Rainbow at Midnight

“All right, then, tell me, who are you?” Howie asked, still playing along. “But in the end, you know I always win, Amber Sue Wade.”

“First, that is not my name,” she said, mulling over the possibility he was a crazed stalker. But again, the feeling she had was that he was safe.

“Ok, I’ll bite. What is it?”

“I am Amber Suede.”

He laughed.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, seeing the look on her face. “I guess you made it as either a stripper or a porn star, huh?”

“What?”

“You always said,” Howie told her, “that you wished your name was combined from Amber Sue Wade to Amber Suede. AJ said that would be great if you were a stripper or porn actress.”

She looked insulted.

“I don’t know who this AJ person is, but I am very far from either one of those two professions. I write romance novels.”

“Woo, this just keeps getting better and better,” he said, leaning back in a chair.

“How did you get here?” Amber demanded. “No one should be able to find this place in the daytime, let alone in the middle of the night.”

Howie thought for a minute. He hadn’t considered that.

“I don’t know,” he told her. “I was standing on the balcony outside my room, thinking of you, Amber Sue. Our month hiatus starts tomorrow and I was wishing I could see you. I was wondering if I had time to fly to Italy to see you.”

“Please stop calling me Amber Sue,” she instructed. “I have news for you. This isn’t Italy. How did you get from your balcony to my house?”

“I…I’m not sure. While I was out there, I remember the sky getting very dark, then light again. It was the strangest thing. I must be crazy, but I swear I saw a rainbow. I closed my eyes for a moment, to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, and when I opened them, I was here.”

Amber looked at him. If it hadn’t been for him saying he had seen the rainbow, too, she wouldn’t have believed him. In her research for some of her books, she had come across accounts of people who said they had seen mysterious sights, and found themselves in either the past or the future. One of her favorite books involved a woman who traveled through time on a holiday in Scotland. But all of that was pure fiction, fantasy.

“Are you from the future?” Amber asked suddenly.

“The future? I doubt it,” Howie said, studying her. “What are you saying, that either you or I traveled through time? That’s a little far-fetched.”

“Then how did you get here?”

“I told you,” he said, getting annoyed, “I don’t know. This is just getting weird. Amber, please take off that wig and stop playing games.”

“I’m not wearing a wig,” she told him. “I don’t know how you got here or how you’re going to leave. In real life, people just don’t suddenly appear.”

He looked at his watch. He asked her what the date was.

“August third, 2001.”

“Where are we?” He wanted to know.

“We are in Lincoln, Alabama. You are in my private home.”

“So, we are in your home town on the date I left my suite’s balcony. You are a romance writer and I just appeared out of no where. I think I am crazy,” he said sincerely. “You are not my Amber Sue, are you? No, I believe you now. My God, what has happened?”