STORIES

THREE
Pat Cadigan
-
Nothing Personal
[Among Strangers]
Stilled Life
[Found in the Translation]
Jimmy
Worlds of Possibilities
Not Quite Alone in the Dream Quarter [with Mike Resnick]
Tales from the Big Dark: Lie of the Land
The Mudlark
Truth and Bone
Don’t Mention Madagascar
The Taste of Night
Between Heaven and Hull
[We’ll Take Manhattan]
[Funny Things]
Picking up the Pieces
Cody
You Never Know
-
Nothing Personal
-
Detective Ruby Tsung could not say when the Dread had first come over her. It had been a
gradual development, taking place over a period of weeks, possibly months, with all the subtlety of
any of the more mundane life processes—weight gain, graying hair, aging itself. Time marched on
and one day you woke up to find you were a somewhat dumpy, graying, middle-aged homicide
detective with twenty-five years on the job and a hefty lump of bad feeling in the pit of your
stomach: the Dread.
It was a familiar enough feeling, the Dread. Ruby had known it well in the past. Waiting for the
verdict in an officer-involved shooting; looking up from her backlog of paperwork to find a stone-
faced IAD officer standing over her; the doctor clearing his throat and telling her to sit down before
giving her the results of the mammogram; answering an unknown trouble call and discovering it
was a cop’s address. Then there were the ever-popular rumors, rumors, rumors: of budget cuts, of
forced retirement for everyone with more than fifteen years in, of mandatory transfers, demotions,
promotions, stings, grand jury subpoenas, not to mention famine, war, pestilence, disease, and death
—business as usual.
After a while she had become inured to a lot of it. You had to or you’d make yourself sick, give
yourself an ulcer, or go crazy. As she had grown more experienced, she had learned what to worry
about and what she could consign to denial even just temporarily. Otherwise, she would have spent
all day with the Dread eating away at her insides and all night with it sitting on her chest crushing
the breath out of her.
 The last ten years of her twenty-five had been in Homicide, and in that time she had had little
reason to feel Dread. There was no point. This was Homicide—something bad was going to happen,
so there was no reason to dread it. Someone was going to turn up dead today, tomorrow it would be
someone else, the next day still someone else, and so forth. Nothing personal, just Homicide.
Nothing personal. She had been coping with the job on this basis for a long time now and it
worked just fine. Whatever each murder might have been about, she could be absolutely certain that
it wasn’t about her. Whatever had gone so seriously wrong as to result in loss of life, it was not
meant to serve as an omen, a warning, or any other kind of signifier in her life. Just the facts, ma’am
or sir. Then punch out and go home.
Nothing personal. She was perfectly clear on that. It didn’t help. She still felt as if she had
swallowed something roughly the size and density of a hockey puck.
There was no specific reason that she could think of. She wasn’t under investigation—not as far
as she knew, anyway, and she made a point of not dreading what she didn’t know. She hadn’t done
anything (lately) that would have called for any serious disciplinary action; there were no
questionable medical tests to worry about, no threats of any kind. Her son, Jake, and his wife, Lita,
were nested comfortably in the suburbs outside Boston, making an indecent amount of money in
computer software and raising her grandkids in a big old Victorian house that looked like something
out of a storybook. The kids e-mailed her regularly, mostly jokes and scans of their crayon
drawings. Whether they were all really as happy as they appeared to be was another matter, but she
was fairly certain they weren’t suffering. But even if she had been inclined to worry unduly about
them, it wouldn’t have felt like the Dread.
-
Almost as puzzling to her as when the Dread had first taken up residence was how she had
managed not to notice it coming on. Eventually she understood that she hadn’t—she had simply
pushed it to the back of her mind and then, being continuously busy, had kept on pushing it all the
way into the Worry About Later file, where it had finally grown too intense to ignore.
Which brought her back to the initial question: when the hell had it started? Had it been there
when her partner Rita Castillo had retired? She didn’t remember feeling anything as unpleasant as
the Dread when Rita had made the announcement or later on, at her leaving party. Held in a cop bar,
the festivities had gone on till two in the morning, and the only unusual thing about it for Ruby had
been that she had gone home relatively sober. Not by design and not for any specific reason. Not
even on purpose—she had had a couple of drinks that had given her a nice mellow buzz, after
which she had switched to diet cola. Some kind of new stuff—someone had given her a taste and
she’d liked it. Who? Right, Tommy DiCenzo; Tommy had fifteen years of sobriety, which was some
kind of precinct record.
But the Dread hadn’t started that night; it had already been with her then. Not the current full-
blown knot of Dread, but in retrospect, she knew that she had felt something and simply refused to
think about the bit of disquiet that had sunk its barbed hook into a soft place.
But she hadn’t been so much in denial that she had gotten drunk. You left yourself open to all
sorts of unpleasantness when you tied one on at a cop’s retirement party: bad thoughts, bad
memories, bad dreams, and real bad mornings after. Of course, knowing that hadn’t always stopped
her in the past. It was too easy to let yourself be caught up in the moment, in all the moments, and
suddenly you were completely shitfaced and wondering how that could have happened. Whereas
she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard of anyone staying sober by accident.
 Could have been the nine-year-old that had brought the Dread on. That had been pretty bad even
for an old hand like herself. Rita had been on vacation and she had been working alone when the
boy’s body had turned up in the Dumpster on the south side—or south town, which was what
everyone seemed to be calling it now. The sudden name change baffled her; she had joked to Louie
Levant at the desk across from hers about not getting the memo on renaming the ’hoods. Louie had
looked back at her with a mixture of mild surprise and amusement on his pale features. “South town
was what we always called it when I was growing up there,” he informed her, a bit loftily. “Guess
the rest of you finally caught on.” Louie was about twenty years younger than she was, Ruby
reminded herself, which meant that she had two decades more history to forget; she let the matter
drop.
Either way, south side or south town, the area wasn’t a crime hotspot. It wasn’t as upscale as the
parklike west side or as stolidly middle/working class as the northland grid, but it wasn’t east
midtown, either. Murder in south town was news; the fact that it was a nine-year-old boy was worse
news, and worst of all, it had been a sex crime.
Somehow she had known that it would be a sex crime even before she had seen the body, lying
small, naked, and broken amid the trash in the bottom of the Dumpster. Just what she hadn’t wanted
to catch—kiddie sex murder. Kiddie sex murder had something for everyone: nightmares for
parents, hysterical ammunition for religious fanatics, and lurid headlines for all. And a very special
kind of hell for the family of the victim, who would be forever overshadowed by the circumstances
of his death.
During his short life, the boy had been an average student with a talent for things mechanical—
he had liked to build engines for model trains and cars. He had told his parents he thought he’d like
to be a pilot when he grew up. Had he died in some kind of accident, a car wreck, a fall, or
something equally unremarkable, he would have been remembered as the little boy who never got a
chance to fly—tragic, what a shame, light a candle. Instead, he would now and forever be defined
by the sensational nature of his death. The public memory would link him not with little-kid stuff
like model trains and cars but with the pervert who had killed him.
She hadn’t known anything about him, none of those specific details about models and flying,
when she had first stood gazing down at him; at that point, she hadn’t even known his name. But
she had known the rest of it as she had climbed into the Dumpster, trying not to gag from the stench
of garbage and worse and hoping that the plastic overalls and booties she had on didn’t tear.
That had been a bad day. Bad enough that it could have been the day the Dread had taken up
residence in her gut.
Except it wasn’t.
Thinking about it, remembering the sight, the smell, the awful way it felt when she had
accidentally stepped on the dead boy’s ankle, she knew the Dread had already been with her. Not so
cumbersome at the time, still small enough to snub in favor of more immediate problems, but
definitely there.
Had it been Ricky Carstairs, then? About a month before the nine-year-old, she had been on her
way out of the precinct house when she had passed two uniformed officers bringing him in and
recognized him immediately. She had no idea how she had managed that mental feat—he had been
skinny, dirty, and obviously strung out, and she hadn’t seen him since he and Jake had been in the
seventh grade together, but she had known him at once and it hadn’t been a good moment.
 “It’s just plain wrong,” she had said when Rita asked her why she looked as if she had just
found half a worm in the middle of an apple. “Your kid’s old school friends are supposed go away
and live lives with no distinguishing characteristics. Become office workers in someplace like
Columbus or Chicago or Duluth.”
“And that’s just plain weird,” Rita replied, her plump face wearing a slightly alarmed
expression. “Or maybe not weird enough—I don’t know. You been watching a lot of TV lately?
Like the Hallmark Channel or something?”
“Never mind,” she said, making a short dismissive wave with one hand. “It made more sense
before I said it out loud.”
Rita had burst into hearty laughter and that had been that; they’d gone with the rest of the day,
whatever that had involved. Probably a dead body.
The dismaying sight of one of Jake’s old school friends sweating in handcuffs had lodged in her
mind more as a curiosity than anything else. Uncomfortable but hardly critical—not the fabled
moment of clarity, not a short sharp shock or a reality check or a wake-up call from Planet Earth.
Just a moment when she hoped that poor old Ricky hadn’t recognized her, too.
So had the Dread already been lodged in her gut then?
She tried, but she honestly couldn’t remember one way or the other—the incident was just that
too far in the past and it had lasted only a minute, if that—but she thought it was very possible that
it had.
-
It was unlikely, she realized, that she would ever pinpoint the exact moment when something
had shifted or slipped or cracked—gone faulty, anyway—and let a sense of something wrong get in
and take root. And for all she knew, it might not even matter. Not if she were in the first stage of one
of those on-the-job crack-ups that a lot of cops fell victim to. Just what she needed—a slow-motion
train wreck. Christ, what the hell was the point of having a breakdown in slow motion unless you
could actually do something about it, actually prevent it from happening? Too bad it didn’t work
that way—every cop she knew who had come out the other side of a crash described it as
unstoppable. If it had to happen, why couldn’t it be fast? Crack up quick and have an equally rapid
recovery, get it over with. She pictured herself going to the department shrink for help: Overclock
me, Doc—I got cases to solve and they’re gaining on me.
Ha-ha, good one; the shrink might even get a chuckle out of it. Unless she had to explain what
overclocking was. Would a shrink know enough about computers to get it? Hell, she wouldn’t have
known herself if she hadn’t picked things up from Jake, who had blossomed into a tech head
practically in his playpen.
Her mind snagged on the idea of talking to the shrink and wouldn’t let go. Why not? She had
done it before. Granted, it had been mandatory, then—all cops involved in a shooting had to see the
shrink—but she’d had no problem with that. And what the hell, it had done her more good than
she’d expected it to. She had known at the time that she’d needed help and if she was honest with
herself, she had to admit that she needed help now. Going around with the lead weight of the Dread
dragging on her wasn’t even on the extreme ass end of acceptably screwed up that was in the range
of normal for a homicide detective.
The more she thought about it, the more imperative it seemed that she talk to the department
shrink, because she sure hadn’t talked to anyone else about it. Not her lieutenant, not Tommy
DiCenzo, not even Rita.
 Well, she wouldn’t have talked to Lieutenant Ostertag—that was a no-brainer. Throughout her
career, she had always had the good sense never to believe any my-door-is-always-open bullshit
from a superior officer. Ostertag hadn’t even bothered with the pretense.
Tommy DiCenzo, on the other hand, she could have talked to and counted on his complete
confidence. They’d gone through the academy together and she’d listened to plenty from him, both
before and after he’d dried out. Tommy might even have understood enough to tell her whether she
was about to derail big-time or just experiencing another side effect of being middle-aged,
overworked, and underpaid. But every time she thought about giving him a call or asking him to go
for coffee, something stopped her.
Maddeningly, she couldn’t think of a single good reason why. Hell, she couldn’t even think of a
crappy reason. There was no reason. She simply could not bring herself to talk to him about the
Dread and that was all there was to it.
And Rita—well, there had been plenty of reasons not to talk to her. They were busy, far too busy
to devote any time to anything that didn’t have a direct bearing on the cases piling up on their
respective desks. Not that Rita wouldn’t have listened. But whenever she considered bringing it up,
saying, You know, Rita, lately I’ve had the damnedest feeling, a sense of being in the middle of
something real bad that’s about to get a whole lot worse, the image of the nine-year-old boy in the
Dumpster would bloom in her brain and she would clench her teeth together.
Of course, she could go to Rita now. She could trot on over to her neat little fourth floor condo,
sit out on the balcony with her amid the jungle of plants with a few beers, and tell her all about it.
Only she knew what Rita would probably say, because Rita had already said it. That had been the
night before she had put in her retirement papers; she had taken Ruby out to dinner and broken the
news to her privately.
“I always planned to put in my twenty and get out while I was still young enough to enjoy it,”
she said, cheerfully sawing away at a slab of bloody steak. “You could have done that five years
ago. Do it now and you’ll be in good shape all the way around. Maybe you want to get in thirty, but
is putting in another five years really worth it?”
“Five years—” Ruby had shrugged. “What’s five years? Blink of an eye, practically.”
“All the more reason to get out,” Rita had insisted. “Before it’s too late to get a life.”
Bristling inwardly, Ruby had looked down at her own steak. Why she had ordered that much
food was beyond her. The Dread didn’t leave anywhere nearly enough room for it. “I have a life.”
“The job is not a life,” Rita said, chewing vigourously and then dragging her napkin across her
lips. “The job is the job. What do you do when you’re not on the job?”
“Talk to the grandkids on e-mail. Shop. Rent DVDs—”
“You ever go out to a movie? Or out to dinner—with anyone other than me?” Rita added
quickly before she could answer. “Hell, girlfriend, when was the last time you got laid?”
Ruby blinked at her, startled, unsure whether it was by the question itself or by the fact that she
didn’t know the answer.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard—” Rita leaned over the table and lowered her voice
confidentially. “But there are more alternatives for people our age than the cone or the rabbit.”
“Yeah, but my idea of sex doesn’t involve typing.” Ruby looked at her sidelong.
“Keeps the fingers nimble.” Rita laughed. “No, I wasn’t referring to chat room sex. I’m talking
about going out and meeting people.”
“Dating sites?” Ruby made a pained face.
 “Please.” Rita mirrored her expression. “Social groups. Meet-ups for people with similar
interests. Hobbies, film festivals, shit like that. You know I’ve got a boyfriend?” Pause. “And a
girlfriend.”
“Sounds exciting,” Ruby told her. “But I don’t know if that’s really for me.”
“I didn’t know, either,” Rita said. “I sure didn’t go looking for it. It just happened. That’s how it
is when you have a life—things happen. You ought to try it.”
“Yeah? Well, what I really want to know is how come I haven’t gotten to meet these people
you’ve been seeing.” Ruby folded her arms and pretended to be stern.
“Well, for one thing—and I’ve got to be perfectly honest here—” Rita put down her knife and
fork. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”
Ruby’s eyebrows went up. “What? All this time we’ve worked together and you don’t know I’m
not a homophobe?”
“I was referring to the guy,” Rita said, deadpan.
“Damn. And I thought I hid it so well,” said Ruby, equally deadpan.
Rita gave a laugh and picked up her knife and fork again. “So pull the pin with me. You won’t
have to hide anything you don’t want to.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” Ruby lied.
“I’m asking you again—what’re you waiting for?” Rita paused, regarding her expectantly.
When she didn’t answer, she went on: “They’re not gonna promote you, you know. You do know
that, don’t you?”
Ruby dipped her head noncommittally.
“I sure knew they weren’t gonna promote me. I knew that for a goddam fact.” Rita took a
healthy swig of wine and dragged her napkin across her mouth again.
“So is that why you decided to retire?”
Rita wagged her head emphatically. “I told you, it was my plan all along—get in my twenty and
get the hell out. They’d have had to come up with a pretty hefty promotion to make me want to
stay.”
“Yeah? Like what—chief? Commissioner?”
“Supreme dictator for life. And I’m not so sure I would have said yes.” Rita sighed. “What are
you holding out for—lieutenant?”
“I passed the exam.”
“So did I. So did umpty-hundred other cops ahead of us both and they ain’t moving up, either.”
Rita’s expression abruptly turned sad. “I never figured you for a lifer.”
“Or maybe you hoped I wasn’t?” Ruby said. “Personally, I never thought about it. I just get up
and go to work every day.”
“Think about it now,” Rita said urgently. “Think about it like you’ve never thought about
anything else. Get serious—you’re topped out. Whatever you’re waiting for, it isn’t coming. All you
can do is mark time.”
“I work on solving murders and putting away the guilty parties,” Ruby said, an edge creeping
into her voice. “I wouldn’t call that marking time.”
“For you personally, it is,” Rita insisted, unapologetic. “And in case you forgot, you count for
something.”
“I’m a good cop. That counts for a lot.”
“That’s not all you are, though. Do you even know that anymore?”
Ruby shifted in her seat, more than a little irritated. “Retiring young isn’t for everybody, even if
you think it is. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
 “Oh, for chrissakes, already—” Rita blew out a short breath. “That’s what I’ve been trying to
tell you.”
They sat looking at each other for some unmeasured time and Ruby realized that her soon-to-be-
ex-partner was just as irritated with her, possibly more. She tried to come up with something to say
to defuse the situation before a serious quarrel developed, but the Dread sitting large and
uncomfortable in the middle of her body was eating her brain. The Dread was actually all she ever
thought about now, like a pain that never went away, she realized, and there was barely room for
anything else anymore.
Then Rita had sat back in her chair, dismay in her plump, round face. “Shit, what the hell am I
doing? I’m sorry, Rube.”
Ruby stared at her, baffled.
“I’m telling you you don’t have a life and I’m browbeating you like I’m trying to get a
confession.” She shook her head as if trying to clear it. “I think I’m getting out just in time.”
“Well, I was gonna lawyer up,” Ruby said, laughing a little. “Forget it. It’s a touchy thing when
a partner leaves; we both know that. Things can get a little weird, blown out of proportion.”
They had finished their dinner—or rather, Rita had finished hers while Ruby got a doggy bag—
and called it a night early, smiles all round, although the smiles were slightly sad.
That was how things still stood between them: smoothed over but not actually resolved. If she
went to Rita now and told her about the Dread, growing a little bit bulkier, a little heavier, and a
little more uncomfortable every day with no end in sight, Rita would only take that as further proof
that she was right about retirement.
And she really did not want to have that conversation with Rita, because she had no intention of
retiring. Because she knew, deep in her core and in her bones, that even if she did take Rita’s advice
to pack it all in, even if she took it a step further, sold everything she owned and went off to a
luxury beach condo in the Caribbean to laze around in the sun all day, indulge in fancy food and
drink, and get thoroughly, perfectly laid every night by a series of gorgeous men and women,
separately and together—despite all of that and a billion dollars besides, she knew with no
uncertainty at all that she would still wake up every morning with the Dread that much larger and
heavier and unrelenting than it had been the day before.
If she went to Rita, she would have to tell her that, and she didn’t want to because she really
didn’t think Rita would understand. And if she didn’t tell her, then Rita would only start harping
again on the question of what she was waiting for. Probably accuse her of waiting for the Dread to
go away.
Then she would have to confess: No. I’m waiting to find out. I’m waiting for whatever it is I’ve
been Dreading to show up. Which was something she hadn’t quite admitted to herself yet.
-
“Coffee?”
The voice cut through the combination of Ruby’s usual morning haze and the constant
overriding pressure of the Dread, startling her and making her jump a little. She looked up from the
open folder she had been staring at unseeingly to find a young guy standing next to her desk,
holding out a large cup that definitely had not come from any of the precinct machines.
“I didn’t know you guys delivered,” she said, smiling as she took the cup from him.
 “Don’t let it get around,” the guy said, “or I’ll have to do it for everybody.” He was about thirty,
just a little too dark to be called olive skinned, with a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his
nose and a head full of honey-colored dreadlocks that had the potential to become unruly. He was
only a couple of inches taller than Ruby herself—five-eight, five-nine at the most—and slightly
husky.
“It’ll be our secret,” she assured him, taking the lid off the cup. A dark roast aroma wafted up
with the steam; not her favorite, but she wasn’t inclined to find fault. “Am I supposed to know
you?”
“When the lieutenant comes in, he’ll introduce me as your new partner.”
“I see.” Ruby studied him. “Transfer from Vice?”
He shook his head.
“Narcotics?”
“Ah.” He smiled with half his mouth. “Must be the dreads.”
Ruby barely managed not to flinch at the word; it took a quarter of a second before she realized
what he was referring to. “Well, it was some kind of undercover work, though. Right?”
“Fraud and cybercrime. Rafe Pasco.” He held out his hand and Ruby took it. It was strong and
square but as smooth and soft as a woman’s.
“Portuguese?” she guessed.
“Filipino, actually. On my father’s side.” He grinned and half sat on the edge of her desk.
“Though as you can see, that’s only part of the story. Even on my father’s side.” His grin widened a
bit. “Like you, maybe.”
Ruby shrugged. “Everybody had a story in my family and none of them could ever keep them
straight. My father claimed they almost named me Kim Toy O’Toole. And I didn’t even have
freckles.”
“Then you grew up deprived.” He tilted his head to look at the file on her desk. “What are you
working on?”
She had to glance down to remind herself. “Ah. Suspicious drowning. Wife reported her
husband missing; three days later he turns up on the rocks under the Soldiers Road bridge. Coroner
says he’s pretty sure the guy didn’t just happen to wash up there, that someone must have pulled
him out and then just left him.”
“Anonymous call tipping you off where to find him?”
Ruby shook her head. “Couple of kids found him and told their parents. Can’t figure why
someone would pull a corpse out of the river and then just leave him.”
“The killer?”
“Then why pull him out at all?”
“Well, the wife couldn’t collect on any insurance without a body. For instance.”
“Could be.” Ruby made a face. “But I don’t think she killed him. I think he’s a suicide and she’s
trying to make it seem like a murder so she doesn’t lose the insurance. The payout isn’t much—
$25,000. Not enough to inspire murder but not a sum you’d want to have to give up, either.”
Pasco nodded, looking thoughtful. “Is she a hardship case?”
“Why?” Ruby asked, frowning.
“Maybe she really needs it.”
She gave a short laugh. “Hey, man, who doesn’t need $25,000? Especially if it’s on the verge of
dropping right into your lap.”
“Yeah, but if she’s got kids or she’s gonna get evicted or something, it’d be too bad to take it
away from her.”
 Ruby leaned back in her chair and gave him a searching look. “Are you kidding?”
“I’m just saying.”
“That’s a whole lot of just saying about a case I only just now told you about. You always get so
deeply invested on such short notice?”
He looked slightly embarrassed. “I’m not invested. This is just something we do in Fraud—
think about all the angles. Try to get into the mind-set of the people we’re investigating, try to figure
out where they’re coming from—are they desperate or do they feel entitled for some reason. Stuff
like that.”
Ruby had to bite her tongue to keep from making an acid remark concerning the mass media
image of criminal profiling and other extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. It
wouldn’t do any good. Pasco would only get defensive and then expend a lot of effort trying to
prove she was wrong instead of just working the cases. In the end, he’d flounder, trying to adapt the
job to his methods rather than the other way around.
Abruptly she realized that she had been staring at him in silence for more than just a moment or
two. Before she could think of some neutral comment, Lieutenant Ostertag came in and waved them
into his office.
-
“I know, I know—he’s a geek,” Ostertag said to Ruby after he had waved Pasco out of his office
again. “He’s got, I dunno, two, three degrees, maybe four. He’s been in Fraud and Cybercrime since
he joined the department about five years ago.”
Ruby nodded. “And somebody thinks he’d make a good homicide detective.”
“Apparently he already is. In the course of his last two cases he cleared up two murders, one of
which nobody even knew about at the time.”
“Good for him,” said Ruby. “Has anyone told him that he left all the criminal masterminds back
in Cybercrime?”
“He’s working another case right now. I’ll let him tell you about it.” He got up and opened the
door for her by way of declaring the meeting over, then caught her arm before she could leave.
“You OK?”
Ruby drew back slightly, giving him a surprised look. “Sure I’m OK. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Ostertag’s mouth twitched. “You OK with getting this guy as a partner so soon after Rita
leaving?”
She laughed a little. “Rita retired; she didn’t die. I’m not in mourning.”
The lieutenant nodded a bit impatiently. “This guy’s pretty different than what you’re used to.”
Ruby tilted her head and frowned. “Are you asking me if I’d rather work with someone else?”
Ostertag’s face turned expressionless. “No.”
“What I thought,” Ruby said good-naturedly, and went back to her desk.
-
 She decided to give Pasco a little while to organize his desk, maybe meet a few of the other
detectives, and then go over to ask him about his case. Instead of taking over Rita’s old spot, he had
opted for the vacant desk by the blocky pillar that served as an unofficial bulletin board for less-
than-official notices and items, usually cartoons (which were usually obscene). It was a strange
choice; Ruby had never seen anyone actually opt for that particular desk if there was anything else
available, and there were two others empty at the moment. It was badly positioned—you had to sit
either facing the pillar or with your back to it. Turn the desk sideways and it would obstruct the
aisle. The previous lieutenant had tried switching the desk with a set of filing cabinets, but that had
been no solution at all and they’d switched things back before the day was up. Moving the desk out
altogether would have made more sense, but there were no city employees anywhere who would
have been so foolish as to voluntarily give up anything. Someone at City Hall could get the wrong
idea, start thinking that if there was no room for a desk in your area, there were probably other
things you could do without as well.
Rafe Pasco obviously had no idea he had picked the lousiest spot in the room, Ruby thought.
Maybe he’d had a similar spot in Cybercrime, wherever that was headquartered. Spending all his
time on a computer, he might not have noticed or cared where he sat.
“So you get the new guy.” Tommy DiCenzo sat down in the chair beside her desk, a bottle of
Coke Zero in one big paw. He tilted it toward her, offering her a sip.
She waved it away. “Rafe Pasco. From Cybercrime.”
“I heard.” Tommy glanced over his shoulder. “What’d you do, tell him to keep his distance?”
“Didn’t get a chance to,” she said. “He picked it out himself.” From where she was sitting, she
could actually see him quite well. She watched as he took a shiny black laptop out of a bag and set
it on the desk. “I see he brought his own hardware. Maybe he figures he’ll have more privacy over
there. No one’ll be able to see when he’s playing solitaire.”
Tommy followed her gaze. “Guy’s a geek. No offense,” he added quickly. “How is Jake,
anyway?”
Ruby laughed. “Fine. And he’d take offense if you didn’t call him a geek. As would he, I
imagine.” She jerked her chin in Pasco’s general direction.
“It’s a different world,” Tommy said, affecting a heavy sigh. Then his face grew suddenly
serious. “You OK?”
“Damn.” Ruby gave a short laugh. “You know you’re the second person to ask me that today?”
Tommy’s steely-gray eyebrows arched. “Oh? Must be something going around.” He gazed at
her thoughtfully. “So, are you OK? Anything bothering you?”
The Dread seemed to reawaken then; it shifted inside of her by way of reasserting itself,
reminding her that it was there and it was in charge. “Like what?” she said, hoping the casually
offhand tone in her voice didn’t sound as forced as it felt.
“Well, like Rita pulling the pin.”
She let out a long breath. “It’ll take some getting used to. I keep looking around for her. Which
is only normal, I guess.”
“You weren’t prepared for her leaving, were you.” It wasn’t really a question.
“No,” she admitted. “But I’m OK with it.”
“I’m sure you are.” Tommy’s smile was knowing. “But it still took you by surprise. You never
thought about her retiring.”
“I was busy,” she said, and then winced inwardly. Had she ever said anything lamer? “But you
know, things, uh, change.” Now she had.
“They do that.” Tommy pushed himself to his feet. “It’s not a steady-state universe.”
 “No, I guess not.” Ruby stared after him as he ambled over to introduce himself to Rafe Pasco,
wondering why his words seemed to hang in the air and echo in her brain. Maybe it was just having
him and Ostertag ask her if she were OK within a few minutes of each other had put a whole new
level of odd over the day.
-
The call came in about twenty minutes before Ruby had tentatively planned to go to lunch.
Which figured, she thought as she and Pasco drove to the east midtown address; it had been a quiet
morning. Any time you had a quiet morning, you could just about count on having to skip lunch. Of
course, since the Dread had moved in on her, it hadn’t left much room in her stomach. Not a whole
lot of room in her mind, either—she missed the turn onto the right street and, thanks to the
alternating one-ways, had to drive around in a three-block circle. If Pasco noticed, he didn’t say
anything. Maybe she would let him drive back to the station.
She was a bit surprised to see that patrol cars had almost half the street blocked off, even though
there were very few curious onlookers and not much in the way of traffic. The address in question
was a six-story tenement that Ruby had visited with Rita a few times in the past.
“Is this an actual residence or a squat?” Pasco asked her as they went up the chipped concrete
steps to the front door.
“Both,” Ruby told him. She wasn’t actually sure anymore herself.
The uniform standing at the entrance was a young guy named Fraley; Ruby thought he looked
about twelve years old, despite the thick moustache he was sporting. He opened the door for them
as if that were really what he did for a living.
The smell of urine in the vestibule was practically a physical blow; she heard a sharp intake of
breath from Pasco behind her.
“Straight from the perfume counter in hell,” she said wryly. “Ever wonder why it’s always the
front of the building, why they don’t take a few extra seconds to run to the back?”
“Marking their territory?” Pasco suggested.
“Good answer.” Ruby glanced over her shoulder at him, impressed.
There was another uniformed officer in the hallway by the stairs, a tall black woman named
Desjean whom Ruby recognized as a friend of Rita’s. “Sorry to tell you this,” she told them, “but
your crime scene’s on the roof and there’s no elevator.”
Ruby nodded, resigned. “Do we know who it is?”
Desjean’s dark features turned sad. “Girl about twelve or thirteen. No I.D.”
Ruby winced, feeling acid bubbling up in her chest. “Great. Sex crime.”
“Don’t know yet,” the uniform replied. “But, well, up on the roof?”
“Local kid?” Ruby asked.
Desjean shook her head. “Definitely not.”
Ruby looked at the stairs and then at Pasco. “You can go first if you think you might go faster.”
Pasco blew out a short breath. “I’m a geek, not a track star.” He frowned. “Ostertag did tell you
that, didn’t he?”
“Uh, yeah,” Ruby said, unsure as to whether he was kidding around or not. “Before we go up,
one thing.”
“Don’t talk to you on the way?” He nodded. “The feeling’s mutual.”
She felt a brief moment of warmth toward him. Then the Dread overwhelmed it, crushing it out
of existence, and she started up the stairs.
-
 A uniformed sergeant named Papoojian met them just outside the door on the roof. “Kid with a
telescope spotted the body and called it in,” she told them as they stood catching their breath. “I sent
a couple of officers over to get a preliminary statement from him and his very freaked-out parents.”
“Kid with a telescope.” Ruby sighed. “I don’t know if that’s an argument for closed-circuit TV
surveillance or against it.”
The sergeant looked up at the sky worriedly. “I wish the lab guys would hurry up and get here
with a tent or we’re gonna have regular TV surveillance to deal with. I’m surprised the news
helicopters aren’t buzzing us already.”
As if on cue, there was the faint sound of a chopper in the distance. Immediately, one of the
other three uniformed cops on the roof produced a blanket and threw it over the body, then turned to
look a question at Papoojian. Papoojian nodded an OK at him and turned back to Ruby. “If the lab
has a problem with that, tell them to get in my face about it.”
Ruby waved a hand. “You got nothing to worry about. No I.D. on the body?”
The sergeant shook her curly head. “Except for a charm on her bracelet with the name Betty
engraved on it.” She spelled it for them.
“There’s a name you don’t hear much these days.” Ruby looked over at the blanket-covered
form. She was no longer panting from the long climb, but for some reason she couldn’t make
herself walk the twenty feet over to where the body lay on the dusty gravel.
“Hey, you caught that other case with the kid,” Papoojian said suddenly. “The Dumpster boy.”
Ruby winced inwardly at the term. “Yeah.”
“They dumping all the murdered kid cases on you now?”
She shrugged, taking an uncomfortable breath against the Dread, which now seemed to be all
but vibrating in her midsection.
Was this what she had been dreading? she wondered suddenly. Murdered children?
It almost felt as if she were tearing each foot loose from slow-hardening cement as she urged
herself to go over and look at the victim, Pasco at her elbow with an attitude that seemed oddly
dutiful.
“Ever see a dead kid?” she asked him in a low voice.
“Not like this,” Pasco replied, his tone neutral.
“Well, it’s gruesome even when it’s not gruesome,” she said. “So brace yourself.” She crouched
down next to the body and lifted the blanket.
The girl was lying faceup, her eyes half-closed and her lips slightly parted, giving her a sort of
preoccupied expression. She might have been in the middle of a daydream, except for the pallor.
“Well, I see why Desjean was so sure the girl wasn’t local,” Ruby said.
“Because she’s Japanese?” he guessed.
“Well, there are a few Japanese in east midtown, not many, but I was referring to her clothes.”
Ruby shifted position, trying to relieve the pressure from the way the Dread was pushing on her
diaphragm. It crossed her mind briefly that perhaps what she thought of as the Dread might actually
be a physical problem. “That’s quality stuff she’s got on. Not designer but definitely boutique. You
get it in the more upscale suburban malls. I have grandchildren,” she added in response to Pasco’s
mildly curious expression.
She let the blanket drop and pushed herself upright, her knees cracking and popping in protest.
Pasco gazed down at the covered body, his smooth, deep gold face troubled.
“You OK?” Ruby asked him.
He took a deep breath and let it out.
“Like I said, kids are gruesome even when they’re not—”
 “I think this is related to this case I’ve been working on.”
“Really.” She hid her surprise. “We’ll have to compare notes, then. Soon.”
He didn’t answer right away, looking from the blanket to her with a strange expression she
wasn’t sure how to read. There was something defensive about it, with more than a little suspicion
as well. “Sure,” he said finally, with all the enthusiasm of someone agreeing to a root canal.
Ruby felt a mix of irritation and curiosity, which was quickly overridden by the Dread. She
couldn’t decide whether to say something reassuring or simply assert her authority and reassure him
later, after she knew she had his cooperation.
Then the crime lab arrived, saving her from having to think about anything from the immediate
situation. And the Dread.
-
At the end of the day, Pasco managed to get away without talking about his case. It was possible
of course that he had not been purposely trying to elude her. After spending most of the day talking
to, or trying to talk to, the people in the building, checking on the results of the door-to-door in the
neighborhood, looking over the coroner’s shoulder, and through it all pushing the Dread ahead of
her like a giant boulder uphill, she was too tired to care.
She made a note about Pasco in her memo book and then dragged herself home to her
apartment, where she glanced at an unopened can of vegetable soup before stripping off and falling
into bed, leaving her clothes in a heap on the floor.
-
3:11.
The numbers, glowing danger red, swam out of the darkness and into focus. It was a moment or
two before she realized that she was staring at the clock radio on the nightstand.
Odd. She never woke in the middle of the night; even with the Dread pressing relentlessly
harder on her every day, she slept too heavily to wake easily or quickly. Therefore, something must
have happened, something big or close, or both. She held very still, not even breathing, listening for
the sound of an intruder in the apartment, in the bedroom.
A minute passed, then another; nothing. Maybe something had happened in the apartment next
door or upstairs, she thought, still listening, barely breathing.
Nothing. Nothing and more nothing. And perhaps that was all it was, a whole lot of nothing. It
could have been a car alarm out on the street, an ambulance passing close with its siren on, or
someone’s bassed-out thumpmobile with the volume set on stun. Just because she didn’t usually
wake up didn’t mean that she couldn’t. She took a long deep breath and let it out, rolling onto her
back.
There was something strange about the feel of the mattress under her and she realized that she
wasn’t alone in the bed.
Automatically she rolled onto her right side. Rafe Pasco’s head was resting on the other pillow.
He was gazing at her with an expression of deep regret.
Shock hit her like an electric jolt. She jumped back, started to scream.
In the next moment she was staring at the empty place next to her in the bed, her own strangled
cry dying in her ears as daylight streamed in through the window.
She jumped again and scrambled out of bed, looking around. There was no one in the room
except her, no sign that anyone else had been lying in bed with her. She looked at the clock. 7:59.
 Still feeling shaky, she knelt on the bed and reached over to touch the pillow Pasco’s head had
been resting on. She could still see him vividly in her mind’s eye, that regretful expression. Or
maybe “apologetic” was more like it. Sorry that he had showed up in her bed uninvited? Hope
you’ll forgive the intrusion—it was too late to call and there wasn’t time to get a warrant.
The pillow was cool to her touch. Of course. Because she had been dreaming.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, one hand unconsciously pressed to her chest. That had
been some crazy dream; her heart was only now starting to slow down from double time.
She stole a glance over her shoulder at the other side of the bed. Nope, still nobody there, not
nobody, not nohow, and most especially not Rafe Pasco. What the hell had that been all about,
anyway, seeing her new partner in bed with her? Why him, of all the goddam people? Just because
he was new? Not to mention young and good-looking. She hadn’t thought she’d been attracted to
him, but apparently there was a dirty old woman in her subconscious who begged to differ.
Which, now that she thought about it, was kind of pathetic.
“God or whoever, please, save me from that,” Ruby muttered, and stood up to stretch.
Immediately, a fresh wave of the Dread washed over her, almost knocking her off balance. She
clenched her teeth, afraid for a moment that she was going to throw up. Then she steadied herself
and stumped off to the bathroom to stand under the shower.
-
Pasco was already at his desk when Ruby dragged herself in. She found it hard to look at him
and she was glad to see that he was apparently too wrapped up in something on his notebook to pay
attention to anything else. Probably the mysterious case he was working on and didn’t seem to want
to tell her about. Shouldn’t have slipped and told me you thought it might be related to the one we
caught yesterday, she admonished him silently, still not looking at him. Now I’ll have to pry it out
of you.
Later. She busied herself with phone calls, setting up some witness interviews, putting in a call
to the medical examiner about getting a preliminary report on the Japanese girl, and requesting
information from Missing Persons on anyone fitting the girl’s description. It wasn’t until nearly
noon that it occurred to her that he was working just as hard to avoid catching her eye as vice versa.
She drew in an uneasy breath and the Dread seemed to breathe with her. Maybe he had the same
dream you did, suggested a tiny voice in her mind.
As if he had sensed something, he looked up from his notebook at her. She gave him a nod,
intending to turn away and find something else that had to be done before she could talk to him.
Instead, she surprised herself by grabbing her memo book and walking over to his desk.
“So tell me about this case of yours,” she said, pulling over an empty chair and plumping down
in it. “And why you think it might have something to do with the dead girl from yesterday.”
“Do we know who she is yet?” he asked.
Ruby shook her head. “I’m still waiting to hear from Missing Persons. I’ve also put a call into
the company that makes the charm bracelet, to find out who sells it in this area.”
Pasco frowned. “She could have bought it on the Internet.”
“Thanks for that,” she said sourly. “You can start with the auction sites if I come up empty.”
He nodded a bit absently and then turned his notebook around to show her the screen. The dead
girl smiled out from what seemed to be a formal school photo; her eyes twinkled in the bright studio
lights and her lips were parted just enough to show the thin gold line of a retainer wire around her
front teeth.
“Where’d you get that?” Ruby demanded, incredulous.
“It’s not the same girl,” he told her.
 “Then who is it—her twin?”
“Can’t say at this point.” He smiled a little. “This girl is Alice Nakamura. I was investigating a
case of identity theft involving her parents.”
“Perps or victims?”
“To be honest, I’m still not clear on that. They could be either, or even both.”
Ruby shook her head slightly. “I don’t get it.”
“Identity theft is a complex thing and it’s getting more complex all the time.”
“If that’s supposed to be an explanation, it sucks.”
Pasco dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment. “That’s putting it mildly. The Nakamuras
first showed up entering the country from the Cayman Islands. Actually, you might say that’s where
they popped into existence, as I couldn’t find any record of them prior to that.”
“Maybe they came from Japan via the Caymans?” Ruby suggested.
“The parents have—had—U.S. passports.”
Ruby gave a short laugh. “If they’ve got passports, then they’ve got Social Security cards and
birth certificates.”
“And we looked those up—”
“‘We?’”
“This task force I was on,” he said, a bit sheepishly. “It was a state-level operation with a federal
gateway.”
Here comes the jargon, Ruby thought, willing her eyes not to film over.
“Anyway, we looked up the numbers. They were issued in New York, as were their birth
certificates. There was no activity of any kind on the numbers—no salary, no withholding, no
income, no benefits. According to the records, these people have never worked and never paid
taxes.”
“Call the IRS; tell them you’ve got a lead on some people who’ve never paid taxes. That’ll take
care of it.”
“Tried that,” Pasco said, his half smile faint. “The IRS records show that everything is in order
for the Nakamuras. Unfortunately, they can’t seem to find any copies of their tax returns.”
“That doesn’t sound like the IRS I know,” Ruby said skeptically.
Pasco shrugged. “They’re looking. At least, that’s what they tell me whenever I call. I have a
feeling that it’s not a priority for them.”
“But what about the rest of it? The birth certificates? You said they were issued in New York?”
“They’re not actually the original birth certificates,” Pasco said. “They’re notarized copies,
replacing documents which have been lost. Some of the information is missing—like where exactly
each of them was born, the hospital, the attending physician, and, except for Alice, the parents’
names.”
Ruby glanced heavenward for a moment. “What are they, in witness protection?”
“I’ll let you know if I ever get a straight answer one way or another on that one,” Pasco said,
chuckling a little, “but I’d bet money that they aren’t.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Ruby sat for a few moments, trying to get her mind around everything he had
told her. None of it sounded right. Incomplete birth certificates? Even if she bought the stuff about
the IRS, she found that completely implausible. “But I still don’t understand. Everything’s
computerized these days, which means everything’s recorded. Nobody just pops into existence, let
alone a whole family.”
“It’s not against the law to live off the grid,” Pasco said. “Some people do. You’d be surprised at
how many.”
 “What—you mean living off the land, generating your own electricity, shit like that?” Ruby
gave a short, harsh laugh. “Look at that photo. That’s not a picture of a girl whose family has been
living off the grid. She’s got an orthodontist, for chrissakes.”
“I’m not so sure,” Pasco said. “We had the Nakamuras on our radar, so to speak, when they
entered the state. However they had been covering themselves before they left the Caymans,
whatever they’d been doing to stay invisible, they weren’t doing it anymore. They left an easy trail
to follow. I found them in a northland hotel near the airport. They were there for a week. At the
same time, the task force was investigating some fraudulent activity elsewhere in the same area. It
seemed that the Nakamura case was going to converge with it.”
“What was it, this other activity?” Ruby asked.
Pasco made a face. “More identity theft. I can run you through the long version later if you
want, but the short version is, be careful what you do with your utility bills after you pay them, and
if you insist on paying them over the phone, don’t use a cordless phone or a mobile.” He paused;
when she nodded, he went on. “Anyway, we had enough evidence for a warrant. But when the
police got there, the house was abandoned. The only thing they found was the body of Alice
Nakamura in one of the bedrooms. Her birth certificate, school photo, library card, and passport
were lying next to her on the floor.”
“How did she die?”
“Natural causes. Heart failure. I forget what the conditon’s called, but the coroner said that a lot
of kids on the transplant lists have it. Alice Nakamura wasn’t on any of those. There are no medical
records for her anywhere, in fact. And it turned out that her passport was a forgery.”
Ruby blinked. “So much for homeland security.”
“It was an excellent forgery, but a forgery nonetheless, as there was no record of her ever
applying for a passport, let alone receiving one. Unlike her parents.”
“If this is some kind of conspiracy, it’s the most random and disorganized one I’ve ever heard
of,” Ruby said, frowning. “Not to mention that it doesn’t make any sense. Unless you’ve actually
been speaking a language that only sounds like English, but all the words mean something entirely
different, and I haven’t really understood a single thing you’ve said.”
Her words hung in the air between them for a long moment. Pasco’s face was deeply thoughtful
(not deeply regretful; she stamped down on the memory again), practically contemplative, as if she
had set out a significant issue that had to be addressed with care. Inside her, the Dread pushed
sharply into the area just under her breastbone.
“I’m sure that’s how everything probably looks when you see it from the outside,” he said
finally. “If you don’t know a system, if you don’t understand how things work or what the rules are,
it won’t make any sense. The way a foreign language will sound like gibberish.”
Ruby grimaced at him. “But nothing’s that strange. If you listen to a foreign language for even
just a minute, you start picking up some sense of the patterns in it. You recognize it’s a system even
if it’s one you’re not familiar with—”
“Oh?” Pasco’s half smile was back. “Ever listened to Hungarian?”
She waved a hand at him. “No, but I’ve listened to Cantonese and Mandarin, simultaneously at
full volume when my grandparents argued. You know what I mean. For a system, or anything, to be
completely incomprehensible, it would have to be something totally—” She floundered, groping for
a word. “It would have to be something totally alien. Outside human experience altogether.”
Her words replayed themselves in her mind. “Christ,” she said, massaging her forehead. “What
the hell are we talking about and why?”
 Pasco pressed his lips together briefly. “You were saying that there are a lot of things about my
case that don’t make any sense.”
“You got that right, my man,” she said feelingly, and then let out a long sigh. “I suppose that’s
the human element at work.”
“Pardon?” Now he looked bewildered.
“People are infinitely screwy,” she said. “Human beings can make a mess out of chaos.”
He surprised her by bursting into loud, hearty laughter. She twisted around in her seat to see that
the whole room was staring at them curiously. “Thanks, I’ll be here all week,” she said a bit self-
consciously, and turned back to Pasco, trying to will him to wind down fast. Her gaze fell on the
notebook screen again.
“Hey, what about her retainer?” she asked, talking over his guffaws.
“Her what?” Pasco said, slightly breathless and still chuckling a little.
“On her teeth.” Ruby tapped the screen with her little finger. It felt spongy. “Were you able to
trace it to a particular orthodontist?”
“She wasn’t wearing a retainer and they didn’t find one in the house,” Pasco said, sobering.
“And what about her parents?”
“The Nakamuras have dropped out of sight again.”
“Popped out of existence?”
“I thought so at first,” he said, either oblivious to or ignoring her tone of voice. “But then that
girl turned up on the roof yesterday, which leads me to believe they were still around. Up to that
point, anyway. They might be gone by now, though.”
“Why? You think they had something to do with the girl’s death?”
“Not intentionally.”
Ruby shook her head. “Intentionally, unintentionally—either way, why? Who is she to them—
the long-lost twin of the girl who died of heart failure?” Abruptly the Dread gave her stomach a half
twist; she swallowed hard and kept talking. “How long ago was that anyway, when you found Alice
Nakamura?”
Pasco hesitated, his face suddenly very serious. “I didn’t find her. I mean, I only pinpointed the
address. I wasn’t there when the police entered the house. The geek squad never goes along on
things like that. I think the other cops are afraid of geeks with guns.”
“But you’re cops, too.”
“Exactly. Anyway—” He swiveled the notebook around and tapped the keyboard a few times.
“That was about five and a half weeks ago, almost six.” He looked up again. “Does that suggest
anything special to you?”
Ruby shook her head. “You?”
“Just that the Nakamuras have managed to lay pretty low for quite a while. I wonder how. And
where.”
Ruby wanted to ask him something about that but couldn’t quite figure out how to word the
question. “And you’re absolutely sure that girl—Alice Nakamura, I mean—died of natural causes?”
“None whatsoever. Also, she wasn’t abused or neglected in any way before she died, either. She
was well taken care of. She just happened to be very sick.”
“Uh-huh.” Ruby nodded absently. “Then why would they just go off and leave her?”
“If they didn’t want to be found—and judging from their behavior, they didn’t—then they
couldn’t carry her dead body along with them.”
“All right, that makes sense,” Ruby said. “But it still leaves the question of why they don’t want
to be found. Because they’re in on this identity theft thing, conspiracy, whatever it is?”
 “Or because they’re victims of identity theft who have had to steal a new identity themselves.”
Ruby closed her eyes briefly. “OK, now we’re back to not making sense again.”
“No, it’s been known to happen,” Pasco insisted. “For some people, when their identity gets
stolen, the thief does so much damage that they find it’s virtually impossible to clear their name.
They have to start over.”
“But why steal someone else’s identity to do that?” Ruby asked. “Why not just create an entirely
new identity?”
“Because the created identity would eventually trace back to the old one. Better to get one with
completely different connections.”
Ruby shook her head obstinately. “You could still do that with a brand-new identity.”
Pasco was shaking his own head just as obstinately. “The idea isn’t just to steal someone’s
identity—it’s to steal their past, too. If I create a new identity, I really do have to start over in every
way. That’s pretty hard. It’s easier if I can, say, build on your already-excellent credit rating.”
“Obviously you’ve never tried to steal my identity,” Ruby said with a short, humorless laugh.
“Or you’d know better than to say something like that.”
“I was just giving an example.”
Ruby let out a long breath. “I think I’ll pay the coroner a visit, see if there’s anything he can tell
me about how Alice Nakamura’s twin died. Maybe it’ll tell us something about—oh, I don’t know,
anything. In a way that will make sense.” She stood up to go back to her desk.
“Hey—” Pasco caught her wrist; the contact startled her and he let go immediately. “What if she
died of natural causes?”
“Jesus, you really can dream things up, can’t you.” Ruby planted her fists on her hips and gave
him a hard look. “That would be entirely too much of a coincidence.”
-
“Natural causes,” said the coroner’s assistant, reading from a clipboard. Her I.D. gave her name
as Sheila St. Pierre; there was a tiny Hello Kitty sticker under the “St.” She was a plump woman in
her midtwenties with short, spiky blond hair and bright red cat’s-eye glasses, and while she wasn’t
chewing gum, Ruby kept expecting to hear it pop every time she opened her mouth. “Aneurysm.
Tragic in one so young, you know?”
“You’re sure you have the right chart?” Ruby asked tensely.
“Unidentified Oriental adolescent female, brought in yesterday from a rooftop in east midtown,
right?” Sheila St. Pierre offered Ruby the clipboard. “See for yourself.”
Ruby scanned the form quickly several times before she was able to force herself to slow down
and check each detail. “How can a thirteen-year-old girl have a fucking aneurysm?” she said finally,
handing the clipboard back to the other woman. “The coroner must have screwed up. Where is he? I
want to make him do it again.”
“There’s no do-overs in postmortems,” Sheila St. Pierre said, making a face. “What do you
think we’re working with here, Legos?” She shifted her weight to her right side and folded her
arms, hugging the clipboard to her front. “How about a second opinion?”
“Great,” Ruby said. “Where can I get one?”
 “Right here. I assisted Dr. Levitt on this one and I saw it myself firsthand. It was an aneurysm.
Case closed. You know, an aneurysm is one of those things anybody can have without even
knowing it. You could have one, or I could. We just go along living our lives day in, day out,
everything’s swell, and suddenly—boom. Your head blows up and you’re history. Or I am. Or we
both are. Most people have no idea how thin that membrane between life and death can be. But
then, isn’t it really better that way? Better living though denial. Who’d want to go around in a
constant state of dread?”
Ruby glared at her, but she was turning away to put the clipboard down on a metal table nearby.
“At least it isn’t all bad news,” she said, holding up a small plastic bag between two fingers. There
was a retainer in it. “We did manage to identify the girl from her dental records.”
“I didn’t see that on that report!” Ruby snapped. “Why wasn’t it on there? Who is she? When
were you going to fucking tell me?”
Sheila St. Pierre tossed the bag with the retainer in it back on the table. “Which question would
like me to fucking answer first?”
Ruby hesitated and then looked at the retainer. “Where did that come from, anyway? I didn’t see
one at the scene.”
“Well, it was there. Nobody looked close enough till we got her on the table. Her name is Betty
Mura—”
“What’s her address?” Ruby demanded. “And why didn’t you call me?”
“I did call you,” Sheila St. Pierre said with exaggerated patience. “You weren’t at your desk, so
I left a message.”
Ruby had to force herself not to lunge forward and shake the woman. “When was that?”
“As near as I can tell, it was while you were on your way over here.”
“Give me that information now!” Ruby ordered her, but she was already picking up the
clipboard. She slid a piece of paper out from under the form on top and handed it over.
“Thank you,” she prompted politely as Ruby snatched it from her.
“You’re welcome,” Ruby growled over her shoulder, already out of the room.
-
There was a ticket on her windshield, another skirmish in the struggle to keep the area in front
of the municipal complex a strict no-parking zone, this means you, no exceptions, especially cops.
Ruby crumpled it up and tossed it in the backseat as she slid behind the wheel. She clipped Betty
Mura’s home address to her visor. A West Side address, no surprise there considering the girl’s
clothes. But what had she been doing on a roof in east midtown? What had she been doing
anywhere in east midtown, and how had she gotten there? She might have died of natural causes,
but there had definitely been something unusual going on in the last hours of her life.
She went to start the car and then paused. First she should call Rafe Pasco, tell him she had the
girl’s name and address and she would pick him up.
The image of his head resting on the pillow beside her flashed in her mind; irritation surged and
was immediately overwhelmed by the Dread in a renewed assault. She had a sudden strong urge to
close her eyes and let her head fall forward on the steering wheel and stay that way until the next
Ice Age or the heat death of the universe, whichever came second.
She took a steadying breath, popped her cell phone into the cradle on the dashboard, put it on
speaker, and dialed the squad room. Tommy DiCenzo answered; she asked him to put her through to
Pasco.
“Can’t, Ruby. He’s not here; he left.”
 “Where’d he go?” she asked, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew the
answer.
“Coroner’s office called—they identified your rooftop girl from her dental records. He took the
name and address and left.”
“Did he say anything about coming to get me first?” Knowing that he hadn’t.
Tommy hesitated. “Not to me. But I got the impression he thought you already knew, since you
were on your way over to the coroner’s anyway.”
“Shit,” she muttered, and started the car. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know Pasco’s cell phone
number, would you? I don’t have it with me.”
“Hang on—”
“Tommy—” But he had already put the phone down. She could hear the tanky background noise
of the squad room: footsteps, a phone ringing, and Tommy’s voice, distant and indistinct, asking a
question. A few seconds later he picked up the phone again.
“OK, ready?”
“Wait—” She found a pen, looked around hurriedly, and then held the point over the back of her
other hand. “Go.”
He dictated the number to her carefully, saying it twice.
“Thanks, Tommy,” she said, disconnecting before he could say anything else. She dialed the
number he’d given her, then pulled away from the curb as it began to ring.
To her immense frustration, it kept on ringing for what seemed like a hundred times before she
finally heard the click of someone picking up.
“Rafe Pasco speaking—”
“Goddammit, Rafe, why didn’t you call me before—”
“I’m in the Bahamas for two weeks,” his voice went on cheerfully, cutting into her tirade, “and
as you can see, I didn’t pack my cell phone. Sorry about that. But you can phone my house sitter
and talk to her if you want. It’s your call.” There was another click followed by a mechanical female
voice inviting her to leave a message after the beep.
Ruby stabbed the disconnect button and redialed. The same thing happened and she
disconnected again, furious. Was Pasco playing some kind of mind game or had he really just
forgotten to change his voice-mail message after his last vacation? Either way, she was going to
have a hard time not punching him. Weaving in and out of the traffic, she headed for the freeway.
She was merging into traffic from the entrance ramp when all at once she found herself
wondering what she was so frantic about. Pasco had been inconsiderate, even rude, but he must
have figured she’d get the same information from the coroner. Possibly he had assumed she would
head over to the Mura house directly from the coroner. He was her partner, after all—why should
she be concerned about him going to the girl’s house without her?
The Dread clutched her stomach like a fist and she swerved halfway into the breakdown lane.
Behind her, a horn blared long and hard. She slowed down, pulling all the way into the breakdown
lane to let it pass; it whizzed by a fraction of a second later. The Dread maintained its grip on her,
flooding her system and leaving no room for even a flash of fear at her close call. She slowed down
intending to stop, but the Dread wouldn’t let her step on the brake.
 “What the fuck,” she whispered as the car rumbled along. The Dread seemed to have come to
life in her with an intensity beyond anything she had felt in the past. The maddening, horrible thing
about it, however, was that it had not tipped over into terror or panic, which she realized finally was
what she had been waiting for it to do. She had been expecting that as a logical progression—
apprehension turned to dread; dread became fear. But it hadn’t. She had never suspected it was
possible to feel so much dread—Dread—without end. It shouldn’t have been. Because it wasn’t a
steady-state universe.
So what kind of universe was it, then?
This was it, she thought suddenly; this was the crack-up and it was happening in fast motion just
like she had wanted. The thing to do now was stop the car, call Tommy DiCenzo, and tell him she
needed help.
Then she pressed the accelerator, put on her turn signal, and checked the rearview mirror as she
moved back into the travel lane.
-
The well-groomed west side houses slid through the frame of the car windows as Ruby
navigated the wide, clean streets. She didn’t know the West Side quite as well as the rest of the city
and the layout was looser than the strict, organized northland grid or the logical progressions of
midtown and the south side. Developers and contractors had staked out patches of the former
meadowlands and put up subdivisions with names like Saddle Hills and Wildflower Dale and filled
them with split-level ranches for the young middle class and cookie-cutter mansions for the newly
affluent. Ruby had taken small notice of any of it during the years Jake had been growing up. There
was no appeal to the idea of moving to the West Side from downtown—it would have meant two
hours of sheer commuting every day, time she preferred to spend with her son. The downtown
school district had not been cutting-edge, but it hadn’t been anywhere near disastrous, either—
She gave her head a quick shake to clear it. Get a grip, she ordered herself, and tightened her
hands on the steering wheel as if that would help. She checked the address clipped to her visor
again, then paused at the end of the street, craning her neck to read the road sign. It would solve a
lot of problems, she thought, if the cheap-ass city would just put GPS navigation in all the goddam
cars. She turned right onto the cross street and then wondered if she had made a mistake. Had she
already driven along this street? The houses looked familiar.
Well, of course they looked familiar, she realized, irritated—they were all alike. She kept going,
watching the street signs carefully. Christ, it wasn’t only the houses themselves that were all like—it
was also the cars in the driveways, the front lawns, even the toys scattered on the grass. The same
but not the same. Like Alice Nakamura and Betty Mura.
She came to another intersection and paused again, almost driving on before she realized that
the street on her left was the one she wanted. The Dread renewed its intensity as she made the turn,
barely noticing the woman pushing a double stroller with two toddlers in it. Both the woman and
her children watched her pass with alert curiosity on their unremarkable faces. They were the only
people Ruby had seen out walking, but the Dread left no room for her to register as much.
-
The Mura house was not a cookie-cutter mansion—more like a cookie-cutter update of the kind
of big old Victorian Jake and Lita lived in with the kids. Ruby pulled up at the curb instead of
parking in the driveway where a shiny black SUV was blocked in by a not-so-shiny car that she
knew had to belong to Rafe Pasco.
 Ruby sat, staring at the front of the house. It felt as if the Dread were writhing inside her now.
The last thing she wanted to do was go inside. Or rather, it should have been the last thing she
wanted to do. The Dread, alive everywhere in her all the way to her fingertips, to the soles of her
feet, threatened to become even worse if she didn’t.
Moving slowly and carefully, she got out of the car and walked up the driveway, pausing at
Pasco’s car to look in the open driver’s side window. The interior was impossibly clean for a cop or
a geek—no papers, no old sandwich wrappers or empty drink cups. Hell, even the floor mats were
clean, as if they had just been vacuumed. Nothing in the backseat, either, except more clean.
She glanced over at the glove box; then her gaze fell on the trunk release. If she popped it, what
would she find in there, she wondered—a portable car-cleaning kit with a hand vac? A carton of
secret geek files? Or just more clean nothing?
There would be nothing in the trunk. All the secret geek files would be on Pasco’s notebook,
and he probably had that with him. She considered popping the trunk anyway and then moved away
from the car, stopping again to look inside the SUV. The windows were open and the doors were
unlocked—apparently the Muras trusted their neighbors and the people who came to visit them.
Even the alarm was off.
There was a hard-shell CD case sitting on the passenger seat and a thin crescent of disk
protruding from the slot of the player in the dash. A small string of tiny pink and yellow beads
dangled from the rearview mirror along with a miniature pair of fuzzy, hot pink dice. Ruby
wondered if Betty Mura had put them there.
She turned toward the front door and then thought better of it. Instead, she made her way around
the side of the garage and into the unfenced backyard.
Again she stopped. The yard was empty except for a swing set and a brightly painted jungle
gym. Behind the swings was a cement patio with a couple of loungers; under one of them was an
empty plastic glass lying on its side, forgotten and probably considered lost.
The sliding glass patio doors were open, Ruby realized suddenly, although the screen door was
closed and the curtains were drawn. She edged her way along the rear of the garage and sidled up
next to the open door.
“. . . less pleading your case with me,” she heard Pasco saying. “Both girls are dead. It ends
here.”
“But the other girls—,” a man started.
“There are no other girls,” Pasco told him firmly. “Not for you. They aren’t your daughters.”
Ruby frowned. Daughters? So the girls really had been twins?
“But they are—,” protested a woman.
“You can’t think that way,” Pasco said. “Once there’s been a divergence, those lives—your own,
your children’s, everyone’s—are lost to you. To act as if it were otherwise is the same as if you went
next door to your neighbors’ house and took over everything they owned. Including their children.”
“I told you, we didn’t come here to kidnap Betty,” the man said patiently. “I saw her records—
the man showed me. He told us about her aneurysm. He said it was almost a sure thing that it would
kill her before Alice’s heart gave out. Then we could get her heart for transplant knowing that it
would be a perfect match for Alice—”
“You heartless bastard,” said a second male voice identical to the one that had been speaking.
How many people were in that room, Ruby wondered.
“She was going to die anyway,” said the first man. “There was nothing anyone could do about it
—”
 “The hell there wasn’t. If we had known, we could have taken her to a hospital for emergency
surgery,” a woman said angrily. “They can fix those things now, you know. Or aren’t they as
advanced where you come from?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Pasco said, raising his voice to talk over them. “Because Alice died
first after all.”
“Yes,” said the woman bitterly, speaking through tears. It sounded like the same woman who
had been talking so angrily a few moments before, but Ruby had a feeling it wasn’t.
“And do you know why that is?” Pasco asked in a stern, almost paternal tone of voice.
“The man was wrong,” said the tearful woman.
“Or he lied,” said the angry one.
“No, it was because you came here and you brought Alice with you,” Pasco said. “Once you did
that, all bets, as they say here, were off. The moment you came in, it threw everything out of kilter
because you don’t belong here. You’re extra—surplus. One too many times three. It interrupted the
normal flow of progress; things scattered with such force that there were even natural-law
anomalies. This morning, a very interesting woman said to me, ‘Human beings can make a mess out
of chaos.’ I couldn’t tell her how extraordinarily right she was, of course, so I couldn’t stop
laughing. She must have thought I was crazy.”
Ruby pressed her lips together, thinking that he couldn’t be any crazier than she was herself
right now; it was just that she was a lot more confused.
Abruptly, she heard the sound of the front door opening, followed by new voices as a few more
people entered the house. This was turning into quite a party; too bad Pasco had left her off the
guest list.
“Finally,” she heard him saying. “I was about to call you again, find out what happened to you.”
“These West Side streets are confusing,” a woman answered. This was a completely new voice,
but Ruby found it strangely familiar. “It’s not a nice, neat grid like northland, you know.”
“Complain all you want later,” Pasco said. “I want to wrap this up as soon as possible.”
“I don’t know about that,” said another man. “Have you looked out front?”
Pasco groaned. “What now?”
“There’s a car parked at the curb, right in front of the house,” the man said. “I don’t think that’s
a coincidence.”
“Oh, hell,” Pasco said. She heard his footsteps thumping hurriedly away from the patio door—
probably going to look out the window at the car—and then coming back again. She straightened
her shoulders and, refusing to give herself time to think about it, she yanked open the screen door
and stepped into the house, flinging aside the curtain.
“I’m right h—” Her voice died in her throat and she could only stand, frozen in place, one hand
still clutching the edge of the curtain while she stared at Rafe Pasco. And a man who seemed to be
his older, much taller brother. And two identical Japanese couples sitting side by side on a long sofa
with their hands cuffed in front of them.
And, standing behind the couch, her newly retired ex-partner, Rita Castillo.
-
“Now, don’t panic,” Pasco said after might have been ten minutes or ten months.
“I’m not panicking,” Ruby managed in a hoarse voice. She drew a long, shaky breath. Inside
her, the Dread was no longer vibrating or writing or swelling; it had finally reached full power. This
was what she had been Dreading all this time, day after day. Except now that she was finally face-
to-face with it, she had no idea what it actually was.
“I can assure you that you’re not in any danger,” Pasco added.
 “I know,” she said faintly.
“No, you don’t.”
“OK,” Ruby said. Obviously he was in charge, so she would defer willingly, without protest.
“The sensation you’re feeling right now has nothing to do with your actual safety,” Pasco went
on, speaking carefully and distinctly, as if he were trying to talk her down from a high ledge. Or
maybe a bad acid trip was more like it, she thought, glancing at the Japanese couples. The Muras
and the Nakamuras, apparently. She wondered which was which. “What it actually is, is a kind of
allergic reaction.”
“Oh?” She looked around the room. Everyone else seemed to understand what he was talking
about, including the Japanese couples. “What am I allergic to?”
“It’s something in the nature of a disturbance.”
Oh, God, no, she thought, now he’s going to say something about “the force.” I’ll find out
they’re all actually a lunatic cult and Pasco’s the leader. And I’m trapped in a house with them. Her
gaze drifted over to Rita. No, Rita would never have let herself get sucked into anything like that.
Would she?
Rita shifted, becoming slightly uncomfortable under Ruby’s gaze. “Do I know you?” she asked
finally.
Ruby’s jaw dropped. She felt as if Rita had slapped her.
“No, you don’t,” Pasco said over his shoulder. “She knows someone like you. Where you come
from, the two of you never met. Here, you were partners.”
“Wow,” Rita said, shaking her head. “It never ceases to amaze me, all that what-might-have-
been stuff.” She smiled at Ruby, giving an apologetic shrug.
“And where does she come from?” Ruby wanted to know. Her voice was a little stronger now.
“That doesn’t matter,” Pasco told her. “Besides, the less you know, the better you’ll feel.”
“Really?” She made a skeptical face.
“No,” he said, resigned. “Actually, you’ll feel not quite so bad. Not quite so much Dread. It may
not be much, but any relief is welcome. Isn’t it?” He took a small step toward her. “And you’ve
been feeling very bad for a while now, haven’t you? Though it wasn’t quite so awful in the
beginning.”
Ruby didn’t say anything.
“Only you’re not sure exactly when it started,” Pasco continued, moving a little closer. Ruby
wondered why he was being so cautious with her. Was he afraid of what she might do? “I can tell
you. It started when the Nakamuras arrived here. Ostensibly from the Cayman Islands. When they
stepped out of their own world and into this one. Into yours.”
Ruby took a deep breath and let it out, willing herself to be less tense. She looked around,
spotted an easy chair opposite the couch, and leaned on the back of it. “All right,” she said to Pasco,
“who are you and what the hell are you talking about?”
Pasco hesitated. “I’m a cop.”
“No,” Ruby said with exaggerated patience, “I’m a cop. Try again.”
“It’s the truth,” Pasco insisted. “I really am a cop. Of sorts.”
“What sort?” Ruby asked. “Geek squad? Not Homicide.”
He hesitated again. “Crimes Against Persons and Property. This includes identity theft, which is
not a geek squad job in my line of law enforcement.”
