Chapter 236: Happy New Year

December 31, 2011

“The poor dear,” a woman’s voice was saying. “I wonder what’s wrong with him?”

I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, still trying to process what had happened to me. The last thing I could remember was standing on the bridge of the Edna Lorraine, a World War II Diver-class Search & Rescue ship that was captured off the coast of Tapato, then presented to me by the Queen to use in my search for Don’rahall’s sunken spacecraft and the final piece of the Te’trad that was still onboard, according to Thesan.

“He doesn’t appear to be bleeding or anything. Should we try to move him? He could have internal injuries, you know,” said a different woman’s voice.

“Poor baby. He looks so cold just lying there,” chimed a third voice. “Do you think he’s homeless?”

“Well, let’s see if we can wake him; then, if he can walk, we’ll take him to the shelter,” said the first voice.

“Hello officer,” said the second voice.

“Ladies,” he said politely. “Can I help you?”

“We just found him lying here and we were going to try and wake him. Then, if he’s not too drunk or high, we were going to escort him to our mission on 46^th Street and get him out of this cold.

“Son, can you hear me?” a man’s voice asked as he nudged me with the toe of his boot. I opened my eyes and craned my neck up to see a man dressed as a twenty-first century police office in full riot gear. Normally, I don’t appreciate being addressed as ‘son’ by anyone. It always sounds so condescending, especially since I am actually fifty-six years old. But at the moment, I was too busy trying to regain my senses to object. Besides, I was truly thankful that he hadn’t nudged me a lot harder with those steel-toed size thirteen’s he sported.

With one of the women helping me, I was finally able to sit upright, leaning against a concrete pillar while sitting on the concrete floor. At that moment, I heard, or rather felt, the loud vibrations of a train as it rumbled by somewhere close to where I was.

Concrete? Trains? Not to mention the smell!

Yep! This could only be the subway, which meant I was now in New York. I had been here before, in my last life. Well, maybe not exactly here, but I had had an office not five minutes from here. I knew this because over the officer’s shoulder, the large overhead sign posted near the ceiling said ‘42nd St - Times Square’.

The radio clipped to the officer’s shoulder clued me in that this was probably not the same era I had come from. So the question wasn’t WHERE was I, but WHEN was I?

“Are you okay?” asked the woman with the voice I had assigned as number three.

“Do you hurt anywhere?” asked number two.

“What happened to you? Why were you lying there without your coat?” scolded number one.

Holding out my left hand, palm outward, hoping to slow down their inquisition, I used my other hand against the pillar to get shakily to my feet.

“Do you have any identification, son?” asked the giant in the riot gear.

I immediately felt for my wallet, but then I realized that any identification I had on me would be from 1971, and somehow, I didn’t think it would help me any here.

“Uh, I’m sorry. It seems that whoever hit me and stole my coat, also took my wallet,” I told the officer. I knew that muggings, while not commonplace, were not totally unheard of either in the subway. I just hoped that he didn’t make me file a report or anything.

“What about your phone?” he asked. “Did they get that too?”

“Apparently, they got that too,” I replied after feeling my pockets as if looking for it.

“Well, tell us where you live and we’ll see about getting you back home,” he said.

“Uh-oh! This is getting complicated,” I thought. “I need to get out of here and figure out what’s happening. And find somewhere warm to do it!”

“Well, er, my uh, grandmother lives out on Long Island,” I said hesitantly, “but she would be really upset if she had to send someone out to get me tonight.”

Suddenly, his radio blared with some kind of message, coded in police-speak. Immediately, without removing it from his shoulder, he pressed the mic key and replied in the same unintelligible language. Then turning to the ladies and me, he said, “Sorry, I have to run. It’s almost time. Can you handle helping him get home?”

“Of course, officer,” replied number one. “Thank you for your help.”

“Thank goodness!” I thought. “Now if I could just find out the date.”

“And Happy New Year!” said number three to his retreating back. We all watched as he was swallowed up in the swelling crowd as everyone seemed to be making their way to the stairs up to 42nd street.

“Michael? Is that really you?” a new voice asked. “Why, what in the world are you doing here?”

“Holy cow!” I thought, shaking my head to try and clear the cobwebs in my brain.

“My goodness, Michael. And what happened to your coat?” she asked me in her most motherly tone.

I just gave her my best teenaged shrug. She was positively one of the last people I expected to see in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

“Here, take this one. I’ll get another one for my grandson later,” she instructed as she pulled a rather large box from an equally large shopping bag she carried at her side. Inside was a single-breasted wool & cashmere blend overcoat. The designer label sewn in it simply said ‘Joseph’. When I slipped it on, it fit perfectly, and I immediately began to feel much warmer. I had never worn a five-thousand-dollar coat before.

“Now,” she continued, “thank these nice ladies for their assistance and you can come watch the ball drop with me.” And with that, she turned and started very slowly towards the stairs that lead from the subway up to Times Square.

I quickly thanked the three ladies for their concerns and then hurried to catch up with her. The whole time, my brain was trying to catch up with her as well.

When we finally reached the street, it was packed with revelers moving en masse towards the Times Building. Without saying a word, she simply grasped my hand and we allowed ourselves to be swept along with the crowd.

