In Times Like These (11 page)

“Do you think he’s going to be upset about us contacting him there when he told us not to?” Blake asks.

“We have extenuating circumstances. He should’ve had time to check out the softball field and our story by now. If he’s mad, I guess he’ll just have to deal.”

The others all seem agreeable and Francesca volunteers to be the one to call him. We file downstairs to the roll top desk and crowd around the phone as Francesca dials. “Hello.
May I speak to Malcolm please? . . . Okay.” She covers the mouthpiece and turns to us. “She’s going to get him.”

I gr
ab a pen and pad of paper from the desk to be prepared. Francesca straightens up as someone picks up on the other end.
That was fast.

“Hello, it’s Francesca, from the Pier. Oh
 . . . Hello.” She looks confused for a moment. “Yes. I know. But we have a situation. We would like to meet sooner . . . yes. It is very important . . . okay.”

She grabs the pad of paper and pen from me and starts scribbling. “Okay. We’ll be there. Thank you.” She puts down the phone and tells us the news. “He’ll meet us tomorrow.”

“Malcolm?” Carson asks.

“Quickly,” Francesca replies. “I was just talking to Harold Quickly
.”

Chapter 7

“
Cheating on a woman is always a bad idea. If your girl happens to be a time traveler, that’s worse. And if her father is a time traveler too . . . well, now you’ve really messed up.”

-Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Harold Quickly
, 2010

The St. Pete Shuffleboard club is as busy as I’ve ever seen it. The 1986 crowd seems a good bit older than the young demographic I’m used to in 2009, but the enthusiasm is the same. A squat, middle-aged woman named Annie greets us in the main building as we walk in, and asks if we’ve been here before. It occurs to me that technically we have been here after, and not before, but I simply nod and say yes. She points us to the tangs and I root through a couple, trying to find one with solid tips.

“Are we actually going to play?” Carson asks.

“We are a little early,” Francesca responds. “We can probably fit a game in.”

We all grab tangs and head toward the courts. I notice a framed movie poster has been hung on the wall advertising
Cocoon
. Annie spies me looking at it and is at my elbow in an instant.

“Did you know they filmed a scene right here? I got to meet Ron Howard myself. He’s such a sweetheart.”

“You know, I saw that movie years ago but I never realized it was filmed here,” I say.

“You must be thinking of something else
, dear. This just came out this past summer. You mean you didn’t go out and see it?”

“Oh, right. No. I wasn’t in town this past summer,” I reply.

“It was such a wonderful film. Ron Howard is so handsome now that he is grown up. And to think that we used to see him so little on
The Andy Griffith Show
and now he’s shooting big time movies in our city.”

Another person comes up to Annie for help and I gratefully make an exit out the door. I find my friends outside and we cruise around until we find an open lane. Blake grabs a rack of shuffleboard biscuits from a pile outside and t
urns back to Francesca. “How are we supposed to know when Quickly is here? Did you tell him what we look like?”

“He said he would find us here,” Francesca replies. “He never asked what we looked like. He just said be here around eight and that he would find us.”

“Do we know what he looks like?” Carson asks.

“I guess we keep an eye out for somebody who looks like he’s looking for us
,” I say.

We can’t all play simultaneously, so Robbie and I decide to trade off shots. He, Francesca and I walk to the bleacher side of the lane and face off across from Blake and Carson. Robbie and I play against Francesca, while Blake contends with Carson
. The match is going fairly smoothly until I accidentally knock two of my biscuits into the negative-ten-zone simultaneously while trying to move Francesca’s.

“Son of a—
” I edit myself as I see an older woman eyeing me disapprovingly from the neighboring lane.

“There goes our lead.” Robbie laughs.

“Here, you take it for the remainder. See if you can pick me up,” I say, and hand Robbie my tang.

I jump up a couple of steps and have a seat in the bleachers to watch the others play. The clock on the wall in the main building shows ten past eight.
No sign of our mysterious rendezvous.
I prop my feet on the railing and adjust my pants. Mr. Cameron took us to the Salvation Army so we could raid the sale racks for clothing. I ended up with a pair of jeans and a couple of T-shirts. The one I’m wearing now features Gizmo from
Gremlins
. Carson claims to have found the best vintage treasure because he snagged an original
Thriller
T-shirt, but I’m happy with mine.

I look around at the other people in the bleachers and take in the conversations. A group of older ladies are clumped together to my right, discussing their disapproval of someone’s taste in second husbands. I can hear occasional loud laughter from two men who are probably in
their sixties, sitting a few rows up in the bleachers directly behind me. To my left a group of middle-aged couples is commenting on one of the games being played by their friends.

As I’m watching Blake and Carson repetitively clear each other’s biscuits off the lane in quick succession, one of the older men from behind me steps past me, still talking over his shoulder.
“Gotta get back to glassing the lanes. It was good seeing you. Tell Mym I said hi.”

“I’ll tell her,” the other man replies. “She still talks about your wife’s cooking on a regular basis. Probably an allusion to what she has to put up with from me.”

“You two come over next time she’s in town. We’ll be happy to feed you both.”

“See you, Walt,” the man behind me says.

Walt walks in front of the bleachers, picks up the glass bead material and heads for the set of lanes around the corner. After a few moments, the second man proceeds down the steps as well, but instead of passing by, sits down next to me. He’s wearing a cheese cutter hat and a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows.

I nod to him. “How ya doin
’?”

I look back to my friends’ game. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him appraising me. He stretches a leg out and puts a foot onto the lower rail in front of us.
“Are you a betting man?”

I turn and look at him. His eyes are friendly. He skin has the healthy sunned look that a lot of Florida seniors acquire.
“Not too much. My friend Robbie likes to bet the dogs. I’ve never been a big gambler.”

