Free Entr'acte by Frank Juliano

would whisper to each other whenever they had to pass by Joyce’s bed.
    She had the nurses open her wallet and examine the items in it.
    “A video rental card, do you know what that is?” Joyce sat up on her elbows and glared, but the nurse just smiled placidly back at her.
    “How did I get the U.S. government to cooperate in this if it is just an hysterical fantasy?” Joyce challenged again. “Look at my money.”
    70
    ENTR’ACTE
    Several staff people went through her billfold, rubbing the paper money between their fingers and handling the coins. They were fascinated with what they found.
    “See! Now let me out of here,” Joyce said.
    “Counterfeiting is illegal,” the head nurse said stiffly. The others, taking their cue from her, began tsk-tsking behind her.
    “These aren’t even very good fakes. What is this material in this quarter, instead of silver?”
    Joyce lowered herself back onto the bed with a resigned sigh.
    Out of the corner of her eye she noticed one of the aides pocketing the small tube of hypoallergenic makeup Joyce kept in the change purse.
    71

Chapter 13
    The musician who brought her to the hospital came to visit, with a box under his arm. “I’m Bart McCauley,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember me…”
    “She remembers you, it’s the past she’s having trouble with,”
    one nurse snapped.
    Joyce smiled weakly at him and said, “What’s in the box?”
    “I never visited anybody in a hospital before. I figured candy and flowers are boring, so I got you some magazines and this,”
    he said,” opening a backgammon set with a flourish. “Do you play?”
    Joyce shook her head no.
    “Neither do I.” Bart looked at the wooden disks and the board forlornly. “Do you know how to set them up?”
    Joyce shook her head no again, an amused smile playing on her lips. “Aren’t there instructions?”
    This time Bart looked perplexed. “It has something to do with having the two colors clash, and if you land on a bar occupied by the other person’s color, the piece that had been there goes all the way back to the beginning.”
    They set the board up so that each player started on the 72
    ENTR’ACTE
    quadrant of the board farthest from the one he’d have to reach to move his pieces safely off.
    The doctor came by then, glanced at the board and said,
    “that’s not right.” He moved the disks around, and then turned his attention to Joyce, feeling her scalp for bumps.
    “Doctor, if I can tell you something that will happen in the future, wouldn’t that prove that somehow I’ve,” Joyce paused hesitantly and then went on quickly, “gone back in time?”
    Bart shifted uneasily in his chair and the doctor sat down on the bed, motioning for the nurse. Joyce had the sick feeling that the staff was about to make sport of her again.
    “Joyce is going to predict the future for us,” the doctor said.
    “Go ahead, dear.”
    “Okay,” she said. “On September 1, German troops are going to invade Poland, touching off World War II.”
    “My,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “World War II.” Then he smiled and stood up. “I guess we’ll have to talk again in September.”
    “Wait!” Joyce commanded. “There will be a big World’s Fair this year, somewhere in New York.”
    “Very good, Joyce,” the doctor said condescendingly, patting her on the head as he left. “Get some rest now.”
    “What was wrong with that?” Joyce asked Bart.
    “It opened last month, in Flushing Meadows. Did you read about it in the papers?” he asked tentatively.
    “No, in history class,” she shot back, but when she saw the sad way Bart was looking at her, she softened.
    “I thought I was onto something there,” she said ruefully.
    “Too bad I couldn’t come up with something that’s going to happen tomorrow. Have Hitler and the British prime minister made their deal on Czechoslovakia yet?”
    “Last year,”’ Bart said sadly.
    73
    FRANK JULIANO
    “The Hindenburg