Time Thieves

well,” he said.
        
        “Still?”
        
        “Yes. It's such a strong memory that it interferes with everything else, makes my mind wander. It hangs there-” He turned and looked at the bed. “I remember how comfortable it was. I slept on the right side, as if you were on the left, and that amused me at the time.” He walked into the bathroom. “No stopper for the tub, just the shower. I remember that too. And the first shelf of the medicine cabinet is rusted along the edge.” He opened the mirrored door and proved his statement.
        
        “And you didn't do anything but stay here, in your room?”
        
        “I watched television.”
        
        “You never do.”
        
        “I know, but I did this time.”
        
        “Where did you eat?” she asked.
        
        She looked around the room while he tried to remember. The place was so impersonalized, without a single article of his own, that he might never have been here. Perhaps no one had ever been here. There was not even a cigarette burn on the surface of the desk.
        
        “I can't remember eating,” he said at last. “I must have gone out to restaurants.”
        
        “Maybe the desk clerk will know.”
        
        He looked around the room once again. “Let's go see him.”
        
        The 4:00-to-midnight shift clerk was a small, balding man named Leroy Simmons. The only distinguishing feature of his bland white face was a small moustache. And even that was so thin that it might have been drawn on with a pencil. He looked up at them, blankly, then offered Pete a tentative smile.
        
        “Can I help you with something?” He shifted his gaze, nervously, to Della, considering her. Pete had evidently signed the register without a “Mr. and Mrs.” preceding his name.
        
        “Yes,” Pete said, wondering how to phrase everything he had to ask. “Do you remember when I checked in?”
        
        “Three evenings ago, wasn't it?” Simmons asked. He pulled the guest register to him and flipped through the pages of duplicate copy, perforated sign-in cards. “Here it is. Thursday evening at 6:20.” Again, he looked at Della, certain she was the center of some trouble about to descend on him.
        
        Pete thought a moment, then forced a smile. “It seems I've had a bit of amnesia,” he said. “From a war wound. It happens now and again.”
        
        Simmons looked startled. His little mouth drew up in a tart bow, circled by the black line of his moustache. “I see.”
        
        “I was wondering if you might help me reconstruct those days I was here.”
        
        “I'm only on duty evenings,” Simmons said.
        
        “As best you can, then.”
        
        Simmons played with a black and gold pen that was chained to the top of the formica counter. “What do you want to know?”
        
        “Did I come here during the evening? To buy a paper or magazine or anything?”
        
        “Twice,” Simmons said, “A paper both times.”
        
        Pete frowned. He could not remember having read a paper. Considering how brilliant were his memories of the rest of those three days, that was an odd ommission.
        
        “Did we talk about anything?” he asked.
        
        “The weather,” Simmons said. “Pleasantries.” He blushed, an unpleasant change on the pallid, round face. He looked as if he were ready to burst. “You'll excuse me if I don't remember exactly what was said. So many strangers go in and out, and the talk is always the same.”
        
        He had nothing else to tell them. At last, Pete took out his checkbook and said, “How much do I owe?”
        
        Simmons looked startled. “You paid for three days, when you came in.”
        
        Pete looked in his book; he could not find a stub to verify what Simmons had told him.
        
        “No, you paid by cash,” Simmons said. “It was unusual. You insisted on paying me then. You said you might have to leave in a hurry and you didn't want to chance getting caught in a line at the desk if you had to depart during a rush hour.”
        
        Outside, on the concrete veranda before the office, Della breathed the golden, late afternoon air and said, “Well, he threw a little light on the situation, anyway.”
        
        “None at all,” Pete