“I find a good game of shuffleboard is made that much more interesting with a few side bets. Whom would you bet on in your friends’ game there
, for example?”

I look at the scoreboard at the far end of the lane and see that Carson and Francesca a
re up by fifteen points. “Francesca and Carson look like they’re pulling ahead a little bit, but I know Blake and Robbie are pretty consistent shooters. They’ve been known to pull off some comebacks.”

“Who’s your pick then?” h
e presses me.

“Hard to say. They’re all strong.”

He reaches into his coat pocket and rummages around. “Let’s see what I’ve got for a wager.”

“I really don’t have much money,” I reply, wishing he would just drop the subject.

“Okay, what do you have?” he asks.

I reach into my pocket hopelessly and pull out the few items inside. I have a gum wrapper, a pencil I borrowed from Mr. Cameron’s desk earlier, and seventy-two cents in change.
“I’ve got seventy-two cents for you.” I hold out the change in my right hand.

He ignores it and looks toward my other hand. “What kind of pencil is that? Berol? Faber?”

I read the label. “Dixon Ticonderoga.”

“Ah, not bad. A classic. Okay, tell you what, I have a ball point pen here that I’ll wager against your Dixon Ticonderoga, that your lovely female friend will win it by five.”

“Really?” I ask. “You want to be that specific? That looks like a nice pen.”

“Confidence is key. And I’ve always been more of a pencil man. You never know when you might need to rewrite what you’ve already written.”

He stares at me until I acquiesce. “Fine. I’ll take Blake for the winning shot, by three.”

“Now we’re talking!” He smiles jubilantly, and turns his attention to the game.

In the time it has taken for us to settle on a wager, Blake and Robbie have scored twelve points to Carson and Francesca’s three, making it a six-point game. Francesca notices the man sitting next to me and gives me a curious look. I shrug my shoulders and she goes back to shooting. She and Robbie both score sevens on their turns. Blake and Carson knock each other around for a couple of shots before Blake puts up two eights by replacing both of Carson’s to put him within two points of the win. Francesca’s third shot lands on the centerline for no points and Robbie slides one into the ten spot just shy of the line for ten points. Francesca lines up and shoots down the middle and knocks Robbie’s away, neatly replacing it. She jumps up and down for joy as she’s showing eighteen points in position, but Robbie eyes his last shot.

“I am going to hate you forever if you knock out my ten Robbie!” Francesca exclaims.

Robbie shows no mercy and trains his shot straight at it. The shot doesn’t have the force he wants however, and when it makes contact, it’s just a glancing blow, barely moving Francesca’s biscuit back into the eight spot and ricocheting off to make contact with his previous biscuit and knocking it off the lane. His shot winds up on the seven/eight line for no points.

“Yes!” Francesca yells, and I see Carson’s celebratory fist pump. Francesca and Carson meet in the middle of the walkway and high-five. Mentally I do the math.
Seventy-eight to seventy-three.

I look at
my companion. He’s not looking at me, but he’s smiling. “I don’t know how you did it, but you nailed it.” I hand the pencil over. He takes it and examines the eraser approvingly, then slides the pencil into the inner pocket of his jacket.

“I’ll tell you the secret to my success.”

“Psychic?”

“Cheater,” he replies. “The worst.”

I get a good look at his smiling green eyes and I know why I’ve been had. “You’re Harold Quickly, aren’t you?”

“At your service.” He smiles and offers his hand. I shake it. My friends make their way over.

“Excellent match!” Quickly congratulates them.

“What have you two been discussing over here?” Francesca asks.

“I was simply giving a lesson in crooked wagering to your friend here,” Quickly replies.

“Yeah, lesson one: Don’t bet against time travelers.”

“Oh! You’re Dr. Quickly?” Francesca asks.

“Indeed. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Blake and Robbie introduce themselves to Dr. Quickly and take seats on the bleachers behind us. Carson and Francesca remain standing below. “I’m sorry we didn’t recognize you earlier,” Francesca says.

“No, that was my own doing,” Quickly replies. “I wanted to enjoy the game and get to know Benjamin here. Plus I had a lot riding on your performance.”

“Oh yeah?” Carson asks.

“He swindled me out of a pencil,” I say.

“Oh, high stakes.” Robbie laughs.

“You never can tell when you might need a good writing instrument,” Quickly says. “The possibilities are endless.”

“We have about a million questions for you,” Blake says.

“I imagine you do. Why don’t we go somewhere where we can discuss the issues at hand with a little more ease? Do you all mind riding with me, or do you have your own transportation?”

“We actually walked here, so a ride would be good,” I reply.

“Very well. Follow me then.”

We file out into the parking lot behind Dr. Quickly, and he leads us to his car, a sky blue convertible with tail fins and a lot of chrome.

“Wow. Sweet car,” Carson says.

“This is my favorite,” Quickly responds.

“What is it?” Francesca asks.

“It’s a Ford Galaxie.”

The six of us fit easily in its wide interior. Francesca ri
des in between Dr. Quickly and me on the front bench seat while the other guys share the back. We turn out around the banyan trees and cruise past the library on our way south. We take a right on First Avenue North and head west. The skyline seems vacant without the baseball stadium, and I have an unexpected pang of homesickness.

Dr. Quickly steers the Galaxie into a residential neighborhood I don’t recognize. There’s nothing that catches my eye about the houses on the street we turn on. They all blend together in their nondescript uniformity. We pull into the
driveway of a one-story ranch house that seems, if anything, more bland than the others around it. I realize that I’ve been expecting Dr. Quickly to have something more elegant or dramatic in store for us, but there is nothing apologetic about his mannerisms as he cheerily welcomes us inside.