Time and Again

Then suddenly he smiled, his face alight with friendliness, eyes warm and welcoming — an instantaneous transformation — and his hand moved out to shake mine as he spoke. "I'm Jacob Pickering, a boarder here like yourself." He was shaking my hand vigorously, his face entirely amiable, and all the time his grip was tightening I smiled back just as amiably, tightening my own grip with all the strength I had. We were fighting, there in that pleasant room, no one else knowing it, our forearms begi

Julia said, "I didn't like that, Mr. Pickering. I didn't like that at all." She turned to me. Her eyes were blazing, her hands still busy at the back of her neck, putting up her hair. "Perhaps you will do another of me, Mr. Morley?" she said. "On paper. One I can keep. I'll be pleased to pose for you at any time!"

My hand was in my pocket, hiding it. I knew it must be red and starting to swell; it hurt badly. "I'll be glad to, Miss Julia. Very, very glad.'' I was turning my head as I spoke so that I finished while looking into Pickering's eyes. "In fact, I insist on it."

He only smiled: at me; at everyone. "Perhaps I was wrong," he said, dropping his head a little in mock humility. "Sometimes I… act precipitately." Then he raised his head to look me in the eye. "When my fiancée is concerned."

Aunt Ada, Maud, Byron, and Felix began talking, almost chattering, covering and burying an awkward incident. Julia turned and walked quickly into the dining room and on into the kitchen, where she made tea. Byron Doverman said something to Pickering, who responded. Aunt Ada came over to me, and I asked her about something in the whatnot cabinet: a thin glass vial stopped with a cork. It turned out to be sand from the Sahara Desert.

We had tea, Julia carrying it in on a large wooden tray. Sipping it, we all talked for a few minutes, finishing the evening with a semblance of propriety, though neither Pickering nor I spoke to or even looked at the other. Then everyone shook hands with Felix in final birthday good wishes, and the party was over.

Upstairs in my room, standing in the dark unbuttoning my shirt and staring down into the empty darkness of Gramercy Park, I knew that Rube, Oscar, Danziger, Esterhazy, and I had forgotten the obvious: that simply being with people is to become involved with them. I was to have been only an observer here, strictly enjoined from interfering with events, and certainly from causing them. Yet I'd done just the opposite. About to pull off my shirt, I stopped and stood motionless, staring down at a hitching post mounded with snow. It might be that I ought to leave as fast as I could. That I ought to pack now, sneak downstairs, out, and back to the Dakota before I could do any more harm.

But my mind was yelling, Thursday! Tomorrow is Thursday! Tomorrow "at half past twelve," said the note I'd seen Jake Pickering mail, "appear in City Hall Park." I had to be there, had to; somehow invisibly, and interfering with nothing, but I had to be there. Just one more day; half a day! I was saying to myself. For only those few hours I could certainly retreat to the role of observer only, couldn't I? Lifting my hand into the faint light reflected up to my window from the snow outside, I looked at it, then compared it with the other, my hands side by side. The right hand was puffy, and all four finger knucklebones ached steadily. Staring at my hand, I flexed it slowly, then tried closing it into a fist. I couldn't do it, but as it began to close, an involuntary picture popped up in my mind in which that fist was punching Pickering in the mouth.

I had to laugh at that, silently, and I dropped my hand; but it worried me. Yet it was a fact that I needn't even encounter Pickering in the morning. I could wait to come downstairs till he'd left the house, and then never see him face to face again. As for Julia — well, what about Julia? After a few moments I nodded; in a way I wasn't able to analyze, I was somehow involved with her, too. But that didn't matter, either; we were of separate times, and I'd be leaving hers very soon.

I tested something; I thought about Kate, and stood there in the dark examining my feelings about her. Nothing had changed. As soon as I returned, I knew I'd want to see her, and I felt a sense of relief, and then started to wonder about that. Instead, I turned away from the window, unbuttoning my shirt — it buttoned only partway down, the lower part being a single wide shirttail — undressed, and got into my nightgown. Lying in bed, I smiled; it had been quite a day. Then, within a minute or so, I fell asleep, knowing I might be terribly wrong to stay here but knowing also that I was going to; that I had to see what happened in City Hall Park at half past twelve, Thursday, January 26, 1882 — tomorrow.

13

I had breakfast alone in the morning, all the other boarders gone. I'd lain in bed listening for them, counting them off as they'd come down the hall and gone down the stairs, all within a few minutes of each other. Then I'd dressed, and sat watching by my window till I actually saw Jake Pickering leave.

Walking into the parlor now, I saw that it was swept and dusted, and I turned to look at the windows. They were almost entirely clear, wiped or washed clean of frost and drawings both, a new film of frost begi

I sat down at the long dining-room table, and Aunt Ada — listening for me, I think — came in from the kitchen wearing her working clothes: a plain dark cotton dress and a white bib-apron tied in a big bow at the back. She welcomed me, very sweetly and genuinely, asking how I'd slept and if my room were satisfactory. Then, still smiling, anxious not to offend me, she said this was the only morning I could expect breakfast after eight, and I said I'd either get down earlier or do without.

She served breakfast then: a fried chop, fried eggs, toast with three kinds of jam, coffee, and the morning Times. Setting these down on the table while I watched, she glanced at me, hesitated, and then — genuinely anxious about my welfare — suggested that if I were looking for work I ought to begin getting up earlier. With the backs of her fingers she felt the base of the silver coffeepot which she'd set onto a thick knitted square, then filled my cup and left, and I opened the Times, and began to eat.