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On an unseasonably warm October day in 1951, Phil visited the new Western Auto store in North Conway and drove back home along Route 111 with a present for the whole family in the trunk: a Zenith television set, the Regent model with the porthole screen. He also bought rabbit ears, but with an antenna they might be able to get the Boston stations. He was thinking Jake would go out of his mind with happiness at the prospect of actually watching Range Rider instead of listening to it on the radio.

There was something else on his mind as well, potentially more important than the new TV. He’d had a conversation that morning with a man named Blaylock Atherton, who happened to be the Republican in charge of the New Hampshire state senate. A real mover and shaker was Senator Atherton, and it had been an interesting conversation indeed. Phil was thinking of the discussion he’d have with Sally Ann about that when he passed a bright yellow sign planted on a stick by the side of the road. The message, 2 MILES TO THE ANSWER MAN, brought back brilliant memories.

Can’t be him, not after all these years, Phil thought. But in his heart he knew it was.

Just past the Curry town line he passed another sign, this one in electric blue, announcing that the Answer Man was a mile ahead. Phil breasted the hill at the edge of town. Two hundred yards ahead he saw the red umbrella. This time the Answer Man had set up shop in a large clearing not far from the new elementary school. It was where the Curry Volunteer Fire Station would stand in a year or so.

Heart thumping, new TV and Blaylock Atherton forgotten, Phil pulled off the road and got out. His Chevrolet jalopy was long gone. He slammed the door of his new Buick and for a moment just stood there, amazed by what he saw. More like thunderstruck.

Phil had aged; the Answer Man hadn’t. He looked exactly the same as he had on that October day fourteen years ago. His thinning hair was no thinner now. His eyes were the same bright blue. White shirt, gray slacks, black shoes—all just as before. His long-fingered hands were folded on his table just as before. Only the signs flanking the one proclaiming him the Answer Man had changed. The one on the left read $50 PER 3 MINUTES. The one on the right read YOUR FIRST ANSWER FREE.

I guess even magic isn’t immune to inflation, Phil thought. Meanwhile, the Answer Man was looking at him with lively interest.

“Do I know you?” he asked, then chuckled. “Don’t answer that! You’re not the Answer Man, I am. Just let me think.” Like a creature in a fairy tale, he laid his finger to one side of his nose. “I’ve got it. You’re Just Phil. You wanted to know if your girl would marry you, although you knew she would, and if you’d come to live in this little village, although you knew that, too.”

“They were impotent questions,” Phil said.

“Yes, they were. They were indeed. Sit down, Just Phil. If, that is, you’d like to do some business. If not, you are of course free to go on your way. Freedom is what makes America great, or so they say.”

A bell rang loudly not far away. The doors of the new elementary school flew open. Yelling kids carrying book satchels and lunch boxes fled out the doors as if from an explosion. One of them was undoubtedly his son, although in the general scrum Phil couldn’t pick him out; there were lots of boys wearing Red Sox caps. Two school buses were ready to take in those who lived more than a mile away.

Phil sat down in the client’s chair. He started to ask if this strange roadside salesman was human or some sort of supernatural being, but he must have learned at least a few things between twenty-five and thirty-nine, because he shut his mouth before he could waste his free question. Of course the Answer Man wasn’t a human being. No man looked exactly the same after fourteen years, and no man could have known that he would survive close-range machine-gun fire on Eniwetok.

What he said instead was, “Your price seems to have gone up.”

“For certain people,” the Answer Man said.

“So you knew I was coming.”

The Answer Man smiled. “You are trying to get information by making statements. I’m hep to that trick.”

I’ll just bet you are, Phil thought. A real hep cat.

Children were walking past the site of the future fire station now, and although kids were curious by nature, the few who looked at the vacant lot looked away without interest.

“They don’t see us, do they?”

“Another question to which you know the answer, my friend. Of course they don’t. Reality has folds, and we’re currently in one of them. That’s your free question. If you want to ask others, you have to pay. And in case you were wondering, I don’t take checks.”

Feeling like a man in a dream, Phil took his wallet out of his hip pocket. In it were three twenties and a ten (there was also a C-note for emergencies, tucked in behind his driver’s license). He gave the ten and two of the twenties to the Answer Man, who made them disappear. He picked up his little bag—same bag—and took out the same oversized stopwatch. This time the numbers only went from 0 to 3, but there was the same ratcheting sound as he wound it up.

“I hope you’re ready, Just Phil.”

He thought he was. There weren’t any dilemmas this time, he was perfectly happy with the current course of his life, but he supposed men and women were always curious about the future.

“I’m ready. Let’s go.”

The Answer Man’s reply was just as it had been on that day in 1937. “So we begin.” He clicked the lever on the back of his big clock. It began to tick and the single hand started its journey from 3 to 2.

Phil thought of his conversation with Blaylock Atherton—not a proposal but a possibility. A trial balloon.

“If I’m asked, should I run—”

The Answer Man raised an admonitory finger. “Have you forgotten what I told you about that word? I am the Answer Man, not your agony aunt.”

Phil hadn’t forgotten, exactly; he had just gotten used to asking questions that didn’t advance matters. Impotent questions, in fact.

“All right, here’s my question. Will I run for the U.S. Senate?”