Read Out of Time 01 - Out of Time for Free Online Page A

lowering his voice. “But here it’s a little revealing.”
    She looked down at her shirt. It was small, but everything was covered. All the important stuff anyway. She looked up in time to see Simon avert his eyes.
    He cleared his throat and struggled to find his words. The skin of his neck reddened. Was he actually blushing? He cleared his throat again. “Your... chest is... displayed.”
    Elizabeth looked at the clothes the other women on the street were wearing and finally understood. A part of her hadn’t quite accepted that she wasn’t just the observer here, but also the observed. She was really here. A wolf whistle from a passing truck put the exclamation point on it. She was a bright, perceptive person, but had a huge blind spot when it came to men. She never noticed them noticing her, and the realization always made her uncomfortable. Very self-conscious now, she hunched her shoulders and crossed her arms over her chest.
    Simon sighed heavily and pulled his sweater over his head, leaving him wearing only a crisp white oxford shirt. He held the sweater out to her, but his eyes wouldn’t meet hers. “Put this on.”
    It was ridiculously large for her. The sleeves fell well past her hands and the hem rested barely above her knees. But it was a good fit in other ways, better ways. It smelled like Simon—clean with a hint of aftershave. The weight of the soft fabric was comforting, like the pressure of a hand on the small of her back. She let herself snuggle into it and then noticed Simon looking at her with a strange, far off look in his eyes. Whatever he’d been thinking, he pushed it away quickly and found a fascinating spot of gum on the sidewalk.
    Elizabeth pushed the long sleeves up to her elbows. “We should be...”
    Simon put his hands in his pockets and nodded. Slowly they fell into step together again and joined the busy flow of pedestrians.
    They started in mid-town and after a few inquiries headed south toward the lower class sections where pawn shops would most likely be found. Before too long, the neighborhood changed. The streets were a little dirtier, and the people a little harder. The Lower East Side was a haven for immigrants and the working class, all of them trying to find their piece of the American dream.
    “There we go,” Elizabeth said and pointed to a sign “Arbogast J. Smith - Pawnbroker”.
    As they stepped inside, she was struck by how every pawnshop was like the next—a sad mixture of lost hope and second-hand dreams. The owner stood behind the glass-cased counter and looked up sharply when the bell at the top of the door announced their arrival.
    He was a tall, thin man with dark eyes that seemed unnaturally large behind the thick lenses of his glasses. Elizabeth shuddered. He looked like the proverbial spider, and she felt like the unwitting fly.
    “Why don’t you see what you can get for the ring and I’ll try to find some clothes,” Elizabeth said. She tried to shake the feeling she was being sized up for something unpleasant and browsed the shop’s wares.
    His large bug eyes followed her as she looked at the merchandise—clothes, jewelry and the inevitable saxophone. Why was it every pawn shop seemed to have a tarnished sax hanging in one corner? A bit of someone’s soul dangling by a thin cord. A piece of someone’s heart taken in trade. She’d left a few chapters of her life behind in glass cases.
    She noticed Simon hadn’t started haggling and nodded her head toward the counter to prod him along. She thought about doing it herself. Simon was clearly out of his element. But could a woman in the 1920’s get the same price as a man? Hell, they couldn’t even in the next century. Some things were slow to change. She reminded herself to try to check her impulses. A headstrong woman in this time would be as welcome as a skunk at a lawn party, and they couldn’t afford to stick out at all. She spied a rack of second-hand dresses in the back and went to find