Changing the Past Read Online Free PDF Page A

guess I could have been recalled, but for some reason that never happened, and I didn’t regret it, for by that time the moment had passed and I was in college.”
    â€œBut,” derisively asked the little man, “if you had it to do all over again, would you marry a woman who would cuckold you almost immediately after the ceremony? And would you want once again to be the father of a homosexual?”
    For an instant Kellog lowered his head. Then he raised it and said calmly, “That was Hunsicker.”
    â€œVery good!” The little man spun around in the swivel chair and plucked a piece of paper from one of the cubbyholes of the rolltop desk. He scribbled on it with a pencil stub he found in the middle drawer. He turned back to Kellog.
    â€œWhat kind of job do you have?”
    â€œI inherited quite a bit of money from my father, who took what Grandpa left him and went on with it, not only expanding the laundry-and-cleaning business but also going in a big way into city real estate. Maybe you know the Kellog building? The firm for which Hunsicker worked occupied just one floor of it.”
    The little man was nodding eagerly as he took more notes. “Splendid, you’re getting the idea now. A word of advice: if you change one thing, you’ve altered a lot, usually more than you might think. It’s a chain reaction. If you have different children, then you’ve necessarily had a different wife.”
    Suddenly, Hunsicker had returned. “Look, I have the finest wife in the world. There’s an explanation: he was an old boyfriend, down on his luck. Martha’s the most compassionate person in the world. She simply couldn’t reject him when he was in that situation. I know, it might sound implausible, but that’s really the way she is. It wasn’t easy for me to experience, I’ll admit.” He sighed before he might have to sob. How terrible that he should have to think of this matter again, after all those years. “As to my son, it’s true that I was devastated when I first learned of it, which to his credit was from him, face-to-face. But that was long ago, more than a decade. He’s a marvelous fellow. You know, he was a first-rate athlete in college. He might have realized my old dream to play professional ball. He had offers. His E.R.A. was one point eight. He batted three eighty-four in his senior year.”
    â€œNevertheless, you’d never want to go through all that again,” said the little man.
    â€œPoor Hunsicker,” said Kellog. “He had his limitations. I am myself separated from my third childless wife. It got into the tabloids when Mimi took a shot at me on the penthouse terrace. She came back from Barbados a day early and caught me in the sack with her best friend—female, I should add.”
    â€œIt looks like you’re on your way,” the little man said, folding the piece of paper. He found a cubbyhole into which roughly to insert it. He rose. “If things are going well, there’ll be no need to report in. But if you wish to make more changes of the past, come around and see me. But remember the office hours. I don’t have a home phone.”
    Hunsicker would have wondered whether this odd person even had a home, but Kellog was too self-concerned for that. He was at the moment trying to recall his own address, which obviously would be in one of the better parts of town—but before it came to him, he reflected that if he was estranged from his current wife, he surely lived somewhere else at the moment, perhaps at a posh hotel.
    When he reached the sidewalk, he remembered: of course, he had a suite at the Rudolf. The heavy rain had stopped now, but the air was still saturated and water stood in the gutters. It was a long walk to the hotel. En route there he might well get splashed by the frenzied cars of the rush hour that was just getting its earliest start. He walked towards the corner to