of
course he did when I finally told him but by then it was all so
different and I'm afraid I've gotten confused. Where was I? Oh, you need
a refill."

"Thank you," Victor said, "I forget myself exactly where it was you
were. Is that right? Where you was it were? No, I'm sure _that's_ wrong.
Where were you it was, I think. Does that sound better to you?"

"Isn't that peculiar?" she answered. "Could it be where I was you
weren't? No, now I'm being silly, and I can't for the life of me
understand why. After all, this is a serious affair. Or at least I wish
it were. Was."

"What?"

"I remember, damn it," she said. "We were talking about _Don_ald again.
Well, he kept making these remarks about coming through time and of
course I didn't understand what the hell he was talking about but I
thought because of my not remembering anything and all that I better
just not say anything so I didn't, but he kept on and little by little I
got the idea, the general idea anyhow, but what on earth could I do
about it? And then he started talking about it was time to go back and
all that, and I _cer_tainly wasn't going to go floating off in any old
_time_ machine whether he was nuts or not, so I just kept putting
him off the best I could but he started getting so impatient that
finally--what was that? I think there's something wrong."

* * * * *

They both sat suddenly quite still and listened, but they heard nothing.

"I hear nothing," Victor said.

"That's it," Mimi hissed. "He's not snoring anymore. He'll be here any
minute. Act natural. Have another martini."

"Thank you, perhaps just one more," Victor said as Donald Fairfield came
into the room.

* * * * *

He strode across the room crossing in front of them without turning his
head or acknowledging their presence and made straight for the buffet in
the opposite corner. He bent over and extracted a thick black cigar,
struck a match, lit the cigar, puffed several times, dropped the match
into a gigantic ashtray made of marble, or something that looked like
marble, puffed several more times, finally inhaled deeply and exhaled
slowly before he turned and nodded at his two spectators. "You make
better cigars than we do, I'll say that for the twentieth century," he
complimented Victor in the manner of all tourists, as if Victor himself
were the cause and not the product of his age. "One of the mysteries of
history