FOUR
The time-travelers stood on the sidewalk, completely stunned. A crowd of women in full skirts, hats and gloves, and men in sharp suits and derbies flowed around them. In their Levi’s and leather jackets, Dean realized the Winchester boys looked out of place in the smart corporate landscape, to say the least.
That winged chimp really has sent us back to what looks like New York in 1954, he thought, his brain struggling to process. It seemed Don had dropped them smack dab in the middle of Times Square, but there wasn’t a camera-wielding tourist anywhere in sight. The place was also suspiciously clean and quiet, no crumpled piles of paper or garbage, and no blaring rap music emanating from any of the stores nearby.
“First, we get our bearings, then I beat your ass,” Dean announced.
“I didn’t—” Sam began.
“Don’t, Sam. Nothing you can possibly say will make up for you throwing us under the bus, again.”
“You’re not the only one with a stake in this, Dean. That means, sometimes, you follow my plan.”
Dean scanned the bustling crowd, wary of continuing this discussion in public.
“Alright, smarty-pants. You wanted to do the time warp again, so what’s the next move?”
“We get off the street.”
On that point, Dean had to agree with his brother. Trying their best to blend into the crowd, they quickly turned and headed north toward Central Park.
Dean deftly grabbed a New York Herald Tribune from a green newsstand that squatted on the corner of 47th and Broadway. Some things don’t change, no matter what era you are in; sleight of hand is still sleight of hand. Dean peered at the date: June 26th, 1954. He shook his head. That asshole had shot them back almost half a century without even an explanation of where or how to find the War Scroll.
Despite their predicament, Sam was smiling.
“This is amazing,” he said.
“What are you, Buddy the Elf, fresh from the North Pole?” Dean chided. “We’ve been to New York a dozen times.”
“Yeah, but how many times have we been to the fifties?” Sam retorted.
“The real fun starts in the sixties.”
As they crossed a busy intersection, a man in a trench coat clipped Dean’s shoulder.
“Hey, watch it buddy,” Dean said with automatic vitriol, but when he looked at the guy, for a half-second he thought he saw the face of Castiel. The man looked up in alarm, and Dean realized his mistake. It wasn’t Cass, and they didn’t know anyone in 1954. There wasn’t a friendly face for miles, or decades for that matter.
The boys were no strangers to angelic time jumps—they had been through this before, when Anna tried to kill John and Mary Winchester in 1978, and when Cass took Dean back to 1973. The past wasn’t something Dean liked to visit or even remember, and now he was back. Plus, he was super hungry—another drawback to time travel.
Sam looked over his shoulder at the man in the trench coat, and then back at Dean.
“Dude, this isn’t the New York we’re familiar with. Try to be a little less conspicuous.”
As they left Times Square, Sam took one last look. Rather than the giant three-story-high video screens back in the present day, the streets were lined with theaters and coffee shops. The iconic signs that had made the square famous were mazes of neon. A two-story-high Pepsi Cola bottle-cap sign mooned over the square, which was filled not with mid-western tourists in fanny packs, but a vital post-war workforce eager to create the American dream. The fifties saw the beginning of the consumer society that perpetuated after World War II; buying things created a wealthy America, and the indications were all around them. A Chevrolet sign topped a building, under which was a Canadian Club Scotch Whiskey sign, and below that was the large-toothed smiling face of Ed Sullivan, hanging off the side of the building in front of them.
Sam grabbed Dean’s arm.
“We could go see The Ed Sullivan Show!”
Dean looked at his brother scornfully.
“Sam, I’m not hanging around here playing Mad Men with you. We get the page from those scrolls, and somehow have Don get us back to 2010. Nothing else.”
“I just thought we could take in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see living legends... living.”
Dean made his way up Broadway, and Sam followed a few steps behind. Dean took a right at 55th Street, and he seemed to know exactly where he was headed as he crossed the street, dodging in between cars. Good thing there are no jaywalking tickets in the 1950s, Sam mused.
Dean pushed in the door to the Carnegie Deli and Sam dutifully followed him inside, knowing there was no point in resisting his brother’s appetite.
They slid into a booth looking out onto 7th Avenue. Dean didn’t need to look at a menu; this was the only place in the whole wide world where Dean’s favorite thing diverged from his usual bacon cheeseburger. A waitress appeared at their table in a full pink skirt edged with white bric-a-brac.
“What can I get you gentlemen?” she asked with a heavy New York accent.
