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...ou'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.
But a dog gets used to his fleas and so did I. Denver in 1970 was a very quaint place with a fine old-fashioned flavor; I became very fond of it. It was nothing like the slick New Plan maze it had been (or would be) when I had arrived (or would arrive) there from Yuma; it still had less than two million people, there were still buses and other vehicular traffic in the streets-there still were streets; I had no trouble finding Colfax Avenue.
Denver was still getting used to being the national seat of government and was not quite happy in the role, like a boy in his first formal evening clothes. Its spirit still yearned for high-heeled boots and its Western twang even though it knew it had to grow up and be an international metropolis, with embassies and spies and famous gourmet restaurants. The city was being jerry-built in all directions to house the bureaucrats and lobbyists and contact men and clerk-typists and flunkies; buildings were being thrown up so fast that with each one there was hazard of enclosing a cow inside the walls. Nevertheless, the city had extended only a few miles past Aurora on the east, to Henderson on the north, and Littleton on the south-there was still open country before you reached the Air Academy. On the west, of course, the city flowed into the high country and the federal bureaus were tunneling back into the mountains.
I liked Denver during its federal boom. Nevertheless, I was excruciatingly anxious to get back to my own time.
It was always the little things. I had had my teeth worked over completely shortly after I had been put on the staff of Hired Girl and could afford it. I had never expected to have to see a dental plastician again. Nevertheless, in 1970 I did not have anti-caries pills and so I got a hole in a tooth, a painful one or I would have ignored it. So I went to a dentist. So help me, I had forgotten what he would see when he looked into my mouth. He blinked, moved his mirror around, and said, "Great jumping Jehosaphat! Who was your dentist?"
"Kah hoo hank?"
He took his hands out of my mouth. "Who did it? And how?"
"Huh? You mean my teeth? Oh, that's experimental work they're doing in... India."
"How do they do it?"
"How would I know?"
"Mmm... wait a minute. I've got to get some pictures of this." He started fiddling with his X-ray equipment.
"Oh no," I objected. "Just clean out that bicuspid, plug it up with anything, and let me out of here."
"But-"
"I'm sorry, Doctor. But I'm on a dead run."
So he did as I said, pausing now and again to look at my teeth. I paid cash and did not leave my name. I suppose I could have let him have the pics, but covering up had become a reflex. It couldn't have hurt anything to let him have them. Nor helped either, as X rays would not show how regeneration was accomplished, nor could I have told him.
There is no time like the past to get things done. While I was sweating sixteen hours a day on Drafting Dan and Protean Pete I got something else done with my left hand. Working anonymously through John's law office I hired a detective agency with national branches to dig up Belle's past. I supplied them with her address and the license number and model of her car (since steering wheels are good places to get fingerprints) and suggested that she might have been married here and there and possibly might have a police record. I had to limit the budget severely; I couldn't afford the sort of investigation you read about.
When they did not report back in ten days I kissed my money good-by. But a few days later a thick envelope showed up at John's office.
Belle had been a busy girl. Born six years earlier than she claimed, she had been married twice before she was eighteen. One of them did not count because the man already had a wife; if she had been divorced from the second the agency had not uncovered it. She had apparently been married four times since then although once was doubtful; it may have been the "war-widow" racket worked with the aid of a man who was dead and, could not object. She had been divorced once (respondent) and one of her husbands was dead. She might still be "married" to the others.