guy and a gal."
"Oh, you heard that, did you?"
"And I'm new here, so I was hoping maybe a lovely gal like you might show me around."
With mock surprise, Lucy said, "Why, Mr. Rose. Are you asking me on a date?"
"I believe I am." He smiled, and to his delighted surprise, he felt genuine about the offer even if the door had proved to be the instigating factor. "I thought perhaps I could take you out to a respectable dinner tonight."
An amused light covered her face. "That sounds agreeable, Mr. Rose," she giggled. "Vincent and I live in the apartment upstairs. You may call on me tonight, say around seven?"
"Seven it is."
Chapter 12
Â
The remaining hours of the day crawled by at a languid pace as if the universe knew the importance of Duncan's upcoming date and wanted nothing more than to torture him by halting time. Considering that he had walked through a door and emerged on the other side almost eighty years earlier, he didn't put it beyond the realm of possibility. In fact, the more he pondered it, the more he thought that the universe loved messing with him. But the universe had nothing compared to the war waging between his brain and his heart.
Stay focused, his brain commanded as he lay in his hotel bed. This date was reconnaissance â find out all he could on the door and why Lucy had drawn it, where the door was and how he could get to it. Nothing else mattered.
But his heart countered with images of Lucy smiling at him while a gauzy filter of sunlight shined around her. He pictured her disrobing in a graceful motion, her dress fluttering to the ground as she stepped closer to him. Making love on clouds.
Who the hell are you? his brain countered. This wasn't the man he had lived his life as. He never had fallen hard for a girl before and now certainly wasn't the time to start. Go on the date, find the door, get your ass home.
Sliding the bedside table drawer open, Duncan brought out a deck of cards he had stashed there and tried to recreate Vincent's trick. Earlier in the day, when Ben had performed the trick with the crystal ball, Duncan thought he might be able to use the same principle on Vincent's trick. It was called the 10/20 split because no matter what number the mark picked, the math always worked out the same. There were many variations on the idea but the basic mathematics of it all never changed.
He tried to recall every word Vincent had said when performing the trick. There hadn't been any calculations involved, he never asked Duncan to add or subtract or anything like that. But he did have Duncan count out a specific number of cards. Perhaps that set the card order up in a way that couldn't be changed.
Duncan shuffled his deck and made several attempts to count out specific card orders. None of them worked. He ended up with a different card every time and he had no clue what the card would be.
He rose from the bed, crossed the room, and poured some whiskey into a glass. As he sloshed it around before drinking, he smirked. He'd only been in 1934 for a day-and-a-half, and he had already taken to drinking as hard as the locals. Besides having lived with Prohibition, everybody had to deal with The Great Depression. It's a wonder they all didn't become alcoholics. But he hadn't been hit by either of those major historical events. He was a wealthy tourist to this time period, yet the stress of not knowing when he'd get his return ticket seemed to be drying his mouth out more often than not.
He shot back the whiskey and returned to his cards, but nothing he tried solved the problem. With a disgruntled moan, he threw the cards onto the bed and flicked on the radio. Thank goodness he still had that pleasure. Though television and the Internet were decades away from creation, good old radio existed to fill the gaps of time with lovely voiced harmonies and jazzy big bands. Even the news breaks were entertaining. Announced in that old time radio voice that, Duncan had to remember, was not old time
"Oh, you heard that, did you?"
"And I'm new here, so I was hoping maybe a lovely gal like you might show me around."
With mock surprise, Lucy said, "Why, Mr. Rose. Are you asking me on a date?"
"I believe I am." He smiled, and to his delighted surprise, he felt genuine about the offer even if the door had proved to be the instigating factor. "I thought perhaps I could take you out to a respectable dinner tonight."
An amused light covered her face. "That sounds agreeable, Mr. Rose," she giggled. "Vincent and I live in the apartment upstairs. You may call on me tonight, say around seven?"
"Seven it is."
Chapter 12
Â
The remaining hours of the day crawled by at a languid pace as if the universe knew the importance of Duncan's upcoming date and wanted nothing more than to torture him by halting time. Considering that he had walked through a door and emerged on the other side almost eighty years earlier, he didn't put it beyond the realm of possibility. In fact, the more he pondered it, the more he thought that the universe loved messing with him. But the universe had nothing compared to the war waging between his brain and his heart.
Stay focused, his brain commanded as he lay in his hotel bed. This date was reconnaissance â find out all he could on the door and why Lucy had drawn it, where the door was and how he could get to it. Nothing else mattered.
But his heart countered with images of Lucy smiling at him while a gauzy filter of sunlight shined around her. He pictured her disrobing in a graceful motion, her dress fluttering to the ground as she stepped closer to him. Making love on clouds.
Who the hell are you? his brain countered. This wasn't the man he had lived his life as. He never had fallen hard for a girl before and now certainly wasn't the time to start. Go on the date, find the door, get your ass home.
Sliding the bedside table drawer open, Duncan brought out a deck of cards he had stashed there and tried to recreate Vincent's trick. Earlier in the day, when Ben had performed the trick with the crystal ball, Duncan thought he might be able to use the same principle on Vincent's trick. It was called the 10/20 split because no matter what number the mark picked, the math always worked out the same. There were many variations on the idea but the basic mathematics of it all never changed.
He tried to recall every word Vincent had said when performing the trick. There hadn't been any calculations involved, he never asked Duncan to add or subtract or anything like that. But he did have Duncan count out a specific number of cards. Perhaps that set the card order up in a way that couldn't be changed.
Duncan shuffled his deck and made several attempts to count out specific card orders. None of them worked. He ended up with a different card every time and he had no clue what the card would be.
He rose from the bed, crossed the room, and poured some whiskey into a glass. As he sloshed it around before drinking, he smirked. He'd only been in 1934 for a day-and-a-half, and he had already taken to drinking as hard as the locals. Besides having lived with Prohibition, everybody had to deal with The Great Depression. It's a wonder they all didn't become alcoholics. But he hadn't been hit by either of those major historical events. He was a wealthy tourist to this time period, yet the stress of not knowing when he'd get his return ticket seemed to be drying his mouth out more often than not.
He shot back the whiskey and returned to his cards, but nothing he tried solved the problem. With a disgruntled moan, he threw the cards onto the bed and flicked on the radio. Thank goodness he still had that pleasure. Though television and the Internet were decades away from creation, good old radio existed to fill the gaps of time with lovely voiced harmonies and jazzy big bands. Even the news breaks were entertaining. Announced in that old time radio voice that, Duncan had to remember, was not old time
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