Ruby wanted to sit down more than anything in the world now, but she forced herself to stay on
her feet. To make Pasco look at her on the same level, as an equal. “Go on.”
 “It’s my job to make sure that people who regret what might’ve been don’t get so carried away
that they try to do something unlawful to try to rectify it. Even if that means preventing a young girl
from getting the heart transplant that will save her life.”
Ruby looked over at the people sitting handcuffed on the sofa. They all looked miserable and
angry.
“An unscrupulous provider of illegal goods and services convinced a couple of vulnerable
parents that they could save their daughter’s life if they went to a place where two other parents
very similar to themselves were living a life in which things had gone a bit differently. Where their
daughter, who was named Betty instead of Alice, had an undetected aneurysm instead of a heart
condition.”
Light began to dawn for Ruby. Her mind returned to the idea of being trapped in a house with a
bunch of lunatic cultists. Then she looked at Rita. Where you come from, the two of you never met.
“Many of my cases are much simpler,” Pasco went on. “People who want to win instead of lose
—a hand of cards, a race, the lottery. Who think they’d have been better off if they’d turned left
instead of right, said yes instead of no.” He spread his hands. “But we can’t let them do that, of
course. We can’t let them take something from its rightful owner.”
“And by ‘we’ you mean . . . ?” Ruby waited; he didn’t answer. “All right, then let’s try this: you
can’t possibly be the same kind of cop I am. I’m local, equally subject to the laws that I enforce.
But you’re not. Are you.”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Pasco replied. “I have to obey those laws, but in order to enforce
them, I have to live outside the system they apply to.”
She looked at Rita again. Or rather, the woman she had thought was Rita. “And what’s your
story? He said you’re from a place where we never met. Does your being here with him mean you
don’t live there anymore?”
Not-Rita nodded. “Someone stole my identity and I couldn’t get it back. Things didn’t end
well.”
“And all you could do was become a sort of a cop?” Ruby asked.
“We have to go,” said Pasco’s taller brother before the woman could answer. He could have
been an alternative version of Pasco, Ruby thought, from a place where she hadn’t met him, either.
Would that be the same place that Not-Rita came from? She decided she didn’t want to know and
hoped none of them would feel compelled to tell her.
“We’ve still got time,” Pasco said, looking at his watch, which seemed to be a very complicated
device. “But there’s no good in pushing things right down to the wire. Take them out through the
garage and put them in the SUV—”
“Where are you taking them?” Ruby asked as taller Pasco and not-Rita got the Japanese couples
on their feet.
Pasco looked surprised by the question; it was a moment or two before he could answer. “To
court. A kind of court.”
“Ah,” Ruby said. “Would that be for an arraignment? A sort of arraignment?”
He nodded and Ruby knew he was lying. She had no idea how she knew, but she did, just as she
knew it was the first time he had ever lied to her. She let it go, watching as the other two herded the
Japanese couples toward the kitchen.
“Wait,” she said suddenly. Everyone stopped, turning to look at her. “Which ones are the
Nakamuras?”
Judging from the group reaction, she had definitely asked the wrong question. Even the couples
looked dismayed, as if she had threatened them in some fashion.
 “Does it matter?” Pasco said after a long moment.
“No, I guess not.”
And it didn’t, not to her or anyone else, she realized, not now, not ever again. When you got
caught in this kind of identity theft, you probably had to give identity up completely. Exactly what
that meant she had no idea, but she knew it couldn’t have been very pleasant.
Pasco nodded and the other two escorted the couples out of the room. A few moments later,
Ruby heard the kitchen door leading to the garage open and close.
“How did you know the Nakamuras would come here?” Ruby asked Pasco.
“I didn’t. Just dumb luck—they were here when I arrived, so I took them all into custody.”
“And they didn’t resist or try to get away?”
“There’s nowhere for them to go. The Nakamuras can’t survive indefinitely here unless they
could somehow replace the Muras.”
“Then why did you arrest the Muras?”
“They were going to let the Nakamuras supplant them while they moved on to a place where
their daughter hadn’t died.”
The permutations began to pile up in Ruby’s brain; she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment,
cutting off the train of thought before it made her dizzy.
“All right,” she said. “But what about this master criminal who convinced the Nakamuras to do
all this in the first place? How could he, she—whatever—know about Betty Mura’s aneurysm?”
Pasco’s face became thoughtful again and she could practically see his mind working at
choosing the right words. “Outside the system, there is access to certain kinds of information about
the elements within it. Features are visible outside that can’t be discerned inside.
“Unfortunately, making that information available inside never goes well. It’s like poison.
Things begin to malfunction.”
“Is that really why Alice Nakamura died before the other girl?” Ruby asked.
“It was an extra contributing factor, but it also had to do with the Nakamuras being in a world
where they didn’t belong. As I said.” Pasco crossed the room to close the patio door and lock it.
“What I was referring to were certain anomalies of time and space.”
Ruby shook her head, not understanding.
“It’s how Betty Mura ended up on a rooftop in midtown,” he clarified. “She just went there,
from wherever she had been at the time. Undoubtedly the shock blew out the weakness in her brain
and killed her.”
“Jesus,” Ruby muttered under her breath. “Don’t think I’ll be including that in my report—”
Abruptly, the memory of Rafe Pasco lying in bed with her, his head resting on the pillow and
looking at her with profound regret, lit up in her mind. So sorry to have dropped in from nowhere
without calling first. Not a dream? He might tell her if she asked him, but she wasn’t sure that was
an answer she really wanted.
“That’s all right,” Pasco said. “I will. Slightly different case, of course, and the report will go
elsewhere.”
“Of course.” Ruby’s knees were aching. She finally gave up and sat down on the edge of the
chair. “Should I assume that all the information you showed me about the Nakamuras—passports,
the IRS, all that—was fabricated?”
“I adapted it from their existing records. Alice’s passport worried me, though. It’s not exactly a
forgery—they brought it with them and I have no idea why they left it or any other identifying
materials behind.”
“You don’t have kids, do you,” Ruby said, amused in spite of everything.
 “No, I don’t,” he said, mildly surprised.
“If you did, you’d know why they couldn’t just leave her to go nameless into an unmarked
grave.”
Pasco nodded. “The human factor.” Outside, a horn honked. “It’s time to go. Or do you want to
stay here?”
Ruby stood up, looking around. “What’s going to happen to this place? And all the other things
in the Muras’ lives?”
“We have ways of papering over the cracks and stains, so to speak,” he told her. “Their daughter
was just found dead. If they don’t come back here for a while and then decide not to come back at
all, I don’t think anyone will find that terribly strange.”
“But their families—”
“There’s a lot to take care of,” Pasco said, talking over her. “Even if I had the time to cover
every detail for you, I would not. It comes dangerously close to providing information that doesn’t
belong here. I could harm the system. I’m sure I’ve told you too much as it is.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Take me to ‘court,’ too?”
“Only if you do something you shouldn’t.” He ushered her through the house to the front door.
“OK, but just tell me this, then.” She put her hand on the doorknob before he could. “What are
you going to do when the real Rafe Pasco comes back from the Bahamas?”
He stared at her in utter bewilderment. “What?”
“That is what you did, isn’t it? Waited for him to go on vacation and then borrowed his identity
so you could work on this case?” When he still looked blank, she told him about listening to the
message on his cell phone.
“Ah, that,” he said, laughing a little. “No, I am the real Rafe Pasco. I forgot to change my voice-
mail message after I came back from vacation. Then I decided to leave it that way. Just as a joke. It
confuses the nuisance callers.”
It figured, Ruby thought. She opened the door and stepped outside, Pasco following. Behind his
car was a small white van; the print on the side claimed that it belonged to Five-Star Electrical
Services, Re-Wiring Specialists, which Ruby thought also figured. Not-Rita was sitting in the
driver’s seat, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. The tall guy was sitting in the SUV.
“So that’s it?” Ruby said, watching Pasco lock the front door. “You close down your case and I
just go home now, knowing everything that I know, and that’s all right with you?”
“Shouldn’t I trust you?” he asked her.
“Should I trust you?” she countered. “How do I know I’m not going to get a service call from an
electrician and end up with all new wiring, too?”
“I told you,” he said patiently, “only if you use any of what you know to engage in something
illegal. And you won’t.”
“What makes you so goddam sure about that?” she demanded.
Forehead creasing with concern, Pasco looked into her face. She was about to say something
else when something happened.
All at once, her mind opened up and she found that she was looking at an enormous panorama
—all the lost possibilities, the missed opportunities, the bad calls, a lifetime of uncorrected
mistakes, missteps, and fumbles. All those things were a single big picture—perhaps the proverbial
big picture, the proverbial forest you sometimes couldn’t see for the proverbial trees. But she was
seeing it now and seeing it all at once.
It was too much. She would never be able to recall it as an image, to look at it again in the
future. Concentrating, she struggled to focus on portions of it instead:
 Jake’s father, going back to his wife, unaware that she was pregnant—she had always been sure
that had been no mistake, but now she knew there was a world where he had known and stayed with
her, and one where he had known and left anyway—
Jake, growing up interested in music, not computers; getting mixed up with drugs with Ricky
Carstairs; helping Ricky Carstairs straighten out; coming out to her at sixteen and introducing his
boyfriend; marrying his college sweetheart instead of Lita; adopting children with his husband,
Dennis; getting the Rhodes Scholarship instead of someone else; moving to California instead of
Boston—
The mammogram and the biopsy results; the tests left too late—
Wounding the suspect in the Martinez case instead of killing him; missing her shot and taking a
bullet instead while someone else killed him; having the decision by the shooting board go against
her; retiring after twenty years instead of staying on; getting fed up and quitting after ten; going to
night school to finish her degree—
Jury verdicts, convictions instead of acquittals and vice versa; catching Darren Hightower after
the first victim instead of after the seventh—
Or going into a different line of work altogether—
Or finding out about all of this before now, long before now when she was still young and full
of energy, looking for an edge and glad to find it. Convincing herself that she was using it not for
her own personal gain but as a force for good. Something that would save lives, literally and
figuratively, expose the corrupt, and reward the good and the worthy. One person could make a
difference—wasn’t that what everyone always said? The possibilities could stretch so far beyond
herself:
Government with a conscience instead of agendas; schools and hospitals instead of wars; no
riots, no assassinations, no terror, no Lee Harvey Oswald, no James Earl Ray, no Sirhan Sirhan, no
9/11—
And maybe even no nine-year-old boy found naked and dead in a Dumpster—
Abruptly she found herself leaning heavily against the side of the Mura house, straining to keep
from falling down while the Dread tried to turn her inside out.
Rafe Pasco cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”
She looked at him, miserable.
“That’s what makes me so certain,” he went on. “Your, uh, allergic reaction. If there’s any sort
of disruption here, no matter how large or small, you’ll feel it. And it won’t feel good. And if you
tried to do something yourself—” He made a small gesture at her. “Well, you see what happened
when you only thought about it.”
“Great,” she said shakily. “What do I do now, spend the rest of my life trying not to think
impure thoughts?”
Pasco’s expression turned sheepish. “That’s not what I meant. You feel this way because of the
current circumstances. Once the alien elements have been removed from your world”—he glanced
at the SUV—“you’ll start to feel better. The bad feeling will fade away.”
“And how long is that going to take?” she asked him.
“You’ll be all right.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I think I’ve given you enough answers already.” He started for his car and she caught his arm.
“Just one more thing,” she said. “Really. Just one.”
Pasco looked as if he was deciding whether to shake her off or not. “What?” he said finally.
 “This so-called allergic reaction of mine. Is there any reason for it or is it just one of those
things? Like hay fever or some kind of weakness.”
“Some kind of weakness.” Pasco chuckled without humor. “Sometimes when there’s been a
divergence in one’s own line, there’s a certain . . . sensitivity.”
Ruby nodded with resignation. “Is that another way of saying that you’ve given me enough
answers already?”
Pasco hesitated. “All those could-have-beens, those might-have-dones and if-I-knew-thens you
were thinking.”
The words were out of her mouth before she even knew what she was going to say. “They all
happened.”
“I know you won’t do anything,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning toward her slightly,
“because you have. And the conscience that bothers you still bothers you, even at long distance.
Even in the hypothetical.”
Ruby made a face. “My guilty conscience? Is that really what it is?”
“I don’t know how else to put it.”
“Well.” She took a breath, feeling a little bit steadier. “I guess that’ll teach me to screw around
with the way things should be.”
Pasco frowned impatiently. “It’s not should or shouldn’t. It’s just what is.”
“With no second chances.”
“With second chances, third chances, hundredth chances, millionth chances,” Pasco corrected
her. “All the chances you want. But not a second chance to have a first chance.”
Ruby didn’t say anything.
“This is what poisons the system and makes everything go wrong. You live within the system,
within the mechanism. It’s not meant to be used or manipulated by an individual. To be taken
personally. It’s a system, a process. It’s nothing personal.”
“Hey, I thought it was time to go,” the man in the SUV called impatiently.
Pasco waved at him and then turned to Ruby again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You will?” she said, surprised. But he was already getting into his car and she had no idea
whether he had heard her or not. And he had given her enough answers already anyway, she
thought, watching all three vehicles drive away. He had given her enough answers already and he
would see her tomorrow.
And how would that go, she wondered, now that she knew what she knew? How would it be
working with him? Would the Dread really fade away if she saw him every day, knowing and
remembering?
Would she be living the rest of her life or was she just stuck with it?
Pasco had given her enough answers already and there was no one else to ask.
Ruby walked across the Muras’ front lawn to her car, thinking that it felt as if the Dread had
already begun to lift a little. That was something, at least. Her guilty conscience; she gave a small,
humorless laugh. Now that was something she had never suspected would creep up on her. Time
marched on and one day you woke up to find you were a somewhat dumpy, graying, middle-aged
homicide detective with twenty-five years on the job and a hefty lump of guilty conscience and
regret. And if you wanted to know why, to understand, well, that was just too bad because you had
already been given too many answers already. Nothing personal.
She started the car and drove away from the empty house, through the meandering streets, and
did no better finding her way out of the west side than she had finding her way in.
-
 [Among Strangers]
-
Stilled Life
-
When the weather gets warm, the human statues come out in droves. In Covent Garden,
especially. As you leave the tube station, turn right to go down to the covered piazza called the
Apple Market and you’ll see them every ten feet on either side. Young women and men painted
white or silver or gold or even black, head to foot, clothes and all, standing on a stool or a box or an
overturned bucket, holding impossibly still in some marvelous pose. Besides making a little money,
a lot of them are hoping to get spotted by one of those agencies that provide entertainment for
corporate parties or celebrity bashes. Either could be lucrative, but Sophie was hoping more for the
latter than the former. Corporate parties were good steady gigs, but even just one celebrity bash
could make you a star. Sophie wanted stardom and she didn’t bother hiding it.
Sophie was like that—unconditionally, sometimes brutally honest. Personally, I’ve always
thought that excessive honesty was vastly overrated, so exactly how we became friends is a mystery
to me. We had very little in common—she was London-born-and-bred, I was a U.S. ex-pat; she was
in her late twenties, I was caught in the headlights of my oncoming fifties; she was a beauty, a
classic English rose with fair hair, luminous eyes, and porcelain skin . . . I was caught in the
headlights of my oncoming fifties—go figure. Call it a chick thing—sisterhood is powerful.
Whatever our bond was, it was strong enough that we could accept each other even if we didn’t
always understand each other. I mean, I wouldn’t have tried the human statue thing on the street
even in my early twenties, and God knows I’d tried plenty back then. But I didn’t mind helping her
out with her paint and her costume and props when we both had the same day off from Fresh 4 U.
That was how we met—she’d been working at the health food store for almost a year when I
was hired. We bonded among the organic produce and fair-trade chocolate when we weren’t
standing at adjacent cash registers and ringing up the lunchtime rush of health-conscious office
workers hoping that the antioxidants in the salads could counter the cumulative effects of twenty
cigarettes a day. Some of them were also hoping to attract Sophie’s attention, but she made it clear
to all of them she wasn’t interested.
“That kind of distraction would only interfere with the stillness,” she told me once, as I was
helping her into her alabaster goddess getup. This was a Grecian-style gown that she had bleached,
starched, painted, and varnished to the point where it actually could have stood up without her. How
she tolerated it next to her skin I couldn’t imagine. She claimed that coating herself with several
layers of greasepaint made it bearable; I didn’t even like to touch the thing. The wig was even
worse.
“If you say so,” I replied.
She chuckled and handed me a tube of clown white so I could touch up her back. “I don’t expect
you to understand, Lee. You’re not a statue.”
Neither are you, I wanted to tell her, but I made myself shut up. Saying something like that to
her just before she went into her act would screw her up completely and ruin the whole day—spoil
her stillness. Ironic, I thought, that someone who worked as a statue could be so easily psyched out.
-
 Besides the alabaster goddess, Sophie had two other personae: the bronze Amazon and the silver
lady. The bronze Amazon wore more paint than clothing so she only came out in very warm
weather, and only when Sophie was feeling particularly good about her body. The silver lady was,
to my uncultured, American philistine’s eye, a cross between a hood ornament and a second-place
athletic trophy, which makes it sound a lot tackier than it looked. There was nothing tacky about the
silver lady just as there was nothing sleazy about the bronze Amazon. I just couldn’t take any of it
as seriously as Sophie or her fellow statues and their helpers.
Chalk it up to my age. To me, the whole human-statue thing is the twenty-first-century version
of street mimes. It was less strenuous, and it didn’t involve someone in whiteface following you
down the street making fun of the way you walked, which definitely counted in its favor. But
anything done for pocket change was a paying-your-dues thing, not a vocational calling.
I did try talking to Sophie about her plans for the future; she was rather vague about everything.
I supposed that only made sense. I mean, working as a human statue didn’t suggest a specific next
step, not like singing or dancing or riding a unicycle while juggling chainsaws.
“I have a pretty good singing voice,” Sophie said when I finally managed to pin her down. We
were restocking organic greens in the produce section. “But it’s nothing special—one of a million,
not one in a million, and I’m not limber enough to be a real dancer. I’m not coordinated enough to
even look at a unicycle. Hell, it took me most of a week just to learn how to ride a regular bike. And
chainsaw juggling is so last century.”
“So you’re a human statue because holding still is something you can do?” I said, examining a
head of crinkly green lettuce for spots.
“It’s not just holding still. It’s the stillness.” She was smiling dreamily, distantly. “I like the
stillness. I like the way it builds from a little tiny speck deep inside. It swells, spreads all through
me. When I get it to go just right, the whole world is flowing around me while I just stay.”
“Like a rock in a stream?”
Sophie shook her head. “Better than that.”
“Sounds very . . . stoic.”
“Does, doesn’t it?” She beamed at me. “Stoic. That’s a good word, stoic. Stoic. Strong. We shall
not be moved.”
I grinned. “‘Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling upon her mat.’”
She paused with a head of curly green in one hand and a softball-sized radicchio in the other.
“Say again?”
“It’s from a poem by Emily Dickinson. ‘The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door;
on her divine majority, obtrude no more.’”
“I love it,” Sophie said. “‘On her divine majority, obtrude no more.’ That’s a good mantra for
stillness.”
“Well, a long one, anyway.” I shook my head and put a head of cos in the good pile. “Stillness is
another thing I don’t understand. When I was your age, I couldn’t hold still for two seconds.”
Sophie threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, man, what is this when-I-was-your-age shite?
You make it sound like you’re old enough to be my mother when I’m pretty sure you’re not.”
“Actually, I think I am,” I said, wincing.
“Bollocks.”
“Well, technically old enough if not really mature enough. If you know what I mean.”
“Ah, right,” she conceded, mirroring my wince. “Sometimes when people come in here with
little kids it suddenly occurs to me that I’m old enough to be their mother.” Sophie gave a small
shudder. “Really weirds me out.”
 “What about when you’re a statue? Does it weird you out then?”
“Nah. Statues can’t have children.” She looked down at the crate on the floor between us. “They
don’t have kids and they don’t get older.”
I gave a short laugh. “Everything that exists gets older. Statues are no exception.”
Sophie tossed a wilted mass of curly-red in the bad basket. “Not the same way people do.”
“Oh, no, honey,” I said unhappily. “Please don’t tell me you’re one of those people who thinks
‘age’ is a dirty word.”
“Oh, come on, Lee—are you saying you wouldn’t stay young if you could?”
“Got it in one, girlfriend.”
“Bollocks.”
“Why? Can you really not conceive of someone who doesn’t want to stay young?”
She stared at me incredulously. “If I had the choice, I’d take it in a minute. And you’ll never
make me believe that you wouldn’t, either.”
I thought it over while we picked through some more greens. A dismaying amount of it was
wilted. Stored too cold. Finally, I said, “Would you go back to high school? Pardon me, secondary
school.”
Sophie’s lovely English Rose face took on a revolted expression. “I knew what you meant. And
the answer is a resounding hell, no, I’d rather die in a fiery car crash, thank you very much.”
“OK, how about elementary school? That was usually a lot more fun for most people.”
“Uh-uh, not there, either.”
“Well, all right, then,” I said. “Now you know how I feel.”
Her revulsion changed to puzzlement. “About what?”
“About staying young. I’m glad I was young, of course. I didn’t waste much time being
sensible, I took full advantage of my youth—I did all kinds of reckless, crazy things, I made a
shitload of mistakes and generally made a right prat of myself, as you Brits put it. Je ne regret
rien, pardon my French.”
Sophie looked pained. “I will but the French wouldn’t.”
“I’m also glad I was young when I was young,” I added. “Oh, what a time it was, there were
giants in those days, blah-blah-blah. But I’m over it.”
I could see she was mulling it over. “Staying young and going back to school isn’t the same
thing,” she said finally. “Think about it. I mean, really think about it. Having a young body, more
flexible, without so many aches and pains? No wrinkles? No gray hair? Never getting tired, having
limitless amounts of energy? What about those things?”
I started to feel more than a little defensive. “I don’t think I’m allthat wrinkled. Gray hair—” I
shrugged. “There are people who pay big money to get these highlights. And as for the rest of it,
well, I don’t remember having limitless amounts of energy and never getting tired, but then, I
wasn’t actually all that flexible back then, so I wasn’t wearing myself out doing gymnastics, either.”
“But what about all those mistakes you claim you made?” Sophie gave me a sly grin. “You had
to have a lot of energy for those, didn’t you?”
I shrugged. “Sleep all day, party all night.”
Her eyes widened. “Christ, what were you, a vampire?”
“Of course not. Today you’d have to be a vampire. Back then you only had to be a hippie. Never
mind,” I added in response to her puzzled look. “Different world.” I tossed another wilted head of
curly green into the bad pile and paused to massage the back of my neck.
“Did I mention aches and pains?” Sophie asked playfully, watching me.
 “Hey, if people my age didn’t have aches and pains, the ibuprofen companies might go out of
business, which would lead to a worldwide economic crash and depression. You think we want that
on our conscience?”
“Very funny,” Sophie said, laughing. “But seriously—”
“But seriously, yourself, girlfriend. If that’s what getting older means to you—aches and pains
and gray hair and wrinkles, you’re a lot shallower than I thought you were.”
Sophie looked as if I had slapped her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to call you shallow,” I went on. “But that’s not all there is to getting
older.”
“Okay,” she said. “So tell me some wonderful things.”
I hesitated. “That’s like you asking me to tell you how wonderful it is to be me and I just can’t.
It’s my Catholic school education—I had modesty beaten into me by a succession of husky nuns
with thick rulers.”
We both laughed and went on sorting lettuce while I wondered if she knew just how badly I had
copped out with my modesty excuse. Tell her what’s so great about getting older. Well, Sophie,
honey, first of all, you’re still alive. Second, you’re, uh, still alive. And third, uh . . . well, you see,
girlfriend, whatever else might be good about getting older, still being alive trumps them all. The
whole idea is to keep breathing and last as long as you can.
-
Sophie quit while I was off sick for a few days. I didn’t find out till I came back and met the
gangly eighteen-year-old guy replacing her. He was recently out of school, friendly and polite and
reasonably intelligent, and everybody had already taken a liking to him. I felt betrayed and
abandoned.
When my shift ended, I headed straight over to Covent Garden. I wasn’t really expecting Sophie
to talk to me, about the store or anything else. I just felt the overwhelming and rather selfish need to
show her my unhappy face.
It was after three when I stepped out of the tube station and headed down toward the piazza. The
intermittent sun had done a disappearing act and it was misting out (never turn your back on a
London sky, as I heard a customer say once) but there were still a lot of people milling about on the
street. No, not milling—they were assembled, watching something.
No, not merely watching—staring, hard. Transfixed.
There was only one human statue on the walkway but, for a moment, I actually wasn’t sure that
it was Sophie. She was the bronze Amazon and there was no mistaking that—the spear, the helmet
and wig, the torn cropped shirt, the modified swimsuit bottom, that perfect bronze-metal color
coating her well-conditioned body. She stood with her feet about shoulders’ width apart, just
starting to raise the spear in her right hand, as if she had glimpsed some hazard that had yet to show
itself clearly. Her eyes never blinked, at least not that I saw, nor could I see any sign that she was
taking even the shallowest of shallow breaths. Her other arm was by her side, bent slightly at the
elbow, wrist starting to flex, ready to provide counterbalance if/when she threw her spear.
Perhaps it hadn’t been the weather that had driven away all the other statues. The toy soldier, the
clown, the rag doll, the fox, Marilyn Monroe—I could picture them stepping down from their boxes
and stools, shouldering their gym bags and retreating, defeated by Sophie’s power. It was something
well beyond what the word stillness had meant to me, well beyond what I had seen Sophie do in the
past. Maybe even well beyond the motionless nature of a real statue.
 Fascinated, I eased my way forward through the crowd, which was also very still and quiet—so
quiet, in fact, that it felt wrong even to move, but I wanted to get up as close as possible. I was ten
feet away from her when I saw something in her face change. It was barely there, not even so much
as a shimmer in the heavy mist. I knew it meant that she had seen me.
Her stillness didn’t crack for another ten or fifteen seconds, when I was almost within arm’s
reach. And that was exactly what happened: it cracked. Not visibly or audibly and yet it was, in a
way—visible on the subliminal level, audible only to the subconscious. A few seconds later, her
stillness flaked away and was gone, and the crowd was staring at nothing more than a scantily-clad
woman in bronze body paint. The heavy mist deepened into rain.
Umbrellas went up and flapped open; voices murmured, rose, called to each other as people
scattered, off to the piazza or the nearby shops and bars. I stayed where I was and watched Sophie
come out of her pose like someone coming out of a dream.
“Dammit, Lee.” Her shoulders slumped as she looked down at me. “This is all your fault.”
“How?” I forced a laugh. “I didn’t make it rain.”
We both knew that wasn’t what she meant but she let it go for the moment as she climbed down
carefully from her pedestal. A real pedestal, or at least real enough. I rapped my knuckles on it.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked.
“Who ever heard of a statue on a stepladder?” Sophie said irritably.
“Good point,” I said. “Does it help? With your stillness, I mean.”
“Can’t say, really.” She eyed me darkly. “But I can tell you what doesn’t.”
“I’m sorry I broke your concentration,” I told her. “Truly, I am. I didn’t mean to.”
Sophie said nothing as she took off her sandals and padded barefoot to the covered space in
front of a clothing store to get her duffel bag. I was surprised that she had just left it sitting there and
even more surprised that Covent Garden hadn’t been closed down so the bag could be removed and
blown up by the bomb squad.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I was just upset when I came into work today and found out you
quit.”
Sighing, she removed the helmet and the wig. “You didn’t really think I was going to devote my
life to organic groceries, did you? Sorting wilted lettuces and spotty apples?” She reached into the
bag and pulled out a towel to dry the helmet.
“Why don’t you wipe off the bronze and let me buy you a pint?” I said. “Or even an early
dinner?”
She bit her lip, staring at something over my right shoulder. I turned to follow her gaze and was
startled to find a man leaning against a pillar. I thought he must have just sneaked up behind me
because I couldn’t believe I’d walked right past someone that close without noticing. He was an
inch or two shorter than I was, dressed in an assortment of things, none of which went with
anything else, a bit like an extra in a production of Oliver!, but without the theatrical flamboyance.
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Up to you, luv.”
Sophie didn’t answer. She had the apprehensive look of someone afraid of saying the wrong
thing.
“You know that I’ve nothing against you eating,” he added.
I leaned in toward her and lowered my voice. “Who’s that? Have you got a manager now?”
“Something like that,” she said, almost too softly for me to hear. She fiddled with the drawstring
on the duffel bag. “Lee’s a friend from the shop,” she said to the guy, then added, “Someone I know,
that I used to work with,” as if she were correcting herself.
He frowned at me the way people do when they’re measuring something.
 “She used to help me out sometimes with my costumes and paint,” Sophie went on, a bit
urgently. “And she covered for me at the shop, too, before I quit.”
“I told you, luv, I’ve nothing against you eating.” All at once he was nose to nose with her
before I could even register that he had moved. “Here, I’ll take care of your bag so you don’t have
to lug it around.”
Sophie was slightly taller than he was but she seemed to shrink under his gaze. “I won’t be
long,” she said, still in that urgent, pleading tone. A knot gathered in my chest. I didn’t see him nod
or make any other sign but apparently Sophie had. She reached into the duffel bag, took out a loose
shift, and slipped it over her head. “Right. So let’s go, yes?”
She was still very bronze. If she didn’t mind, I didn’t, either, but she seemed to have forgotten
she was barefoot. I pointed at her feet. A little flustered, she pulled the sandals out of her bag,
stepping into them as we walked off together.
-
I had been thinking in terms of sandwiches, but since her manager had gone to the trouble of
saying not once but twice that he had nothing against her eating, I decided to blow the budget at a
nearby brasserie. On my salary, that really was blowing the budget—I’d be living on the store’s
cast-offs for a while but I didn’t care.
The brasserie hostess didn’t even blink at Sophie’s body paint, although she did look
significantly toward the loo. Sophie took the hint and excused herself while the hostess showed me
to a table. I ordered a large platter of potato skins as a starter and two glasses of red wine while I
waited. When she returned from the ladies’, less bronze but still somewhat stained, she didn’t look
thrilled.
“I worked up quite an appetite today,” I said as she sank into her chair, “and it’s been a long
time since I’ve indulged in comfort food. Hope you don’t mind too much.”
“I don’t mind you indulging,” she said, emphasizing the you slightly but pointedly. “But you
really should have asked before ordering wine for me.”
“Hey, my treat, remember?”
“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it. I do. It’s just that I’m off alcohol completely.”
I wondered if she realized she was holding the wine glass and gazing at the shiraz with a
longing that bordered on lust. “One glass of red wine with a meal is healthy,” I said. “Didn’t you
read any of the nutritional propaganda at the store?”
She chuckled a little. “Red wine and potato skins? Very haute cuisine.”
“This is just the appetizer. Here comes our waitress to take the rest of our order.”
“No!” She didn’t actually yell but she spoke loudly enough to make the people on either side of
us look up to see if someone was about to make a scene. “I mean—well, it’s just that I don’t know if
I can eat more than what we’ve got right now,” Sophie added, slightly apologetic. “That’s a whole
lot of potato skins.”
“Give us a little while with our appetizer,” I told the waitress, grabbing Sophie’s menu before
she could get rid of it. “I think we just have to make up our minds.”
Sophie frowned annoyance at me as the waitress moved off to take someone else’s order. “In
case you’ve forgotten, I can’t work if my stomach’s too full.”
“But it’s the end of the day. You haven’t taken to working after dark, have you?”
She sighed, put-upon. “Did it occur to you that I might have a gig this evening?”
Now I felt like a complete idiot. “Oh, shit, Sophie. No, it didn’t. I’m so sorry.”
Her grin was a bit mean as she pushed her wine glass over to me. “So you’ll pardon me for not
drinking this nice wine. And you won’t try to force me to overeat now, will you?”
 “No, of course not. But surely you’ve got to have a little something in your stomach to give you
stamina—” I broke off and put my head in my hands. “Oh, Christ.”
“What? What is it?” She sounded genuinely concerned.
I peeked through my fingers at her. “I sounded exactly like my mother just then.”
Sophie burst into hearty giggles.
“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” I said, relieved that she still had a sense of humor. “But if you’d
actually known my mother, you’d be making me crawl for forgiveness.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“You have no idea. But seriously, Sophie. If this—” I gestured at the potato skins “—is too
heavy for you, what can you manage instead? A salad? Fruit? Yogurt?”
“I’m fine with a couple of these,” she assured me, her expression softening. “Look, I didn’t
mean to be pissy. I’m just kind of nervous. This is my first big evening gig.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Some corporate bash? Or have you hit the big time with a celebrity?”
Her smile faded away. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“Top secret, huh? Then it’s either politics or royalty.”
Sophie laughed uneasily. “I told you, I can’t talk about it.”
“Okay,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t let my imagination run away with me, right?”
“Sure, sure.” She pulled one of the potato skins onto the small plate in front of her. “Knock
yourself out.”
-
My feeling that Sophie wouldn’t be able to resist the appetizer proved correct. While I drank her
wine and mine and then in a drunken folly ordered a third glass, Sophie ended up eating over half of
the potato skins. Eating the first one seemed to loosen her up; after that, she was reaching for them
casually, with no hesitation. When we got down to the last two, I helped myself to one and pushed
the other one off the platter onto her plate. “That’s yours,” I said cheerfully.
She picked it up and then froze. “Oh, damn,” she said and practically threw it down. “Oh, no—
I didn’t.” She put one arm across her stomach. “Oh, Jesus, I did. Oh, God, I’m so stupid. How could
I be so Goddamned stupid?”
“Sophie—” I started and then cut off. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “My God, honey,
don’t cry.”
“I’m full. No, it’s worse—I’m stuffed.”
“Sophie, don’t—”
“That’s what you should have said to me before, when I was stuffing my face,” she said, hotly.
“‘Sophie, don’t.’ A true friend would have.”
The people at the adjoining tables were staring at us. I ignored them. “That’s an awful thing to
say.”
“The world weeps.” She sat up straighter and took a deep breath. “Right. At least I know what
to do about it.” She got up.
“Wait,” I said, reaching over and grabbing her wrist. “Where are you going?”
Her mouth tightened into a hard colorless line before she twisted out of my grip and headed
toward the ladies room. Because I was tipsy, it took me a little time to get it. Then I went stumbling
across the brasserie after her but by the time I got there, she was finishing up.
“How could you do that?” I asked her as she came out of the stall, her face all red and sweaty.
“Finger down the throat, how do you think?” she said hoarsely, splashing water on her face from
the sink. “It works.” She drank from her cupped hands, swished the water around in her mouth and
spat it out with a grunt.
 “But you’re not an adolescent girl, you’re—what, twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”
“Twenty-nine next month, actually.” She splashed more water on her face and then straightened
up to look at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot.
“That’s way too old for bulimia, Sophie.”
She shut off the faucet and patted her face dry with a paper towel. “It’s way too old for a whole
lot of things, Lee. I’m fighting for my survival.”
“Keep doing that shit and you’ll lose,” I said.
“Thanks for your support.” She took a deep breath and let it out, putting her arm across her
stomach again. “Empty. It’s all right. I never should have done this but I’m going to be all right.”
“Sophie—”
“Oh, shut up, Lee,” she snapped. “This soul selects her own society and it’s not you. Got that?
Obtrude on someone else and stay the fuck away from me.” She yanked open the door and left.
I started to go after her but the hostess intercepted me politely but firmly to make sure I wasn’t
trying to skip out on the bill. By the time I got outside, Sophie was nowhere to be seen. I went back
to where we had left her manager but there was no trace of either of them. Even the pedestal was
gone.
-
I stayed away from Covent Garden for over a week after that. When I finally did go back, I
wasn’t even sure that Sophie would be there anymore. Maybe the creep had packed her duffle bag
for her and taken her away. I couldn’t decide whether I was afraid I’d never see her again or hoping
I wouldn’t. But when I came out of the tube station, I knew Sophie was still there even before I
spotted the bronze Amazon. The crowd was even larger and quieter than before.
This time, there were still a few other statues trying for attention—the weather was good and the
tourists were out in force, enough to support a whole flock of statues, buskers, Big Issue vendors,
and plain old beggars. But once again, Sophie had the lion’s share.
“Oi. Oi, you.”
Something landed on my shoulder; it was Raggedy Andrew’s blue ballet slipper, with his foot
still in it. He was balanced on his other leg on a barrel painted to look like a very tall toy drum. It
was a nice effect. No one was looking. He broke pose and sat down on the barrel. “You used to help
out Miss Superstar over there.” He jerked his chin in Sophie’s direction.
“Not anymore.”
The red yarn bobbed as he nodded his head. “Yeah, I know. You ain’t been around lately so I
guess the friendship’s off between you two. You got no pull with her or anything, right?”
I spread my hands. “Why? Is there something you want?”
“Yeah. I want her to get the fuck outta here. We all do.” He gestured at the other human statues.
I looked from him to Sophie’s bronze form—even at a distance, that stillness was apparent. “I
guess I can understand that.”
Raggedy Andy gave a short, unpleasant laugh. “You think it’s because she’s getting all the
money and attention. That’s only part of it. But not all of it, or even most of it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So what is?”
“Stick around for a while, till she takes her break. You’ll see then.They won’t—the punters, I
mean. I don’t know why, but they don’t. But us, we do.” He waved at the other statues again. “I’m
betting you will, too.”
 On the face of it, the idea that a grown man dressed as a rag-doll could scare me in broad
daylight was laughable. But I wasn’t laughing and neither was he. A chill went through me deep
inside, where the warm sun couldn’t reach. I turned away from him and started moving through the
crowd again.
I didn’t have to get that close to her to see that Sophie’s body had gone from enviable to
virtually perfect. Her muscle definition was better than I had ever seen on her or, for that matter,
anyone else. But there was something strange about it, too. It was the kind of definition that
wouldn’t be apparent unless she were flexing and holding the pose like a bodybuilder, purposely
displaying the muscles, and I knew she wasn’t. A flexing pose would have shown off one set of
muscles—arms or legs, back or stomach. Whereas Sophie’s entire body was . . . well, an aerobics
instructor would have wept at the sight of such an impossible ideal.
I heard the quiet snick of a camera shutter. The guy next to me was holding an elaborate digital
SLR with an equally elaborate lens.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but does that thing zoom in?”
It did. He took a close-up of Sophie and then showed me the image on the small screen on the
back of the camera.
“I can’t really see her face in any detail,” I told him apologetically. “Would you mind terribly
letting me look through the lens?”
He hesitated, then decided that I wasn’t going to try to run off with it. He showed me which
buttons to press and slipped the strap over my head; I put my eye to the viewfinder.
The zoom went so fast that it took a moment for the focus to catch up with it and when it did, I
wasn’t sure I had aimed it at the right target. It seemed to be Sophie’s face but the eyes were blank.
Just blank featureless bronze. Like a statue’s.
Shocked, I fumbled the camera; if the owner hadn’t taken the precaution of putting the strap
around my neck, I would have dropped it. Not trusting myself to handle it, I motioned for him to
take it back and he did so, looking more than a little bemused.
As soon as it was around his neck again, I felt like a complete ass. I had glimpsed Sophie’s face
for barely a second and her head had been tilted slightly forward. If I had let my own middle-aged
eyes adjust, I surely would have seen there was nothing wrong with hers. Should have followed my
earlier impulse and gone home, I thought as I started working my way toward the front of the
crowd. I didn’t need to get up close and see whether her eyes were really blank or not. I already
knew I’d imagined it, and I kept going anyway.
This time, I was twenty feet away from her when her stillness cracked. I froze where I was,
thinking that I had done it again. But no, this was just her taking a break, like Raggedy Andy had
said.
Or rather, it was her creepy manager telling her to take a break. I could see his hand resting on
the back of her left calf, signaling her as if she were a trained dog. I felt a surge of anger that he
would treat her like that.
Sophie seemed to shrink and fold in on herself, practically collapsing as she climbed down from
the pedestal and disappeared behind the dispersing crowd. I got more than a few dirty looks as I
forced my way through the people milling around in front of me. I had the strange feeling that they
had all forgotten they’d just been staring at Sophie’s bronze Amazon; like they’d been released from
a trance with the command to remember nothing.
 When I finally reached the pedestal, I thought Sophie had left, spirited away by her manager just
like the night I had taken her to the brasserie. But that was ridiculous—no one could have gotten
away so quickly with so many people clogging up every available walkway. I went over to where
she had left her duffel bag the last time, then to the pillar where her creepy manager had appeared
out of nowhere—nothing. People bumped into me on all sides as they passed, the crowd growing
thicker and everyone in it apparently in a hurry; I started to feel a little unsteady, even disoriented.
And suddenly there she was, right next to her pedestal. She was wearing a loose-fitting robe
printed with abstract shapes in various metallic browns and golds that complemented her body paint
in such a way that it made her seem somehow indistinct. A trick of light and color?
“Sophie,” I called. “Do you have a moment?”
Shoulders sagging, she turned away from me.
“Please, wait—” I rushed over to her and then stopped short, not just because her creepy
manager appeared seemingly out of nowhere but at the sight of her face, close up. “Sophie?” I
asked, suddenly unsure if it really was her.
Her face had the haunted, suffering look of someone who had been enduring years of torment
and was now deteriorating under the strain. “Oh, Jesus, Sophie,” I said. “What happened to you?”
“Leave me alone,” she said dully, waving me off. I grabbed her arm.
“No, Sophie, talk to me! What the hell?”
She tried to pull away but I hung on to her. Her arm felt even worse than her face looked—the
muscles were soft, practically limp, as if they had atrophied, while the bone underneath was oddly
light, like it might have been hollow.
“I told you, leave me alone,” she growled, pushing at me. I managed to get hold of her robe and
tore it open.
This could not have been the body that I had seen posing on that pedestal, I thought, staring in
shock. There wasn’t much flesh and what there was hung in loose little folds. Her midsection was
abnormally concave, as if most of it had actually been removed, while her legs were little more than
sticks. This could not have been the body that I had seen posing on that pedestal—and more than
that, this could not have happened to her in the space of a week.
“Sophie, what did you do to yourself?” My gaze moved from her to the creep, who was standing
beside her with a ghost of a smile on his evil face. “What did you do to her?”
He put his arm around her shoulders and closed up her robe.
“Sophie, please talk to me.” I reached for her again but somehow he slipped her around to his
other side and put himself between us.
“She told you to leave her alone,” he said in a low, oily voice. “And now I’m telling you.”
Before I could answer, he turned Sophie and himself away from me and in the next moment, they
were justgone, melting into the Covent Garden crowd of tourists without a trace.
I looked around and saw that the pedestal had disappeared as well.
-
“Certain things are impossible,” said Raggedy Andy over a pint. “You can tell yourself this. You
can learn it in school or by experience or both. Then they’ll happen anyway and you won’t be able
to do a thing about it.”
The toy soldier toasted that statement with a bottle of Beck’s. “Right.”
 They weren’t Raggedy Andy and the toy soldier anymore, of course. Raggedy Andy was now a
ginger-haired, green-eyed fellow named Liam who was a few years older under the whiteface than I
had estimated. The toy soldier was a very tall woman named Pauline whose olive features had a
strangely ageless quality; she might have been seventeen or forty. I was sitting with them in a pub
near the tube station.
“Maybe that’s what ‘impossible’ really means,” Pauline added. “Impossible to do anything
about.”
“You think it’s impossible for me to help my friend?” I asked.
Liam gave a short hard laugh. “You saw her. That’s what’s happened to her in a week. Can you
honestly believe she’s not beyond help?”
“What do you know about it?” I said. The words came out sounding defensive but at the same
time, it was an honest question. “Do you know that guy she’s with? Do you know anything about
him?”
“No.” He took a healthy gulp from the pint. “Not really.” His eyes swiveled to Pauline in the
chair beside him. She looked away.
I sat up straighter and grabbed his glass away from him. “Oh? What don’t you really know?”
“Nothing to speak of,” the other woman said, giving me an appalled look as she transferred her
Beck’s to the hand farther away from me. “Really. Liam doesn’t know him and neither do I.”
“No one does,” Liam added in response to my skeptical look. “Nobody knows his name or
where he comes from, who he works for if he works for anyone at all. And anyone who does know
ain’t talking. Like your friend.” He reached for his glass; I held it away from him.
“When was the first time you saw this guy?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said irritably. “I see a few thousand people every day. After a while some
faces get familiar but I couldn’t tell you when I first saw most of them.” He reached for the glass
again but I still refused to give it to him. “And holding the last of my pint hostage isn’t gonna
improve my memory any. I can buy another.” He started to get up; I waved him down and gave him
back his glass.
“Did you ever see him do this with anyone else?” I asked.
Liam frowned thoughtfully. “No. But you hear things.”
“No, you hear things,” I corrected him. “So what have you heard?”
He looked at the woman again; she shrugged. “It was very vague. Something about a garden.”
“Ah.” I gave a harsh, humorless laugh. “Wait, don’t tell me—could it be, oh, Covent Garden?”
“No, actually it wasn’t,” she said coolly. “Somewhere south of the river.”
“Oh, yeah. That would be New Covent Garden, then.” I made a disgusted noise. “Who do you
think you’re talking to, some clueless fuck of a tourist?”
They looked at each other, then got up and walked off. I slumped, resting my elbow on the table
and staring at my own pint. Guinness Extra Cold; I couldn’t remember whether it was my second or
third. Or fourth? I was losing track and if I kept on, I was going to lose consciousness as well.
“Not New Covent Garden, either.”
I jumped as the woman plopped down in the chair next to me.
“It’s not any public place. A regular garden,” she went on, “as in the place behind somebody’s
private residence.”
“That’s it?”
She tilted her head thoughtfully. “I got the impression it was a biggarden. Big garden behind a
big house. Posh, lots of money.”
“Wouldn’t it belong to someone pretty well known, then?” I asked.
 Pauline blinked at me. “Why?”
“Because that’s how it seems to go in this country. If you’re posh, you’re famous.”
Now she smiled faintly. “There’s posh and then there’s posh—too posh for lower life-forms like
us to know anything about. Do you know all the very high-and-mighty in America, the rarefied
elite?”
“No, but this is a much smaller country. Fewer people to keep track of.”
She moved my pint away from me and pushed something else into its place. “Here. You need
this.”
I found myself staring at a large cup of coffee. There was no milk in it but I gulped it down
anyway.
“Can’t hold your liquor at all, can you?”
I shrugged. “On the other hand, I have the smallest bar bill in the country.”
“All that means is you drink alone. A lot.”
“That may be true,” I said with another sigh, “but it’s rather unkind to point it out. Isn’t it?” I
closed my eyes and waited for her response; nothing. “Well, isn’t it?”
I opened my eyes. There was no one in the chair next to me.
-
I pulled myself together enough to gulp down another cup of coffee, even though I knew the
whole sober-up-with-lots-of-coffee thing was just a myth. If I couldn’t actually get sober, I would
settle for drunk and wide awake. It would save me some time and trouble if I didn’t fall asleep
going home on the tube. Going home was really all I was thinking about when I finally stepped out
of the pub. Then I saw the crowd and headed straight down to join it.
Sophie had changed into the silver lady and the persona was a lot different than the time I had
last seen it. Now she wore as little as the bronze Amazon—no, less. Her breasts were barely
covered, and I wasn’t sure what she was wearing on the bottom, but it looked like a modified doily,
and a very small one at that.
Her body, however, had changed even more—i.e., it was better, if better was really the word to
describe it. The impossible ideal of the bronze Amazon had somehow been surpassed. The silver
lady’s muscles were sleeker and better defined, her posture was so precise that she even
looked taller. No, not just taller, but larger all the way around—
That couldn’t be Sophie, I thought, goggling at her. There was a very strong resemblance but it
wasn’t her. This had to be someone else entirely, a bigger woman who was doing a variation on
Sophie’s silver lady. The creep manager’s idea, no doubt. He probably had a whole stable of
“clients” and made them trade off their costumes and personae all the time, just to make sure they
knew who was boss.
After a bit, I realized she was moving; very, very slowly, all but imperceptibly, like the minute-
hand on an old-fashioned clock, she was changing position. At the same time, I had the distinct
impression of her figure hardening, become more statuelike rather than less. Her hands, held close
together at waist level, began to descend, moving away from each other to the tops of her thighs;
her head lifted, turned toward me as her weight shifted from one leg to the other.
Her eyes were blank. Smooth, featureless silver, just like a statue’s.
Slowly, incredibly, painfully slowly, one arm began to rise and her weight shifted again as she
reached forward. Her fingers were still curled softly inward toward her palm, so she wasn’t really
pointing in my direction, but for a few moments, I was sure she was going to. Instead, her arm went
on rising and eventually stopped over her head, as if she meant to call down some power from
heaven. Perhaps the silver lady was a goddess now.
 This was a different woman; it was so obvious. She was several inches taller than Sophie and at
least twenty pounds heavier. It couldn’t have been Sophie.
Except that I knew it was.
-
It was practically dark by the time the silver lady broke and got down off the pedestal. In the
whole time I had been watching her, I had barely moved myself. Now my legs hurt all the way up to
my hips.
But at least I felt a lot more sober—sober enough to keep Sophie and the creep manager in sight
despite the distance and the flow of people between me and them. I watched as the creep wrapped
her up in a silver-gray robe but then carried out what seemed to be an inspection of her body. He felt
her up with both hands, through the robe and then under the robe, as if she were a race horse.
Sophie submitted to it with no resistance that I could discern. Whatever he discovered apparently
satisfied him. He put one arm around her shoulders and herded her away, talking intently while she
hung on his every word.
I didn’t make a decision to follow them—I just did it. They were so wrapped up in each other
that they didn’t bother to watch where they were going much less look back to see me trailing
several yards behind them. Some instinct seemed to be guiding them along the street, stepping up or
down as necessary, while people moved aside to let them pass without actually noticing. At a quick
glance, they might have passed for any newly smitten couple enjoying the high of a new
relationship. But what I saw in Sophie’s face was an eaten-away-from-the-inside quality similar to
terminal cancer patients, while the look in her creep manager’s eyes was more like gluttony than
desire.
-
They got into a black cab outside a theater on Drury Lane; I grabbed the one behind it, unsure
how the driver would react when I told him to follow that cab. He gave me an arch look but he
didn’t tell me to get out. I came up with a story about a sister with a large inheritance and a work-
shy boyfriend I suspected was abusing her. It worked so perfectly I felt simultaneously relieved and
ashamed.
I felt a lot more ashamed when we finally came to a stop in some tangle of streets whose names
I’d never heard of, just around the corner from where Sophie and the creep were getting out—the
fare was three and a half pounds more than I had. I asked for the cab driver’s name and address so I
could mail him the difference; he left me a couple of pound coins and drove away before I could
even get his cab number.
From behind the low brick wall surrounding the front yard of the house on the corner, I watched
Sophie waiting on the sidewalk while the creep paid the cab driver. Or argued with him—I couldn’t
really tell. Some kind of discussion was taking place; I didn’t hear any raised voices but there was
something about the way the creep was leaning in toward the driver that made me think it wasn’t a
friendly exchange. Maybe the creep was trying to beat his fare. Sophie remained motionless, not so
much like a statue as just some inanimate object waiting to be picked up and carried away. Like a
duffel bag. Finally, the creep stepped back and made an abrupt dismissing gesture with one hand,
then turned to Sophie.
It was like he flipped a switch turning her on; she came to life and stood at attention. He put his
hands on her shoulders, swiveled her around and steered her up the sidewalk in my direction.
 I ducked down behind the wall quickly, almost cutting myself on the rough edge of a battered
and bent metal sign screwed into the brick: FOXTAIL CLOSE. Staying low, I risked peeking
around the corner again just in time to see the two of them climbing the front steps of a house
almost directly across from where I was crouching.
I hadn’t noticed the place before; if I had, I would have taken it for derelict. It was large and
dark, set back from the row houses stretching down the block, on a patch of ground that didn’t
really seem to belong with the rest of the street. Sophie and the creep went inside without turning on
any lights. I waited but the house stayed dark.
After a while, I pushed myself upright and shook out each leg until my knees stopped
screaming. And now that I knew where she was living—or where the creep was keeping her,
anyway—what did I think I was going to do next? Take down the address and send her a card?
Abruptly, a big man came out of the shadows on the right side of the house. And I
mean big, bouncer big, the kind of guy who handles “security” at a club. At first I thought the creep
had seen me after all and had sent him out to settle my hash. But the man only stood on the
sidewalk in front of the house. He was wearing a headset and holding a clipboard. He really was a
bouncer, I realized, and he was on the job right now.
I’d thought the creep had taken Sophie home but he’d actually taken her clubbing, at one of
those secret, members-only, you’ve-got-to-be-invited-to-find-it places—
No, she wasn’t clubbing, I realized; she was working. This was Sophie’s major nighttime gig.
The creep had her working all day and then working all night. No wonder she looked like the wreck
of the Hesperus.
A cab pulled up at the curb and three people got out. The bouncer greeted them familiarly but
looked them up on his clipboard all the same before directing them around the side of the house,
where he had come from. The next cab arrived moments later; another was right behind it, and a
third pulled up behind that one. The bouncer seemed to know everyone but made a point of
checking his clipboard anyway. He sent them all around the side of the house into the shadows and
they all went without hesitation. Most of them were well dressed; some were overly well dressed,
and a few were more costumed than attired. I didn’t recognize any of them but that didn’t mean
anything. Most celebrities aren’t actually that recognizable in person. If the Royal Family had
arrived I couldn’t have been completely sure.
Eventually, the cabs came less frequently and then tapered off altogether. I waited for the
bouncer to tuck his clipboard under his arm and vanish into the shadows again but he stayed where
he was. Someone must have been fashionably late.
How late was it anyway? I had no idea. Late enough that I wasn’t really drunk anymore. Still
impaired, though—bad judgment and no cab fare. Even if I could find a tube station, it would be
closed by now.
“Well? Are you just going to lurk there all night?”
I looked over at the bouncer to see who he was talking to, already knowing that he was calling
to me.
“Come on, now. You came this far. Might as well come the rest of the way, yes?”
I made myself move forward, stopping at the corner. “How long have you known I was here?”
The bouncer laughed. “All along, luv. What do you think, we wouldn’t have good security?”
I could run, I thought. Then I stepped off the curb and went over to him.
“This way.” He tucked the clipboard under his arm.
“Aren’t you going to check if I’m on the list?” I asked.
“Don’t have to. Come along, now.”
 -
The party in the backyard had apparently been going on for some time. I sat in the chair where
the big man had left me; it was next to the swimming pool, one of those silly, kidney-bean-shaped
things, good only for getting your bathing suit wet rather than real swimming. It seemed to be much
deeper than normal, however—even under the bright lights, I couldn’t make out the bottom. Or
maybe the water was tinted dark. To discourage guests from getting rowdy and pushing each other
in, perhaps? It didn’t seem to be that kind of crowd, I thought, watching the well-dressed people
drift around chatting to each other and helping themselves to refreshments from a large round table.
A nondescript man in a nondescript waiter outfit materialized in front of me with a plate of hors
d’oeuvres. He held it out with a faint smile. I pushed myself up out of the chair and walked away.
The food smelled impossibly good, the way it does when you suddenly realize you haven’t eaten all
day, but I didn’t want to accept anything. I had it in my mind that if I did, it would be like accepting
what had happened to Sophie, approving of it. They might have had my name on their list but I
wasn’t at this party. Not the way all the rest of these people were. Whoever they were. The
nameless posh, perhaps, what the toy soldier had called the rarefied elite, and this was how they
lived, one party after another, day after day, night after night. Wasn’t there some old joke about
people who would go to the opening of an envelope? I didn’t see any envelopes here. Maybe they
were in the house.
Or out in the garden.
Something about a garden. Big house, big garden.
I looked around but the lights were so bright and every one of them seemed to be shining right
in my eyes.
“Not lost, are you?”
I knocked the creep’s hand off my shoulder. “Where’s the garden?”
He smiled. “You think that’s where she is?”
“If she isn’t, where is she? I want to talk to her.”
“Okay, you got me.” A phony sheepish smile. “In the garden. But she won’t talk to you. She’s
busy.”
“When’s her break?”
Now the creep acted surprised, as if I had asked him something completely absurd.
“Her break? She doesn’t take one.”
“You’ve got her working without a break?”
“I said she was busy. I didn’t say she was working.”
I wasn’t about to let him draw me into a word game. “Just tell me how to find her. If she’s too
busy to talk to me, I want to hear it from her. To my face.”
“Yeah. Your face.” He beckoned. “This way.”
He led me around the pool and down some stone steps to another patio where even more people
were sitting around eating finger foods and talking in low murmurs about who knows what. This
area was bounded on one side by a tall hedge with a wooden door in it. He stopped in front of the
door, turned around and started to say something. Ignoring him, I reached for the handle; he pushed
me back with a strength I hadn’t suspected.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, raising his voice to address everyone there. “This is a little bit
earlier than I had originally planned but I apparently underestimated the eagerness of some people
—” he glanced at me “—to see what we’ve done with the reclaimed land. So without further delay,
please follow me for your first look at the finished—”
I ducked around him and pushed through the door.
 More bright lights hit me in the eyes along with the overpowering aroma of fresh flowers in
massive quantities. The utter intense beauty of the smell was like being assaulted with bouquets.
Behind me, people were ooh-ing and aah-ing and I could hear the creep telling them to watch
out for patches of uneven ground.
“Sophie?” I called hopefully.
“. . . statues are perfect,” a man said, going past on my left.
I looked up. Yes, they were. And there were so many of them.
Every ten feet, there was a different figure standing on a pedestal about five feet off the ground.
Men and women, gold, silver, bronze, black, alabaster, even marble. Warriors, kings and queens,
fairies, gods and goddesses, shamans, witches, aliens and animal hybrids—dog people, cat people,
lion people, lizard-, snake-, and bird-people. Some nude, some nearly but not quite. All of them
deeply still, completely wrapped in stillness.
“Sophie!” I ran along the row of statues on my right, looking up at each female. “Sophie, answer
me!” I was expecting the bouncer to tackle me at any moment but no one tried to stop me. No one
even came near me—when I looked over my shoulder, I saw that the creep and his party guests
were staying up near the entrance. Giving the crazy woman a wide berth.
I slowed to a stop next to a woman made up like Marie Antoinette in marble. “Sophie, dammit,
answer me or I’ll start tearing things up! I swear I will, I’ll rip all these flowers up by their roots!”
Nothing. I turned to see how the creep was taking this; he didn’t look too worried.
“Sophie?” I started walking again, looking significantly at the flower beds on either side. This
section was all tulips, every variety and color. “Sophie, I’m not kidding. I’ll tear this place apart, I
really will.”
I went another twenty feet before I stopped again. Just how big was this Goddamned yard
anyway? Shading my eyes from the bright overhead lights, I tried to see where it ended. “Sophie?”
The rest of the people at the party looked ridiculously far away now, as if I were seeing them
through the wrong end of a telescope. I couldn’t hear the murmur of their voices or the music. I
listened for traffic noises, the rustle of trees, any ambient night sounds, but there was nothing. It
was completely still.
“Sophie!” I bellowed her name at the top of my lungs. Still nothing.
I turned to look at the nearest statue. A young man who might have been either Robin Hood or
Peter Pan. “You, in the jaunty hat,” I called up to him. “Come down and help me out here or I’ll pull
you down.”
He didn’t twitch. I reached up and grabbed his ankles, intending to yank him off his perch. My
hands closed around cold, hard stone. I let go with a yelp and staggered back, wiping my hands on
my jeans. Great. I couldn’t tell the difference between a human statue and a real statue. The creep
and his party guests were probably very impressed. I moved to the next statue: Zorro. I didn’t
bother even touching him—the swirl of the whip was suspended in midair, like the lasso of the
cowboy next to him.
I crossed over to the other side of the garden where a bronze-colored matador stood with his
face turned haughtily away from me. He held his cape low, the hem touching his feet. I put a hand
on the cape. It was hard, cold, unyielding. Yet something about the set of his shoulders suggested he
was human, not stone or metal. If only I could see his eyes, I thought.
I looked back over my shoulder at the other statues.
They had all moved, the matador, the cowboy, Zorro. Not much—barely noticeably—but I
could tell.
 “Sophie?” Dread rose inside me like cold water as I moved farther down the row of statues,
away from the house. “Sophie, I really need you to answer me now. Please.”
A blank-eyed marble Cleopatra holding a snake to her breast stared through me.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
Next to her a chimney sweep was staring off to my right. I followed his gaze past a Victorian
lady, past Oscar Wilde, a cricket player, a Madonna, a town crier, a jester, all the way down to the
end of the garden.
The bronze Amazon stood on a pedestal in front of another hedge with a door in it.
She looked larger than life now, much larger—if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn she
was seven feet tall, her perfectly sculpted muscles in flawless proportion.
“In metal, it would weigh several hundred pounds,” said the creep, following me over to her.
“‘It?’”
He ambled around me to stand in front of the pedestal, planting one elbow next to Sophie’s foot.
“And it’s almost ready for the next garden,” he added, glancing at the door.
“Sophie, come down,” I begged.
“She doesn’t hear you,” he said cheerfully. “Once they’re in the next garden, none of them hear
anyone like you.”
“But she’s not in the next garden yet,” I said, moving closer to her. “Sophie, you hear me, I
know you do. Please, come down and let me take you out of here.”
“Why should she? What can you offer her? Friendship in the monotony of a nothing job in a
world where things ripen and then rot, to be discarded and forgotten.” He laughed nastily. “You can
go now, she doesn’t care to listen to anything you have to say.”
“That’s not true, is it, Sophie?” I put a hand on her cold leg. “Please come down. I’ll help you.”
“Help her what?” The creep gave me a shove that sent me back a few steps. “Help her rot and
convince herself she’s happy about it? She’s a star, now, she’s my masterpiece and she’ll stand in
the next garden forever, unmoved and perfect. Take your spoiled meat out of my sight. You’re not
even mildly amusing anymore.” He went to shove me again but I dodged around him and threw my
arms around Sophie’s pedestal.
I don’t know whether it was the sight of the creep getting physical with me or just that the
activity itself was a distraction, but she lost it.
This time, the cracking was quite audible. It came from deep inside of her and it was the sound
of pure breakage, what you hear when something shatters that cannot be mended. Her body
shuddered and began to collapse inward like a deflating balloon. Except her skin didn’t hang on her
now—there wasn’t enough substance for that. This was what a living mummy would look like:
wizened, dried up, little more than a husk. She wavered, trying to lift her torso and pull her
rounding shoulders back but the cracking grew louder and more intense,
Suddenly the pedestal broke apart, dumping her down on the grass on her hands and knees in
front of the creep.
“What did you do?!” His voice was as inhumanly shrill as a siren. I wasn’t sure whether he was
yelling at Sophie or me. “What the hell is this, you were better than that, you told me you were
better than that, what did you do?!”
Sophie reached one hand toward him; he stepped back, revolted.
“Now you have to start all over!” he squealed.
Sophie was nodding her head, trying to speak. I wanted to sweep her up in my arms and rush
her away from him but I was afraid to touch her, afraid that she would crumble to dust in my hands.
 “Only I don’t have another pedestal, you stupid cow!” he went on. “Every spot is taken! You’ll
have to wait! You’ll have to wait and you’ll never last that long!”
Sophie was gasping and wheezing as she tried to crawl toward him. Evading her, he turned to
me with fury in his creep face. “This is your fault, you bitch! You had to come here and spoil
everything! She was the best I’d ever had! I’ll never get anyone else that good,ever! Get out of my
garden before you spoil them all, get out of my garden right now!”
The bouncer and another equally burly man materialized on either side of me. I tried to twist
away but one of them dug a fist into my hair and held on. I had one last, quick glance of Sophie
flattened on the ground with the creep screaming at her before they rushed me out of the garden and
into the darkness.
-
The sky was just getting light when the police woke me in Leicester Square. I was lying on a
park bench in the garden, right next to a statue of the Little Tramp.
I tried to get him to tell me what had happened to Sophie but he wouldn’t even twitch. I thought
it was because the police were there but Chaplin was just as mute and still when I came back by
myself later. All the statues are like that, everywhere I go—Leicester Square, Covent Garden, the
West End, the South Bank. It doesn’t matter what I say or how loud I yell, they’re all unmoved.
Like stone.
-
[Found in the Translation]
-
Jimmy
-
The day JFK got shot, things got really crazy for Jimmy Streubal. For me, too—hell, for
everybody—but mostly for Jimmy.
It wasn’t like things weren’t already screwy for him. He had this really messed-up family
situation. When his parents were together, they used to have the kind of fights that the neighbors
called the police about. After they got divorced, legend had it the custody fight was back-asswards
—his mother tried to force his father to take him and vice versa. In those days, the scandal of
having divorced parents in a small town was bad enough but when neither of them wanted you, it
was like going around with the word TRASH tattooed on your forehead.
But it was even worse than that for Jimmy. He had a lot of relatives on both sides of the family
—aunts, uncles, all kinds of cousins, and grandparents—and none of them wanted him any more
than his parents did.
Social Services was forced to intervene, as my mother put it. She worked in the admitting office
at the local hospital and she knew everybody in Social Services, including Jimmy’s social worker,
Mrs. Beauvais. Because there were so many Streubals and Streubal in-laws in town, my mother told
me, Mrs. Beauvais was under orders to get one of them to take Jimmy. The county had only one
group home for orphaned or unwanted boys but it was over thirty miles away and filled to twice its
official capacity with kids who were worse off. The state’s foster-family subsidy was good enough
that she could usually talk a reluctant relative into a ninety-day trial period. Unfortunately, Jimmy
never lasted that long. Four or five weeks later, Mrs. Beauvais would get a call telling her to come
and get him now. All she could do was take Jimmy back to her office and call the next relative on
the list.
My mother didn’t normally share this kind of information with me, but Jimmy and I had been
friends since kindergarten and she wanted me to know the facts rather than the gossip. So she swore
me to secrecy, promising to kill me if I let anything slip (in those days, if your parents loved you,
they threatened your life at least once a week).
 I dutifully vowed not to say a word. I didn’t tell her that I had already heard the same thing,
generously embellished, from Mrs. Beauvais’s niece, who sat behind me and served as the class
distributor of any gossip worth repeating. Big problems in a small town: If you had any, there
wasn’t a hope in hell of keeping them quiet. Nor did I mention that I had heard even more detailed
information from Jimmy himself. Neither my mother nor Mrs. Beauvais’s niece knew, for example,
that he was always evicted before anyone called the Social Services office; when Mrs. Beauvais
arrived, she would find him waiting out on the sidewalk, regardless of the weather or time of day
(or night), with a note listing all of his sins and general shortcomings pinned to his shirt.
“My mom said I stole from her purse,” Jimmy told me. “My dad claimed I smoked his
cigarettes and sneaked out at night when I was supposed to be in bed.”
“Where did you go?” I asked him.
“Dunno. He never said.” Jimmy wrinkled his nose. “Just out somewhere, getting into trouble
and he couldn’t control me.”
“Jeez.”
“Uz,” Jimmy added, grinning a little. If you split the syllables between two kids, it didn’t count
as swearing.
“Did you ever ask him?”
“Ask him what—where I went? Are you kidding? You think I wanted a fat lip?” He ran a hand
over his crew cut. Jimmy always had crew cuts, even in the coldest weather. On the first day of
school in first grade, the teacher swore she saw lice in his hair so every few weeks, Mrs. Beauvais
dragged him to the barber to have clippers run over his head. His hair was so short that it was hard
to tell what color it was. I didn’t think it was fair but Jimmy said it was better than getting his head
scrubbed with disinfectant shampoo.
