With Leora, the only thing he ever needed to “work out” were the solutions to the puzzles she constantly threw at him. Once, on the anniversary of the day they had met, he had to go to a conference in California, promising to take her out to celebrate when he returned. When he arrived at his hotel room that night, he found a slide projector propped up on a chair in the middle of the room, its cord attached to an outlet by the darkened window and pointing at a large segment of bare white wall. He called the front desk and told them someone had left something behind in Room 413.

“Left something behind?” the man at the front desk asked, his accent vaguely European.

Jake sat on the bed, staring at the slide projector, which was squatting on the chair and aiming at the wall like a cannon, ready to blow it up. He noticed that it was loaded. “Yes, a slide projector. There are slides left in it too. Someone should come and pick it up.” Jake swallowed. “Or I can bring it down myself, if that’s better for you.”

“Ah yes, the slides,” the man laughed. “No, you do not have to return them here. They are yours.”

“Mine?”

“You are in Room 413, yes?”

“Yes, but they’re not—”

“They have been sent to you.”

“What?” Jake heard himself croak into the phone.

“They were sent here to you, in Room 413,” the man intoned. “You can return the slide machine when you finish. But the slides you keep.”

Jake hung up the phone and looked at the slide projector, hesitant. Standing up with care, he took a few short steps toward the slide projector, inspecting it. A normal slide projector. It occurred to Jake that he hadn’t seen a slide projector in ages, since high school even. Slide projectors were going the way of the gaslight and the treadle sewing machine.