“Quite a lot,” I said truthfully.
“Well, you’re in God’s country now. How short do you want it?”
“Short enough so I don’t look like”—ahippie,I almost finished, but Baumer wouldn’t know what that was—“like a beatnik.”
“Let it get a little out of control, I guess.” He began to clip. “Leave it much longer and you’d look like that faggot who runs the Jolly White Elephant.”
“I wouldn’t want that,” I said.
“Nosir, he’s a sight, that one.”That-un.
When Baumer finished, he powdered the back of my neck, asked me if I wanted Vitalis, Brylcreem, or Wildroot Cream Oil, and charged me forty cents.
I call that a deal.
5
My thousand-dollar deposit at the Hometown Trust raised no eyebrows. The freshly barbered look probably helped, but I think it was mostly being in a cash-and-carry society where credit cards were still in their infancy… and probably regarded with some suspicion by thrifty Yankees. A severely pretty teller with her hair done up in tight rolls and a cameo at her throat counted my money, entered the amount in a ledger, then called over the assistant manager, who counted it again, checked the ledger, and then wrote out a receipt that showed both the deposit and the total in my new checking account.
“If you don’t mind me saying so, that’s a mighty big amount to be carrying in checking, Mr. Amberson. Would you like to open a savings account? We’re currently offering three percent interest, compounded quarterly.” He widened his eyes to show me what a wonderful deal this was. He looked like that old-time Cuban bandleader, Xavier Cugat.
“Thanks, but I’ve got a fair amount of business to transact.” I lowered my voice. “Real estate closing. Or so I hope.”
“Good luck,” he said, lowering his own to the same confidential pitch. “Lorraine will fix you up with checks. Fifty enough to go on with?”
“Fifty would be fine.”
“Later on, we can have some printed with your name and your address.” He raised his eyebrows, turning it into a question.
“I expect to be in Derry. I’ll be in touch.”
“Fine. I’m at Drexel eight four-seven-seven-seven.”
I had no idea what he was talking about until he slid a business card through the window. Gregory Dusen, Assistant Manager, was engraved on it, andDRexel 8-4777.
Lorraine got my checks and a faux alligator checkbook to put them in. I thanked her and dropped them into my briefcase. At the door I paused for a look back. A couple of the tellers wereworking adding machines, but otherwise the transactions were all of the pen-and-elbow-grease variety. It occurred to me that, with a few exceptions, Charles Dickens would have felt at home here. It also occurred to me that living in the past was a little like living underwater and breathing through a tube.
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 wordDrexelattached to some numbers was all about. Then I rememberedDragstrip 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 theadjacent 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?
