"I see," I agrees, dazed. Rabelais flicks the paper with a silly grin
and tells me to look on page four. I do and there's an editorial
beside a cartoon of me, pot belly and all, and it says, "Mayor Mike
Murphy agrees to run for Congress...."
"Me?"
"You," says Rabelais. "You make it, too, Mike."
Before I can answer, we stop at a building lighted up. Over the door
it says, "Pettis." That's all. It's his, the whole building. And it's
full of offices. He shows me one where his former bosses are slaving
over drafting boards. The bank part is closed but some slavies are
working late as people in banks always do and we go in and Rabelais
gets a wad of money and we leave.
It goes on like that. I'm ashamed to say we get sort of looped and the
next thing we know we're in Paris and having a fine time. Then we take
another flier on his machine and it's summer. We enjoy that for a
while and then try another season. It goes on that way for a couple
weeks. Once we accept the fact that we're traveling in time, it's
easy.
But Rabelais, even when he's looped, won't take us into the past or
far into the future. He just says, "We have to watch probability,
Mike."
I don't get the idea but it doesn't seem to matter much. We're having
too good a time kicking around in the near future. Finally when we all
feel ready for a Keeley cure, Rabelais takes us home. We land in the
basement at the very moment we left it but with our fur coats and
fancy luggage and souvenirs. Rabelais looks over all the gadgets we
have and those that are too much ahead of our time, he throws away.
In a taxi heading for town, I smoke my dollar cigar. I'm happy. The
girls are quiet, a little sad.
"It was fun," the redhead sighs. "Kicking won't seem the same."
"Quit that kind of work," Rabelais says. "Go to college or something."
And he hands each of them a big wad of money.
Downtown we split up, each of us going off somewhere to get the rest
we need. I sleep around the clock and a little more. When I wake up
I'm the owner of a tavern still, so I figure I'm to be mayor in '54
and congressman in '56. It's a wonderful life for a while. The only
thing is that I miss Rabelais coming in at five-ten for his beer.
In '54 I get elected Mayor like he said. My business gets remodelled
and all is swell.
* * * * *
Then one night I go to sleep in my new house and I wake up in the
middle of the night feeling a cold draft. When I turn over I roll onto
a lump in the mattress and I know it was all a dream and I'm Mike
Murphy, bartender, again.
The next a.m. I pick up the paper and it's the summer of '53, the day
of Rabelais and my thirty-first anniversary and I'm back at the old
stand. It was a fine dream, I says, and go to work.
At five-o-nine, though, I can't help looking at the clock. And sure
enough, Rabelais comes in, walks up to the bar like he owns it and
roars at me, "Two beers, Mike!"