George found it amusing, Martha’s attachment to old technologies. There was the grandfather clock in the living room with its big brass pendulum and the Latin inscription on its face—tempus fugit—or as Giuseppe the barber liked to say: Time, she fly. There was the old electric typewriter and pack of postage stamps at her work desk: neither rain nor sleet…etc. And then, of course, there was her telephone, an old-fashioned rotary dial phone with its pig-tail cord and dial that clicked and whirred as it went around. Martha had expressed no interest in wireless phones, and cellphones were beyond her ken. They belonged to the realm of magic. Too bad for her she hadn’t gotten a cellphone. She might not be in her present pickle, staring at the garden with her blank, unseeing eyes. George unwound the telephone cord from her neck and returned the receiver to its cradle. He mustn’t dawdle. Best to take what he’d come for and vanish before it was too late. As Giuseppe liked to say: Time, she fly.
