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A customer did come in. Paul and his father stopped sniping at each other. They sold the local a fancy tape
deck. People in this alternate thought it was fancy, anyway. It was a long way behind the state of the art in
the home timeline. Everything there was digital, and had been for most of a hundred years.
Inspector Weidenreich didn't show up at Curious Notions that day. Dad looked smug. Paul ignored him.
Twenty minutes before they closed, he walked around the corner to buy a couple of hot dogs at Louie's,
where he went a lot of the time. Everybody here called them franks or wieners, but they were hot dogs, all
right. When he came back to the store, a skinny marmalade cat meowed at him. He tossed it a chunk of hot
dog. It sniffed suspiciously at the meat, then gobbled it up.
"They're as bad as beggars on two legs," his father said when he went inside. "Now it'll expect a handout
every time."
"Well, so what?" Paul answered. "Maybe I'll adopt it for as long as I'm here."
"Just so you don't try to bring it back to the home timeline," Dad said. "For all I know, it may be a boy. It'd
make Crosstime Traffic have kittens either way, though." He gestured. "Take those upstairs, will you?
We're supposed to look like we're a business. We can't do that if you're standing there feeding your face."
From what Paul had seen, at least half the shopkeepers in this alternate's San Francisco ate while they
were open. If they didn't, they wouldn't be able to eat at all. Again, though, life was too short to argue. He
started toward the stairway.
The bell over the front door rang before he'd taken more than three steps. He looked back over his
shoulder, then stopped. There stood Lucy Woo, a large, closed basket in her hand. "Hello," Paul said.
She nodded shyly. "Hello. I wanted to thank you I wanted to thank both of you for helping to get my
father away from the Feld-gendarmerie." She nodded again, this time to Paul's father. She plainly worked
hard at being polite.
Dad nodded back, even though he hadn't had thing one to do with getting Lucy's father out of jail. "It was
nothing," he said. Considering what he'd done considering that he'd got her father into trouble in the first
place that was true enough for him.
"We were glad to do it," Paul said. He had been, anyway.
She hefted the basket. "I brought you something. I hope you enjoy it."
"You didn't have to do that!" Paul exclaimed. She'd told him where she worked. He had a pretty good idea
of how much she'd make. If it was ten dollars a week, he would have been amazed. She couldn't afford
much in the way of presents.
With dignity, she said, "I think I did. You did something special for my family and me. This is the least we
can do to show we're grateful."
Paul realized he couldn't turn down the present, whatever it was. That would be a deadly insult. His father
had figured out the same thing a couple of steps ahead of him. "Thank you very much, Miss Woo," Dad
said. "This is really kind of you." He did everything but go over and kiss her hand. Dad could be charming
when he wanted to, sure enough charming to everybody but Paul.
Lucy came into the shop and set the basket on the counter. "Open it, please," she said.
Dad waved to Paul. He might have been saying, This is your fault you take care of it. Had they been by
themselves, Paul would have had some things to say about that. He couldn't say them with Lucy there. He
flipped back the basket's hinged lid, hoping she hadn't had to buy the container with the present.
The biggest lobster he'd ever seen stared back at him. It had to weigh at least five pounds maybe closer
to ten. Rubber bands held its claws closed. It was still wiggling a little; it had come out of the sea very
recently. "I got it at Fisherman's Wharf," Lucy said. "Throw it in a big pot of water and it will be
wonderful."
How many benjamins would a lobster this size cost in the home timeline? Lots Paul was sure ofthat. They
thought in terms of dollars here. It had to cost two or three, maybe even five. Five dollars in the home
timeline was a handful of little aluminum coins, worth next to nothing. Five dollars here . . . Five dollars here
was a good part of a week's pay for Lucy.
Quietly, Paul said, "This is too much. You didn't need to."
"For helping my father?" Lucy shook her head. "It's not enough. I wish I could do more."
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