things we know the Nailes did—and we don’t know much of that—and the rest of the time sit around afraid to leave the house or whatever because we might screw up the future?”
“No, we just try to behave rationally,” Jack said, “and we hope for the best.”
“We do what this family has always done,” Ellen declared. “We fly by the seat of our pants. And at least you and your father will still be able to wear pants,” she added.
CHAPTER
THREE
By the time they reached the hotel outside Bakersfield, California, near the site where principal photography on Angel Street would begin the next day, they had driven over two thousand miles, carried the attaché case with the diamonds and their modest supply of gold in and out of seven motels and nearly twenty restaurants, taught Lizzie how to drive quite well and eliminated a little over nine pages from the screenplay. Regardless of whether or not those pages stayed out of the script, their obligation to the production company was officially fulfilled.
Jack Naile had always considered himself somewhat anal retentive (convincing himself that attention to detail was prudent thoroughness, therefore a virtue rather than a psychological quirk). Consequently, he felt perfectly justified getting up a few times each evening, going to the window of whatever hostelry happened to be their abode of the moment and checking that the Suburban was as it should be.
The contents of the Suburban were vital to their success in the past. Certainly, it would be possible to survive without these items, but impossible to maintain any semblance of a normal late twentieth century lifestyle.
“Come to bed, Jack. The Suburban’s just fine.”
“Coming, kiddo.”
“What’s bugging you, Jack?”
“I’m just hoping that we didn’t forget something. And I don’t mean movies on videotape. It’s like that kit we thought of that we can install so we can run the Suburban on grain alcohol.”
“That was a good idea, seeing as we didn’t have enough money or time to get a diesel engine put in.”
“Yeah. With the right filter, we could have run the car off the equivalent of home heating oil.”
From the semidarkness of the bed, Ellen said reassuringly, “There will obviously be some things that we forgot or couldn’t anticipate needing, Jack. That’s just the way that life is.”
“What do you think the kids are talking about?” They were in the next room, an unlocked adjoining door connecting to it.
“David’s probably sleeping. If he doesn’t get his eight hours, he’s a grouch. Liz is probably watching a talk show or a movie and keeping the sound low so she won’t awaken David.”
Jack Naile nodded, glanced once more at the Suburban and then walked back to the bed. The attaché case with their stash of gold and diamonds was beside the bed, between it and the nightstand. In front of the nightstand, abutting the leading edge of the attaché case was an aircraft aluminum case, larger and heavier. Inside it were all but one of the personal sidearms he had brought for their anticipated travel into the objective past.
All but one. The long-barreled Colt Single Action Army, five chambers loaded, rested on the nightstand.
Jack got into bed, his right arm curling around Ellen’s bare shoulders. “Wanna make love? Might be our last chance in this century.”
“What a come-on line, Jack! You ought to save that one for a book!”
“Well, it might be.”
Ellen rolled into his arms and brushed her lips against his. “But just think how romantic it will be making love in the past, before we were even born. Do you want the little guy to be all tired out? Don’t you want to save up until—”
“He’s getting bigger by the second. He won’t get tired out, and I don’t need to save up. I make more all the time. Even when I’m sleeping, I’m always working, making more just for us. I’ll get pimples. You wouldn’t want me to show up in the past with a zit or something. Have you considered that? I think not” Jack Naile’s left hand cradled his wife’s face and he kissed her hard on the mouth. The zit thing almost always worked . . . .
The movie set looked just like something out of a movie, with several cameras—one of them on what looked like railroad tracks—and lights and canvas-backed folding chairs with names or titles stenciled on them and bunches of people. Half of them just milled around and seemed to be doing absolutely nothing, while the other half walked or occasionally