Chapter 40
FEELING VIOLENTLY ILL, her head about to explode, Alex began to wake up.
Slowly, in excruciatingly painful stages.
Alex finally opened her eyes and was met by the glare of a blazingly hot sun. She was disoriented, confused, and flat on her back on the hard ground. Was she still in Tripoli? Somehow that seemed wrong. Then her heart constricted. Hadn’t she escaped?
Alex realized that she was staring up through the branches of a leafy green tree—not a palm tree or a date tree, but some kind of continental species, a beech or an elm, perhaps. Her heart raced.
And as her world slowed in its spinning, as the tree and the puffy white clouds overhead came increasingly into focus, images flooded her.
Of finding Xavier outside of the palace’s front gates, of Murad standing there, refusing to escape with them, of being picked up on the beach by a small rowboat and taken to the USS Constitution.
Ohmygod! In a blinding flash she recalled the night that had just passed, and Xavier’s fierce yet tender lovemaking.
Her head pounded harder now, and she had to close her eyes.
“I cannot,” he had whispered. I cannot.
He was married.
Alex’s eyes flew open and she stared up at the tree. Slowly, filled with dread, other bits and pieces of that evening coming back to her now, she turned her head. And stared at the Riverside Drive brownstone where she lived.
Alex levered herself upright.
Pedestrians in jeans and shorts were hurrying by her and studiously ignoring her. Alex did not care. She brushed chunks of red hair out of her eyes, beginning to cry.
How was this possible? How had she traveled back to the present? Hadn’t she been on board the Constitution just moments ago? She found it terribly difficult to breathe, panic overtaking her. The intensity of her headache increased, the pain nearly blinding.
Xavier was married. He had betrayed her.
Alex covered her face with her hands, fighting the urge to vomit. How could he have deceived her this way? In the two years since she had first met him in Tripoli, he had never said a word, never even hinted, that he had a wife.
Alex clutched her chest. She did not think she could survive her grief.
A passerby hesitated, and stopped. “Are you all right, young lady?”
Alex blinked at the elderly gentleman through tear-filled eyes. She was incapable of formulating a reply.
He hurried on.
She bent over her knees, choking on a sob. Xavier was on board the USS Constitution, just north of Tripoli, married to another woman, and Alex was here, in the twentieth century. Oh God! If anguish could kill, then she would be dead.
She rocked herself back and forth, moaning.
“Alex!” Beth cried.
Alex froze, looking up at her best friend. Beth was white with shock. Then she dropped to her knees and gripped Alex’s shoulders. “Good God! What has happened to you? And what are you doing back—and here—on the street?!”
Alex had never needed anyone more than she needed Beth. She rose with Beth’s help, a wave of nausea sweeping over her again. “I am going to be sick,” she gritted.
“Alex?” Beth asked with concern.
Alex allowed the violently ill feeling to pass, and then she embraced her friend.
Beth held her, stroking her hair. “Good Lord, what happened to your hair?” she said thickly.
Alex did not understand. She broke away, wiping her eyes. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“It’s long. And your face—how did you get those cuts? Are you hurt? And what are those strange clothes? Alex—I thought you left for Tripoli!”
Alex glanced down at her genuine nineteenth-century breeches and her old-fashioned linen shirt—items she had freely borrowed from a chest in Preble’s cabin.
At least she hadn’t been dreaming. The clothes were proof that she had been in the past, as were the scratches on her face and arms. Alex clutched herself, overwhelmed by another cresting tide of heartbreak.
How could she live without him? Yet he belonged to another woman, another place, another time.
“Alex? Please, what’s going on?”
Alex shook her head, and allowed Beth to lead her up the front steps of the brownstone. Beth unlocked the door and they walked up the three flights to Alex’s apartment. The moment the door was open Alex slid to the floor, hugging her knees. She began to weep.
Behind her, she heard Beth close and lock the door.
Alex cried until she had no tears left.
She looked up, wiping her eyes with her shirtsleeve. “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely.
“Do you want to tell me what’s happened? You never went to Tripoli, did you?”
Alex inhaled, hard. “I went to Tripoli, Beth. How can you even ask? I’ve been gone for three years.”
