Whatever Lola Wants by George Szanto Page B

hug her, just the friendliest of hugs …
    â€œAnd Beth Cochan’s memory too. Two memories so close together.”
    Then my belly tightened. Now Lola was wrong. Because I knew I couldn’t be seeing Beth Cochan’s memory because I knew, without knowing how, that Beth Cochan was dead. I’d have to figure that one out.
    I closed my eyes again, maybe find Beth again. No. She wasn’t there. I’d try again later.
    Later too I couldn’t locate her. But I did see John Milton Magnussen. In his mid-twenties. In London. Deep under the ground.
    And from about the same time, Theresa’s memory.
    â€¢
    3. (1963)
    Milton had told his sister, Bev, about meeting Theresa on the boat, the Princess Isabella , second day out of New York, heading to England and France. Lots of students on board. Theresa would be working at the Hotel Boniface in Lyon after her fencing tournament in Paris. They’d spend the afternoon together tomorrow when he passed through, six hours between his train from London and the connection to Freiburg. He wanted to give her a small present. Bev said she’d take him to London’s Silver Vaults.
    â€œWhat’re they?”
    Back in the nineteenth century, Bev told him, silver dealers from Hatton Garden stored their goods overnight in underground vaults there. Then dealers began to open these subterranean warehouses to the public, and the Silver Vaults sold retail ever since.
    Bev and Milton descended, grim fluorescent light overhead, lines and lines of shops along the alleyways, all displaying silver: candlesticks, samovars, cutlery, picture frames, rings, tea sets. The next shop, silver animals: rabbits, mice, beavers, a dozen different insects, a silver cockatiel, cats, dogs of all breeds.
    â€œDown this way.” Bev led him to a store displaying smaller, less expensive items, necklaces, broaches, earrings. She knew how little money he had.
    A necklace, he figured. Both intimate and general. The bald clerk laid out a dozen and more on the glass countertop. Milton examined each, his eyes returning to a delicate silver chain, links so tiny and interconnected it looked like a slender snake slithering across his palm. From the chain hung a small stone framed with silver, a bloodstone, green jasper with bright red dots spattered anarchically. Her birthstone. March 23. He’d sneaked a look at her passport.
    â€œChalcedony quartz,” the clerk said. “Named heliotrope, reflects sunlight brilliantly.”
    â€œCan you try it on, Bev?”
    Bev opened the clasp, took an end of chain in each hand, and brought it around her neck. The bloodstone glowed soft green against her skin, whitened by the fluorescence overhead. She attached the clasp without a problem. She raised her chin. “How’s it look?”
    â€œGood.” He nodded to the clerk. “You have a little box to put it in?”
    Bev undid the clasp.
    He paid. Her birthstone. It would be for Theresa only. Until the boat had sailed away, taking her on to Le Havre, leaving him on the dock at Southampton, he hadn’t understood how deeply smitten he was. Three days ago. Her absence had left him acutely alone. Even with Bev appearing as planned outside the Immigration Hall to take him in hand.
    He pocketed the package and they left the shop.
    â€œYou know,” Bev said, “in India they grind bloodstones into powder. You drink it down in water. It’s an aphrodisiac. It gives you strength. They say.”
    Strength is what he’d hoped for on the boat. He’d noticed Theresa the second day at dinner, the chair at her table in the dining room back to back with his own. At one point she’d pushed backward, tapping his chair. He’d turned. She’d grinned, said, “Sorry,” stood, and walked away. A tall woman, a couple of inches shorter than his own six feet. But elegantly curved. Had he been brave enough, he’d’ve gotten up and followed her out