Dean smiled for the first time that day.
“I’ll have a pastrami on rye, extra mustard, potato salad, and a root beer, please.”
Sam shook his head. Nothing makes Dean happier than a meal. He looked up from his menu.
“I’ll have the turkey Reuben, light on the Russian dressing, and a side of coleslaw,” he said. The waitress nodded and scribbled on her pad.
“Comin’ right up,” she said and smiled as she left to place the order.
Once she was out of earshot, Dean looked expectantly at his brother.
“Alright, captain. What’s the plan?”
Sam had been pondering their next move, but hadn’t come up with any bright ideas yet. They knew very little about the location of the War Scroll, only what was publicly available on the internet in 2010. What they did know was that a private sale happened at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on July 1st —in just five days. But how would they even get close to infiltrating that transaction?
“Well, we could try to get jobs at the Waldorf,” he said. “We wouldn’t call any attention to ourselves if we actually worked there.”
Dean shrugged. Getting a real job wasn’t their usual process, mostly they just pretended to be FBI agents, or priests, or CDC inspectors. Doing actual work wasn’t part of Dean’s modus operandi. But, considering the circumstances, they didn’t have a choice. They didn’t know nearly enough about the time period to successfully pass as government officials.
Their sandwiches arrived, five inches of beautiful meat piled onto freshly baked bread. Dean was beside himself with joy.
Minutes later, Dean was finishing up his pickle and the last bite of his sandwich. As they got up to leave, Dean looked at the check and pulled a ten spot out of his pocket. They walked past the young waitress on their way out.
“Thanks,” Dean said, giving her a big smile.
She coyly lilted back. “No, thank you.”
Dean pulled open the door of the deli and looked back to smile smugly at Sam.
“Looks like Betty Draper has a thing for me.”
“You’re gonna wanna run, Dean,” Sam said with an equally smug look.
Dean looked at him questioningly. Then they heard a woman’s voice yelling after them.
“Stop those men!”
They looked back at the waitress, who was holding the very modern ten dollar bill Dean had just put down.
Without a second thought, Sam bolted down the street with Dean a step behind him. They dodged through stalled traffic at the intersection, nearly causing a pile-up when the light turned green.
Moments later they were casually sauntering east on 54th Street.
“To the Waldorf?” Dean asked.
“Guess so,” Sam replied. He took out his BlackBerry, intending to Google the hotel’s location. Instead, he stared at the mess of jumbled pixels on the phone’s LCD. Not only would it have no signal in the fifties, the phone’s hardware had been damaged. Either time travel does a job on electronics, or it broke in the fall, he sumised. He quickly put it back in his pocket, not wanting to draw any more attention to them with his anachronistic device.
“Hey, what time is it?” Dean asked.
“I don’t know, my phone’s useless,” Sam answered.
“Yeah, mine too. Won’t turn on.”
Sam shielded his eyes and looked up at the sun.
“Maybe an hour till sunset,” he said. “On second thought, let’s find a place to crash first. I don’t know if it was the time travel or the dine-and-dash, but—”
“But little Sammy could use a nap?” Dean quipped.
“Take a look in the mirror,” Sam replied. “The bags under your eyes have bags under their eyes.”
“And whose fault is that? You think maybe all of your shenanigans are finally taking their toll on me?”
The brothers continued to bicker until they passed a block of pre-war apartments called the Villard Houses. A sign in front advertised a ‘vacency,’ which Sam figured was close enough, and they strolled into the building and up to apartment 3E.
An old woman answered the door, and directed them to take a look at the apartment across the hall. It had clearly once been part of a larger penthouse, but had been walled off into a smaller dwelling with a half kitchen, bedroom and adjoining living room. After years of living in dilapidated motels and the backseat of the Impala, the boys weren’t picky. With literally no money to their names—at least any they could actually use—Dean asked the landlady if he could give her the rent at the end of the week. She agreed; she just needed their names. They offered up two aliases. Sam was so tired that he couldn’t even place which band they said they came from.
Unfortunately for the Winchesters, the one thing the apartment didn’t have was a bed.
“Couldn’t we have just stayed at the Waldorf?” Dean said grumpily.
“You think they’d let us pay at the end of the week, genius?” Sam replied. Before Dean could respond, Sam went to the bathroom. He climbed into the claw-footed bathtub and rolled his coat underneath his head. It wasn’t nearly big enough for him, but he didn’t care.
Within a minute, he was asleep.