Esme spat her tea across the table. It would have mattered little, except she was sitting on the balcony watching the river and the action sent a spray of tea over the rails to rain on the crowd below. The squeals and cries that reached her ears a moment later were not from delight. She would surely hear about it from the manager when she reported for work, if she didn’t hear about it before.
She blinked her eyes rapidly trying to clear her vision. In the fraction of a second after her first decadent sip of the hot liquid gold, a small tug had appeared across the river as if it had been there all along. She knew it hadn’t been there when she sat down, so where did it come from? As if her memories and dreams were mocking her while her eyes were wide open, and as though it were yesterday, Captain Henry appeared on the deck clad in a nightgown. He hadn’t aged a day. She was still trying to make sense of what she was seeing when he, and his ship, were obscured for a time as a large, heavily loaded barge passed between them on its way to port.
After so many years living along the back river, she was surprised to realize that she had never noticed how long it actually took a barge to travel the distance from the river’s mouth up to port. Even more so, how long it took for one to pass her perch. By the time it finally eased through, and she was able to see beyond it once again, she was even more shocked that the small tug was still there. She didn’t know when she had gotten up, but had to ease back from the spot where she now found herself, white – knuckled, clutching the rail, squinting to focus on the far side of the river near the shore.
Captain Henry was still there in his nightgown, though somewhere between her first glimpse of him and the one now, he had sat down. Why, was anyone’s guess. His expression was colored with confusion as his gaze followed the barge up river. Esme noticed as he scanned back across the western bank, still obviously perplexed. She chuckled to herself to notice his slight jump as the next barge came through. Knowing this time that it would take more than a few long moments, she refilled her tea and sat back down to see what would happen next.
When the second barge cleared, she was curious as the captain was no longer on deck. He reemerged rather quickly, this time more appropriately dressed. She couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. If she had to guess, based on his earlier nightgown, and the very dated outfit he had donned in between, where ever he had been since 1865, it had not been alongside the same timeline she had experienced. She had to set her teacup down and clutch her sides for the next few moments as she watched him. The frantic scramble was laughable.
The 1812 Overture blared from her phone where it rested on the table. Grabbing it, she absently noticed the time. She was late. She had been so caught up in the developments on the water that she forgot she had picked up the morning shift at the desk. Huffing, she connected the call and composed herself before answering.
“I apologize. I forgot. I’ll be downstairs in 10 minutes.” She announced as calmly as she could manage before the questions could be posed.
She knew without much thought that she would not be able to see the tug from the front desk. The angle was too sharp. She could only hope that it would still be there when she got a chance to step outside and have a look. It was going to be a very long day.