Chapter 5

I'd screwed things up really good. Oh yeah, I had Maggie back, hornier than ever and much more active in the sack. But as a result of interdependent changes I'd made by going back in time and having first sex with the younger versions of women I knew, I'd lost my daughter Felice. What used to be her room was now an office.

"I got your good suit cleaned for the wake," said Maggie as I stared into Felice's old bedroom, now a home office.

Damn! And Mrs. Hendricks was still dead, too early in life because of changes I'd made. There was no direct causality, but she was alive before I started time-influenced cherry busting, and now she wasn't. "Thanks."

Maggie wanted another frolic in bed but my heart wasn't in it. No Mrs. Hendricks and no Felice? My pleasure had a huge price to pay, something I didn't want Maggie reminding me.

I lazed around the house watching random channels, reading magazines, and avoiding the office. When time got close, I took a shower, and had to physically push Maggie away when she decided that she wanted a vertical coupling under a warm spray. I picked a pressed white shirt and conservative tie from the rack. Maggie wore a simple black dress that made her look phenomenal. Too bad it was time to go, because at that moment, I was ready for the sex she'd pestered me for all day.

I didn't know Mrs. Hendricks very well, maybe at all. I recognized her poster-sized photo at the entrance to the room at the local mortuary. Maggie signed both of our names into the remembrance book. Most of the people there knew her from public service, like serving on the Board of the library, and her work with the Parent-Teacher Organization. Her grown-up children, parents in their own right, showed off their kids, yet another generation. I avoided looking in the casket. Too creepy.

A few steps away from the main attraction, a woman who I immediately recognized as the antique shop owner was pushing a wheelchair. I presumed the pushee was her mother. The shop owner looked at me as if she recognized me. From her first sex or the day I bought the silver clock? In both cases, I was the same current age. I considered that if I was really my age back when she was eighteen, I'd be even older than her mother in the wheelchair.

I nodded my head.

"You owe me something," said the shopkeeper.

Maggie chose that moment to join me and take my arm. "Dear, what's the matter?"

"Your husband has something of mine." She scowled. "I want it back." Her voice got louder.

Her mother in the wheelchair looked up for the first time. Her eyes went wide. "I know you. Oh yes, I know you."

The shopkeeper turned her attention to her mother. "No, Mama, you're mistaken. You've never met-"

Her mother almost bolted out of her chair. She reached for me, and I backed up. "Yes I do, dammit. I know him!"

Another man walked over. "Dutchie, calm yourself or you'll have another stroke."

The only thing that made any sense was that Dutchie was the older woman in the picture on the younger shopkeeper's side table the day I shared her first intercourse. But that day I'd only met her father, who'd socked me back to the present with a stroke of his baseball bat.

To avoid further embarrassment, the shopkeeper rolled her mother away. "I'm not done with you." She almost spat the words.

"What was that all about?" asked Maggie. "Did you steal something from her?"

I'd taken her virginity and her clock, but paid for the latter. And hadn't stopped paying, with Mrs. Hendricks dead and Felice only in my memory. "No, there's a misunderstanding. I bought an antique from her, with a legitimate receipt. She set the price, and now is upset because she made it too low." I lied. How could I explain any of this to Maggie?

"Maybe you should renegotiate the price. It's only money."

If paying the old shopkeeper would bring Felice back and revive Mrs. Hendricks, I would have done it in an instant. But I was stubborn. The clock was mine, and no one was going to take it from me. "We had a fair deal." Seventy-two cents wasn't a fair price and I knew it. But the clock had caused grief as well as pleasure. What would a fair price be?

"That's an odd, name don't you think?" asked Maggie. "Dutchie? They didn't look Dutch."

"Probably a nickname. Maybe she liked going Dutch treat."

"I wonder why she was so insistent that she knew you? Do you think that's possible?"

"Never saw the woman in my life," I replied. "Never."

"Well, she sure knew how to make a fuss."

We left the mortuary shortly thereafter. Maggie was more subtle, undressing in front of me down to bra and panties but getting ready for bed in the bathroom.

When Maggie came out prepared for bed, she wore a peignoir that was so transparent it was almost not there. I couldn't avoid her in the proximity of our marital bed, so I accepted her sexual advances. In fact, I threw myself into the action, rolling her off me, onto her back, and fucking her like it was our first time. In one way, it was, at least, the first time with this version of Maggie. I prayed that she was ovulating and that we were making a daughter, just eighteen years later than the last time.

Exhausted, I rolled over and curled up. Dutchie's accusation echoed in my head as I drifted off to sleep.

I stood in a room decorated with antique wooden furniture. Looking out the window, we were several stories up. Built into one wall was a bed, decorated in pastel colors. The designer had put decorative bedposts at both ends, a few inches from the wall that enclosed the sleeping surface. And hovering above one of those bedposts was a naked young woman. She looked very much like the antiques shopkeeper, but not the same person. Besides, I'd already delivered her first fucking. No, this was a relative. "Dutchie?"

The young woman looked up from her pursuit of impaling herself, her vagina, on the bedpost. "What did you call me?"

"Sorry, I'm confused. What's your name?" Odd thing to ask, seeing her naked, but a conversation was necessary, and I didn't have a name for her except adorable.

"None of your business. What are you doing in my bedroom?" She wobbled directly over the wooden penis substitute.

She deserved better, and better was in my pants. "I'm here-" I paused. Should I tell her the truth? Why not? Because if she lowered herself, then the game would be over. "I'm here to make love to you."