5432852385743

6
I got the clothes Al had recommended at Mason’s Menswear, and the clerk told me yes, they would be
more than happy to take a check, providing it was drawn on a local bank. Thanks to Lorraine, I could
oblige in that regard.
Back at the Jolly White Elephant, the beatnik watched silently as I transferred the contents of
three shopping bags to my new valise. When I snapped it shut, he finally offered an opinion. “Funny
way to shop, man.”
“I guess so,” I said. “But it’s a funny old world, isn’t it?”
He cracked a smile at that. “In my opinion, that’s a big you-bet. Slip me some skin, Jackson.” He
extended his hand, palm up.
For a moment it was like trying to figure out what the word Drexel attached to some numbers was
all about. Then I remembered Dragstrip Girl, and understood the beatnik was offering the fifties
version of a fist-bump. I dragged my palm across his, feeling the warmth and the sweat, thinking
again: This is real. This is happening.
“Skin, man,” I said.
7
I crossed back to Titus Chevron, swinging the newly loaded valise from one hand and the briefcase
from the other. It was only midmorning in the 2011 world I’d come from, but I felt tired out. There
was a telephone booth between the service station and the adjacent car lot. I went in, shut the door,
and read the hand-printed sign over the old-fashioned pay phone: REMEMBER PHONE CALLS
NOW A DIME COURTESY OF “MA” BELL.
I thumbed through the Yellow Pages in the local phone book and found Lisbon Taxi. Their ad
featured a cartoon cab with eyes for headlights and a big smile on its grille. It promised FAST,
COURTEOUS SERVICE. That sounded good to me. I grubbed for my change, but the first thing I
came up with was something I should have left behind: my Nokia cell phone. It was antique by the
standards of the year I’d come from—I’d been meaning to trade up to an iPhone—but it had no
business here. If someone saw it, I’d be asked a hundred questions I couldn’t answer. I stowed it in the
briefcase. It would be okay there for the time being, I guessed, but I’d have to get rid of it eventually.
Keeping it would be like walking around with an unexploded bomb.
I found a dime, dropped it in the slot, and it went right through to the coin return. I fished it out,
and one look was enough to pinpoint the problem. Like my Nokia, the dime had come from the
future; it was a copper sandwich, really no more than a penny with pretensions. I pulled out all my
coins, poked through them, and found a 1953 dime I’d probably got in change from the root beer I’d
bought at the Kennebec Fruit. I started to put it in, then had a thought that made me feel cold. What
if my 2002 dime had gotten stuck in the phone’s throat instead of falling through to the coin return?
And what if the AT&T man who serviced the pay phones in Lisbon Falls had found it?
He would have thought it was a joke, that’s all. Just some elaborate prank.
I somehow doubted this—the dime was too perfect. He would have shown it around; there might
even eventually have been an item about it in the newspaper. I had gotten lucky this time, but next
time I might not. I needed to be careful. I thought of my cell phone again, with deepening unease.
Then I put the 1953 dime in the coin slot and was rewarded with a dial tone. I placed the call slowly
and carefully, trying to remember if I’d ever used a phone with a rotary dial before. I thought not.