“That stuff smells funny,” he said. “Like you oughta wash floors with it, not your hair, and if it
gets in your eyes, it stings worse than anything. I got some in my mouth once and I couldn’t taste
anything else for days.”
It was an odd friendship, Jimmy and me—a boy and a girl, the class troublemaker and the
straight-A student. It started, as I said, back in kindergarten. I first noticed Jimmy because he was
actually doing something wrong: He was over at the small sink in the corner where Miss Campbell
had us all wash our hands after finger-painting, and he was filling a paper cup with water and
pouring it into the trash can, over and over again.
I remember this so vividly that even now I can close my eyes and see it like a clip from a movie
—an indie production shot on a budget, The Chant of Jimmy Streubal, maybe. I can see Jimmy
moving from the small white sink to the trash can, also white, round-topped with a swing door, and
slightly taller than he was, and back again with an expression of deep concentration on his face, a
little man with a mission.
I remember the other kids standing around watching in horrified anticipation of what would
happen when Miss Campbell finally looked up from whatever she was engaged in and saw what he
was doing; this was so far off the misbehavior scale that no one could imagine what sort of
punishment Jimmy was in for.
Most of all, I remember that I understood immediately what he was doing: He wanted to know
how many cups of water it would take to fill the trash can all the way to the top. This was
something I had wondered about myself and I had even contemplated trying the same thing to find
out. Ultimately, I had decided against it, as it seemed to be the sort of thing that would make Miss
Campbell scream and yell and call your mother. As it turned out, I was right but that was no fun.
Fun would have been Jimmy telling us exactly how many cups it took and Miss Campbell writing it
on the board for him, not to mention getting to see a trash can full of water, instead of what actually
happened.
 Strangely, that’s the one thing I can’t remember—what happened when Jimmy got caught, or
even how he got caught. Whether one of the kids finally got tired of waiting for the storm and called
out, Miss Campbell, look what Jimmy’s doing! or whether Miss Campbell herself suddenly realized
there was too much running-water noise and turned to see what fresh hell her teaching degree had
visited on her now, I have forgotten completely.
I’ve also forgotten exactly how Jimmy was punished for this stupendous transgression but
shortly after that, we became friends. We didn’t talk about the Trash Can Incident until a few years
later when, after confirming I’d been right about his intentions, I asked him how many cups of
water he thought it would have taken.
“At first, I thought maybe a hundred,” he told me, his voice thoughtful and serious. “But I was
just a little kid, I didn’t even really know what a hundred meant. Now I know it would have taken a
lot more and I would have had to pour a lot faster—water was leaking out all over the floor.”
That surprised me—I didn’t remember any water on the floor. Just Jimmy pouring cup after cup
into that white trash can. I asked him if that was when all the trouble had first started, with one very
bad morning in kindergarten.
“Nah,” he said, “it had already started at home. The kids next door were playing with matches
one day and they set their room on fire. They told their parents I did it and everyone believed them.
I couldn’t even tie my own shoes let alone light a match but everyone believed them anyway.”
In a properly aligned universe, Jimmy would have been throwing rocks at me, putting spiders in
my desk, spitting in my hair when my back was turned, and extorting my lunch money out of me.
He didn’t actually do anything like that to me or anyone else but for some reason, everyone was
sure he did. I couldn’t figure it out; Jimmy said it was his lot in life. Hiskarma, he called it. I had to
look that one up, something that didn’t happen very often even when I was ten years old. It didn’t
occur to me to wonder how Jimmy would know about something like that. I just figured he was as
brainy as I was and hiding it. No one would have believed he was really smart—if he’d ever gotten
an A or even a B, everyone would have accused him of cheating. Kids like Jimmy weren’t smart
and they weren’t talented. They couldn’t be—otherwise their parents would have wanted them.
Wouldn’t they?
Big problems in a small town; messy questions with neat answers.
-
Where were you when you heard Kennedy got shot? had a neat answer for everybody. I was in
school—just another day in fifth grade—but Jimmy wasn’t there. Thrown out again, I thought; he
was always absent when someone threw him out. This time it was his aunt Linda. Mrs. Barnicle (I
swear to God, that was really her name) raised her eyebrows at his empty desk and then got this
look like she smelled something bad. That was how she always looked at Jimmy and I hated her for
it. I don’t think she knew that she was doing it, which made me hate her even more.
As if she sensed something, she looked over at me, her expression changing to puzzled and then
disapproving, and I realized I had been scowling at her with that same bad-smell expression on my
own face. If I didn’t cut it out, I was going to get the chair—the wooden chair in the far corner.
You’d get exiled to it for chewing gum, passing notes, answering back, or other high crimes, and if
you didn’t sit completely still, it let out a god-awful squealing noise. I had never sat there; Jimmy,
of course, had done more time in it than anyone else in the class, maybe more than everyone else
combined. It never squealed when he sat in it, which seemed to annoy Mrs. Barnicle more than if he
had made it sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
I looked away from her quickly and started sorting my books and papers, hoping she wouldn’t
decide to come over and ask me if there was something I’d like to share with her and the rest of the
class. Fortunately, the Moran twins went up to her with a complicated question about a math
problem we’d had for homework. I kept my head down. With any luck, she would forget all about
me.
-
 The day progressed unremarkably. Judy LeBlanc got caught with a Beatles magazine and was
sent to the chair for the rest of the day, Beatlemania being the bane of Mrs. Barnicle’s existence.
Judy cried steadily if quietly for the first half hour; she was afraid she wouldn’t get the magazine
back and so were the rest of us. She had promised to show it to us at recess and obviously that
wasn’t going to happen now. Disappointment hung over us like an indoor cloud.
Then someone called Mrs. Barnicle out of the classroom and when she came back, she looked
as if she’d been hit over the head with a baseball bat. I don’t remember what she said, not the exact
words. I just remember disbelief and shock, and an echo of the feeling I’d had when my father had
died, a sense that all the things that were supposed to be steady and permanent were actually no
more substantial or enduring than soap bubbles.
I automatically turned to look at Jimmy. His empty desk sat there as if it were anyone else’s, as
if it belonged to a kid who just happened to be sick today and not someone whose aunt was kicking
him out. As if everything were really quite normal and it wasn’t a world where the president had
just been assassinated.
Assassinated. That was the word Mrs. Barnicle used. She said it over and over and it was so
scary, not even the biggest loudmouth jerks in the class sniggered at it.
-
They let us out early. On my way home, I passed people crying on the street. Grown-ups crying
in public, as if JFK had been someone they’d known personally. Maybe it was Kennedy or maybe it
was the tenor of the times, or maybe it was both. Whatever it was, I can’t imagine it happening
now; but then, it made everything even scarier and more messed-up. My mother was still at work,
unreachable except in an emergency, and since I had neither been shot nor done the shooting, this
didn’t qualify. Even if she had been home, she would have been glued to the news and telling me to
be quiet. Didn’t matter to me—I wanted Jimmy, not my mother. Jimmy knew about messed-up
things. I hurried home, changed out of my school clothes, and went to look for him.
His aunt Linda lived four blocks away from our apartment building, which wasn’t quite outside
the boundary my mother had told me I was confined to when she wasn’t home. As a latchkey kid, I
was under strict orders not to roam the streets, something my mother considered both dangerous
and disgraceful. Personally, I didn’t see the harm in going for a walk but after discovering the hard
way that she somehow always found out when I disobeyed—secret mother radar? superpowers?—I
did as I was told. The only person who didn’t make fun of me for this was Jimmy, which I thought
was above and beyond the call of friendship. Hell, I made fun of myself for it.
I walked over to Jimmy’s aunt’s house wishing it weren’t too cold to ride my bike—otherwise I
could have been over there and back in under fifteen minutes. Less if his cousins were outside,
because then I wouldn’t have to ring the doorbell and talk to his aunt. You could never depend on an
adult for a straight answer in a situation like this anyway and Linda Valeri wasn’t the most
approachable person in town. Chances were she’d just yell Mind your own business! and slam the
door in my face. His cousins, on the other hand, would fall all over themselves to tell me where he
was just to show off how much they knew.
The afternoon sky was graying up so that the day looked colder than it really was. I remember
that and I remember I could almost smell snow in the air. Six days to Thanksgiving and it hadn’t
snowed but a couple of times; what was left from that wouldn’t have made a decent-size snowman.
I was thinking about how early it got dark, how it would be like midnight by six o’clock, which was
when my mother got home from work. I had to find Jimmy before then because I wasn’t supposed
to be out after dark, especially not on a school night. Then I turned the corner onto his aunt’s street
and walked right into the middle of his latest crisis.
 All three of Jimmy’s cousins were outside in front of the house along with his aunt Linda. She
had been crying and still was a little, dabbing at her reddened eyes and nose with a wad of tissues
about twice the size of a softball. She was talking to two people standing with their backs to me: a
woman in an expensive tweed coat and a turquoise velvet hat and a tall skinny guy in a trench coat.
A big boat of an Oldsmobile and a little red VW were parked nose-to-nose at the curb, or sort of
nose-to-nose—the VW had one tire up on the curb. I was thinking the Olds looked familiar when
one of Jimmy’s cousins suddenly yelled, “Hey, I bet she knows—she’s his girlfriend!”
All three adults turned to see who she was, Jimmy’s aunt glaring as if I had killed Kennedy and
the other two looking like they thought I could catch the person who had.
“Hello? Little girl?” said the woman, bending down a little with a slightly desperate smile. This
was Jimmy’s social worker, Mrs. Beauvais, I realized, and I stepped back, wondering if it was too
late to run. “What’s your name, dear?”
“She lives in one of those big blocks on Water Street,” Jimmy’s aunt said. From the tone in her
voice, you’d have thought she was talking about maggots.
Mrs. Beauvais tossed her an irritated glance and turned back to me, her smile becoming more
desperate. “It’s okay, dear, you’re not in trouble.”
The tall skinny man next to her rolled his eyes; when he realized I had seen him, he gave me a
big thousand-watt, pleading smile of his own. “Well, of course she knows she’s not in trouble, Jean-
Marie,” he said, his voice going all gooey. “We just want to ask you if you know where Jimmy
Streubal is. Are you really his girlfriend?”
“No!” I said hotly, looking daggers at Jimmy’s cousins. If the adults hadn’t been around, I’d
have punched them out for that slander. They knew it, too; they made faces at me behind Mrs.
Beauvais’s back.
“We’re just friends. I gotta go home—”
“No, please, wait a minute—at least tell us your name,” said Mrs. Beauvais, also going all
gooey now. “It’s so nice for us to meet a friend of Jimmy’s.”
I was probably the only one they had ever met, I thought, as I told her who I was.
“Oh, you’re Janet’s daughter!” Mrs. Beauvais exclaimed as if this was the most wonderful thing
she had ever heard. “I know your mother verywell, I see her whenever I’m at the hospital—”
“The hospital?” Jimmy’s aunt snapped, stepping forward. “Oh my God, you mean her mother’s
a nurse?”
“No, she works in the admitting office,” Mrs. Beauvais said, still sounding utterly delighted.
“And a lovely person she is—”
“Oh, that’s just great.” I thought Jimmy’s aunt was going to spit with disgust. “She’ll know all
our private business and so will this little shit here—”
Mrs. Beauvais straightened up instantly. “I have warned you before—do not use that
language about children in front of children, especiallyyour own, or Jimmy won’t be the only child
going into care tonight.”
Jimmy’s aunt stared at her openmouthed—she needed a dentist bad, I thought—then turned to
look at her daughters now lined up on the sidewalk next to her. Their faces were so terror-stricken
that I forgot I wanted to punch them out. I tried to will Jimmy’s aunt to bend down, gather them into
her arms, and tell them they didn’t have to be afraid. Instead, she turned back to Mrs. Beauvais.
“You got someplace to take them, you go right ahead, lady. I need a rest and I can’t get a
babysitter.”
All three girls burst into loud tears. It was all I could do not to cry with them.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up!” Jimmy’s aunt shouted, dabbing at her eyes with the enormous
tissue wad. “You’re not goin’ nowhere, they don’t got nobody to take care of you. Now shut up
before I give you something to cry about!” This only made them cry louder. Mrs. Beauvais turned
to the skinny guy, who went over to the girls and tried to comfort them.
 Naturally, they thought he was trying to take them away. Screaming at the tops of their lungs,
they ran into the house and slammed the door. Even then we could still hear them wailing and
sobbing. I looked around, wondering why the neighbors weren’t coming out to see what was going
on, and then remembered about Kennedy. They’d all be glued to their TV sets. Besides, they were
probably used to hearing Linda Valeri’s kids cry.
“Oh, what are you lookin’ so upset for?” she asked the skinny guy, who was pinching the bridge
of his nose like he had a bad headache. “Youdon’t have to live with that—I do.”
“Mrs. Valeri—” he started.
“Don’t Mrs. Valeri me, you—you—” She hesitated, as if she’d been about to say something and
then caught herself. “You social worker. You never mind about them or my brother’s kid. We’ve
got real problems now. Kennedy’s been shot, probably by some Communist! This time next week
we could have Russian tanks rolling down Main Street, unless they just drop the bomb on us. You
gonna take my kids away then?”
Mrs. Beauvais and the skinny guy looked at each other for a moment; then she turned to me
with a pained look that was trying to be a smile. “Sweetheart, an awful lot has happened today and
it’s got everyone so upset they’re saying things they don’t mean—”
If she was talking about Jimmy’s aunt, she was a lousy judge of character, I thought, but I didn’t
say anything.
“—but right now, I’m very, very worried about Jimmy because nobody seems to know where he
is.” She stared into my face as if she really expected me to solve all her problems.
“Well, he wasn’t in school today,” I offered.
She nodded patiently. “Yes, we know that now. His aunt Linda said Jimmy left the house this
morning just like always so she thought he was in school. When he didn’t come home with his
cousins, she called to see if he was with me. Now we’re all very concerned—”
“Include me out,” said Jimmy’s aunt. “That kid can take care of himself just fine.”
“Please, Mrs. Valeri—” said the skinny guy.
“Don’t Mrs. Valeri me!”
He looked like he wanted to say something; instead, he turned his back and moved away a
couple of feet. What did she want him to call her, I wondered—Aunt Linda? Your Majesty? At least
none of us had to call her Mommy; inside the house, Jimmy’s cousins were still wailing and
sobbing.
“There, you hear that?” Jimmy’s aunt said, gesturing with the wad of tissues. “That’s my night
shot to shit. Smooth move, Ex-Lax, thanks for nothin’. You’re so worried about Jimmy, go look for
him. I did what I was supposed to do. I told you to come and get him after school. It’s not my fault
if he took off. All I can say is, I just better see a check for the last month and a half or I’ll sue
you and the city.” She marched into the house and slammed the door behind her. A moment later we
could hear her screeching at the kids, who began crying louder than ever.
Mrs. Beauvais seemed to sag all over, even her face, as if she were deflating. Then the skinny
guy touched her arm and nodded toward me. She squared her shoulders and made herself smile. “I
have an idea,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “Why don’t you help me look for Jimmy? We’ll
drive around in my car.”
I looked at the big Oldsmobile. “I’d have to ask my mother but she’s still at work, and I’m not
supposed to call her there unless it’s an emergency.”
“That’s no problem, I’ll call her,” said the social worker airily. “There’s a pay phone in the
candy store up the street, we’ll call her from there.”
“Well . . . I guess,” I said dubiously. First it was “I’ll call her” and in the next breath it was
“We’ll call her”? Sounded like a classic double cross to me. But even if it wasn’t, I didn’t think this
was going to go over very well. It had the feel of something that was supposed to be a good deed
but would somehow end up backfiring and getting me into trouble.
 The skinny guy bent down so we were eye-to-eye. “Look, Jimmy might have been intending to
go straight to school when he left his aunt’s house this morning and then had an accident or
something. He could be lying hurt somewhere, unable to call for help and hoping that someone,
anyone would come looking for him. I bet he doesn’t even know what happened to the president.”
I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, imagining myself lying unseen all day in a
ditch with a broken leg or worse without anyone knowing it. The fact that there were no ditches
where even a mouse could have lain unseen all day between my house and school didn’t matter.
“Good girl.” The social worker was ushering me toward her car quickly, before I could think of
an argument. “Hop in, we’ll drive to the store.”
I pulled away from her. Getting into someone’s car without permission? Unthinkable, even if I
got permission afterward.
“Please,” Mrs. Beauvais said wearily. “It’ll take me a half hour to walk all the way there, make
the call, and walk back again. That’s a half hour when we could be looking for Jimmy and it’ll be
dark soon.”
I gave in, hoping that somehow my mother either wouldn’t find out or would make an exception
to the rule this one time. Like if Jimmy really were lying hurt somewhere and would have died if I
hadn’t gone looking for him with his social worker. Nobody would punish a kid for saving
someone’s life, I thought.
-
The guy behind the counter at the candy store was watching a little black-and-white TV with the
sound turned down low. Every minute or so, he changed the channel, which meant he had to fiddle
with the antenna. A lady came out from the back room and asked him what was happening now.
Then they’d both look at the skinny guy and say something like, “Can you believe it? What’s this
country coming to?” The skinny guy nodded and said something similar, all the while glancing over
at Mrs. Beauvais, who was on the pay phone with my mother. Getting her permission for me to
drive around with her and look for Jimmy was taking a lot longer than I’d thought it would.
Not a good sign—the longer it took, the more trouble I would probably be in later, whether we
found Jimmy or not. Hoping I wouldn’t have to talk to my mother myself, I stayed by the counter
with the skinny guy, who had told me he was Mrs. Beauvais’s assistant.
The conversation went on and on; I couldn’t imagine what they were saying to each other and I
didn’t want to. The candy-store guy had flipped around the dial six or seven times when Mrs.
Beauvais suddenly looked up and beckoned to me, pointing at the receiver. My heart sank but I
went over anyway.
“—absolutely right, Janet, I don’t know what it’s like to bring up a child as a single parent,” she
was saying. “But you’ve known me for years and I would hope you know that I would never let any
harm come to a child in my care. There is absolutely no danger and if I thought there were—”
Long pause. Mrs. Beauvais patted my shoulder reassuringly and then held on to it to keep me
from walking away.
“I highly doubt that anyone would think anything bad about you or your daughter just because
they saw her in my car, and if anyone ever did say anything, you have my assurance that I would
correct them—”
Pause again.
“Well, then, how about just until four thirty? No matter what, I will drive her home at four thirty
on the dot.” Pause. “Yes, I promise. Four thirty on the dot. Yes, she’s right here—” Mrs. Beauvais
put her hand over the receiver and held it out to me. I took it from her, thinking that JFK had been
lucky to have a quick death.
“Hi, Mom,” I said miserably.
“Why does Social Services think you know where that boy is?” she demanded. “Where on earth
would they get an idea like that?”
“I don’t know,” I said even more miserably.
 “However you managed to get involved in this, you’d better be home at four thirty on the
dot. Because I’m going to call the house at four thirty-five and you’d better answer by the third
ring.”
“I will—”
She went on but the social worker took the phone away from me and talked over her, thanking
her profusely for allowing me to help a child who through no fault of his own was in trouble and
what a day this was with one thing and another, isn’t it just awful what happened and again, thank
you so, so much. I was pretty sure my mother was still talking when Mrs. Beauvais hung up and
turned to me with a bright, professional smile. “I guess we’d better get a move on if I’m going to
get you home on time.”
“Four thirty on the dot,” I reminded her. My mother was going to kill me.
“Where are you two going to look first?” the skinny guy asked Mrs. Beauvais as we left the
store.
“Well, where do you think we should look?” she asked me brightly. “Is there any special place
Jimmy likes to go that only he knows about and nobody else does?”
I wanted to laugh in her face. If only Jimmy knew about it and nobody else, then I wouldn’t
know about it, either. Then I thought of the embankment and the area under the Fifth Street Bridge.
“Maybe,” I said. “There’s this place where we go sledding when it snows.” I looked down at her
feet. She was wearing boots but they had heels and looked dressy and expensive. “It’s over by the
playground. The one near the bridge.”
“That’s where we’ll be,” she told the skinny guy.
“I’ll go uptown, then,” he said and headed for his VW. I almost called after him not to bother—
Jimmy never went uptown if he had a choice—but Mrs. Beauvais was stuffing me back into the
front seat of the Oldsmobile like she was afraid I’d change my mind.
-
Back then, the Fifth Street Bridge was one of the longer bridges in that part of the county. It
connected the main part of town with the more suburban south side, stretching over the railroad
tracks that went to and from the state capital and, parallel to the tracks, the Nashua River, which in
those days wasn’t so much a river as a waste runoff from the paint factory and a couple of paper
mills. You could tell how good business was by the color of the water—bright red, ink blue, puke
green, or milk of magnesia white were all signs of an economic upturn, more so if there was a
particularly bad stench.
Mrs. Beauvais parked the car across the street from the playground and peered through the
windshield, worried. “Do you think Jimmy is on the bridge?” I knew she was looking at the
concrete arches on the near side. The more daring high school boys showed off by walking all the
way up and over them. Occasionally, the fire department would have to come out and rescue
someone who’d reached the top and then lost his nerve, and everyone knew someone who knew
someone who had seen the kid who had fallen off and splattered all over the road, although no one
seemed to know exactly when this grisly event had occurred. I knew Mrs. Beauvais was wondering
if Jimmy planned to walk over.
“No,” I said, “he’s not on the bridge. He’s under it.”
She looked at me, horrified. “But it’s dangerous down there. The railroad tracks—he could get
run over by a train. Or he could fall in the river—God only knows what would happen to him if he
did!”
I shrugged. Getting hit by a train seemed to be a lot more difficult than avoiding it—it wasn’t
like a train could sneak up on you, after all, you could hear it coming for miles, which gave you
plenty of time to get out of the way. The river we gave a much wider berth. It was generally
accepted among kids that if you stuck your finger in the Nashua, all the flesh would dissolve off it,
leaving the naked bone. But that was pretty easy to avoid, too—you just stayed far away from the
water’s edge. Not hard to do—there was a lot of land under the bridge, overgrown and wild, a
jungle in the middle of town.
 As if Mrs. Beauvais caught a sense of my thoughts, she said, “You know, sweetheart, sometimes
bad people hide down there. Tramps passing through, criminals on the run from the police. If
Jimmy ran into someone like that—well, there are people so bad they do that, you know. They hurt
kids.”
I didn’t say anything. I had a vague idea of what she was talking about but as far as I knew, bad
people like that didn’t hide in the undergrowth beneath bridges—they lurked around outside schools
with bags of candy.
“Do you and Jimmy spend a lot of time down there?” she asked, looking into my face seriously.
“Everybody goes sliding here when there’s enough snow,” I said. “There’s a steep part and a
part that’s not so steep. Sometimes if it’s slippery enough you can build up enough speed to go all
the way to the tracks, practically.”
“That’s very dangerous,” Mrs. Beauvais scolded. “A train could come along at exactly the
wrong moment and there’d be nothing left of you.”
“Nobody’s ever slid onto the tracks,” I said. “I don’t think you could go fast enough.”
She sighed heavily and looked toward the bridge again. “You think Jimmy’s down there now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’d have to go down and see. If you want, I’ll go down by myself and
come back and tell you.”
Mrs. Beauvais shook her head so emphatically, the little net veil on her hat wiggled. “Didn’t you
hear me just tell you it’s dangerous? Besides, I don’t just want to know where he is. He has to come
with me.”
“Why?” I asked.
She looked startled at the question. I was startled myself at my sudden and hitherto unsuspected
nerve. Never in my life had I ever asked an adult to explain herself.
“His aunt kicked him out, didn’t she,” I said.
“I’d rather you didn’t put it that way,” Mrs. Beauvais said and I realized she was embarrassed,
which startled me even more.
“Where’s he going to go now?”
She tapped her gloved fingers on the steering wheel. “That’s a good question. I think Jimmy
may have finally run out of relatives.”
“Why can’t you just make his mother take him?” I said. “Isn’t it against the law or something
for a mother to refuse to take care of her own kid?”
Mrs. Beauvais gave me another startled look. “I’m sorry, that was indiscreet. I shouldn’t have
said anything about Jimmy,” she said in that brisk way grown-ups use when they’ve done
something wrong and a kid bags them right in the act. “It’s nothing that concerns you. These are
matters that you’ll never have to worry about, God willing. Now let’s see if we can find Jimmy.”
We got out of the car and Mrs. Beauvais followed me over to the easier way down, which
wasn’t all that easy for her in those boots and her dress and her nice tweed coat. I thought she
probably would have had a hard time anyway at her age; I had no idea how old she was but all
grown-ups seemed to be too old for everything kids could do. Every time I looked back at her
clambering down the uneven slope after me, I was tempted to tell her to forget it, Jimmy probably
wasn’t down here, it was too cold.
I guess she knew from the look on my face because she kept telling me to keep going, she was
doing fine, she had actually been a kid once herself, even if I found that hard to believe. What I
found hard to believe was that I would get her back up the hill to the car fast enough so she could
drive me home in time for my mother’s four thirty-five phone call. How could I have been so
stupid, I thought furiously. If I’d been with another kid, it would have been simple: I could just say I
had to go home or my mother would kill me and then leave. The other kid wouldn’t have blamed
me for taking off. But if I left Mrs. Beauvais here, I would somehow end up in worse trouble when
my mother found out. And she would find out, because Mrs. Beauvais saw her several times a
week. She’d make a point of telling her.
 That was grown-ups for you—do them a favor and they’d end up making stuff that should have
been simple into something so complicated you ended up in trouble no matter what you did. Maybe
that was why Jimmy’s life was all messed up, I thought—he’d done some adult a favor once and
he’d been paying for it ever since.
Finally we reached the bottom of the hill where the land sloped gently toward the railroad
tracks. Mrs. Beauvais stood there for a few moments, swaying on her high-heeled boots, her
pocketbook swinging from the crook of her elbow. Jeez, why hadn’t she hidden that under the front
seat, I wondered as she grabbed my shoulder to steady herself.
“I don’t suppose there’s an easier way back up?” she asked, puffing a little. I shook my head; I
was doomed.
After she caught her breath, we continued down the slope and I led her toward the patch of land
directly under the bridge. In the summer, big weeds grew up around the bridge support, overgrowth
tall enough to hide in. I had thought most of it would have been gone now, killed off by the cold,
but a lot of the thicker stalks were still there, yellow and dry as old corn husks.
“Jimmy?” I called softly, moving ahead of Mrs. Beauvais. “It’s me, are you down here?” I
glanced back at the social worker picking her way along the frozen ground, both arms out for
balance as if she were walking a tightrope or something. I should have made her wait in the car, I
thought, watching her pause to frown at her right boot. She’d stepped in something.
Without waiting for her, I plunged into the thickest part of the tall dead weeds close to the
bridge support, both arms out in front of me so I wouldn’t go face-first into the cement if I tripped.
Abruptly, one of the stalks tilted down and hit me right on the bridge of my nose. Tears sprang into
my eyes even though it wasn’t quite as bad as the time the army brat who lived upstairs from us
punched me in the nose. I staggered sideways, my hands grabbing for something, anything. Weeds
broke off in my left hand; what felt like several jets of warm, humid air hit my right palm, and then
I was sitting on the ground with Jimmy standing over me. He was wearing only a light, threadbare
brown plaid shirt and jeans, but he didn’t look cold.
“What’re you doing here?” His voice sounded tired and old.
“Looking for you.” I got up and brushed myself off. “Just like everybody else in town, I think.
Well, your social worker and her assistant, anyway. The one who drives the red VW. They made me
help them.” I spotted Mrs. Beauvais about twenty feet away, turning around with a desperate,
bewildered expression on her face. I waved at her. “Hey, over here!”
Jimmy pulled my arm down. “Don’t bother. She can’t hear you. Or see you.”
I twisted out of his grip. “What are you talking about? She’s just right there—” I raised my arm
to wave at her again and saw the air in front of me ripple, as if it were shimmering in intense heat.
“Okay, go ahead—wave, yell, yodel for all I care.” Jimmy chuckled. “Can you yodel?”
I couldn’t but I tried waving and yelling some more. Mrs. Beauvais didn’t even look in our
direction as she stumbled around in her expensive boots.
“Jeez, Jimmy. How are you doing it?”
“I’m not doing anything. They are.” He jerked his thumb upward. I looked. Instead of the
underside of the bridge, there was—
Well, I don’t know what it was; I still don’t. That might have been because only part of it was
visible, as if someone had torn a strip out of the world overhead so it could show through, like a
hidden attic between a ceiling and a roof, but I don’t think so. It did remind me of an attic but it also
made me think of a submarine. Or, strangely, a cross between Mrs. Beauvais’s pocketbook, still
swinging from the crook of her arm, and the roof of my mouth.
Too weird; I wanted to lower my head but my neck wouldn’t move and closing my eyes made
me feel dizzy. There was another, worse feeling creeping up on me as well, a strong sense of not
mattering, of being so small next to everything else that I might as well not exist. It was horrible
and scary but at the same time I also felt oddly relieved to know where I stood in the universe of
things. But not happy; definitely not happy.
“Jimmy?” I said weakly.
“I know,” he said. “This is my dharma.”
 I’d never heard the word before; it lodged in my brain like a barbed hook. “Who—or what—is
up there?” I asked. I thought I saw faint shadows moving in the vaulted darkness. Later, much later,
I thought of a church or a cathedral, but it wasn’t like that at all.
“I just told you—my dharma. That’s what they said, anyway. It means this is how it is for me.”
“Oh.” I wanted to tell him that my neck wouldn’t move but I couldn’t remember how to say
something like that.
“I don’t know if that’s really the right word, considering they’re doing it to me,” Jimmy went
on. “Probably doesn’t matter—I can’t stop it. They’re just gonna keep doing anything they want to
me.”
“What are they doing?” I asked.
Jimmy hesitated. “They’re still trying to find a word for that. If they ever do, it’ll probably be a
bad word. Really bad. But what it is, they make me know things.”
My neck was starting to hurt. “They tell you stuff?”
“No, they make me know things.”
“That’s what I meant—they tell you things.”
He made a frustrated noise. “No. It’s not the same thing. I could tell you something but that
wouldn’t mean you’d know it.”
“What’re you talking about?” I said, getting frustrated myself, both with the argument and not
being able to move my head. “If you tell me something, I’ll know it.”
“Oh, yeah? I can tell you I ran a mile without stopping and got tired but you won’t know my
feet hurt and my legs were wobbly and my lungs burned like fire. Even if I told you that, too, you
still wouldn’t know it, because it didn’t happen to you. Unless I could make you know it my way.”
“Oh.” I managed to get both my hands up behind my neck and started rubbing it, pushing on the
base of my skull as I did. After a bit, I could feel my head tilting down again little by little. Finally I
was looking straight ahead instead of straight up. Mrs. Beauvais tramped back and forth in front of
me and although I could see her mouth opening and closing, I didn’t hear her. I didn’t hear anything
except Jimmy’s voice and under that, a soft rushing noise, like when you put a seashell to your ear.
“Is that why you weren’t in school today?” I asked. “Because someone was making you know
something?”
“I didn’t want to,” he said. “I tried to run away but I ended up here.”
“Have you been here all day?”
“Not exactly here. But all day, yeah.”
“Mrs. Beauvais’s assistant thought you might be stuck somewhere, like lying hurt in a ditch and
unable to call for help. He said you probably didn’t even know about what happened to the
president.”
“Oh, I know,” Jimmy said. “I know all about it. I know everything.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. They made me know.”
The pain in his voice made me turn toward him. In the same moment, I suddenly noticed that
the daylight was all but completely gone. Everything of the day seemed to rush down on me like an
avalanche—Jimmy’s empty desk, Mrs. Barnicle, Judy and her Beatles magazine, hearing that
Kennedy had been shot, Jimmy’s aunt and his cousins, Mrs. Beauvais and her assistant, the phone
ringing in our empty apartment with my mother on the other end of the line getting madder and
madder. Then I felt Jimmy’s hand take hold of mine.
A riot of new images bloomed in my head.
I saw the presidential motorcade from several different angles and people lining the Dallas
streets; sunlight gleamed off the shiny cars as JFK smiled and waved until part of his head exploded
into red mist; Jackie Kennedy, slim and angular in her refined pink suit and pillbox hat, elegant face
twisted in anguish, crawling onto the back of the car, not to get the attention of the bodyguard there
but to grab up something that had landed on the trunk—part of her husband’s skull. People
screaming, sirens screaming, the air itself was screaming, electric with the fear that came with the
breaking of the social compact we made not to kill each other.
 Only I didn’t know about things like social compact, not the words, not the concept. Well, yes, I
knew but I didn’t know that I knew. As brainy as I was, I was still supposed to be safe from
knowing that for a long time.
Mrs. Beauvais stumbled across my field of vision looking bewildered and scared. Social
worker; social compact worker. Her and her assistant, trying to keep Jimmy within the social
compact, trying to catch him when he fell outside of it. But they didn’t know about this.
Whatever this was.
“Jimmy.” It was an effort to speak. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To her. Mrs. Beauvais.”
“You can. They’re not done with me yet. There’s more to come.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“When will they be done?”
“When they are.”
“But what—”
“I just showed you,” he said, almost snapping. “I made you know some of it. Only a little.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I could because you wanted to know.”
Mrs. Beauvais was standing in front of me almost close enough to touch now. The air between
us shimmered again. I should reach out and pull her in, I thought.
“You can’t,” Jimmy said, as if I had spoken aloud. “There’s no room for her in here. No room
with them. She’s too full. Maybe you’d better go now before they make you know something.”
“You think they would?”
“I dunno. They might. If they do, you could end up like me. Nobody’ll want you. And you don’t
have as many relatives as I do. If your mom doesn’t want you, you’ll have nowhere to go.”
“That wouldn’t happen,” I said.
Jimmy gave a small, bitter laugh. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. But I do. They
messed me up, making me know things. It’s like I’ve got scars, only they don’t show the way
normal scars do. People look at me and they know something’s wrong. They don’t know what, they
just know there’s something off. They try to figure it out—some think it’s a bad smell, I don’t wash
maybe, or I’m looking at them funny, like I don’t respect them. Or they can’t see me, they see
someone bad they used to know. Maybe some of them even dream that I do things I haven’t done
and then think it was real after they wake up.”
“What about me? I don’t think any of those things,” I said. “And what about Mrs. Beauvais?
She doesn’t, either.”
“Yes, she does,” Jimmy said. “She holds her nose and forces herself to smile and try to help me
because it’s her job. But deep down, she thinks I’m bad. As for you—” He hesitated. “Well, there’s
some people who don’t get a rash from poison ivy. You’re like one of them.” He sighed. “You better
go. They’re coming back for me.”
“I don’t want to leave you here,” I said.
“You have to. If they come back and see y—”
His voice didn’t so much stop as it snapped off like a dry twig. I wasn’t going to look up again
because I knew if I did I wouldn’t be able to look away. But knowing that made it impossible not to
look. I raised my head.
 I’m not sure what I expected to see—monsters that looked like Frankenstein or the Creature
from the Black Lagoon or maybe a robot like the one in The Day the Earth Stood Still. But they
were nothing like any of those, the ones who made Jimmy Streubal know things. They were
something I had never seen before, something I knew I would never see again. So I took a good,
long, hard look at them, I memorized every line and shadow and feature while they looked back at
me and did the same. And when I was sure I knew exactly what they looked like, something in my
mind clicked, like a switch or a lock, and to this day if I try to describe them even just to myself, no
words or gestures will come.
The one thing I can describe, however, is the way they sniffed at me, tasted me, and then gently
pushed me away.
I tried to reach for Jimmy—whether to stay with him or pull him with me, I still don’t know. It
didn’t work. The air around me shimmered and I fell, rolling over and over on the dead weeds in the
cold, to stop at the very expensive boots of the very, very surprised Mrs. Beauvais.
She pulled me to my feet and started yelling at me about how I had scared her. I didn’t say
anything, just waited for her to pause for breath so I could suggest we go back up to her car. Even if
four thirty-five was long gone and my mother was probably on her way home, I hoped I might get
off a little more lightly if I had to face the music with Mrs. Beauvais beside me.
But she kept yelling and yelling and yelling, and she was holding my shoulder so that her
fingers were digging into it harder and harder. I thought she was going to twist my arm off if she
didn’t scream her own head off first.
I tried to pull away from her but that only made her madder. She started jerking me back and
forth and it really hurt. I struggled to get away from her and she was trying to hang on to me and
finally I just pushed her as hard as I could.
She went over backward and I started to run away. But she didn’t get up and yell some more and
I knew something was really wrong. I went back to look. She had hit her head on a rock and there
was blood all over the dead grass and her velvet hat, more blood than I had ever seen in my life.
I turned to run and a small movement caught my eye. Over by the bridge, the air was
shimmering, as if heat were rising from an unseen fire. For a moment, I had a powerful urge to
plunge back into it. But I couldn’t leave Mrs. Beauvais lying there, not even if I had killed her.
It seemed to take forever to get up the easy slope. By the time I reached the top, I barely had
enough breath left to run to the nearest house for help.
-
I don’t think that I’ve ever had so many people yelling at me for so long, before or since.
Everyone who saw me seemed to feel compelled to yell at me for something, even people I didn’t
know. Somewhere in all the noise, someone—probably Mrs. Beauvais although it could have been
my mother—convinced the police to conduct a thorough search of the area under the Fifth Street
Bridge. One of the TV news programs in the capital got wind of it and actually sent out a reporter
and a camera crew, and we saw thirty, maybe forty seconds of every cop in town poking around the
dead weeds under the bridge. One of them went right past a spot by the bridge support where the air
seemed to wiggle and shimmer like it did when it was very hot, but that could have been the film or
the TV.
Nobody found anything. There was no sign of Jimmy, no sign of anything, nothing but dead
weeds and Mrs. Beauvais’s blood. There was plenty of that.
I was positive she would bleed to death by the time the ambulance got there. But when they
brought her up on the stretcher, she was not only alive but conscious and talking, insisting that they
take me in the ambulance with her. So she could have me arrested at the hospital for pushing her
down, I thought, but I was wrong about that, too. She told the ambulance guys on the way in that
she had been about to take me back up to her car so she could drive me home when someone came
out of nowhere and gave her a hard shove that knocked her down and although she didn’t see who
did it, it must have been Jimmy. It couldn’t have been anyone else.
 They asked me if I’d seen Jimmy do it; I told them no but I don’t think they believed me. Then
we got to the hospital emergency room where my mother was waiting for me and the yelling began
again.
-
I spent Thanksgiving vacation under house arrest. I did a lot of reading and watched a lot of TV.
I saw JFK’s funeral and the film of Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald. I didn’t see Jimmy.
-
When school resumed in December, Jimmy’s desk was still empty and it stayed that way. Mrs.
Barnicle said he was missing. Unfortunately missing was how she put it. Nobody knew where he
was.
Even after my house arrest was lifted, my mother threatened me with dire punishments if I
should ever show the incredibly bad judgment to go down under the Fifth Street Bridge again. I
didn’t tell her the threats weren’t necessary; I had the odd sense that she felt it was her duty to make
them.
-
Eventually, trains ceased to run on that stretch of track. Environmentalists cleaned up the
Nashua River. It looked beautiful but you couldn’t have paid most people to go near it anyway.
I had been living in Chicago for ten years when my mother wrote to tell me that the Fifth Street
Bridge was to be torn down and replaced with a better structure. She sent newspaper clippings; I
read the articles, looked at the photos carefully, but there was nothing to see.
I still wonder why Jimmy didn’t come with me out of that strange space under the bridge,
whether it was because those . . . beings, whatever they were, wouldn’t let him go or whether he
was just sick and tired of having to be at odds with the whole world. Either way, I always feel a
sense of seriously deep loss when I think of him.
It’s not just the loss of Jimmy himself, although he did leave a big hole in my childhood life. I
can’t help thinking that we lost an opportunity for something—“we” as in people in general. The
way Jimmy was being made to know things—I think eventually more people would have been
made to know things. Really know them, in the profound and meaningful way that leads to
understanding and possibly even—pardon the expression—enlightenment.
But it didn’t agree with us. I felt how difficult it was when Jimmy made me know what
happened to JFK. It was overwhelming and I shut my mind off from it as best I could, partly
because Jimmy wasn’t there to help me with it. But mostly because for as long as it was vivid in
me, people were angry with me. Jimmy had been right—when you were made to know things in
that way, it messed you up with other people.
I still look for Jimmy. I look for that shimmer in the air, like from intense heat. And whenever I
see it, I look the other way.
-
Worlds of Possibilities
-
. . . for all your mystic needs.
.
If she had been just a little more paranoid, Detective Ruby Tsung thought as she climbed out of
her ancient Geo, she would have read the antique gold letters on the display window as a taunt. And
why not? This morning she had woken up feeling as if something about the size and shape of a
hockey puck had congealed just under her breastbone and was slowly twisting her insides into a
misshapen mass. Or mess.
 The return of the Dread; she had known it would happen eventually but that didn’t make it any
easier. This time there had been no warning, no gradual onset, and so no chance to talk to her
partner Rafe Pasco about why the near-overwhelming sense of impending doom that he had told her
was actually a kind of allergy had come back. She had intended to call him but even as she was
reaching for the phone, Ostertag had rung with orders to proceed directly to this address on the
other side of the downtown business district. Do not pass the squad room; do not collect 200
calories of doughnut.
She had arrived to find half the block cordoned off and a small army of uniformed police trying
to look purposeful and on the case and not at all like they were milling around drinking coffee and
gossiping. That would be down to Ostertag’s presence. The lieutenant only showed when there was
something majorly unfortunate. Usually this involved someone high up in city or state government
and an underage person. They didn’t get many of those calls, however, and none of them in Ruby’s
experience had ever been found at a store that sold tarot cards, crystals, and incense. Maybe this
was a massage parlor in disguise? She frowned at the window again. Worlds of Possibilities; there
were stranger ones—worlds and possibilities both.
“Hey, Rube,” said the uniform on the front door, smiling and in spite of the Dread, she managed
to smile back at him. Dave Maqsood had been one of her classmates at the academy, umpty years
ago.
“So what’s it like in there?” she asked, clipping her badge to the breast pocket of her jacket.
“Very spiritual and mystic.” He leaned toward the open doorway and took a deep breath in
through his nose. “The manager lit a lot of incense while he was waiting for us to show.
Sandalwood and something else. I don’t know what it is but I think it’s in my wife’s favorite
cologne. It’s nice. Almost covers the db stink. Almost.”
She poked her head in and looked around. There were even more uniforms inside, some taking
photos. “Jesus, who died—the mayor? Or does he just own the place?”
“He might as well own everything in a ten-block radius. Or didn’t you notice how much this
area’s been pimped out lately? Redevelopment. The old warehouses are loft condos, they turned the
old handbag factory into an art gallery, and there’s two designer coffee joints on this block alone,
one at each end. Serious money’s getting poured in here and nothing fucks that up like murder, you
know?”
Ruby nodded. “Yeah, there goes the neighborhood.” She peered in through the doorway again.
None of the glass cabinets or display tables seemed to be disturbed even slightly. “So where is this
dead body?”
“Two dbs,” Maqsood corrected her, “and they’re in one of the treatment rooms in the back.” He
pointed; at the far end of the room to her left, she saw a doorway with a multicolored beaded curtain
currently tied up out of the way. Just above it was a sign that said Treatment Rooms in flowery
script.
“Treatment Rooms?” Ruby made a pained face. “What kind of treatments are we talking
about?”
“Don’t ask me, I don’t even work here.” Maqsood chuckled. “Your partner’s back there with
Lieutenant Ostertag. DiCenzo and Semente are talking to the employees who found the bodies and
now that you’re here, the party can really begin.”
“You didn’t get a chance to talk to anyone, did you?” Ruby asked as the Dread pressed harder
on her stomach.
Maqsood shook his head. “Sorry, Rube. Rivard and Goldie were the responding officers. Jean
and I came in on the second wave by request.”
 “Anything you can tell me?” she said without much hope.
“Whoever’s in there has made Ostertag very unhappy.” He leaned in a bit closer. “I heard the
word ‘mob.’ ”
Ruby blinked at him. “Really.”
“If you heard it, too, it wasn’t from me. Necessarily.” He spread his hands. “Sorry, Rube, that’s
the best I can do.”
“I hear you,” she said and started to go in.
“No, I feel you.”
“Pardon?” She paused, looking at him in surprise.
“That’s what they say now. Not ‘I hear you’ but ‘I feel you.’“
“Great. That’s all I need is everybody feeling me. Jesus wept.”
Maqsood’s laughter followed her as she went inside.
-
She spotted Tommy DiCenzo and his partner Lou Semente talking with three very distraught
people. DiCenzo excused himself from the group and came over to her.
“You look like hell,” he said with a grim half-smile.
She winced. “Why, you silver-tongued devil, always with the flattery.”
“Sorry. You coming down with something or was the traffic that bad?”
“The traffic’s always bad in this part of town. It’s because the highway’s all screwy. I swear to
God, the exit and entrance ramps make a square knot.” She nodded toward the people with
Semente. “They find the bodies?”
“Yeah. The older guy’s the manager, Clement Odell. The taller woman with the black hair’s
named Joan Klein, the short one’s a Candy Lovelace and as you can probably see, she’s pretty
freaked out.” Candy Lovelace was huddled between the manager and the other woman with her
arms wrapped tightly around herself, her head bowed and her shoulders up around her ears. Ruby
could see she was crying. “I called an ambulance,” DiCenzo added. “Maybe it’ll get here before she
melts down altogether.”
Ruby nodded absently. “And what’s the story with these treatment rooms?”
DiCenzo shrugged. “Manager says they just used them for private appointments with psychics. I
didn’t see any massage tables or baby oil or anything.”
“Okay, whatever.” She frowned. “Do they still say ‘whatever’ or is it something else now like ‘I
feel it?’“
DiCenzo gave her a sideways look. “Who are ‘they’ and what are ‘they’ feeling?”
“Don’t ask.”
She made her way across the store, nodding at the various uniformed officers. Just outside the
doorway leading to the rooms in the back, she paused for a look at a long glass display case filled
with a large collection of semi-precious gemstones in a multitude of colors, shapes, and sizes. Ruby
knew nothing about any sort of gems but she was fairly sure that unless these were all fakes made
out of plastic, there was a small fortune laid out glittering under those tiny bright lights in the case.
But again, as far as she could tell, nothing had been disturbed. The stones were grouped by color,
dark alternating with light, in a way that made her think of one of those pictures made up of
thousands of smaller pictures—you could only see the larger picture at a distance.
And why would she think that, she wondered, frowning. Then the Dread throbbed inside her, a
reminder that everything was wrong and would continue to be wrong until further notice.
 The so-called treatment rooms had been dressing rooms in a previous lifetime; Ruby could tell
by the doors. They had been repainted a rich, midnight blue and decorated here and there with tiny
gold suns and crescent moons and comets but they still had panels with adjustable shutters. Cheaper
than getting rid of them but they must have been a bitch to paint, Ruby thought.
However many rooms there had been originally, the area had been remodeled so that there were
now only three. Two smaller ones on her left faced a larger one across a narrow passageway; at the
far end was a door marked Employees Only.
Abruptly, her partner Rafe Pasco poked his head out of the larger room on her right, his honey-
colored dreadlocks swinging with the motion. “Door number three for the win.”
“And today’s prize is?” She followed him into the room.
“My ulcer,” said Ostertag. He was crouched at the foot of two bodies, a man and a woman, laid
out side by side. Both had been shot several times in the chest, leaving their faces untouched.
“I didn’t know you had an ulcer,” Ruby said, unconsciously pressing one hand to her own
midsection where the feeling of impending doom had gone up another few notches.
“I don’t. Yet,” the lieutenant said. “It’s the one I’m going to have by lunchtime. Between the
mayor and the city council and the press, it’ll be a doozy, too.”
“Does anyone still say ‘doozy?’“ she said before she could think better of it.
Ostertag was apparently too deep in his study of the bodies to hear her. The woman was blonde,
medium build, in her late twenties or early thirties, wearing a long, gauzy white garment that made
the manner of her death all the more vivid. It wasn’t really a dress, Ruby thought; it looked more
like it was supposed to be a ceremonial robe. Perhaps the sort of thing the well-dressed psychic
wore on the job these days.
By contrast, the man had met his end in a very expensive suit, possibly made to order, along
with the silk shirt. No tie—either he hadn’t been wearing one or someone had taken a souvenir.
Ruby estimated that he was about her own age, making him perhaps twenty years older than the
woman next to him, dark-haired and a bit heavy-set, as if he had just started to put on weight. There
was something familiar about his face but she couldn’t place him.
“Do we know who they are?” she asked.
“The manager ID’ed her as Emmeline Lilliana, professional psychic. The other two employees
confirm that,” Pasco told her. “None of them recognized the man.”
Ruby frowned, thinking. “I could swear I’ve seen him somewhere before—”
“You have,” said Ostertag, pushing himself to his feet. Ruby waited for him to continue. Instead
he began walking slowly in a wide circle around the bodies. She turned to Rafe Pasco; his face was
carefully composed, impossible to read. The irritation she would have felt was all but completely
overridden by the Dread, the awful feeling of utter certainty that she was about to find herself at the
mercy of something unstoppable, unbearable, and incurable. Because one or both of the dead people
on the floor didn’t belong here. She wished Ostertag would go off and have his ulcer somewhere
else so she could talk to her partner alone.
All at once she noticed that Ostertag had several faint shadows radiating in all directions and
looked up. The original ceiling had been raised several feet and track lighting installed; four tracks,
with a lot more lights than the room really needed. Ruby looked around and there was also an
indirect lighting system running along the perimeter of both the floor and ceiling.
“Is it me,” she said, “or is it warm in here?”
Ostertag glanced at her but didn’t answer.
“Seriously,” she prodded, “what’s with all the lights?”
 The lieutenant still didn’t say anything. He had finished his circuit of the bodies and was now
standing at their feet again with his hands in his pockets.
“Okay,” she said, taking out her notebook and pen. “We’ve got an ID on the woman but nobody
knows who the guy is—”
“I didn’t say that.” Ostertag eyed her darkly. “The manager and the other two don’t know who
he is. But I do. That’s Phil Cannizzarro. Career criminal, convicted felon. Family man.”
Ruby had to think for a couple of seconds before she remembered. “I thought Phil Cannizzarro
died four or five years ago while he was serving time for bribery.”
“I know he did,” Ostertag said. “I saw the body myself.”
“Then this is just some guy who looks like—”
“I don’t want anyone talking about who he is or isn’t or who he looks like,” Ostertag added,
going on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I told DiCenzo and Semente and the uniforms who saw the body
the same thing. That’s four other people besides you two and me. I don’t want anyone else in here
who hasn’t been in here already.”
“What about the coroner’s office?” Ruby asked. “How long do you think they’ll keep a lid on
it?”
“Long enough to prove this isn’t Phil Cannizzarro.”
“That’ll be easy. One DNA test, end of story.”
Ostertag’s mouth twitched. “It better be,” he said. “Because I don’t know how I’ll take it if it
turns out Phil Cannizzarro has an evil twin. Or an even more evil twin.”
“Had a twin,” Ruby corrected him. “Evil or more evil, he’s dead now, too. It’s still end of
story.”
Ostertag shook his head slowly and emphatically. “It’d be an evil omen.”
Ruby’s eyebrows went up; in the eight years she had known him, Ostertag had never shown any
sign of being superstitious. She turned to her partner who was studying a palmtop computer with a
deeply furrowed brow. Before she could say anything to him, Ostertag’s cell phone rang, sounding
exactly like the phones from a certain TV series about a counter-terrorist agency that her grand-kids
were crazy about.
Ostertag noticed her reaction and said, “My daughters” before answering. He left the room with
the cell clamped to the side of his head.
“He didn’t even say hello,” she said.
“Probably didn’t have to,” Pasco replied. He was taking photos of the bodies from several
different angles with his palmtop. “By the time this is over, he’ll have to have his phone surgically
removed from his ear. Someone ought to tell him about Bluetooth.”
“Someone did,” said Ruby. “He’s got a thing about walking around talking to nobody.” She let
out a long breath. “So this is why I woke up feeling like shit this morning.”
Pasco finished taking pictures and thumbed the small keypad with the expert rapidity that made
Ruby feel old and in the way every time she saw it. Except for today, of course; nothing trumped
the Dread.
“What kind of identity theft is this?” she asked, just for the sake of saying anything at all instead
of standing silently in a room with two corpses and the Dread growing inside her like a tumor on
fast-forward.
 Pasco’s attention was still on his palmtop. “Not the usual. Maybe not even mainly identity
theft.” He glanced up at her briefly. “Sorry, I’m looking up some...” His voice trailed off before his
lips stopped moving. Ruby waited. In the eleven months since he had transferred to homicide from
cybercrime—the Geek Squad, as everyone called it, including the people in it—she had gotten used
to him. To say that he was nothing like her old partner Rita Castillo was an understatement. When
Ostertag had assigned him to her after Rita’s retirement, she’d had a few misgivings and they were
as much about her own ability to adapt to working with somebody her son’s age as they were about
Pasco’s being able to switch from virtual crime to real violence with real blood and guts and worse.
But there was more to it than that. His arrival in homicide had coincided with the arrival of the
Dread, which hadn’t actually been a coincidence at all. And from there—well, she might not have
believed any of it, not even what she saw with her own eyes. Except for the Dread. It was like a mix
of every bad feeling she had ever experienced, heavily salted with the certainty that there was worse
to come. In fifty-four years of life (fifty-five next October), she had never had any idea that it was
possible to feel so awful and not be in physical pain.
Regret, Rafe Pasco had told her, was like that.
She took his word for it; regret was something she had never allowed herself to give into, not in
any serious way, not even when the Dread took hold of her. Because when the Dread did take hold
of her, the regret trying to find its way into her wasn’t exactly her own. Pasco had told her that, too
and she wouldn’t have believed it except for Rita Castillo—not the one who had been her partner
for so many years but the one who had worked out of some other precinct and had never met her at
all.
Her gaze fell on the corpses again and she felt her stomach do a slow forward roll. “Aw, shit,”
she groaned.
Pasco looked up from his palmtop, mildly surprised. “I know, but anything in particular?”
“This is just what we need,’ Ruby said. “The Mob working an angle with identity theft. Evil
twins, more evil twins, terrifyingly evil twins—who knows, maybe even good twins. That would
really be something. This is like a dream come true for them. They can alibi each other, dump
bodies, tamper with evidence, witnesses, juries—” She made a disgusted noise, wiping one hand
over her face. “Once they really get their hooks in, they’ll have everything so fucked up we won’t
know what world—system—universe—we belong in. They’ll take over the best ones and force
people to pay them to live in it. Jesus, I better put in for my retirement while I still know which end
is up.”
Her partner started to say something when they heard a terrified scream from someone out in the
main part of the store. She automatically reached for her gun but Pasco put his hand on her arm and
shook his head.
Several voices were talking at once; she could hear DiCenzo telling someone to calm
down, calm down and come over here, please come over here right now and sit down while a man’s
voice said Omigod, Omigod, Omigod over and over with the same inflection, like a machine.
Underneath the commotion, Dave Maqsood was asking someone to step outside, please just step
outside for a few minutes and a woman wanted to know what had happened. Keeping her hand on
her weapon, Ruby went out to see what was going on.
On one side of the store, DiCenzo was trying to calm the manager who was gesturing at the
door and then toward the treatment rooms. The other two employees were in a far corner with some
uniformed officers; Ruby could hear the rapid whooping pant of someone hyperventilating. She
looked around, caught the eye of Dave Maqsood’s partner Jean Fletcher; Jean shook her head and
shrugged.
 Pasco tapped her on the shoulder and pointed at the display window. Through the glass, she
could see Maqsood talking calmly but firmly to someone whom he was preventing from coming
into the store. Ruby moved closer and saw that it was a young blonde woman dressed in a yellow
sleeveless top and a ruffly peasant skirt; draped over one arm was something long and white,
covered in plastic from a local drycleaner.
Ruby turned to Pasco, mystified.
“Who said anything about the Mob?” He chuckled. “What we’ve got is a case of job sharing
without the employer’s knowledge or permission, by a con artist running a psychic scam.”
Ruby stared at him flatly.
“Although I will admit that the presence of a Mob figure is definitely disturbing,” he added.
“Oh, no shit, Sherlock?” Ruby gave a single, mirthless laugh.
“Still, she’s at the center of this,” Pasco insisted. “Not him.”
“What makes you so sure?” Ruby asked, still skeptical.
“Because if she weren’t, there’d be two identical women back there.”
-
Ruby wanted to appreciate the sight of Ostertag looking as bad as she felt, possibly even worse,
except it did nothing to relieve the Dread weighing her down.
“I give him points for not going back to the precinct and hiding out in his office,” Pasco said as
they watched him directing the cops outside to tighten the cordon from where they stood near the
front door.
“Are you kidding?” Ruby said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, he calls confrontation a lifestyle.
And he’s not gonna let go of this Phil Cannizzarro thing until he gets some answers.”
Pasco’s faint smile was wry. “If he gets any, you think he’ll believe them?”
“I have no idea.” Ruby sighed. “It depends on what they are, I guess.” She saw Ostertag pause
at the back door of the ambulance where the hysterical employee was now lying down. A paramedic
came out to have a few words with the lieutenant, then went back inside. The ambulance had
arrived at the same time as the crime scene techs who were now crawling all over the back rooms,
including the one marked Employees Only; Ruby had managed to get a quick look at it before they
had chased her out complaining about contamination. Half the room served as the employee lounge
with a couple of cheap vinyl sofas and a dented coffee urn; the other half was the manager’s office.
Not what she’d have called a great arrangement. She tried to imagine having to take coffee breaks
in Ostertag’s office and felt nothing but the Dread.
“Here, look at this,” Pasco said, giving her a nudge. He was holding the palmtop in front of her.
She had to lower it six inches and when that didn’t help, made him wait while she took out her
reading glasses.
“What am I looking for?” Her eyes focused on a mug shot of a woman. She was dark-haired and
very disheveled, with a swollen lower lip and the start of a black eye but Ruby recognized her.
“Okay, is that the dead one or—” she looked around, spotted DiCenzo with the manager in the
astrology section but no one else.
“Semente is babysitting her over in the self-help corner,” Pasco told her. “I thought we might
ask her that.”
“Fine, but I’d like to know if you know,” Ruby said. “I think at least one of us should know if
she’s lying.”
“You don’t think you’d be able to tell?”
Ruby frowned. “What, if she doesn’t belong here I’ll feel worse? I didn’t think it worked that
way.”
 “Once you know what to look for, you can see the differences.”
“Fine. You look for the differences. I’ll back you up.”
“All right,” said Pasco genially.
-
The self-help corner was furnished with several wicker chairs. Semente and the woman might
have been two customers having a chat about biorhythms or some other mystical thing except that
Semente had positioned himself so she had no unobstructed avenue of escape. As soon as he saw
Ruby and Pasco, he excused himself. The woman watched them with wide, anxious eyes as they sat
down, Pasco taking Semente’s place. Ruby had to force herself not to push her own chair farther
away. If the Dread was any worse, she couldn’t tell; it certainly wasn’t any better.
“Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?” the woman said, looking from Pasco in front of
her to Ruby on her right. “What happened?”
“You’re Emmeline Lilliana?” Pasco said, glancing down at his palmtop.
The woman looked at him, then at Ruby with her notebook and pen. “Yes. Is someone ever
going to write that down? You people keep asking me that.”
“Is that your real name?”
Now she frowned at Pasco, offended. “What kind of a question is that?”
“Is that your real name, or is that just the name you do business under as a psychic?”
She glanced at Ruby. “It’s my legal name. My full legal name.”
“Actually, that comes up as an alias,” Pasco told her, almost sounding apologetic. “Along with
Emily LaDue, Lilly LeFevre, Lillian Emerson, and Emma Casey.”
The woman took a deep put-upon breath and let it out again. “Don’t you think it’s a waste of
time to ask me questions you already know the answers to?”
“Just want to see if your answers match ours.”
“Okay, whatever. Look, I’m not trying to be difficult or disrespect you or anything but I just got
here. I thought I was coming into work like I would on any other day and instead the street’s
blocked off, there are cops everywhere and as soon as Carol lays eyes on me, she goes bananas and
has to get sedated. And no one will tell me what’s going on.”
Pasco shook his head. “Come on, you must have picked up on something.”
She gave Pasco and Ruby dirty looks. “Yes, all right, I can figure out something really bad’s
happened. Someone’s been hurt—killed?”
Pasco shrugged, glancing at Ruby; she put up a hand, fingers spread.
“There wouldn’t be so many cops here if it wasn’t a murder,” the woman said after a long
moment. “Right?”
Pasco shrugged again.
“Come on, yes or no,” she prodded.
“I didn’t think you’d have to ask,” said Pasco. “You are psychic, aren’t you?”
The woman looked heavenward. “I can’t believe I walked into that one again. I never learn.”
“I figured that out from your record.” Pasco chuckled, glancing at Ruby again. “That you never
learn, I mean.”
“If you were planning on telling the owners of this place about my record, don’t bother. They
already know. I didn’t even have to explain. They know the torment that skeptics visit on the
sensitive.”
“Do they,” Ruby said.
 Emily Lilliana’s half-closed eyes swiveled to look at her. “Of course. Both you and your partner
must know what it’s like to be picked on just because you’re different. How many other Chinese
kids did you go to school with, dear? Did they call you ‘kung fu’ or ‘ching chong,’ pull the corners
of their eyes up? Make jokes about slanty-eyed rice-burning cars?”
“Those are Japanese cars,” Ruby corrected her.
“As if they knew the difference.” Emmeline Lilliana sniffed and turned back to Pasco. “And you
—did you grow up with the black parent or were you forced to try fitting into a world full of people
who looked nothing like you? Or are both your parents black and you were the little genetic surprise
that no one knew what to make of. What did your father think of those freckles?”
“What’s your point?” asked Ruby. “Other than antagonizing the people who are trying to decide
whether to arrest you or not?”
“Arrest me? What for?” Emmeline Lilliana looked hurt. “For being psychic? I can’t help that
any more than you can help those freckles, officer—”
“Detective,” Pasco said.
“Of course, detective. My bad—”
“Do they still say ‘my bad?’“ Ruby said, doing her part to keep the woman off-guard in spite of
the increasing pressure of the Dread in her chest.
“I don’t see any arrests on your record for being psychic,” Pasco told the woman as he studied
his palmtop. “A lot for fraud, though. And larceny, of course. A couple of assaults here, too. You’re
not going to get violent, are you?”
“I have never been violent in my life,” the woman said, offended. “All of those charges are
complete fabrications. As are the fraud charges. It’s a sad world where you can be thrown in jail for
someone else’s lack of faith.”
“And the two dead people in the back room—is that why they were killed?” Pasco said. “Or was
it something else?”
“I don’t know anything about the people back there.”
“Even though you’re psychic.”
Emmeline Lilliana huffed. “It’s not a trick. I’m not a dove-puller. It doesn’t work that way.”
“‘Dove-puller?’“ Ruby almost laughed.
“A stage magician,” the woman said, her lips curling with contempt. “Abracadabra, hocus
pocus, hey, presto, I found a quarter in your ear. You know, whenever you see one of those flash-
bang tricks where a dove disappears in a sudden flame and a puff of smoke, the bird gets killed.
And the magician always gets away with it; you never arrest him for animal cruelty. Meanwhile I’m
not hurting a soul, animal or not, and I’ve got cops jumping on me just because of who I am.”
“Well, that’s because it’s illegal to pretend you’re getting messages from people’s dead friends
and relatives and then charge them money for them,” Pasco told her.
“I don’t pretend anything. I’m sensitive—I receive messages from a realm beyond this one. The
people they’re intended for identify them as being from loved ones no longer on this plane of
existence. They insist—quite forcefully, in fact. I can’t argue with them; after all, they know their
loved ones. I don’t. And I don’t charge anyone anything. The grateful reward me as they see fit.”
“You’ve got it all figured out,” Pasco said.
The woman dipped her head, shrugging one shoulder. “If you don’t believe me, that’s your right.
But that’s hardly grounds for arrest.”
“There’s the problem of two dead people, though.”
“That has nothing to do with me.”
“I think it does.”
 The woman turned to Ruby, looking blank. “What is it with your partner? He’s got my record
literally in the palm of his hand with that gadget. You read it, you’ll see I’ve never—”
“I think messages from the dead weren’t lucrative enough,” Pasco went on, talking over her.
“Especially after someone showed you how to cross from one line to another. You saw a few
differences and decided to use them to your own advantage. Did Phil Cannizzarro even know where
you were taking him? What did you tell him to get him here?”
The woman looked down at her hands folded in her lap and didn’t answer.
“How hard was it to get his old crew here?” Pasco went on. “Did you try to run the messages-
from-the-dead scam on them or did you tell them that Cannizzarro was really still alive?” He sat
forward. “How long did it take, even with a connection you could exploit? Was it your connection,
or did you have to go through several different lines?”
“Pardon me for saying so but I’m not following you at all.” The woman kept her gaze fixed on
her hands.
“What am I thinking?” Pasco said, hitting his forehead lightly with the heel of his hand. “Of
course it wouldn’t be your connection. You wouldn’t want to get all mobbed up in your own line.
It’s very dangerous, getting into bed with the Mob. Tends to shorten your life expectancy. Like the
poor woman in the back. Your co-workers all thought it was you.”
Ruby turned to him sharply, frowning. At the same time, the woman looked up, her face the
picture of innocent bafflement. “Obviously it’s not me. But just because they thought it was doesn’t
mean that I have any connection—”
Pasco got up and pulled her out of the chair by one arm. “Tell you what,” he said, propelling her
through the store toward the treatment rooms, “instead of arguing about it, you can see for yourself
and then tell me what you think.”
The woman stumbled along, trying to pull away and protesting that she didn’t want to look at
any dead bodies, especially murder victims. Unsure of what to do, Ruby followed, wondering what
her partner thought he was going to accomplish. She had been known to shove gory crime scene
photos at suspects or their accomplices or even material witnesses who were reluctant to make a
statement but this was something entirely different. Even some of the uniformed cops looked
shocked as they watched Pasco force the woman through the doorway to the back.
“See, this is what we’ve been discussing,” he said, shoving her into the room.
She twisted out of his grasp and tried to push past him to leave. Pasco spun her around, grabbed
the back of her head, and held her in place.
For a long moment, they stayed like that, as still and silent as statues. Just behind them on the
threshold, Ruby waited, not daring to breathe, waiting for the woman to scream or try to run. But
the moment stretched out and continued to stretch and still no one moved or spoke. Because of the
lights, Ruby thought, feeling surreal; too many lights and no proper shadows.
Then she heard the woman say, “Uh-oh,” and everything unfroze.
“Yeah,” Pasco said. “‘Uh-oh.’ Houston, we’ve got a problem for sure.”
The woman turned to him, her face tight with fear and more than a little desperation. “I didn’t
set this up. It was someone else. One of the others.”
Pasco glanced at Ruby. “Why should we believe you?”
“Because she said they wouldn’t have faces.”
“Pardon?” Ruby said, although she was pretty sure she knew exactly what the woman meant.
