God, what a mess.
I'm sick.
That damned castor oil in the carburetor. I'll be in the W. C. until oh-six-hundred....
No, the air wasn't one of castor oil but the pleasant smell of aged paper and printer's ink.
I'd been daydreaming again. I shouldn't forget things were getting different lately. It was becoming dangerous.
I gathered up an armload of air-war magazines at random.
Leaning across the table, I noticed the curtain in back for the first time. It was a beaded curtain of many different colors. Theda Bara might have worn it for a skirt. Behind the curtain was a television set. It was a comforting anti-anachronism here.
The six- or eight-inch picture was on a very flat tube, a more pronounced Predicta. The size and the flatness didn't seem to go together. Then I saw that the top part of the set was a mirror reflecting an image from the roof of the cabinet where the actual picture tube lay flat.
There was an old movie on the channel. An old, old movie. Lon Chaney, Sr., in a western as a badman. He was protecting a doll-faced blonde from the rest of the gang, standing them off from a grove of rocks. The flickering action caught my unblinking eyes.