Eli Yon casually stepped out of the men’s room and approached the hostess desk, tugging at the front of his blue cotton dress shirt and smoothing his graying hair. The petite girl with long black hair had been too busy to notice that he hadn’t come in through the front doors. That he hadn’t existed until recently.
Works every time.
Yon took a furtive glance at his über-modern silver timepiece to verify which year he was in.
2028.
Perfect.
“Welcome to Jo’s, Lincoln City. Just one?” she asked with a smile as she gazed up into his gray eyes.
Yon nodded and followed the girl past the hostess desk through the huge, high-ceilinged dining hall to a table facing the array of picture windows that framed the great Pacific Ocean. The horizon sliced through the pane like the line dividing grounded reality from the temporal flux with which Yon was all-too familiar.
The nautical décor reminded him of the last time he’d been in a Jo’s restaurant – sixty years ago, in May of 1968 – although it was the one located in Newport that time, and the sixty-year stretch in between had only been two years in Yon’s career as a History Steward.
Back then there was no holographic jukebox, but other than that, the place was much the same.
Yon sat on the hard bench and stared at the menu that offered “hops” and “grapes” in place of beer and wine, and asked for a Full Sail Ale before the hostess left the table.
He enjoyed these excursions, especially to the early twenty-first century – or the nineteen eighties, one of his favorites – because you just couldn’t get that authentic seaside dining experience anymore. Probably because there was no seaside anymore, at least not anywhere north of the twenty-third parallel – what they used to call the tropics. And the rest was just swamp land these days.
No, this was a treat – pounding surf, huge waves rolling in, a (seemingly) endless driven rhythm. They appeared small from this distance, and deceptively silent, but the giant breakers carried such power and authority they gave Yon a shiver down his spine.
A smiling waiter named Sam appeared at the table, his “Jo’s” visor atop his shaggy head, a colony of about a thousand straws peeking out of his apron pocket.
“Are you ready to order?” he asked, hands clasped behind his back and no sign of a pen or pad.
“What do you recommend?”
“The shrimp skewers are amazing.”
“Alright, I’ll take the grilled parmesan petrale sole sandwich – that’s a mouthful! – with the clam chowder,” said Yon, ignoring the waiter’s suggestion.
“Great choice, Sir,” said Sam, stealing away with the menu.
The lowering sun filtered through the tall clusters of cattails outside that leaned in the evening breeze, casting irregular, moving shadows on the walls and highlighting the mini-museum of nautical paraphernalia – a row of “welcome aboard” life preservers, glass floats of various colors hanging in fishing nets with sea shells, a variety of clocks modeled after ship’s steering wheels, and other assorted kitsch.
Yon watched an elderly couple in the corner, as the old man leafed through his wallet, then pulled out a leather coin purse, fishing for change with no luck and cursing in frustration. A small sign on the wall behind them read me and my old crab live here. Yon smiled at the juxtaposition.
On the other side of the room, a chubby young family got up to leave, a tall stack of dirty dishes in their wake. To their left was a knick-knack on the wall – a miniature saloon storefront in bas-relief accompanied by the words we trade in beer and gossip – which reminded Yon that he needed to be sure not to blow his cover.
Strangely enough, Yon had used Jo’s – this one, or others on the Oregon Coast - as a meeting place at various times throughout the latter twentieth century – yet nobody ever recognized him. Salt air, good food, anonymity. Ideal for an elimination broker like Yon.
The perfect location for setting up kills.
The clam chowder was as good as Yon remembered it – the perfect flavor and consistency, with melted butter oozing deliciously up to the surface as he spooned the gray-white puree into his mouth. It was so good he burned his tongue in his race to shovel it in.
Time displacement always made him hungry, so when his sole hit the table it was in his mouth before Sam could ask him if he needed anything else. The crispy parmesan encrusted fish melded with the soft fresh bun, lettuce and tomato with perfection. As he chomped the last bite, he checked his watch again. Soon his contact would be here to receive instructions and payment, and the final phase of this job would be underway.
Yon stared out at a congregation of gulls huddled together across the water on a sand spit, oblivious to the world beyond this run of coast line. He saw the men fishing on the beach, and considered that all of these people were much like the gulls – oblivious to the world around them as it really is. They had no clue the way the strings were being pulled, every day of their little lives.
Yon sipped his ale as Otis Redding’s classic Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay came over the piped music system, throwing Yon’s mind back once again to the late spring of 1968, and the one job that hurt his career the most.