Back to the Future by George Gipe Read Free Book Online

“Well,” she said coyly. “I may have encouraged him a little…”
    “I’ll bet you had to practically jump on his bones,” Marty offered.
    With that, he finished eating, declining a piece of the convict’s non-homecoming cake, wiped his mouth and stood up.
    Lorraine scarcely noticed, so lost was she in thought. “Thinking back on it,” she reminisced, “I did. I practically had to—”
    Not wishing to fall into contemporary “obscene talk,” as she called it, she let the rest of the sentence die in her throat. It was an appropriate ending, anyway. Marty was halfway out of the kitchen, Linda was looking out the window at something happening next door and George was still lost in his papers. Lorraine shrugged and reached for the nearest knife. If no one was going to have a piece of Uncle Joey’s cake, she would give it a try.
    Smiling in anticipation, she carved herself a four-inch wedge, shoved it onto her coffee saucer, and began to attack it. As the creamy icing melted in her mouth, so evaporated any feelings that the past thirty years had been anything but glorious.

 
 
● Chapter
 
Three ●
 
 
 
    Doc Brown eased the venerable step-van onto the Twin Pines Mall parking lot shortly after midnight. There were more cars than he expected so he pulled to the far rim of the asphalt area and waited.
    “Must be a long movie,” he said to himself.
    Einstein, the large dog curled on the passenger seat, hopped up as soon as the van stopped and poked his wet nose against the window.
    “No, Einstein,” Doc Brown murmured. “Not yet. We have a few minutes, so make yourself comfortable again.” Einstein yawned, curled his tongue back into his mouth and tried to scratch beneath the collar he was wearing. The battery-operated digital clock attached to it undulated in the moonlight, changed from 00:07 to 00:08, then came to rest as the dog either satisfied its itch or gave up trying to scratch where he couldn’t reach.
    A few minutes later, several dozen people emerged at once from the mall’s interior and moved to their cars. A series of starting engines, blinking lights and squealing rubber enlivened the vast treeless plain for a few minutes. Then all was silence again. The faint smell of gasoline fumes hung in the thick air as the tiny specks of light disappeared into the early morning darkness. In comparative solitude once again, Brown felt better. People made him feel vaguely insecure.
    He was dreamily anticipating public reaction to his coming experiment when he suddenly realized he had forgotten one of the most important tools to be used.
    “Damn,” he muttered.
    Fortunately, it was 1985 rather than the old days, when he would have been forced to find a public telephone booth somewhere in the mall. Reaching under the dashboard, he pulled out his telephone and began to dial.
    Marty was not asleep, partly because he had every intention of meeting Doc Brown, and partly because his mind was filled with dark unsettling thoughts. As far as Jennifer was concerned, of course, the damage had been done. He had forgotten to call her. Looking at his watch, he decided it was too late to give her a buzz, especially since he didn’t know if she was still at her grandmother’s or had gone home. Possibly this was a rationalization for his being too lazy. In any event, he dropped his wrist down across his chest and closed his eyes once again.
    In the light from the single lamp, it was possible to see that the room’s occupant was heavily into rock music, cars and sound reproduction. Covering the walls were posters of rock stars and new cars, particularly Toyota four-by-fours. A tape recorder, portable home synthesizer and sizable stack of lead sheets were packed in one corner while a bass guitar and amp sprawled in another.
    Although he was weary from all the running around, Marty couldn’t sleep. He continued to think of the shoddy treatment he had gotten at the hands of the section committee and began to wonder