 “Because of the way they’d be killed,” the woman said, desperation rising. “She said the way
they’d be killed, they wouldn’t have faces. There’d be nothing left, not even enough for dental
records.” She looked from Pasco to Ruby. “Hey, I didn’t want to go along with it but she made it
pretty clear that if I didn’t, it would be me on the floor instead of—well, you know. A different
one.”
Ruby swallowed hard and took a steadying breath. “Does she belong here or do you?”
“I do,” the woman said quickly. “I belong here. She’s from the same place as him.” She made a
gesture at the bodies without looking at them and shuddered.
“And which scam were you running—messages from the dead or manifesting spirits?”
The woman’s mouth opened and closed a few times silently.
“Come on, if you want to stay alive, I have to know,” Pasco snapped.
“Manifestation,” she said, her voice small. She looked at Ruby, her eyes pleading. “That wasn’t
my idea, I wanted to stay with just the messages. But she said if we could actually show them the
dear departed, the money would roll in like—well—”
“Did Phil Cannizzarro know he was coming back from the dead?”
“Sometimes. I—we—didn’t always use the same one.”
The Dread had acquired an almost sharp edge now; Ruby pressed her lips together, trying to
keep her face impassive.
“What about this one?” Pasco said. “Was he in on it?”
“I—I’m not sure. I’m not!” she added in response to the look Pasco gave her. “She set it all up.
I—we just had to make the appointment, she said she’d take care of everything else, getting all the
right people together.”
“And you knew it was going to be a hit,” Ruby said. There was more of an edge in her voice
than she had expected.
“She didn’t give me a choice. She said either I went along with it and she’d split the money with
me or she’d make an appointment for me, too.”
“The money?”
“Like a finder’s fee. For finding out he was alive and getting him here.”
Pasco turned to Ruby, one eyebrow raised. She shook her head.
“Did you tell them how Cannizzarro faked his death in prison? Or did you just show them
photos of him alive?”
“She did all that, handled all the details.”
“And where is she now?” Ruby asked.
“I don’t know,” the woman said. “Not here, obviously, since she left me holding the bag.” She
looked nervously from Pasco to Ruby and back several times. “What happens now?”
“We take you into custody, of course,” Pasco said. “What did you think?”
“But what about her?”
Pasco shrugged. “You’re her. Case closed.”
“But I’m not! I wouldn’t do something like this—”
“I wouldn’t know.” Pasco dragged her back to the main part of the store and told a couple of
uniforms to take her into custody.
“I don’t suppose you’ve figured out how we can write this up so that it makes sense,” Ruby
said, watching as the cops cuffed her and took her out.
 “Hey, we just arrest them—we don’t explain them.” Pasco smiled. “As she makes her way
through the system, she’ll wind up taking a detour which will take her where she belongs. The
appropriate law enforcement agency will take over and you’ll stop feeling the effects of your, ah,
allergy.”
“And I assume there’ll be a plausible explanation or cover story for all of it?” Ruby said.
“Something that’ll keep Ostertag’s head from exploding?”
“Ruby, it’s the system. That’s all the explanation anybody’s going to need. Especially Ostertag.”
She didn’t understand until a week later, when Ostertag made a passing mention of a murder
victim who had borne an extremely strong resemblance to a dead Mob figure.
“Do not try to talk me out of this,” she said, shaking her retirement papers in Pasco’s face. “It’s
all getting too loose and runny.”
“I understand,” he said. “Fortunately, not all of you retired. There’s one—”
“Shut up!” She whacked him over the head; papers flew in every direction and she refused to let
him help her pick them up again.
-
Not Quite Alone in the Dream Quarter
[with Mike Resnick]
-
PLEASURE
IS TOXIC
PAIN
IS TOXIC
PLEASURE
IS TOXIC
PAIN
IS TOXIC
CHOOSE
YOUR PASSION
CHOOSE
YOUR POISON
CHOOSE
YOUR
PASSION
CHOOSE
YOUR
POISON
.
The sign hangs in the darkness, each word a different vivid color not found in nature—hard
pink, panic red, terror orange, sear yellow, poison green, scream blue, bruise purple. Or contusion
purple. Hematoma purple. Colors you see when something’s too wrong to make right. What have I
done to myself now?
Whatever it is, I’ve done it in a Dream’s apartment. Dreams are all utterly crazy for air signs,
those brilliant, glowing, ephemeral formations of charged particles that display statements, the more
enigmatic the better. Come-ons to those of us who use their services, of course, but also I think
secret messages to each other that we lesser beings can’t understand.
 This air sign is very elaborate. Besides the different colors, the words appear to be spinning like
weather vanes caught in discrete winds, and yet none of them ever appears backward. After a while,
my eyes adjust so that I can see more of the apartment in the sign’s glow. It seems to be typical of a
Dream’s living space. The walls are lined with shelves, and the shelves are crammed with all kinds
of things—small boxes, figurines, cups, empty picture frames, bits of electronics, show-discs gone
dark, other objects I can’t identify. Some of the stuff came from customers, but most of it was
probably scavenged, for reasons that wouldn’t make sense to anyone except a Dream. Once I came
to in a Dream’s apartment filled with stacks of old flat-paper photos, all spanning generations of
various families. I only know this because I knocked over one of the stacks and the Dream made me
pick them up. Otherwise I would never go through a Dream’s belongings. Some people do, and I
know the Dreams don’t mind, but I won’t. I’m afraid of finding something of my own.
My eyes have adjusted even more now, so that I can see I’ve never been here before. A new
Dream—perhaps that’s why my memory is so slow to come back. How long have I been here,
anyway? It feels like it’s much longer than usual. Maybe the Dream couldn’t wake me afterward
and decided to crawl off into a corner to sleep, leaving me to come to on my own. I hate spending
the night in a Dream’s apartment. In the cold, post-reverie light of day, among all the clutter, a
Dream might as well be just another human you’ve done something very foolish with.
Pleasure is toxic, the sign reminds me. Pain is toxic. The back of my head feels tender and
bruised, as if I passed out and banged it when I fell. Carefully, I roll my head over to the right;
there’s nothing to see but the patchy shadows of more clutter. Directly above me is an irregularly
shaped hole in the ceiling, where a light fixture might have hung. Perhaps it was scavenged by
another Dream before this one moved in.
Wincing, I roll my head around to the left and come face-to-face with the Dream. My Dream.
There’s a faint smile on his pure, hairless face, and for a moment I think he’s been lying there
watching me come to, waiting until I’m alert so he can tell me that we’re done and I can leave. Then
I understand—there’s something wrong with his eyes. At the same moment, I see that what I
thought was a shadow on his forehead is actually a hole.
I push myself up to my knees. Most of the back of his head is gone; blood, bone, and tissue has
spread out in a lopsided flourish. And now that I see it, the smell hits me all at once, as if it has been
holding back deliberately until I know.
This is completely beyond my experience. This is not the kind of world I have ever lived in. I’m
a Decadent, an Indulger, a Consumer. The harm I have done and the harm I have come to has never
drawn blood.
Is toxic. Is toxic.
I wait to feel nausea or fear or even arousal. Instead what comes is a sensation of being set
firmly in time and space, in three dimensions, then four, then more. I am here and I will always be
here. I can’t leave.
Pleasure. Pain. Spinning.
Toxic. Spinning.
Choose.
Passion. Poison.
Choose. Choose.
Spinning. Spinning. Spinning.
When the door behind the air sign opens, the words billow and then blow apart, silent fireworks
scattering twinkling particles in every direction. Dispersed, they die out wherever they land.
 A group of half a dozen solemn people lifts me to my feet, binds my wrists, and escorts me out
past a silent crowd of Dreams. I don’t look back, but if I did, I know that I would see myself
kneeling on the floor beside the dead Dream, staring at the ruin of his head.
-
“We know this isn’t really your style,” says the detective. Her name is Pret, and like all
detectives, she’s a bastard. I know about detectives; I grew up with some.
“You arrested me anyway.” I look around the bare, windowless room where we sit facing each
other across a naked metal table. A Dream would go insane in a place like this, screaming like a
steam-whistle until there was enough clutter to make the room look at least slightly messy, breaking
up the table and chairs if necessary.
“We wanted to reassure the Dreams,” she says. “Besides, we don’t know that you haven’t
changed your style.”
I can’t believe I’m hearing this. “You think I’m bloody now?”
“Stranger things have happened.” Pret’s eyes focus on something visible only to her. “Stranger
things have made the world what it is today.”
“Which world do you mean?” I ask.
“The idiom we use to indicate the local universe.”
“How local?”
Abruptly Pret is staring hard at me. “What’s going on with you? Are you guilty?”
I don’t say anything because I don’t know.
“Well? Don’t you know?” the detective prods.
I keep quiet. Admitting I can’t remember is an invitation for her to construct a plausible account
for me. I don’t let anyone except a Dream make things up about me.
Abruptly, the door opens and the man who bound my wrists comes in, his dark face looking
almost afraid. The sound of many, many excited voices talking all at once comes in with him.
“The whole Dream Quarter’s here,” he says to Pret.
“What do they want?” she asks, irritated.
He points at me.
“Fat chance.” Pret swivels around in her chair to face me, ready to resume pressuring me.
“No, we have to,” he says. “We don’t have a choice.”
Pret looks up at him, and they fall silent together while she reads something new on her lenses.
“This can’t be right,” she says finally. “It can’t be.” But when she turns back to me, it’s obvious
from the expression on her face that the man is right.
“What are they going to do?” she asks, still gazing at me, troubled.
“They didn’t say.”
“Well, did anybody ask them?” she demands.
“Of course,” says the man, his irritation showing. “They didn’t say.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” she says.
“Can’t you stall them?”
“I’ve been stalling them. They won’t stall anymore. If you don’t comply, they’re going to come
in and comply for you. And you know what that means.”
She looks around the bare room and I can see that she does; it means she’s going to have a
crowd of Dreams screaming like steam-whistles while they tear their own clothes off—and possibly
ours as well—to clutter the place up. I can also see that this is the last thing she wants, with the
possible exception of abdominal surgery without anesthetic.
 The man comes over to me and holds out something about the size of a pea. “Here, swallow
this. It’s a bug. We can at least keep track of you, and if things get really bad, we’ll know where you
are and maybe pull you out of it.”
“Or just pick up the pieces,” I say. “Unless they plan to make clutter out of me.” I take the bug
and swallow it, then stand up and brace myself for whatever’s coming up next.
Pret leads me down a hallway to a lobby. The place is filled with Dreams of every color, more
colors than in the air sign back in the dead Dream’s apartment. But it’s the sheer numbers that I find
overwhelming. I’ve never seen so many Dreams all together in one place before. If they fell on me
and tore me to a million pieces, I couldn’t possibly provide enough clutter for all of them.
They don’t look like they’re going to tear me to pieces, though. They don’t look angry or even
upset. Mostly, they look curious, and only mildly curious at that. The two cops step back away from
me, and then I’m in the middle of the multicolored horde. I turn to look back at Pret and the man,
but there are already too many Dreams between them and me.
What now, I wonder. Pleasure? Pain? Passion? Poison?
There doesn’t seem to be anything like that around me. Just Dreams, everywhere; I’m walking
through a sea of Dreams, and the sea of Dreams is walking with me.
I look around. I can’t see anyone but Dreams. I’m not surprised. I ate the bug; they’ll know
where to find me when the Dreams get through with me.
But the Dreams still don’t look angry, not even annoyed. I walk another half mile—I don’t know
why, just keeping up with the flow—and finally we stop.
We are back in the Dream Quarter. Not in the heart of it but on one of the streets near the border.
From here, the taller buildings of ordinary waking life are still visible—but whatever happens next
will have nothing to do with ordinary waking life.
I turn my back so that I see only the part of the city that is now the Dreams’ habitat. They did
odd things to the buildings we gave them—cut down some of the tall ones, added levels to lower
ones, made straight lines curved so that the walls bowed in or bellied out, and reset rooftops at
angles you might call jaunty, at least until you woke up. And of course they splashed color on
everything, sometimes in designs, sometimes not. Or maybe in designs that we can’t see unless
we’re Dreaming.
“What are you going to do to me?” I ask, looking around. No cops, no other humans. Only
Dreams, as far as the eye can see. Filling the streets. I never knew there were so many.
They stare at me as if they hadn’t expected the question. Not for the first time, I wonder if
they’re really sentient.
“This is as far as I’m going until I know what’s going to happen to me,” I say firmly, though I
don’t know how I can make it stick.
All at once, the air in front of me is alive with twinkling pinpoints of light, like fairy dust from
one of those old fairy tales we no longer tell ourselves anymore. They loop and swirl and finally
congeal into another air sign. But this is a new type of sign, something I’ve never seen before.
There are no words. Instead, the multicolored particles form themselves into a picture of two
figures. There’s just enough detail to let me recognize one of them as myself; I know the other one
must be the dead Dream.
“When did you start making movies?” I ask. It was meant to sound tough and unafraid. It comes
out sounding only curious.
In answer, a Dream comes up behind me and clamps a very strong hand over my mouth. I
decide not to fight it—I probably couldn’t budge the hand if I tried—and wait to see what they’ll do
to me next, but they’re all watching the sign now, not me.
 I see the Dream helping me lie down on my back. It’s so formal, as if I am lying down on an
altar, as a sacrifice. He straddles me on his knees, bows his head, and begins to weep, letting his
tears fall on my face. That is what it looks like anyway, but he wasn’t weeping. Those aren’t tears.
After a while, he stops but remains where he is, gazing down at me while I Dream. And then,
something happens to me. Something changes. My head comes up slightly. The Dream pushes it
down again, hard. I raise my head once more and something jumps between us, from me to him.
The Dream falls over sideways, and the angle of the sign changes to show us lying on the floor
next to each other. There is a hole in the Dream’s head; he is shuddering. He’s trying to get up again
but he can’t.
The back of his head blows out in a small silent explosion. A moment later, the sign dissolves.
The twinkling lights scatter and disappear, and the hand over my mouth lets go.
A Dream steps forward. “Why did you . . . ?” It reaches for a word and can’t find it.
“Kill the Dream?” I ask.
“Kill,” it repeats, as if it had never heard the word before. “Yes, kill. Why did you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t remember.” Don’t remember? I don’t even know how. Why aren’t
they asking me that? There is a long, awkward silence. Finally I can’t stand it anymore, and say,
“I’m sorry he died.”
“Oh,” says the Dream. A long silence. “Why are you sorry?”
“Because it’s my fault that it happened to him.”
“Fault’?”
Not knowing fault is like not knowing cause and effect, or so I thought. But fault doesn’t
register for them on an emotional level. Thus they have no enmity toward me for the Dream’s death.
“He wouldn’t have died if I hadn’t been there.”
“Ah,” says the Dream, and I have no idea if he understands.
I feel I have to say something else. “I’m sorry I made him suffer before he died.”
“Suffer?” asks a Dream.
“Yes, suffer,” I say. And because I know he has no idea what I’m talking about, I add another
line he won’t comprehend: “He experienced pain.”
I could have guessed the next question.
“What is pain?”
“I can’t explain that. You’d have to—I’d have to show you.”
“Please do.”
I can’t believe this. What do I do now—slap his face? Punch him in the stomach? Or just ask
him to make me Dream?
Abruptly, I pull a pen out of my pocket and grab hold of his hand. Am I really doing this? I
wonder, as I dig the pen into his flesh until it draws blood, or am I just Dreaming again?
He stares at his hand. “We call that blood,” he says. Strangely enough, it’s as red as any
human’s.
“Blood is the end result,” I explain. “Pain is what you feel.”
He stares at me, and this time I not only see sentience in his eyes, but a hint of a massive
intelligence. Different, to be sure, but massive. “We call that curiosity.”
I have no answer for that. There is some conjecture that the Dreams are just some mutated form
of humanity. Anyone who holds that belief has never spent five minutes trying to talk to one.
“That is why we are here,” says another Dream.
“For what?” I ask, confused. “To feel pain?”
 “We are here to . . .” He frowns, reaching for the next word and failing to find it. “We have, you
have . . . then you have, we have.”
Now it was my turn to frown. “You mean share?”
“Yes,” says the Dream, and all the others murmur an assent. “Share.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “There is no sharing. You give. We take. Period.”
“You give,” the Dream insists.
“No,” I say adamantly. “You give us Dreams—visions, pictures, sensations, ideas. Gratification.
But we give you nothing in return.”
“You give,” insists the Dream.
“Okay,” I say. “What do we give?”
“Pleasure. Pain.”
“No,” I say. “That’s what you give.”
“Visions,” says a Dream.
“Pictures,” says another.
“Sensations!” says a new voice.
“Ideas!”
“Gratification!”
“Hope!”
“Fear!”
“Stop it!” I shout and hold up my hands. “We give you all these things?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What do you call these things?” asks a Dream.
“Hope and fear and the like?” I say. “Feelings. Or emotions.”
“That is what you give us. Without you we cannot feel. Not even a sharp object piercing my
hand.”
“How does it work?” I ask.
“We give you Dreams; you give us love and hate and fear and pain.”
“Why did you never tell us that we gave you something in return for all the fantasies you induce
in us?”
“You are men,” answers another Dream. “You would extract a higher payment than fantasies if
you knew you had something we needed.”
I couldn’t deny it.
“Why the clutter?” I ask. “Why do you surround yourselves with junk?”
“It has meaning to you,” answers a Dream. “It stimulates your thoughts. We kept hoping—”
“For what?” I ask.
“For what happened,” says the Dream I hurt. “For what you did.”
I stare at them and wonder. No one knows where they came from, just that one day they were
here, and in quantity. Did our need bring them into existence in this local universe? Or, just as likely
when you think about it, did their need bring us?
“You were hoping for a human to kill one of you?”
The Dream shakes his head. “Humans kill us now and then. But only in the human way. You did
not.” He steps to one side, and I see that the crowd of Dreams on the street are parting to let
something come through. Even before I see it, I know what it is.
The Dreams who step forward out of the crowd are carrying the body of the Dream I killed,
wrapped in a sheet. They lay him down on the pavement in front of me and unwrap him.
 It looks as if they have picked up every last fragment of flesh, skull, and brain tissue. One of the
Dreams makes sure it’s all there, up by his head. I keep thinking I should feel sick looking at this,
but something in my brain refuses to accept this as real.
Two Dreams take me by either arm. I don’t resist when they make me straddle him on my
knees, but I don’t know what they want from me.
There is a twinkling in the air. I look up and there it is again:
.
PLEASURE
IS TOXIC
PAIN
IS TOXIC
PLEASURE
IS TOXIC
PAIN
IS TOXIC
CHOOSE
YOUR PASSION
CHOOSE
YOUR POISON
CHOOSE
YOUR
PASSION
CHOOSE
YOUR
POISON
.
The Dreams surround me and I have a sudden vision of how it must look from above—
hundreds, maybe thousands of Dreams spreading out from where I kneel over the one I killed,
caught in one single moment until further notice.
“What?” I ask, plead really. “What do you want?” It was better when we didn’t know that we
gave. Humans are like that, I guess, always have been. We’re fine as long as we don’t know what
we’re doing. But the moment we do know, we’re lost.
“Give,” says the wounded Dream simply.
I shake my head.
“Bend your head,” the Dream says.
“You call it weeping,” says another.
“Let it fall on his face.”
“Take back what you gave.”
“Wake him from your Dream.”
I feel, not tears, but the mindless laughter of hysteria starting to build inside me. Do they really
believe that I can reverse what I did by force of will, or is this simply my punishment?
The Dreams murmur encouragement to me, so many of them that the murmuring becomes
louder than a shout, and the air sign sails around me. Pleasure. Pain. Passion. Poison. My body is
shaking now, but I don’t know whether I’m laughing or weeping. I’m almost certain I’m not
Dreaming, at least I don’t think so, but I could be wrong.
I wonder if my tears are falling on the dead Dream’s face yet.
 How long will they make me stay like this before they see that there’s no waking from a human
Dream?
I’ve swallowed the bug so Pret and her bastard band of detectives can find me, come here and
explain that no matter how much or how long I cry, the pieces of the dead Dream’s head will never
draw back in and mend, that there is no reversal.
Except I have a deep and terrible certainty that this won’t happen, either. That even if Pret and
the others do come, they’ll take a long look at me and the Dreams and then go away again, back
into the territory of normal waking life where humans can forget their Dreams.
And me? I’ll weep here in a sea of Dreams where, with no human voices to wake me, I will
drown.
-
Tales from the Big Dark: Lie of the Land
-
“Bicycles,” said Shiva, staring across the boulevard. Just opposite where we were sitting on a
bench in the small rest area, a traffic warden had pulled over half a dozen cyclists for riding [stet]
two by two. “A billion lightyears from home, there are bicycles.” The snow-white hair that started
at the crown of his dark brown head and ended at the base of his neck in a narrow, horse’s-mane
shape fell to one side as he turned to look at me.
“Yeah, well. There you go.” I winced inwardly. For all the years I’ve done this job—hell, for all
the years I’ve been here—you’d think I could come up with something sage, or at least not so lame
and empty. I thought he’d been staring at the traffic warden, who had particularly vivid plumage.
Feathered bipeds are quite the novelty for the rest of us. Most of my patients are still goggling at
them long after the first few layers of strange have worn off everything else.
Of course, there’s plenty more strange after that. Out here in the Big Dark, there’s no shortage of
reminders that it’s not your universe, you just live in it. Sometimes it’s a race of mammals with
feathers rather than fur or hair and other times it’s finding out just how common the commonplace
really is.
“Have they always had bicycles here?” Shiva asked, his radiant dark brown features even more
aglow with curiosity.
“I don’t know about always—I’m not quite that old.” I grinned at him. “They weren’t new when
I got here so I guess as far as we’re concerned, that’s always. Close enough for government work.”
Shiva burst out laughing. “Oh, I love that. Everyone in the universe has bicycles and
government work.”
The translator behind my right ear didn’t hum even slightly, which meant we were talking about
exactly the same thing. Apparently government work was a bigger joke among Shiva’s people than
it was among mine.
“When you think about it, it’s perfectly natural,” I said. Shiva erupted with laughter again. “I
mean bicycles,” I clarified, laughing a little myself. “You know, once humanoids have the wheel,
it’s really only logical. We have bicycles where I come from, as well as unicycles, tricycles, and
four-wheeled vehicles with and without motors, all of which are here. Scooters and skateboards,
too.” I’d half-expected to get at least a hum from my translator on that last but there was nothing, of
course. Have no idea why I’d thought there would be since I’d just been running my mouth about
the universality of the wheel. Just my own shock of the commonplace, I supposed. The frisson of
the familiar, as Jean-Christophe always put it.
Damn. I sneaked a look at my watch and saw that I’d managed to go almost two hours without
thinking of Jean-Christophe. I shifted uncomfortably on the bench.
 “I suppose you’re right,” Shiva was saying. “Still, seeing bicycles surprises me more than
anything else. Even feathered humanoids.” Pause. “Or people with only one sex.” He looked at me
sidelong. “Is my talking about that a faux-pas or a sign of full-blown mental defect?”
Faux-pas. As if there really was no English equivalent and my translator had had to borrow
from French. I spoke no French at all so I never heard anything but English when Jean-Christophe
talked to me.
“Excuse me, did that translate right?” Shiva touched the bare skin above his left ear where his
own translator was located, as if he could actually feel it. A lot of new arrivals think they can but
that’s strictly psychosomatic. The translator’s a nano device; the buzz is nerve stimulation and it
happens only when there’s a shortfall in translation. I hadn’t felt so much as a hum on anything
Shiva had said and I told him so.
“I just wanted to make sure,” he said, looking concerned. “In case it wasn’t working right . . .”
“That never happens.”
The white mane of hair fell to one side again as Shiva tilted his head. “You’re really that
certain.”
“I am.” I pulled his hand gently away from his head and placed it atop his burgeoning belly.
“Tell me the truth,” Shiva said, smiling. “If you were in my place . . .”
“I was once,” I reminded him.
“I know. Indulge me anyway. If you had just woken up in an artificial habitat millions of light
years from everything you knew with no memory of how you got here and no way to get home and
I was the medic looking after you, what would shock you most—feathered people, a dually-sexed
human referred to as male when pregnant, or bicycles?”
I was almost tempted to tell him that what was really bothering me was the nagging suspicion
that my translator had deliberately used French to make sure I kept thinking about Jean-Christophe.
But even if I’d been so unprofessional, I wasn’t sure either of us would have been able to hear
anything over the buzzing.
“Good question,” I said after a bit. “Too bad you weren’t around to ask it when I first woke up
here. But now I think it’s time to get you back to your room.”
Shiva let me help him to his feet, his attention back on the cyclists. The traffic warden had them
riding off one by one at carefully timed intervals so they wouldn’t bunch up. Even if they didn’t,
they’d be stopped again farther on by another traffic warden who would insist they ride two-by-two.
Unless they hit an orientational anomaly—then they’d all be riding on the ceiling, out of reach. I
smiled at the thought and Shiva, thinking it was directed at him, smiled back.
-
A cluster of circles in various sizes and colours floated in mid-air above the console-desk in Dr.
Neep’s office. S/he was using a light-pen on them, moving them around till s/he found one s/he
wanted. Then s/he changed the setting on the pen so the circle swelled to several times its original
size and strange unreadable (to me) symbols appeared on it. Neep scrolled through them in various
ways—up and down, sideways, diagonally—added more symbols and erased others before making
the circle smaller again and pushing it off to one side. Paperwork is a lot more psychedelic out here
in the Big Dark. Well, some people’s paperwork. Neep’s system was far too abstract for me. Even
after all these (subjective) years, I still wasn’t completely comfortable using only the cartoon-style
graphics on a flatscreen without any actual files that I could physically hold in my hands.
After a while, Neep paused to look over her/his shoulder at me. “Are you warming that chair
because you really think you have something important to tell me about Shiva or are you trying to
delay going to see Jean-Christophe for as long as possible?”
 I sighed. “For the record: have you re-checked his due date? Because when I took him out for
exercise and orientation, I thought I saw signs of pre-labour.”
Neep echoed my sigh perfectly. For some reason, all dually-sexed species have the ability to
mimic other voices with astounding accuracy. “For the record: I re-checked his due date the first
time you asked me and I re-check it every day in anticipation of your asking me again, which you
always do. Today’s reading shows that he’s not due for another eight days. Yesterday’s reading
showed he was not due for another nine days. Tomorrow’s reading will show that he’s not due for
another seven days. And if you ask Shiva himself, he will give you a more precise answer in hours
rather than days because he is much more sharply attuned to the biological process. Did you ask
Shiva today?”
“I asked him yesterday.”
“Next time, make a note of the answer so you won’t forget.”
“I didn’t forget.”
“Oh? I thought that was why you were asking me.” “No, I’m asking you because Shiva needs
his rest. It wouldn’t be fair for me to tire him out so I can put off going to see Jean-Christophe.” I
sighed again.
“Oh, of course. Better to hang around my office and interrupt me while I’m updating patient
files.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt. You can go on working. Ignore me. I can’t read your written
language so it’s not like I’m seeing anyone’s confidential information.”
Neep’s dark red-gold face looked put-upon. “I know, but it feels funny anyway. How would you
feel if I were looking over your shoulder while you did your paperwork?”
I couldn’t help grinning at the last word. I’ve lost count of the number of species I’ve met in the
Big Box, humanoid and otherwise, and paperwork translates perfectly for every single one. Even
those who don’t ride bicycles. “I see your point. Suppose I sit with my back to you?” I swiveled
around in the chair.
“Suppose you sit in Jean-Christophe’s room? He’s been in and out of consciousness for the past
two hours. Charlie’s been with him but Maintenance wants you on the case and no one else.
Unquote.”
I swiveled back to face her/him, a bit startled. “They told you that? Personally?”
Neep looked even more put-upon. “No, I’m lying because the truth is so boring.”
“Did Maintenance also decide to explain why they didn’t send him to some other humanoid
sector where no one knows him? Since he’s supposed to be a new arrival and not someone who’s
lived in the Big Box even longer than I have.”
“This may surprise you but no. Still.”
“It would make more sense.”
“No, it would be easier on you. Maintenance have their own ideas of what makes more sense.
You know what they’re like. Now, please, Hannah. Let me finish my paperwork before it eats my
brain and I die of tedium.” S/he made a shooing motion with both hands.
-
Charlie all but jumped up from his chair as soon as I walked into Jean-Christophe’s room, relief
large on his bony face. “Really glad you’re here. He’s going to wake all the way any minute.”
I shrugged, irritated. “So? This isn’t your first day on the job. Or did Maintenance wipe your
memory, too?”
“Keep your voice down!” Charlie grabbed my arm and pulled me into the far corner. “What if
he heard you?”
 “What if he did?” I looked past him at Jean-Christophe, stirring slightly. “Maybe he ought to.
This is bullshit. We’ve all got better things to do, Jean-Christophe included.”
Charlie’s grip on me tightened. “Yeah, but it’s Maintenance’s bullshit. You want to get in trouble
with them, go ahead but leave me out of it.”
“Sorry,” I said, prying my arm loose. “Honest. I’m just upset about this.”
“I know,” Charlie said, sympathetic now. “I’m upset for you. I don’t understand why he couldn’t
have been sent to some other part of the Big Box, either. I don’t understand why he couldn’t have
just gone back to rehab if he was having a breakdown. Whenever any of us has a breakdown, we go
back to rehab. I don’t know what was so special about Jean-Christophe that they had to re-set him.”
“Don’t ask me,” I said. “I only saw him for a few minutes in the Terrarium. He told me he was
leaving. Then you called me back to the shelter for a pick-up. As a matter of fact, I was just with
Shiva.”
“Oh? How is he?” Charlie asked conversationally.
“More pregnant that I’d have thought possible for any life-form, mammalian or otherwise. In
good spirits. Still amazed by bicycles.”
Charlie nodded. “Everybody’s got their own special kick in the head.”
“Don’t I know it.” I looked over at Jean-Christophe who was stirring a little more. “I think he’s
about to surface. You’d better go.”
Instead of running for the door, Charlie surprised me by hesitating. “Maybe I should stay.”
“This is my problem,” I said, giving him a little push. “You’re my assistant, not my slave.”
There was a slight buzz on the last word and I remembered that slavery was unknown on Charlie’s
planet. Why our translators didn’t simply choose an equivalent to subordinate or some other state
having to do with expected obedience without buzzing was yet another of the translator’s many
mysterious quirks. Or features. Not that I found it any more mysterious than how Charlie’s branch
of the human race didn’t comprehend slavery.
“But I know how it is with you two,” he was saying. “Jean-Christophe is bad for you. He always
has been. Who’s to say that’ll change just because Maintenance wiped his memory?”
“Who’s to say it won’t?” I gave him a more forceful push toward the door. “I might not interest
him at all this time around.”
“But what about you? Will he interest you?”
“Not if he’s my patient,” I said firmly, hoping I wasn’t lying. I never have gotten involved with
a patient in that way.
Jean-Christophe stirred some more and mumbled something. I managed to get Charlie out of the
room and locked the door behind him.
Just pretend it’s any other case, I told myself as I went over to the bed. Maintenance cut off his
hair and shaved his beard as well as wiping his memory. This makes him no different from anyone
else who’s ever been abducted by aliens and then left off at the shelter. As far as he’ll know, he is no
different. He’ll feel the same way they all feel when they first come here. He’ll go through the same
stages of adjustment as you guide him through rehab.
I felt myself start to relax. There was no reason why I couldn’t be his medic. In fact, there was
no reason why I shouldn’t. Knowing him as well as I did, I was the best choice to take him through
rehab and see that he adjusted—again—to spending the rest of his life in the Big Box. Perhaps he
would adjust so well under my care that he would have fewer breakdowns. Maybe even none.
While I would benefit because my professional standards would prevent me from falling madly in
bed with him. No more ill-advised love affairs. Well, at least not with Jean-Christophe, who had
always been bad for me.
 Had that been Maintenance’s reason for re-setting him—to give him a fresh start? Possibly,
although it was just as likely that they were merely experimenting for the hell of it, or for some
reason that wouldn’t have made any sense to mere mortals like me and Jean-Christophe.
I pulled a flatscreen out of the frame of his bed and had a look at his vitals. He was definitely
waking up now. Leaning over him slightly, I took his hand. His fingers moved over my skin until
they found mine and entwined themselves in a familiar way. Old habits die hard, I thought, trying to
ignore the pang in my heart.
“Hello?” I said, keeping my voice soft so I wouldn’t startle him.
His eyes opened and he looked up at me. Those green eyes still seemed to look right through
me. Maybe this was going to be too hard after all, I thought, hoping I appeared a lot more
professional than I felt.
“You’ve been asleep for a long time so you might feel groggy for quite a while . . .”
“Hannah,” he said.
I froze. You misheard that, said a small, desperate voice in my mind. He actually said Hand,
because you’re holding his. Or he was trying to say Where am I? Because that’s what they all say . .
.
“I’m back, aren’t I?” He squeezed my hand. “I guess it’s true –once you’ve been abducted by
aliens, you’re far more likely to have it happen again.” He let out a resigned breath. “Or did
Maintenance send a crew after me to bring me back?”
I didn’t even think about it; I just reached over and slammed the panic button in the wall beside
me as hard as I could.
-
“I wish you’d stop doing that,” I said as Neep topped up the sedative in my system.
“The panic button is for patients who become hysterically violent.”
“He scared me.” I wasn’t slurring my words but my muscles felt like half-filled water balloons.
“It’s OK to hit the panic button if a patient scares you. I thought. It should be.”
“You ended up scaring Jean-Christophe.”
“Sorry.” It came out shorry. Neep frowned and made a small adjustment to the collar resting on
my neck; immediately I felt more alert, although not enough to get up off the table in the treatment
room. “It’s Maintenance’s fault. They said they wiped his memory. I thought he was supposed to be
like a new arrival.”
Neep dipped his/her head non-committally. “Obviously we misunderstood.”
“You mean they lied.”
“We don’t know that.”
“We know that nobody ever leaves the Big Box. Once you’re out in the Big Dark, there’s
nowhere to go and no way back home. For most abductees, that’s the hardest thing, the worst. When
this gets out, what do you think is going to happen? We’ll be lucky if there aren’t riots. How could
Maintenance do this?”
Neep’s red-gold features were disgusted. “I don’t know. All I can think is that they deliberately
allowed him to escape.”
I stared at her/him with my mouth open for some unmeasured period of time. “They—what?”
“Probably as part of some experiment,” s/he went on. “You know what they’re like. Which is to
say, nobody knows what they’re like, or what they’re thinking.”
“How could Jean-Christophe have escaped?” I demanded.
 “My theory? He crawled through conduits in the infrastructure to the travellers’ area and talked
one of the more irresponsible crews into taking him with them. Probably the Dacz.va. You know
what they’re like.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I used to think so.”
“Neep. Think for a minute.” I tried to will my arm to reach for her/him but I was far too limp.
S/he frowned at me. “About what?”
“Jean-Christophe didn’t go anywhere. Maintenance screwed around with his memory so that he
thinks he did.”
“Oh?” Now there was no expression at all on Neep’s face. “Did they screw around with my
memory, too?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. How long do you think Jean-Christophe was gone?”
“By our reckoning? A few hours.”
“Well, there you go.” I couldn’t help laughing a little. “That isn’t enough time to . . .”
Neep was shaking her/his head. “You know time gets very slippery out here in the Big Dark.”
“Not that slippery. A few hours isn’t long enough to travel from one end of the Big Box to the
other, let alone all the way back to Earth and then back here again.”
“You’re an expert?”
“No, but . . .”
“Neither am I. Very few are. Among those few, however, are Maintenance.”
“And Maintenance has somehow convinced you that this is possible. Even though you’re not an
expert, you would know if they were lying.”
“Why would they lie to me? Or you, or Jean-Christophe, or any of us? It wouldn’t give them
any advantage they don’t already have. They run everything. If they were going to lie, I’d think it
would be to tell us Jean-Christophe didn’t leave. That would save them a lot of trouble. Now,
however, they’ll have people clamouring for more information and saying they want to leave, too.”
Neep was still going on as I let myself drift away.
-
The uproar about leaving the Big Box that I had predicted never materialized. A few people got
vocal about wanting to leave. Maintenance responded with a detailed demonstration of how security
measures had been beefed-up to prevent any more contact with travellers. I had expected them to
trot out Jean-Christophe and have him speak about how he regretted his escapade—how his second
abduction had been even more cruel than the first one or somesuch –but that never happened.
At least Maintenance no longer insisted that I handle his case. They gave him over to another
medic working on a different clock and I never had to see him, even in passing. It should have been
a relief and mostly it was. But he stayed in the back of my mind like a little barbed hook that had
caught there and somehow never really let go.
-
Eventually he came to me and I didn’t run the other way as fast as I could. I told myself that I
was surprised at this but it wasn’t true.
He said he knew that I didn’t believe he had really gone back to Earth and then, in an effort to
convince me, launched into a long, detailed account of what things were like there. I let him talk on
the grounds that it was probably better for him to spill out all the lies and false memories that
Maintenance had given him instead of walking around with it all bottled up inside.
 All right, I’ll admit it—I was curious. And maybe, deep down, I hoped to hear something that
might mean it could have been true after all. But it turned to be an enormous disappointment. Most
was stuff the latest abductee from Earth had told us; the rest was too absurd.
I mean, our particular branch of the human race has never been what anyone would call
enlightened, but not even the Dacz.va would be stupid enough to damage their own planet so badly
that they could see it dying around them and do nothing about it. And we’re nowhere near as dumb
as the Dacz.va.
Are we?
It crossed my mind that perhaps Maintenance was just trying to make us feel better about being
out here in the Big Dark—like, not only less homesick but actually glad we’re not there any more.
That’s almost funny, in a tragic sort of way.
But there are two things I know for certain are true:
a) I don’t know why they decided to play this silly charade with Jean-Christophe.
b) He’s just as bad for me as he ever was.
Anything else, I’m not buying.
-
The Mudlark
-
A week and a half after my mother vanished out of the British Museum, I found her, purely by
chance, picking up trash on a stretch of stony shore by the Thames.
By then I had gone from frantic to part jumpy, part dazed. The police had been kind; WPC
Nadia Cihan, the officer in charge of the case, had introduced me to some uniformed officers she
said had a lot of experience working missing persons cases. But I knew what she was really doing
was handling me. Not that I blamed her. People go missing all the time in big cities—one eighty-
seven-year-old American tourist was not a significant addition to the thousands of others already
missing. I thanked WPC Cihan and the sympathetic uniformed officers and made sure they had
enough recent photos. Then I wandered around London in search of her myself, trying not to feel
helpless or hopeless.
It wasn’t until I spotted her moving slowly on the rocky riverbank with her cane in one hand and
a plastic supermarket carrier bag hanging from her other wrist that I realized I had never expected to
see her again.
I wouldn’t have seen her then if I hadn’t stopped to talk to a couple of women on the
Millennium Bridge. They were taking photos of the skyline with St. Paul’s Cathedral behind me,
where I had just been showing my mother’s picture to anyone and everyone I could though I was
mainly targeting tourists. Or, to be precise, people with cameras, who I thought might have
accidentally captured her in their recent shots of some sight or landmark and so would recognize
her. I don’t know what put that idea in my head, and so far I’d had zero results but was still trying.
“Excuse me,” I said. Just as the women turned to me with identical polite, guarded expressions
on their faces, a small bit of movement caught my eye, and I saw her down on the shore. I
recognized her immediately by her bearing; she was moving in her usual slow, determined fashion,
dressed in her beige raincoat, tweed hat, brown slacks, and walking shoes, the same things she’d
been wearing when I’d lost her at the British Museum. “Good God!” I blurted. “What the hell is she
doing down there?”
The two women glanced at each other. “Mudlarking,” said the taller one. She had shiny black
hair with a magenta forelock.
I looked up at her, bewildered. “What?”
 “Mudlarking,” said the other woman. She had very curly black hair with purple accents
throughout. “Looking for any interesting bits of stuff that may have washed up on the bank.”
Her accent said she was from North America like me, but she might have been speaking in
tongues for all the sense it made. “’Bits of stuff’? Like what?”
“Like shards of old china,” the second woman replied, shrugging.
“Trash?” I said, incredulous.
“Some of it’s over a hundred years old.”
I stared down at my mother, openmouthed. This was a woman who wouldn’t darken the door of
a charity shop and turned up her nose at flea markets, and a stranger was trying to tell me she was
picking trash out of the mud and slime by the Thames. Not even whole trash but bits and pieces.
As if to confirm that, my mother bent over, leaning heavily on her cane, and picked something
out of the rocks. She examined it as she straightened up again, then dropped it into the plastic bag
hanging from her wrist and kept moving, scanning the ground in front of her.
“See?” said the first woman. “Obviously, she found something.”
I shook my head, still dumbfounded. “But what could she possibly want with a piece of—of
broken dishware, or whatever?”
“No idea,” said the first woman with a small laugh. “Mudlarkers are not us.”
“I’ll say,” the other woman added, and the two of them laughed together.
I didn’t bother to glare at them before running toward the end of the bridge—literally running,
which is something I never do, especially as I’m past fifty. Just off the paved walkway that passed
under the bridge, I found a long flight of stone steps leading down onto the riverbank and just
barely didn’t take a header as I rushed down, afraid that my mother would somehow disappear
again before I could get to her.
The best I could do on that stony shore, however, was a hurried stumble; running was
impossible unless I wanted a broken ankle. How the hell was my mother managing with her stiff
knees and arthritic hips?
“Mom!” I called, slipping and sliding toward her. She gave no indication that she’d heard me. I
called again, louder; her head turned slightly in my direction, then away. Maybe she had lost her
hearing aids or run out of batteries. But even as I thought it, I knew she hadn’t. She seemed to
hunch in on herself, the way you do when you’re trying to make yourself inconspicuous.
“Mom!” By then I was only a few feet away so that she had no choice but to turn around.
“What?” she said in a heavily put-upon tone. Her faded brown eyes, magnified by her glasses,
were weary and uninterested.
“What are you doing here? Where have you been? Answer the second question first,” I added
quickly, looking her over. After ten days, she might have been in rough shape, dirty, confused, and
ill, but she looked as impeccable as always. The raincoat was clean, her hair under the tweed hat
was combed, and she still had her hearing aids as well as her gloves and scarf.
“Where have I been?” she said, emphasizing the I very slightly. “Oh, just around.” She turned
her attention back to the rocks and started to move away.
“That’s not an answer!”
She glanced up at me briefly. “No? You didn’t used to feel that way.” She poked the end of her
cane into a small pile of stones and levered them apart. “’Where did you go?’ ‘Out.’ ‘Who were you
with?’ ‘Nobody.’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘Nothing.’”
“That was different,” I said, exasperated.
“How?”
“I was fifteen, not eighty-seven, and I never went missing for a week and a half—“”
 “I beg to differ, madam. If you add up all the hours I didn’t know where you were, who you
were with, or what you were doing, I think you’ll find it comes to quite a lot more than ten days.
Months. Years.”
“But I didn’t do it all at once!” I was getting angry, as much with myself for letting her cloud the
issue as with her for disappearing. “And that’s got nothing to do with this. I’ve got the police
looking for you, I’ve given your photo and description to every hospital and shelter in London, I’ve
been running around like a madwoman accosting strangers in the street, asking if they’d seen you,
imagining you lying unconscious in some alley or wandering around disoriented, unable to
remember anything—“
“Amnesia?” My mother actually threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, bitch, please. That’s
strictly TV-movie.”
I caught her arm as she started to move away. “What did you just say?”
She hesitated, looking blank, then laughed again. “Oh, that. Sorry, I wasn’t actually calling you
a bitch, it’s just an expression. You know, like ‘far out’ or ‘groovy’ or ‘off the pigs.’ Whatever.” She
shrugged, then laughed a little more. “That, too.” She shook off my hand and batted me aside with
her cane so she could continue searching the shore.
“Mom!” I stumbled after her. “Are you trying to tell me that you went missing to get back at me
for stuff I did over thirty years ago?”
“Well, revenge is a dish best served cold.” More hearty laughter. “Oh, the look on your face. I’m
kidding, honey. For God’s sake, lighten up. And try to remember that everything isn’t about you.”
“All right, so what are you doing?” I asked.
“Mudlarking.” Her smile was sunny. “That’s when you—“
“I know what mudlarking is, a couple of tourists explained it to me. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why not?”
“Because you wouldn’t be caught dead in the Salvation Army store back home, nor would you
go to a flea market if I put a gun to your head. But here you are picking rubbish out of the mud.
How about Dumpster-diving? Do you do that too, now?”
She gave me an unreadable look and kept going.
“But never mind all of that,” I went on, still following her. “You were missing. For a week and a
half. Then when I find you—completely by accident—you act as if nothing’s happened. So what’s
going on?”
“Nothing. And I haven’t been missing for a week and a half—“
“No? Then what would you call it?”
She talked over me. “—I’ve been missing for twenty-five years.” Those faded brown eyes had
turned hard. “It wasn’t until ten days ago that you finally noticed I was gone.”
-
It isn’t easy to argue with a statement like that, but I wasn’t about to let it go. She turned away
again and resumed poking at the rocks with her cane.
“That’s bullshit!” I said to her back.
She paid no attention.
“Bitch, please.”
Then she looked back at me, amused, but kept on going. I stumbled over the rocks and caught
up to her.
“Bitch, please what?” she said with a heavy sigh.
 “Bitch please don’t start with that cliché about old people being invisible and everyone ignoring
them,” I said. “Because I haven’t been ignoring you for the past twenty-five years, and you can’t
tell me I have.”
Her mouth twitched slightly. “Maybe I didn’t do it all at once.”
I glared at her. “You are very close to experiencing shaken-mother syndrome.”
“Ha, ha, that’s a riot,” she said in a flat voice as she batted me aside with her cane. “Careful you
don’t lose your balance and fall here. These rocks are pretty slippery.” As she moved past me, the
plastic bag brushed against my leg, and I snatched it up.
“What’s in here?” I asked.
To my surprise, she let me dig around in it instead of trying to pull it away. I pulled out a few
fragments of broken china, none larger than the ball of my thumb. Each one had a little bit of
pattern on it; nothing I could identify. I looked up at my mother. “This is it? This really is it?”
“What were you expecting—gold doubloons? Blood diamonds?”
I shook my head. “The people I talked to said this was what you were after. They also claimed
that this cr—stuff is supposed to be over a hundred years old, but I don’t know how anyone could
know that.”
“Well, I found a few pieces of ceramic pipe stem as well,” my mother said. “Nobody’s made
those for about that long. Those were pipes for smoking tobacco, not blowing bubbles.”
“I know that.” I dropped the stuff back in the bag. “Mom, no matter how old it is, this is trash.
You’re picking up other people’s trash.”
“Yeah, like I’ve never done that before. Except I guess you’re going to tell me that was different
just because it happened to be stuff you’d strewn all over the house.”
“You always made me pick up after myself—“
“Only if you were actually in the house to do it. There were plenty of times you managed to
escape, and I’d be left to pick up the pieces. Literally.”
“I seem to remember your insisting this wasn’t about me,” I said evenly.
“And nobody loves a smart-ass—do you seem to remember that, too?” My mother frowned at
something on the ground behind me and went over to have a closer look. Bracing herself with her
cane, she lowered herself to a crouching position and started prying it out of the mud.
“Don’t, Mom.” I stumbled over to her. “Whatever it is, I’ll get it for you—“
She slapped my hand away. “Back off, this is mine! I can pick it up myself!”
I was so startled I drew back too quickly, lost my balance, and fell on my backside. Studying her
find, my mother pushed herself up to a standing position while I floundered on the rocks, feeling
every one of them digging into me through my clothes. When I finally managed to get up, covered
with mud and slime and God only knew what else, she was already several feet away, scanning the
ground for more treasure.
I brushed myself off as best I could and caught up to her. “So what didn’t you want me to touch?
A gold doubloon or a blood diamond?”
She swung her cane in a low arc, whacking me on the shins. “No, it’s just more trash. Now why
don’t you just go away and mind your own business?”
“Because in case you haven’t heard me or you’ve forgotten, you’ve been missing for a week
and a half,” I said, getting angry again. “And don’t give me any of that bullshit about being missing
for twenty-five years, and I only just noticed. I’ve been out of my mind. I filed a police report—“
“You said, you said already.” My mother swung her cane in the other direction, catching the
back of my calf. It stung.
 “And I’ve kept the hotel room five days longer than we planned,” I added. “I called the credit-
card company and explained the situation, and they agreed to raise the credit limit. But at this
exchange rate, it won’t be long before it’s maxed out again. After that, I don’t know what I’ll do.
Maybe they’ll raise the credit limit another couple of thousand dollars, maybe they won’t. Either
way, I’m already in more debt than I can afford—“
“So pack up and go home. I didn’t ask you to break the bank.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
She turned to me with that weary, fed-up look. “Bitch, please.”
“Bitch, please yourself!” I said hotly.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing!” she snapped. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, and
I can do anything I do want to. Now get out of here, you’re bothering me.”
I reached for her. “Mom—“
She smacked my hand away with her cane. “Eighty-seven years, goddammit! Eighty-seven
years on this earth, and I can’t do what I want without being harassed! Will you just go back to your
life and leave me alone?”
I took a step toward her.
“Get away from me!” She swung the cane at my head. I ducked and almost fell again.
“Go on!” she yelled. “I mean it, get the hell off my South Bank!”
I noticed that the few other people on the shore close enough to hear were staring at us and
decided to humor my mother before one of them called the cops. Better for me to go back up to the
paved walkway and call WPC Cihan, tell her that I had found my mother and she had obviously had
some kind of breakdown, maybe even a small stroke, and we needed an ambulance.
-
During the half hour it took for the paramedics to arrive, I watched my mother wander a random
but very directed route by the water’s edge, acting as if she had all the time in the world and
intended to spend it scavenging. I was half-afraid she’d fall down and half-hoping she would just so
I could go back to her.
But she was still on her feet and as steady as ever when the paramedics, a middle-aged woman
and a younger man, finally showed up. They listened attentively while I gave them a quick rundown
of the situation, emphasizing how out of character my mother’s behavior was.
“Considering her age, it’s possible she’s having some kind of episode,” the woman said, when I
asked about the possibility of a stroke. Her name tag said she was Celie Stine and she outweighed
me by at least thirty pounds, all of it apparently muscle.
“Is she taking any medications that you know of?” the man asked. His name was Niall Lassiter,
and he was almost as muscular as his partner.
“No, not that I know of . . .” I thought about my mother’s claim to have been missing for
twenty-five years. “But she sort of hinted that there were things I don’t know about.”
The woman chuckled. “I’ve got to remember that one. It’ll drive my kids crazy. No offense,”
she added with an apologetic look.
“None taken. Just please get my mother off those rocks so I can take her home.” I frowned.
They had a first-aid kit or something and their radios but nothing else. “Shouldn’t you have a
stretcher?”
“It doesn’t look like we’ll need one.”
I started to follow them, but the man stopped me. “You told us she was very agitated with you,
so I think it really would be better if you wait here. We want her to stay calm. Otherwise, she might
hurt herself.”
 They tramped down the stone steps and made their way over the rocks.
-
The paramedics talked to my mother for quite some time. I saw them look into her eyes and take
her pulse but nothing else. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought they were simply having a
friendly chat. Granted, it was a rather unusual place to socialize, out there on the muddy rocks while
the day grew colder and damper and the sky became grayer and more threatening, as if rain were
going to pour down at any moment.
Impatient, I looked at my wrist, forgetting that I had left my watch back in the hotel room.
Damn it, how long did it take to bundle a frail old woman in her late eighties off to a psych ward? I
should have made them go back to the ambulance for a stretcher, I thought, trying to curb my
impatience.
Abruptly, the paramedics made their way back across the rocks but without my mother, who had
gone back to searching for trash.
I ran to meet them at the top of the stone steps. “What are you doing?”
Niall Lassiter shrugged apologetically. “We talked to her like you asked us to. There’s nothing
wrong with her that we can see.”
“You didn’t see much,” I retorted. “I was watching. You didn’t give her an examination.”
“Well, it may not have seemed that way to you,” Celie Stine said in a brisk, professional tone
that wasn’t quite unfriendly. “We did take her pulse and her temperature as well as checking her
pupils and her reflexes. There’s nothing to suggest that your mother is ill in any way.”
“You didn’t take her blood pressure.” I was trying not to raise my voice, but I was aware of a
number of people turning to look.
“That would have meant asking your mother to remove her coat and jumper and rolling up her
sleeve. Not a good idea in this environment, I think you’ll agree.” Her tone still wasn’t unfriendly,
but it was getting there.
“I also don’t think it’s a good idea to leave her in this environment which I thought you’d agree
with, too, but obviously you don’t.” I looked from her to Niall Lassiter. Her expression was cold,
but he gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Oh, we agree,” he said. “We just can’t do anything about it.”
“Why not?” I demanded. By that time people going by were stopping to watch, but I was too
upset to care.
“Because your mother is over the age of majority. Mudlarking probably isn’t the best activity
for someone her age, but it isn’t illegal. She’s not endangering herself or anyone else—“
“But she is endangering herself! She could fall on those rocks and break her hip or her neck or
her skull, or all three!”
“She could, but she hasn’t,” Celie Stine said, wearily authoritative. “And we can’t wait around
on the off-chance that she might get hurt. There are people who are hurt that we have to tend to.”
They started to leave, and I caught Niall Lassiter’s arm. “Please, you don’t understand—she’s
been missing for ten days—“
“Yeah, she mentioned she’d gone off on her own, and you were upset about it.” He removed my
hand gently but firmly. “We asked her where she’d been, but she wouldn’t tell us. She doesn’t have
to.”
I started to protest, and Celie Stine stepped between me and her partner. “We aren’t cops. If she
doesn’t want to tell us where she was for the past ten days, she doesn’t have to. Just judging from
her appearance, however, it was somewhere indoors, clean, dry, and warm. Which is more than I
can say for the way you look.” She gave me a slow and very pointed up-and-down.
 “I fell on the rocks,” I said defensively. “While I was trying to talk to her, to persuade her to
come home—“
“This is between you two,” Celie Stine said in a very final way. “Good luck.”
“But she’s irrational!” I called after the paramedics as they walked away. “You don’t
understand, she’s behaving like—“ I cut off, looking around at the audience I had attracted. It was
bigger than I’d realized. “Like a crazy woman,” I finished in a small voice. Defeated, I turned back
to see what my mother was doing.
She was gone.
I ran back and forth along the walkway, thinking—hoping—she had simply managed to work
her way farther along the riverbank, but I couldn’t find her. I went back down to the shore and
stumbled around, asking the few other people there if they had noticed even just the general
direction she had gone, but none of them could even remember seeing her at all. The clouds grew
darker and seemed to lower, and suddenly I noticed that there was a lot less shore than there had
been when I had first spotted my mother.
“Tide’s coming in,” said a man in a long coat and big rubber boots as he headed for the stone
staircase. “Best get back up to dry land quick-like, it comes in faster than you’d think.”
I wanted to keep searching near the water’s edge in case she had somehow fallen in but
suddenly found myself ankle deep in freezing, dirty water in the dark. In the pouring rain.
-
The next morning, I moved to a cheaper hotel. The room was only slightly larger than the walk-
in closet in the master bedroom at my mother’s house, and the single bed took up most of it. The
bathroom was down the hall, an arrangement I wasn’t crazy about but would afford me a few extra
days before my credit card reached its new, horribly ruinous limit.
I talked to the people at the front desk about my situation. One of the clerks, a young Pakistani
woman who told me she was attending law school part-time, suggested I put up a Web page then
very helpfully did it for me, for a modest fee. I didn’t think the fee was really so modest, but it
would have taken me forever to do it myself, and I didn’t want to take the time away from searching
for my mother.
I figured she’d try to dodge me by going elsewhere along the Thames to pick trash. Armed with
a pair of binoculars and my digital camera, I took some boat rides. It wasn’t the season for boat
rides, so I didn’t have to fight a lot of other tourists for space on deck.
The various crews probably thought I was crazy, standing in the wind and the rain, scanning the
shore with binoculars and taking pictures seemingly at random. The camera had a good optical
zoom on it; I was hoping it might capture something I hadn’t seen clearly with the binoculars. Like
an old woman in a beige raincoat and a tweed hat, leaning on a cane, for example. When I thought
about that as I lay in the single bed at night trying to sleep, it seemed like a crazy idea. But then, the
idea that my mother would disappear on our off-season, cut-rate trip to London would have seemed
even crazier before it happened.
Not that it seemed any less crazy after the fact.
-
I went to different areas of the Thames and asked other mudlarkers if they’d seen my mother.
Some were very friendly, eager to show me their little collections of detritus. I tried to look
impressed or at least politely interested, but I don’t think I was successful. Others ignored me unless
I actually got in their way. None of them recognized my mother or remembered seeing anyone
fitting her description there on the rocks or anywhere else.
 I’d have found that hard to believe except that no matter where I went or how many times I
visited any of the areas where the mudlarkers went, I never met the same person twice. I told myself
there was nothing really strange about that, not really. In a city the size of London, you might meet
someone once, then never see them again in this lifetime. Especially if you didn’t actually live
there.
-
I had run up another week of hotel bills while living on ramen noodles and some other kind of
instant, in-the-cup soupy thing when WPC Cihan called to tell me that someone fitting my mother’s
description had been spotted lining up for free food every morning on Gower Street. Actually, what
she said was queuing, which confused me for a few seconds even after several weeks of hearing
British English.
The food came courtesy of an Eastern religious commune. “They run a restaurant over on the
edge of Soho,” said the uniformed officer WPC Cihan sent to accompany me as we came out of the
Warren Street tube station. John Selkirk was one of the cops I had met when my mother had first
gone missing, a stocky, fair-haired, pink-skinned man with light blue eyes, a gap between his front
teeth, and one gold earring. To my North American ear, he sounded exactly like Ringo Starr. “This
is how they clear out their leftovers and advertise at the same time. Lure in a lot of custom this
way.”
I frowned at him. “How?”
“It’s good food,” he said, a bit surprised.
I was still bewildered. There was a bizarre image in my head of homeless people recommending
a good place to eat while begging for spare change. Then we turned a corner onto Gower Street, and
I saw that it wasn’t just the homeless who enjoyed the free breakfast. The line—queue—for the
white cart parked on the sidewalk was almost half a block long, and it wasn’t made up exclusively
of homeless people. At least half of the people in it were obviously students; others looked like
faculty, and a few seemed far too well-to-do to be there at all. I pointed this out to Officer Selkirk.
“The food is free to anyone who wants it,” he said, amused, “and they keep serving until ten
o’clock.” He glanced at his watch. “Which means they’ll be at this for another hour and a half.
Besides the rough sleepers, you got your basic skint students here—they’ll eat half and save the
other half for lunch, and your basic skint lecturers, who’ll eat a few bites now, skip lunch, and save
most of it till teatime. Then you got people who’re getting a plate for somebody in university
hospital. You know what hospital food’s like. Anyway, the students’ll get their parents to take them
to the restaurant, and the lecturers’ll go there when they get a pay rise. So will the hospital patients
when they get released. It all works out.”
I almost asked him how he could be so sure. “But there’s got to be at least a few people cadging
a free meal.”
Officer Selkirk chuckled. “Can’t always tell who’s really hungry and who’s blagging just
because they can. Never mind, I think I see your mum. Third person behind that tall guy with the
red hat?”
He was right. There she was, wearing the same clothes as when I had last seen her and still as
neat and clean as ever. She stood in profile to us, leaning on her cane and studying the large
redbrick building in front of her as if she intended to memorize it. A plastic bag hung from her
wrist, perhaps the same one; it looked as if there was a lot more in it now.
“I don’t want to sneak up on her and startle her,” I told Officer Selkirk, “but I don’t want her
running off on me, either.”
“Wait a bit. The closer she is to the food, the less likely she’ll be to scarper.”
 “’Scarper?’” I had a hard time imagining my mother doing that; it sounded like a cross between
skipping and capering, possibly with some gibbering. While I, on the other hand, was all too close
to it.
“Just wait. I’ll let you know when to make a move.”
We waited longer than what I would have called a bit; there were obviously a number of
regulars in the line, and the two people serving food from the cart took time to chat with them as
they dished up rice and vegetables with a side of what I supposed was a tofu scrambled-egg
substitute. Watching, I actually began to feel hungry.
As if sensing my thoughts, Officer Selkirk said, “Looks good, doesn’t it? You want me to get
you a plate?”
“Y—no, of course not,” I said. “I’m here to take my mother home, not to eat.”
“Maybe your mum would be more receptive if you had breakfast with her.”
“My mother is behaving irrationally,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as impatient as I felt. “I’m
not going to enable her.”
He shrugged and said nothing more until my mother was about a dozen people from the food
cart. Then he gave me a small push. “OK, you’re on.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” I asked.
“No, I’m going to have a friendly chat with the caterers.”
I started to protest, but he was already walking away. Bracing myself, I made my approach,
sticking close to the line on her right side, where her vision has always been weaker.
Just as I reached her, she turned her back, gave a big, noisy sigh, and said, “I was wondering
when you’d finally come at me.”
For a moment, I wasn’t actually sure if she were talking to me or someone else in line with her.
“Well?” she added, too quickly to let me answer even if I had known what to say. “You didn’t
really think you could sneak up on me, did you? I’m your mother. I’ve got eyes in the back of my
head and all around the sides. I knew the moment that you and Officer Friendly hit Gower Street.”
Finally, she turned to look at me. “Where is Officer Friendly? Don’t tell me your backup’s already
bailed on you?”
“Officer Selkirk is talking to the food servers.”
She craned her neck to see what was going on at the front of the line. “Well, so he is.”
“So much for the eyes ringing your head.”
“Don’t get smart with me, you.”
“Or what?” I said. “You’ll spank me? Take me into the middle of a big city where I don’t know
anybody and leave me for the gypsies?”
“Keep your voice down.” She rapped me on the shin with her cane. “Remember where you are.
There are real gypsies in this town, and they don’t need people like you dissing them.”
“’Dissing?’”
“That means—“
“I know what it means!”
“Really.” She raised her eyebrows. “I’m surprised.”
Someone behind us smothered a laugh. I forced myself not to turn around and glare, telling
myself I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction but mostly because I was afraid it might be a gypsy. I
stepped to one side and waved at Officer Selkirk. It took a few moments to get his attention, which
was focused on the very pretty woman serving portions of tofu. She was telling him something long
and involved, occasionally emphasizing a point by dropping tofu onto someone’s plate with a little
extra gusto. He almost managed not to look irritated as he excused himself and came over to me.
 “Everything all right now?” he asked, his tone overcheerful.
“No,” I said. “I can’t get her to talk to me.”
He looked from me to my mother. “Please talk to your daughter, ma’am,” he said politely.
“She’s been worried sick, and we’ve had an army of police officers searching for you.”
“Tell them to stop looking,” my mother said just as politely and with a hint of affection. “I’m
not lost. And I’ve already talked to her—she just won’t listen.” Her eyes swiveled toward me under
half-closed lids. “As usual.”
“I see.” Officer Selkirk turned to me. “Please listen to your mother, ma’am. It’s the only way
you’ll be able to work things out. Now, you’ll have to excuse me—“
“No, wait!” I said. Everyone in the line turned to look. As usual. Even the food people stopped
serving, so they wouldn’t miss anything.
“Ma’am, I can’t do anything more for you,” Officer Selkirk said, his fair features puckering
earnestly. “This is a family matter that has to be settled between the two of you.”
“We did that,” said my mother.
“We did not!” I said.
The policeman threw up his hands. I didn’t blame him. “I can’t do anything more for you. I
hope you work things out.” He started to walk away.
“She won’t leave me alone!” my mother called after him. “It’s harassment! Stalking!”
He stopped, and I saw his shoulders rise and fall with a big sigh before he turned and came
back.
“Mom, what are you talking about? I’m your daughter.”
Officer Selkirk paid no attention to me. “Are you making a formal complaint?”
“Yes, I am,” my mother replied feelingly. “She’s been stalking me, and now she’s trying to force
me to go with her when I don’t want to.”
Officer Selkirk sighed again, looking very unhappy. “Please leave this lady alone,” he told me,
“or I will have to take action against you.”
“This. Is. My. Mother,” I said, trying not to shout. “She’s been missing for ten da—no, for over
two weeks now. I told you she’s been acting irrationally—“
“She’s not acting irrationally now,” he said in a maddeningly reasonable voice.
“No? What do you call this, then?” I grabbed the plastic bag and held it up, shaking it so the
fragments clinked. “She’s been picking trash out of the mud by the Thames! That isn’t rational
behavior, not for her!”
“Let go!” My mother slapped my hand, hard. “She’s just saying that because I won’t go with
her. I don’t have to go with her or anyone else, and I want her to leave me alone.”
“Ma’am, will you please leave your mother alone?” Officer Selkirk looked unhappier than ever
as he pried her plastic bag of trash out of my grip and gave it back to my mother without looking
inside.
“I can’t just abandon her here in a foreign country! We were supposed to go home weeks ago—“
“Sorry, ma’am, but if you won’t leave this lady in peace, you’ll have to come with me.” He took
hold of my arm and began walking me away from my mother.
“No, wait, you can’t do this—“ I tried to pull away, which was the wrong thing to do. Suddenly
Officer Selkirk had me in a wristlock and was talking into his radio. The police car arrived much
more quickly than the paramedics had.
As we drove away, I caught a glimpse of her reaching into the bag and holding something out to
the food servers.
-
 WPC Cihan was not exactly hostile, but she made it clear that she had no more time for me or
my mother problem.
“Officer Selkirk did not formally arrest you because he knows you’re having a hard time,” she
said, sitting on the edge of the table in an interview room and looming over me. “We all understand
you’re in a state. But this is now a family matter—“
“So I’ve been told,” I said. My voice sounded small. I think the room was soundproofed.
“—and the police don’t handle family matters unless they involve violence or something
unlawful. Like harassment.”
“You’re saying I can’t take my mother home with me.”
“Not if she won’t go.”
“But she’s not supposed to stay here. Neither of us is. We’re American tourists—“
“North American tourists,” WPC Cihan put in.
“Fine, North American tourists. What’s the difference?”
“To someone from South America? Quite a lot.”
I stared at her. Was a London police officer really quibbling about North and South America
with me in the middle of a crisis, or was I hallucinating this part?
“Fine,” I said after a long moment. “I get your point. But my mother still isn’t supposed to stay
here indefinitely.”
“Visitors from the United States can stay here up to six months without any special permits.”
I put my face in my hands and tried to compose myself. When I raised my head, WPC Cihan
was still looming over me, arms folded, her expression impassive. “I can’t let my mother just stay
here for six months.”
“You don’t have anything to say about it. I thought we made that clear to you.”
“You did,” I said miserably. “I just don’t know what to do.”
The other woman blew out a short breath. “Tomorrow morning, check out of your hotel. Go to
the airport and catch the first flight home.”
“And just abandon my mother?”
“You’re not abandoning her. She’s made her wishes clear, and obviously you’re not going to
change her mind. So do as she asks. Give her her space. Maybe in a few weeks, she’ll feel more
receptive, and she’ll call.”
I was still stuck on give her her space and almost missed the rest. “And if she doesn’t? Or you
call instead, to tell me you’ve found her body?”
WPC Cihan slid off the table and walked around to the other side, where my shoulder bag was
lying open with the contents next to it, including my passport and driver’s license. She swept
everything back into the bag and planted it in front of me. “Ma’am, I am not a guidance counselor.
Take your things and go. I don’t want to arrest you.”
