Disclaimer: Although some of the characters in this book are based on actual people, these accounts are purely fictitious and for entertainment purposes only. The depictions of historical people should not be taken as an accurate account of any person's life.
“Saving Marilyn” by Christy Cauley
28,179 words
ISBN-13: 978-1-4524-4687-5
© 2011 Christy J. Cauley www.ChristyCauley.com
As always, I owe this book to the most amazing husband a woman could ever ask for, Joseph Cauley. He designed the cover, provided hours upon hours of technical support (yes, he knows how to build a time machine – theoretically anyway) and has always been my number one editor. This book would never have been possible without you. My life would not have been possible without you. I love you dearly.
Special thanks to my friends and family for their support and encouragement. Thank you as always our nephews, Jeremy, Jason and Justin for making our house a home!
Dedicated in loving memory to our children,
Gwendolyn and Gabriel Cauley (www.GwenAndGabe.com).
Chapter 1 – Loki
Claire Callahan and her husband, Auggie, were at their usual positions, both in front of their respective computers. The twenty-first century had sprung nearly a decade earlier and they were the poster children for new technology. Every technical gadget that a middle class family could afford graced their living quarters. In the 90s, they were the first family on the block to have a computer, the first with internet access, and so on. Now their house looks more like the headquarters for Microsoft than anything else. Most of these high-tech decorations can be attributed to Auggie’s testosterone-driven need to have the latest and greatest everything, but Claire enjoys all of the amenities just the same.
Claire is average height and built solid like a brick wall. At thirty-something, she has friendly, emerald green eyes with the beginnings of tiny lines on the sides that crinkle every time she smiles. Her hair is short, brunette, and perfectly sculpted into a wedge like the one Dorothy Hamill sported when she won a Gold medal in figure skating during the 1976 Olympics. Claire was six then and she dreamed of gliding on the ice at 70-miles-per-hour while the breeze sent ripples through her hair. Unfortunately, her butt was always too big for those little figure skating outfits, so she settled for softball instead. She wasn’t the best player, but the friendships she forged meant more to her than winning or losing. Boys weren’t falling all over themselves to date girls on the softball team, but it kept her butt from getting any larger, so it was win/win.
Claire is a claims investigator for Brentwood Insurance. She longs for big cases, like investigating the death of a client to see if the claim of “death of natural causes” was actually a murder-for-hire plot hatched by the client’s spouse, but in reality she was buried in case after case of minor auto and house insurance fraud investigations. During her last case, she spent 12 hours staked out in her car taking pictures of a man through the bay window in his living room. He was playing games on a PS3 that he claimed was stolen during a burglary. Claire often found herself bored by the tediousness of her job.
Auggie is tall and fair with a sweet, dimpled smile and crystal blue eyes like the shallow part of the ocean drifting onto a Hawaiian beach. He dons a perfectly trimmed beard and moustache that bear a striking resemblance to Commander Riker on “Star Trek, the Next Generation.” He has the hands of an artist, small and soft, but his feet are like an NBA player’s, at size fourteen-and-a-half. He wears the same pair of shoes with almost every outfit. They’re plain black sneakers with no laces and no brand name. He even wears them to work. Auggie is a materials engineer for the government. He hates shopping for shoes. In fact, he hates shopping for anything except gadgets and gismos. His love of technology began in high school. He came to school early to set up equipment that would be used for the day and stayed late to put it away. Auggie was an absolute AV geek.
Auggie is from Encino, Claire from Sherman Oaks. They met in college at UCLA. She was a criminal justice major, while he was an engineering student. They married soon after graduation and neither wanted children. When Claire’s parents told them they were moving, Claire jumped at the chance to buy her grand parents’ home. It was one of the oldest houses in Brentwood. Anyone else would have torn it down and built a cookie-cutter mini-mansion on the property. Claire refused to allow that to happen.
Together, she and Auggie were the ultimate geek couple. From the “Star Trek” decor in the living room to the collection of sci-fi movies in the family room, and shelves upon shelves of books in the den, they are nerds through and through. Auggie spends hours online playing multi-player games while Claire chats away on the Internet or updates her blog on MySpace. Even when they are offline, they’re usually still in front of their computers.
