He looked knowing. “Woman trouble?”
“Weelll . . . yes.”
“She married?”
“You might say so.”
He dug me in the ribs and winked. “I catch. Old Miles is pretty puritanical isn’t he? Okay, I’ll cover for you and someday you can cover for me. Is she any good?”
I’d like to cover you with a spade, I thought to myself, you fourth-rate frallup. Mort was the sort of no-good traveling salesman who spends more time trying to seduce waitresses than taking care of his customers-besides which, the line he handled was as shoddy as he was, never up to its specs.
But I bought him a drink and treated him to fairy tales about the “married woman” I had invented and listened while he boasted to me of no doubt equally fictitious exploits. Then I shook him.
On another occasion I tried to buy Dr. Twitchell a drink and failed.
I had seated myself beside him at the restaurant counter of a drugstore on Champa Street, then caught sight of his face in the mirror. My first impulse was to crawl under the counter and hide.
Then I caught hold of myself and realized that, out of all the persons living in 1970, he was the one I had least need to worry about. Nothing could go wrong because nothing had. . . I meant “nothing would.” No-Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations-conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.
In any case, past or future or something else, Twitchell was not a worry to me now. I could relax.
I studied his face in the mirror, wondering if I had been misled by a chance resemblance. But I had not been. Twitchell did not have a general-issue face like mine; he had stern, self-assured, slightly arrogant and quite handsome features which would have looked at home on Zeus. I remembered that face only in ruins, but there was no doubt-and I squirmed inside as I thought of the old man and how badly I had treated him. I wondered how I could make it up to him.
Twitchell caught sight of me eying him in the mirror and turned to me. “Something wrong?”
“No. Uh . . you’re Dr. Twitchell, aren’t you? At the university?”
“Denver University, yes. Have we met?”
I had almost slipped, having forgotten that he taught at the city university in this year. Remembering in two directions is difficult. “No, Doctor, but I’ve heard you lecture. You might say I’m one of your fans.”
His mouth twitched in a half-smile but he did not rise to it. From that and other things I learned that he had not yet acquired a gnawing need for adulation; he was sure of himself at that age and needed only his own self-approval. “Are you sure you haven’t got me mixed up with a movie Star?”
“Oh no! You’re Dr. Hubert Twitchell . . . the great physicist.”
His mouth twitched again. “Let’s just say that I am a physicist. Or try to be.”
We chatted for a while and I tried to hang onto him after he had finished his sandwich. I said it would be an honor if he would let me buy him a drink. He shook his head. “I hardly drink at all and certainly never before dark. Thanks anyway. It’s been nice meeting you. Drop into my lab someday if you are ever around the campus.”
I said I would.
But I did not make many slips in 1970 (second time around) because I understood it and, anyhow, most people who might have recognized me were in California. I resolved that if I did meet any more familiar faces I would give them the cold stare and the quick brushoff-take no chances.
But little things can cause you trouble too. Like the time I got caught in a zipper simply because I had become used to the more convenient and much safer Sticktite closures. A lot of little things like that I missed very much after having learned in only six months to take them for granted. Shaving-I had to go back to shaving! Once I even caught a cold. That horrid ghost of the past resulted from forgetting that clothes could get soaked in rain. I wish that those precious esthetes who sneer at progress and prattle about the superior beauties of the past could have been with me-dishes that let food get chilled, shirts that had to be laundered, bathroom mirrors that steamed up when you needed them, runny noses, dirt underfoot and dirt in your lungs-I had become used to a better way of living and 1970 was a series of petty frustrations until I got the hang of it again.