She called Officer Selkirk to walk me out. He was nice to me, even apologizing for dragging me
away in a wristlock. I tried to pay attention to what he was saying, but something was nagging at
me.
“—because if anyone sees a person get the upper hand on a cop, that’s it,” Officer Selkirk was
saying as we reached the front entrance. “It’s open season, everyone’ll come after us. And I mean
everyone, from little kids to identified hardened criminals.” He opened the door for me.
I stopped in my tracks. “Identification!”
“Right, I believe you got all yours back.” He tried to push me over the threshold onto the front
steps.
“No, my mother’s identification.”
 He looked puzzled but kept trying to nudge me out the door.
“You didn’t ask to see it,” I said urgently.
His pleasant expression was crumbling. “Come on now, you’re blocking the access—“
I braced myself against the side of the door with one arm. “Why didn’t any of you ask to see my
mother’s ID?”
“Why would we? You identified her.” He tried to push my arm away.
“You should have asked for her ID. That’s standard practice, isn’t it?”
“I mean it now, you’re in the way here—“
I pushed my whole body against the side of the doorway. “You should have asked for her ID,
and you didn’t! You should have confirmed who she was!”
“Ma’am, I’m trying to be patient with you, but you’re creating a problem again, and it’s getting
more serious than you realize. You have to leave. Now.”
“But—“
“I don’t think our asking for your mother’s ID would have magically changed her mind and
made her want to go with you. Now please, before I have to take you back to WPC Cihan—“
“It would if she didn’t have any.”
He stared at me blankly.
“If she didn’t have any ID, that would have mattered, wouldn’t it?”
“We don’t have mandatory ID cards in this country.” Pause. “Yet.”
“Not for your citizens, but what about foreigners? We have to have passports. If she didn’t have
her passport, wouldn’t you have to do something about that? Either make her produce it or take her
into custody?”
Officer Selkirk pulled me out of the doorway and shoved me onto the front steps. “Do not come
back here.” I opened my mouth to protest, and all at once I was nose to nose with him. “There’s
nothing more anyone can do for you. Go home.”
-
The US embassy looked like it was getting ready for a siege, but the middle-aged couple ahead
of me in the long queue—line—for the entrance told me that this was the standard level of security.
“Don’t travel a lot, do you, dear?” the woman asked with a look that said she pitied yokels like me.
The line moved steadily, and eventually we were ushered through a metal detector and into a large
entry hall, where two people at a desk directed visitors to the correct department.
After a few hours on a hard folding chair in a waiting area, a young man whose ID badge said
he was Bryan Lewchuk took me into Office 4A, which looked an awful lot like the interview room
back at the police station right down to the furniture.
“Now, you say you lost your mother, is that right?” Bryan Lewchuk’s brow furrowed with
professional concern, his pen poised over a yellow legal pad. “Have you filed a report with the
Met?”
I nodded.
“And there’s no sign of her?”
“Well, actually, I found her a week ago, but I lost her again the same day. But the police found
her again this morning.”
Professional concern turned to bewilderment. I thought it made him look about twelve years old.
I told him the whole story while he took notes, occasionally asking me to pause so he could keep
up.
 When I finished, he said nothing for what seemed like at least half a minute, only staring at the
legal pad with a troubled frown. Finally, he sat back in his chair and said, “Now what is it that you
think the embassy is supposed to do about this?”
-
I wouldn’t say that they threw me out, exactly. The man who escorted me to the exit wasn’t
armed—well, not that I could see. Nor did they tell me that I could never come back, only that
getting upset and shouting was counterproductive.
-
The Pakistani clerk called to me as soon as I walked into the hotel lobby. I was afraid she was
going to tell me that my credit card had been refused, but it was something else altogether.
“I’ve had to take down the Web page about your mother,” she said. “The authorities say that she
is no longer a missing person so the Web site says she doesn’t belong there anymore. I do hope that
nothing bad has happened to her?”
“No, at least not as of this morning,” I said. “But she is still missing. Or she’s missing again.
Whichever it is, I’m still looking for her. So could you put the page back up, please?”
“No. You can’t say that someone is missing when the police say she isn’t. The Web site won’t
allow it.”
“The Web site?” I said, incredulous. “How does the Web site know anything?” But she was
hurrying back to her place behind the front desk. I almost followed her, then caught sight of the
head clerk standing at the end of the counter. He had a cordless phone receiver pressed to one ear,
and he was glaring at me.
He glared me out of the lobby and into the narrow lift—elevator. Even after the doors closed, I
was pretty sure that he was glaring through the walls at me up to the second (third) floor and all the
way to my room.
I forced to myself to wait fifteen minutes, then called the front desk. As I had hoped, she
answered.
“Just tell me one thing,” I said quietly.
She hesitated. “If I can.”
“Who told this Web site that my mother isn’t missing—the police?”
She hesitated again, a little longer this time. “All I know is, I got an e-mail from the
webmaster,” she said, speaking very softly, as if she were trying not to be overheard.
“But how did the webmaster find out?” I asked. “Is there some official connection to the
police?”
“You said just one thing,” she reminded me.
“Yes, but—“
There was a loud click as someone else came on the line.
“Hotel staff are not permitted to become involved in guests’ personal problems,” the head clerk
said, speaking just a bit louder than was necessary. “Especially when those problems involve filing
false police reports. Please don’t make me have to ask you to leave.”
There was another even louder click as he hung up. I heard a whispered “Sorry!” before the line
went dead.
How the hell had I come to this, I wondered, sitting on the narrow and not very comfortable
bed. All I had done was come to London with my mother, nothing complicated. We weren’t
complicated—we’d always had a good relationship. We’d been talking on and off for years about
going to London together. I couldn’t even remember which of us originally suggested it.
 Unbidden and unwanted, the idea bloomed suddenly in my mind: had my mother planned to do
this all along?
I hauled her suitcase out of the tiny closet. I hadn’t touched it since I’d packed everything up to
change hotels, and I hadn’t been too careful, just throwing everything in. I hadn’t looked through
her things for any clues as to her state of mind or her intentions or anything else. How stupid was
that? About as stupid as the police not asking for her ID? Or as stupid as them not asking me about
what she may or may not have left behind?
I dumped her suitcase out on the bed, thinking she’d have killed me if she’d seen how badly her
clothes were wrinkled. I shook them all out and set them aside, emptied out her toiletry bag and
pawed through the travel-sized bottles and tubes. Nothing unusual there—except that they were
there. My mother was fastidious, and yet she had gone off without her wash-bag or a change of
clothes. Not even a change of underwear. It was too unlikely. About as unlikely as finding her
scavenging trash by the Thames, in fact.
The few souvenirs she’d bought were wrapped in layers of newspaper: a model of Big Ben with
an actual clock in the tower, a coffee mug—tea mug?—with a picture of the Queen on it, another
commemorating Charles and Camilla’s wedding, a toy double-decker bus and black cab. Had the
last two been meant for a friend’s grandchild or a neighbor kid? If so, then she couldn’t have been
planning to disappear, at least not all along.
Feeling around the inside pockets of her suitcase, I came up with flyers for various tourist
attractions but nothing more. Then I noticed a zipped compartment in the lid.
More brochures advertising bus tours and boat rides, trips to Windsor Castle, LegoLand, and a
few amusement parks. I hadn’t noticed her pick any of these up and wondered when she’d done it.
As I shuffled through them, something fell out onto my lap. It looked like a business card except
it was made of the same hard plastic as a credit card. On one side, in plain, dark blue letters on
white, it said, taxi service: dial 10101 from a designated pay phone.
On the back was only one word, in big black stencil-type lettering: void.
How could you tell which pay phones were designated, I wondered? And what was void—the
number? The card? I slipped it into my back pocket.
I went through the brochures more carefully, checking inside each one. Folded into the
LegoLand flyer was a map showing part of central London around the Thames. No, I realized, it
was only part of a map, a panel that had been carefully torn out, showing the area near the
Millennium Bridge. Where I had found my mother originally.
There was nothing else hidden among the rest of the brochures. I checked the zippered
compartment in the suitcase again and found one last item, something that looked like an empty
checkbook. Except the dark green cover said passes, and the stubs had nothing about transactions or
balances carried forward. All of them had been stamped used. All twenty-five of them.
Twenty-five stubs . . . twenty-five years? There were no dates that I could see, but the stamps
varied slightly in size and style, and the first one seemed to have been made a very long time ago.
Or maybe I was imagining it.
And that really was all. I searched my own suitcase on the off-chance that she might have
hidden something there as well as the carry-on bag (she had insisted we take only one between the
two of us, and I should do the carrying, of course) but there was nothing else.
I was putting everything away again when my gaze fell on the digital camera sitting on the desk,
and a small voice in my brain said that I hadn’t checked that yet. I picked it up, switched it to photo
review, then hesitated.
 This would be the twilight-zone moment, I thought, the moment when I clicked through the
photos I had taken of her and discovered she was gone out of every single one. After which the
police would call to tell me they’d found records saying my mother died twenty-five years ago, was
I a practical joker or just mentally ill?
But of course, it wasn’t the twilight-zone moment. My mother was still in all the pictures,
looking just as she had when I had taken them. No messages appeared in the viewing window
saying error. Or void. Or used.
I shoved the suitcases back into the closet and tucked the map into my pocket with the card.
-
The cell phone was making the pay phone rarer, I discovered the next morning when I got up
early to go in search of a designated one. There were still plenty of them in tube stations, in the
ticket halls, and even on the platforms, where cell phones wouldn’t work. But they were fewer and
farther between on the street, and a lot of them didn’t work. Nor did any of them seem to be
designated.
I tried talking to the woman behind the Information counter at Oxford Circus tube station; she
told me she couldn’t help me with taxis or phones. She did, however, recognize the map portion and
happily provided me with a whole one.
If there was no way to identify a designated phone, I decided, then I would try some
undesignated phones. But, of course, there was the problem with the number—even adding the
prefix for inner or outer London, it was too short. In the Leicester Square ticket hall there was a
phone with a screen and keyboard, and I thought I’d found what I needed. I hadn’t.
Finally, I called the operator for help.
“Five-digit numbers are for text messaging from cell phones,” she told me politely. “It’s a
different system.”
“But if I can call a cell phone from a regular phone, why can’t I use this number?” I asked.
“Landlines are not equipped with screens for texting, for one thing,” she said. “If you really
want to explore this issue, you’ll have to call the service provider.”
“Which service provider?”
“Whoever you get your phone service from. Or I can connect you directly to the service
provider for the phone you’re using right now.”
“No, but thanks anyway,” I said, and hung up.
I had a cell phone, rented for the duration of my stay in London. Extending the rental was
another expense contributing to the imminent demise of my credit rating.
Now that I thought of it, that made it a kind of pay phone.
No, that was stretching it, I thought as I took the handset out of my shoulder bag and looked at
it. My mother had flat out refused to carry one herself. She’d complained that she couldn’t see the
buttons or the screen, and she couldn’t figure out how to make a call or even answer one. Portable
telecommunications had to be my department. The truth was, I fumbled the thing more often than
not myself.
Almost without meaning to, I dialed 10101. Immediately, the message came up: no signal.
Feeling foolish, I went up the step to Charing Cross Road and pushed through the ever-present
crowd to a quiet spot around a corner near Chinatown.
The screen displayed a cartoon of a telephone sending out waves: ringing. I put the phone to my
ear. There was no ringing sound or any other signal, just silence for a few seconds, then suddenly, a
woman’s voice.
“That card is void—can’t you read?”
 “Yes, I—“
“Also, this account is already in progress,” she added briskly and a bit sternly. “How did you get
this number?”
“It says taxi service—“
“Were you actually trying to call a cab?” she asked, sounding slightly incredulous.
“Yes, I’m supposed to meet my mother—“
“The final pickup on this number was outside the British Museum a little over two weeks ago.”
“Yes, I realize that,” I lied, “and I was supposed to be there, but my purse was stolen, and I lost
everything.”
“Do you remember your own number?”
“No,” I said sadly. “I know it’s only five digits but I have a bad memory. And lousy eyesight.” I
put in a tearful voice-break. “Then my mother called and asked me why I wasn’t where we were
supposed to meet—“
“All right, take it easy.” I could hear rapid clicking in the background, fingers on a keyboard.
“You say she called you? Are you sure?”
“She’s my mother. I would know.”
More clicking. Then: “I’m sorry, if you’ve lost your card, and you can’t remember the number, I
can’t help you there. And this number is void.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” I pleaded, trying to sound even more tearful.
There was a long moment of silence, and I was afraid she’d hung up. Then she said, “All right,
I’ll give you directions to intercept her trajectory.”
“Her what?”
She didn’t seem to have heard me. “You need to go to the Piccadilly Circus tube station. In the
main ticket hall, just inside the barrier, you’ll see the CCTV room. Knock on the door and tell them
you couldn’t get a taxi.”
“All right.” I waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. “Then what?”
“They’ll let you in so you can look at the monitors.”
“The monitors?”
“The closed-circuit TV screens. When you see her, just go down to whatever platform she’s on.”
“Oh,” I said. “And you’re sure she’ll be there?”
“It’s her trajectory. The numbers don’t lie.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, just for the sake of saying anything at all. “Are you in touch with her, by any
chance?”
“Oh, no, she’s well out of our range at this point. You shouldn’t have any trouble, though.”
Pause. “Unless you’re trying to play me.”
I felt a surge of guilty apprehension. “How do you mean?”
“I think you know.” She chuckled slightly. “Doesn’t matter. If you aren’t, you’ve got nothing to
worry about.”
That didn’t sound good. “And if I did have something to worry about, what would that be?”
But she had already hung up.
-
“I couldn’t get a taxi.”
The gray-haired man at the door stepped back and gestured for me to come in. I hesitated for
half a second. The CCTV room was dark, the only light coming from the glow of two rows of
monitors stacked one on the other above a long, low desk.
“Thanks,” I said. “They said I should just—“
 The man put one hand up and shook his head sharply, then gestured at the side of his head. Now
I saw he was wearing an earpiece; tiny lights were blinking on and off.
Sorry, I mouthed, but he was already going back to where he’d been sitting at the far end of the
desk. Apparently I was free to do my monitor-checking unsupervised.
I was surprised to see that the image quality varied, from OK to fuzzy. OK wasn’t as good as I
would have thought; fuzzy was dismayingly poor. Most were one or the other, with very little in
between. If my mother was on one of the fuzzy screens, I thought, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to
recognize her.
Starting with the top row, I took a long, hard look at each monitor. As my eyes became
accustomed to the gloom, I saw there were a few controls just below the screen. I was tempted to
fiddle with them to see if I could get a better picture. The man who had let me in was still deeply
engrossed in whatever his earpiece was telling him and using a stylus on a handheld computer. He’d
probably never notice until later, when he discovered he could actually see something, I thought.
On the other hand, it would be just my luck that I’d only end up making things worse. Maybe he
wouldn’t notice that, either, but I decided to restrain myself anyway.
By the time I started on the lower row of monitors, my eyes were watering. Despite that, I could
actually tell how the cameras were positioned on the platforms. Occasionally, the image on one of
the screens would change suddenly and show a set of escalators for a while, then change back.
Great, I thought; my mother could have gotten on a train during one of those transitions, and I’d be
giving myself eyestrain for nothing.
And then I saw her, sitting in the middle of a row of plastic seats. She took off her tweed hat and
fluffed up her fuzzy silver hair, loosened the scarf at her throat and looked off to her left. Waiting
for the next train. I checked the number of the platform and rushed down there.
I couldn’t find her, of course. Maybe a dozen people waited along the length of the platform,
and the only person sitting was a tall, fortyish man reading a newspaper.
“Has a train arrived here in the last minute?” I asked him.
He looked up at me with a faintly suspicious expression and shook his head.
“Thanks,” I said, looking around. “Would you mind telling me how long you have been waiting
here?”
“Maybe five minutes. I don’t really know.”
“Did you happen to see a little old lady, silver hair, with a cane? She’s wearing a beige raincoat
and a tweed hat?”
Frowning, he shook his head again. “Sorry.”
“She’s my mother, and I’ve lost her. She’s kind of confused, so if you do see her, could you call
somebody, like one of the transport people here?”
“I would, my train’s here.” He stood up just as I became aware of a rumbling behind me. The
train rolled in and stopped; people got on and off while I stood there looking down the platform
helplessly. A few moments later, the train pulled out again, and I tried to get a good look through the
windows of each carriage.
Trying not to be discouraged, I walked the length of the platform, then crossed over to the other
one. There were only three people on that one, none of them old or a woman.
Still trying to look at everyone around me, I went back up to the ticket hall. Maybe I had gone to
the wrong platform. Or maybe she had gone to a different platform while I was on my way down
there. In which case, she might already have boarded a different train. It was probably pointless to
go back into the CCTV room—
 No, it wasn’t. The cameras recorded as well as surveilled. I could look at the playback, see
where my mother had gone.
As soon as I walked in, however, the man was on his feet and hurrying to show me out again.
“Sorry, authorized personnel only,” he said sternly. “And you’re definitely not authorized.”
“There was no problem about me coming in before,” I said, moving one way, then the other,
trying to get around him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, we don’t allow anyone except transport employees in
here.” He took hold of my upper arm and tried to pull me toward the door.
“I told you I couldn’t get a taxi and you just let me right in.”
“You’re completely mistaken—“
For several moments, we struggled with each other, bumping against the desk, until I managed
to twist away from him. He reached for me, and I lunged away from him toward the monitor where
I had seen my mother.
She was back on the platform, sitting on the same plastic seat.
“Damn!” I yelled, fighting the man off again as he tried to pull me away. “What did you do, call
down to her somehow, warn her?”
“Who?” He almost fell backwards, then caught himself on the desk. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about. Or who.”
He had my left arm; I tried to hang on to the desk with my right, slid down onto the floor, and
found a metal support underneath. I wrapped my arm and both legs around that.
“I’m going to have to call the transport police,” he told me, trying to pry me off.
“My mother’s got dementia,” I lied. “She ran away, and I’m trying to get her off the street. Call
the transport cops, I’ll get them to play back that camera for me. I want to see where my mother
went, where she was hiding.”
The man let go of me. “If I call the transport police in here, I’ll show them the playback from
that camera. And then it won’t be your mother they’ll be getting off the street and sectioning for
dementia.”
“OK,” I huffed, wondering how a bluff could go both weird and wrong. “You just do that, and
we’ll see what happens.”
I heard him let out a long breath. “You don’t have clue one, do you?” He sounded as if he pitied
me. “All right, tell you what—I’ll show you the playback right now. After you see it, you can decide
what you want to do.” He reached down and took my arm gently. “Here, get up and have a proper
seat.”
He helped me up and sat me down in a chair in front of the monitor.
The playback didn’t last long. It hadn’t taken me much time to get down to the platform where
my mother was sitting. I appeared on camera, looked around, then walked out of the frame. I
reappeared a few seconds after the train arrived, although only my head was visible, turning around
one way and another, trying to see everyone at once getting on and off the train before it pulled out
again. I watched myself stand looking after it before walking away, out of camera range again, to
search the rest of the platform as well as the one opposite. And all the while my mother sat quietly,
observing everything I did, never moving from her seat.
After watching me go, she turned and looked up at the camera. The expression on her face was
unreadable; I don’t think it was because of the lousy resolution.
“It’s a trick,” I said. “You digitized that—“
“Oh, please,” he said, standing behind me. “The pixels are the size of baby teeth. I couldn’t fool
with that even if I wanted to. And why would I anyway? I don’t know you.” Pause. “Or I didn’t.”
 “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, feeling my hackles rise.
“You lied. I suppose I should have known all along, but it’s been known to happen.”
“What is?”
“Someone missing their taxi and needing interpolation.” He reached forward and touched a
control; the screen switched back to real time. “You, however, aren’t one of them. Off you go now.”
He pulled me out of the chair and ushered me to the door. “Unless you want the transport police to
see you looking directly at the woman you claim you can’t find. Start arguing with them, and you’ll
find yourself sectioned before you know it. They don’t take chances with anyone who could be a
terrorist. Which is anyone, full stop.”
“Wait, please,” I said, hanging on to the doorjamb the way I had at the police station. “Can’t you
at least tell me what’s going on? What’s my mother doing?”
The man shrugged. “Whatever she wants, I suppose. She’s used up her passes and decided to
take the last one, which is not a return.”
“Twenty-five passes, twenty-five years,” I said, more to myself than to him.
“That many.” He chuckled slightly. “Peripatetic old girl, was she?”
“No, she wasn’t,” I said. “She never went anywhere. I’d have noticed.”
“Ah, it was like that, was it?”
“Like what?”
He chuckled again. “You didn’t notice. No wonder she decided to use the last one.” He pried me
out of the doorway. “Now, it’s time for you to be moving on.”
“But my mother—“
“Hop it,” he said, his voice stern again.
I was still trying to protest when he shut the door in my face.
-
“I don’t know if you’re actually still here,” I said quietly to the empty plastic seat on my right.
“Or if I’ve just lost my mind. I’d just like to know what this was—is—all about. The passes.
Picking trash by the Thames. Having the cops take me away. None of it makes any sense. You’re
my mother. We always had a good relationship. I thought, anyway.”
Abruptly, a hefty kid in baggy jeans and a hoody plopped down in the seat. I gasped, but he
didn’t hear me over the rhythmic noises coming out of his earphones. Well, I could probably take
that as a sign, I thought, and glanced at the kid again. He was nodding along to the beat. I started to
get up, and he caught my arm.
“Here,” he said, holding his left earphone out to me. “It’s a major choon, you’ll like it.” When I
hesitated, he plugged the thing into my ear himself.
The rhythmic noise faded down suddenly, and I heard a familiar voice say, “Hey, I’m sorry, kid,
but when you get offered an alternative to going painfully and feebly into that less-than-good night,
you’ll pick up trash by the Thames, too, if that’s what it takes. If you get offered. I’ll try to put in a
good word for you. Now go—“
Abruptly the music came up hard and loud, and I yanked the earphone out by the wire.
“See? Major, innit?” The kid smiled and tucked it back into his own ear.
I thanked him and left.
I was about to go through the ticket barrier when I noticed a few CCTV monitors hanging
overhead. Odd place for them, I thought, especially when they had a whole room of them. Even
odder, the images on them were backwards—people walking right to left were shown left to right.
What was the point of that?
 I waved one arm to see if I were anywhere near a camera and spotted my hand moving up and
down on one of the screens. With everything backwards, it took a few moments to maneuver myself
into the right position to appear on the screen. Then I stood there, staring up at my image. I looked a
little silly. Like, say, a yokel who didn’t travel much and had never seen anything so advanced as
closed-circuit TV that showed everything backwards.
After a minute, my mother still hadn’t appeared behind me. She had probably caught her train.
Her trajectory. The numbers didn’t lie, or so I’d been told.
On the screen, a large swarm of people flowed past behind me to the down escalator and
immediately hit a bottleneck. I turned away from the monitor to look and saw a group only half the
size of that on the monitor, some in a hurry to walk down rather than simply stand and ride.
I looked back at the monitor. Definitely a much larger crowd.
Every day people go missing. It’s a surveillance society; in a city the size of London, a person
might appear on camera up to sixty times a day, even a missing person. And then after a while—
I sighed. “OK, but I still don’t understand what picking trash by the Thames has to do with it.”
A woman about to pass me stopped suddenly. “That’s mudlarking. And pardon me, love, but
you’ve picked a very bad place to stand, you’re blocking the way.”
“Thanks,” I said. But I stood there for a full count to thirty before I moved.
-
Truth and Bone
-
In my family, we all have exceptionally long memories.
Mine starts under my Aunt Donna’s blond Heywood Wakefield dining room table after one of
her traditional pre-Christmas Sunday dinners for the familial horde. My cousins had escaped into
the living room to watch TV or play computer games while the adults gossiped over coffee and
dessert. I wasn’t quite two and a half and neither group was as interesting to me as the space under
the table. The way the wooden legs came up made arches that looked to my toddler eyes like the
inside of a castle. It was my secret kingdom, which I imagined was under the sea.
That afternoon I was deep in thought as to whether I should take off my green, red, and white
striped Christmas socks and put them on my stuffed dog Bluebelle. I was so preoccupied—there
were only two and they didn’t go with her electric blue fur—that I had forgotten everything and
everyone around me, until something my mother said caught my ear:
“The minute that boy turned sixteen, he left home and nobody begged him to stay.”
All the adults went silent. I knew my mother had been referring to my cousin Loomis. Every
time his name came up in conversation, people tended to shut up or at least lower their voices. I
didn’t know why. I didn’t even know what he looked like. The picture in my mind was of a
teenaged boy seen from behind, shoving open a screen door as he left without looking back.
The silence stretched while I studied this mental image. Then someone asked if there was more
coffee and someone else wanted more fruitcake and I almost got brained with people crossing and
uncrossing their legs as the conversation resumed.
One of the relatives had seen Loomis recently in some distant city and it had not been a happy
meeting. Loomis still resented the family for the way they had treated him just because (he said) of
what he was, as if he’d had any choice about it. The relative had tried to argue that nobody blamed
him for an accident of birth. What he did about it was another matter, though, and Loomis had made
a lot of his own problems.
Easy to say, Loomis had replied, when you didn’t have to walk the walk.
The relative told him he wasn’t the first one in the family and he certainly wouldn’t be the last.
 Loomis said that whether he was the first or the thousand-and-first, he was the only one right
now.
And just like that it came to me:
Not any more, Loomis.
-
In my family, we all have exceptionally long memories and we all . . . know . . . something.
Only those of us born into the family, of course—marrying in won’t do it, we’re not contagious.
That’s not easy, marrying in. By necessity, we’re a clannish bunch and it takes a special kind of
person to handle that. Our success rate for marriages is much lower than average. Some of us don’t
even bother to get married. My parents, for instance. And neither of them was an outsider. My
father was from one of the branches that fell off the family tree, as my Aunt Donna put it. There
were a few of those, people who had the same traits but who were so far removed that there was no
consanguinity to speak of.
It only took one parent to pass the traits on; the other parent never figured it out—not
everything, anyway. That might sound unbelievable but plenty of people live secret lives that even
those closest to them never suspect.
-
In my family, we all know something, usually around twelve or thirteen. We call it “coming into
our own.”
Only a few of us knew ahead of time what it would be. I was glad I did. I could think about how
I was going to tell my mother and how we’d break it to everyone else. And what I would do if I had
to leave home because no one was begging me to stay.
In the words of an older, wiser head who also may have known something, Forewarned is
forearmed.
-
My mother knows machines: engines, mechanical devices, computer hardware—if it doesn’t
work, she knows why. My grandfather had the same trait; he ran a repair service and my mother
worked in the family business from the time she was twelve. Later she paid her way through college
as a freelance car mechanic. She still runs the business from a workshop in our basement. My Aunt
Donna keeps the books and even in a time when people tend to buy new things rather than get the
old ones fixed, they do pretty well.
Donna told me once that my mother said all repair work bored her rigid. That gave me pause.
How could she possibly be bored when her trait was so useful? But when I thought about it a little
more, I understood: there’s just not a whole lot of variety to broken things.
-
My father knows where anyone has been during the previous twenty-four hours. This is kind of
weird, specific and esoteric, not as handy-dandy as my mother’s trait but still useful. If you were a
detective you’d know whether a suspect’s alibi was real—well, as long as you questioned them
within twenty-four hours of the crime. You’d know if your kids were skipping school or sneaking
out at night, or if your spouse was cheating on you.
My father said those were things you might be better off notknowing. I wasn’t sure I agreed
with him but it was all moot anyway. My parents split up shortly after Tim was born, when I was six
and Benny was three, for reasons that had more to do with where they wanted to be in the future
than where either of them had been the day before.
In any case, my father wasn’t a detective.
He was a chef on a cruise ship.
 This was as specific and esoteric as his trait so I suppose it fit his personality. But I couldn’t
help thinking that it was also kind of a waste. I mean, on a cruise ship, everyone knows where
everyone else has been during the previous twenty-four hours: i.e., on the boat. Right?
-
My Aunt Donna knows when you’re lying.
Most people in the family assume that’s why she never married. It might be true but there are
other people in the family with the same trait and it never stopped them. Donna was the oldest of
the seven children in my mother’s family and I think she just fell into the assistant mother role so
deeply that she never got around to having a family of her own. She was the family matriarch when
I was growing up and I guess being a human lie detector is kind of appropriate for someone in that
position.
The thing was, unless someone’s life was literally in danger, she refused to use her trait for
anyone else, family or not.
“Because knowing that someone is lying is not the same as knowing the truth,” she explained to
Benny on one of several occasions when he tried to talk her into detecting my lies. I was ten at the
time and I’d been teasing him with outrageous stories about getting email from movie stars. “Things
get tricky if you interfere. When you interfere with the world, the world interferes with you.
“Besides,” she added, giving me a sly, sideways glance, “sometimes the truth is vastly overrated.”
-
A few weeks after that I was out with her and my mother on the annual back-to-school safari—
hours of intense shopping in deepest, darkest shopping-mall hell—and she suddenly asked me if I
felt like my body was changing. We were having food-court fish and chips and the question
surprised me so much I almost passed a hunk of breaded cod through my nose.
“Hannah’s entirely too young,” my mother said, bemused. “I wouldn’t expect anything to
happen for at least another three years.”
My aunt had a cagey look, the same one she had worn when she had made the comment about
truth being overrated. “That’s what you think. Puberty seems to come earlier all the time.”
They turned to me expectantly. I just shrugged. A shrug was just a shrug and nothing more, least
of all a lie.
“Well, it’s true,” Donna went on after a moment. “Ma didn’t get her period till she was almost
fifteen. I was thirteen, you were twelve. The girl who delivers my paper? She was ten.”
“And you know this how?” my mother asked. “Was there a little note with the bill—Dear
valued customer, I have entered my childbearing years, please pay promptly? Or do they print
announcements on the society page with the weddings and engagements now?”
Donna made a face at her. “Last week when she was collecting, she asked if she could come in
and sit down for a few minutes because she had cramps. I gave her half a Midol.”
My mother sobered at once. “Better be careful about that. You could find yourself on the wrong
end of a lawsuit.”
“For half a Midol?”
“You can never be too careful about giving medicine—drugs—to other people’s children. She
could have been allergic.”
I was hoping they’d start trading horror stories about well-intentioned adults accidentally
poisoning kids with over-the-counter medicine and forget all about me. No such luck. My mother
turned to me with a concerned look. “So have you been feeling any changes, Hannah? Of any
kind?”
“Do we have to talk about that here?” I glanced around unhappily.
 “Sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” She touched my arm gently and the expression
on her face was so kind and, well, motherly that I almost spilled my guts right there. It would have
been such a relief to tell her everything, especially how I didn’t want to end up like Loomis.
Then I said, “That’s OK” and stuffed my mouth with fries.
“I don’t care if your papergirl already needs Midol,” my mother told Donna, “Hannah’s still too
young. We shouldn’t be trying to hurry her, we ought to let her enjoy being a kid while she can.
Kids grow up too fast these days.”
The conversation turned to safe, boring things like where we should go next and what if
anything I should try on again. But Donna kept sneaking little glances at me and I knew the subject
wasn’t really closed, just as I knew it hadn’t really been about menstruation.
No matter when I came into my own, I decided as I bent over my lunch, I was going to hide it
for as long as possible. It might be hard but I had already managed to hide the fact that I knew about
my trait.
Besides, hiding things was a way of life with us. It was something we were all raised to do.
-
We all know something and no matter what it is, we virtually never tell anyone outside the
family.
“It’s like being in the Mafia,” my cousin Ambrose said once at a barbecue in Donna’s back yard.
“We could even start calling it ‘this thing of ours’ like on TV.”
“Nah, we’re not ethnic enough,” said his father, my Uncle Scott.
“Speak for yourself,” my cousin Sunny piped up and everyone laughed. Sunny was Korean.
“You know what I mean,” Scott said, also laughing. “You’re the wrong ethnic group anyway.”
“Maybe we should marry into the Mafia,” Sunny suggested. “Between what we know and what
they can do, we could take over the world.”
“Never happen,” said my mother. “They’d rub us out for knowing too much.” More laughter.
“Ridiculous,” said someone else—I don’t remember who. “Knowledge is power.”
-
Knowledge is power. I’ve heard it so often I think if you cracked my head open, you’d find it
spray-painted like graffiti on the inside of my skull. But it’s not the whole story.
Sometimes what power it has is over you.
And it’s always incomplete. Always.
-
My cousin Ambrose knows what you’ve forgotten—the capital of Venezuela, the name of the
Beatles’ original drummer, or the complete lyrics to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire”
(Caracas, Pete Best, and don’t go there, he can’t sing worth a damn). When he came into his own at
fourteen, Donna threw him a party and he told everyone where they’d left their keys or when they
were supposed to go to the dentist. Apparently reminding people to buy milk or answer their email
wasn’t interfering with the world, at least not in the way that got tricky.
We all knew the real reason for the party, Ambrose included: he was Loomis’s younger brother.
Just about all the local relatives showed up and they all behaved themselves, probably under threat
of death or worse from Donna. Even so, I overheard whispers about what a chance she had taken,
what with Loomis being the elephant in the room. It was hard to have a good time after that,
watching my own younger brothers giggling as they asked Ambrose to remember things they’d
done as babies.
 There were other mutterings suggesting that Ambrose had come into his own earlier than he had
let on. He was a straight-A student and who wouldn’t be with a trait like his? Just jealousy, I knew;
Ambrose had always been brainy, especially in math. He was three years older than I was and I had
been going to him for help with my homework since third grade.
Still, I was tempted to ask. If he really had hidden his trait, maybe I could pick up some
pointers.
-
I came into my own in the school library on a Thursday afternoon in early April, when I was
thirteen.
After knowing for so long in advance, I had expected to feel different on the day it finally
happened, something physical or emotional or even just a thought popping into my head, like all
those years ago under my aunt’s table. But I didn’t. As I sat at a table in the nearly-empty library
after the last class of the day, the only thing on my mind was the make-up assignment my math
teacher Ms. Chang had given me. I had just been out a week with strep throat so I was behind with
everything anyway but this was the worst. X’s and y’s and a’s and b’s, pluses and minuses,
parentheses with tiny twos floating up high—my eyes were crossing.
I looked up and saw Mr. Bodette, the head librarian, standing at the front desk. Our eyes met
and I knew, as matter-of-factly as anything else I knew just by looking at him—there was a spot on
his tie, he wore his wedding ring on his right hand, his hair was starting to thin—that in a little over
twenty-eight years, he was going to fracture his skull and die.
Mr. Bodette gave me a little smile. I looked down quickly, waiting to get a splitting headache or
have to run to the bathroom or just feel like crying. But nothing happened.
I must be an awful person. I stared at the equations without seeing them. A nice man was going
to die of a fractured skull and I didn’t feel sick about it.
I curled my index finger around the mechanical pencil I was holding and squeezed until my
hand cramped. Was it because twenty-eight years was such a long, long time away? For me,
anyway. It was twice as long as I had been alive—
“Takes a little extra thought.”
I jumped, startled; Mr. Bodette was standing over me, smiling.
“Algebra was a killer for me, too.” He took the pencil out of my hand and wrote busily on a
sheet of scrap paper. “See? Here, I’ll do another one.”
I sat like a lump; he might have been writing hieroglyphics.
“There.” He drew a circle around something that equaled something else. “See? Never do
anything to one side of the equation without doing the exact same thing to the other. That’s good
algebra. Got it?”
I didn’t but I nodded and took my pencil back from him anyway.
“If you need more help, just ask,” he said. “I needed plenty myself. Fortunately my mother was
a statistician.”
I stared after him as he went back to the front desk. Twenty-eight years; if I hadn’t been so
hopeless in math, I’d have known if that was equal to x in his equation.
A student volunteer came in and went to work re-shelving books. She had red hair and freckles
and she was going to live for another seventy-nine years until a blood vessel broke in her brain. I
had to force myself not to keep staring at her. I didn’t know her name or what grade she was in or
anything about her as a person. Only how and when she was going to die.
-
 Perversely, the equations began to make sense. I worked slowly, hoping the building would be
empty by the time I finished. Then I could slip out and hope that I didn’t meet anyone I knew on my
way home—
—where my mother and Benny and Tim would be waiting for me.
A cold, hard lump formed in my stomach. OK, then I’d go hide somewhere and try to figure out
how I was supposed to look at my mother and my brothers every day knowing what I knew.
Is that really worse than knowing the same thing about yourself? asked a small voice in my
mind.
That was an easy one: Yes. Absolutely.
-
Knowing about myself wasn’t a horrific blaze of realization, more like remembering something
commonplace. In ninety years, two months, seven weeks, and three days, my body would quit and
my life would go out like a candle. If twenty-eight years seemed like a long time, ninety was
unimaginable.
I slipped out of the library unnoticed and got all the way up to Ms. Chang’s classroom on the
third floor without meeting anyone. I left the worksheet on her desk, started to leave and then froze,
struck by the sight of the rows of empty seats staring at me. Today they had been filled with kids.
Tomorrow they’d be filled with heart attacks, cancers, strokes . . . what else?
More fractured skulls? Drownings? Accidents?
Murders?
My skin tried to crawl off my body. Would I be able to tell if people were going to be murdered
by the way they were going to die? Was Mr. Bodette’s fractured skull going to be an accident or—
What if someone close to me was going to be murdered?
What if it was going to happen the next day?
I would have to try to stop it. Wouldn’t I? Wasn’t that why I knew?
It had to be. My mother knew what was wrong with a machine so she could fix it; I knew about
someone’s death so I could prevent it. Right?
No. Close, but not quite. Even I could see that was bad algebra.
Just as I went back out into the shadowy hallway, I heard a metallic squeak and rattle. Down at
the far end of the corridor, one of the janitors was pushing a wheeled bucket with a mop handle. I
braced myself, waiting as he ran the mop-head through the rollers on the side of the bucket to
squeeze out excess water.
Nothing.
He started washing the floor; still I felt nothing. Because, I realized, he was too far away.
I dashed down the nearest staircase before he got any closer and ran out the front door.
-
Now that was very interesting, I thought as I stood outside on Prince Street looking back at the
school: people had to be within a certain distance before I picked anything up from them. So the
news wasn’t all bad. I could have a career as a forest ranger or a lighthouse keeper. Did they still
have lighthouse keepers?
 Should’ve walked toward the janitor, you wuss, said a little voice in my mind; then you’d know
how close you had to be to pick up something. No, only a very general idea; I wasn’t good with
distances—math strikes again. Too bad Ambrose’s sister Rita hadn’t been there. She knew space.
All she had to do was look at something: a building, a room, a box, and she could give you the
dimensions. Rita had capitalized on this and become an interior decorator. Sadly, she didn’t have
very good taste so she worked in partnership with a designer who, Ambrose said, probably had to
tell her several times a week that knotty pine paneling wasn’t the Next Big Thing.
I crossed the mercifully empty street but just as I reached the other side, I knew that eleven
years and two months from now, a woman was going to die of cancer.
There was no one near me, not on the sidewalk nor in any of the cars parked at the curb. Up at
the corner where Prince met Summer there was plenty of traffic but that was farther away from me
than the janitor had been.
I didn’t get it until the curtains in the front window of the nearest house parted and a woman’s
face looked out at me. She glanced left and right, and disappeared again. Another useful thing to
know, I thought, walking quickly—people had to be within a certain distance but they didn’t have to
be visible to me.
In the house next door, there was a head injury, forty years; a stroke, thirty-eight years in the one
after that. Nothing in the next two—no one home. Internal bleeding, twenty-six years in the next
one. A car passed me going the other way: AIDS, ten years behind the wheel and heart failure,
twenty-two years in the passenger seat. More AIDS, six years in the house on the corner.
Waiting for a break in the traffic so I could cross, I learned another useful fact—most of the cars
on Summer Street passed too quickly for me to pick up on anything about the people in them. Only
if one had to slow down or stop to make a turn would something come to me.
Eventually the traffic thinned out enough to let me cross. But by the time I reached the middle
of the road, cars had accumulated on every side. My head filled with cancers, heart attacks,
infections, organ failures, bleeding brains, diseases, conditions I didn’t know the names of. I hefted
my backpack, put my head down and watched my feet until I reached the other side.
Baron’s Food and Drug was just ahead. I spotted an old payphone at the edge of the parking lot
and hurried toward it, digging in my pockets for change (I was the last thirteen-year-old on the
planet without a cell phone). It was stupid to hide that I’d come into my own. I would call my
mother right now and come clean about everything, how I’d known for years and how I was afraid
to tell anyone because I didn’t want to end up like Loomis, leaving home with nobody begging me
to stay.
I was in the middle of dialing when a great big football player type materialized next to the
phone.
“Hey, girlie,” he said with all the authority of a bully who’d been running his part of the world
since kindergarten. “Who said you could use this phone?”
I glanced at the coin slot. “New England Bell?”
“ ’Zat so? Funny, Nobody told me. Hey, you guys!” he called over his shoulder to his friends
who were just coming out of Baron’s with cans of soda. “Any a you remember anything saying little
girlie here could use our phone?”
My mouth went dry. I had to get the hell out of there, go home, and tell my mother why I now
needed a cell. Instead, I heard myself say, “Should’ve checked your email.”
He threw back his head and laughed as three of his pals came over and surrounded me. They
were big guys, too, but he was the biggest—wide, fleshy face, neck like a bull, shoulders so massive
he probably could have played without pads.
 “Sorry, little girlie. You got no phone privileges here.”
His friends agreed, sniggering. I tried to see them as bad back-up singers or clowns, anything to
keep from thinking about what I knew.
“Come on, what are you, deaf?” The mean playfulness in his face took on a lot more mean than
playful. “Step away from the phone and there won’t be any trouble.”
More sniggering from the back-up chorus; someone yanked hard on my backpack, trying to pull
me off-balance. “I need to call home—“
“No, you need to go home.” He pushed his face closer to mine. “Hear me? Go. The
fuck. Home.”
I should have been a block away already, running as fast as I could. But the devil had gotten into
me, along with the knowledge that three days from now on Sunday night, the steering column of a
car was going to go through his chest.
“If you’d let me alone,” I said, “I’d be done already. Nobody’s using this phone—“
“I’m waitin’ on an important call,” he said loudly. “Right, guys?”
The guys all agreed he sure was, fuckin’ A.
“From who?” said the devil in me. “Your parole officer or your mommy?”
Now his pals were all going Woo woo! and She gotcha! He grabbed the receiver out of my hand
and slammed it into the cradle. My change rattled into the coin return; I reached for it and he
slapped my hand away, hard enough to leave a mark.
“Smart-ass tax, paid by bad little girlies who don’t do as they’re told,” he said, fishing the coins
out with his big fingers. “Now get the fuck outa here before something really bad happens to you.”
The devil in me still hadn’t had enough. “Like what?”
He pushed his face up close to mine again. “You don’t want to find out.”
The guys around me moved away slightly as I took a step back. “Yeah? Well, it couldn’t be
anywhere near as bad as what’s coming up for you,” the devil went on. “Yuk it up while you can,
because this Sunday you’re gonna d—“ I stumbled slightly on a bit of uneven pavement and finally
managed to shut myself up.
He tilted his head to one side, eyes bright with curiosity. “Don’t stop now, it’s just gettin’ good.
I’m gonna what?”
Now I had no voice at all.
“Come on, girlie.” He gave a nasty laugh. “I’m gonna what?”
I swallowed hard and took another step back and then another. He moved toward me.
“Come on, I’m gonna what?”
“You—you’re—“ I all but choked. “You’re gonna have a really bad night!”
I turned and ran until I couldn’t hear them jeering any more.
-
You’re not just a bad person, you’re the worst person in theworld. No, you’re the worst person
who ever lived.
Sitting at the back of the bus, I said it over and over, trying to fill my brain with it so I couldn’t
think about anything else. I actually managed to distract myself enough so that I didn’t notice as
many deaths as I might have otherwise.
Or maybe I was just full of my thug’s imminent death. That and what I had told him.
Except he couldn’t have understood. When that steering column went through his chest, he
wasn’t going to think, OMGWTFBBQ, she knew! in the last second before he died.
Was he?
-
 The public library was my usual hideout when I felt overwhelmed or needed somewhere quiet
to get my head together. Today, however, I was out of luck—the place was closed due to some
problem with the plumbing. Figured, I thought. No hiding place for the worst person in the world.
By this time, my mother would be teetering on the threshold between annoyed and genuinely
worried. I called her from the payphone by the front door of the library.
“This had better be good,” she said, a cheery edge in her voice.
I gave her a rambling story about having to finish a math assignment and then going to the
library to get a head start on a project only to find it was closed.
“Just get your butt home,” she said when I paused for breath. To my relief, she sounded more
affectionate than mad now. I told her I’d be there as soon as I could and hung up.
If I were going to live a long time, I thought as I walked two and a half blocks to a bus stop,
then wouldn’t the chances be really good that my mother and brothers would, too?
And if any of them were going to die in an accident, then I hadto tell them so we could stop it
from happening. I shouldn’t have been afraid to go home. I should have rushed home.
I had to tell my mother everything, especially what I had said. She would know what to do.
Was this the kind of problem Loomis had made for himself, I wondered? Was this why no one
had begged him to stay?
At least being home wasn’t an ordeal. My mother would fade away in her sleep at ninety-two,
Benny would suffer a massive stroke at eighty-nine, and Tim would achieve a hundred-and-five
before his heart failed, making him the grand old man of the house. We were quite the long-lived
bunch. I wondered what Mr. Bodette’s mother the statistician would have made of that. Maybe
nothing.
And it was nothing next to the fact that I didn’t tell my mother anything after all.
But I had a good reason. It was Benny’s night; he’d gotten a perfect score on a history test at
school and my mother had decided to celebrate by taking us all to Wiggins, which had the best ice
cream in the county, if not the world. We didn’t get Wiggins very often and never on a school night.
I just couldn’t bring myself to spoil the evening with the curse of Loomis.
-
My thug’s name, I discovered, was Phil Lattimore. He was sixteen, a linebacker on the varsity
football team. There were lots of team photos in the school trophy case, which was the first thing
you saw when you came up the stairs from the front door. I had never paid much attention to it.
Sports didn’t interest me much, especially sports I couldn’t play.
When I went to school on Friday, however, the trophy case that had once barely existed for me
seemed to draw me like a magnet—any time I had to go from one place to another, I’d find myself
walking past it and I couldn’t pass without looking at my thug’s grinning face.
Worse was that I was suddenly noticing photos of the team everywhere, adorned with small
pennants in the school colors reading !PRIDE!, !STRENGTH!, and !!!CHAMPIONS!!! and it
wasn’t even football season any more. You’d have thought they’d cured cancer or something.
Unbidden, it came to me: this could be a sign. Maybe if I saved my thug’s life, he would cure
cancer—or AIDS, or Ebola. Or maybe he’d stop global warming or world hunger. Plenty of people
turned their lives around after a close brush with death. It was extremely hard to imagine my thug
doing anything like that, but what did I know?
Unless I really was supposed to leave him to his fate.
That was like a whack upside my head. Was I supposed to fix this the way my mother fixed
broken machines? Or just live with what I knew, like my Aunt Donna?
 I couldn’t do anything about what I didn’t know, I decided. I had to do something about what
I did know.
I was thirteen.
-
Ambrose made a pained face and shoved my math book back at me. “Liar.”
“What do you mean?” I said, uneasily. “This stuff’s driving me crazy.”
“You’re a liar. You make me come all the way over here when you don’t need any help. Not
with that, anyway. You just need your head examined.” He started to get up from my desk and I
caught his arm.
“Gimme a break—“
“Give me a break.” My cousin gave me a sour, sarcastic smile. “Let me remind you of
something you’ve forgotten: I know what you’ve forgotten.” He tapped my math book with two
fingers. “You haven’t forgotten this. Ergo, you actually understand it. Congratulations, you’re not a
moron, just crazy. It’s Saturday, it’s spring, and there are a gazillion other things I’d rather do.”
“Do you know Phil Lattimore?” I blurted just as he reached the doorway of my room.
He turned, the expression on his face a mix of surprise and revulsion. “Are you kidding?
Everybody knows Phil the Fuckhead. According to him, anyway. What about him and why should I
care?”
I took a deep, uncomfortable breath and let it out slowly. “I, uh . . . “
Ambrose stuck his fists on his narrow hips and tilted his head to one side. “You what?”
I swallowed and tried again. “There’s something . . . “ I cleared my throat. “Close the door.”
He frowned as if this were something no one had ever asked him to do before.
“And come back over here and sit down,” I added, “so I can tell you what I know.”
He did so, looking wary. “You mean . . . Know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow night, Phil Lattimore—“ I floundered, trying to think of the right
words. “OK, look—if you knew you could save someone’s life, wouldn’t you do it? Even a
fuckhead?”
Ambrose’s face turned serious. “What are you saying?”
“It’s a car accident. Phil Lattimore—he—he’ll be hurt.”
He stared at me for I don’t know how long. “You really, like . . .know this?” he said finally.
I nodded.
“Anyone else going to get hurt with him?”
“Not that I . . . uh . . . know of.”
“Damn.” Ambrose shook his head and gave a short, amazed laugh. “You really haven’t told
anyone else?”
“No one. Just you.”
“I don’t know why not.” He ran a hand through his thick, brown hair. “If I could warn people
when they were going to have an accident instead of just telling them where they left their keys—
man, that would be fuckin’ awesome.” He gave me a significant look. “A hell of a lot better than
telling people when they were going to die.”
-
There are so many ways you can go wrong without meaning to.
You can make a mistake, an error, or a faux pas. You can screw things up, you can screw things
up royally, or just screw the pooch. Or you can fuck up beyond all hope, like I did. Deliberately.
 I knew it was wrong but I was afraid he wouldn’t help me. But a life was at stake and that was
more important than anything, I told myself. As soon as Phil Lattimore was safe, I’d tell Ambrose
the truth. He might be angry with me at first but then he would understand, I told myself. So would
the rest of the family. They couldn’t possibly not understand. I told myself. I was thirteen.
-
“But why don’t you want to tell anyone?” Ambrose asked as he worked on a Wiggins
butterscotch shake.
“It’s complicated. And keep your voice down.” We were sitting outside at one of the bright
yellow plastic tables near the entrance to the parking lot.
Ambrose made a business of looking around. The only other people there were a young couple
with a baby three tables away. “Right. Because they might hear us over the traffic noise!” He
bellowed the last words as a truck went by on the street. The couple with the baby never looked in
our direction.
“Fine, you made your point,” I said. Normally two scoops of coffee ice cream topped with hot
fudge was enough to put the world right but not today. The people with the baby had arrived after
we had and they were directly in my line of sight.
“You know, it’s rare but there are a few other people in the family with your trait,” Ambrose was
saying.
“There are?”
“Yeah, one of our cousins, she lives in California, I think. My dad mentioned her once. Also one
of his aunts, which I guess makes her our great-aunt. Dad said she so was high-strung that
sometimes she was afraid to go out.”
“Because of what she knew?” I said.
Ambrose frowned. “Not exactly. Something real bad happened—I don’t know what—that
everyone thought was an accident. Only it wasn’t, because she didn’t know about it in advance.
Since she had no connection to anyone involved and no evidence, there was nothing she could do.
Dad said she freaked out and never really recovered.”
“She couldn’t have made an anonymous call to the police? Or sent a letter or something?”
Ambrose shrugged. “I don’t know the whole story. Maybe she tried that and it didn’t work.” His
expression became slightly concerned. “I hope nothing like that ever happens to you.”
“I can’t worry about that right now,” I said. “Are you sure Phil the Fuckhead’s gonna be here?”
“I told you, my friend Jerry works weekends here and Phil always shows. After the fill-in
manager goes home, he comes in to hassle the girls on the counter. Is there something about those
people that bothers you?”
The sudden change in subject caught me by surprise. “What people? Why?”
“You keep putting up your hand to your head like you want to block out the sight of them but at
the same time you’re sneaking little peeks. Something wrong with them?”
Not really. Other than the fact that in nine years, seven months, and one week, the kid is going
to drown, it’s all good. I had to bite my lip.
Ambrose’s eyes widened as he leaned forward. “Are theygoing to have an accident?”
The dad and mom would go on for another forty-five and sixty-eight years respectively before
they died of two different cancers. I hoped they’d have other children.
“Nothing in the immediate future,” I said.
“What about you and me?” His face was very serious now. “Are we gonna be OK?”
 Ambrose had another fifty-two years ahead of him. Not as long as anyone at my house but not
what I’d have called being cut off in his prime. “We’re fine,” I said. “We seem to be pretty l—ah,
lucky.” I’d been about to say long-lived.
“For the immediate future,” he said, still serious. “How far ahead do you know about—two
months? Six months? Longer?”
I took an uncomfortable breath. “I-I don’t know. I haven’t picked up on anyone else yet. What
about the cousin and that great-aunt? How far ahead did they see?”
“My dad said the great-aunt wouldn’t tell. He thinks maybe six months for the cousin but he
couldn’t remember.”
“Six months would be pretty helpful,” I said lamely.
Ambrose wasn’t listening. He was looking at a car pulling into the parking lot.
“Fuckhead alert,” he said. “Driving his land yacht. The only thing big enough for his fuckhead
posse.”
Land yacht was right; the metallic brown convertible was enormous, old but obviously cared
for. The top was down, either to show off the tan and plaid upholstery or just to let the guys enjoy
the wind blowing through their crew cuts. Phil parked down at the far end of the lot by the exit,
taking up two spaces. Not just typical but predictable, like he was following a program laid out for
him. The Fuckhead Lifeplan. Maybe I really was supposed to leave him to his fate.
As if catching the flavor of my thoughts, Ambrose said, “Yousure you want to help this asshole?
He’s got plenty of friends. Letthem rush him to the hospital.”
“Shut up.” I slipped over to Ambrose’s side of the table. “And turn around, don’t let them see
we’re looking at them.”
“Whatever.” Pause. “Hey, we’re not doing this because you have some kinda masochistic crush
on him, are we?”
“No, I hate him.”
“Oh, look—it’s my little girlie friend!” bellowed that stupid, awful voice. “And who’s that with
her? Hey, you’re not cheating on me, are you? Better not or I’ll have to teach you both a lesson—“
I wiped both hands over my face, begging the earth to open up and swallow me but as usual it
didn’t. Phil Lattimore loomed over me like the Thug of Doom, his chuckling goon squad backing
him up. I glanced at Ambrose. He sat with his arms crossed, staring straight ahead.
“Oh, hey, you got a pet fag!” my thug said with loud delight. “I got no problem with fags as
long as they’re housetrained and don’t try to hump my leg or nothing. You wouldn’t do something
like that, would you, pet fag? Hey, you got a name? You look like a Fifi. Right, guys?”
Fuckin’ A, said the guys, high-fiving each other.
Phil Lattimore bent down so we were eye to eye. “Who said you could eat ice cream here?”
Would his buddies be in the car with him when it happened, would they be hurt? If so, they’d
recover. The soonest any of them would pass away was thirty years from now; the goon on Phil’s
immediate left would die of blood poisoning. Another avoidable death. I Should make a note to
phone him in three decades, two months, and six days: Hey, if you get a splinter today, you’d better
go to the hospital immediately because you’ll die if you don’t.
All this went through my head in a fraction of a second, before Phil straightened up and went
on. “Any a you guys get a memo saying girlie and Fifi could eat here?”
The goon squad chorus didn’t answer; instead, they all turned and went into Wiggins.
I turned to Ambrose, stunned. “What just happened?”
 “A minor miracle.” He pointed; a police car had just pulled into the lot. “Maybe they’ve been
following him.” We watched as the cops got out of the car and went inside. “Bunch of guys riding
around on Saturday night. Could be trouble.”
“It’s not night yet,” I pointed out.
“But it will be soon. Let’s get out of here before Phil and the posse come back out. They’re not
gonna feel like hassling the waitresses with a couple of cops watching.”
We threw our empty dishes away and got into the VW. Technically the car was his mother’s but
she had left it behind after moving out. His parents, like mine, both carried traits but, unlike mine,
had gotten married. Despite splitting up, however, they still weren’t divorced.
“You sure this isn’t a pervy crush?” Ambrose grumbled as he backed out of the parking space.
“Wanting to help that asshole—“
“I don’t want to,” I said. “I have to.”
“Because?” Ambrose prompted as we approached the exit; it was right near where Phil
Lattimore had parked his land yacht. “Or is that a deep, dark, pervy secret?”
“Because I said something to him about what I know.”
Ambrose slammed on the brakes so sharply I flopped in my shoulder harness.
“You told Phil the Fuckhead that you know he’s gonna have an accident tomorrow night?” My
cousin’s voice was half an octave higher than I’d thought it could go. “You really are fucking
crazy!”
“I didn’t mean to—“
“Don’t you realize that he might think you threatened him?”
The idea of Phil Lattimore thinking I could threaten him was so funny I laughed out loud.
“You idiot,” Ambrose said. “He could say you did something to his car! For all you know, he
told his father or his mother—or maybe he’s telling the cops in Wiggins right now.”
“I don’t think so,” I said unhappily, looking at the side view mirror.
“OK, maybe not, but—“
“Definitely not. He—“
Phil Lattimore slammed up against the driver’s side door and stuck his head through the
window. “Hey, why’re you sittin’ here starin’ at my car? What’s goin’ on, Fifi?”
Ambrose stamped on the accelerator and we shot out of the parking lot, barely missing an
oncoming SUV.
-
“Don’t talk,” Ambrose said for the fifth or sixth time.
“I wasn’t,” I said, glaring at him.
“I thought I heard you take a breath like you were gonna say something.”
“You were mistaken.”
“OK. Don’t talk any more now.”
“Fine. I won’t.” I stared out the passenger side window. We were out in the countryside now,
taking the long way back to my house. The really long, long way, all the way around town, outside
the city limits; a nice drive under other circumstances. “Phil Lattimore would never in a million
years believe me,” I added under my breath and waited for Ambrose to tell me to shut up. He didn’t
so I went on muttering. “He wouldn’t believe it if you’d said it. That’s why we don’t tell anyone
outside the family anything—“
 “Shut the fuck up,” Ambrose growled. “You think I spent my life in a coma? I know all that.
Now I’m gonna drive you home and you’re gonna tell your mom everything, what you know and
what you said to Phil—hey, just what did you say? No, don’t tell me,” he added before I could
answer. “I’m probably better off not knowing. If I don’t know, I’m not an accessory.”
“A what?” I said, baffled.
“An accessory to your threatening Phil.”
“He threatened me, just because I wanted to use a payphone,” I protested. “I only told him he
was going to have a bad night.”
“I told you not to tell me!” Ambrose gave me a quick, pained glance. “OK, never mind, just
don’t tell me any more.”
“There isn’t any more to tell,” I said, sulking now.
Ambrose eased off the accelerator and only then did I realize how fast we’d been going. “Are
you shitting me?” He looked at me again and I nodded. “Oh, for cryin’ out—that’s not a threat.
We’re gonna go home and forget the whole thing. And don’t worry, I won’t remind you.”
“We can’t,” I said.
Ambrose shook his head in a sharp, final way. “We can and we will.”
“I thought you said you hadn’t spent most of your life in a coma. Don’t you get it? I can’t just
turn my back. If Phil the Fuckhead is in the hospital for months and months, that’s on me for not
doing anything. If he ends up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, that’s on me.”
“He could also just walk away from the wreckage with nothing more than a scratch on his
empty fuckin’ head,” Ambrose said. “Guys like him usually do.”
“What about any other people in the accident? If they’re crippled or—or worse? That’s on me,
too. And you. For not doing anything.”
Ambrose didn’t say anything for a long moment. “It could happen no matter what we do.”
“Yeah, but we’d have tried. It wouldn’t be like we just stood by.”
“Shit.” Ambrose turned on the radio and then immediately turned it off again. “But you don’t
know anything about any other people, do you?”
“I only know about Phil Lattimore getting badly hurt in an accident. If I don’t try to do
something about it, I might as well stand next to the wreckage and watch him d—suffer.”
“And that’s why you need to tell your m—“
“No! If I tell my mother, then I have to tell her what I said to him.”
“But it’s not that bad,” said Ambrose. “It really isn’t. If you’re that scared, I’ll tell her for you.
You can hide in your room.”
“Please, Ambrose, I’m begging you—do this my way. I swear I’ll confess everything to
everyone after it’s all over, even if the worst happens. I just—I need to do this as a test. I’m testing
myself.”
Ambrose gave me a startled glance and I realized I was crying. “But it’s not just you,” he said.
“You dragged me into it.”
“And that’s on me, too, making you share this,” I said. “I know that.”
“You better know it.” His voice was grim. “If I had any sense, I’d take you straight home and
tell your mom the whole thing. But I’m not a rat, because—“ he took a deep breath. “Just between
you and me, OK?”
I looked at him warily. “OK. What.”
“I came into my own a year and a half before Aunt Donna gave me that party.”
“You did?” I was stunned. “Why did you hide it?”
 “Because I felt weird about it. Some of the things that people had forgotten—my father would
have realized I knew some things that—well, it wouldn’t have been good. But Aunt Donna found
out.”
“How?”
“She just asked me. I tried to lie by being evasive but I was too young and stupid to do it right.
We had a talk and she promised not to tell on me. And she didn’t.”
I was flabbergasted.
“I know, everyone was suspicious anyway because of how well I always did in school,” he said,
chuckling a little. “You, too, maybe. But I hadn’t come into my own when I started school and after
I did, it didn’t matter. I was already in the smart-kid classes and smart kids don’t forget much. I get
straight A’s because I’m smart, too, and I study my ass off. Anyway, you can trust me. I won’t say
anything. But promise me that tomorrow night, when this is all over, you’ll tell your mom.”
“OK,” I said.
“Good.” He looked at me sternly. “Because it’s not ratting you out if I make you keep that
promise.”
-
I got home and went straight upstairs to run a bath for myself. When I took off my clothes, I
discovered I had gotten my first period and burst into tears.
My mother waited until I had quieted down before coming to check on me. To my relief, she
didn’t rhapsodize about becoming a woman or ask me any questions. She just put a new box of
sanitary pads on the counter by the sink, gathered up my clothes and let me have a good cry in
peace, up to my neck in Mr. Bubble.
-
The next morning, I came down to breakfast to discover that she had sent Benny and Tim off to
Donna’s for the day.
“Estrogen-only household, no boys allowed,” she said cheerfully as she sat at the kitchen table
with the Sunday paper. “We’ve got plenty of chocolate in a variety of forms and an ample supply of
Midol. There’s also a heating pad if you need it.”
“Thanks, but I’m OK,” I said. She started to say something else and I talked over her. “I’m
going over to Ambrose’s. Algebra.”
She looked surprised and then covered it with a smile. “All right. It’s your day, after all.” And
she wished I were spending it with her. So did I.
I started back upstairs to get dressed.
“Hannah,” she called after me suddenly. I stopped. “No later than five. You’ve got school
tomorrow. OK?’
Phil Lattimore would die at six-fifty-two unless I saved him. “OK.”
“I mean it,” she added sharply.
“I know,” I said. “No later than five, it’s a school night.”
Her expression softened. “And if you decide to knock off the studying early, the chocolate and
everything else will still be here.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I got two steps farther when she called after me again.
“Are you really having that much trouble with algebra that you have to spend all weekend
working on it with your cousin?”
“You have no idea,” I replied.
I’d gone another two steps when she said, “Just one more thing.”
I waited.
 “Is there anything else you want to tell me about?”
“Not yet.”
-
“Leave it open,” Ambrose told me as I started to close the door to his room. “New rule. All the
time we’re spending together is making my father nervous.”
I blinked at him. “You kidding?”
Ambrose shook his head gravely. “I wish I were. He thinks it’s more than algebra.”
“But we’re cousins,” I said, appalled and repelled.
“No shit. Just remember to keep your voice down and your algebra book handy for those
moments when he just ‘happens’ to pass by on his way to the linen closet.” He gave a short laugh.
“You know, I thought that when I finally told him what we’re doing, he’d be mad at me for hiding
stuff from him. Now I think he’ll just be relieved.”
-
The day crawled by. Ambrose sat at his desk, tapping away on his computer while I stretched
out on the bed, trying to ignore the mild discomfort in my lower belly. But after Uncle Scott went
past a couple of times, he called Ambrose out of the room for a quick word. Ambrose returned with
a request for me to sit up, preferably in one of the two straight-back chairs. I compromised by
stretching out on the floor. “If your dad has a problem with this,” I said, “I’ll give him a complete
description of how my first period is going.”
Ambrose blanched. “I didn’t need to hear that.”
“Neither will he.”
We finally went out for lunch at two, driving out past the city limits into the country again.
“Won’t your dad worry about what we could do in a car?” I asked.
Ambrose shook his head. “Not in a Volkswagen.”
I gave an incredulous laugh. “We could get out of the Volkswagen.”
“And then what? I don’t have enough money for a motel and he thinks I’m too hung-up to do it
outside.” He glanced at me. “Forget it. Grown-ups are fuckin’ weird, is all. Every last one of them,
fuckin’ weird. Especially in our family.”
Anxiety did a half-twist in my stomach or maybe it was just cramps.
“And we’re giving them a run for their money right now ourselves,” he added. “Skulking
around so you can play hero single-handed for an asshole who wouldn’t appreciate it even if
hedid know what you were doing. Fuckin’ weird? Fuckin’ A.”
The moment hung there between us, a silence that I could have stepped into and confessed
everything—the truth about my trait and what I was really trying to do. Then he went on.
“Anyway, I didn’t want to talk about this before in case my dad overheard.” He glanced at me;
anxiety did another twist, high up in my chest where it couldn’t have been cramps. “When you
come into your own, you don’t just get one of the family traits. They let you in on other things.
Family things.”
“Like what? Skeletons in the closet or something?”
Ambrose gave a small, nervous laugh. “Not just that. There are skills to learn, that go along with
the traits.”
“Skills?”
“Coping skills. There are ways to compartmentalize your mind so you don’t get caught up in
something you know when you’re supposed to be doing something else. Some traits, you have to
learn how to distance yourself. Mind your own business.”
I bristled. “If this is a sneaky way of trying to talk me out of—“
 “Relax. I should but I’m not.”
“You never mentioned any of this before.”
“I didn’t think you’d want to hear it.”
“I still don’t.”
“I know. But shut up and let me talk, OK? I promised you I’d help you and I will. I am. But I
had to talk to somebody. So after my dad went to bed last night, I called my sister Rita and talked to
her.”
“You what?” My voice was so high that even I winced.
“Relax. I didn’t tell her about you. I talked to her about Loomis.”
I felt my stomach drop, as if there were thousands of miles for it to fall inside me. “Why . . . “
My voice failed and I had to start again. “Why Loomis?”
“I would have asked Dad about his aunt or the cousin but I was afraid he might start wondering
why I wanted to know. Then he’d put two and two together about you and I’d have to explain why
you won’t tell anyone and it’d be a big mess. Asking about Loomis would’ve been worse—he’d
have gotten the wrong idea about your trait.” I winced, wondering if Ambrose would ever speak to
me again when the truth did come out. “So after he went to bed, I called Rita.”
“But why Loomis?” I asked again.
“Because your trait is similar in a lot of ways. I know, you said Phil Lattimore could die, not
that he would, but there are parallels. You and Loomis know a specific thing about one particular
person. So I thought anything Rita told me about him would apply to you, too.”
“Good algebra,” I said, mostly to myself.
“What?” Ambrose gave me a funny look.
“Nothing. What did she tell you?”
