As Sandow descended to the front row, Thomas Edison warmly greeted him, and introduced him to a tall, expensively-dressed, dark-haired companion in his late twenties, who had a patch on his right eye, and was missing the ring and middle fingers of his right hand. I couldn’t place this remarkably strange man, but I sensed danger. I knew him from somewhere.
So I eavesdropped, which wasn’t hard: Edison was completely deaf in his left ear, so his companions had to shout into his right one, which also had profound hearing loss.
“My friend Mr. Johnson here suggested that I invite Miss Brumbach to New Jersey to make a kinetograph of her feats,” said Edison.
Sandow, shaking out his shirt, was dismissive. “Mere brute strength does not impress the public, Mr. Edison!”
“Now, now, Eugene. It’s Tom,” corrected the Wizard.
“Of course, Tom!” said Sandow, ignoring the inventor’s mispronunciation. “At the World’s Fair, Flo Ziegfeld had me lifting weights for a week until we discovered that it was my muscles that attracted the people’s attention!” He flexed his bared arm and sure enough, one of the bolder young ladies in the audience stepped forward to squeeze his biceps. She reddened and giggled to her companions.
Edison chuckled. “What has it been, eight years? And yet your posing routine is still our most popular picture. Kinetoscopes are wearing out the prints faster than we can make them.”
Sandow nodded. “Exactly! So where are Miss Brumbach’s muscles? What is attractive about her?”
Edison had no answer for that.
I was ready to jump down and tell them both, but Johnson, who was three sheets to the wind, did it for me.
“Friend, they tell me you’re the strongest man in the world. Well, having bested you tonight, I guess now she can claim the title of strongest person on Earth.”
“Ridiculous!” fumed Sandow. “Tom, as I have a ship to catch, I must bid you good night! As for you, Mr. Johnson, I wish you sobriety. Or if that is impossible, that you not be disfigured any further.” He quickly strode out of the theater, pulling on his jacket as he outdistanced his admirers.
Johnson watched him go with an amused smile. “Kind of a testy sort, isn’t he?”
Edison shrugged, noncommittal. Or maybe he just didn’t hear.
Johnson shook his head.
“All I can say is, my dad has had me on the lookout for a strong woman like this forever! That’s why I brought you here, Tom! But hey...I won’t presume to tell the father of motion pictures his business!”
Edison lit a cigar.
“Well, Octavius, I don’t have time to be involved in the pictures these days. So long as I collect my royalties and patent fees, the Edison Company may record whatever subjects it deems saleable.”
“Then let us repair to the nearest saloon and discuss how Dad and I can finance that nickel mine of yours!” slurred Octavius. “What’s it for again?”
“Batteries.”
“Right, right, batteries. Swell!”
After that, Edison and Johnson were swallowed up in the crowd flowing out the exits.
I was all by myself on stage. I looked into the wings, where I saw Kati and Max in her dressing room. The door was open, but they were in a romantic embrace.
Feeling pretty useless, I about-faced and headed for the stage door...where I bumped into Ariyl Moro. She’d had no trouble getting past Pop, the elderly stage door man, who was tilted back in a chair, dozing. (I’m pretty sure he was called Pop. Aren’t all stage door men called Pop?)
Ms. Moro’s eyes were shining as she spoke in hushed tones.
“Oh, David, I saw it all from back here! You were wonderful!”
“Thanks. Now what kept you?”
“Eh, this damn Crystal! I just got to 1902 ten minutes ago,” she admitted. “But I came right here, ’cause I have faith in you. Now, I know how much you must resent Max, but what you just did for him and Kati was sooo beautiful!”
I waved it off.
“I just got lucky.” I glanced back at the loving couple. “Or actually, they did.”
I was feeling pretty bitter.
Ms. Moro gazed into my eyes with apparent sympathy. “And what about you? Are you remembering anything else about your past?”
“About the past, more and more. My past, not so much.” I looked out at the auditorium. “I did see someone in the front row that I felt like I knew, but I just can’t place him.”
Her ears pricked up.
“What’d he look like?
“Thirtyish, six-two, eye patch, two fingers missing...”
“Octavius Johnson?!” she gasped.
“Yeah, that was his name! You know him?”
“Where is he?”
I scanned the trailing members of the exiting throng.
“Outside by now. You’ll never find him in this mob.”
“Tell me everything he said!”
“Well, he was talking to Thomas Edison—”
“Edison? Where is he?” Now she was pissed.
“He left with Johnson. What’s wrong with Edison?”
“Tell you later,” she seethed. “It has to do with an elephant.”
I had a flash of recall: Ariyl Moro stroking a lion. What the hell was that about?
“You know, I’m not sure I want my memory back,” I said. “I have the feeling my life is about to get a lot weirder.”
She laid a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“The important thing is to take it slow, David. Your memory’ll come back on its own.” Then she looked at my bright red cravat.
“You know, that tie does not go with that shirt.”
“Thanks. Any other fashion tips?”
“I wish you wore something classier than jeans.”
“Next time, I’ll rent a tux.”
