Issue 04 # Sept 1950 by Fantasy; Science Fiction

Author:Fantasy; Science Fiction
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-05-16T05:42:50+00:00

Time travel is impressive enough when elaborately decked out with oddly constructed machines, theories of temporomagnetic fields, and formulas involving the square root of minus one; but you can read such stories with a reasonable assurance that your own life is never going to involve such machines, theories or formulas. There is, however, another kind of time travel: the brief displacement, the slight fault in an otherwise ordered universe, such as once befell two maiden ladies in the gardens of Versailles. It is this unintentional, unpreventable time-slip that Roger Angell recorded with such detailed plausibility some two years ago in “The New Yorker” … precisely as it may happen to you tomorrow.

Just a Matter of Time

by ROGER ANGELL

Crazy things like this probably happen all the time, and I suppose my reaction is just the same as anybody else’s in the same position. At first, you think it just can’t be, that there must be some simple explanation for the whole thing. Maybe Cromartie was drunk that night and just wrote down the wrong address by mistake. Or maybe it was his idea of a joke. But then, later on, you begin to wonder if there has to be a logical answer like that. Why not accept the simplest explanation of all? Anyhow, that’s the way I look at it now. I‘ve been thinking about it for months — time I wrote it down, while I remember it all. Anybody who wants to check up on me can ask Carol Cain. She was in on the beginning of it. And then there’s my sister, down in Pennsylvania. You could ask her, though probably she just thought I was drunk or stupid the night I tried to take her to a place that didn’t exist. Anyway, these are the facts, and you’ll just have to accept them until I find Cromartie. And I will find him someday. I’m sure of that-

First of all, you have to know about me and Carol Cain. I guess, looking

at it honestly, I have to admit that that’s probably all over for good. But back last fall, Carol and I seemed pretty well set. It looked like a steady thing. And the funny part of it is that I can’t say just what went wrong, I don’t think it’s the difference in our ages. I’m not what you’d call middle-aged yet — not in any way that matters. I’ve seen too many of my friends get out of touch with things in the last twenty years to let that happen to me. I can remember back when I used to see all my friends in the same places almost every night. And then they stopped coming. Some of them died or moved away, some got married, and some went broke for a while, but most of them just got out of the habit and stopped coming. Now I never see them any more. But I haven’t let that happen to me. Right now, I can walk in anywhere and get a table — any place you mention.

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