Work Text:
Thursday, October 15
2009
King Street
11:00 am
It wasn’t even lunch yet, and Erica already wanted to just call it quits for the day.
This sex book was driving her crazy. She’d turned down Julianne’s offer of writing it herself, but that still meant that Erica had to find someone else to write it. And in between Julianne and Brent’s weird passive aggressiveness all morning, the office had been chillier than the Arctic in the dead of winter.
So when her coffee break had rolled around, she’d taken the opportunity to flee the building for a bit, and had headed over to Goblins to get herself a drink. Kai had been off shift, which was disappointing, but the barista working behind the counter had still made her a fabulous latté. The first few sips of it had made her forget all about the tension of this morning.
At least the coffee break was going well. She stepped outside the shop into the cool October weather to enjoy the sights of King Street on her way back to work. She paused next to a crosswalk to wait for the light to change and enjoy more of her drink.
She was so relaxed that she paid little attention to the flow of traffic. A taxi zoomed down the street, weaving in and out of traffic to get to its destination faster. As the traffic light in front of it flipped from green to orange, the taxi surged forward to make it across the intersection in time and swerved into the outside lane to make it around a slowing car. It veered dangerously close to the curb, and Erica jumped back to avoid being hit. Her sudden move knocked off the lid of her drink, spilling the warm drink all over her. Erica cried out in shock as the drink splashed her open jacket and soaked through her shirt. She threw the now empty cup in a nearby garbage can, and tried to shake it off. Of all the days to wear a new top…
She looked around for a place to get cleaned up. There was one of the many Starbucks in the area just across the street, so as soon as the light changed, she dashed across the crosswalk. She weaved her way around the crowd waiting in line for coffee, and pushed open the door to the washroom—
--only to find herself in a very familiar looking office. She let out a sigh of relief and dropped her purse onto the chair. “Do you have a towel?” she asked, barely looking up to see Dr Tom. He handed her a fluffy towel from out of one of his cupboards, and she started wiping furiously at her shirt.
“Rough morning?” he asked.
“Ugh, you’d better believe it,” she said. “This coffee’s just the highlight of a stressful morning. I don’t think I can get this stain out, and I don’t have anything here to change into.” She finally looked up at him. “Dr Tom, what am I going to do?”
“ ‘We humans are full of unpredictable emotions that logic alone cannot solve.’ Captain James T. Kirk”, he said, making his way around to his side of the desk. “Have a seat.”
Erica set the towel down on one of the free tables in his room and sat down in the patient chair. “The usual stuff?”
Dr Tom nodded and pulled out her list. He looked over it a few second before making an affirmative noise and setting it down on the table, facing her. “So,” he said, sliding the notepad towards Erica, “tell me about ‘The Octopus’.”
Erica looked at her own writing for a couple seconds before it clicked. “Oh, right, that,” she said. She let out a deep breath.
“It was spring ninety-three, and I was seventeen and just a couple months away from graduating high school. The Maple Leafs were in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Toronto was going hockey crazy so it was kinda hard to avoid. Everyone thought that the Leafs had a pretty good chance of of getting the Cup that year. They didn’t end up being the big winners, but they did get pretty far and it sure seemed like they might be at the time.
“Zach entered some kind of radio contest for tickets to a playoff game here in town, and surprisingly, he actually won a pair. He invited me to go with him and I said yes, but he came down with this nasty case of stomach flu from some bad Dairy Queen hamburger the day before, so he had to stay home and deal with it. He was really disappointed, but he still gave me the tickets and I took Jenny, because she was free that night. I’m not really much of a hockey fan, but with all the energy in the place it was still kind of exciting, you know?”
Dr Tom nodded. “I remember that series. The Leafs were good back then.”
Erica shrugged. “I guess, I ‘m not big on sports. Anyway, the guy sitting next to me wasn’t a Leafs fan. He really liked the Detroit Red Wings, the team the Leafs were playing, so he was all decked out in their team colours. And I guess Detroit has this weird tradition where you throw an octopus on the rink ice in playoff games to wish them good luck.”
“An octopus?” Dr Tom asked.