He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. “The closer it gets to that time, the more likely we
are to run into Phil Lattimore.”
“Why?”
“Because you know what’s going to happen and you talked to him. It’s a synchronicity thing.
Your separate courses affect each other.”
“Our ‘separate courses’?”
“It’s a mathematical thing, really advanced. I kind of understand it but I’d never be able to
explain it to you.”
“And Rita told you this?” I gave a small, incredulous laugh. “Since when is knotty pine’s
biggest fan such a brainbox?”
“My sister may be tacky but she’s not stupid.” Ambrose sounded so serious I was ashamed of
laughing even a little. “She knows space. Every so often, she picks up on something weird, like two
points that are actually far apart registering as being in the same spot.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means she has to use her tape measure.”
“Very funny,” I said sourly.
Ambrose shrugged. “You’re nowhere near ready for quantum mechanics or entanglement.” He
flexed his fingers on the steering wheel again. “You know, something like this happened with
Loomis. When he told somebody something he shouldn’t have.”
All of a sudden I felt weightless, the way you do in the split second before you start to fall.
“Who?” I asked, or tried to. What voice I had was too faint for Ambrose to hear.
 “Rita said as soon as he did that, it was like they couldn’t keep out of each other’s way,” my
cousin went on. “Not so strange in a small town like this. The strange part was every time Rita read
the distance between them, it came up zero.”
“You believe her?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Of course I believe her!” Ambrose glanced at me, his face red with anger. “What kind of
fuckin’ question is that? I wish to God she were here now, you’d eat those words.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to insult anybody.”
“My sister and I sit up half the night just for your benefit and that’s the thanks we get?”
“You did tell her!” I shouted. “You said you wouldn’t—“
“I had to tell her something,” Ambrose shouted back at me. He slowed down and pulled onto the
dirt shoulder of the country road we were on. “She knew I’d never call in the middle of the night
just to chat about Loomis and I couldn’t get away with lying to her—“
“So you lied to me about lying to her—“
“Shut up and let me finish!” He turned off the ignition. “I figured it wouldn’t matter if she knew
the truth, she’s in Chicago.”
“What else did you tell her?” I asked, managing not to scream in his face.
“Just that you’d come into your own and you didn’t want to tell anyone yet. Nothing about Phil
or what we’re doing.”
I gave him a poisonous look. “Can I really believe you?”
He blew out a short breath that might have been a humorless laugh. “Don’t you think she’d have
hung up on me and called your mom if I had told her everything?”
“OK,” I said after a bit. My heartbeat had finally slowed from machine-gun to a gallop. “Why
did we stop here?”
“I don’t drive when there’s yelling in the car,” Ambrose said, sounding almost prim. “That’s
practically guaranteeing a wreck.” He raised an eyebrow at me and I had a sudden vision of him at
his father’s age, paternal but firm: You kids behave yourselvesright now or I’m turning this car
around.
“Fine,” I said. “No yelling.”
He started the VW again.
-
“Wake up,” Ambrose said.
“I’m not asleep,” I said thickly, blinking and sitting up straight in my seat. Most of the daylight
was gone and we were no longer out in the country but pulling into the parking lot at Wiggins.
“What time is it?”
“Fifteen minutes to Operation Save the Fuckhead.” Ambrose cruised slowly through the
crowded lot. It was a Sunday night in spring; everyone wanted to end the weekend with one last
treat. “Uh-oh.”
“What ‘uh-oh’?”
“I don’t see his car.”
My stomach seemed to twist, then drop; at the same time, my cramps woke up with a
vengeance. I leaned forward with my arms across my middle. “Maybe he was here already and left.
Or maybehe’s out in the country now.”
“I’ll drive down the road to Westgate Mall, turn around, and come back again,” Ambrose said.
“There’s no place to park here anyway.”
 Just as we pulled out of the exit, a car roared up from behind and swerved sharply around us,
horn honking, headlights flashing from low to high. Ambrose jerked the wheel to the right and we
veered off the road into the dirt. The tires crunched on something as he slowly steered the car back
onto the pavement.
“Who do you suppose that was?” he said wearily.
“Let’s go,” I said, hoping I wasn’t yelling. “We’ve got to catch him!”
But as we sped up, the VW began to shudder hard from side to side.
“What the hell is that?” I yelled as Ambrose brought the car to a stop.
“Flat tire.”
“Can’t we change it?” But even as I asked, I knew. “The spare’s flat,” we said in unison.
High beams swept across the road and shone through the windshield and lit up the inside of the
VW. The driver had crossed from the opposite lane to stop in front of us, facing the wrong direction.
“Uh-oh,” Ambrose said softly as we watched Phil Lattimore get out of his land yacht and lumber
toward us. We rolled up the windows and locked the doors.
“Car trouble?” Phil asked, pressing his nose against my window.
-
“Can’t reach my mom or my dad,” Ambrose said unhappily, snapping his cell phone shut.
Lying across the front of the VW, Phil Lattimore waved cheerfully. “Hey, I told you
we’re happy to give you a ride!” He gestured at his friends waiting in the convertible; I could barely
hear the Fucking A’s with the windows rolled up.
“Call a tow truck,” I said.
“I’ll call the cops.”
“You can’t! As soon as Phil sees a cop car, he’ll take off and it’ll happen. We’ll have caused the
accident. Just call a tow-truck. What time is it? How long have we got?”
Ambrose tilted his watch toward the light, trying to read it. “Shit. My watch stopped.” He turned
the key in the ignition so the dashboard lit up. The digital clock read 88:88.
“What about your phone?” I asked. He showed it to me. The screen said—/—Set Time?
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.
“Just guessing, I’d say it means you won,” Ambrose said. “Now if we can just lose the ugly
hood ornament.”
Phil was squinting at his own watch in a puzzled way. He tapped the face hard with a fingernail,
then held his wrist up to the light again. Ambrose leaned hard on the horn, startling Phil so much
that he fell off.
“What’d you do that for?” I yelled.
“It worked. Now we can call your mother instead of a tow truck. I don’t have enough money for
a tow truck and you promised you’d tell her. She can take us to a service station and I’ll pump up
the spare while you tell her everything. It’s killing two birds with one stone.”
Phil Lattimore was back on his feet, brushing himself off as he went back to his land yacht. I
unlocked my door and started to get out.
“Hey, don’t!” Ambrose caught my arm. “Are you crazy?”
“I’ve got to keep him out of his car for just a little longer.” I twisted out of his grip and ran
toward Phil Lattimore. His buddies gestured, hooting and cheering wildly; the surprise on his face
when he turned and saw me was utterly genuine, which surprised me just as much.
“What do you want?” he asked and for a moment he actually seemed concerned. Hey, girlie,
you’re doing it wrong—I scare you and you run away, that’s how the game goes.
 I stopped in front of him. The smell of beer was like a cloud around him. “Just  . . . wait a
minute.”
He gazed down at me as if from a great height. “Sorry, girlie, no can do. Watch died. Your ugly
face break it, or Fifi’s?” He turned away and kept going.
“I said, wait!” I yelled, going after him.
He spread his arms as his buddies hooted some more. “She loves me, what can I—“
I made a two-handed fist and walloped his right butt cheek.
He stumbled, more from surprise than from the blow itself. I barely saw him whirl on me before
he grabbed my upper arms, lifted me off my feet and threw me into the back seat of the land yacht.
It wasn’t a soft landing and his buddies were no more ready for it than I was. I was struggling in
a tangle of arms and legs. There was laughing and someone yelling Jesus are you crazy toss her out
she’s jailbait and another voice saying she wants a beer. I kicked out, hoping to hit something
tender but connected with nothing but air. Beer cans crumpled against my face, dug into my skin as
the car jerked forward.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop! Don’t let him! Don’t let him, make him stop!”
“What the fuck?” somebody said. No more laughing. One guy in the front seat was insisting that
we’d better stop, another guy agreed, and then a third guy yelled Look out!
For a fraction of a second, I thought it was pure noise, an impact from sound waves. The car
skidded at an odd angle and I managed to pull my head up just in time for the second impact. The
air went out of my lungs in one hard blow. When my vision cleared I was trapped on the floor;
someone seemed to be kneeling on my ribs. Fighting to breathe, I tried to drag myself up toward air.
I don’t remember hearing the third impact.
-
I came to inside something moving fast.
“Do you know your name?” said a woman’s voice, all brisk concern. A hand squeezed mine.
“Do you know your name?”
The light was blinding me; high beams?
“Do you know your name? If you can’t talk, squeeze my hand.”
I tried to pull my hand away and sit up but I couldn’t move at all.
“Do you—“
“Hannah,” I croaked. My mouth tasted funny. “Tell me he’s OK.”
“You don’t worry, everyone’s in good hands.”
“No, tell me.” The light in my eyes grew more painful as I became more alert. “Tell me he’s
OK. Tell me I saved him.”
“Don’t worry, honey, everything’s gonna be OK—“
I had a glimpse of a woman’s face, dark brown, with short black dreadlocks. In thirty-five years,
degeneration in her brain would finally reach its end-stage.
Abruptly pain erupted everywhere in my body. I would have howled but all that came out was a
long croaky moan. The woman turned away quickly and did something; the pain began to ebb,
along with my awareness.
“Midol,” I whispered. Or maybe not.
-
After that, I was in and out, almost like channel surfing. Doctors and nurses appeared and
disappeared and I never knew which was which. Sometimes I saw my mother, sometimes my
brothers; once in a while Donna was there as well. Although I was never sure if I were dreaming,
even when it hurt.
 At one point, I was trapped in the back seat of Phil Lattimore’s land yacht again, feeling it spin
around, tires screeching, glass breaking, metal smashing. I think I heard the third impact that time
but afterwards, there was no one asking if I knew what my name was while we traveled. But it was
much easier to breathe.
-
Phil Lattimore came to see me. He peered over a nurse’s shoulder and made stupid faces,
mouthing Who said you could have a car accident here? That was no way to treat the person who
had saved his stupid thug ass and I’d tell him that as soon as I was well enough.
-
My mother was sitting next to my bed, gazing at me with an anxious, searching look.
“Yeah, it’s me.” It hurt to talk. My voice sounded faint and hoarse.
“No kidding.” She tried to smile. “I’d know you anywhere.”
I swallowed hard on my dry throat and winced. She poured me a glass of ice water from a
sweating metal pitcher and held the straw between my lips for me. “Did Ambrose tell you?”
It was like a shadow passed over her. “Ambrose? No.”
“He made me promise—“ I sucked greedily at the straw; suddenly ice water was the most
wonderful thing in the world. “Said if I didn’t tell you, he would. After it was all over. Which it is.
Isn’t it?”
She made a small, non-committal movement with her head. “Yes, honey. It’s all over.” She
poured some more ice water for me. “Rita got here as soon as she could.”
“Rita?” It took me a few moments to remember. “Did she come because Ambrose told her?”
She made that little movement with her head again.
It was easier to talk now; I turned my face away from the straw to show I’d had enough. “I feel
bad about that. Because now I have to admit I lied to Ambrose.”
My mother closed her eyes briefly as if she had had a sudden pain, then put the ice water down
on the table beside the bed. “Yes, I know. We know.”
We? Pain nibbled at the edges of my awareness, as if it had just woken up and wanted to join the
conversation without drawing too much attention to itself. “How? Who told you?”
“You did.” My mother sighed, looking at me sadly. “You don’t remember talking to me, do
you?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“The doctors said you’d have a spotty memory thanks to the combination of the head injury and
the medication.” She put her hand over mine on the bed and I realized I had a cast on my arm up to
my knuckles.
“Everything’s all dream-like.” The pain was getting more assertive. “Did he make it? Is he
alive?”
Now she hesitated. “Your uncle Scott’s been sitting with him. He hasn’t left the hospital since
—“
“Uncle Scott?” Pain definitely wanted more attention now; I tried to ignore it. “Why is Uncle
Scott sitting with Phil Lattimore?”
“Phil who?” My mother looked as mystified as I felt. “He’s withAmbrose.”
Uh-oh, said a small voice in my mind, under the pain. It sounded exactly like Ambrose. “Phil
Lattimore is the guy I was trying to save,” I said. “I knew Ambrose would be all right.”
“All right?” My mother looked mildly stunned now, as if she had bumped her head.
“Ambrose isn’t going to die for f—for a very long time,” I said. “I knew I didn’t have to worry
about him.”
 My mother took a deep breath and let it out. “Is that so?” She gazed at me for a long moment,
her expression a mixture of hurt, frustration, pity, and something else I couldn’t read. I started to say
something else and she suddenly rushed out of the room.
Caught completely by surprise, I tried to call after her but the pain stole my voice. Before it got
really bad, however, a nurse came in with some medication.
-
When I woke up again, there was a man sitting in the chair next to the bed. I had never seen him
before but even without the strong family resemblance I’d have known who he was.
“Hello, Loomis,” I croaked.
“Hello, yourself.” He got up and gave me some ice water the way my mother had, holding the
straw between my lips. I drank slowly, studying his face. He was a little taller than Ambrose, wiry
and lean, as if he spent most of his waking hours running. His hair was curly but darker than
Ambrose’s and he had a full dark beard with a few white hairs here and there. I found it really
interesting that although his eyes were same shape as Ambrose’s, they weren’t the same clear green
color but dark muddy brown, like mine.
I finished the water and told him I’d had enough. He put the glass aside and continued to stand
there looking me over.
“Guess you know,” I said after a bit.
He didn’t bother nodding. “You weren’t surprised, were you. Knew it almost your whole life
and never told anyone.”
“That how it was for you?” I asked.
He pressed his lips together. “So, was this premeditated or spontaneous?
I frowned. “What?
Loomis took a breath and let it out; not quite a sigh. “Were you always planning to save
someone’s life or was it a spur-of-the-moment thing?”
I hesitated. “I was gonna say spur of the moment but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I was always
gonna do something like this and never knew it.”
Loomis’s eyebrows went up. “Good answer. Insightful. More than I was at your age. Otherwise
—“ he shrugged.
“Otherwise what?”
“Otherwise you’re just as much a dumb-ass as any of us.”
I was offended and it must have showed. He laughed and patted my hand.
“Hackles down, kid. Till the body cast comes off, anyway.” He looked me over again. “Damn.
Even I never took a beat-down this bad.”
“Was it for nothing?” I asked.
Now it was his turn to be confused. “Say again?”
“Phil Lattimore. Did I save him?”
Fuck, no. He grimaced and poured another glass of water. Before I could tell him I didn’t want
any more, he drank it himself. “There are two rules, cuz. Number one: Never tell anyone. And
that’s anyone, even family. Never. Tell. Anyone. Never. And rule number two: Never try to save
them. You can’t do it. All you can do is make things worse.” He gestured along the length of my
body. “Exhibit A.”
Alarm bells went off in my mind; I shut them out, made myself ignore the cold lump of
apprehension in the middle of my chest. I’d be getting more pain medication soon; that always
made all the bad feelings go away, physical and emotional. “Yeah, but I knew I was gonna be all
right.”
 Loomis stuck one fist on his hip; the move was pure Ambrose. “You call this ‘all right’? Hate to
tell you, cuz, but after the casts come off, you’ve got a whole lot of physical therapy ahead of you
and you’ll probably lose a year of school. At least a year.”
“You know what I mean,” I said defensively. “I knew I wasn’t gonna get killed. It was just Phil
Lattimore. No one else.”
“Yeah, that was all you needed to know, wasn’t it? Only this Phil Lattimore would die so that
meant everybody else would be all right.” He looked at me through half-closed eyes. “Like you and
Ambrose.”
The lump in my chest was suddenly so large it was hard to breathe around it and my heart
seemed to be laboring. “Ambrose wasn’t driving, we had a flat—“
“He ran into the road after the car you were in,” Loomis said. “One of those things you do
without thinking. The car that swerved to keep from hitting him hit another car, which in turn hit the
car you were in. Which hit him before skidding into yet another car.” I started to say something but
he put up a hand. “There were two fatalities—this Phil Lattimore person who was apparently too
cheap to install airbags in his old land yacht and got spindled on the steering column, and someone
else who you apparently hadn’t met.”
“But Ambrose is ali—“
“Alive, yes, and will be for another fifty-odd years,” Loomis said, talking over me. “Exactly
how odd nobody really knows yet. The doctors told my parents it’s a miracle he survived that kind
of head injury. They won’t know how extensive the impairment is until he wakes up. My mother
believes he’s going to wake up any minute because he’s breathing on his own.”
It was like I was back on the floor of the car with some thug kneeling on my ribs, but harder, as
if he were trying to force all the air out of my lungs.
“Hey, stay with me.” I felt Loomis tapping me lightly first on one cheek and then the other. “I
wasn’t trying to be cruel.” He ran a small ice cube back and forth across my forehead. “But you had
to be told.”
I started to cry, my tears mixing with the cold water running down from my forehead.
“Shouldn’t have happened,” Loomis went on. “Wouldn’t have, but they just won’t talk about it
in front of the kids. They tell you everything else—why we keep the traits secret, how to be careful
around those poor souls who have the misfortune and/or bad judgment to marry one of us, how to
cover if you say something you shouldn’t to an outsider. But not how I ‘accidentally’ broke a kid’s
wrist playing football so he couldn’t go to the municipal swimming pool afterwards like he planned
and drown. And he didn’t. He went straight home because he didn’t know his wrist was broken and
he drowned in the bathtub. His parents were investigated for child abuse and his sister spent eight
months in foster care.”
“Stop,” I said. “Please.”
“They were all so mad at me, the family was.” Loomis shook his head at the memory. “They
claimed they weren’t, they told me it wasn’t really my fault because I didn’t know any better.
Everyone kept telling me they weren’t upset with me even after the authorities found out I had
broken the kid’s wrist and called me in for questioning. Along with Mom and Dad and Rita.
Ambrose was a baby; they examined him for bruises.”
“OK. Now stop,” I pleaded. “I mean it.”
 Loomis was talking over me again. “It all came out all right, there was no reason to be upset
with me. They said and they said and they said. But after my mother searched my room and found
my journal with everybody’s dates in it—then they got upset. Oh, they got furious with me. I said it
was my mother’s fault for snooping and then telling the rest of the family about it but they weren’t
having any of that. Writing down those dates—how could I have done such a thing? I stuck it out
till I was sixteen and then I booked.”
The silence hung in the air. I closed my eyes hoping that I’d pass out or something.
“When you’re well enough to travel,” he said after a while, “you’ll come with me.”
My eyes flew open.
“Death is the one thing you never, ever even try to mess with. Everything in the world—
everything in the universe changes. But not that. Death is. If you went down to the deepest circle of
hell and offered resurrection to everyone there, they’d all say no and mean it.”
“That’s not where you live, is it?” I asked.
Loomis chuckled. “Not even close.”
“They won’t beg me to stay, will they? They all hate me now.”
“They don’t hate you,” Loomis said, patting my hand again. “They love you as much as they
ever did. They just don’t like you very much any more.”
The nurse came in with my pain medication and I closed my eyes again. “Let me know when
we leave.”
-
Don’t Mention Madagascar
-
For Allen Varney
.
I don’t actually remember meeting Suzette. It’s like we were heading in the same general
direction and fell into step together. She knew everybody I knew and vice versa, but amazingly
enough we had no ex-boyfriends in common. But we’d never have let a guy come between us. “No
penis between us,” Suzette used to say with her big old grin. Girlfriend had a great grin.
Suzette was about five-four, five-five, and proportioned like a dancer. I think she had trained as
one once but she never said and I never asked. I’ve never asked a lot of questions; still don’t. It’s
not that I don’t care or I’m not interested. I’ve just always figured that if there’s anything I need to
know about anyone, they’ll tell me, no need to interrogate. Not that I mind answering questions as I
also figure if anyone wants to know something, they’ll ask; no need to admit to anything
prematurely.
Suzette was more forthcoming. She’d drop tantalizing little tidbits into a conversation in an
offhand way—like, “Hey, I used to have shoes like those but someone stole them while I was
getting defibrillated. I swear, you gotta keep an eye on your stuff every minute in Mongolian
emergency rooms.” Anyone else, it would have been showing off; Suzette just knew how to take
things in stride. I like that in a person.
The only time I ever saw her ruffled was on this one occasion. At the time, she was an office
manager for a real estate agency and coming in regularly to the coffee bar. By day I made soy lattés
and iced half-caff mochaccinos with a twist, and I studied computer engineering at night school.
About 11 o’clock on a Tuesday morning, she showed up looking like a woman who’d just been
caught in a high wind—rumpled, dreadlocks practically standing on end, eyes too wide and too
bright, and a little out of breath.
I said, “Jeez, what happened?”
 “I just quit my job,” she said.
“Oh. Well.” I knew this couldn’t be what had her all freaked. “Are congratulations in order?”
She flicked a glance to my right and I knew The Great Dick Tater had to be giving me the stink-
eye because I said something to a customer that wasn’t What can I get for you today? The GDT
took his assistant manager responsibilities very seriously.
“I don’t know what’s in order. Everything’s out of order.” She glanced to my right again; the
GDT must have been wearing a face that could sour milk. Soy milk.
“What can I get you today?” I said cheerfully.
Suzette’s mouth opened but nothing came out.
“One medium American filter, mellow blend of the day, room for cow,” I announced, repeating
her order from yesterday. I rattled off the price while I double-cupped it to go, staring the GDT
down with my back. Suzette paid and dropped a few coins in the tip jar. All the baristas split the tip
jar, something you should keep in mind if you like your overpriced coffee without extras like
employee saliva. Suzette was top of the no-spit list (posted conspicuously in the locker room, along
with security camera photos to prevent episodes of mistaken identity), a policy that even the GDT
respected.
Transaction done, Suzette went upstairs to sit. I gave it five minutes before announcing I was
going on my break.
“Jeez, Pearl, what kept you?” Suzette said when I finally joined her.
That annoyed me; she knew damned well what the GDT was like. “Sorry,” I said, taking off my
apron and folding it up. “I couldn’t just drop everything. Then I had to walk up the stairs because
the teleporter’s broken again.”
Suzanne gave me a sharp look at that last.
“Kidding,” I said; as she visibly unclenched, I added, “The teleporter’s not really broken, I just
needed the exercise.”
Bam—she was white-knuckled all over her body again, which was a neat trick for someone with
skin that dark. “Stop that,” she growled. I felt a sudden seriously terrible pain in my upper arm;
Suzette had me in a Death Grip of Doom.
“Ow.” I thought I could hear bone start to crack within the pulp formerly known as my bicep.
“What kind of day are you having?”
“Odd.” Her grip loosened.
I pulled away fast before she changed her mind. “How odd?” I asked.
She took something out of her back pocket, unfolded it, put it on the table: a photograph. I
winced; folding photographs goes against my personal code of fussy conduct. I’m no tight-ass—I’ll
tear the tags off pillows, jaywalk, even wear white after Labor Day. But fold a photograph? It’s
practically a physical pain.
“Look at that.” Suzette tapped her finger on it hard. I winced again because touching the surface
of a glossy-finish photograph is another of my fussy things.
“What is it?” I said.
“Rolling Stones, late 1960s.”
“Really?” I almost forgot how fussy I was. It was an outdoor venue in sort of jungle-ish
surroundings and the vantage point was onstage, far to the right. Only Keith Richards and Mick
Jagger are in the photo. Keith Richards was still pretty rather than craggy, with the wide-eyed look
of someone whose reality is exceeding his dreams, not the sneer of an old-timer who’s seen it all.
Mick Jagger was singing and pointing at a bunch of screaming girls. One had hoisted herself up on
the others and seemed about to climb onto the stage in the hope of touching His Satanic Majesty.
 “Where’d you get this?” I said. If it hadn’t been for the folding and the fingerprints, the photo
could have been taken the day before rather than forty-odd years ago. Heavy on the odd.
“My boss’s desk,” she said.
I was stunned. Suzette never stole from anyone, no matter how much they might have deserved
it.
“He showed it around this morning. Said his uncle took the picture when he was a stringer for
some music magazine back in the day.”
I looked from the photo to her and back again, frowning. “And that made you, uh . . .
kleptomaniacal?”
She tapped the photo hard again, her finger on the faces of the screaming girls. “See this
woman? That’s my Aunt Lillian. And the one trying to climb up on the stage?” She moved the
photo so it was directly under one of the bright ceiling lights and pointed. “That’s my mother.”
“Are you sure?” I tried not to laugh and failed.
Suzette tossed her dreads, offended. “What, you think I don’t know my own mother when I see
her?”
“OK, so it’s your mother. Why does that upset you?”
“Dammit, you’re not looking!”
“Jeez, just tell me already.” I drew back a little. “And then let me know if my head’s still there
or did you bite the whole thing off.”
“Sorry,” she said and managed to look it for all of a second. “But that’s not my mother back in
the day. That’s her now.”
“Oh?” I picked the photo up and angled it under the light. None of the people with her were
very young. They were really cutting loose and that made them seem youthful but they hadn’t been
girls for some time.
“Or rather, it’s how she would look now,” she added.
I frowned, not understanding.
“She died when I was sixteen.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, then, it can’t be her.”
“It is.”
“OK, have it your way. It’s her. Photoshopped. Do you know when your boss met your aunt?
And did you know they were such tasteless practical jokers?”
Suzette grimaced impatiently. “I tried calling my Aunt Lillian. Some guy answered, said he’s
her house-sitter while she’s on vacation. She’s been gone two weeks and he’s not sure exactly when
she’s coming back.”
“Did he say where she went?”
Suzette’s dark eyes seem to get even darker. “Where this picture was taken.” Tap-tap-tap with
her finger again. “Madagascar.”
-
(I know what I said. Don’t interrupt.)
-
Now, this next part is kind of a blur. It’s not that I don’t remember what happened, it’s that I
don’t have a reasonable explanation for it.
It certainly seemed reasonable at the time—well, after listening to Suzette for a while—to go
downstairs, toss my apron in The GDT’s face, and walk out the front door with her.
 First stop after I went home to pack a bag and grab my passport was Suzette’s aunt’s house in
Chicago, to meet this alleged house-sitter and see, as Suzette put it, just what his shit was made of.
That was an eight-hour drive in my ancient Geo, a subcompact car which a lot of my friends have
described as being only just too large to hang on a charm bracelet. Taller people grumbled, then
stopped when they found out what kind of gas mileage I could still get out of it. I’d have bought a
hybrid a long time ago except that being virtuously green has always been the domain of the
extremely wealthy, who probably weren’t so virtuous while they were getting that way. Suzette and
I discussed that on the road; by the time we hit the Loop, we had an airtight argument for why all
the hideously rich had to help all the rest of us get virtuously green by buying us hybrids and solar
panels and shit. If I ever remember it, there’ll be one hell of a revolution.
Suzette’s aunt’s place was a condo halfway up a high-rise with a nice view of Lake Michigan. I
was surprised but no more than Suzette was herself.
“You’ve never been here?” I asked as we got into the elevator.
“She moved here last year. Or maybe the year before, I can’t remember.”
“Haven’t seen her for a while?”
“She’s always busy,” she said, sounding defensive. “You want to see her, you gotta make an
appointment.”
I started to tell her that I hadn’t meant anything by that question but we were already at the right
floor and heading down the hall, which smelled like a mix of potpourri and carpet shampoo. Suzette
stopped at a door decorated with a wreath of artfully woven twigs and pussy willows, hesitated,
then rapped on it hard, squarely in the middle of the wreath.
The guy who answered was better-looking than anyone calling himself a house-sitter had any
right to be, tall, bearded and golden-skinned. We’d have stared even if he hadn’t been wearing a
turban.
“Ah, Suzette,” he said. “I recognize you from your pictures.” He stood back to let us in, giving
me a polite little nod as if to say that I was welcome, too, even though there were no pictures to
recognize me from.
His name was Jamail, he told us over coffee, and he was a student at Northwestern. One of his
professors lived down the hall and when Suzette’s aunt was looking for a house-sitter, he had
introduced them. “I’m what you call a mature student,” he said. “I believe learning is for life. Your
aunt feels the same, obviously.”
“How do you figure?” Suzette asked.
“I chose to go to university, she to Madagascar.” He lowered his voice ever so slightly on the
last word.
“Is that where you’re from?” Suzette stared pointedly at his turban.
“No. I’m from Scottsdale.”
“Scottsdale?” Suzette was openly skeptical.
He shrugged. “My grandparents were from India. I’m a Sikh.” The only contact information he
had for Suzette’s aunt was an email address on Google Mail; there was no hotel or cell phone that
he knew of, or so he claimed. Both Suzette and I found that hard to believe. Jamail took our
suspicion graciously. He was really quite a sweet guy; I found myself wondering if Sikhs ever dated
outside the church, so to speak.
Finally, he played the I-really-must-study-now card and started clearing away the coffee cups.
As he turned toward the kitchen with his hands full, Suzette stopped him. “Thanks for letting me
know my aunt’s in Madagascar.”
He smiled faintly. “Don’t mention it.”
 “Did she take her wheelchair?”
Wheelchair? I looked around. Nothing suggested a wheelchair user had ever lived here.
“I’m sure she took everything she needed. Now, if you’ll exc—“
Suzette shoved the photograph in his face. “And she never said anything about this?”
He dropped everything with a godawful crash. “Where did you get that?” He reached for the
photo.
Suzette whipped it behind her back. “A friend.”
“I see.” Jamail hesitated, then went into the kitchen and came back with a small business card.
“If anyone asks, you just found this somewhere,” he told Suzette firmly, looking unhappy as he
handed it over.
“OK. Thanks,” Suzette replied.
I started to bend down. “Here, let me help y—“
“Don’t.” He didn’t snap or even raise his voice but the command was so forceful that we backed
off immediately, and kept backing off, out the door and down the hall to the elevator.
-
“ ‘Miles 2 Go,’ ” Suzette read from the card as the elevator descended. “ ‘We’ll Get You On
Your Way. Jinx Gottmunsdottir, Senior Agent.’ ”
“Hey, does your aunt really use a wheelchair, or was that a trick question?” I asked.
She flicked a glance at me. “She’s been in a wheelchair for ten years. I told you. What kind of a
name is that?”
“No, you didn’t and it’s Icelandic, like Bjork.” I was only half listening. The elevator we’d gone
up in had not had mirrored panels.
“I mean ‘Jinx.’” Suzette was impatient again. “A travel agent named Jinx? Seriously? There’s
pushing your luck, there’s tempting fate, and then there’s teasing fate unmercifully till it bites you in
the ass and gives you rabies.”
“Is it rabies if this isn’t the same elevator?” My reflections and I watched each other with wary
solemnity on infinite repeat.
“What are you talking about?” Suzette glanced around quickly, then made a face. “So it’s a
different elevator. There’re two. We went up in one and now we’re coming down in the other.” She
studied the card again. “Address and phone number but no website. What kind of business doesn’t
have a website?”
I was busy trying not to feel spooked at my endless duplication. “This is not the same elevator.
And when there are two, they’re usually identical.”
“So? I don’t think there’s a federal elevator law about it.”
We went all the way to the ground floor without stopping and for a split second, I had the crazy
idea that the doors would open onto a different lobby. If so, what should I do—go back up to
Suzette’s aunt’s apartment and ask the Sikh’s advice? Or just get off and take my chances with
whatever was coming up next?
But it was the same lobby, of course, and there were, indeed, two elevators. The other one,
however, was blocked off by a ladder with a sign taped to it that said OUT OF ORDER. I stared,
sure that hadn’t been there when we’d come in. Then something else occurred to me.
“Hey, Suzette, if your aunt’s in a wheelchair—“
But she was already halfway across the lobby, muttering about bad names for travel agents.
-
 Jinx Gottmunsdottir was a pink-cheeked strawberry blonde somewhere between fifty and sixty-
five, with sapphire blue contact lenses and generous proportions made to look even more so by her
cabbage rose print dress. She did business in an indoor market between a sports souvenirs stall and
a place selling Russian nesting dolls custom-printed with your own face (X-tra Faces = X-tra $—
Ask 4 quote!). Her “office” was an ancient desk with an even older typist’s chair, and two other
chairs for clients: a molded white plastic thing and a vinyl beanbag that was a lot more bag than
bean. Overlooking all of this was a poster stapled to a heavy dark blue drape, a generic landscape of
rolling dark green hills with a glimpse of ocean in the background; flowery script at the bottom
said, Bulgaria . . . Let It HAPPEN . . . To YOU.
She looked up without much interest from the motocross racing magazine on her desk. “If you
want cut-rate fares to London or Paris, you’re in the wrong place. I specialize in roads not taken.”
Suzette slapped the photograph down on her desk. Immediately, Jinx Gottmunsdottir swept the
magazine into the center drawer. “Have a seat.”
I let Suzette have the white plastic chair. The beanbag was hopeless so I just sat cross-legged on
the floor.
“Normally, I have a spiel I go through,” the woman said in an important, business-like tone.
“However, you’re obviously familiar with the caveats so I can save my breath.”
Warning bells went off in my head. I got up on my knees to suggest she go through her spiel
anyway and suddenly found myself rolling around on the floor; Suzette had pushed me over.
I pulled myself up on her chair. Suzette gave me a warning glare and mouthed Shut up.
“But I will remind you that you have to follow the itineraryexactly,” Jinx Gottmunsdottir was
saying as she took two ticket folders out of her right hand desk drawer. “Miss a connection and it’s
immediate cancellation. No refunds.” She checked the contents of each folder, nodded, and smiled
at Suzette expectantly. “We take all of the usual credit cards.”
“Is there a discount for cash?” Suzette asked.
The woman blinked in mild surprise. “Do you have some?”
“No. I was just wondering.”
“Ah. Well, no, it’s the same price regardless. We don’t do bulk, either. I’m sure you can see
why.”
Suzette, still bluffing, nodded; I decided to assert myself. “I don’t.”
Jinx Gottmunsdottir’s professional smile disappeared, replaced by an expression of cold
irritation with an undertone of revulsion.
“Don’t mind her,” Suzette said brightly. She produced a credit card and pushed it across the
desk.
Jinx Gottmunsdottir produced a wireless electronic credit card machine and spent a lot more
time tapping the keypad than seemed usual. When she offered it to Suzette, I saw that below the
tiny screen there were two separate sets of keys, one with standard numbers and one with symbols
that I mostly didn’t recognize, although some of them seemed vaguely Greek or Cyrillic.
Suzette barely hesitated before entering a PIN. The woman pulled the machine back before we
saw anything on the screen. Seconds crawled by while she stared at the device and we stared at her
and I wondered if Suzette’s bluff had failed. I actually hoped it had. Bluffing isn’t anything I think
you should do outside of poker and, truth be told, I’m not that wild about poker, either.
But then a slip of paper came out of a slot at the top of the machine and Jinx Gottmunsdottir
beamed as she tore it off and handed it to Suzette along with the folders. “Enjoy your trip.”
“Will do,” Suzette replied briskly and helped me to my feet. “Bye now.”
 Jinx Gottmunsdottir gave us a distracted wave. The racing magazine was already back on the
desk in front of her.
-
Since our flight was at four-thirty the next morning, we found a hotel near the airport and didn’t
so much spend the night as take a nap. Normally, that alone would have been enough for me to bail
—early morning is not my natural habitat. But Suzette and that damned picture seemed to have me
under a spell.
Of course, the alternative was just another barista job, or temping in an office. Or cleaning it. Or
trying to survive on unemployment until something else opened up in the great minimum-wage
wasteland. Go to college, get a degree, they said. Yeah, because nothing impresses the civil servants
at the unemployment office like someone reading Proust in the waiting room. Flying to Madagascar
definitely seemed like the better option.
Suzette was also paying for everything at this point. She didn’t even ask me for change. Any
time I offered, she’d wave that credit card. Finally, over breakfast in the airport—coffee and limp
croissants at one of those tall round tables where you have to stand up and eat (which I would like
to go on record as saying is adding insult to the dual injury of the price and quality of the food,
thank you so much), I said, “Haven’t you maxed that thing out yet?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t find anything about a limit.”
“What is it, platinum Amex?”
Suzette pulled it out of the back pocket of her jeans and studied it. “Actually, I don’t know what
it is.”
“What?” I snatched it away from her. The bright colors seemed to be a mix of Visa, Master
Card, and Sears; I had just enough time to see there was no name on the front and no signature strip
on the reverse before she snatched it back. “Where’d you get it?”
“My aunt’s place. I helped myself to some of her mail while What’s-His-Name was making
coffee.”
“Really getting into this stealing thing, aren’t you?” I said, mildly creeped out. “You sure it’s
hers? Maybe it’s his—a special Sikh membership card.”
Suzette frowned. “If there is such a thing, I doubt it would work like a credit card.”
A new thought occurred to me. “How did you know the PIN number?”
“It was with the card.”
“Credit card companies don’t do that.”
Suzette shrugged. “This one did.”
“Did you take anything else?” I asked.
“A couple of bank statements. Nothing crucial.”
“You think bank statements and a credit card with no limit are ‘nothing crucial’?”
The sleepy-eyed man behind the counter perked up a bit. Suzette glared at me. “Keep it down,
Ms Accessory-Before-and-After-the-Fact.”
“Unwitting,” I said emphatically.
“I was kidding, Pearl. This is my aunt’s. She’s family. My family wouldn’t prosecute me.
Would yours?”
I winced. “I’ve never told you about my family, have I?”
“Tell me later.” Suzette finished her coffee in a gulp. “We’d better check in.”
There was no line at the desk. Suzette handed over our tickets and then both she and the man
behind the counter waited while I dug around for my passport.
 When people take a long time checking in at the airport, I always wonder why. Everything’s on
the computer. Even if you don’t have a seat assignment, how long can that take? If most of the
flights I’ve been on are typical, the only ones left are middle seats in the last two rows.
Our check-in took a long time, apparently because there were a lot of connections. The man
kept shuffling slips of paper and stamping them, reshuffling them, sorting them into two piles,
which he recombined and shuffled through again. That was what it looked like to me, anyway.
Finally, I said, “How many times do we change planes?”
He looked up at me sharply, as if this were an especially stupid question. “It’s complicated.” His
gaze slid to Suzette and then back to me. “You know you have to make your connections, right?”
“Right,” Suzette assured him.
“There’s no taking a later flight, no re-booking, or anything like that.”
“We know,” Suzette said.
“I’ve got to match up all the arrivals and take-offs so you canmake those connections. Some of
these windows don’t stay open very long and the ones that do aren’t always at the right time in the
right flight path. And then there’s the fact that there’s two of you.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, I must
sound like a crabby old man. This kind of thing gets more complicated every day.”
I wanted to ask why we couldn’t just fly direct but Suzette was standing on my foot with a glare
that said Shut up. The man finished shuffling and stapling and tucked a sheaf of coupons and
boarding passes into each of the ticket folders.
“I’ve stapled itineraries inside each wallet.” He shoved mine at me and opened Suzette’s on the
counter to show it to both of us. “You’ll have plenty of time to make each flight—“
“What if we’re delayed?” I asked, a bit belligerently. “Can you guarantee we won’t be
delayed?”
His look said he thought I was insane as well as rude. “Yes. From Berlin, you go to Rome, then
to Morocco, and then to Johannesburg. There’ll be a lot of turbulence on the flight out of Jo’burg.
Don’t let it scare you. Just finish your drinks early and keep your seatbelts on. After that, you have
the layover.” He closed Suzette’s folder and slid it under her hand. “Bon voyage.”
I looked at the itinerary inside my folder. “Johannesburg toMombasa? I thought we were going
to Madagascar.”
“Don’t mention Madagascar,” the man snapped in a half-whisper.
“Thanks very much for all your help,” Suzette said quickly, pulling me away. I wondered if the
whole trip would be like this—me making people angry and her dragging me off before they took a
swing at me.
-
Someone told me once that flying to London during the day rather than overnight made jetlag
easier to handle. Or maybe I only dreamed that; I was a zombie. I gave up trying to tell what time of
day it was as I marched through Heathrow behind Suzette. If I’d been even slightly more awake, I
might have asked if we were going the right way. It seemed to be the long way; one hallway would
let out onto a concourse which would take us to another hallway and then another. Occasionally
someone in a uniform carrying a radio would wave us on. When I tried to stop and ask a woman in
a maroon blazer a question, she told me to keep going, everything would be taken care of at The
Desk. I could hear the capitals when she said it.
“I don’t think there is a flight to Berlin,” I said to Suzette as I shuffled down another hallway
behind her. “We’re actually walking there.”
 The hallway let out onto a concourse, smaller than any of the others and deserted except for a
woman stationed at a counter in front of something that might have been one of those exclusive
airline clubs, except there was no company name or logo. She reminded me a little of Jinx
Gottmunsdottir, only a few decades younger and nowhere nearly as generously proportioned. I
followed Suzette over and she greeted us with the restrained, professional smile people wear when
they’re not sure whether they’ll have to let you in or throw you out.
“Is this The Desk?” Suzette asked.
The woman nodded. “Tickets, passports, and landing cards, please.” She sorted, shuffled, and
stamped, and sent us through a turnstile to a waiting room where the flight to Berlin was already
boarding.
In Berlin, we debarked outdoors in the middle of what looked like a parking lot for airplanes
and boarded a shuttle bus. Instead of getting off at the first stop with most of the other passengers,
however, an attendant told us to stay on and we were ferried to another plane, much smaller than the
one we had arrived in.
The flight attendant who checked our tickets as we boarded seemed more like a security guard.
She pointed each passenger to a specific seat with an air that suggested she wouldn’t look kindly on
anyone wanting to switch places. I fell asleep before takeoff and didn’t wake up till after we landed
in Rome, which made me grouchy with disappointment—I’d hoped to get at least a glimpse of the
city from the air.
Another shuttle bus took us to the next small aircraft. There were fewer passengers and no
assigned seats. I had intended to stay awake but there was a long delay before takeoff. When I woke
up, we were in a holding pattern over Morocco.
The shuttle bus waiting here was all but hermetically sealed against the heat and the windows
had such a dark tint, it was practically impossible to see out of them. Tired, I leaned over to Suzette
and whispered, “I’m exhausted. You go on, I’m gonna stay here and see when I can get a flight
home.”
“You are not.” Suzette said, grabbing my arm in that Death Grip of Doom again. “You can’t.”
“I’ll pay you back the airfare.” I tried prying her fingers off me and couldn’t.
“Pearl, you can’t just bail. This is a trip for two. You’re locked in.” Suzette looked significantly
at the uniformed man standing by the exit.
“Are you kidding me?” I started to get up and she pulled me down.
“Don’t. He’s armed.” She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “I’d have quit after Berlin.
But we’re committed.”
“You can’t force people to travel. It’s illegal.”
“It’s not a matter of legal or illegal,” said a firm voice. I looked up to see the guard standing
over us. “You are in transit. You cannot leave a plane in transit. You stop when it stops.” The bus
came to a halt and he pointed at the exit door. It slid open to reveal the steps up to the next aircraft.
“You haven’t stopped yet.”
-
The flight to Johannesburg was the longest and the one where sleep deserted me. The flight
attendants looked as tired as I felt. I considered slipping one of them a note: Help, I’m traveling
against my will. Seeing those morose faces, however, made me decide against it. They’d probably
just tell me to be glad I was sitting down.
 Someone had left a thick paperback book in the seat pocket in front of me. It seemed to be a
thriller involving spies who had sex a lot but I couldn’t be sure. It was in French, a language I’d had
little acquaintance with since high school. Eventually, I got bored enough to try reading it and
discovered that I could make out slightly more of the text than I’d expected but not, unfortunately,
in any of the parts where the spies had sex a lot.
Suzette by contrast did sleep most of the time, and so heavily that I wondered if she had taken
something. I hadn’t seen her do anything like that but then I hadn’t seen her steal her aunt’s mail,
either. I’d have to ask her when she woke up. Girlfriend, if you’ve got some Ambien on you, is it
too much to ask you to share?
By the time the seatbelt sign came on for the descent into Johannesburg, I felt as if I’d spent a
year in that stupid, lumpy seat. Again we exited the plane outside on the tarmac, far from any
buildings. But this time, there was no shuttle bus. The plane for the final leg of the journey was
waiting for us just a little ways away. A guard wearing the same uniform as the one who had spoken
to me in Morocco led us over to it and checked our tickets at the foot of the steps before allowing us
to board.
Just as I reached the open door, I heard a commotion at the bottom of the steps. A tall man with
thinning brown hair was arguing with the guard, who was pushing him back. A jeep with three other
uniformed people, two men and one woman, appeared out of nowhere and screeched to a stop
beside the steps. All four of the guards were carrying the struggling man by his arms and legs
toward the jeep when the relentlessly smiling flight attendant at the door pulled me inside and asked
me to sit down in a way that made it sound like an offer I couldn’t pass up instead of an order I
didn’t dare refuse.
I’ve since tried to figure out that technique for my own use but I always end up just straining my
vocal cords.
-
All the attendants for this flight had relentless smiles; it was a special charter. They moved
around the cabin distributing snacks, drinks and folders thick with information about the city of
Mombasa as well as Mombasa District and the area of Kenya where it was located.
“Did you know this was a charter?” I asked Suzette, paging through a booklet on Kenya’s flora
and fauna.
“Does it matter?” She stuffed her folder in the seat pocket without looking at it.
“Hey, don’t you want to keep that?”
“You can’t keep it. It belongs to the charter company.”
That was a non-answer if I’d ever heard one. “Then they’ll have to catch me,” I said, feeling
contrary. “After seeing this, I kind of wish we really were going there instead of M—“
“Keep your voice down,” Suzette snapped in a loud whisper.
I shrugged. “Fine. Sorry. But I don’t know what all the big—“ At that point, we hit the
turbulence we’d been warned about and I lost my train of thought. Shortly after that, I also lost the
drink I’d just finished along with the peanuts from the last flight and the pretzels from this one.
Nausea takes up all of my brain, leaving little room for anything other than wishing I were dead.
But I did notice that the airsick bag was much larger and sturdier than average. It was made of
untearable paper, printed with word games, riddles, and puzzles—Fun Facts About Mombasa!—and
lined with heavy-duty plastic.
 The turbulence lessened sometimes but never stopped. I kept the sick bag clamped to my face,
wondering if anyone had ever died of nausea—not throwing up, just nausea. I couldn’t remember
ever feeling this bad. Was I just overtired or had those stupid snacks poisoned me? Suzette wasn’t
doing any better. Nor was anyone else on the plane, apparently. Even the flight attendants looked
green.
Abruptly, there was a jolt so hard that if I hadn’t been belted in, I’d have gone through the
baggage compartment above me. Then the plane went into a nosedive.
Oxygen masks dropped out of flaps overhead. I couldn’t hear myself scream over everyone else.
I grabbed my oxygen mask, drew the bright yellow cup to my face and then hesitated. Passing out
was probably preferable to feeling the impact—
Rough hands pushed the airsick bag away and forced the oxygen mask over my nose and
mouth. Something fresh-smelling hit my nostrils and I inhaled deeply.
“Don’t hyperventilate! Breathe normally!” scolded a flight attendant. There was no relentless
smile behind the transparent oxygen mask she wore; it was attached to a small tank strapped to her
back. She pulled herself up the aisle, checking on each passenger.
“Holy shit!” I shook Suzette, twisting around to stare after her. “That woman’s a hero!”
“Just breathe already,” Suzette said irritably. “And don’t shake me or I’ll—“ She lifted her mask
briefly so she could use the sick bag.
And all at once, the plane leveled out. Everyone screamed again, this time in a mix of surprise,
relief and extreme joy. Well, that was why I screamed, anyway. The flight attendant reappeared
complete with relentless smile, telling us to keep our masks on until after we landed. No problem; I
didn’t have the will or energy to take it off. I was feeling dizzy now as well as wrung out; dizzy,
wrung out and sleepy.
-
“Sleeping through a landing after a nosedive isn’t just being tired,” I whispered to Suzette as we
went up the walkway from the plane to the arrival area. “They must have sedated us.”
Suzette shrugged. “Did you really want to be awake for the landing after that?”
“No,” I admitted. “But don’t you think that’s sneaky?”
“It’s a special charter. They have their own way of doing things.”
That made no sense to me but I didn’t argue. Instead of going through the arrival gate, we were
led down a long ramp to an area I thought was customs, except it had no separate divisions for
arrivals from different countries. We all waited together to be seen at one of two dozen numbered
desks. Fewer than half of them were staffed but there weren’t that many of us in line. Still, the wait
seemed interminable anyway. To distract myself, I looked around at our fellow travelers, wondering
if I’d recognize any of them. Not that I’d been paying much attention.
Only one person looked at all familiar, a tall man seven people behind me. It took a few seconds
to place him and then I had to force myself not to stare. Either the man I had seen forcibly carried
away by security guards in Johannesburg had an identical twin or the guards had brought him back
and let him board the flight after all without my noticing.
The woman who saw us at desk 23 had very close-cropped hair, which showed the perfect shape
of her head. She found Suzette’s dreads fascinating.
“Have you worn those a long time, my sister?” she asked, looking from Suzette to her passport
and back again. Her accent sounded musical to me; I was caught between wanting to hear more of it
and trying to see where the tall man was now. To my surprise, he was already at a desk, having his
passport stamped. A second later, he had been waved on. I watched as he disappeared down a
corridor.
 “Yeah, they’re easy to take care of,” Suzette was saying.
The woman looked from Suzette to her passport and then to the monitor on her desk. I couldn’t
see the screen. As tempted as I was to move so I could get a look at it, I had a feeling it would be a
bad idea. Nearby, a tall guard in an immaculate khaki uniform held a weapon that looked both lethal
and complicated. I stood very still.
“The information you need to book your new flights will be waiting for you at your
accommodations,” the woman said. “You will make your choices within twenty-four hours.” She
used the largest metal stamp I’d ever seen on our passports and gave them back to us. “Stay
together, until you leave.”
“We’ll do everything we’re told,” I said solemnly. Suzette gave me a look; I was trying to speak
loudly enough for the soldier to hear without actually shouting.
The woman beamed at us warmly. “Welcome to Madagascar! Enjoy your stay!”
-
We were directed to the baggage claim area where our baggage had already been claimed on our
behalf and loaded onto a motorized cart.
“Welcome to Antananarivo, mesdames.” A dark-skinned man in light, loose-fitting shirt and
trousers materialized beside us. He was holding a tablet notebook like a clipboard; a jute carrier bag
dangled from one arm. “Your luggage will be taken to your accommodations for you—don’t worry,
we have never lost a single bag!” Chuckling, he reached into the bag and handed each of us a
zippered 8 x 10 envelope; I could just make out a lot of printed documents inside the frosted plastic.
“Everything you need for your layover is in there—food and drink vouchers, transport tickets, and
of course the passes for your famadihana.”
“’Famadee-yan’?” I said, mystified.
“The bus is outside, you must go now.” He shooed us toward the nearest exit.
There were a lot of buses lined up at the curb outside and they all seemed stuffed to capacity and
beyond with people and luggage. “Maybe we’re just supposed to get on anything with room for us,”
Suzette suggested doubtfully.
Abruptly, two women pushed us toward an ancient white school bus, already overcrowded with
passengers. Suzette hesitated; as the people nearest the door pulled her up the steps, the tall man
reappeared beside me. I was torn between wanting to ask him who he was and keeping track of
Suzette. Smiling, he made an after-you gesture. Then I was being yanked up the metal steps while
the two women gave me an unceremonious push from behind.
I had never been in such a crush. Every color and shape of humanity seemed to be represented
—fair-haired Nordic types, Latins, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Middle Easterns, North Africans,
South Africans of all colors. People called to each other in Russian, Italian, French and other
languages with clicks and glottal stops. It was so fascinating I almost forgot about the tall man.
I couldn’t see him anywhere up front. Apparently I’d been the last sardine in. Maybe security
guards had carried him off again. The bus started off with a jerk. There was nothing to hold onto, no
hanging straps or poles within reach but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t possibly fall down. “How long
do you think this’ll take?” I asked Suzette, who was wedged under my left arm.
“I heard someone say it was ten miles to the city,” she said.
The bus went over a large bump and I felt my feet leave the floor, along with everyone else
around me. I’d barely caught my breath when we went over two more in quick succession, both
larger than the first one so that the bus practically seesawed. As the front half dipped, the back end
rose and I caught a glimpse of a familiar tall figure behind a young couple who were each holding a
laughing toddler.
 It couldn’t be him, I thought. He’d have had to go past me and I knew he hadn’t. No one had
because no one could.
Another bump; the toddlers giggled as his hair flew up with the motion and fell down over his
forehead. He laughed with them.
“See anything?” Suzette asked.
“Nothing I can explain,” I said.
I looked for him when we finally all spilled out in front of the hotel but he had vanished again.
-
“The white umbrellas you see there, that’s the Zoma.” The man pointed out the open window of
our hotel room. “Today is the biggest day for it, in fact. ‘Zoma’ means ‘Friday.’”
I looked at Suzette. “Is today Friday?”
“Don’t mind her,” Suzette said. “We’ve been traveling for so long, she lost track.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course you must be tired.” The man looked apologetic. “But you will not be able to
rest until after your famadihana. Now it’s time to go.”
“Can’t we have five minutes to wash up and change?” I asked, looking longingly at my suitcase
over in a far corner.
“I’m sorry, no,” the man said briskly. “You must be exactly as you are for your famadihana.”
“What is that?” I demanded.
“It’s what you came here for,” he said, herding us out of the room.
I tried not to budge and failed completely. “Actually, we came here to find her mother,” I said,
jerking my chin at Suzette. “Or have I been traveling for so long I’ve lost track of that, too?”
“Many come here to find mothers. Also fathers, siblings, friends, lovers, even themselves. The
only way is the famadihana.”
“But what is it?” Suzette asked.
“The Dance with the Dead.”
-
I’d expected to see another bus or even the same one in front of the hotel. But the vehicle
waiting for us was an old Geo that looked amazingly like the one I’d left sitting in O’Hare’s long-
term parking. The man thrust the plastic envelopes we’d been given at the airport into our hands and
hustled us into the backseat, before getting into the front seat next to the driver. “You’ve come this
far, you don’t want to be late now!”
The driver looked over his shoulder at us. “Seatbelts on!”
We obeyed. As I clicked mine into place, I silently apologized to everyone who’d ever ridden in
my Geo’s backseat. It really was horrible.
Street-level Antananarivo went past in a blur and a cloud of dust; the many-windowed houses
covering the hills stared into the distance. The man in the passenger seat was saying something
about how the famadihana took place only during the dry season, from June to October.
“Practical reasons for that, of course,” he said, peering around the back of his seat at us with a
smile. “We restrict yourfamadihana to the same time. Out of season doesn’t work as well
for vazaha.”
“What’s a vazaha?” Suzette asked, leaning against me as we took a corner at 90.
“You are,” said the driver cheerfully. “Means foreigner.”
We took another corner on two wheels; the city vanished in a cloud of dust behind us. On the
hills, the houses continued to stare impassively into the distance.
 After a couple of miles, the sound of clarinets and drums came to us faintly under the chatter of
the engine. Suzette and I looked at each other; she shrugged. As the music grew louder, I heard
accordions and flutes as well.
“I don’t think that’s the Rolling Stones,” I said more to myself than anyone else.
“Maybe it’s their opening act,” Suzette said.
The man in the front passenger seat turned to say something. Suzette shoved the photograph
under his nose but before she could ask about her mother, the driver stood on the brakes.
My forehead hit the back of the seat in front of me—not so hard it hurt, just enough to be
startling. The shoulder harness didhurt—I swore I could feel every fiber in the strap bruising my
skin.
“What the hell, Suzette?” I yelled. “Couldn’t you have waited till we stopped?”
“I didn’t do anything!” she shouted over the chaotic mix of laughter, singing and music now
surrounding the car. “I dropped it! Where is it? Give it back—“
“Is that klezmer?” I peered out the windows.
Children grinned back at me. “Vazaha! Vazaha!” They jumped around and mimed taking
photos. Behind them, several adults went by, carrying a coffin. They were laughing and singing.
“What kind of a funeral is this?” I asked.
“Not a funeral—it’s a famadihana,” the man told me. “The coffin has been removed from the
family crypt. Now the family will dance with their dead, wrap the body in a new lambamena, and
return it to the resting place, until next year.”
Suzette and I looked at each other; she was as flabbergasted as I was.
“But my mother’s not buried here. She’s not buried at all. She was cremated and we scattered
the ashes.” Suddenly, she looked horrified. “My Aunt Lillian! Has something happened to her?”
The man reached down beside his seat and came up with the now dog-eared photo. “I do not
know of any vazaha who has died here.” His face creased with a mixture of amusement and pity as
Suzette took it from him.
“Are you sure? Should we ask the police?” Suzette looked from him to me and back again.
“No, no police,” said the driver. It was an order. He put the car in gear again and floored it. I
looked out the window to see the people at the end of the procession waving goodbye.
-
Open country gave way to rainforest. Big green leaves slapped against the car windows. I sat
forward, holding onto the back of the passenger seat and peered through the windshield. The “road”
was a set of parallel wheel ruts. Very well-traveled wheel ruts—the Geo’s off-road limit is an un-
mowed lawn—so wherever they were taking us couldn’t be too far from civilization.
Whose civilization, however, I wasn’t sure of. After traveling to a place whose language and
customs we didn’t understand, Suzette and I had willingly gotten into a car with two strange men
who were now driving us into a rainforest—jungle?—to a destination they hadn’t even bothered to
lie about because we hadn’t bothered to ask them.
Was this the way your life began flashing before your eyes? Nothing remotely similar had
happened when the plane had gone into a nosedive—
As if on cue, we were suddenly going down a steep hill into a tunnel. Suzette and I looked at
each other; she had my arm in that Death Grip and I was returning the favor.
“Where—“ Suzette started.
 “Almost there,” the man in the passenger seat said cheerfully. The driver put on the Geo’s
headlights but he didn’t really have to: the tunnel lit the area immediately above us as well as a few
yards ahead. The illuminated area traveled with us; I looked out the back window to see the lights
going off behind us.
“What is this place?” I asked; I was thinking theme park.
The man in the passenger seat waved the question away. “Make sure you carry your documents
and you can’t get lost.”
“I’m lost now,” Suzette said. “Tell us where we’re going right now or—“ But of course, she
didn’t know how to finish that sentence and neither did I. This was Madagascar. Except right now it
looked more like something out of a freaky movie.
The tunnel suddenly opened out into an enormous clear area paved with asphalt—outdoors.
Waist-high barriers made of metal tubing held back the thick rainforest. I pressed my face against
the window to look up at the sky, wondering if we really were outdoors again or if this were some
sort of brilliant illusion.
Abruptly, we stopped in front of some ticket windows and turnstiles in front of what looked like
an enormous sporting arena. The man got out of the car, then helped me and Suzette out of the
backseat. He led us over to the counter, standing us in front of a specific window.
“Now I leave you.” He made a little bow. “May each of you recognize what you seek in
your famadihana.” I was still trying to parse this when he got back in the car.
“What did that mean?” I asked Suzette as we stared after the car now disappearing into another
tunnel entrance.
“Beats me,” she said, “but I suspect it’s not as good as he wants us to think it is.”
“You must be able to recognize a good thing when you see it,” said a voice behind us.
We turned to see a woman smiling at us with professional patience. She was in her late forties or
early fifties, although her black hair had no strands of gray. She wore gorgeous blue and white
printed material in intricate folds. I couldn’t imagine where she had come from. Trapdoor?
Transporter beam? At this point, either seemed likely.
“Documents, please.”
Suzette slid her plastic envelope under the transparent divider. I started to do the same and she
shook her head.
“One at a time, please.” She opened the envelope and spread everything out on the counter. It
was an odd assortment of things—cards of various sizes, some that looked an awful lot like old
elementary school report cards, some that could have been I.D. cards or drivers’ licenses or even
library cards, a plastic thing that I knew was a hotel key-card but not one I recognized, and
something that looked like a passbook for a savings account. All of them were marked with a
barcode. I wondered what was in mine and decided to have a look.
“Don’t do that,” the woman said sharply, holding a barcode scanner in one hand and Suzette’s
high school photo in the other.
“I was just—“
“Don’t. Do. That.” She put down the photo and slid her hand under the barrier. “Here, we’ll
avoid temptation. Give it to me.”
I hesitated. “Why can’t I look?”
 “It’s not time.” She frowned at Suzette, who took the envelope from me and passed it to her. She
set it aside and went back to scanning barcodes. When she had finished, she did something under
the counter and a flatscreen rose up from a slot that had been invisible thus far. I couldn’t see what
was on it from where I was standing; after checking for armed guards (none), I stood on tiptoe and
tried to crane my neck. What little I could see didn’t tell me anything—a few straight lines radiating
from a point and a square the size of a postage stamp cycling through the color spectrum.
“There are many different routes from here but of course, not all of them are desirable—“
Suzette pressed the photo up against the barrier. “Is there one that goes here?”
The woman barely glanced at it. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re already here.”
“Wait a minute.” Suzette put the photo on the counter and pointed. “This is my mother. I’m
trying to find her. And my Aunt Lillian—“
The woman motioned for her to pass it to her. “That narrows things down.” She studied it for a
moment and then concentrated on the screen, touching it occasionally, frowning at the result,
touching it again, and frowning more deeply. After a few more touches, she stood back.
“I’m sorry, you can’t get to her.”
“What do you mean?” Suzette asked.
“There is no possible itinerary that will put you with her.”
“You sound like you’re booking flights,” I said.
The woman nodded. “Yes, of course. What did you think you were doing here? However, I can
give the both of you much better routes.”
Suzette and I looked at each other. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
She emptied my envelope and spread the contents out. It all looked like bus tickets, appointment
cards, and the written portion of the driving test in Massachusetts. “I can give you both a route
where you graduate from your respective universities magna cum laude and you meet for the first
time during post-graduate study abroad.” She touched the screen again. “It comes with single
parenthood but you’ll both be fairly well off.”
“Magna cum laude in what?” I said. She was speaking English but nothing made sense.
The woman smiled. “That’s up to you. Isn’t that nice? You get the choice. Please pick something
beneficial. You don’t have to, of course, but if you did, it would make planning routes much easier
in the future.”
“My mother—“
“Your mother’s itinerary does not intersect with yours. At least, not any more than it already
has. Your flights in relation to her are unchanged.”
Suzette shook her head, baffled.
“On your itinerary, she still dies when you’re sixteen. But onher new itinerary, she never has
children. I’m sorry, but there was no route with offspring that didn’t include an early death. Once
she understood this wouldn’t affect your existence, she decided. I don’t blame her.”
“This,” Suzette said, “isn’t happening.”
“Oh, it is. And it’s not going to get any better, believe me.” She put everything back into the
envelopes and passed them back to us. “Through there,” she said, pointing at the nearest turnstile.
We went through and down a passageway to a metal door. “This way to the egress,” I said with
a nervous laugh.
“On three,” said Suzette. “One . . . two . . . “
We pushed through and the noise hit us like a physical blow.
 -
We should have realized that it wasn’t going to be a Rolling Stones concert, either in the late
1960s or from last week. I was actually hoping but when we pushed through that door, we found
ourselves out on the tarmac at an airport. The wind was blowing and it sounded like a hundred jets
were revving up for takeoff all at once. My inner ear suddenly turned against me and I felt myself
falling. But before I could hit the ground, two strong hands caught me and set me on my feet again
—an armed man in a uniform. He smiled at me and Suzette as he hustled us over to a shuttle bus
and pushed us onto it.
The bus took us not to the airport building but to another plane. I was too boggled to do
anything except get on board and sit where the flight attendant said to. “I guess this means we won’t
be enjoying the Zoma,” I said to Suzette as we sat down. Another flight attendant standing nearby
gave me a disapproving look.
“Keep your voice down,” she said. “I don’t think this is . . . you know.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“Excuse me,” Suzette called to the flight attendant. “What’s the name of this airport?”
The woman raised one eyebrow, as if she thought Suzette was being rude in some way.
“The full official name, I mean.”
“Moi,” the attendant said. “Mombasa Moi International Airport.”
“Thank you.” Suzette turned to me with an I-told-you-so look.
“OK,” I said. “Just tell me how we got here from Madagascar—“
“No, no, no,” said the flight attendant, looming over us now. “You don’t mention Madagascar.”
“But—“
“No.” She raised a finger and I thought she was going to shake it in my face.
“This has got to be a trick,” I said.
“It is,” said the flight attendant. “And it’s a very good one. So be quiet. Don’t tell how the trick
is done.”
We’d been in the air an hour before Suzette realized she had left the photo behind.
-
We flew to New York and then to San Francisco, where we live. Suzette has a degree in
economics and works on budget planning. I’m an architect, which I find amazing; I never thought I
had it in me.
Neither of us is a parent yet. I don’t think we’re even close to it but the trajectory of this route
allows for surprises. Other things, however, it doesn’t allow for.
I’m more easygoing than ever, tearing the tags off pillows, jaywalking, wearing white after
Labor Day. I got over my thing about folding photographs. People should live life just the way they
want. So go ahead, dye all your hair purple, live in a tree, hitchhike your way around the world in a
chicken suit. Whatever turns you on, yanks your crank or gets you through the night is OK with me.
Just don’t mention Madagascar. At least, not where I can hear you.
-
The Taste of Night
-
 The taste of night rather than the falling temperature woke her. Nell curled up a little more and
continued to doze. It would be a while before the damp chill coming up from the ground could get
through the layers of heavy cardboard to penetrate the sleeping bag and blanket cocooning her. She
was fully dressed and her spare clothes were in the sleeping bag, too—not much but enough to
make good insulation. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, though, she would have to visit a
laundromat because phew.
Phew was one of those things that didn’t change; well, not so far, anyway. She hoped it would
stay that way. By contrast, the taste of night was one of her secret great pleasures although she still
had no idea what it was supposed to mean. Now and then something almost came to her,almost. But
when she reached for it either in her mind or by actually touching something, there was nothing at
all.
Sight. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch.________.
Memory sprang up in her mind with the feel of pale blue stretched long and tight between her
hands.
The blind discover that their other senses, particularly hearing, intensify to compensate for the
lack. The deaf can be sharp-eyed but also extra sensitive to vibration, which is what sound is to the
rest of us.
However, those who lose their sense of smell find they have lost their sense of taste as well
because the two are so close. To lose feeling is usually a symptom of a greater problem. A small
number of people feel no pain but this puts them at risk for serious injury and life-threatening
illnesses.
That doctor had been such a patient woman. Better yet, she had had no deep well of stored-up
suspicion like every other doctor Marcus had taken her to. Nell had been able to examine what the
doctor was telling her, touching it all over, feeling the texture. Even with Marcus’s impatience
splashing her like an incoming tide, she had been able to ask a question.
A sixth sense? Like telepathy or clairvoyance?
The doctor’s question had been as honest as her own and Nell did her best to make herself clear.
If there were some kind of extra sense, even a person who had it would have a hard time
explaining it. Like you or me trying to explain sight to someone born blind.
Nell had agreed and asked the doctor to consider how the other five senses might try to
compensate for the lack.
That was where the memory ended, leaving an aftertaste similar to night, only colder and with a
bit of sour.
-
Nell sighed, feeling comfortable and irrationally safe. Feeling safe was irrational if you slept
rough. Go around feeling safe and you wouldn’t last too long. It was just that the indented area she
had found at the back of this building—cinema? auditorium?—turned out to be as cozy as it had
looked. It seemed to have no purpose except as a place where someone could sleep unnoticed for a
night or two. More than two would have been pushing it, but that meant nothing to some rough
sleepers. They’d camp in a place like this till they wore off all the hidden. Then they’d get seen and
kicked out. Next thing you knew, the spot would be fenced off or filled in so no one could ever use
it again. One less place to go when there was nowhere to stay.
