In the stillness of the night, Murphy heard the stranger’s voice clearly. It held an odd accent that he couldn’t quite place: British-American, yet with a faint Asian inflection.…
“Yes, operator, would you be so kind as to tell me the exact date? Yes, ma’am… today’s date. And the year, please.”
The date? The year? What, he didn’t have a calendar?
The porch steps creaked when Murphy put his weight on them. Startled by his sudden appearance, the stranger looked up sharply, all but dropping the receiver from his hand.
“Sorry,” Murphy said automatically. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
The man at the phone looked vaguely Eurasian. He stared at Murphy through wire-rim glasses, then seemed to remember what he had been doing a moment earlier. He raised the receiver again. “I’m sorry, ma’am… could you repeat that, please?”
Murphy walked over to the Coke machine, dug into his trouser pockets for change. He felt the stranger’s eyes upon him as he found a couple of quarters and fed them into the slot. He had to be a vagrant; his clothes were so old-fashioned, they had to have come from Salvation Army. Yet even the most destitute homeless men he had seen huddled on steam grates in downtown DC wore cast-off down coats or old baseball jackets. The last time Murphy had seen men’s apparel of this style was in old photos of his grandfather as a young man.
“Thank you, ma’am. You’ve been very helpful.” The stranger prodded the rim of his glasses as if adjusting them, then hung up the phone. He blew into his hands, cast a furtive glance at Murphy, then started to walk toward the steps.
“Cold night,” Murphy said.
The stranger hesitated. “Pardon me?”
“Cold night.” Murphy pushed the Dr Pepper button; there was a heavy clunk deep within the vending machine, then a can rattled down the chute. “At least twenty.”
“Twenty what?”
“Twenty degrees. The temperature.”
“Oh… well…” Drawing his coat lapels more closely around him, the man nodded in the general direction of the road behind him. “It doesn’t bother me. I don’t live far away. Just down the road. Came down to use the road… the phone, I mean.”
Was it his imagination, or did his voice sound a bit different now? Murphy bent to pick up the can of soda, and the stranger hurried past him. “I didn’t know anyone lived here year-round,” Murphy added. “I thought all these places belonged to summer people.”
“A few of us stay through the winter.” The other man took off his glasses, carefully folded them, placed them into his coat pocket. “Excuse me, but I…”
“Want to get home. Sure.” Murphy slipped the unopened soda into a pocket of his parka. “Take it easy.”
“Yes… uh, yeah.” He trotted down the porch steps. “I’ll take it easy. You take it easy, too.”
Murphy watched the stranger huddle into himself and quickly walk away, moving out of the faint glow of the porch light as he began marching up the road leading to the top of the nearest hill. Poor bastard probably lives in a trailer, he mused. Can’t afford a phone of his own, so he has to hike down here when he wants to make a call. Hope he’s got a good space-heater or something to keep him warm…
But why would anyone call an operator to find out today’s date?
Crazy people. Crazy people in Washington, crazy people in Tennessee. Crazy people still working for OPS even though they knew better. Murphy shrugged, then went down the steps. He’d better get back to camp before Ogilvy or Sanchez or someone else missed him. The sergeant minding the checkpoint was probably thirsty for his Dr Pepper.
He had only walked a short distance before he realized that he could use a soda himself. No sense in going back with only one soft drink; it was going to be a long night. Might as well grab one for the road. So he turned around and jogged back to the lonesome Coke machine.
When he searched his pockets, though, he discovered that he only had a quarter. Tough luck… then he glanced at the adjacent pay phone, and realized that the guy he just met had been talking to an operator.
Why would anyone walk all this way just to…?
Never mind. Point was, he hadn’t retrieved his change from the return slot. Probably too cold to remember that he had money coming back to him. And since the phone took twenty-five cents, there might be enough left in there for Murphy to buy himself a Sprite.
Murphy stepped over to the phone and poked an inquisitive finger into its tiny drawer. Sure enough, two dimes and a nickel. He dug them out, jingled them in his fist, then walked over to the Coke machine. He slipped his quarter into the slot and was about to slide home one of the dimes when he did a double-take.
It was a Mercury dime.
He hadn’t seen a Mercury dime since he was in grade school.
Then he opened his palm and saw another Mercury dime and a buffalo nickel.
What were the chances of this occurring by accident? So far beyond the realm of probability that Murphy instantly rejected it as an explanation. And these coins looked good as new.
Okay, so maybe the stranger was a rare coin collector. Yeah, right. A rare coin collector who couldn’t afford decent winter clothes, but drops spotless Mercury dimes and buffalo nickels into pay phones. Well, maybe he was an absent-minded collector who used rare coins to call operators on pay phones to ask them what time…
And just then, something Harry Cumisky had said last night at the Bullfinch came back to him.
Friday, January 16, 1997: 6:48 P.M.
Careful not to switch it off, Franc folded the compad and thrust it into his pocket, then clenched the jacket more tightly around himself. The wind at the top of the hill was fierce and bone-chilling; his legs shook involuntarily, and he had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. He stamped his feet against the blacktop in a vain effort to warm his frozen toes.
“Hurry up,” he whispered, glancing up at the opaque sky. “Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up…”
It wasn’t only the cold that made him impatient. The chance encounter with the local had unnerved him to the point that he had almost forgotten his errand; it had taken an conscious effort to store the exact date and time in the memory of his faux spectacles. The man who had come to use the vending machine had been more than casually interested in his presence at the pay phone, and it wasn’t merely late-twentieth-century snoopiness. He might have been from one of the nearby homes, but Franc suspected otherwise.
Well, it didn’t matter much now. Metz was probably lifting off even now; once aloft, he’d find Franc by homing in on the signal from his still-active compad. He looked up again, although he knew Metz had probably reactivated the chameleon and that he wouldn’t be able to see the timeship until it was…
“Okay… who are you… anyway?”
The voice from the darkness was strained and out of breath, but familiar nonetheless. Franc whirled around, searching the road behind him.
“I said… who are you?”
The man from the store.
Franc finally made him out. Only a few meters away, struggling up the hill toward him.
“Nobody you would know, sir,” he replied. “I just live around here.”
“I… kinda doubt that.” The stranger stopped; he bent over and rested his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. He must have run all this way. “Nobody… lives around here… in winter. If they did, they’d… they’d… have their own phone.”
“I don’t.” Franc’s mind raced. The Oberon would be here any minute; he couldn’t allow his departure to be witnessed by a local. “I just use the pay phone to save money.”
“Yeah… right.” A soft jingle of loose change. “Money like this?”