“I have no idea why,” Erica said, “but he somehow smuggled one into the arena and he tried to throw it on the ice after the Red Wings scored. But he had terrible aim, and I guess he didn’t prepare it right, so it didn’t hit the ice. It hit these big beefy guys four rows below us. And they were drunk and angry and covered in octopus, so they started this brawl in the stands. Security had to come and usher out most of the people in the section to stop the fighting. Somebody accidentally hit me in the face during the fight, so I had this big purple bruise right there on my face for two weeks afterwards that I had to keep explaining to people. I had to slather loads of cover up on top it so that it wouldn’t show up in my grad photos, and it still didn’t completely cover it. It was horrible.”
Dr Tom looked at her thoughtfully. “And if you could go back to that night, what would you change?”
“Well, I’d stop him,” Erica said. “I’d stop him before he could throw that thing and start the whole fight. If I could just make sure that he never chucked it, then the night would go perfectly and we could just enjoy the game, and I wouldn’t have photos of my bruise stuck forever on the walls of my high school.”
“Sounds fair enough,” Dr Tom said. He took the list back to his side of the table and smiled at Erica. “Welcome to hockey night in Canada.”
There was a sudden whooshing feeling, as the world around her shifted in the blink of an eye. There was barely enough time to take in the sight of the hockey arena before the crowd screamed and sirens went off.
Friday, April 23
1993
Maple Leaf Gardens arena
9:00 pm
The people around her leapt to their feet, cheering, and loud rock music blared over the loudspeakers. Erica looked around in confusion for a second before she realized the cause: the home team must have just scored. Down on the ice, hockey players wearing blue and white jerseys hugged each other and gave high fives to the other players still on the bench. All the seats in the arena were packed full of people, many of them wearing matching blue jerseys or holding signs with supportive slogans. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and she couldn’t help being swept along by it.
The announcer’s voice boomed across the stadium. “Toronto’s second goal of the night, scored by #14, Dave Andreychuk!” The crowd roared again, and airhorns joined in the general noise.
Someone elbowed Erica in the ribs, and she turned to see Jenny to her right. “Two goals in a row! Finally something exciting happens,” Jenny said. “I was worried that it would be just guys with sticks skating around in circles all night.”
The cheering subsided and the crowd started to sit back down as the game resumed on the ice far below. The crowd followed all of the players’ moves with eagerness, oohing and aahing every time someone got close to the net. “You didn’t have to come with me tonight if you didn’t want to,” Erica pointed out.
Jenny shrugged. “I didn’t want to leave you stuck here all by yourself while Zach is busy at home with his porcelain throne. Hey, you know what you get stomach flu from? Feces.”
“Jenny, that’s disgusting!”
“But it’s true, Erica! I looked it up in the library’s encyclopedia during English class. I wouldn’t get too close to Zach for a while, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Erica said. Not that she had any desire to get too close to Zach at all, with or without stomach flu.
“ ‘Sides,” Jenny continued, “everyone’s crazy enough about the hockey playoffs right now, I might as well see what all the fuss is about. And some of the players are actually pretty hot.” Her gaze shifted past Erica and she lowered her voice. “Not that I could say the same about their fans.”
Erica turned her head to follow Jenny’s gaze. Their row was full of high school aged teenagers – presumably other winners of the same radio contest as Zach – but the boy next to her stuck out like a sore thumb. His loose, bright red Detroit Red Wings jersey stood out amidst the sea of Maple Leafs blue, and he smelled as though he’d bathed in a bucket of bad cologne.
Erica’s eyes widened. This was the guy. This was the one who’d thrown the octopus that had started the whole mess. But where was he keeping it? He didn’t seem to have any bag big enough to hide an octopus in, and arena security would have searched his smaller bag when he came in. So how would you sneak a dead, gooey, tentacled sea creature into the game? Without knowing where it was, Erica had no way to get it away from him. She’d just have to wait until he pulled it out from who-knows-where.
She had to focus on something else for now.
She tried to pay attention to the game going on down on the ice. The gameplay was faster than most of what she’d caught when Ethan watched Hockey Night in Canada some weekends. Still, she wasn’t the biggest hockey fan, and although the two teams were taking a lot of shots on goal and slamming each other into the boards surrounding the ice with enough force that she could hear it up in the stands, it still kind of looked like guys skating back and forth over the ice while chasing a tiny black dot.
Jenny appeared to be much more interested in the crowd than the hockey game, as she kept switching her attention from the ice to the crowds. Erica followed the sightline of the small binoculars Jenny had brought, and saw a well-built fan two sections over who had painted his face blue and white, and was wearing a tight Leafs t-shirt. Jenny fumbled in her bag a bit to pull out her camera, and snapped a couple pictures of the stands.