 Nell hated loss, hated the taste: dried-out bitter crossed with salty that could hang on for days,
weeks, even longer. Worse, it could come back without warning and for no reason except that,
perhaps like rough sleepers, it had nowhere else to go. There were other things that tasted just as
bad to her but nothing worse, and nothing that lingered for anywhere nearly as long, not even the
moldy-metal tang of disappointment.
-
After a bit, she realized the pools of colour she’d been watching behind her closed eyes weren’t
the remnants of a slow-to-fade dream but real voices of real humans, not too far away, made out of
the same stuff she was; either they hadn’t noticed her or they didn’t care.
Nell uncurled slowly—never make any sudden moves was another good rule for rough sleepers
—and opened her eyes. An intense blue-white light blinded her with the sound of a cool voice in her
right ear:
Blue-white stars don’t last long enough for any planets orbiting them to develop intelligent life.
Maybe not any life, even the most rudimentary. Unless there is a civilization advanced enough to
seed those worlds with organisms modified to evolve at a faster rate. That might beg the question of
why an advanced civilization would do that. But the motives of a civilization that advanced
would/could/might seem illogical if not incomprehensible to any not equally developed.
Blue-white memory stretched farther this time: a serious-faced young woman in a coffee shop,
watching a film clip on a notebook screen. Nell had sneaked a look at it on her way to wash up in
the women’s restroom. It took her a little while to realize that she had had a glimpse of something to
do with what had been happening to her, or more precisely, why it was happening, what it was
supposed to mean. On the heels of that realization had come a new one, probably the most
important: they were communicating with her.
Understanding always came to her at oblique angles. The concept of that missing sixth sense,
for instance—when she finally became aware of it, she realized that it had been lurking somewhere
in the back of her mind for a very, very long time, years and years, a passing notion or a ragged
fragment of a mostly forgotten dream. It had developed so slowly that she might have lived her
whole life without noticing it, instead burying it under more mundane concerns and worries and
fears.
Somehow it had snagged her attention—a mental pop-up window. Marcus had said everyone
had an occasional stray thought about something odd. Unless she was going to write a weird story
or draw a weird picture, there was no point in obsessing about it.
Was it the next doctor who had suggested she do exactly that—write a weird story or draw a
weird picture, or both? Even if she had really wanted to, she couldn’t. She knew for certain by then
that she was short a sense, just as if she were blind or deaf.
Marcus had said he didn’t understand why that meant she had to leave home and sleep on the
street. She didn’t either, at the time. But even if she had understood enough to tell him that the
motives of a civilization that advanced would/could/might seem illogical if not incomprehensible to
any not equally developed, all it would have meant to him was that she was, indeed, crazy as a
bedbug, unquote.
The social worker he had sent after her hadn’t tried to talk her into a hospital or a shelter right
away but the intent was deafening. Every time she found Nell it drowned everything else out. Nell
finally had to make her say it just to get some peace. For a few days after that, everything was extra
scrambled. She was too disoriented to understand anything. All she knew was that they were
bombarding her with their communication and her senses were working overtime, trying to make up
for her inadequacy.
 The blinding blue-white light dissolved and her vision cleared. Twenty feet away was an
opening in the back of the building the size of a double-garage door. Seven or eight men were
hanging around just outside, some of them sitting on wooden crates, smoking cigarettes, drinking
from bottles or large soft-drink cups. The pools of colour from their voices changed to widening
circular ripples, like those spreading out from raindrops falling into still water. The colours crossed
each other to make new colours, some she had never seen anywhere but in her mind.
The ripples kept expanding until they reached the backs of her eyes and swept through them
with a sensation of a wind ruffling feathery flowers. She saw twinkling lights and then a red-hot
spike went through her right temple. There was just enough time for her to inhale before an ice-pick
went through her eye to cross the spike at right angles.
Something can be a million light-years away and in your eye at the same time.
-
“Are you all right?”
The man bent over her, hands just above his knees. Most of his long hair was tied back except
for a few long strands that hung forward in a way that suggested punctuation to Nell. Round face,
round eyes with hard lines under them.
See. Hear. Smell. Taste. Touch.________.
Hand over her right eye, she blinked up at him. He repeated the question and the words were
little green balls falling from his mouth to bounce away into the night. Nell caught her lower lip
between her teeth to keep herself from laughing. He reached down and pulled the hand over her eye
to one side. Then he straightened up and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “I need an
ambulance,” he said to it.
She opened her mouth to protest but her voice wouldn’t work. Another man was coming over,
saying something in thin, tight silver wires.
And then it was all thin, tight silver wires everywhere. Some of the wires turned to needles and
they seemed to fight each other for dominance. The pain in her eye flared more intensely and a
voice from somewhere far in the past tried to ask a question without morphing into something else
but it just wasn’t loud enough for her to hear.
Nell rolled over onto her back. Something that was equal parts anxiety and anticipation
shuddered through her. Music, she realized; very loud, played live, blaring out of the opening where
the men were hanging around. Chords rattled her blood, pulled at her arms and legs. The pain flared
again but so did the taste of night. She let herself fall into it. The sense of falling became the desire
to sleep but just as she was about to give in, she would slip back to wakefulness, back and forth like
a pendulum. Or like she was swooping from the peak of one giant wave, down into the trough and
up to the peak of another.
Her right eye was forced open with a sound like a gunshot and bright light filled her mouth with
the taste of icicles.
-
“Welcome back. Don’t take this the wrong way but I’m very sorry to see you here.”
Nell discovered only her left eye would open but one eye was enough. Ms. Dunwoody, Call-
Me-Anne, the social worker. Not the original social worker Marcus had sent after her. That had
been Ms. Petersen, Call-Me-Joan, who had been replaced after a while by Mr. Carney, Call-Me-
Dwayne. Nell had seen him only twice and the second time he had been one big white knuckle, as if
he were holding something back—tears? hysteria? Whatever it was leaked from him in twisted
shapes of shifting colours that left bad tastes in her mouth. Looking away from him didn’t help—
the tastes were there whether she saw the colours or not.
 It was the best they could do for her, lacking as she was in that sense. At the time, she hadn’t
understood. All she had known was that the tastes turned her stomach and the colours gave her
headaches. Eventually, she had thrown up on the social worker’s shoes and he had fled without
apology or even so much as a surprised curse, let alone a good-bye. Nell hadn’t minded.
Ms. Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne, was his replacement and she had managed to find Nell more
quickly than she had expected. Ms. Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne, had none of the same kind of
tension in her but once in a while she exuded a musty, stale odor of resignation that was very close
to total surrender.
Surrender. It took root in Nell’s mind but she was slow to understand because she only
associated it with Ms. Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne’s unspoken (even to herself) desire to give up. If
she’d just had that missing sense, it would have been so obvious right away.
Of course, if she’d had that extra sense, she’d have understood the whole thing right away and
everything would be different. Maybe not a whole lot easier, since she would still have had a hard
time explaining sight to all the blind people, so to speak, but at least she wouldn’t have been
floundering around in confusion.
“Nell?” Ms. Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne, was leaning forward, peering anxiously into her face.
“I said, do you know why you’re here?”
Nell hesitated. “Here, as in . . .” Her voice failed in her dry throat. The social worker poured her
a glass of water from a pitcher on the bedside table and held it up, slipping the straw between her
dry lips so she could drink. Nell finished three glasses and Ms. Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne, made a
business of adjusting her pillows before she lay back against the raised mattress.
“Better?” she asked Nell brightly.
Nell made a slight, non-committal dip with her head. “What was the question?” she asked, her
voice still faint.
“Do you know where you are?” Ms. Dunwoody, Call-Me-Anne, said.
Nell smiled inwardly at the change and resisted the temptation to say,Same place you are—
here. There were deep lines under the social worker’s eyes, her clothes were wrinkled, and lots of
little hairs had escaped from her tied-back hair. No doubt she’d had less rest in the last twenty-four
hours than Nell. She looked around with her one good eye at the curtains surrounding them and at
the bed. “Hospital. Tri-County General.”
She could see that her specifying which hospital had reassured the social worker. That was
hardly a major feat of cognition, though; Tri-County General was where all the homeless as well as
the uninsured ended up.
“You had a convulsion,” Call-Me-Anne told her, speaking slowly and carefully now as if to a
child. “A man found you behind the concert hall and called an ambulance.”
Nell lifted her right hand and pointed at her face.
Call-Me-Anne hesitated, looking uncertain. “You seem to have hurt your eye.”
She remembered the sensation of the spike and the needle so vividly that she winced.
“Does it hurt?” Call-Me-Anne asked, full of concern. “Should I see if they can give you
something for the pain?”
Nell shook her head no; a twinge from somewhere deep in her right eye socket warned her not
to do that again or to make any sudden movements, period.
“Is there anyone you’d like me to call for you?” the social worker asked.
 Frowning a little, Nell crossed her hands and uncrossed them in an absolutely-not gesture. Call-
Me-Anne pressed her lips together but it didn’t stop a long pink ribbon from floating weightless out
from her mouth. Too late—she had already called Marcus, believing that by the time he got here,
Nell actually would want to see him. And if not, she would claim that Marcus had insisted on
seeing her, regardless of Nell’s wishes, because he was her husband and loyalty and blah-blah-blah-
social-worker-blather.
All at once there was a picture in her mind of a younger and not-so-tired Ms. Dunwoody, Call-
Me-Anne, and just as suddenly, it came to life.
I feel that if we can re-unite families, then we’ve done the best job we can. Sometimes that isn’t
possible, of course, so the next best thing we can do is provide families for those who need them.
Call-Me-Anne’s employment interview, she realized. What they were trying to tell her with that
wasn’t at all clear. That missing sense. Or maybe because they had the sense, they were
misinterpreting the situation.
“Nell? Nell?”
She tried to pull her arm out of the social worker’s grip and couldn’t. The pressure was a
mouthful of walnut shells, tasteless and sharp. “What do you want?”
“I said, are you sure?”
Nell sighed. “There’s a story that the first people in the New World to see Columbus’s ships
couldn’t actually see them because such things were too far outside their experience. You think
that’s true?”
Call-Me-Anne, her expression a mix of confusion and anxiety. Nell knew what that look meant
—she was afraid the situation was starting to get away from her. “Are you groggy? Or just tired?”
“I don’t,” she went on, a bit wistful. “I think they didn’t know what they were seeing and maybe
had a hard time with the perspective but I’m sure they saw them. After all, they were made by other
humans. But something coming from another world, all bets are off.”
Call-Me-Anne’s face was very sad now.
“I sound crazy to you?” Nell gave a short laugh. “Scientists talk about this stuff.”
“You’re not a scientist, Nell. You were a librarian. With proper treatment and medication, you
could—”
Nell laughed again. “If a librarian starts thinking about the possibility of life somewhere else in
the universe, it’s a sign she’s going crazy?” She turned her head away and closed her eyes.
Correction, eye. She couldn’t feel very much behind the bandage, just enough to know that her right
eyelid wasn’t opening or closing. When she heard the social worker walk away, she opened her eye
to see the silver wires had come back. They bloomed like flowers, opening and then flying apart
where they met others and connected, making new blooms that flew apart and found new
connections. The world in front of Nell began to look like a cage, although she had no idea which
side she was on.
Abruptly, she felt one of the wires go through her temple with that same white-hot pain. A
moment later, a second one went through the bandage over her right eye as easily as if it wasn’t
there, going all the way through her head and out, pinning her to the pillow.
Her left eye was watering badly but she could see Call-Me-Anne rushing back with a nurse.
Their mouths opened and closed as they called her name. She saw them reaching for her but she
was much too far away.
And that was how it would be. No, that was how it was always, but the five senses worked so
hard to compensate for the one missing that people took the illusion of contact for the real thing.
The power of suggestion—where would the human race be without it?
 Sight. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch.________.
Contact.
The word was a poor approximation but the concept was becoming clearer in her mind now.
Clearer than the sight in her left eye, which was dimming. But still good enough to let her see Call-
Me-Anne was on the verge of panic.
A man in a white uniform pushed her aside and she became vaguely aware of him touching her.
But there was still no contact.
-
Nell labored toward wakefulness as if she were climbing a rock wall with half a dozen sandbags
dangling on long ropes tied around her waist. Her mouth was full of steel wool and sand. She knew
that taste—medication. It would probably take most of a day to spit that out.
She had tried medication in the beginning because Marcus had begged her to. Anti-depressants,
anti-anxiety capsules, and finally anti-psychotics—they had all tasted the same because she hadn’t
been depressed, anxious, or psychotic. Meanwhile, Marcus had gotten farther and farther away,
which, unlike the dry mouth, the weight gain, or the tremors in her hands, was not reversible.
Call-Me-Anne had no idea about that. She kept trying to get Nell to see Marcus, unaware they
could barely perceive each other anymore. Marcus didn’t realize it either, not the way she did.
Marcus thought that was reversible, too.
Pools of colour began to appear behind her heavy eyelids, strange colours that shifted and
changed, green to gold, purple to red, blue to aqua, and somewhere between one colour and another
was a hue she had never found anywhere else and never would.
Sight. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch.________.
C-c-c-contact . . .
The word was a boulder trying to fit a space made for a pebble smoothed over the course of
eons and a distance of light-years into a precise and elegant thing.
Something can be a million light-years away and in your eye at the same time.
Sight. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch.________.
C-c-c-con . . . nect.
C-c-c-commmmune.
C-c-c-c-c-communnnnnnnnicate.
She had a sudden image of herself running around the base of a pyramid, searching for a way to
get to the top. While she watched, it was replaced by a new image, of herself running around an
elephant and several blind men; she was still looking for a way to get to the top of the pyramid.
The image dissolved and she became aware of how heavy the overhead lights were on her
closed eyes. Eye. She sighed; even if she did finally reach understanding—or it reached her—how
would she ever be able to explain what blind men, an elephant, and a pyramid combined with
Columbus’s ships meant?
The musty smell of surrender broke in on her thoughts. It was very strong; Call-Me-Anne was
still there. After a bit, she heard the sound of a wooden spoon banging on the bottom of a pot.
Frustration, but not just any frustration: Marcus’s.
She had never felt him so clearly without actually seeing him. Perhaps Call-Me-Anne’s
surrender worked as an amplifier.
The shifting colours resolved themselves into a new female voice. “. . . much do either of you
know about the brain?”
“Not much,” Call-Me-Anne said. Marcus grunted, a stone rolling along a dirt path.
“Generally, synesthesia can be a side effect of medication or a symptom.”
 “What about mental illness?” Marcus asked sharply, the spoon banging louder on the pot.
“Sometimes mentally ill people experience it but it’s not a specific symptom of mental illness.
In your wife’s case, it was a symptom of the tumours.”
“Tumours?” Call-Me-Anne was genuinely upset. Guilt was a soft scratching noise, little mouse
claws on a hard surface.
“Two, although there could be three. We’re not sure about the larger one. The smaller one is an
acoustic neuroma, which—”
“Is that why she hears things?” Marcus interrupted.
The doctor hesitated. “Probably not, although some people complain of tinnitus. It’s non-
cancerous, doesn’t spread, and normally very slow-growing. Your wife’s seems to be growing faster
than normal. But then there’s the other one.” Pause. “I’ve only been a neurosurgeon for ten years so
I can’t say I’ve seen everything but this really is quite, uh . . . unusual. She must have complained
of headaches.”
A silence, then Call-Me-Anne cleared her throat. “They seemed to be cluster headaches. Painful
but not exactly rare. I have them myself. I gave her some of my medication but I don’t know if she
took it.”
Another small pause. “Sometimes she said she had a headache but that’s all,” Marcus said
finally. “We’ve been legally separated for a little over two years, so I’m not exactly up-to-date. She
sleeps on the street.”
“Well, there’s no telling when it started until we can do some detailed scans.”
“How much do those cost?” Marcus asked. Then after a long moment: “Hey, she left me to sleep
on the street after I’d already spent a fortune on shrinks and prescriptions and hospitalizations. Then
they tell me you can’t force a person to get treated for anything unless they’re a danger to the
community, blah, blah, blah. Now she’s got brain tumours and I’m gonna get hit for the bill.
Dammit, I shoulda divorced her but it felt too—” The spoon scraped against the iron pot. “Cruel.”
“You were hoping she’d snap out of it?” said the doctor. “Plenty of people feel that way. It’s
normal to hope for a miracle.” Call-Me-Anne added some comforting noises, and said something
about benefits and being in the system.
“Yeah, okay,” Marcus said. “But you still didn’t answer my question. How much do these scans
cost?”
“Sorry, I couldn’t tell you, I don’t have anything to do with billing,” the doctor said smoothly.
“But we can’t do any surgery without them.”
“I thought you already did some,” Marcus said.
“We were going to. Until I saw what was behind her eye.”
“It’s that big?” asked Marcus.
“It’s not just that. It’s—not your average tumour.”
Marcus gave a humourless laugh. “Tumours are standardized, are they?”
“To a certain extent, just like the human body. This one, however, isn’t behaving quite the way
tumours usually do.” Pause. “There seems to be some grey matter incorporated into it.”
“What do you mean, like it’s tangled up in her brain? Isn’t that what a tumour does, get all
tangled up in a person’s brain? That’s why it’s hard to take out, right?”
“This is different,” the doctor said. “Look, I’ve been debating with myself whether I should tell
you about this—”
“If you’re gonna bill me, you goddam better tell me,” Marcus growled. “What’s going on with
her?”
 “Just from what I could see, the tumour has either co-opted part of your wife’s brain—stolen it,
complete with blood supply—or there’s a second brain growing in your wife’s skull.”
There was a long pause. Then Marcus said, “You know how crazy that sounds? You got any
pictures of this?”
“No. Even if I did, you’re not a neurosurgeon, you wouldn’t know what you were looking at.”
“No? I can’t help thinking I’d know if I were looking at two brains in one head or not.”
“The most likely explanation for this would be a parasitic twin,” the doctor went on. “It happens
more often than you’d think. The only thing is, parasitic twins don’t suddenly take to growing. And
if it had always been so large, you’d have seen signs of it long before now.
“Unfortunately, I couldn’t even take a sample to biopsy. Your wife’s vitals took a nosedive and
we had to withdraw immediately. She’s fine now—under the circumstances. But we need to do
those scans as soon as possible. Her right eye was so damaged by this tumour that we couldn’t save
it. If we don’t move quickly enough, it’s going to cause additional damage to her face.”
Nell took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She hadn’t thought they would hear her but they
had; all three stopped talking and Call-Me-Anne and Marcus scurried over to the side of her bed,
saying her name in soft, careful whispers, as if they thought it might break. She kept her eyes closed
and her body limp, even when Call-Me-Anne took her hand in both of hers and squeezed it tight.
After a while, she heard them go.
How had they done that, she marveled. How had they done it from so far away?
Something can be a million light-years away and in your eye at the same time.
Her mind’s eye showed her a picture of two vines entangled with each other. Columbus’s ships,
just coming into view. The sense she had been missing was not yet fully developed, not enough to
reconcile the vine and the ships. But judging from what the doctor said, it wouldn’t be long now.
-
Between Heaven and Hull
-
As soon as the hitchhiker got into the Mondeo, he knew he’d made a mistake. That happened
sometimes. After you’d spent several hours on foot, a car would finally, mercifully-thank-you-God
swerve into the breakdown lane and stop. You’d approach with caution and when it didn’t suddenly
pull away in a tire-squealing display of so-called humor, you’d run toward it thinking that your luck
must be on the upswing because it was a very nice car, maybe even brand new. The people who
rolled down the window would smile at you with clean, friendly faces and ask where you were
going, not sounding at all like they were going to give you a Coke spiked with roofies and leave you
to wake up in the woods the next morning stripped of all your worldly possessions, including your
clothes.
So you’d practically leap into the backseat and even as you were sighing with relief because it
was now starting to rain, you’d suddenly realize that the music coming out of the expensive in-car
stereo was a live recording of an untalented child’s violin recital or Wagner’s operas or country
music’s one hundred best-loved hymns. And as the rain pounded down and late afternoon turned to
early evening, you’d have to decide which was more important: being dry or being sane.
In this case, the two women in the front seat were gigglers. They giggled like girls and they did
it a lot. It wouldn’t have bothered him quite so much if they’d actually been girls, but they were
both far from it—early forties at the youngest, probably older. Hardly ancient but definitely too old
for giggling.
 Of course, he’d already known before he’d climbed in that this might not be the smoothest ride
he’d ever taken. From where he’d been standing halfway up the entrance ramp, he’d had an
unobstructed view of the car circling the roundabout in the wrong direction—a sure sign that one of
his fellow Americans was behind the wheel. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen an American do that,
nor was it the most cringe-worthy. Sometimes he had been tempted to pretend he was Canadian.
But sweet God, he’d been standing on that damned entrance ramp for so long and it was starting
to look like rain.
“Hi, I’m Doni,” said the one in the driver’s seat—no, that was thepassenger seat. He kept
mixing them up. “And that mad woman behind the wheel is Loretta.”
“Hiya.” The mad woman winked at him in the rearview mirror. The wind from the half-open
window had blown her short, nearly platinum blond hair into a shapeless mess. The other woman
had a mass of thick, curly dark hair caught up in a large plastic clip. They were such opposites he
couldn’t help thinking it had to be deliberate, as otherwise they seemed similar to him. Their
giggling certainly was.
“Are you two sisters?” he asked, and winced as they giggled some more.
“Nope, just very old friends,” the dark-haired one told him.
“Hey, who are you calling old?” the other woman demanded with feigned outrage.
“Friends of long standing, then. Is that more acceptable to you, madame?”
“Much better, thank you.” The driver flicked another glance at him in the mirror. “So, where are
you headed?”
“Aberdeen,” he replied, watching big fat raindrops splatter on the windshield.
“We’re going to Scarborough. Just might make it by nightfall, too, if we’re lucky.”
“Dunno, could be asking entirely too much of luck,” said the dark-haired woman.
“My geography isn’t what it should be,” he said. “Is Scarborough that far away?”
“It is if it takes you forty-five minutes to get out of Heathrow after you pick up your rental car,”
said the blonde.
“Not used to driving here?” he asked.
“One way to put it. You know, Doni actually bet me that you wouldn’t get in the car after seeing
my little oops with the roundabout.”
“Well, to be honest, I’m surprised you stopped for me,” he replied. “Women almost never do.”
“Since we’re being honest, it was pure self-interest.” The driver’s giggle was sheepish. “I was
actually hoping you were a Brit and I could get you to take over the driving.” Another quick glance
at him in the rearview mirror. “I don’t suppose you’re experienced driving in this country?”
“Sorry. Plus my license is expired. Forgot to renew it before I left.”
The dark-haired woman frowned over her shoulder at him. “Jeez, you’re just no damned good to
anybody, are you?” She managed to keep a straight face just long enough to make him wonder if
she were serious. Then both women giggled and he made himself laugh to show he was a good
sport. Then all at once she frowned at him again, this time with concern. “You’re not buckled up
back there, are you? You really ought to be.”
He found himself unexpectedly touched by her solicitude. Dutifully, he struggled with the belt,
which kept jamming every time he pulled it out. Then, when he finally managed to get it the right
length, he couldn’t find the buckle.
“Probably wedged down between the cushions,” she said. “Just dig in with your fingers.”
He tried, hoping she wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t exactly making a big effort. He’d never
liked being strapped to anything, even a car seat, safety or not. “Sorry,” he said after a bit.
“Maybe we should pull over so I can try,” she said. “My hands are smaller.”
 “Leave him be, worrywart,” said the blonde. “If he were in the front seat, it would be different
but the backseat is safer. Tell you what—if it looks like we’re gonna crash, I’ll sing out ahead of
time so you can curl up on the floor. Deal?” She winked at him in the rearview mirror.
“Works for me,” he said, making a small salute. Still more giggles, of course, although he didn’t
find that quite so annoying anymore. Apparently you really could get used to anything, he thought,
and anyway, at least they weren’t missionaries or opera fans. Not unattractive, either. He couldn’t
say that if he’d met them at a party or a bar, he wouldn’t have been interested.
His gaze met the dark-haired woman’s and he realized she had said something to him.
“Pardon? Sorry, I guess I zoned out for a minute there. I must be tireder than I thought.”
She gave him a kindly smile. “I said, how long have you been on the road?”
“Quite a while, obviously.” He laughed; they giggled.
“No, really. How long? I’m just curious.”
“She means nosy,” the blonde put in wryly.
“That’s OK,” he said, sitting back and stretching out. The blonde sat close to the dash, which
left him quite a lot of leg room. “When I was in Gdansk, the weather was really good—sunny, very
warm. Until you got right to the beach. Then the temperature dropped about twenty degrees. There
was this long pier you had to pay to walk out on. That must have been . . . late June, early July, I
guess.”
“And I thought I lost track of time,” the blonde chuckled.
“I’ve given up wearing a watch. I can’t keep one longer than ten days, two weeks at most before
I lose it or it breaks. I have bad watch karma.” The giggles were actually kind of musical, he
thought absently; like wind chimes.
“And before Gdansk, where were you?” prodded the dark-haired one.
He had to think about it for a few moments. “Ekaterinburg, in the Urals. It was beautiful but
they had this unexpected heat wave and there was no air-conditioning anywhere. I got a ride from a
couple who invited me to supper at their lakeside dacha.”
“That must have been pretty far out in the country, away from Ekaterinburg.”
“Do you know the city?” he asked.
“We’ve been up and down every street. But only on the Web,” she added as he started to ask if
she’d been inside any of the ornate Russian Orthodox cathedrals. “Amazing definition. At street
level, you can see the texture of the stone buildings so clearly, you’d think you really were there.”
“Sounds like pretty heavy surveillance,” he said uneasily.
A few dark, curly tendrils fell loose as she shook her head. “Oh, hell, no. It’s that company,
what’s-their-names. They’ve been sending vans with cameras all over the world to photograph all
kinds of cities and then stitching the pictures together to make a virtual diorama.”
“Shouldn’t that be ‘panorama’?” asked the driver.
“Tomayto, tomahto.” The dark-haired woman waved a hand carelessly.
“So you went to Gdansk after Ekaterinburg. Didn’t stop in Moscow on the way?”
“No,” he said, thinking that it seemed kind of foolish now that he hadn’t. At the time, however,
it had seemed more important to get moving. He waited for them to ask him why he’d passed up the
opportunity to see Red Square and the Kremlin but they didn’t. In fact, they said very little except to
prompt him when his recall turned spotty. They never commented on his memory, either, because
they were too polite or they had actually traveled enough themselves to know how sometimes
things could blur after a while.
 Their interest surprised him as well. He’d have thought listening to him talk about where he’d
been and what the weather had been like and what minor, uneventful things he’d done would have
bored them to tears. Every so often, he would mention a city—Basel, Berlin, Calais—and they’d
perk up as if he’d said a magic word. It was always because they had explored it the same way they
had Ekaterinburg, via detailed, high-definition photos on the Web, uploaded by some corporation
that was apparently determined to scan the entire world into a computer file.
“I know very little about computers and all that online stuff,” he told them after a while.
“Sometimes I go to an Internet café to check the news from home or watch a funny film clip but I
can’t sit still for very long. Fifteen, twenty minutes and I have to get moving.”
“Now that’s what I call restless,” the driver said. No giggling, which seemed rather strange.
“I’m hopeless at remembering things like e-mail addresses and passwords anyway,” he went on.
“I tried opening an e-mail account once but then I couldn’t even remember where I opened it.
Forgetful-dot-com. Braindead-dot-com. Memory-like-a-sieve-dot-com—that’s what I’d need.”
“Well, let’s just check if those domains are available,” the dark-haired woman giggled. His
polite laughter cut off when he saw she had a thin, shiny notebook on her lap.
“Oh, Christ, don’t do that!” he said, alarmed without knowing why.
“Too late!” she sang. “But it’s all moot anyway, those names are all taken.”
The blonde gave a surprised laugh. “Seriously? Even memory-like-a-sieve-dot-com?”
“Even that one.”
“How can you get on the Web from the car?” he asked, amazed.
“Wireless access,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Wow, you really don’t get online
much do you?” she added, seeing his expression. “Ever thought about getting a BlackBerry—”
“Also known as a CrackBerry,” the blonde chuckled.
“—or a netbook,” the other woman went on, ignoring her. “Or even a PDA with sat nav.”
“I prefer to travel as light as possible,” he said.
“The new netbooks aren’t even as heavy as a large bottle of water. And a PDA weighs even
less.”
“Must cost a fortune,” he said.
“You’d be surprised.”
“Well, it’s a fortune if you don’t have it to spare,” he said, starting to feel slightly defensive.
“And it’d just be one more thing for someone to steal. I try not to carry too much that anyone would
want to hit me over the head for.” He tried a good-natured grin on the dark-haired woman; she
didn’t smile back.
“Ever thought about not traveling so much?” she asked.
He blinked at her. “Pardon?”
“Just getting off the road, taking up residence at a fixed address?”
“Waking up in the same place every morning,” added the blonde, her gray-green eyes twinkling
at him in the rearview mirror. “Someplace with a door you keep the key to, so you can have nice
things.”
He sat back without answering.
“You’ve really never thought about that?” the dark-haired woman said incredulously.
“No. And it’s not something I really want to discuss,” he said, trying to keep his tone firm but
pleasant.
The dark-haired woman started to say something else but the blonde talked over her. “OK,
forget we said anything. Really.”
 “Thank you,” he said with pointed formality. The dark-haired woman looked frustrated as she
turned around to face forward. The small computer on her lap was still open but he couldn’t see
what was on the screen.
Abruptly, she turned back to him. “A PDA with sat nav would help you a lot, though. You’d
always know where you are and how to get wherever you wanted to go. You could find the most
direct route like that.” She snapped her fingers.
“I’m not always big on the most direct route,” he said, unconsciously digging his heels into the
carpeting.
“Then you could find the least direct if you wanted.”
“I’d rather be surprised,” he said, politely obstinate. “You know, I’ve had people try to sell me
on this stuff before. The virtues of high-tech hitchhiking, Goo-Goo maps or whatever it’s called.
I’m just not into it. Sat nav—what’s that? Satellite navigation? You connect to satellites to find your
way around one minute and the next you’re worrying about how your privacy’s being invaded?
What’s that about?”
Nobody said anything for a long moment. Then the driver cleared her throat. “The man’s got a
point.”
“Guess I’ll have that ID implant taken out of my arm,” said the dark-haired woman.
He was horrified. “You have an ID implant in your arm?”
Both women burst into hearty giggles. “Omigod, no!” said the dark-haired woman when she
could speak. “It’s something that fancy exclusive clubs have been doing for super-VIP members.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “No one would do that, not even the craziest crazy-rich. That’s
got to be some kind of urban legend.”
“I don’t think so,” said the dark-haired woman, still laughing.
“Of course, if it were, it wouldn’t be the first time you fell for one of those,” said the blonde.
She gave him another wink in the rearview mirror.
Was he supposed to be in on some joke or did she just have a nervous tic? “Or the second or
third. Or fourth—”
“All right, that’s enough. You don’t have to rub my nose in it.”
“Which ‘it’?” laughed the driver. “The tiny Mexican dog that turns out to be a rat or the cobras
in the fur coat? Or—”
“I said, that’s enough!” The dark-haired woman tried to sound stern but giggled instead. “I
guess that’s why I like the high-tech stuff so much. Hardware, hard data, hard facts.”
“Hard ass,” he added before he could think better of it. Immediately he tried to apologize but
couldn’t make himself heard over their giggles.
“This guy’s definitely got your number, Doni,” the blonde said when she had caught her breath.
“No shit.” The dark-haired woman was still laughing. “And please, don’t apologize,” she added
to him. “That was a good one.”
His smile was more like a grimace. It wasn’t that good, he thought. Maybe he had tapped into
some subtext he was unaware of, some secret in-joke that colored everything for them. That would
certainly account for all the giggling. Except in-jokes were never as funny to anyone on the outside.
It might be time to get out of the car and go his own way, he thought uneasily.
As if catching the flavor of his thoughts, the blonde slowed down and pulled into the breakdown
lane.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, bracing himself on the seat as she twisted around to look at
him.
 “Not at all,” she said cheerfully. “It’s just that there’s an interchange coming up where our
routes diverge. If you want to take a more direct route to Aberdeen then we should leave you off
there so you can pick up another ride. Or . . . ” She made a small flourish with one hand to
punctuate her dramatic pause. “You can come with us and see the Humber Bridge.”
Both women were looking at him with eager, expectant expressions. “Is there something special
about the Humber Bridge?”
The women glanced at each other briefly. “You’ve never seen it,” the dark-haired woman said to
him.
“Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked,” the blonde added.
“It’s gorgeous,” said the dark-haired woman.
“A gorgeous bridge?” he asked, skeptical.
“Absolutely,” replied the blonde. “I know, it’s hard to believe. I didn’t believe it myself when
Doni first told me the first time I came here. But then I saw it. If there are bridges in heaven, my
man, this is what they look like.”
He smiled, still doubtful. “How far is it from where we are now?”
She turned away to look at something on the dashboard. “Sat nav says only a few miles. It’s not
that far out of our way—crossing the bridge will take us to Hull and Scarborough’s just north of
that. But we can leave you off at a spot where you can pick up a ride going west, back toward
Leeds.”
“Shouldn’t I just keep going north with you and try to get a ride out of Scarborough?”
“You’ll probably end up going to Whitby and having to pick up yet another ride from there,” the
dark-haired woman advised him.
“Tomayto, tomahto,” he said, making them giggle. “Like I said, I’m not all that big on taking
the most direct route anywhere.”
“Your choice,” said the blonde. “But if you end up having to spend the night in Whitby, eat
some garlic for supper so Dracula won’t bite you.”
“Dracula?” he asked, baffled.
“Yeah. That’s where he came ashore after leaving Transylvania,” said the dark-haired woman
matter-of-factly. “You didn’t know?”
“No, but that would have been about a hundred years ago, wouldn’t it?” He chuckled, sitting
back as the blonde pulled the car onto the road again.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t matter with Dracula. He’s undead.”
“I thought he got staked and turned into ashes or smoke or something.”
The dark-haired woman shook her head emphatically. “Dracula alwayscomes back.”
“Bela Lugosi’s dead,” he replied, unperturbed. “There’s even a song about it.”
“Bela, sure. But not Dracula.”
He couldn’t tell if she were really kidding around or not; she was keeping a straight face again
but this time she showed no sign of breaking. He looked at the rearview mirror, waiting to see if the
blonde would wink at him. When she finally did glance up, it was only for half a second and her
eyes told him nothing.
What the hell, he thought; it was a strange world, made more so by the people in it. He’d ridden
with atheists who believed in ghosts and people who thought astrology was another branch of
astronomy. These probably weren’t the only two otherwise sane people who thought Dracula was a
documentary. He shifted so he could look between the seats at the road ahead and what he saw
scared him a hell of a lot more than ghosts or vampires.
 The road was far too narrow to accommodate their car and the one coming toward them going
the other way, even if the latter had not been towing a trailer the size of an elephant. He opened his
mouth to say as much but his voice wouldn’t come. Before he could cower on the floor in the fetal
position, the blonde slowed down and steered to the left.
“Inhale!” she sang out cheerfully. He obeyed without thinking and held his breath as he watched
the other car and trailer cruise past with what looked like less than an inch to spare.
“Close one,” said the dark-haired woman. “You sure we didn’t scrape some paint off?”
“It looks closer than it was,” said the blonde.
“No, it doesn’t,” he said shakily. “When did we leave the highway?”
“We didn’t,” the blonde told him. “If we were in the U.S., we’d be lost in the sticks. In rural
England, this is a major artery.”
“Warn me next time we’re gonna do that, so I can curl up on the floor and pray.” He tried to
laugh with them and couldn’t.
-
Fifteen minutes later, the blonde pulled the car onto the dirt shoulder. “Behold,” she said. “The
Humber Bridge.”
He sat forward and gazed through the windshield, all but awestruck in spite of himself.
“Suspension bridge” seemed too plain a term for the structure that spanned the water under the late-
afternoon sun. Had the builders imagined it this way—a mile-long structure of metal, stone, and
asphalt that would look somehow as elegant as a section of spiderweb? The suspension appeared
almost delicate and yet strong enough to hold anything, even a piece of the world.
Abruptly, he shook off the sensation of dreaminess that had been creeping at the edges of his
mind and rubbed his eyes hard. He looked at the bridge again; the clouds had bunched up again,
cutting off the late-afternoon sunlight, and mist was beginning to build up.
“See? Amazing sight, isn’t it.”
He nodded silently, unsure which woman had spoken to him. The car was moving again and
they were heading toward the bridge. As they got closer, he saw that it wasn’t anywhere nearly as
narrow as it looked from a distance. That was a relief; no danger that they’d go over the side and
end up in the water trying to pass another car and trailer.
Before they were even halfway across, however, the mist had built up so thickly that the rest of
the bridge ahead of them had disappeared. He was about to suggest that the blonde should put on
the headlights when, to his horror, she brought the car to a complete stop.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice rising with fear as she put on the emergency brake.
“This is where you get off,” she said as the dark-haired woman opened her door and climbed
out. She pushed the back of her seat forward and leaned in to look at him.
“Come on, you heard Loretta,” she said.
“Are you two crazy? You want me to get out in the middle of—”
“The sat nav’s never wrong,” the blonde said. “Now hurry up. You’ve got less than a minute.”
“Till what—I get hit by a car in the fog?”
The dark-haired woman leaned in and grabbed hold of the front of his shirt. He tried to draw
back and discovered that she was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked. She dragged him out of
the car and shoved him against the rail that divided the road from the pedestrian walkway, tossing
his backpack at him so hard he nearly fell.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
The dark-haired woman paid no attention, looking up into the mist. Abruptly, she grabbed his
arm and pulled him closer to her. “Just shut up and stand there,” she snapped.
 He reached for her but she drew back and his hand closed on empty air. Angry, he took a step
toward her, reaching for her again. The next thing he knew, he was falling, rolling over and over
down a cold, muddy incline covered with wet leaves. He came to rest flat on his back, looking up at
the night sky. Somewhere nearby, a truck rumbled by doing seventy, air-horn fading as the pitch
dropped.
Stunned, he pushed himself to his feet and struggled up the incline. Another truck blew past as
he reached the side of the road. Route 2A—he knew it immediately. He knew every inch of it; it
was still the best place to catch a ride with one of the many long-haul truckers avoiding the newer
interstate so as not to get weighed. Or someone traveling on business in a company car who
preferred the old highway for the quality of the roadside cafés.
He brushed himself off as best he could, shrugged on his backpack, and stuck out his thumb,
thinking he must have been pretty tired to fall asleep in a ditch.
-
“All gone,” said Doni, climbing back into the passenger seat and slamming the door.
“I just wish he’d stay gone,” Loretta grumbled. She released the emergency brake and inched
the car forward cautiously, watching the side-view mirror for anything coming up behind her before
she pulled all the way onto the lane again.
“Never mind that now,” Doni said. “As soon as we get off the bridge, we’re in Hull and I for
one would like to find the road out of it this time instead of driving around and around in circles for
an hour.”
“Hey, it could be worse,” said Loretta good-naturedly. “At least I know how to find reverse gear
on this thing now.”
“Shut up and drive already.”
.
Afterword
If there’s anything I love other than chocolate, a wild party, and the love of a good cat (to
name but a few things I cherish), it’s an urban legend, especially if there’s a possible
supernatural angle to it. Great stories to tell after dark and into the night, when you’re too
tired to be much of a hard-headed realist, and the shadows are long and deep enough so that
you think you might have seen something moving out of the corner of your eye.
Or you can tell them right out in the light of day on a long car trip. Especially if the long
car trip is exceptionally long, much longer than it should be.
In 1993, Ellen Datlow and I took a long car trip from London to Scarborough. We had no
idea how long it would be, although the fact that it took me forty-five minutes to find my
way out of Heathrow Airport with the rental car should have given us some idea. We did not
reach Scarborough for another eight hours (the last forty-five minutes of which we spent
trying to find the parking lot for our hotel). In between, we had An Adventure.
In a perfect world, it would have been this one. A Phantom Hitchhiker, after all, would
have no trouble hitching all around the world. If the Web can spread computer viruses, why
can’t GPS spread phantoms?
We did see a few hitchhikers. One of them did watch as we zoomed the wrong way
around a roundabout (if you’re going the wrong way, you’d better do it fast). Then, as we
barreled up the entrance ramp where he was standing, he very deliberately pulled his thumb
in, put his hand in his pocket, and averted his gaze. I doubt he was a phantom. But if he was,
perhaps there are also two phantom American women in a phantom rented Ford Mondeo still
driving around and around in a phantom Hull, desperately trying to find their way out.
P.S. When my license finally expired, I gave it a Viking’s funeral.
-
 [We’ll Take Manhattan]
-
[Funny Things]
-
Picking up the Pieces
-
I don’t think I’ve ever quite forgiven 1989. It was one of those years when everything started
looking up.
OK, not everything. But even after Tiananmen Square, the developments in Eastern Europe
were enough to make a person think the world was actually becoming a better place.
All right, then, just me. I wondered. I was thirty-six—theoretically old enough to know better
but young enough to drop everything and fly halfway around the world for my crazy sister Quinn.
Dammit, everything goes to hell around that girl, my father used to grumble. Actually, it was
more like chaos, which, now that I think of it, was hell for my father, a man who envisioned his
daughters as swans and instead got—well, us. And Quinn, in that order. The first four (of which I
was the last) made his head spin. Then when I was sixteen, Quinn arrived, unintended, unpredicted,
unexpected, and made everything spin. My sister, the thrill ride. If there is such a thing as
reincarnation, she’ll probably come back as a Tilt-a-Whirl. Or a Wild Octopus.
Maybe a rocket, seeing as how she was born the day after the first moon landing. But it would
have to be a rocket that never came down: She wasn’t manic-depressive; there was no depression,
just manic and more manic. Although to be honest, it wasn’t mania in the clinical sense, just high
energy and no brakes. Two separate therapists diagnosed her as a borderline personality. I had to
look that one up. Some things seemed to fit, some didn’t, and the rest I wasn’t sure about, but it all
sounded pretty bad.
In the end, I decided the diagnosis creeped me out, not my sister. Quinn could be frivolous and
silly, the grasshopper to everyone else’s ant; she could be self-centered and even insensitive, with
the attention span of a gnat and poor impulse control, but she had never been mean or spiteful. Most
of the time she was good-natured, slow to anger, and quick to kiss and make up. And more than
anything else, generous.
My mother never missed a chance to point out Quinn’s good qualities. There’s no malice in her.
She’s got a good heart. She never goes out of her way to hurt anyone. She’d give you the shirt off
her back. What my mother didn’t mention, however, was that when Quinn ran out of shirts, she’d
expect you to volunteer yours. Her tendency to presume wasn’t as attractive as her thick, curly
black hair or her silvery gray eyes or her smile, features that could usually persuade the susceptible
to overlook her flaws.
It didn’t always work to her advantage, of course. Because she was a child, she had a hard time
telling the difference between excitement and trouble. I’m not sure she even knew there was a
difference. Because there’s no malice in her, my mother said. Because she’s got a good heart.
In November of 1989, Quinn went to Berlin with her good heart, which had been captured by a
tall, rangy blond man with blue eyes, cheekbones like the white cliffs of Dover, and snake hips. It
was a package that would have held my attention even without the German accent. With it,
everything he said sounded exotic and even a bit mysterious, at least to my tin American ear.
Especially after a few glasses of red wine.
And very good red wine it was, too, a French Bordeaux that actually tasted as good as the label
looked. He brought two bottles when he and Quinn turned up at our parents’ house for the annual
your-father-won’t-celebrate-his-birthday dinner in early September. Only Kath, Lisa, and I were
not-celebrating with our parents. Our oldest sister, Marie, and her wife were stuck in Toronto seeing
their twins through chicken pox, and as far as any of us knew, Quinn was traveling—the family
euphemism for that period beginning with the last time anyone had heard from her and ending when
she finally called one or more of us to say she was OK and hint she needed a small loan.
Unpredicted and unexpected again. Surprise, everybody, and oh, hey, meet Martin.
 The not-a-birthday dinner immediately turned into the Quinn Show, with special guest. Quinn
was bubbly, vivacious, and entertaining, Martin was personable, witty, and utterly covet-worthy,
and everyone enjoyed themselves. Though Kath, Lisa, and I sneaked commiserating looks at each
other even as we did; sometimes it was hard not to feel drab around our baby sister.
But if we felt drab next to Quinn, we were positively lackluster compared to Martin. Originally
from East Berlin, he was barely more than a toddler when his parents had given him over to some
trusted friends who had smuggled him through the Berlin Wall and taken him to live with them in
London. Since then, he had heard precious little of his family: All he had was a blurry photo of his
parents with the two younger sisters and a brother he had never met. My mother teared up. This
embarrassed Martin, who apologized. Quinn, however, sat back with a faint smile, and I knew she
was pleased to have brought us someone to prick our social conscience—very much a Quinn thing
to do.
She and Martin didn’t stay long after that. “And there they go,” Kath sighed as we stood on the
front steps watching Martin’s sports car pull out of the driveway. “Back to life among those more
beautiful and exciting than us.” Her gaze swiveled to Lisa, the grammar Nazi of the family.
For once, Lisa wasn’t taking the bait. “What color do you suppose the sky is on that planet?”
she asked wistfully.
“Dunno,” I said. “Our eyes are probably too ordinary to see it.”
“Don’t be silly, Jean.” Kath elbowed me. “It’ll be gold lamé. With real gold.”
“Girls.” Mom was right on cue. “There’s no malice in her. She’s got a good heart.”
Dad gave a small hmph. “I hope this Martin doesn’t break it.”
My sisters and I looked at each other, knowing immediately he would.
-
Quinn’s call came on one of those rare nights when I had a few friends from work over for
drinks and hors d’oeuvres. The conversation was mostly about East European politics. Was this
really the beginning of the end for Communism, and, if so, did that mean changes for China after
all, despite Tiananmen Square? Current events along with Martin’s brief visit had me thinking more
about politics than I ever had before, although he and my sister were the furthest things from my
mind when the phone rang.
She was talking so fast that I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. I couldn’t even tell
whether she was happy, angry, or scared. I tried calming her down so I could call her back after
everyone left; instead, I ended up mouthing apologies at my guests while they showed themselves
out. Eventually Quinn wound down enough so that I could get in a few questions.
Martin had gone back to London in mid-October, promising to return in a week, ten days at the
most. There’d been two brief phone calls from him—one the day he’d arrived in London to let her
know he’d arrived safely, the other two weeks later to say he had the flu and was too sick to fly.
And after that, nothing—no calls and only the answering machine when she called him. She went
on phoning at all hours of the day and night until she’d finally gotten an answer—not Martin but the
neighbor who said she was watering his plants while he was in West Berlin. No, she didn’t know
when Martin was coming back, big things were happening. He hadn’t told her much before he left,
just something about people coming through the Berlin Wall, which would be very exciting if it
were true, wouldn’t it. Quinn managed to wheedle the name and number of the hotel where Martin
was staying out of her, then decided to take more direct action.
So here she was in Berlin, at the hotel where Martin had supposedly been staying. Only he
wasn’t there now, and she had been running all over West Berlin for days trying to find him. And
now she’d heard about people who had gotten out of East Berlin going back through the wall and
getting stuck, unable to get out again even if they had passports from the UK or West Germany or
even America.
 That didn’t sound right to me. Could any country, even East Germany, prevent a foreign
national from leaving? I thought of what I’d seen on the news about Hungary’s relaxed border with
Austria allowing East Germans to escape to the west. Maybe East Germany was tightening its own
borders with everyone else to counter this, making travel problems for everyone, regardless of
nationality? It didn’t seem likely, but I just didn’t know. Stranger things had happened.
“Maybe the best thing to do is get on the first flight out of there,” I said the next time she
stopped for breath. “Come home, wait for Martin to call you.”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “Martin needs my help, I just know it. He’s one of those people who
went back through the wall and can’t get out again. I can feel it in my bones.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“I just told you, I can feel it in my bones,” Quinn said, as if I had questioned the existence of
gravity. “Haven’t you ever felt that way, like you just know something?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, Yeah, but I’ve always been wrong unless it was something
bad that I was in denial about, but she was talking again.
“A lot of the people here think something’s about to happen, but they don’t know if it’s going to
be something good, like more travel restrictions being eased, or something bad, like Czechoslovakia
in 1968—”
“Do you even know what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968?” I asked, amazed.
“Tanks,” she said vaguely. “But whatever happens, I can’t leave Martin to face it alone.”
I sighed. “Quinn, honey, I think you’ve got it backward. I think Martinleft you.”
“He wouldn’t. I know it in my heart. We have a bond.”
There’s no arguing with what someone knows in their heart or feels in their bones, but that’s
never stopped me from trying. It was especially counterproductive in this case, because the more I
argued against it, the surer she was about Martin and the more determined she became to help him.
“I’ll go get him myself,” she said finally. “I’ll go through the wall and find him and bring him
out again.”
“You just said you heard people from other countries were having trouble getting out. What if
you can’t get out again yourself?”
“Then we’ll be stuck there together,” she said nobly, making me wince.
“And what if he’s not there? What if he’s in West Berlin? Or what if he’s already gone back to
London—or even the U.S.? What if he’s been calling your apartment to tell you when to pick him
up at the airport?”
“He isn’t. I told you, I can feel it in my bones. He’s in trouble. He needs me.”
We argued for another half hour before I could finally make her promise she wouldn’t go near
the wall before I got to West Berlin. I couldn’t always count on Quinn’s word, but, all told, she had
kept more promises than she had broken and there was a very good chance she’d keep this one.
She’d made a passing mention of maxed-out credit cards before I hung up.
-
When the plane touched down at Berlin Tegel, jet lag hit as if someone had dropped a heavy
blanket on me. I managed to drag myself through customs and the baggage claim and finally
through the entrance gate and straight into bedlam.
I was caught in a sea of utterly joyful people, hugging, kissing, laughing, calling to each other in
German but also several other languages, occasionally even English. At least three people kissed me
on both cheeks, and more tried. The hugs were harder to avoid—arms came out of the crowd to
embrace me while I tried to find the city bus, which my travel agent had told me to take to Am Zoo,
the hotel where Quinn was staying. If she was still there.
I didn’t have to wait long at the stop, but more people had jammed themselves onto the bus than
I’d have thought possible. Nonetheless, several near the door pulled me and my one small bag up
into their midst, ignoring my protests that there was no room.
“You’re North American? U.S. or Canadian?” a woman asked in a heavy German accent.
“Uh, U.S.” I felt awkward. We were pressed up against each other so tightly I could feel her
breath against my face. She had been drinking beer. So had everyone else around me.
 “I’ll go there one day. I never thought I would, but now I know I will!” Her wide blue eyes,
already red from crying, welled up and spilled over. With great difficulty, she maneuvered one hand
into the shopping bag she was holding and came up with a piece of toilet paper. I looked down; the
bag was bulging. Besides toilet paper, I could see bananas, marmalade, peanut butter, face cream,
shampoo, and, on top, CDs by Duran Duran and Cyndi Lauper.
“Soft enough to wipe your eyes,” the woman said as she did so. “Nothing will ever be the same.
My mother dreamed of this. She saw the wall go up. I only wish she had lived to see it come down
again.”
“It’s not down yet,” a man said. “Not all the way.”
“It will be!” said someone else, and everyone around me cheered.
As the bus lumbered along, I found out from the people around me what had happened while I
was still in transit. The party secretary in East Germany had announced there would be no more
restrictions on travel to the west, effective immediately. Thousands of East Berliners, on foot or in
cars, promptly made a beeline for the wall, papers in hand, demanding to cross into West Berlin.
They were met by bewildered guards who, unsure of their orders, refused to let them through. In a
few hours, thousands became tens of thousands, until the guards finally gave in and opened the
border. But some brave souls had decided to break through the wall literally, using sledgehammers
and power saws. West Berliners who gathered on the other side greeted them with champagne,
embraces, even money. There was music and people were dancing on top of the Berlin Wall. The
whole city was caught up in the spirit; it was the biggest street party ever.
By the time the bus reached Ku’damm, I was feeling quite a lot of that spirit myself. I was no
longer tired, my face hurt from smiling, and in spite of myself, my own eyes were welling up.
But as I struggled through the heaving masses on the street looking for the hotel, I wanted to kill
my sister.
-
Quinn had added my name to the hotel room. The people at the Am Zoo front desk were
delighted to see me, or rather, my credit card, which Quinn had assured them would take care of the
bill, incidentals included. I made a hopeful joke about discounts for historical events but suddenly
no one understood English well enough to get it.
The room was nice enough, though I wasn’t sure it was really worth the small fortune I would
be paying for it. I was relieved to see my sister’s things very much in evidence—it meant she hadn’t
gone—although she was out. Of course. Probably dancing in the streets with everyone else in West
Berlin. Crisis or no crisis, she never could resist a party.
I looked out the window at the teeming streets, and jet lag hit again. Even if I’d known my way
around the city, I had no energy to elbow my way through all those people. I lay down on the bed
and passed out.
The next thing I knew, Quinn was shaking me like a rag doll.
-
“Come on, Jean, you’ve got to wake up!”
Squinting against the bright overhead light, I tried to pull away from her. “Stop—you’re gonna
give me brain damage!”
Apparently she thought I was talking in my sleep; I had to use a self-defense move to get away
from her. It worked but I almost dislocated an elbow. Then instead of standing back so I could get
up, she actually went for me again. I rolled away, got tangled in the duvet, and landed on the floor.
“Don’t touch me; I’m awake already!” I yelled as she loomed over me.
“I was just going to help you up,” she said, looking offended. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Somebody shook me out of a sound sleep. What’s your excuse?” I used the bed to pull myself
up to a sitting position.
“The Berlin Wall is coming down,” she said. “It’s history, happening right here, right now,
before our very eyes.”
My very eyes still hurt from the bright light in the room: I glared up at her murderously. “And
that’s why you couldn’t wake me up in a more civilized fashion?”
 “I tried. You were dead to the world.”
“I’m jet-lagged. I spent the night not sleeping in a transatlantic sardine can.”
“Well, perk up, ’cause you have to see this; it’s amazing! The East Berlin guards are trading hats
with the West Berlin ones; they’ve got their arms around each other and they’re singing.”
I struggled to my feet, batting away the hand she offered to help. “Then Martin isn’t trapped
anymore, and he and his family can see each other whenever they want. Our work here is done.”
Quinn blinked at me, baffled. “What work?”
“Democracy. Liberté, egalité, fraternité. Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, they’re
free at last. Martin and his family included. Right now, he’s probably bonding with the sisters and
brother he’s never met in between hugging his parents. That’s your cue to slip away quietly
with your sister and go home and hug your parents. I’ll help you pack.”
“There aren’t any flights out now,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Who’d want to leave? Jean, you slept the day away; there wouldn’t be any flights now even if
it weren’t the most incredible day in recent German history.”
I almost laughed; being all of twenty, my sister’s idea of recent history was last Christmas.
“Fine. Let’s pack your stuff. I’ve got one little bag I haven’t even opened. Then we’ll be all ready to
fly out tomorrow morning.”
Quinn shook her head so vigorously her curls flew. “No, we’re herenow. It’s happening right
now. Every second is history. Twenty years from now, do you want to have to tell everyone that you
were in Berlin when the wall came down and you watched it on TV in your hotel room?”
I gave in and put on my shoes.
-
As soon as we waded into the crowds on the street, I realized I wasn’t just hungry but famished.
I hadn’t eaten since before the plane had landed and that hadn’t been much—a small cup of yogurt
and a roll so stale it had mutated into Styrofoam. Quinn didn’t mind putting off our eyewitnessing
history in favor of food, but then with her credit cards maxed out, she’d probably missed a few
meals herself.
The problem was the crowds, not just in the streets but anywhere and everywhere food was
served. “See, they don’t get any of that stuff in East Berlin,” Quinn told me, pointing at a smiling
man loaded down with two cases of Coke. Next to him, his family were eating out of large bags
from a fast-food joint. “They take their kids into stores and the kids think they’re in fairyland. What
we take for granted is incredible luxury to them.” She sounded practically authoritative, as if she
knew all about the privations suffered by people in East Germany.
That would be Martin, of course. She was parroting Martin, probably right down his tone of
voice. And then it hit me: She was trying to find him. I was along to cover expenses.
I wanted to be wrong, but there she was, up on tiptoe, stretching her neck like a meerkat,
scanning the crowd. Irritated, I dragged her around a couple grinning at each other as they hefted
boxes of stereo equipment, through a group of young guys with enough junk food and beer for six
weekend toga parties, and down a side street, where I found what was probably the only restaurant
in West Berlin without a line of people a block long waiting to get in. When I saw the prices, I
understood why, but I was past caring.
“You’re looking for him, aren’t you?” I said as we sat at a table waiting to order. “Don’t deny it;
I’m not a moron. But you are. If he’s back on this side of the wall, he’s probably with his family.
Can’t you just leave him alone with them for a while? Give him some space?” The last sentence
replayed itself in my head. Had I actually said that? I wanted to bite my tongue off.
“You’re being silly, Jean. It’s like a tidal wave of people pouring through from East Berlin. It’s
impossible to find anyone.” But she wouldn’t look at me; instead, she studied the menu as if the
secret of life were printed on it. Or Martin’s current location. I started to say something else but she
talked over me. “Let’s just eat, okay? I don’t know about you, but I’m almost light-headed with
hunger.”
 That’s what happens when you max out your credit cards, I managed not to say out loud. At this
point I was too hungry to deal with anything, much less Quinn’s foolishness. A relentlessly happy
waitress took our orders and then brought us two pint glasses of beer we hadn’t asked for, dancing
away before we could tell her we wanted soft drinks instead. While the restaurant celebrated around
us, Quinn and I ate our overpriced steaks in silence. Every so often, I stole a glance at her to find
her doing the same; it wasn’t until I’d finished a little over half the meal that I could find a little
humor in the situation—the immediate situation, that was. There wasn’t going to be a whole lot of
hilarity in getting my sister home.
“You’re twenty years old.” The words were out before I realized I’d spoken.
Quinn gave a faint, puzzled laugh. “And you’re thirty-six. And?”
“Ever think about going back to college?”
“Not this again.” She sawed a piece off her steak. “As I told Mom and Dad and Marie and
Kath and Lisa and you and everybody andtheir mother, I’m not the academic type. Studying isn’t
my thing.”
“So what is your thing—chasing some guy halfway around the world?”
Now she looked offended. “Martin isn’t just some guy. He’s more—so much more.”
“Okay, he’s got quite a history, I’ll give you that. Being a refugee from behind the Iron Curtain,
growing up without his parents—definitely not your average man on the street. But that doesn’t
mean he hasn’t dumped you.”
“Doesn’t mean he has.” Quinn chewed stolidly and took a sip of beer. “You have no sense of
anything that isn’t ordinary. To you, it’s all just people shifting around like, I don’t know, little
blocks. Legos. Martin and I aren’t Legos. We have something more profound than you could ever
know.”
“How long were you with him?” I asked. “Two months? Three?”
“Almost four.” Quinn looked smug. So there.
“Almost four profound months, eh? What’s his middle name?”
My sister looked startled for a fraction of a second, then covered with a laugh. “Nosy, aren’t
you?”
“Can’t say you know anyone if you don’t know their middle name,” I said.
“I don’t like to pry. Unlike some people.”
“I didn’t know Eddie’s middle name was Erasmus til after we got engaged. Turned out that
wasn’t the only thing I didn’t know about him, and we’d been together for over a year. Good thing I
found out before I did something stupid like marry him.”
“You didn’t break up with Eddie because his middle name was Erasmus,” Quinn said. “I was
only ten but I knew that.”
“Correct. I broke up with him because he’d been hiding things from me.”
“Martin never hid anything from me.”
“You don’t know that. Four months isn’t long enough to know—”
“Fine,” Quinn said flatly, her eyes hard. “Then I’ll give him a little longer.” She dragged her
napkin back and forth across her mouth before dropping it on the table. “You really don’t know,
Jean. There’s a lot more to life than you think. There really is an unseen world. I know—Martin
showed it to me.”
My heart sank. “Oh, no, Quinn, not like the guru.”
“He wasn’t a guru, he was a swami.”
“He was a con man and he saw you coming.”
“It’s not like that!” she said hotly. “This isn’t America where everything happened ten minutes
ago. This is the Old World. Time is measured in millennia here, and everything isn’t always nice
and neat and easily explained. Martin opened my eyes to so much. I’m not going to just abandon
him.”
“You’re going to have to learn the hard way again, aren’t you?” I said before I could tell myself
to shut up.
 Quinn didn’t take offense. Laughing, she toasted me with her beer. “We’ll just see who learns
what the hard way—me or my older and supposedly wiser sister.”
-
In the course of my misspent youth, I joined the 1971 antiwar demonstrations in Washington,
D.C.; some years later, I went to pre-Katrina New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Both times I thought I’d
been in big crowds; this beat them by several magnitudes.
There was no place not filled with people—happy people, dancing, singing, shouting—while
music played and fireworks went off. I held on to Quinn’s arm, determined not to lose her—or let
her lose me—but invariably someone would come between us to hug her or me or both and I’d lose
my grip on her. Fortunately, I always found her again, although a few times I would grab for what I
thought was her arm only to discover I was manhandling a stranger. Quinn’s face would pop up
several feet away, looking amused as I swam through the crowd to get to her.
“We should have tied ourselves together with rope,” I said as we squeezed through the masses.
Disoriented, I had no idea where we were. There seemed to be only two directions—toward the wall
or away from it—and only two locations—one side of the wall or the other. Correction: There was a
third location—on top of the wall. People dancing on it were reaching down to hoist others up to
dance with them. Was Quinn’s errant boyfriend up there? I wondered. As we got closer, I could
hear, below the singing and music and general uproar, tapping noises, metal on stone in various
rhythms. Hammers chipping away at the wall? It would take a hell of a lot of hammers to punch
through. They needed sledgehammers or better yet, wrecking balls.
Abruptly, I heard a loud buzzing whine; on top of the wall, a cascade of sparks erupted as
someone attacked it with a power saw. People cheered, and I found myself spontaneously cheering
with them, which earned me another amused look from Quinn. But only very briefly—she was
scanning the mass of people in front of her with more urgency.
The buzz-saw whine cut off, and I heard a new sound, the chatter of a small engine working too
hard. I looked to my left, and through a break in the crowd, I saw a small car exuding a cloud of
exhaust. As it inched forward, people lunged out of the crowd to pound their fists on it, startling the
driver and his passengers. For a moment, I was afraid I was about to see a mob drag them out of the
car and attack them. But no, the crowd was laughing. A woman shoved a bottle of champagne
through the driver’s side window and kissed the wide-eyed driver, while a couple of teenagers stuck
flowers in the front bumper.
“What’s that about?” I asked my sister.
“Trabi thumping,” she said. “They’ve been doing it all day. Trabants are really awful cars, but
that’s all they have over there.”
Another rattletrap car crept along behind it and was given the same treatment. I turned to ask
Quinn how our being out in an enormous crowd watching people dent cars would accomplish
anything, but she was gone. The arm I was holding on to belonged to a middle-aged man with a
mustache; he was grinning at me with delight.
He went on grinning as I apologized and disengaged, feeling like an idiot, and a drunken idiot at
that. I hadn’t had much beer, but it didn’t take much combined with jet lag and mass celebratory
hysteria. People kept hugging me as I struggled through the crush; I stopped trying to fight them
off. It was faster just to go along with it and keep moving. After a while I realized I was
automatically hugging everyone I passed. When in Rome . . . or West Berlin.
Working my way through the crowd, I began hearing snatches of English. When I looked
around, though, I couldn’t see who was speaking. I listened in vain for Quinn’s voice. Then all the
voices were drowned out by the sound of fireworks. Multicolored lights blossomed overhead,
briefly turning the night as bright as day. None of the joy-filled, upturned faces around me belonged
to Quinn. I kept pushing toward the wall, calling out her name.
More fireworks streaked skyward and exploded. Suddenly a new light hit my eyes, blinding me
for a couple of seconds before it slid away and rippled over the crowd: Someone on top of the wall
was wielding a spotlight like a searchlight. The bright circle moved back and forth, pausing here
and there; the people caught in it waved their arms and cheered.
 Trying to blink away the dark patches of afterimage, I kept pushing toward the wall, calling out
my sister’s name. More lights appeared high up now, large banks of them, sending faint multiple
shadows from the people on top of the wall over the crowd below. I put one hand up to try to shield
my eyes, watering madly now from the cold. Or maybe I was so caught up in the moment I was
crying with happiness like everyone else in Berlin; I honestly didn’t know anymore and I was
starting to feel a little scared. Not just by that but by the fact that the crowd was getting so thick that
sometimes my feet didn’t touch the ground.
Abruptly, I fetched up against something hard and rough and cold. I’d reached the infamous
Berlin Wall, where people had died making a break for freedom, machine-gunned by East Berlin
guards—and where it seemed I was going to be crushed to death, squashed by the entire happy
population of West Berlin celebrating its symbolic fall.
With great effort, I pushed myself back so I could turn around, just as something hit the stone
inches from my right eye. I had a glimpse of a grinning male face and then flinched as a large
hammer came at me. Chips and dust flew against the side of my face.
“Watch it, you moron!” I yelled, startled and angry. “I got that in my eye!” I had one hand
pressed to my eye and I didn’t actually know if that were true, but it would have been just my luck
to be blinded by fragments from the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Where the hell was Quinn?
Blind or not, I was going to kill her.
“Here—a special souvenir!” Someone shoved something into my other hand and closed my
fingers around it.
After a bit of careful blinking, I determined that my eye was all right even if I was still in danger
of being mashed to pulp against the wall, then I turned to see the grinning face again. He was using
a hammer and chisel on the wall but at a safer, lower level.
“What are you doing?” I asked, forgetting I was mad at him.
“Getting pieces of the wall,” he said happily. “Special souvenirs! I gave you one!” He jerked his
chin at my closed hand. I opened my fingers to see a jagged chunk of stone sitting on my palm.
“See? Piece of the real Berlin Wall, the night it came down! Have to get it while we can, before it’s
gone!”
In spite of everything, I had to laugh. Yeah, the Berlin Wall was most definitely down. In a
year’s time, there’d be chunks of broken stone and brick for sale in every hotel and airport gift shop,
attached to key chains, set in snow globes and paperweights and framed boxes, with or without an
accompanying historic photo—Pieces of the True Wall, for sale along with toilet paper, shampoo,
and CDs by Duran Duran and Cyndi Lauper. The people behind the Iron Curtain had no idea what
was about to hit them.
“You want some more?” the guy asked me, pausing with the chisel against the wall. There were
lots of craters where bits had just been chipped away.
I dropped the fragment in my coat pocket and shook my head. “Nah. Save some for the East
Berliners. They’ll need the income.”
He frowned. “I am from East Berlin,” he said.
I nodded and started to push my way past him when he grabbed my arm.
“Wait!” He fumbled in his coat pocket and came up with a compact camera. It looked brand
new. “Please, could you take my picture?”
I looked at the people crowded around us. “I can try.”
He posed, smiling, holding up his hammer and chisel in one hand and a large chunk of stone in
the other.
“Say ‘cheese.’”
