A Walk With the Past

Prologue

The throng of people, mostly woman and girls, pressing around him and shouting for his attention was nearly overwhelming. Sometimes in these situations he felt like a tomato; his vitality being squeezed out so that others could nourish from it.

Tom closed his eyes for a moment to drown out their cries for autographs, pictures, and hugs. He loved them, but there were times when his fans really were too much.

The actor inhaled, and then slowly let the breath release from his tight chest in an effort to level his spinning senses. He made his way down a line of admirers; smiling, nodding, and dishing out his usual idle chit chat with them. Out of the corner of his eye the image of a lone woman, serene compared to the overly eager people on either side of her, caught Tom’s attention. He passed-off a signed photo to whoever had requested it, and then sidestepped several waiting others to make his way to her.

The woman set her eyes upon him, and Tom sensed a deliberate pull to her versus actually approaching of his own free will. When he came to stand in front of the young lady, for some inexplicable reason Tom was unable to summon a cognitive thought.

She stared at him with mossy green eyes. Her mouth was set in such a way that it appeared she might be on the verge of smiling, but not quite. The woman’s attire struck him first. The brim of her cloche hat half-veiled her face, and her circa 1920’s dress and coat created an air of antique mystery.

The people around the woman acted up even more, some of them reaching out to grasp at him, and Tom flinched away from a stray forearm that nearly swatted him. When he turned back to the strange woman who drew him in like a tractor beam, to Tom’s utter dismay she was gone.

His gaze had only been averted from her for a second – two at the very most – but now the mystifying creature was absolutely nowhere to be seen. Tom scanned the crowd the best he could, searching for that signature hat she wore, but came up empty handed.

“Excuse me,” he spoke to one of the girls that she had been standing by. “Did you happen to see in what direction that young lady went off?”

Tom watched the girl’s expression go from one of elation that he was actually talking to her to that of confounded puzzlement. She looked on either side of her, and then shrugged her shoulders at him.

“What lady?” she asked. “These are the same people that have been around me all morning waiting for you.”

Bewildered and a bit ill-at-ease, Tom’s brow creased. He scanned the area once more, and then turned his attention back to the crowd still screaming his name.