“Looks like you’re enjoying yourself, “Erica said.
“Oh, totally,” Jenny said. She dropped the camera back into her bag and shoved the bag back under her plastic folding seat. “I might have to come here more often. Think they’ll have a big halftime show tonight like at the Superbowl or Grey Cup, or is that just for the finals?”
Erica laughed. “I’m pretty sure that’s just for football. It’s pretty hard to have a half time when hockey has three periods. And it’d be way too cold to force people to have to sing and dance way down there on the ice.”
“Tell that to the guy who sang the national anthems at the start of the game. His voice wobbled so much, you’d think he was barely keeping his balance on the ice. I so could have skipped that part of the evening.”
“I guess it’s just tradition,” Erica said.
“Pfft, tradition,” said Jenny. “That’s just what people say when they don’t want to bother changing stuff.”
A food vendor appeared at the entranceway to the seats, and started walking up the stairs in the middle of Erica’s section, calling out “Popcorn! Hotdogs! Beer! Get your popcorn, hotdogs and beer!”
A few people stopped him to buy food, so he made his way slowly up the stands, when he was close enough for Erica to see his face, her eyes widened and she abruptly stood up and started heading for the aisle.
“Hey, what gives?” asked Jenny.
“I … just realized I’m really hungry. I’ll be right back,” Erica said.
“Ooh, good idea. Get me some popcorn!” said Jenny. Erica pushed past the other couple of people sitting at the end of the row and rushed down the stairs to the vendor.
“Well, you’re too young for me to sell you beer, so would you like the hotdog or popcorn, miss?” he asked.
“Dr Tom, I am so glad to see you. And I guess I’ll take a couple of popcorns.”
Dr Tom set the tray he was carrying down on top of his knee, and waited for Erica to fumble with her money. “So, how goes stopping the fight?”
“I don’t know,” she said. Had she really kept pictures of the New Kids on the Block in her wallet in high school? What a loser she’d been back then. “I mean, that’s the guy up there sitting next to me, and I *know* he’s got the squid on him, but I don’t know how to find it to stop it. I feel like I’m going to be waiting here forever.”
“The game only lasts a couple hours. It probably won’t take forever,” Dr Tom said, taking the twenty dollar bill she offered him and counting out the correct change. He handed her back a five dollar bill and some coins, along with a pair of popcorn buckets and a handful of napkins.
“Yeah, well, big help that is right now.” She dumped the coins in her wallet and stuck it back in her pocket. “I wish I could remember when he did it so I could stop being so on edge just waiting for it to come. It has to be after a goal, but I don’t know when.”
“ ‘Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.’ Paul Coelho.” He gave Erica one of his infuriatingly cryptic smiles, and picked the food tray back up. “Enjoy your snacks, miss!” he said loudly. “Popcorn! Hotdogs! Beer! Get your popcorn, hotdogs, and beer!”
Erica grabbed both of the popcorn buckets carefully, and pushed her way back to her seat. Jenny took one of them, and popped a handful of popcorn kernels in her mouth.
“Oh, I love this stuff. Thank you so much, Erica.”
Erica shoved her wallet back in the pocket of her coat hanging off the back of her chair, and tried some of her own popcorn. It was a little cold, but she had to admit that it tasted great.
“You’re welcome. But when we get drinks to deal with all the saltiness, you’re buying.”
Jenny tipped her hand to her forehead in a mock salute. “Deal.”
The rest of the period passed fairly uneventfully. The crowd in the stands were riveted by the action down on the ice, and oohed and aahed to every hit or miss or penalty award. Finally the buzzer went, signifying the end of the period. Down on the ice, the players headed back into the locker rooms, and the announcers came out to run a contest to keep the crowd occupied. People in the section all around them started standing up and stretching, and heading for the hallway with the washrooms and concession stands.
Jenny grabbed her bag from under her seat and stood up to stretch. “I’m going to hit the bathroom and get a drink. You want anything while I’m down there?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah. Get me a Coke, please,” Erica said.
“Sure thing,” Jenny said. She pushed past the other people in the row and headed down the stairs.
