Time and Again

back to Portland. Socialize, take in some movies, go to a few parties. What she needed, she decided with a nod, was to get Caleb Hornblower on his way, back to wherever the devil he came from.
    Taking the coffee, she started upstairs. For all she knew, he might have dropped down from the moon.
    She passed his room and couldn't prevent a quick snicker when she heard the frantic sounds of a television game show. The man, she thought as she slipped behind her own door, was easily entertained.

CHAPTER 4
    It was an education. Cal spent several hours engrossed in a sea of daytime television. Every ten or fifteen minutes he switched channels, moving from game show to soap opera, from talk show to commercial. He found the commercials particularly entertaining, with their bright, often startling, intensity.
    He preferred the musical ones, with their jumpy tunes and contagious cheer. But others made him wonder about the people who lived in this time, in this place.
    Some selections showcased frazzled women fighting things like grease stains and dull wax buildup. He couldn't imagine his mother-or any other woman, for that matter-worrying about which detergent made whites whiter. But the commercials were delightful entertainment.
    There were others that had attractive men and women solving their problems by drinking carbonated beverages or coffee. It seemed everyone worked, many outside, in sweaty jobs, so that they could go to a bar with friends at the end of the day and drink beer. He thought their costumes were wonderful.
    On a daytime drama he watched a woman have a brief, intense conversation with a man about the possibility of her being pregnant. Either a woman was pregnant or she wasn't, Cal mused, switching over to see a paunchy man in a checked jacket win a week's vacation in Hawaii. From the winner's reaction, Cal figured that must be a pretty big deal in the twentieth century.
    He wondered, as he caught snippets of The News at Noon, how humanity had ever made it to the twenty-first century and beyond. Murder was obviously a popular sport. As were discussions on arms limitations and treaties. Politicians apparently hadn't changed much, he thought as he snacked on a box of cookies he'd found in Libby's kitchen, his legs folded under him. They were still long-winded, they still danced around the truth, and they still smiled a great deal. But to imagine that world leaders had actually negotiated over how many nuclear weapons each would build and maintain was ludicrous. How many had they thought they needed?
    No matter, he decided, and switched back to a soap. They had come to their senses eventually.
    He liked the soaps the best. Though the picture was wavy and the sound occasionally jumped, he enjoyed watching the people react, agonizing about their problems, contemplating marriages, divorces and love affairs. Relationships had apparently been among the top ten problems of this century.
    As he watched, a curvy blonde with tears in her eyes and a tough-looking bare-chested man fell into each other's arms for a long, deep, passionate kiss. The music swelled until fade-out. Kissing was obviously an accepted habit of the time, Cal reflected. So why had Libby been so upset by one?
    Restless, he rose and walked to the window. He hadn't exactly reacted in an expected fashion himself.
    The kiss had left him feeling angry, uneasy and vulnerable. None of those reactions had ever occurred before. And none of them, he admitted now, had lessened his desire for her in the least.
    He wanted to know everything there was to know about Liberty Stone. What she thought, what she felt, what she wanted most, what she liked the least. There were dozens of questions he wanted to ask her, dozens of ways he wanted to touch her, and he knew that when he did her eyes would become dark and confused and depthless. He could imagine, with only the slightest effort, what her skin would feel like on the back of her knee, at the small of her back.
    It was impossible. There was only one thing he should be thinking about now. Going home.
    The time with Libby was only an interlude. Knowing as little as he did about women of this time didn't prevent him from being certain that Liberty Stone was not a woman a man could love and leave with any comfort. One look in her eyes and you saw not only passion but home fires burning.
    He was a man who had no intention of settling down anytime soon. True, his parents had matched early and had married fairly young, at