On this day, Auggie was playing a first-person shooter while Claire was chatting in “MM Fans” on Yahoo. They donned headphones to shield one another from their musical choices. Auggie was bouncing his head up and down to Frank Sinatra while Claire was listening to her favorite Marilyn Monroe CD for the ten millionth time. “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” she mouthed, while typing away in cyber oblivion.
Marilyn Monroe was an idol to Claire, but more than that, she was a way of life. To Claire, Marilyn Monroe represented all that was beautiful in the world and everything that Claire wished she could be. Claire always thought about her own athletic build, her tough exterior, and her tomboyish personality as a detriment. She considered her looks to be Plain Jane at best. Anything and everything that made her who she was, she either didn’t like, thought could be better, or just plain hated. She believed that all of those failings could be demolished if she could just be more like Marilyn.
“What do I like best about MM?” Claire read to herself. “Her way with people,” she typed in the chat room. Most of the regulars responded, “LOL,” because they thought she was joking. “Come on, Claire, surely you jest,” offered Wonky4U. “I’m totally serious,” began her reply, “Men wanted her and women wanted to be her. It wasn’t just because of her looks. She had both genders eating out of the palm of her hand.” Confident in her explanation, she sat back and watched the debate continue while continuing to lip-sync “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,” in harmony with her CD.
“I agree with Claire,” began SluttyGirl4U2nite.
“Claire,” she thought to herself, “Why did I tell these people my real name?” Claire was named after her great-aunt who had passed away very young while giving birth to a son. Claire always resented being named for her. It seemed more like a curse than a compliment. “So you’re saying I’m doomed to die young?” she asked her mother about her choice of names. Her mother, being the old fashioned, carry-on-the-family-name type was insulted by the suggestion. It’s possible that being her aunt’s namesake inspired her determination not to have a family, the very thing her mother wanted most for her. The topic of children was always the main source of most of their arguments.
Claire hated how ordinary her name was. “CL-AIRE!” her fifth-grade homeroom teacher would yell in the worst nasal voice you can possibly imagine. The sound of it always sent shivers up her spine. Claire always wanted something different, like Rain, Cassidy or Christyanna; something original that no one else had. Even Clarisse would have been an improvement. That’s the name she gave on the phone when she was pretending to be something she wasn’t. “Yes, this is Clarisse,” just sounded so much more mature, and less athletic. The ultimate would have been Marilyn, of course, after her idol, but alas, she was just Claire.
As she scanned the letters of her name on the screen, the demons in her head brought her back to her high school days. She was a pretty girl, but also one of the chub
biest girls in her class all through school. If she only had a quarter for every time she heard, “but you have such a pretty face,” she would have been set for life. Well intending people can be the cruelest without even realizing it.
In 1985, her whole world came crumbling down with 6 little words. She was a 15-year-old high school sophomore and went to the opening night of the John Hughes’ film, “The Breakfast Club,” with some friends. That’s where she heard those six words for the first time, but definitely not the last:
“Claire?” Judd Nelson’s character, John, asked sarcastically.
“Claire, it’s a family name,” was Molly Ringwald’s innocent reply.
Then came the six toxic words of his bellowing blow, “No, it’s a fat girl’s name!”
There was uproarious laughter from the crowd and nervous giggling from Claire’s friends, who didn’t want to laugh too loudly for fear of hurting her feelings. She dreaded what was in store for her on Monday at school. From that day on, she had to endure years of amateur impersonators spouting those same words to her, over and over again until she thought her head would explode. “Claire is a fat girl’s name!” Bill Malber, one of her worst tormentors, would yet in the hallway. Despite his best efforts, Claire’s head managed to stay intact, it was only her self-esteem that withered and died.
Claire had always been a Marilyn Monroe fan and the “Breakfast Club” incident only made her fascination with Marilyn even more intense. Marilyn’s birth name was Norma Jeane Mortensen; you can’t get much plainer than that. Surely Marilyn, too, anguished over her boring name, which was changed to Norma Jeane Baker soon after her birth.
Despite her auspicious name, Marilyn was the perfect woman, in Claire’s opinion. She had the perfect figure, she was beautiful and she had charisma that made men swoon and women scowl. When Claire was growing up, she wanted to be just like her, but she felt trapped in her own body. She thought her life would have meaning if only people would look at her the way they looked at Marilyn. She often dreamed of being born in another time and place and meeting the blonde goddess in the flesh. She thought they would be fast friends, because they were both soft spoken, cared about people and loved sensitive men.
