covered a bare wooden floor.
“Toby wasn’t lying,” he said. “It is clean.”
“He’s a sweetheart all right, that kid brother of mine.”
“How much?” he asked.
“Five dollars a week? In advance.”
Posing it as a question told him she’d take less. “Five dollars!”
“I suppose I could take four,” she said, bitterness lacing her words.
He hesitated, looked toward the door and said, “I’ll take it for three.”
He could see her face flush behind a scowl as she turned her back on him and stepped outside the room. “Okay. Toilet, sink and bathtub’s down the side. Don’t hog it. And don’t leave no ring around the tub when you’re done.” Her mouth twisted with the words. “Others live here, too, you know.”
He dropped his packages on the chair and followed her out. “Could you possibly supply me with a couple of towels and soap?”
“Fifty cents for that.”
She tried to peek over his shoulder as he turned sideways and peeled off four singles. “Let’s make it a dollar, okay?”
She softened. “If you need anything more, just knock, first door there on the left. That’s my apartment.” She turned to face him directly. “Turn out the lights when you go out, and no parties, no guests past ten, and no ladies-- ever!”
She tried to squeeze a little more information out of him, but he edged himself back into his room and shut the door. Pressing his ear against the door, he listened to her footsteps falling heavily on the wooden floor until they stopped with the slam of a door.
He pulled the key out of the keyhole, recognized it as a skeleton key-- one that would probably open every door in the place-- stuck it back in the hole, turned it and left it in place, locked. Slipping out of his jacket, he eased himself down on the edge of the bed and bounced lightly a few times to get the feel of it. Then, running his hands at his sides over the lumpy mattress to brace himself, he slowly lowered himself with a long, drawn-out groan. His ribs ached, his mouth was dry and his eyes burned. He closed his eyes trying to let go, to relax, to forget for a while, but he couldn’t relax, couldn’t allow himself that luxury, not yet, not until he figured out what was going on and what he was going to do to get straight again.
Money. He needed money and all he had left in his wallet was a twenty, a ten, and a single-- thirty-one dollars, money he’d have to be exceptionally careful about spending. That, plus the fourteen good singles the old man gave him… and fifty-five cents… and sixty-five cents change from the diner, that’s… a dollar twenty more. So, fourteen dollars and a dollar twenty is fifteen dollars and twenty cents, minus the four he paid for the room… leaves a little over eleven dollars in good money to his name.
Thinking tired him out, but he couldn’t let up, not now, not yet. Assuming he hadn’t gone mad-- and he wasn’t quite sure he hadn’t-- he really had found a way to the past, to 1939, to a time long before he was born. All because of a newspaper ad that he’d answered on a crazy whim! For years he’d fantasized over going back in time, just as his grandfather and millions of others had, but actually doing it, having it become a reality, gave it a whole new coloration. Maybe if he had known it was coming, had anticipated it, he could have prepared for it, given some time to thinking of the problems he’d have to face and be ready for them. But this way, he might just as well have been dropped from an aircraft into an alien world. He couldn’t even contemplate the kind of pitfalls or the number of pitfalls that lay ahead. No doubt about it, the more he thought of it, the more certain he was that he was walking through a minefield. How did that saying go, ‘Be careful what you wish for…’?
The larger question was even more troubling than he ever could have imagined: Am I trapped in the past? So far it seemed so, but he wasn’t about to give up on that yet. He would definitely go back to the warehouse where he’d picked up his package, go during business hours. And what of his own time, was it still moving? Would Grandma be worried to death over his disappearance? And Shelley, what must she be thinking?
Then again, how could time be progressing in the future when the future had not yet arrived? The thought comforted him. By the same logic, though, how could he be here if he hadn’t yet been born? He let out a small groan, his mind whirling with these contradictions in logic. Or paradoxes. Whatever the answer, he’d have to be alert to what he said and did. Already thinking about it all was driving him crazy. Too much at once! How could he sleep now, with these questions on his mind, his bones aching and that damned gruesome light from the ceiling fixture shining in his eyes. He eased himself up from the bed. A walk, a little walk, casual, not too strenuous, to get out and get the feel of the times, to breathe some fresh air and not think at all, at least not for a while. He grabbed his jacket and snapped off the light.
Stepping out on the front porch, he was surprised to see a girl about his own age sitting in a wicker chair, her legs crossed and her hands folded over her lap. “Hi,” he said, pausing beside her.
Startled, she glanced up, her brown eyes wide with surprise. “Oh, hello,” she said, pulling a blue shawl down from her chin and tugging at the hem of her skirt.
“I’m Gary Tyler. I took a room here this afternoon.” He held out his hand.
“I know. Mrs. Harmon told my--”
“Don’t get up,” he said, taking her extended hand. “And you’re…?”
“Sarah.” Her mouth formed a small smile. “Sarah Montera.” Her eyes, warm and soft as her voice, lowered to their clasped hands.
He jerked his hand away as if from a hot stove. “Sorry. Have you lived here long… Sarah?”
She stood up, putting a more comfortable distance between them. “Almost a year, I think. I live in the one of the back apartments with my mother.” She gazed into his eyes a moment, then lowered her own with a little-girl shyness he found oddly appealing, so different from Shelley’s, whose eyes were never anything but cool-blue and unwavering .
“Well, it’s nice to have you for a neighbor,” he said, backing off a bit. “Maybe sometime… we can have a talk, that is, when you have nothing better to do… and if you feel like it. You can clue me in on the neighborhood.”
“Clue you in…?”
A mistake, he thought, answering her frown with a smile. “You know, tell me where things are around here, like the drug store, grocery store, like that.”
“That would be nice,” she said. “My mother wouldn’t mind, I’m sure.” Again she smiled demurely. “I’m not so sure about Mrs. Harmon, though.”
“Why should she mind, she’s only the landlady?”
Clasping her hands together in front of her pulled her shoulders in, which made her appear even more frail than she already was. “You can’t say ‘only.’ Mrs. Harmon’s pretty strict.”
“Still, I don’t think she’d mind two of her tenants having a conversation on the porch. I mean, she doesn’t have the right. This isn’t a POW camp.”
“A what?”
Damn! “It’s still a free country,
