Part 2

"My basement!" Caswell was complaining bitterly, almost shouting. "I was going to rent it today, and somebody fills it up with dirt. Why, I ask you, _why_? Why would anybody want to fill my basement with dirt?"

He caught sight of Jack and Lorene standing to one side.

"You!" he cried. "You have anything to do with this?"

"Absolutely nothing," Jack assured him. "I thought there was a store here."

"Store!" snorted Caswell. "Dirt!"

Jack and Lorene got away and made their way back to the street.

"Was there really a store there, Jack?" she asked.

"We're really married, aren't we, honey? I mean yes, there was. I don't know what happened."

He looked at her, smiling, and the smile faded.

"Oh, oh," he said slowly. "I think I know now."

"What?"

"I know now who Edigo Adaman reminded me of. You!"

* * * * *

He didn't tell her the rest. He didn't tell her he was almost sure that, the way things would have been, Lorene and Ken would have been married and Edigo would have been their descendant.

But Edigo had changed all that when he sold Jack a drug that Jack used, to make sure that Ken wouldn't marry Lorene, but that he would instead. And since Ken and Lorene wouldn't be married now, Edigo would never be born, and would never have the idea of building a fifty-story building at that spot, starting it by digging a basement.

So that was what happened to the suit and Ken's car and the television set. Since the basement wasn't to be built there, they wouldn't be, so they weren't--they never had been.

The strange thing about it was that Jack remembered it all, and even stranger, he was still married to Lorene, and he wouldn't have been except for the drug. But then that had to be, because if he hadn't married her, she'd have married Ken--and then the basement would have been, and he'd have gotten the drug, and Ken wouldn't have married Lorene because Jack would have, and then there wouldn't have been any basement....

Jack sighed. He was happy that the circle stopped where it did.