The boy next to them stayed seated, a pulled a bottle of pop out of his small bag and took a swig. Erica relaxed a little; he could be pretty sure that there’d be no squid throwing during the intermission. She took the opportunity to just relax and take in the atmosphere. After the day she’d been having back in the present, it was kind of nice to just enjoy a sports game, even if it wasn’t usually her kind of thing. She wondered how long Dr Tom would let her stay here and just watch the action, or if he’d send her straight back to her own time right after she stopped the guy next to her.
Jenny soon reappeared, carrying a couple drinks and a huge hotdog. She handed one of the bottles to Erica, and slung her bag over the top of her chair.
“You would not believe just how much they’re charging for food down there. It’s ridiculous,” she said.
“I just they figure they have a captive audience, so they can charge whatever they want,” said Erica.
“I should have snuck food in. Remind me to do that next time,” Jenny said.
There was a loud buzz and a sudden blast of loud rock music to announce the beginning of the second period. The crowd cheered as both teams came back out on the ice and got ready to face off again. Erica finished off her popcorn as the game re-started and the hockey players began chasing the same black dot while shoving each other into the boards. The boy next to her put his drink away and re-focused all his attention on the ice.
Erica let her eyes wander the stands to watch as the crowd around her reacted to every pass and shot the players did. She idly wondered what this whole experience would have been like if Zach had skipped the lunch at Dairy Queen, and he had ended up being here with her, instead of Jenny. She wasn’t sure she could have taken both Zach and a dead octopus at the same time.
Suddenly, the sirens went off again and a much weaker cheer erupted across the stands. Erica looked up at the scoreboard in horror to confirm her fear: the Detroit Red Wings had just scored.
This was it.
The boy in red sitting next to her jumped to his feet and shoved his hands under his loose jersey. There was a crinkling of plastic, and he pulled out a thick plastic grocery bag. He quickly ripped open the top of the bag and pulled out a gooey, foul-smelling, slightly squished, very dead octopus. Its tentacles hung limply from below its bulbous head with its huge, dead eyes. The smell from it hit her like a wave. She could guess now why he’d worn so much cologne.
He picked up the animal and prepared to throw it.
“Oh no you don’t”, said Erica. She launched herself at him, knocking him off balance and into the person sitting on the other side. The octopus got caught between her and the boy, and with a sickening noise, the skin punctured, spilling horrible octopus goo all over her.
Jenny gasped. The other fans in the section turned to focus on Erica and the boy, ignoring the announcer’s booming voice (“Detroit’s first goal of the night, scored by #91, Sergei Fedorov”) and the excitement on the ice below. The person on the other side of the boy pushed them off with an angry shove. Erica picked herself up, and the remains of the octopus carcass slid off her onto the concrete below her feet. Her shirt was utterly ruined, and she doubted that she would ever get the smell out of anything in this outfit, but at least no one was throwing punches yet.
Jenny peered over Erica’s shoulder and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Ewww, is that a dead squid? And were you seriously keeping that under your shirt?”
The Detroit fan grabbed Erica hard by the shoulder and glared at her. “What is your problem?” he spat out at her.
“You’re not allowed to throw stuff on the ice,” Erica said weakly. “Especially stuff with tentacles.”
He raised his free hand and slapped her hard across the face. Jenny gasped. Erica stared at him in shock. She could feel her cheek stinging and tears starting to well up in her eyes. She pushed the attacker’s hand off her shoulder as the hockey fan they had fallen on top of grabbed the boy. “Security!” he yelled, pinning the boy’s arms down. “Doing the Legend of the Octopus is one thing, but hitting a girl? That’s really low.”
A pair of burly arena security officers appeared at the bottom of the stands and were pointed up to Erica’s row by the drunk fans who had started the fight the last time she’d lived through this. The officers politely but firmly pushed their way in.
“Is there a problem?” the closer one asked.
“This guy snuck in an octopus,” Erica said, “and hit me when I tried to stop him from throwing it.”
The officers focused all their attention on the boy in the Detroit jersey and the dead cephalopod at his feet. He shrank back a little under their glares as if just realizing what he’d done. “I think you need to come with us, sir,” the closer security officer said. The other fan let go of the boy, who followed the security officer out of the row and down the stairs with his shoulders slumped and his head downcast. His partner gingerly picked up the dead, still oozing octopus.
