Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny

a monocle in one eye, bless him.
    "Yes," I said.
    "Oh. You didn't get any shocks or anything like that, did you?"
    "No, but I got my dollar."
    "That's good." He sighed. "Glad we don't have to fill out an accident report. What happened, anyway?"
    "A guy bumped me and my bag tore. I had the morning's receipts in it. My boss will take it out of my pay if-"
    "Let's go see how much has been collected."
    We did, and I got back ninety-seven dollars, almost enough to let me think a good thought about my fellow man and throw in a brass button for providence for having run a very tight ship so far that day. I left a phony name and address for them to contact, should any other bills turn up, thanked them several times, apologized for the disturbance and got out.
    Traffic, I noticed immediately, was proceeding up and down the wrong sides of the street. Okay, I could live with that. The signs in store windows were all backward. Okay. That, too.
    I started out for the bench where I had stashed my coat receipt. I drew up short after a dozen paces.
    It had to be the wrong direction, because it felt right.
    I stood there then and tried to visualize the whole city as reversed. It was more difficult than I had thought it would be. My roast beef and beer-now reversed-churned in my innards, and I wanted to grab hold of something and hang on. I fought everything back into place, or what seemed like place, and turned. Yes. Better. The trick was to navigate by landmarks and pretend I was shaving. Think of it all as in a mirror. I wondered whether a dentist would have an advantage at something like this, or if his ability only extended to the insides of mouths. No matter. I had figured out where the bench was.
    I got to it, panicked when I could not locate the receipt, then remembered to go over to the opposite end. Yes. Right there . . .
    I had, of course, planted the receipt so that it would not be reversed and cause me difficulty in getting my coat back. And I had checked the coat so the ticket would not be reversed, causing me difficulty in boarding my bus.
    I mapped out the route image in my mind and found my way back to the restaurant. I was prepared for its situation on the opposite side of the street but still fumbled the door by reaching to the wrong side for its handle.
    The girl fetched me my coat promptly, but "It ain't April Fool's Day," she said as I turned to leave.
    "Huh?"
    She waved a bill at me. Lacking change, I had decided to leave a dollar tip. I realized at that moment that I had pulled out my one normal-looking bill, the dollar I had carried through the mobilator.
    "Oh," I said and added a quick-grin. "That was for the party. Here, I'll trade you."
    I gave her a ENO for it and she decided she could smile, too.
    "It felt real," she said. "I couldn't tell what was wrong with it for a second."
    "Yeah. Great gag."
    I stopped to buy a pack of cigarettes, then headed off to relocate the bus station. In that I still had plenty of time before departure, I decided that a little more antitelepath medicine might be in order. I entered an undistinguished looking bar and got me a mug of beer.
    It tasted strange. Not bad. Just very different. I backspelled the name on the tap and asked the bartender if that was what was really under it. He said that it was. I shrugged and sipped it. It was actually pretty good. Then the cigarette that I lit tasted peculiar. At first, I attributed this to the aftertaste of the beer. A few moments later, though, a half-formed thought caused me to call the bartender back again and have him pour me a shot of bourbon.
    It had a rich, smoky taste, unlike anything I had ever had out of a bottle bearing that label. Or any other label, for that matter.
    Then some recollections from Organic Chem I and II were suddenly with me. All of my amino acids, with the exception of glycine, had been left-handed, accounting for the handedness of my protein helices. Ditto for the nucleotides, giving that twisting to the coils of