“Claire...Claire...Claire!” Auggie broke her tortured romp through the past as Claire pulled the headphones away from her head and abruptly stopped lip-syncing.
“What?” she sounded annoyed.
“What are you listening to?” he asked.
“Marilyn Monroe,” She said as she pulled the headphones down off her ears.
After a hearty laugh, he replied, “Why do I even ask?”
“Shut up, smart ass,” was her affectionate reply.
“Do you wanna go out and see a movie or something?”
Claire thought for a moment, then replied, “Nah, let’s just order in.” She paused then continued, “Do you have the blue prints yet?”
“Yep, I just printed them out.”
Auggie got up from his computer and went upstairs. He was a graphic artist, so he took over one of the extra bedrooms and made it into a design studio complete with a huge drafting table. He kept all of his personal treasures in there including an industrial printer big enough to print blue prints. His paints, colored pencils, sketch pads and art books cluttered up the decor. Claire shut down her computer as Auggie came down the steps with two big rolls of paper. They sat on the couch and stretched the first set of blue prints on the coffee table.
“Is this it?” Claire asked.
“This is it.” Auggie smiled his reply.
“Well, it doesn’t look like a time machine.”
“It’s not a time machine, it’s a temporal displacement system,” Auggie replied, sounding exasperated, as though he had explained this many times before. Claire gave him one of those in English please looks, complete with one raised eyebrow. This was a pose Auggie hated because he was not able to achieve it himself. He always wanted to be able to lift one eyebrow like Mr. Spock on “Star Trek,” but no matter how hard he tried the other eyebrow would pop right up with it. Truth be told, Claire trained herself to do it for the exact same reason. She accomplished this by holding down one eyebrow and raising them both. After repeating this process for several weeks, she was eventually able to achieve the one eyebrow raise which she thought looked very intelligent.
“It’s a time traveling device,” he conceded, “but there is no machine that travels back in time; it’s just the person wearing the device who makes the journey.”
“ME!” Claire exclaimed.
“MAYBE YOU,” Auggie warned. “You have to promise you won’t interfere with the timeline and I’m not convinced yet. You have a devious nature, Mrs. Callahan.”
“Whatsa matter, don’t you trust me mi amore?!” she protested with her best Marlon Brando “Godfather” impression.
What Auggie didn’t know was that Claire, indeed, protested too much as she was absolutely planning on interfering with the timeline. She had finally found her chance to correct what she believed was one of the world’s greatest evils. She was going to put a stop to the death of Marilyn Monroe.
She knew she could never be Marilyn, she couldn’t even be like her, but she could be the person who saved Marilyn. Auggie would be an American hero for creating a time machine, but Claire would be Marilyn’s friend for life. It was a lofty goal to be sure, and quite possibly a dangerous one as well. It still wasn’t clear if Marilyn killed herself on purpose, accidentally, or if there was a murder conspiracy, as some have speculated, and Claire whole-heartedly believed. And then there’s the theory that when it’s someone’s time to go, it’s his or her time to go, no matter what. Claire could do everything in her power to save Marilyn just to see her walk right in front of a bus instead.
“It’s not a matter of trust, Claire,” Auggie continued, with no reaction from the daydreamer. “Hello, are you listening to me, Claire?” Auggie waved his hand in front of Claire’s face.
“Of course,” she lied. She was completely caught up in reciting her master plan in her head. Claire and Auggie had always been an unconventional couple but when Auggie brought up the idea of time travel, they stepped way over the line.
“You really have to understand this stuff if you want me to even consider letting you near LOKI,” Auggie said in the voice that Claire called yelling, but was really just emphasizing an important point.
“LOKI?” Claire questioned. She knew that Auggie loved science fiction. She had been forced to watch more bad “B” movies, with rubber aliens and big-breasted women, than she could remember, but this was a new one on her. “What the hell is LOKI?” Claire regretted asking as soon as it came out of her mouth. Auggie sat up a little straighter and took a deep breath that could only mean, LECTURE MODE: ACTIVATED.
