The Toilet Paper Caper: Chapter 9
A Tale of Flushing in the Stark Mystery Saga
I hailed a cab from the studio and hustled on over to Queens. The cabbie dropped me a couple blocks away from the fair, and I had to hoof it through the crowds lining up at the gate. I got lucky, the old man in the ticket booth didn’t look too close at the dollar bills I handed over. The shiny silver Unisphere hovered over the center of the grounds, and I pushed past women in skirts and loafers and guys dressed in their pressed khaki pants and brown hush puppy shoes. I fit right in, and I decided it might be time for a wardrobe change when I got back to the future.
He was waiting by the fountains. At first glance I didn’t recognize him, not without the black-frame glasses and white coat. But it was him, Whipple.
“Hey,” I said as I grasped his arm. “I need you to come with me.”
“Are you Stark?” Whipple glanced around the crowd and pulled his arm out of my grasp.
“In the flesh. I got some questions for you, pal.”
“How’d you find me?” Whipple asked.
“Call it my finely tuned detective mind and my love of non-sequiturs.”
“Oh no!” Whipple’s face drained of color. I thought at first it was from appreciation of my forceful technique, but when I turned to look over my shoulder, I saw her. Darling.
Dressed in pink gingham shorts and white vinyl boots, she charged through the press of people, tossing aside a little kid holding a red balloon. Her beehive hairdo towered above everyone. A little overdressed for a fair, I thought.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, just like the dialogue in every action movie. Guaranteed to give the hero a chance to escape. I grabbed Whipple and we raced past the Space Park and the French Pavilion. A whiff of perfume triggered my memory, and I wished we had time for a detour. I’d like a second chance with that French Suzette, show her what I was like now, all grown up. My jaw still ached from Helen’s punch, though, so we kept going.
The door to the IBM building stood open and I tugged Whipple through and clanged it shut behind us. We scooted behind a row of chairs in the dark theater and I bent to whisper at Whipple.
“All right, out with it, why is your brother so anxious for me to retrieve you from the past?”
“I don’t know.” Whipple’s eyelids fluttered. He reached into his pocket and slipped on his trademark glasses. The man straightened after that, like he slipped into another personality. “My brother is a brute. He has no appreciation for the finer comforts.”
“And your niece?” I asked.
“She’s even worse. A true henchman.”
“What do you have to do with a toilet paper shortage?”
“You mean 1973? There was no shortage.” Whipple gave me a smug look. He didn’t even blink at the year.
“How do you know there won’t be a shortage? And why did you talk about it like it already happened?”
“What already happened?”
“The toilet paper….” I gave up. “Never mind. I’m here about 2020.”
Whipple slumped in the seat. His glasses slipped down to the end of his nose. I swear he looked about ready to cry.
“I told Jimmy it wasn’t a good plan,” he said.
“Better start at the beginning.”
“I needed a job, that’s where it started. And Jimmy had an idea to make us all rich. Stock options, that’s where the money grows. But you need to invest in something foolproof, something everybody needs.”
“But a shortage would just tick everyone off, make them look for alternatives.”
Whipple nodded. “It’s a fine dance between driving up the price and keeping folks from switching to another option. The best investments are those where there is no substitute. Like gasoline,” he said.
I decided not to mention electric cars. We’d keep the focus on T.P.
“So how did you manage that?” I asked.
“Subliminal advertising.”
“I knew it!” I couldn’t wait to call Helen and tell her I was right about those Coca-Cola ads.
“Yes, we had to encourage them to go out and grab a pack, but at the same time keep them from buying too much.”
“How’d you do that?”
Whipple smiled. “You see the woman in the store, right?” I nodded and he continued. “She’s buying just one package.”
“You mean you added a subliminal message telling people to buy toilet paper, but to just buy what they needed?”
“We weren’t sure it would work in American markets, but yes, that’s what we did.”
My head was spinning. Whipple didn’t cause the toilet paper crush. He had tried to stop it. He’d succeeded in 1973, could he do it again?
“What went wrong?” I asked.
“We never meant for it to last so long,” Whipple answered. “The ads were so popular. Then they retired my character. You’ve seen the new ads?” Whipple made a face.
The door to the theater slammed open. A dark figure stood silhouetted in the sunlight. I recognized the outline of her beehive hairdo.
“Time to fly.” I grabbed Whipple and hauled him out of the chair. We fled downstairs and out the back door to the exhibit hall. I heard the clomp of those vinyl boots hitting the stairs behind us.
As we jogged through the crowd outside, I yelled to Whipple, “We need to head to the parking lot, find the Pinto.”
“We’re looking for a horse?”
“No, a car.” Crap, I hadn’t thought of that. The Pinto didn’t even exist in 1965. She should have gone with a Mustang. “It’s not just a car, it’s a time travel machine.”
“Why didn’t you say that from the start?” Whipple asked. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to wrap up a chapter.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go with the traditional cliff hanger.”
“Time travel devices vary. In this case we’ll use something that exists both in the original date and the future date.”
I looked around the park, then listened. Calliope music. “You mean?”
“Sure,” Whipple said. “No Pinto, but I know how to get there using a horse of a different color.”
He patted his pockets then pulled out what looked like a toy transmitter from Radio Shack. The thing beeped and started flashing strobe lights as we made the jump, Darling right behind us. Onto the Flushing Meadows Carousel.
Continues in Chapter 10:
Previous chapters:
Chapter 1 • Chapter 2 • Chapter 3 • Chapter 4 • Chapter 5 • Chapter 6 • Chapter 7 • Chapter 8
