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"Well, good morning," Mr Adelson said, as I sat bolt upright, disoriented in a strange bed with a strange blanket. "Coffee?"
He was leaning over a little Sterno stove, heating up a small tin pot. Morning sun streamed in through the grimy window.
"I wrapped your sandwich up from last night. It's there, on the dresser."
I stood up and saw that except for my shoes, I was still dressed. The sandwich
was salt beef and cheese, and the sourdough was stale, and it was the best thing
I'd ever eaten. Mr Adelson handed me a tin cup full of strong coffee, and though
I don't much like coffee, I found myself drinking it as fast as I could.
"Thank you, Mr Adelson," I said.
"Robert," he said, and sat down on the room's only chair. I perched on the bed's end. "Well, you seem to have had quite a day! Let's hear about it."
I told him as much as I could, fudging around some of the details — my Mama surely did know where I was, even if she wasn't very happy about it; and of course, I couldn't tell him that I'd met Nussbaum in 1975, so I just moved the locale to France, and caged around what message he'd asked me to deliver to Reddekop. It still made for a pretty exciting telling.
"So you want me to go to this lawyer's office with you? To look over the papers?
James, I'm just a sailor, I'm not qualified."
I'd prepared for this argument, on the long slog to the rooming house. "But I know something about this; they won't believe it, though, and will slip all kinds of dirty tricks in if they think that the only fellow who'll be looking at it is just a kid."