“Are you all right, miss?” the remaining security officer asked, putting the octopus back in the remains of the plastic bag. “We’re going to need you to come down to the security office to file a report. But take your time. You might want to get cleaned up first.”
“Thanks,” she said. She gave him a weak smile.
The security officer gave her an encouraging smile back, and then followed his partner down the concrete stairs.
Jenny watched him leave and then slowly turned back to Erica. “What was all that about?”
Erica rubbed her cheek. It was sore, but nothing hurt like she remembered from the first time around. Leftover goo from the octopus left a splotch on her cheek. “I just… I just saw him pull something out from under his jersey and though that it might be dangerous.”
Jenny gave her a thumbs up. “You’ve got guts, Erica.” The edge of her mouth creeped up into a smirk. “And I mean that in both the figurative and literal senses.”
Erica looked down at her ruined shirt. “I guess I do, eh?”
“Oh, yeah.” She reached over to wipe the blob off Erica’s cheek. “And you’ll probably end up smelling like them for weeks.”
“How bad is it?” Erica asked.
Jenny gave her an appraising look as she wiped her hand off on one of the popcorn napkins. “Your cheek is all red, and I can see where he hit you, but I don’t think it’ll bruise. Good thing too, because we have grad photos in a week, and you know they’re going to make one of those grade collages to stick on the school walls forever and ever.”
Erica let out a small sigh of relief. No matter what else had happened, at least she’d managed to change her regret. Not in the way she’d expected, but well enough.
“Look,” Jenny said, interrupting her thoughts, “why don’t you go clean up? I can keep an eye on your stuff here, and I’m pretty sure the guys down there will still be playing hockey when you get back.”
Erica smiled at her. “You’re the best, Jenny.”
Jenny waved her off. “Go on, you.”
Erica pushed her way past the other fans in the row as delicately as she could, and only got a few grumbles about her blocking the view of the gameplay. It was hard going down the steep concrete stairs with the goop covering the bottom of her shoes, and she nearly slipped a couple times. It wasn’t until she turned the corner to the second set of stairs leading to the hallway below that she finally slipped on it. She lost her balance and fell forward, bouncing painfully of a couple of concrete steps before landing on a man just exciting one of the premium boxes.
He pushed her off, and she fell to a heap at the bottom of the stairs. “Watch it!” he said, turning to glare at her.
“I am so sorry,” Erica said, pushing herself clumsily up to her feet. “I slipped and I didn’t mean to—”
Her breath caught as she recognized the person she was talking to. “Dr Tom?”
The man stopped fuming long enough to eye her up. “Am I supposed to know you?”
The realization set in. This wasn’t Dr Tom. This was the Tom Wexler from 1993. This was the same person she’d met at that Coyote Ugly bar long before he’d become her doctor. Of course he wouldn’t recognize her.
“Sorry,” she said. “I thought you were someone else I know. And I’m really sorry about landing on you. Believe me, it was totally an accident.”
He looked her over, and took in her gooey clothes and red-marked face. “What happened to you?”
“I got between a hockey fan and his octopus,” she said. “It didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.”
Tom raised an eyebrow at her description. “You going to be okay?” he asked, concern starting to creep into his voice.
“Yeah, sure,” Erica said. “I just need to get cleaned up.”
The two of them stood there awkwardly for a moment before Tom let out a sigh. “Do you have a towel or anything to dry off with? Or any money to buy one?”
“I have a five left, but I’m pretty sure I left it up in the stands, somewhere in the mess of tentacles,” Erica admitted.
Tom motioned to her. “Follow me,” he said. He led her down the hallway, past the concession and the washrooms. She tried hard to keep her balance and ignore the squishing noises from her shoes. Fans waiting in line to buy snacks at the concession stared openly at her, and Erica silently wished that she could become invisible. Tom stopped in front of the store selling all kinds of Maple Leaf merchandise, that was empty except for a bored clerk flipping through an issue of People magazine and a pair of fan poking through the hockey videotapes. He pointed at a sale rack near the back of the shop labelled “T-shirts, $10”, full of hockey shirts in all different sizes and pictures, all of which had red sale stickers on the tags.
“Pick one out and I’ll buy it for you,” he said. “You’re never going to get all that muck off yourself.”
“Uh, thanks,” Erica said. She walked over to grab a Maple Leaf shirt off the end that looked like it wouldn’t be too big on her. “But why are you doing this?”