The streets were all cordoned off to vehicular traffic, and everywhere you looked, people were laughing and talking, bathed in the sea of digitally colored billboards and signs, for which Times Square was infamous. Ahead of us, in front of the NBC Studios, was a large stage erected on scaffolding almost two stories high. I thought I recognized Lady Gaga talking with some on-air personality, along with Michael Bloomberg who was at the time, I think, the Mayor of New York City. So that told me something. If it really was Lady Gaga and Michael Bloomberg, then I must have landed back in my previous lifetime’s era.

One thing for sure, I was no longer in 1971. And that made me very sad indeed.

“Cheer up, Michael,” she told me. “You won’t be here too long.”

I stopped and was turning to look at her when I felt the swarm of people pressing us on down the street. Grabbing her hand, I threaded us though the crowd towards the small alcove behind the ticket office for the New Amsterdam Theater.

Once there, out of the crowds and especially the wind, I turned to look at her. But before I could say a word, we heard the chant growing louder in the background.

“28... 27... 26... 25...” the massive crowd screamed out the countdown, a million plus voices reverberating through the canyons formed by the city’s skyscrapers. We found ourselves easing back towards the street so we could see the top of the Times Building and the brightly lit ball descending.

“19... 18... 17...” the crescendo becoming louder and louder as she squeezed my hand and pulled me closer.

“12... 11... 10...” She pulled down on my arm, and then placed her hand behind my head as she brought her lips up to mine.

“4... 3... 2... 1...” At that moment, I became lost in her kiss, as I opened my heart to share my passion with her. For some reason, she wasn’t as awed by that as other women I had kissed, so I added my desires, and finally my love for all those of my family and friends and especially those I had a connection with.

It was to the final strains of “Auld Lang Syne” when she finally moaned and fell back in my arms.

“Happy 2012, Michael,” she sighed as she closed her eyes and nestled deep into my arms.

“Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today...” sang the mass of people surrounding us. ” ... I want to be a part of it: New York, New York...”

It felt good to hold her. Not like it felt when I held those of my girls who I had a special connection with, or I was married to. Still, there was something there. So I stood there with her wrapped in my arms and tried to figure out what it all meant and where it was going.

” ... These vagabond shoes, are longing to stray...”

It had been early August, 1971, when our boat, no, our ship, which was sailing off the islands of Tapato, encountered a giant fog bank. Suddenly, the helm wouldn’t answer, and moments later, it felt like the ship was just gliding along over the wave tops, towards that giant fog bank. The next thing I knew, I had passed out on the tiny bridge, only to wake up in a Times Square subway station on New Year’s Eve, 2011.

Then, I was rescued by the last person I ever expected to see. But now that I’d thought it through, it actually made sense.

You see, in my last life, I was a fifty-six-year-old, overweight, out-of-shape, construction worker who was suffering from massive depression and didn’t understand that my depression was a disease that could have been successfully treated with medication and counseling.

Instead, I sat down one night and put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. That was Monday night, May 11^th, 2011.

The next thing I know, I’m waking up in a hospital, in 1971, in the body of a brain-dead sixteen-year-old, and with the ability to both sense what others are feeling and to share those feeling with others. In addition to the empathic abilities, which I refer to as my gift (along with my sixteen-year-old body), I also inherited, if you will, the brain-dead kids’ family.

And that’s what I think is the greatest gift of all.

” ... Right through the very heart of it: New York, New York...”

So now, I just wanted to get back to them. Back to 1971. But the gods don’t usually trifle with mere mortals like me unless they want something, so I guess it was time to pay the piper, as my daddy used to say.

” ... wake up, in a city that doesn’t sleep, and find I’m king of the hill, top of the heap...”

“My great-granddaughters were right. You are very close to being a god,” Thesan told me. “And if you’ll come with me for a little while longer, we’ll check out the rest of their claims before I get you back to your ladies and your quest.”

“Your wish is my command...” I grinned.

One minute we were standing in the freezing cold in front of the closed box office at the New Amsterdam Theatre on West 42^nd Street, with over a million other people singing along to Frank Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York’; the next, we were standing in a penthouse suite looking down on those same throngs through floor-to-ceiling windows. From here, the crowds below could only be imagined to be heard and the bitter winds almost forgotten in the toasty heat.

“Here,” she said, handing me a champagne flute. “A toast. To a New Year and to new experiences,” she said as she extended her flute gracefully towards me.

“And to beautiful new friends,” I added as I gently touched my own fine crystal flute to hers.

Standing this close to her, I confirmed my earlier suspicion that she was barely five foot tall. Yet she truly did hold all the majesty of the universe as she stared up into my eyes. She had removed her coat and was dressed in a soft robe of shimmering purple hues that covered her from neck to toes, just as the last time we met. And her hair was again woven with sparkling purple gems and piled high upon the top of her head. Her long slender neck was adorned with a necklace of clear gems, which I had originally thought much too large to be real diamonds, but on closer examination now, I wasn’t so sure. However, there was no doubt, that from the top of her head to the tips of her tiny feet, this lady literally radiated splendor, grace, elegance, and power.