“Or buy tighter jeans.”
“They’ll shrink the first time I wash them.”
Then she eyed the exiting crowd.
“Just wait for me. I want to see if I can catch up to Octavius.”
“But...”
She was out the exit before I could utter the second syllable.
Max and Kati were still having a cuddle, but when a young usher cleared his throat and rapped on the door jamb of the dressing room, they disentangled themselves. The lad handed Max a note.
“Kati, wonderful news!” he told her in German. “The manager says there’s a reporter who wants to interview you!”
“Oh!” she wailed looking in her mirror. “Not now, Max. I am a mess!”
“Ja, because you just outlifted Sandow!”
“That is no excuse to look like an unmade bed. Give me time to fix my hair and face.” She looked at her nails. “And do my nails.”
Max opened his mouth to argue, but he could see her mind was made up.
“All right. I’ll keep him busy. Come out when you’re ready. But please don’t be long, Liebchen.”
He kissed her and departed, closing the door.
I looked around for something to do with myself.
There were several prop tables. One might have been for a play or a musical number about sports, because there was a tangle of equipment: a baseball bat, a football, a tennis racket, a hockey stick, and so on. Beside it was a collection of prop swords and other medieval weaponry.
Next to it was Kati’s prop table: I could tell because it was laden with a handful of chains, several decks of playing cards suitable for ripping in two, and half a dozen horseshoes, shiny and new from the blacksmith. I picked up one and tried to bend it. Naturally, I couldn’t budge it a millimeter.
Oscar’s loaner jacket lay where Sandow had flung it. I scooped it up, figuring if we’re really about restoring the timeline, I should drop this off back at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was too sultry backstage to put it on, so I just draped it over my arm.
Kati’s dressing room door opened again. She had mopped the perspiration off her face and put on powder. She was now fixing her curls as she called to me.
“Mr. Preston, please would you come in here?”
Then she bent over to retrieve her towel, her “tiger skin” tunic displaying vast décolletage.
“Um...sure,” I said, trying to keep my gaze above her collarbone. As a result, I tripped on a carpenter’s toolbox someone had left in the wings.
Recovering my balance and my dignity, I entered the room.
“Close the door, please?”
I did as she asked.
She turned away from her reflection and looked me up and down.
“Have we met before?”
“No, I’m quite sure I’d remember you.”
She gave a gentle laugh.
“That is so sweet. And yet, you seem familiar to me.”
“I guess I just have one of those faces.”
“Have a seat,” she said.
I looked around the crowded dressing room for some place to hang Oscar’s coat, but wound up just keeping it on my lap as I sat.
“What brought you and Mr. Sandow to the theater tonight?”
“Oh, nothing special. We were just out running around.”
“But you say you and he are not friends?”
“Not anymore, if we ever were.”
“Well, I must thank you for your suggestion. It was indeed more dramatic.” She finished primping and stood up. “I notice you arrived near the end of the show. Would you like to see what you missed?”
“Oh, don’t go to any trouble,” I began.
“It is no trouble for me.”
She picked up an iron bar a half-inch thick and four feet long.
“You know, my Max is an unusual man. But I see others like him, at every show.” She put her foot on the stool near me. “The posters call me ‘The Herculean Venus.’”
She put the bar across her thigh, atop her leather gladiator-skirt.
“Is it true that I am such a beauty? Not really.”
Her broad shoulders trembled and under her smooth skin, I now could see her triceps ripple with the power she was unleashing.
The iron began to give.
“But to these men, my strength is beautiful. They love when I am bending the iron rod for them.”
She grinned at me, as she kept on forcing the metal bar to her will. As it bent, I caught a faint whiff of smoldering flesh, and realized her costume was quite practical: the heat of the deforming iron was branding the leather flaps of her gladiator skirt. It was that hot.
She took it off her thigh to continue twisting it. It was now u-shaped...or to be precise, n-shaped. She changed her grip to the side, and biceps swelling, she bent the ends past each other. It was now an α-shape, which was appropriate for this alpha female.
“Mr. Preston, it is hot in here, no?”
“It is warm.”
“May I take your coat?”
“It’s not mine. I better hold onto it. I don’t want to lose it.” I had a growing feeling that she must recall me from Zwickau. Maybe it was a dumb idea to have withheld the full dose of Pentol.
I cleared my throat.
“So, I understand you and Max are engaged to be married?”
“No. He keeps asking me. But I have not said yes. I am not yet ready to start a family.”
“But...you love him, right?”
She finished contorting the bar, which was now a comical curlicue. She set it gently atop the jacket, I felt warmth and heaviness in my lap as she leaned over my chair and looked deep into my eyes.
“What shall I say? Men are like air to me: you cannot live without them. Every now and then I like to breathe some fresh air. You know?”
I knew I couldn’t resist her, and frankly I no longer wanted to. To hell with history.
“Um...”
The door burst open.
At this point, I would have been relieved to see a jealous Max Heymann.
But instead, it was a strapping redheaded tough who was brandishing a large Bowie knife.