Tom didn’t answer right away. His gaze wandered to stare off into space somewhere near her shoulder. “I have a daughter about your age. Probably a little older. If some guy messed her up, I’d hope someone would help her out.”
Erica’s mind flashed back to the one glimpse Dr Tom had given her of his daughter, as an angry girl dressed in grunge fashions arguing with him in downtown Toronto. She wondered again what had happened to the girl.
“Is she here with you tonight?” Erica asked, hopeful of maybe getting a chance to see the other girl.
Tom shook his head. “Nah, she’s at home with my wife Marjory right now. My company owns a box here, and sometimes corporate gives out tickets. Are you here with your parents?”
“Oh, uh, no. Radio contest,” Erica said. “My boyfriend won a pair of tickets in a phone-in contest by making more noise than the other guy. He’s good at being really loud.”
Tom let out a snort. “Lucky you, I guess.”
He took the sale t-shirt from Erica and handed it over to the clerk will a bill from his pocket. The bored clerk took his twenty, counted out the change, and then went back to her magazine almost immediately.
Tom handed the bag over to Erica while pocketing the change. “Here,” he said. “It’s a present.”
“Thank you,” said Erica. “I don’t know how to thank you properly for this. If there’s anything I can do—”
Tom waved her off. “Really, don’t mention it. Just try to stay away from any more octopi, okay?”
“I will,” Erica said.
“And now,” Tom said, “I’m going to visit the washroom like I was trying to, and get back to watching the game. I’d recommend you do the same.”
“Yessir. I hope you enjoy your box.”
“As long as there’s booze, I’ll be happy.” Tom left her at the edge of the store, and headed back down the arena hallway towards the concessions.
Erica watched him go until he disappeared around the curve of the stadium. She clutched the plastic bag he had given her to her chest, until a squishing noise reminded her off all the goo. She made a beeline for the nearest washroom, which was thankfully mostly empty as the game was still going, and locked herself in a bathroom stall. She peeled off her original gooey shirt and shoved it into the plastic bag. She shimmed into the new t-shirt, and discovered that it fit well enough. A little too big, perhaps, and clearly designed for a guy, but not too terrible. She let herself out, and stopped by one of the bathroom mirrors to clean the rest of it off her jeans and shoes before heading back to the stands.
It was a long climb back up the concrete steps, and this time she waited for the referee to blow his whistle before pushing past the rest of the row of fans. Jenny waved at her from their seats. It looked as though Jenny had done her best to clean up the mess while Erica was gone, and their popcorn napkins sat in an icky pile on the floor inside Erica’s empty popcorn bucket. The seat next to them was still empty, and Erica decided to go find the security offices at the next intermission.
“Hey, you’re back! Nice shirt. Now everyone’ll know just how much you love the Leafs” Jenny said, standing up to make room for Erica to go by.
“Thanks,” said Erica. She plopped back down in her seat. “And it’s not like there was a lot of choice in designs. Did you want me to try wearing a Montreal Canadiens shirt in a crowd of hyped-up Toronto Maple Leafs fans?”
“Please, even I know that’d be suicide,” said Jenny. She looked Erica over with a semi-serious look. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Erica said. “After all, it’s just a game.”
The countdown clock on the scoreboard hanging over the centre of the ice started counting down the final minute of the period. Toronto players made a sudden break for the Detroit end of the rink. They passed it back and forth between them, and despite some of them getting knocked over, the rest kept going. With 15 seconds left, one player got close enough to the net to almost knock it off its position. Erica joined the crowd and cheered loudly as he took the shot—
Thursday, October 15
2009
Starbucks, King Street
11:30 am
-- and found herself back in the hallway outside the bathroom in Starbucks. A couple customers stopped their pouring cream in their coffees to stare at her, their jaws hanging open. Erica gave them a nervous smile, and rushed out of the shop.
Her shirt was still ruined from the spilt coffee, but after being hit by an octopus, it didn’t seem nearly as bad. She bought a cheap blouse from the neighbouring shop, and headed back into the Starbucks washroom to clean up the mess and switch shirts. Her jacket still had a few stains on it, but at least she looked presentable again.
As she bought herself a new latté from the clerk at Starbucks and headed back to work, she thought about her latest time travel experience. Did Dr Tom know that he was going to be at the same games? Would he remember their encounter? She made a mental note to ask him the next time they met.