“Cool name huh? It’s an acronym for Localized Osmium Kinetic Initiator.” Claire braced for the five millionth explanation of how the time machine -- it was a time machine no matter what Auggie said -- worked. She usually tuned Auggie out when he ranted on about his invention, but this time she did her best to take it all in. After all, this thing was her ticket to her destiny.
“Y’see what happens is that by applying a combination of electromagnetic energy and slow neutrons inside a magnetic field to the Osmium lining of the physical displacement chamber, and subjecting the entire assembly to good old acceleration, one produces negative acceleration to minus superluminal speeds, and that is what creates the bubble. Of course, the magnetic field has to duplicate the shape of the matter displacement chamber to within 1/10,000th of an inch.”
“Of course,” Claire echoed. She needed time to digest the previous run-on sentence, so she stalled; “Yeah...LOKI was a god of some kind, wasn’t he?”
“Ah, your training progresses well, young Padowan,” Auggie said in his best Obiwan Kenobi voice; “LOKI was the Norse god of mischief, deception and evil. Very tricky guy. Basically the devil for the Vikings.”
“G-r-e-e-e-e-a-a-a--t
-t,” Claire said, Auggie’s previous speech still sinking in, “Our time machine is named after the devil.”
Auggie got a worried look on his face. “Let me explain,” he said.
“Oh God, I asked for this.” Claire groaned.
Ignoring the remark, Auggie continued, “See, the Vikings were all about fighting, like with spears and hammers, real manly men kind of stuff. Loki, however, was a wimp, even as gods go. So, he had to rely on his brain and use trickery and magic to try to take over Asgard, the Viking heaven. Deception or trickery of any kind was the worst thing you could do to a Viking, so that’s how he became the devil.” Auggie used the quote sign with his hands and continued. “Every religion has a devil figure that represents the worst traits in a society...” he trailed off.
Claire was sorry she asked, but had to push this to the end. “So how does this relate to the machine?”
“Oh yeah!” Auggie remembered, “Check it out.” His face became red with excitement to the point that Claire thought he just might orgasm right there on the spot. “When all of the energy and magnetics are applied at the precise amplitudes and frequencies, and particle injection rates for the neutrons...”
“Aug!” Claire interrupted, suddenly pushed beyond the normal wife-of-a-geek limit for techno babble.
“O.k., o.k...” Auggie had always hoped he could force his love of science onto his devoted wife, but she would have none of it. “The walls of the chamber are spun up, and a Bubble, or pocket of space is essentially isolated from the rest of the universe. In essence, we fool the universe into believing that the chamber is one massless particle that can be manipulated at negative relativistic speeds. So, like LOKI, we fool the unbeatable power of physics in order to conquer heaven! Sweet huh?” Auggie sat there like a ten-year-old with a straight “A” report card. He clasped his hands together in victory and placed them behind his head smugly. His grin was the size of the Grand Canyon.
Claire sat there, expressionless. Auggie’s words were revolving around her mind. She felt like a cartoon character that had just been hit over the head with a mallet with a bunch of little stars and birds swirling around her head. She was Tom and Auggie was Jerry, the clever mouse who had just rigged an anvil to fall on Tom’s head when he opened the door. She was speechless.
“Claire?” Auggie jolted her back to reality.
Claire knew she had to say something. “O.k., well I guess LOKI is easier to say than temporal displacement system.”
Auggie laughed so loudly that the room rumbled. He was easily amused and Claire loved him for it. She, on the other hand, was completely serious. She kept going over the plan in her head.
“So when can we go ahead?” she asked.
“Well, first I have to build it,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Well, duh.”
“Oh, is that how it is, now?” Auggie asked with a slight crackle in his voice. “TICKLE FIGHT!” he yelled and lunged forward, with tickle fingers aimed straight for Claire’s abdomen. It didn’t matter where he aimed, really; Clare was ticklish everywhere and she’s never won a tickle fight.
Exhausted from laughing uncontrollably, Claire turned serious again. “STOP, come on, seriously, when do you think it will be ready?”
“What’s the hurry?”
“No hurry, I just want to be ready.”
“I guess three months sounds about right.” With that, Claire was satisfied to finally have an ETA. She didn’t know what she was going to do with herself for three months; the anticipation was already getting to her and they hadn’t even started yet.