Beth’s eyes widened. “Alex, you’ve been gone for three days.”
Alex stared, speechless. “I beg your pardon?” she finally said.
Beth hesitated. “Why would you tell me that you’ve been gone for three years? And why are you wearing a wig?”
Alex stood. There was a rolled-up newspaper on the kitchen table, and she walked over to it. She slipped off the rubber band and unfolded the New York Times. That day’s date was July 15, 1996.
She had embarked for Tripoli via Paris July 13, 1996.
Beth was right. She had been gone for three days, but in the past, she had lived through three entire years.
Alex walked into the bathroom and looked at herself.
Her hair was six inches past her shoulders now, wild and disheveled from Blackwell’s lovemaking.
There were small cuts on her face from the shards of marble and stone that had fallen on her from Preble’s incessant bombardment of the palace.
And she was wearing clothes that must appear incredibly comic to a twentieth-century observer.
But there was no question about it. She had traveled back in time. She had been living in the past. And now she had returned to the present. She had traveled through time again, without the magic lamp.
Alex didn’t understand it, would never understand it.
And as she stood there looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, she recalled again the exact moment when Blackwell had told her that he had a wife—the moment when she had begun to time-travel.
An unholy rage had possessed her. Had the force of her emotions sent her back to the future?
In any case, the rage was gone. There was only shock and grief.
“Alex? Are you going to tell me what has happened?” Beth asked, having come to stand in the bathroom’s doorway behind her.
Alex turned. “Yes, Beth, I am going to tell you everything.”
But first Alex showered. Her body was bruised and battered from the bombing, and as she soaped herself, she found Blackwell’s semen between her legs. She was not imagining anything.
Hardly refreshed, she put on her oldest, most faded and worn Levi’s, with a big sweatshirt, as tattered and as soft. Beth eyed the shirt dubiously. It had to be ninety-five degrees outside, and Alex’s air-conditioning had never worked well.
Alex curled up in her bed, hugging her knees to her chest. “I have been gone for three years, Beth,” Alex started. Beth appeared about to interrupt, but Alex cut her off. “I am not wearing a wig. These are not hair extensions. My hair has grown for three goddamn years.”
Beth, pale, was silent.
“Want to look for little knots?” Alex asked with some bitterness.
Beth hesitated, wet her lips. “I believe you. About the hair, that is.”
“When I arrived in Tripoli I began to explore immediately. I went to the palace, which is now a museum. Just outside of it there was this little antiquities shop. Inside, I met this man.” Tears seeped from Alex’s eyes as she recalled Murad.
She would always miss him. “A young man named Joseph. And I wound up buying a small blue oil lamp that was at least two hundred years old.”
Beth remained still.
“When I left the store, I began to feel dizzy and strange. The lamp was growing hotter and hotter in my hands. My legs were becoming numb. And the next thing I knew, I was being sucked down into what felt like a cyclone. And then I was waking up. I was flat on my back on this small dirt street. I was disoriented, confused. Everything seemed strange and out of place; the houses seemed old-fashioned, but I figured I was in a ghetto neighborhood in northern Africa. But the people were strange too.” Alex paused, taking a sip of Diet Coke.
“Beth, I was chased by these Turks wielding scimitars. They’re called janissaries.
The soldiers of the bashaw—not twentieth-century soldiers—nineteenth-century soldiers. ”
Beth stared, her eyes wide. “Alex,” she whispered, a protest.
“They carried pistols and muskets, too. Of course, I thought they were in costume. But they chased me through the city, Beth, and it wasn’t for fun.
I was terrified. I ran into an old man’s house.
He seemed kind, and I didn’t understand a word he said—but he drugged me.
When I woke up this time, I was being guarded by two African slaves—and I was being held against my will by a French slave trader. ”
Beth was speechless, unmoving.
Alex stood. “He sold me to the bashaw, Beth. But the bashaw’s son liked me—I married the bashaw’s son, Jebal.
It wasn’t 1996, Beth—it was 1802—and I had no choice!
I have been gone for three goddamn years, I have lived in a harem as a second wife, lived through war …
I have been through hell!” Alex began to weep uncontrollably.
Beth rushed to her and held her. “Alex, shh. You are distraught, overtired.”