“No, say ‘freeeeeeedom!’ ” someone shouted, to the delight of everyone in earshot. The guy did
so but then had to wait an extra second while I found the right button for the shutter, which
probably made his smile look just a bit strained. Not that it mattered: He now had photographic
evidence to prove his rubble was really from the wall and not just something he picked up off the
ground somewhere.
“There you go,” I said, passing the camera back to him. “That’ll take care of the provenance.”
 He thanked me, looking puzzled, and went on chipping away. As I kept moving along the wall, I
saw that he wasn’t the only souvenir hunter. Lots of people were doing the same thing, some of
them filling plastic bags with chunks of history. There was one woman, however, who was actually
fussy about the pieces she chipped out of the wall. She would work on a small area very carefully,
doing her best to get a chunk at least as large as the palm of her hand. Once she did that, she would
hold it for a few seconds, head bowed and eyes closed. Then she would either discard it and look
for another section of wall or kiss it and drop it into the large cloth bag slung diagonally across her
front.
I was curious but more concerned about finding Quinn. I tried calling out her name again, and
this time, the sound of my American accent generated a new and unexpected response.
“American!” “Yay, American!” “USA . . . USA . . . USA!”
Suddenly, everyone in my immediate vicinity loved me. And I mean, loved. They rushed me all
at once, pressing me into the cold stone, grabbing me, kissing my arms, my hands, whatever they
could get at. This was it, I thought as I gasped for air; I was going to die of love at the Berlin Wall.
Then I felt my feet leave the ground. Oh, good, I thought giddily, I was going to crowd surf.
That was so much better than getting crushed to death, I wouldn’t even mind if someone groped my
butt. A small price to pay . . .
But I kept rising higher and higher, and before I knew what was really happening, I was already
on top of the wall amid a group of laughing, dancing people who also seemed to love me a lot,
while the crowd below cheered.
The only coherent thought I had was Omigod, as my sense of balance disappeared and left me
teetering among strangers who might not notice I was about to fall to my death. Then my balance
returned as abruptly as it had vanished and I was fine. Better than fine—it was the perfect vantage
point for looking for Quinn.
I hollered as loud as I could between my cupped hands. People heard me: I saw them turn to
look up at me curiously and then go on with their hugging and kissing and dancing and drinking
champagne. Getting a bit more used to where I was, I started slowly sidling along the wall, stopping
only for the occasional hug and kiss. Flashlights played over the sea of people. A flashlight was
exactly what I needed, I thought; maybe everyone loved everyone so much up here that I could
persuade somebody to loan me one.
A tall woman with spiky red hair was only too happy to let me use hers on the crowd, first
demonstrating zigzags and figure eights and other patterns. I obliged briefly and then began
searching methodically among the people closest to the wall. The light was already dimming in my
hands, probably after hours of zigzags and figure eights. Just my luck, I thought—
Then I saw a head of shiny black curls directly below me; I might not have been sure except for
the shiny blond head with her.
“Quinn!” I screamed.
She and Martin looked up at me along with at least thirty other people. Quinn was surprised, as
if she had forgotten I was even here. Martin’s expression was a mix of dismay and vague
puzzlement. He didn’t recognize me, I realized.
“Quinn, we have to go home now!” I hollered.
She made an annoyed face before turning away to argue with Martin. He wasn’t having any: He
kept interrupting her and gesturing at me, all the while shaking his head emphatically. No, no, a
thousand times no.
“Quinn, he said no; now let’s go home!” My throat was getting raw. I had to get down. But
how? I tried to talk to the people around me to ask them to help me down, lower me down or
something, but no one was listening now. They’d just hug me or kiss me and go on dancing or
cheering. I crouched down, trying to estimate by sight how long the drop would be if I were to hang
by my hands and let my feet dangle. Too far not to get hurt, I decided. Assuming I
actually could have dangled my own body weight by my hands for longer than an eighth of a
second.
 Martin gestured at me again—no, not me, the wall—and pushed Quinn back a couple of feet.
She tried to move toward him, but the people directly behind her grabbed her and held her back.
Not roughly, but firmly, so that she could barely move. Were all those people withMartin? Who
were they? I couldn’t see their faces very well at this angle but some of them had the same shade of
blond hair.
Martin’s family? Then they’d gotten through from East Berlin. Orsome of them had gotten
through and they were here at the wall waiting for the rest? But why here? Why not at one of the
actual gates, where people were coming through on foot or in their cars so the West Berliners could
pound dents into them?
All at once there was an incredibly loud buzzing whine that startled me so much I nearly fell.
Several feet to my right, I saw a fountain of sparks—another power saw. The hell with rubble; grab
some power tools and cut yourself a whole panel. People on top of the wall and below were
cheering. Except for Martin and the people with him, I saw; they actually looked scared.
Quinn was still struggling to get free. Martin seemed to be telling the people who had her to
hold her tighter. Then he turned to face the wall and put both hands on the stone.
I could actually hear my sister screaming above the power saw as Martin moved closer to the
wall in tiny, shuffling steps. The angle made it impossible to see what he was doing; for that matter,
I couldn’t even see him anymore. There was no way to lean forward without taking a header off the
top. I lay down on my stomach so I could see what was directly below me.
The people holding Quinn hadn’t moved, and Quinn still twisted in their grip, but I couldn’t see
Martin. I inched forward, scanning the people on either side of the spot where he had been standing,
but he wasn’t among them. And the spot where he had been remained clear: No one crowded in,
almost as if an unseen barrier were keeping them back.
Quinn lifted her tearful face to look at me. I was trying to think of something to say to her, when
Martin came through the wall.
The actual movement itself seemed so normal that I almost ignored it. Then I did what I can
only describe as a mental double take. By that time, Martin was standing in front of the wall
embracing an older woman shaking as she sobbed in his arms.
They came through the wall. They came through the Berlin Wall. Except, I remembered, some
people had trouble getting through the wall. Some people got stuck . . . .
My rational mind was telling me I was tripping on the atmosphere, jet lag, beer, and possibly
something my beer had been spiked with. But my rational mind was very small and very, very far
away. What I was seeing told me that I had to get Quinn out of the way before she screwed things
up.
“Quinn!” I bellowed. “We have to leave! We’re in the way!”
Martin, the woman who I figured was his mother, and everyone else looked up at me. I got up
and moved down several feet, trying to show them in sign language what I wanted to do. Even
finally getting some help from the people up on the wall with me, however, I couldn’t get close
enough to the ground to jump without hurting myself. Then a few of the people holding Quinn gave
her over briefly to Martin, who tolerated her clinging to him for the time it took for them to catch
me. Still, it wasn’t fun: the fall knocked the breath out of me.
Martin’s people probably were family; close up, the resemblance was very strong. They didn’t
have much English but enough to make it clear that I had to catch my breath quickly and take my
sister away. I wasn’t sure I’d actually be able to do that, considering it had taken four of them to
hang on to her, all of whom looked a lot stronger than I was. But I guess all the struggling had tired
her out. I didn’t need much help to peel her off Martin, and once I got her back into the thick of the
crowd, she wouldn’t be able to push her way through them to get back to Martin.
“Thank you,” he said to me in a voice that was somehow both formal and warm. “It takes all of
us to will it. I can’t take her, too. We’d never get out, we’d die in there. I’m sorry, Quinn, I am.” He
bent to kiss her. “Go. This isn’t for you.”
“No, I can help,” Quinn wailed. I turned her around, grabbed her waist, and pushed her into the
crowd ahead of me. “Jean, don’t, I love him—”
 “Just stay out of it,” I growled, wincing at the growing soreness in my throat. I’d been shouting
so much I was going to lose my voice. “This isn’t your fight. Not this part.”
“You saw it, though, right?” She twisted out of my grip and turned to face me. “You saw; now
you know!”
“Yeah, I saw, I know, and tomorrow I’ll fall out of bed and it’ll all be a dream. Cliché ending,
but if it works, it works. Let’s go.”
“No, I want to be there for him, I want to help! I want to be part of it!” Quinn tried to push past
me, but I’d been right: She had no strength left now.
“You can’t,” I rasped. “You’re not part of it, you can’t be, you never could have been. They’re
them and we’re us.”
“But he showed me—”
“His mistake. People make mistakes when they think they’re all alone.”
“That’s not it—”
“Quinn! That is it. Now we have to let him get the rest of his family out.” The image of the
woman I’d seen chipping pieces out of the wall popped into my mind, tossing some pieces away,
keeping others, kissing them before she put them in her bag. Because she couldn’t get her own
people out? Why not?
Because they had died in there. The answer came unbidden and with a certainty I couldn’t
justify. I shoved the thought aside, telling myself that when I woke up tomorrow, I’d have forgotten
all about it
“I can help!” she insisted, trying to lunge past me again.
“You can’t!” I pushed her back hard. “You don’t belong with them; you’re not special, you have
no place in any unseen world; you’re like me and the rest of our family. Get used to it!”
She looked at me like I’d slapped her.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, feeling equally stung by her reaction. “It’s hell being ordinary, but that’s the
human condition.”
All the fight went out of her then, and she let me take her back to the Am Zoo.
The next morning I paid the horrendous bill and we flew back to the United States. Quinn
wouldn’t talk to me for most of the trip home, which didn’t bother me much. I was too busy
sleeping. The more time I could spend unconscious after that, the less real it seemed and the saner I
felt.
Quinn eventually started speaking to me again but never about that night in Berlin. From time to
time, I’ve been tempted to bring it up but I know that would just be asking for trouble.
I’m much more curious about what happened with Martin and his family—if he got them all
out, where they are now. I’m pretty sure Quinn never heard anything from him. I don’t know for
certain but I’d bet money that she tried to find him again after we got home. And it wouldn’t
surprise me if she Googles his name now and then or looks at footage from that night on YouTube.
I’ve looked myself and never seen anything unusual.
I’ve never gotten back to Berlin, but one of my friends from work went to Germany for the first
time a few years ago on her honeymoon. She came back and gave us all these little bottles about
three inches tall, filled with fragments of brick and stone.
“Pieces of the old Berlin Wall,” she said. “You can buy them everywhere. It doesn’t look like
much but it’s history, I guess. A little bit of history in a three-inch bottle.”
I took mine home and emptied it out on a saucer. It really didn’t look like anything at all. It
certainly didn’t feel like anything special. But instead of putting it back in the bottle, I dumped it
outside in the backyard. Maybe it was just debris from some demolished building, or maybe it was a
collection of pieces of the true wall. On the off chance it was the latter, I left it to blow away freely
in the wind. It just seemed right.
-
Cody
-
 “Common wisdom has it,” said LaDene from where she was stretched out on the queen-sized
bed, “that anyone with a tattoo on their face goes crazy within five years.”
Cody paused in his examination of his jawline in the mirror over the desk to give her a look.
“You see any tattoos on this example of manly beauty?”
“Can’t see the moon from here, either. Or the TV remote,” she added. She sat up and looked
around. Cody found it on the desk and tossed it to her. “Thanks. You know, carnies would call you a
marked man.”
“Carnies?” He gave a short laugh. “Don’t tell me you threw over the bright lights of the midway
to keep a low profile in budget accommodations.”
“Higher-end budget accommodations.” She put on the TV and began channel surfing. “For the
discerning yet financially-savvy business traveller. Don’t you ever read the brochures?”
He made a polite noise that was could have been yes or no and was neither.The hotspot that had
come up over two hours ago was still there, midway between his chin and the point of his jaw, and
as far as he could tell, it hadn’t faded even a little. The medic had assured him there was nothing to
worry about unless it started to spread and it hadn’t. It wouldn’t have bothered him except he hadn’t
had a hotspot in years. Rookies got hotspots.
The sudden recurrence could have been down to any number of things, the medic had said, the
most likely being the attack of hay fever he had suffered on arrival. But he’d never had hay fever in
his life, he’d told the medic. He’d never been to Kansas City in late August, she’d replied,
chuckling.
Technically, he still hadn’t. The airport was thirty miles north of the city and the car they’d sent
had taken him to an industrial park about as far to the west on the Kansas side of the state line,
which apparently ran right through the middle of town. The most he’d seen of Kansas City proper
was a distant cluster of skyscrapers, briefly glimpsed through the tinted window as the driver
negotiated a complicated interchange of highway ramps. After that it was generic highway scenery
all the way to a generic suburban industrial park, full of angular, antiseptic office buildings
surrounded by patches of green landscaped and manicured in extremis, some with a koi pond or a
fountain. The access road meandered through it so much that Cody thought there had to be an extra
mile of travel. Albeit a very pretty mile; perhaps it was so people coming and going could see at
least in passing the flowers they didn’t have time to stop and smell. Cody could have done without
it. By the time they’d reached their destination, he had actually begun to feel carsick.
“Yo!” A pillow hit him in the head, making him jump. “And I thought I was vain,” LaDene
laughed. “Are you really that fascinating?”
“I was woolgathering,” he said as he threw the pillow back at her. “Thinking, in case you don’t
know what that means.”
“I know what it means,” she said. “I also know you’ve got a hotspot. Unclench, honey, I’ve got
one, too.” She lifted her shirt and pointed at her navel.
“Oh, very funny.”
“Oh, very for-real.” She was up off the bed and had his face in her hands before he could say
anything. “Ah, got it, right there.” She patted his cheek and pulled up her shirt again, exposing her
midriff. “Mine’s hotter. Feel.”
Her belly button was only inches away from his nose. Cody drew back and started to protest as
she grabbed his hand and pressed it against her skin. His discomfort turned to surprise. “I sit
corrected,” he said, extricating himself from her grip. “Yours is hotter.”
“Told you,” she said, plumping down on the bed to stretch out again. “It’s probably the ragweed
and who knows what else in the air. Man, I hate KC this time of year.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“I’m from here.” She laughed at his surprised expression. “You couldn’t tell?”
“How could I? We just met.”
“I knew you weren’t from around here, soon as I saw you. No antihistamines.”
He chuckled a bit ruefully. “I thought I was dying of a head cold I caught on the plane.”
 She started to channel surf again, then changed her mind and shut the TV off. “If you get cold
symptoms a lot when you fly, it’s probably an allergy.”
“Oh?” He gave a short skeptical laugh. “Is there a lot of ragweed on airplanes?”
She shrugged. “Lots of other stuff—mold, dust, newsprint. Somebody’s cheap cologne. Even
expensive cologne.”
“Newsprint?”
“Believe it or leave it. You know how if something exists, there’s porn of it? Well, there’s also
someone allergic to it.”
“Newsprint,” Cody said again, still skeptical.
“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.” LaDene raised one hand solemnly, then let it fall. “Okay, that was fun.
Now whaddaya wanna do?”
Cody leaned over and scooped the remote control up so he could turn the TV back on, mainly to
forestall the possibility of her wanting to compare hotspots again. The screen lit up to show a dark-
haired, olive-skinned woman speaking directly to the camera with an earnest sincerity that made his
own brow furrow in sympathy.
“. . . found flayed and burned in a midtown Kansas City, Missouri, parking garage have now
positively been identified as August Fiore, AKA Little Augie Flowers, fifty-one, and Coral Oh,
twenty-nine, of Liberty, Missouri. Fiore went missing two weeks ago from an FBI safe house where
he was being held pending the start of the trial of Carmine Nesparini on racketeering charges. The
FBI has steadfastly refused to comment on allegations that Fiore was Nesparini’s personal ‘master
key’ but sources close to the investigation say that Fiore’s cooperation would have given authorities
an unprecedented level of access to mob records.
“Fiore’s attorneys refused to comment, except to say that they were unaware of any escape plans
and had no knowledge of Fiore’s whereabouts. Whether Fiore left the safe house voluntarily may
never be known. FBI technicians are still working on the sabotaged surveillance system but experts
believe there is little chance they can salvage enough data to be useful.
“Coral Oh’s connection to Fiore still has not been established. Oh worked for the Kansas
City Convention Bureau for fifteen years as an event coordinator, for the last three in a supervisory
position. Coworkers described her as intelligent and well-liked. She was last seen ten days ago in
her office by two of her subordinates, who had been working late with her.”
The woman was suddenly replaced by a video of a very young man who looked as if he hadn’t
slept for at least that long. The slightly wobbly graphic at the bottom of the screen said he
was Akule Velasquez. “She told us to go home, she’d finish up,” he said in a husky voice to
someone just off-camera to the left. “We’d’ve stayed but she was all—” he made small shooing
gestures with both hands. “‘No, get outa here, I’ll finish, bring me some fancy coffee tomorrow.’
She was like that. I tried to stay anyway but she kept telling me no. I wish I hadn’t listened.”
The woman in the studio reappeared, looking more earnest and sincere than ever. “The mayor’s
office issued a statement saying that this unfortunate and tragic incident should not overshadow the
fact that criminal activity in the area has been steadily declining for the past twelve months thanks
to new policing initiatives—”
LaDene snatched the remote out of his hand and turned off the TV. “Well, that wasn’t fun. Now
what do you wanna do?”
“Hey, I was watching that.” Cody reached for the remote but she threw it across the room where
it bounced off the wall and fell neatly into a small wastebasket.
“She shoots, she scores! A three-pointer, the crowd goes wild!” LaDene made crowd noises as
he stalked over to retrieve the control. The impact had knocked the batteries out and it took him two
tries to put them back in properly. “Oh, come on. What do you wanna scare the shit out of yourself
for?”
But the news had moved on; now a man was standing near the edge of an empty swimming
pool, blinking in bright sunlight as he talked about levels of chlorine. “Oh, well.” Cody dropped the
remote on the bed and sat down on the chair by the desk again. “I wasn’t trying to scare myself.”
“Who were you trying to scare—me?”
 “No. I just want to pay attention.”
“Set a news alert on your phone.” She was channel surfing again. “It’s probably all bullshit
anyway. ‘Little Augie Flowers,’ for God’s sake. Who goes around calling themselves ‘Little Augie
Flowers’? For a minute there, I thought they were talking about some old Grand Theft Auto module.
‘Gay Tony Meets Little Augie Flowers, bullets will fly, heads will roll!’ Oh, hey, I love this!” she
added, sitting up suddenly.
Cody barely had to look at the screen to know what it was. “I’ve seen it.” He rested an elbow on
the desk and cupped his face in his hand. The hotspot was still there. “Several times.”
“So have I but I like to watch it whenever it’s on. That guy’s so cool.”
“He is?” If he didn’t leave the goddam hotspot alone, he told himself, it was never going to fade.
He shifted so he was leaning the upper part of his cheek against his hand; as if it had a will of its
own, his thumb slid down to feel his jawline. Annoyed with himself, he straightened up, grabbed the
TV listings off the desk, and paged through them without seeing anything.
“Okay, he’s all wrong and he probably knew it,” LaDene was saying. She punched the pillows
behind her into a more supportive position for her lower back and casually folded her legs into a
half-lotus, making Cody wince. “But so what? The whole movie’s wrong.”
“Well, it’s a pretty old movie,” he said, shrugging.
“Not that old. Not ancient.”
“No, but BCI didn’t even exist when this came out and people were still using floppy disks. This
big.” He held his hands three feet apart. She gave him a Look and he moved them so they were only
a foot apart. “Okay, this big. TVs were dumb terminals and a cloud was a fluffy white thing in the
sky. So the idea of people giving up memories to store data in their brains—”
LaDene waved one hand dismissively. “I was referring to the cell phones.”
He frowned. “What cell phones?”
“Exactly!” She laughed. “How the hell did they miss cell phones?”
As if on cue, there was a sound like a ray gun in a sci-fi movie and the ring on her right hand lit
up with tiny flashing lights. She cocked her head, listening, then bounced off the bed. “My ride’s
here. See you around—” Her grin was sheepish.
“Cody,” he said.
“Right.” She paused, one eyebrow raised, the other down low, somethingCody had never been
able to manage no matter how hard he’d tried. “That’s really your name.”
“LaDene’s really yours?” he said evenly.
“I grew up in Tonganoxie, Kansas. Of course it’s really my name.”
The two statements seemed unrelated to him but he nodded anyway. She pulled her suitcase out
of the closet, extended the handle, and then paused again, one hand on the doorknob. “Where
are you from?”
“I used to know but I rented that out for a database backup.”
He heard her laughing all the way down the hall.
-
He ate alone in the dining room. The waitress gave him a table by a window that made the most
of the hotel’s location atop a rocky promontory, so he could enjoy his chicken Caesar salad with a
scenic view of three other hotels and the six-lane highway running between them.
While it may not have been classic postcard material, he had to admit the view was actually
rather nice. Kansas wasn’t as flat as most people seemed to think, at least not in this locale. Here the
landscape was gently rolling, punctuated by flat stretches usually occupied by malls or apartment
complexes. In the distance, he could see the top of a mall that had to be the size of an
airplane hangar and, not far from that, a crane surrounded by a framework suggesting future
apartments or condos.
 But it was the highway that drew his eye more than anything. He couldn’t remember the last
time he had seen so many private cars. Well, the travel agent had told him this was one of the last
bastions of the autonomous commuter. Cody couldn’t imagine what it was like to spend an hour or
more of every weekday driving. He’d had a license himself once, but only briefly. After it had
expired, he hadn’t bothered renewing it and didn’t miss it.
Perhaps if he were driving now, he’d be too busy to keep worrying at that stupid hotspot.
Annoyed with himself, he pulled the complimentary library up on the table-top and checked out the
local newspaper.
The waitress tried to talk him into dessert every time she refilled his iced tea. After his third
glass, he swiped his keycard through the table-top reader, left an overly generous cash tip, and went
back up to the room. It seemed a lot emptier now that LaDene was gone. Even the pillows she had
piled against the headboard looked forlorn. He hadn’t been thrilled to find her there when he’d
checked in. She had apologised profusely—some kind of travel-plan fiasco. Having been through a
few of those himself, he was sympathetic. As it turned out, she’d been good company—better than
he’d realised. His newly-recovered privacy felt lonely.
He stretched out in the place where she had been and put the TV on again. It was only one night,
and as LaDene had pointed out, this was a higher-end budget hotel. The complimentary coffee
service was a drip pot with pouches of a gourmet blend rather than merely a kettle and two
envelopes of instant. The minibar was well stocked with a wide variety of refreshments and if all of
it cost ten times what it would in a grocery store, at least the cans of mixed nuts were a bit larger
than average.
And then there was the television. Twenty channels including sports and movies, not counting
the on-demand you had to pay extra for. Most places didn’t offer half that. Maybe it was their way
of compensating people like him, who were stuck there without a car.
Although that wasn’t quite true. A chat with the desk clerk had revealed that they were less than
a mile away from what she referred to as a shopping village, which he quickly figured out was a
clever euphemism for strip mall. It wasn’t much, she’d said in a politely cautioning tone meant to
discourage any ideas of a foray on foot—a discount electronics outlet, a hardware store, an indoor
playground, and three fast-food joints. Cody decided he could live without seeing it.
“Good choice,” the clerk had said approvingly. “Because you’d be taking your life in your hands
—no sidewalks.”
“No sidewalks where?” he’d asked, puzzled.
“Between here and the shopping village.”
“Then where do people walk?”
“They don’t. People have to drive to get out here. They park, do whatever they came to do, then
drive home again. I mean, you don’t walk on the interstate, either.”
Cody had been tempted to ask if she ever went for walks herself and if so, where, but decided
against it. She was twenty-two at most, about to go from merely young and pretty to eye-catching as
the last of her adolescent puppy-fat disappeared. She might have thought he was hitting on her and
if he were honest, he might have had a hard time denying it.
He found a 24-hour news channel, turned the volume down to a murmur, and then used the
remote to shut off the lights.
-
The next thing he knew, someone was sitting on his chest.
He could see nothing in the dark except a darker shadow looming over him, blocking out the
flickering light from the television. He tried to yell but his mouth refused to open and he only made
a sort of high-pitched grunt. Something pressed hard against his windpipe as whoever had him
pinned bent over to speak close to his ear.
“You want to lie very still and not make a sound,” said a male voice, just above a
whisper. “Then do exactly what I tell you. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not here to hurt you. But I
will if I have to.”
 His heart was beating hard and fast, as if it were trying to pound its way out of his chest. The
pressure on his windpipe eased but didn’t go away entirely. He swallowed, wincing.
As the man straightened up, Cody made out long greying hair, possibly tied back, and thick-
framed glasses. “First, don’t try to open your mouth. You’re short-circuited and you’ll only give
yourself a headache. Once I know you’re gonna behave yourself, I’ll consider letting you chew
gum.”
He tried to make a conciliatory noise; the pressure on his windpipe increased again.
“I said, don’t make a sound.”
Cody sucked air through his nose, feeling himself jerk helplessly as his body fought to cough
even though his mouth wouldn’t open. His throat clenched, knotted, and tried to turn itself inside
out. Then all at once, his mouth did open, just long enough for him to let out a few explosive
coughs before his jaw snapped shut again.
“Better?”
Cody nodded, breathing in hungrily through his nose.
“You understand now to do exactly what I say?”
He nodded again.
“After I let you up, you’re gonna change your clothes. Then you’ll be taken out of here in a
wheelchair. You’re gonna sit quiet and stare at your lap. You’re not gonna look up. If anyone speaks
to you, you’ll act like you didn’t hear anything. There’s a van waiting out front. You’ll be put into it,
chair and all, and we’ll drive away.
“Now, it’s important you remember everything I just said and do exactly that because an
associate of mine is having a chat with the night clerk. Nice older man, a grandfather, in fact. If,
while we pass through the lobby, he should get the idea that you need help, my associate will hurt
him, badly. Unlike me, my associate doesn’t mind hurting anyone. You don’t want to harm innocent
bystanders, do you.”
Cody shook his head from side to side.
“Very good. Now, when I let you up, you’re going to strip naked and put on what I’ve brought
for you.”
The man climbed off him and stood back. Cody moved more slowly as he slid over to the edge
of the bed and began to unbutton his shirt with shaky fingers.
“A little faster, please,” the man said, staring at the television with his arms folded. Cody wanted
to comply but he was so unsteady he was off-balance even sitting down. He shoved his trousers
down, extricating his ankles one at a time, socks and all. Next to him was a small neat pile of
clothing folded into squares. Trembling, he picked up the top item; it was a hospital gown.
“Ties in back,” the man said, casually matter-of-fact, as if he were remarking on the weather. He
never looked away from the television.
Cody couldn’t have tied his shoelaces. He decided it didn’t matter; the second item was a
bathrobe. He put it on sitting down, then pushed himself carefully to his feet.
The man turned from the television to give him an up-and-down. “I told you to
strip naked. Lose the tighty-whiteys.”
Cody fell over on the bed in the rush to gets his shorts off. The man waited with a put-upon air
till he was done, then took hold of his upper arm and pulled him up. Cody winced; his grip was
unnaturally strong, well out of proportion for a slight, older man almost a head shorter than he was.
The man waiting in the hallway with the wheelchair was a lot taller and huskier, dressed in a
dark blue coverall; there was a patch on his left breast pocket showing a picture of a first-aid kit and
the words County EMS. He said nothing as Cody stumbled over the footrests and fell into the seat.
The frame was lightweight and all the wheels were small. The grey-haired man bent over him and
Cody saw he was wearing the same uniform.
 “You remember what I told you,” he said and Cody noticed how little his rather pasty face
moved, as if he’d Botoxed it into submission. And out here, up close and personal in much brighter
light, the grey hair looked like a wig, ponytail and all. “Think of that poor man’s family. Whether he
goes home when his shift is over is all down to you.” He stared into Cody’s eyes as if he expected to
see some response there, then chuckled and patted his cheek. “And seriously, relax your jaw. I’m
not kidding about the headache.” Cody started to rub the side of his face but the man caught his
hand and put it firmly in his lap. “You don’t move till we’re out of here. Can you manage that or
should I help you?”
Cody bowed his head.
“By George, I think he’s got it.”
Despite the carpeting, the ride was bumpy—the chair had a wobbly wheel, like every
supermarket shopping cart Cody had ever used. But he stared fixedly at the slightly threadbare
material covering his knees as they went down in the elevator. When they reached the lobby, he
bowed his head a little more and squeezed his eyes shut, afraid they’d kill the desk clerk anyway.
Having seen their faces, he’d be able to give a description to the police, which didn’t bode well for
his survival.
Or for his own.
The thought was a cold electric shock running down his back as the automatic doors hummed
open in front of him. He heard the desk clerk tell someone to have a good night and a woman
responded I surely will, you too! in a cheerful, friendly tone.
Then he was outside, rattling toward a white van with the same County EMS painted on the
open side door. A tall woman waited beside a wheelchair lift.
-
Cody had no idea how long they had been on the road before the grey-haired man reached over
and touched something to a spot under his cheekbone near the hinge of his jaw. He was in the
middle of a huge yawn almost before it registered on him that he could open his mouth again. The
muscles on either side of his face felt overworked and sore, including some he had never actually
known were there. He worked his jaw for a while, knowing the grey-haired man was watching him
and trying not to care.
He was sitting in a fold-down seat on Cody’s right, facing backwards. The husky guy had
anchored the wheelchair against a padded backstop and strapped him in before taking the seat on his
left. The tall woman was up front, next to the driver. The woman who had been talking to the night
clerk was behind him, along with at least one other person he had neither seen nor heard and who
apparently wanted to keep it that way. Unbidden, the idea came tohim that it was LaDene; he put it
quickly out of his mind. Paranoia wasn’t going to help.
Cody rested his head against the backstop and closed his eyes, wondering if he actually could go
to sleep. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t anything else he could do. But his mind was as alert
as if he were in the middle of a busy day, which he supposed he was. Pretending to be asleep was a
waste of time, thanks to the hospital gown; he figured they’d souped it up to where it could
practically read his mood.
He opened his eyes and saw the grey-haired man watching him. Almost reflexively, he was
overwhelmed by another huge yawn.
“You know the situation,” the grey-haired man said, when his yawn had passed.
Cody nodded. “And you know I don’t know anything.”
“You don’t have to,” the man said.
“I’m a courier,” Cody added. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t access anything—”
“We know,” the other man said, sounding short.
“—I have no knowledge of the quantity or nature of any data—”
“Yes, we’re aware—”
“—nor am I responsible if any attempts at access cause damage, in whole or in part, to that data
or any hardware or software—”
“We already know that—” He was openly impatient now.
 “—my safe return cannot not indemnify any party against criminal charges of kidnapping and
false imprisonment,” Cody went on, trying not to enjoy the man’s irritation too much as he talked
over him, “which are brought by the state and not by companies or individuals.” He said the last
couple of words through another yawn. “Whew, excuse me. I’m obligated by the terms of my
employment to apprise you of those facts. I can also write it all down for you and sign it.”
The man on his left perked up. “Seriously? Like, if you don’t say all that, they’d fire you?”
Cody nodded. The man thought it over for a second. “What if we all claimed you didn’t?”
“Shut up,” the grey-haired man said, raising his voice.
Cody pretended not to hear. “I’d tell them I did.”
“And they’d just believe you?”
“I’m level-four bonded,” Cody replied. “On the job, I’m permanently under oath. If I lie, it’s
perjury.”
“Shut your face or I’ll shut it for you,” said the grey-haired man, triggering Cody’s urge to yawn
again. The man waited till he was done, then added: “Anything else in the way of legal disclaimers?
Health warnings? Household hints?”
Cody gave his head a quick shake and dropped his gaze to his lap. They traveled in silence for
some unmeasured amount of time. Abruptly, the man on his left straightened up. “I just can’t get my
head around anyone just taking this guy’s word about anything,” he blurted.
“When we get where we’re going, you can look it up on Wikipedia,” the grey-haired man said
acidly. “Last warning—shut your mouth.”
Cody hardly dared to look up after that; whenever he did, the grey-haired man always seemed to
be watching him. He stared into the darkness, listening to the thrum of the tires and air rushing past.
No one said anything about a rest stop and he doubted there was any point in asking—the grey-
haired guy would probably offer him a Coke bottle. He shifted in the chair and concentrated on
making himself relax. He had said what he had to say; his best course of action now was to avoid
further antagonising the grey-haired man.
It was just starting to grow lighter outside when he finally dozed off.
-
He woke from an unpleasant dream of many hands grabbing at him to find the big man
unstrapping the chair while the grey-haired man poked his shoulder, telling him over and over to
wake up. Exhaustion overwhelmed him, weighed him down so that just getting his eyes open was a
major effort and when he finally did, they wouldn’t stay open for longer than half a second. Then he
was wheeled onto the lift and the humid heat that had not yet permeated the van’s still-cool interior
hit him in the face and seemed to suck all the air from his lungs.
Groggy, almost gasping, he noticed the van was now green and brown, bearing the logo of a
large national rental company. More unsettling was seeing that they were in a parking garage. The
grey-haired man leaned over him, looking pastier and more impassive than ever. “This will be less
unpleasant if we don’t have to force you. Not that it’s a party. But if I have to short your circuits,
it’ll only be more of an ordeal.”
Cody wasn’t sure how to respond or even if he should.
“Good,” the man said and made a let’s-go gesture at the guy pushing his wheelchair.
The escort surrounding him blocked his view of everything that wasn’t straight ahead but he
saw enough to know it was definitely underground and it was mostly empty. Which didn’t mean
anything, he told himself. The country was lousy with underground parking garages, it was just a
coincidence he’d seen that item on the news. LaDene had been right, he’d just been scaring himself.
He wasn’t a mobster, he was a courier, just a goddam courier. People didn’t go around killing
couriers. Nobody wanted that kind of trouble, the couriers’ union was too well-connected and too
powerful.
 A car engine started suddenly and the sound made him jump. The grey-haired man didn’t even
glance at him but the others moved in a little closer,hiding him from view. They stayed close, even
after he heard the car pass, until they reached a bank of elevators. One was roped off with a sign
that said it was out of service. The grey-haired man pressed the call button and twisted; it popped
open on a hinge and he inserted a plain metal key.
The elevator doors opened and Cody caught a strong whiff of antiseptic mixed with something
flowery. His stomach turned over as they rolled him into the car, facing the back so he couldn’t see
what floor they were going to. There was no voice announcement or even a chime but he could
make out a series of faint, airy thumps—possibly just the motor running after a long period of
disuse but Cody counted them anyway, noting when the air quality changed from rain forest to
refrigerated, and estimated they stopped on the fourteenth or fifteenth floor.
The place looked like a fancy clinic, right down to the immaculate receptionist at the
immaculate, shiny white desk. The grey-haired man gave her a brisk wave as he strode past,
walking very quickly now as he led the way through a maze of corridors to a room with a gurney
and the machine they were going to use on him.
“Take your robe off and get comfortable,” the grey-haired man said, jerking a thumb at the
gurney.
Cody obeyed, a bit surprised at how quickly everyone else had vanished, leaving him alone with
the man. He held onto the robe, turning it sideways to use like a blanket. “You mind? I’m kinda
cold.”
“Already?” The man was doing something with the machine; he gave a small, humourless
laugh. “Maybe we should get you some mitts and booties.”
“You could turn down the air conditioning,” Cody said.
No answer. Three people in white uniforms came in with a cart. Cody settled down with a sigh
of resignation and closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the cannulas going in.
-
Setting up seemed to take forever, although as far as he could tell, the hardware was up-to-date
and they were all competent enough. Whoever had put the cannulas in his arm and leg was
genuinely talented; it had been almost painless. The blood-pressure cuff on his other arm was
actually more uncomfortable. He didn’t know why they needed that anyway, when the hospital
gown would tell them whatever they needed to know about his vitals. But he supposed under the
circumstances they wanted both a belt and suspenders. They even made a business of verifying his
blood type and his DNA before they finally began the process of filtering his blood.
Once they got going, he felt a little light-headed, as always, and colder than usual. He curled up
as much as he could, huddling under the robe. There was very little conversation, all too low for
him to make out; no one spoke to him. Eventually, he dozed off, mostly from boredom, and woke to
find a pair of woolly socks on his feet. He didn’t really feel any warmer but he was touched by the
gesture all the same.
Just for something to do, he tried to guess who had done it, watching them surreptitiously as
they moved around, checking readouts from him, from the machine, from his blood. The black
woman with shoulder-length braids looked like she could have been someone’s mother; if so, it was
someone very young. Parents of young children were usually good for a kind deed. Or it might have
been the Chinese guy who, like Cody, seemed to be in his late thirties.
He couldn’t decide about the older black woman. She checked his vitals more often than anyone
else but that didn’t necessarily mean she was more concerned about his welfare. For all he knew, the
socks had come from old Grey Ponytail himself. Hadn’t he mentioned something about booties
before they’d even started? Or it was one of the other people he’d barely glimpsed, busily working
with his blood somewhere behind him. Maybe between separating blood cells from plasma and
pumping it back into him, someone had paused to think he might be cold.
 It went on for hours. Cody dozed, woke, dozed again. His stomach growled and subsided as
hunger pangs threatened to turn into queasiness. How much longer, he wondered, irritable with
boredom and lack of food. If they didn’t call a halt soon, he was going to have some kind of major
blood-sugar episode.
Almost as if he’d caught something of Cody’s thoughts, the grey-haired man tapped him on the
shoulder. “Are you supposed to eat something? Somethingin particular,” he added, a bit impatiently.
“Food,” Cody said, not caring how petulant he sounded.
“Not bread or sugar?”
“Just food. I don’t suppose you’ll give me any.”
“What if we tried insulin instead?” There was an edge in the man’s voice. In his peripheral
vision, Cody saw the younger woman and the Chinese guy look up from a tablet they’d been
studying together, obviously startled.
“Risky,” Cody said. “I’m not diabetic. But you knew that.”
The man gazed at him for some unmeasured period of time. He was worn out, tried and
frustrated, Cody realised with a surge of spiteful joy; they all were but him most of all, because he
was on the hook for whatever went wrong.
Abruptly, he blew out an exasperated breath and turned away. “We can’t keep him any longer.
Shut it down, give him lunch, and let’s get him out of here.”
-
Lunch turned out to be a can of nutrient with a straw; Cody was too hungry to feel more than a
vague, momentary disappointment. The grey-haired man sat and glared at him. Hoping Cody would
give up the goods somehow at the last minute? Or just being a sore loser?
“How old are you?” the man asked suddenly.
Cody paused and wiped his mouth. Considering how long they’d run his blood, he must have
known, and a lot more besides. “Thirty-seven. Why?”
“Don’t you think that’s a little old to be a decoy?”
“I’m a courier.” He went back to the drink.
“You’re a decoy. A zero. A nothing. Less than nothing.”
Cody had no response for that; he kept drinking
“The one that sold you out, she was probably the real courier. Wasn’t she?”
“Who?” But even as he asked, he knew. Her name was on the tip of his tongue but he managed
not to say it aloud.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You’re just—what? A day labourer who doesn’t mind needles and won’t
faint at the sight of blood? She’s carrying. LaVerne or LaRue, whatever her name is.”
Cody pressed his lips together briefly. Whether the guy was telling the truth or fishing for a
keyword, it wouldn’t hurt not to give it to him. “Roughly ten percent of the population faints at the
sight of blood,” he said chattily. “It’s a physical reaction, they can’t help it. Nothing to do with their
character or anything.”
“Thank you for that piece of enlightenment.” Despite his obvious irritation, his face was more
impassive than ever, not to mention pastier. Now there were small flakes of what looked like dry
skin around the man’s hairline. The disguise was starting to break down, the wig parting company
with the silicone mask. Everything probably should have been removed hours ago but the guy had
kept nursing it along with touch-ups. Because he’d expected it would all by over by now, data
extracted and delivered, payment collected and he’d be on his way to his next case, already
forgetting what Cody looked like.
Instead he was sitting in a small, cold room with nothing to show for his effort but a spray-on
about to peel off his face and nothing to look forward to except the displeasure of whoever he was
working for, the loss of his fee, and a crew he had to pay anyway.
Cody finished the drink and set the empty can down beside him on the gurney. Well, that wasn’t
fun. Whaddaya wanna do next?
It was the last thought he had for a while.
-
 Sounds nudged him gradually toward awareness, until he understood the voices and various
other noises were real, not lingering fragments of dreams, or dream-like flashes from lost hours,
possibly days. Eyes still closed, he rolled over, turning his face away from the bright light overhead
and smelled clean sheets, along with alcohol, powder, and cleanser. Hospital emergency room, he
thought with cautious relief; there were worse places to wake up.
His memory was patchy but he knew the basics of what had happened. As soon as his captors
had been sure they wouldn’t find anything in his blood, they no longer had to worry about
contamination and dosed Cody’s so-called lunch. Pretty heavily, if the lead-balloon sensation in
his head was any indication. Just by way of kicking his ass for having nothing of value.
Once the lunch had taken effect, they had dressed him up and dumped him someplace where he
could sleepwalk indefinitely without attracting attention. Like, say, a large mall. Or a shopping
village; one with a multi-screen cineplex. Cody wondered how long he had been aimlessly roaming
before anyone noticed something odd about him. There were all kinds of stories. Everybody in the
union knew one about a courier who had woken up to find she’d wandered into a house and spent
five days with people who’d thought she was a long-lost relative. Cody suspected that one was
apocryphal.
-
Two days later, he was in a DC-area suburb, although he wasn’t sure exactly which state. State-
line ambiguity was getting to be a habit with him.
“How’d you like Oklahoma City?” asked the medic from where she sat at the lighting panel.
She was a slightly plump woman with one brown eye and one blue eye; the difference was made
more noticeable by the port-wine stain covering that side of her face from hairline to the corner of
her mouth.
“I only saw a parking garage, a clinic, and part of a hospital.” Cody finishedundressing and
stood with his back to the plain white wall. “Ready when you are.”
“Ah, you’ve done this before. I don’t even have to tell you to close your eyes and hold perfectly
still.”
He took a breath and held it. Sometimes he imagined he could sense the UV light change as the
scanning line traveled over his body. Years ago, when he had first become a courier, they’d showed
him a video of himself being scanned. He’d thought he’d looked like a fantasy creature—one of
Lewis Carroll’s fabulous monsters that had wandered out of the looking glass into a high-tech lab.
Blaschko’s Lines, a doctor had told him, years ago. Only visible under certain kinds of UV light.
He’d done research on his own, wondered about lesions or the possibility of waking up one
morning to find himself permanently piebald. He would dream that the lines running up and down
his arms and legs, traveling in waves on his torso, looping on his back, swirling all over his head
would appear spontaneously and without warning in normal light; sometimes they were permanent.
Other times, they’d flash on and off like a warning light.
He hadn’t had that kind of anxiety dream in a long time. They’d faded away with the hotspots.
Maybe now they were both coming back.
“Done,” the medic called.
Relieved, Cody took a deep breath and stepped away from the wall to get dressed again. The
medic asked his permission before she swabbed the inside of his cheek, and again before scraping a
few skin cells from his lower back, his hip, and his knee. He was immensely grateful for the
courtesy. It was always nice when someone treated a courier like a human being in a demanding
profession rather than merely a meat-bag for data.
The guy who escorted him to his room for the night was wearing the standard gopher attire—a
multi-pocketed vest over plain T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes—but had a military bearing that he
didn’t even try to hide. Cody wasn’t surprised to find someone waiting for him when he got there.
It had been a while since the last sales pitch.
 “We’re all very glad to have you back safe.” The woman in the swivel chair by the desk was
dark-haired and dark-skinned and her voice had the faint but unmistakable lilt that Hindi speakers
never lost completely. He had seen her before a few times, dressed as she was now in a black jacket
and trousers, but only in passing. She was one of those people who gave the impression of being
taller because of the way she carried herself. Not military-style like his friend now standing at
obvious parade rest between himself and the door, just with authority. In Charge. The touches of
grey in her hair suggested she was older than he was, though he couldn’t have said how much—
more than ten, less than thirty.
“I’m glad to be back,” he said, feeling a little awkward as he stood in front of her. She gestured
for him to sit down on the bed, the only other furniture in the room, unless you counted the forty-
inch screen in the wall.
“You automatically get a week of recuperation but we’ll sign off on two or even three.” She
shrugged. “Or four.”
“Thank you.”
“This wasn’t the first time for you, was it.”
As if she didn’t know, he thought, careful to keep a straight face. Then he realised she was
actually waiting for an answer. “No,” he said quickly. “It wasn’t.”
“I hope that it wasn’t especially bad for you.”
He shook his head. His memory was still quite spotty—his clearest recollection was of an older
man with a ponytail and having to lie very still in a cold room while his blood was pumped out of
his body and back in again. He also had the idea that there had been someone in the hotel room with
him before he’d been kidnapped but that didn’t seem likely. Considering how heavily he’d been
drugged, he was probably lucky he still remembered his childhood.
Unless I rented it out for a database. Another of those left-field thoughts that had been popping
into his head for the last few days. They’d probably meant something once.
“. . . sure you will be happy to know that your kidnappers came away with nothing,” the woman
was saying, “thanks to your unique . . . ah, condition.”
He smiled a little. “I never thought of being a chimera as a condition like, oh, excessive
perspiration. Or psoriasis.”
“It does make you uniquely suited for deep encryption. Even if your kidnappers had thought to
use your DNA to activate your blood, they wouldn’t know you have more than one kind of DNA,
much less that they needed to scan you under UV for the entire key.”
His kidnappers; the way she said it made it sound almost as if they belonged to him in some
way. Or like they were his personal problem—hiscondition.
“Eventually, that’ll occur to someone. If someone else doesn’t sell it to them first,” he added.
The memory of a woman’s name, LaRue or LaDene, and an old movie flickered in his brain and
was gone.
“Such optimism.” She gave a short laugh. “The average mere can’t afford to rent a full
sequencer, let alone personnel to run it who would be smart enough to figure out you had two kinds
of DNA, or that they’d need both for decryption.” She gave another, slightly heartier laugh.
“Contrary to what you may have heard, the evil genius is mostly mythical. Nobody turns to crime
because of their towering intellect.
“But that’s neither here nor there. We still want you to work solely for us. I know that someone
has made you this offer before—a few times, yes? As an employee, you would be paid substantially
more, along with bonuses for crisis situations—”
“‘Crisis situations?’ Is that anything like ‘hazardous duty’?”
She barely hesitated as she acknowledged his interruption. “Occupational benefits are also quite
generous. Health coverage, vacation time, paternity leave—”
“Dental?”
Now she paused to give him a look. “And optical. Even a clothing allowance.”
He was tempted to comment on how she had used hers but decided not to get personal.
 “We can also be very flexible in terms of your cover,” she went on. “Some sort of independent,
low-key profession, like an accountant or a transcriber or—” She floundered suddenly and he could
tell it wasn’t something that happened to her very often.
“Software engineer,” he suggested, then smiled sheepishly. “Kidding.”
“That could work, as long as it’s something nice and ordinary. Wedding albums, family albums,
baby pictures, that sort of thing—”
“I really was kidding,” he said. “Software mystifies me.”
“You could even be semiretired—”
“No.” He shook his head, apologetic but firm. “If I go to work for you, I’m no longer a courier.
I’m a government employee in a highly sensitive area under military jurisdiction. Once I lose my
union membership, all bets are off. All I have is you.”
“That’s quite a lot,” the woman said reprovingly. “You have no idea how much.”
Actually, I do, he thought at her, but if I’m flayed and hung up in a parking garage, I won’t care
about the cover story. He shook his head again.
“If we take you into the fold, we can tell you more about what you’re doing. Don’t you want to
know—”
“No.” It came out louder and more emphatic than he’d intended but he wasn’t sorry. “I don’t.
You’ve got me this much. I agreed to cooperate because I don’t need to be in the fold to be an
encryption key. I’ll keep the secret but I don’t want to be the secret.”
The woman shook her head. “Please. You went over that line a long time ago.”
“Not quite,” he insisted. “My body, yes. But not me.”
She stood up, stretching a little. “We’ll talk again. This government doesn’t give up that easily.”
“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows. “Which government is that, anyway?”
The question caught her off guard and for a moment she stared at him, open-mouthed. Then she
threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, very good,” she said, as the man opened the door for her.
“Very, very good.” She started to leave, then hesitated. “And that’s really your name: Cody.”
“Yeah. My name’s really Cody.” Something flickered in his memory again but it was gone
before he could think about it. He lay down on the bed and found the remote under one of the
pillows.
“Well, that was fun,” he said, to no one and to whatever bugs might be listening, and turned on
the TV. “Now whaddaya wanna do?”
-
You Never Know
-
Standing in the doorway of the curio shop, Dov shook his head. “Can’t believe it.”
Kitty looked up from the box of prints she’d been flicking through for the past ten minutes, her
dark brown forehead wrinkling slightly. “Something to disbelieve in this day and age? I’m
shocked.”
Dov jerked his grizzled chin at the record store across the street. “They’ve hired another
deckhand for the Titanic.”
“I told you, Napster’s no match for the combined might of the music industry,” Kitty said as she
turned to look. A young girl was at work on the record store’s front window with a squeegee,
sponge, and bucket while another employee on the other side of the glass clowned around, pointing
at spots she had supposedly missed. The girl showily ignored him as she slopped soapy water onto
the glass in wide arcs. “Oh, Kee-rist! What is she, eight?”
Dov chuckled. “Fourteen, give or take a few weeks.”
“Bullshit. My new gynaecologist? He’s fourteen. She’s barely out of third grade.”
“You say that about everyone,” Dov said, laughing some more.
 “Everyone but you.” Kitty turned back to the prints. “And me.” She started over at the first print
and it seemed to Dov that she was looking at each one a bit longer this time. Kitty was the most
regular of the regular customers. She came every day without fail—well, every day that he was
there—to browse through the prints in the box on the trestle table outside under the awning. Dov
could usually count on seeing her twice a day, occasionally three times, and once in a great while,
four or more. She didn’t always buy a print but in the two years Dov had been managing the store,
he had never known her to buy anything else.
This was her first visit of the day, either a late break or an early lunch, and she had come over
from St. Vincent’s in such a hurry that she still had her stethoscope slung around her neck; not the
most eye-catching accessory on the lower east side of Manhattan.
“Any sign of Big Brother?” she asked him.
“Not yet. The owners said sometime in the next two weeks. That could be any time between this
afternoon and Labor Day.”
Kitty flicked an amused glance at him. “Now, now—don’t go wishing away the summer.”
Dov didn’t answer. After the Fourth of July holiday, time turned to amber. Then all at once, it
was getting dark indecently early and there was a cold bite in the air, and December was slipping
away like it had somewhere better to go and couldn’t wait to get there.
The security system was supposed to be in by then. Maybe if he rewound the tapes, it would
slow things up a little.
Which was probably the most absurd idea he’d had lately, he thought. Although not much more
absurd than installing a camera surveillance system in a one-room junk shop. ‘Curio shop’ was the
polite name and that was the term on his employee contract but Dov had yet to find anything he’d
have called a curio. Most of the inventory came from estate sales and house removals, or from other
stores that had gone out of business. Except for the stock of cheap souvenirs, and even those were
leftovers, things that hadn’t sold in previous years, junk the owners had picked up for next to
nothing from vendors needing shelf space for the current junk. One third of a wall was given to,
among other things, I Heart NYC snow globes (a perennial favourite), Empire State Building
barometers and pencil sharpeners (also classics in fake bronze), Staten Island Ferry ballpoint pens
with a tiny boat that slid back and forth through some oil in the top half of the barrel, Twin Towers
coffee mugs, lighters, clocks, and shot glasses (For World-Class Doubles!). Very few items had
dates so only a retailer would know they were close-outs. Or connoisseurs of tacky souvenirs. Dov
didn’t doubt such people existed but they had yet to find their way here. When they did, he’d
probably find out he’d sold them something worth $50,000 for thirty cents and the owners would
fire him.
Yeah. Right. His head was full of silly things today. A man in a slightly shredded straw hat
paused to look through the old photos Dov had put out on the table. Unlike the prints, which were
all matted, wrapped in cellophane, and numbered, the photos were loose in an old cardboard box,
unordered and unidentified except for names or short notes on the back –Dad at Sarah’s house
summer 1980; Hamptons Graduation Trip; Uncle Tony and Sally at 6 mos; May 1964. They came
with the second hand stock, stuffed into the packing like an afterthought, the last traces of the end of
an era for someone somewhere. They were priced at a nickel apiece, fifty cents for a dozen but Dov
usually let them go for less, sometimes even giving them away to some of the bigger spenders. He
couldn’t imagine why people would buy old photos of strangers and though he was tempted to ask,
he never did.
“Huh,” Kitty said. She had pulled up one of the prints and was studying it with serious eyes.
After some unmeasured period of time, she showed it to Dov.
Number fifty-four, according to the small white sticker in the upper left corner, was a detailed
drawing of the Manhattan skyline, with water-colour accents. As subject matter, it was
unremarkable—Dov had seen the city rendered in more ways than he could count on paper, cloth,
and skin, and sculpted in almost every medium from Play-Dough to chocolate. Here, however, the
precise, hair-thin ink-line seemed to be one unbroken stroke, the artist not lifting the pen even for
the unreadable scrawl of signature in the lower right corner.
 By contrast, the water-colour was careless, pale daubs here and there. You had to study the thing
for a while to see that the two tallest buildings were actually columns of empty space.
Or were they? Dov took a closer look, then held it at arm’s length before remembering his
reading glasses in his shirt pocket. They didn’t help much. Finally, he handed it back to Kitty. “On
the house.”
Her eyebrows went up again. “Wow, thank you. I feel bad for asking for a bag.”
He fetched one from under the counter inside, one of the white plastic sacks he saved
specifically for her. “I wish I hadn’t seen that,” he said, holding it open for her.
She looped the bag over her wrist. “It’s been there for quite some time, you must have seen it
already.”
“Oh, sure. But then you came along and showed it to me.” His gaze drifted to the record store.
The girl had finished the window and was now dumping the water carefully in the gutter. She
straightened up to go back inside and then paused, her head cocked as though she were listening to
something. Dov heard only the usual chorus of car and truck engines, the sigh and wheeze of buses,
the jackhammers from a block over starting, stopping, starting again, a siren starting to wail and
then cutting off abruptly, an alarm that sounded like a death-ray from a Sci-Fi movie, a passing car
pumping out bass at a volume that suggested the driver was deaf.
The girl went inside and Dov saw that Kitty had been watching him watch her. “Something?” he
asked. “Or did I already miss it?”
She made a see-saw motion with her free hand. “Sometimes you don’t notice what you’ve
noticed until you notice that you didn’t notice at the time.”
An enigma wrapped in a puzzle with a hole in the bottom; he smiled. “You never know, I
guess.”
“You never can tell,” she corrected him and checked the watch pinned to her flowery scrubs.
“Damn, I’m late.”
Dov looked at his own watch. “Are you sure?”
“Excuse me, I will have been late. The domino effect.” Instead of hurrying away, however, she
turned to look at the record store.
“She’ll come over, won’t she.” Dov cupped one elbow and rested his mouth briefly against his
fist before he realised and propped his chin on it instead. “By herself, do you think?”
“That coin is still in the air, hon.” Kitty looked at her watch again. “Damn, now I really do have
to run.”
Dov stared after her, allowing himself a few quiet moments in her wake before it subsided and
the day resumed in whatever form it now had. That was as close as he came to getting his mind
around the concept of wave functions collapsing. Kitty had actually tried to walk him through it
once. He had understood each part in succession but all of it together, not so much.
A young mother pushing a stroller with a sleeping toddler paused to look in the window at
something. Dov moved aside to let her ease the stroller over the threshold without waking the child.
Boy? Girl? He hadn’t looked closely enough. Maybe, he thought as he went back inside, he could
avoid doing so.
Which, in keeping with the apparent theme for the day, was really silly. Kitty would have
laughed and told him that wave function had collapsed elsewhere some time ago with no help from
him. Then he would have asked her—again—about the difference between wave functions that
hadn’t collapsed and those he didn’t know already had, but he wouldn’t have understood the answer
—again. He had been tempted to ask her if any of these wave functions, whatever they really were,
could collapse if there was still someone somewhere who didn’t know it had but it sounded too silly
even just in his mind.
Considering how full of silly things his head was today, this might have been the right time to
ask. He started to pick up the newspaper and then grabbed the novel he’d left next to the register
instead. The paper was full of collapsed wave functions but not as far as he was concerned. Today
he wouldn’t collapse anything if he could possibly avoid it. At his age, the possibilities weren’t
endless so he might as well hang onto as many as he could.
 Of course, that might be more difficult after the cameras were installed.
Now that was Olympic-class silly. He decided to distract himself by changing the window
display. He hoped Kitty might make it back before he went home at six; no such luck. This week, a
tall, skinny guy named McTeer had the evening shift. McTeer was one of a handful of people the
owners had hired just to plug personnel gaps in their various interests. More than that, Dov had no
idea—none of the people who took over for him was given to chitchat and McTeer was practically
mute. Hi or hello was his limit, occasionally hey; other than that, he either shrugged or grunted, and
never at the same time. He wasn’t hostile, he simply wasn’t very responsive, like a stranger in an
elevator or a waiting room. Maybe that was how he saw his job, or at least this particular
assignment, Dov thought, and wondered where McTeer was really going and what he’d be like
when he got there. If he ever did. As Kitty had said in the course of an explanation Dov otherwise
no longer remembered, all take-offs were optional, all landings were mandatory, and all destinations
were guaranteed because everybody had to be somewhere.
-
‘OnWatch—Security & Assurance’ read the large, royal-blue letters on the side of the white van,
in the kind of dignified typeface Dov associated more with a stationer or a printer than a security
company. The woman who climbed out of the cab was dressed in an immaculate sky blue coverall
that seemed to have been made for her. Maybe it had—the name ‘Fabiola’ was embroidered rather
beautifully in dark blue thread over her left breast pocket.
“Not a big space to cover,” she said in a light Spanish accent as she looked around. “But I’ll be
here a while. I’ll have to run some wire, do a little drilling. But don’t worry, that won’t take long
and I’ll put down drop cloths to keep the dust off your stock.”
“In this store, the dust is part of the purchase price,” Dov said.
“Well, at least there’s no food to worry about.” She moved to the centre of the store and looked
around again, more slowly this time, as if she were measuring by eye. Then she turned to him with a
slight frown. “Are you the owner?”
“No, but I can sign any work orders or receipts.”
Her frowned deepened as she gave him the same measuring look. “Funny, I could have sworn
you were the owner.”
“If you need to speak to them, I can get their number –” He started toward the office. He
actually knew all four phone numbers by heart and there was a longer, more detailed contact list in
the register but he wanted to get away from that stare.
“Nah, don’t bother,” she said cheerfully. “I must be thinking of another job. I’m pretty busy
these days. Suddenly everybody wants cameras. Orders are through the roof.”
“Really?” Dov was surprised. “And here’s me thinking Big Brother was still the black sheep of
the family. So to speak.”
“That’s a good one.” The woman grinned at him. “It’s an insurance thing. Burglar alarms aren’t
enough now for a lot of these carriers, they want a beltand suspenders. Besides, when’s the last time
you heard one of those go off and you didn’t think it was a false alarm?”
“I should have known,” Dov said with a small laugh. “I mean, this is a pretty good space but it’s
not ballroom size. There’s not much I can’t see from behind the counter.”
“Well, the cameras’ll catch all that and more, you included.” She leaned toward him, lowering
her voice slightly. “I always remind all the good working people I meet on a job that the moment I
flip the on switch, the only privacy’ll be in the facility. Word to the wise.” She tapped the side of her
nose and winked.
Dov became aware that he had his index finger pressed to his upper lip, covering the scar that
was all but invisible now. Irritated with the old habit, he jammed his hand in his pants pocket.
“Thank you. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Not a thing,” she said. “I’ve done this so many times, I can sleep through it. Just pretend I’m
not here.”
 “Let me know if you change your mind,” he called after her as she went out to the truck. His
hand was already out of his pocket, going for his face again. He put it in his pocket again and went
back to his stool behind the register.
He seldom saw that look of appraisal any more, not like when he was a kid with all the grown-
ups staring at him and exclaiming how good he looked, that surgeon was an artist, you’d
almost never know. Some days, he’d spend every waking hour hiding his mouth behind a book or a
piece of paper or his hand. Till he was thirteen, when pretty Ruth Shapiro had saved him by giving
him his first kiss and declaring he was the best kisser in Hebrew school (maybe the best in public
school, too, but she only kissed the boys in Hebrew school). After that, his self-consciousness had
faded right along with the scar.
Still, once in a great while, he would suddenly become aware of his finger resting against the
area under his nose, hiding not only what was there—a scar he could barely see himself any more—
but also what wasn’t: the two little folds that ran vertically from the base of the nose to the flesh of
the upper lip.
It was called the philtrum; he had looked it up. Most people didn’t seem to know the term or
care what it was, but they all had philtrums. They didn’t seem to notice that he didn’t, not even Ruth
Shapiro, whose full, pouty lips made hers look especially pronounced to him. Apparently it was one
of those things you only missed if you’d never had it.
Someone made a polite, throat-clearing noise and Dov came out of his reverie to see a young
woman standing at the counter with a few dull metal bracelets and a set of salt-and-pepper shakers
shaped like dancing goldfish. He rang them up for her, automatically glancing toward the table
outside. Still no Kitty; past where she usually stood, he could see the OnWatch woman taking boxes
out of the back of the truck and stacking them on a dolly. As she wheeled it into the store, the prints
seemed to catch her eye and, for a moment, Dov thought she was actually going to stop for a look
but she didn’t.
Dov wondered what would have happened if she had and then Kitty had come along. He
remembered something Kitty had told him about waves emphasising each other or cancelling each
other out, depending on how they collided. Then there was another customer waiting to pay for
something else and he put it out of his mind.
The afternoon stream of customers was a bit heavier than usual and just about all of them were
in the mood to buy something, which kept him busy enough that he practically forgot about the
OnWatch woman except when the sound of her drill reminded him. It was a small drill and the noise
wasn’t as loud or as grating as the average power tool. A genteel drill, Dov thought, watching the
woman attach a bracket high up on the wall in the far corner, just below the ceiling. She sat astride
the top of her step-ladder with casual ease, untroubled by the height. A well-balanced individual,
Dov thought. Not to mention tidy—true to her word, she had covered everything immediately
below her, although any dust she’d raised was invisible. The white drop cloths looked as
immaculate as her coverall.
 -
The monitor took up a lot of space on the desk in the office but that didn’t bother him as much
as the black computer tower on the floor underneath. It was just the right size and in the right place
for him to bang his knee on it every time he sat down.
“Pretty clear picture, isn’t it?” the woman said, urging him to be as pleased as she was.
He made himself nod. The display rotated every five seconds among four separate feeds, three
in the store and one on the back wall of the office, just above the door to the tiny employee lav. If he
hadn’t known what he was seeing, he wouldn’t have recognised it. He barely recognised himself
when the office came up on the screen, but then the camera was positioned above and behind him.
The woman looked pretty much the same, though. Some people, the camera loved. They were
photogenic, or telegenic, whatever. Him, not so much, but he still couldn’t see himself all that
clearly –
 He’d been staring at the screen for at least two minutes, he realised suddenly, maybe longer.
Every time the display changed, it sort of blinked, like an eye. Store 1 2 3 4 5, store 2 2 3 4 5, store
3 2 3 4 5, office 1 2 3 4 5; store 1 2 3 4 5, store 2 2 3 4 5, store 3 2 3 4 5, office 1 2 3 4 5. The effect
was both annoying and hypnotic. Like real television—all it needs is a laugh-track, he thought
sourly.
“Is there something wrong?” the woman asked, concerned now.
“Oh, no, not at all,” he said quickly. He was hiding his lip in the curve between his index finger
and his thumb, as if he were thinking something over. With an effort, he pulled his hand away from
his face to point at the tower. “Why not put that . . . thing, whatever it is, on the desk with the
monitor?”
“This is a very sophisticated system, not in general use yet. We tell clients to keep it out of sight.
Don’t tempt fate, or individuals weak in character.”
Dov gave a short laugh. “Yeah, I guess it would be embarrassing to have to report your security
system stolen.”
The woman’s sidelong glance suggested to Dov that the word jejune was in her vocabulary.
“People don’t always steal. Sometimes they just smash stuff up.”
“True,” Dov admitted, trying not to feel chastened. “But that transmits everything to you,
right?” The woman nodded. “So even if someone did smash it up, you’d have a record of
everything up to the point where it stopped.”
“Yeah. But then there’s the cost of replacing the unit.” The woman grabbed a takeout menu Dov
had left lying on the desk, wrote a figure in the margin and showed it to him. “Will that be Visa,
MasterCard, or Amex?”
Dov blinked, aghast. “That much? But it’s just a computer. Isn’t it?”
“Well...” The woman grimaced. “That’s the simple description. I’d give you the full rundown
but to be honest, I don’t really understand it well enough. I mean, I understand it but –” She looked
around quickly, pointed at the telephone next to the keyboard. “I understand that enough to use it
but don’t ask me to explain how it works. I’m installation—I plug in wires, I hook up cameras, I
adjust the focus and set the time-stamp. I can show you how to re-wind so you can check what
happened two hours ago or last night—it’s not too hard. And here’s the quick-start.” She stood a
small instruction pamphlet to one side, between the keyboard and the monitor. “It’s got all the
instructions you’re gonna forget I told you.”
Dov chuckled politely. “How far back does it go? I mean, how long will it record before it
records over whatever it’s already recorded?” He paused, replaying what he’d just said. “Did that
make sense?”
The woman laughed. “Yeah, I gotcha. It’s unlikely you’ll ever need anything beyond the
previous twenty-four hours. But if for some reason you ever do, we’ll have it archived. But I gotta
tell you, in all the time I’ve been doing this, I never heard of anyone having the cops ask them for
‘surveillance footage’ –” she made air quotes that Dov could almost see. “Except on a TV show.”
She produced several forms for him to sign, gave him copies, and before he could ask her
anything else, she was scurrying around, packing up her tools, collecting empty boxes, styrofoam
inserts, and folding up drop cloths. He went to carry the ladder out to the truck for her but she
waved him off with a firmness he didn’t dare argue with, despite her cheerful smile.
So that was that. Perched on the stool behind the counter, Dov looked directly at each of the
three cameras in the store—one in the far corner, one over the door to the office, and one on the
wall directly opposite where he was sitting. And when he sat at the desk in the office, the fourth
would be looking over his shoulder.
Abruptly, he realised he’d been looking from one camera to the other every five seconds.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered. Yesterday he’d been silly; today, head-bugs were eating his brain like Pac
Man. The cameras hadn’t even been in for a day—not even for an hour—and he already had some
kind of bizarre OCD. He slipped off the stool thinking he’d go back to the office and then
remembered the camera there. He’d forgotten to allow for that one when he’d been doing his weird
OCD thing just now. Damn it, he couldn’t even get that right.
 Leaving the ring-for-service bell on the counter, he went back to the office anyway, striding past
the desk without looking left or right to shut himself in the tiny lavatory. Privacy at last. He flipped
the light switch; the bulb flashed and went out.
Now he had real privacy, even from himself. The way he was going, by tomorrow this would
seem like a luxury. And still, he realised, he had a finger over his lip.
He opened the lav door intending to stride back out to the store again still not looking at the
monitor on the desk, except it was the first thing he saw. The view of the top of his head was just
long enough to tell him that he’d been in denial about how much he was thinning up there. Then the
screen blinked and he saw the girl from the record store had come in. Blink: someone was at the
table outside looking through the box of prints and it wasn’t Kitty. He rushed into the store. The girl
glanced at him but he barely noticed. There was no one at all at the table looking at anything.
Dov started toward the stool behind the counter but some impulse made him turn around and go
back to look at the monitor. Two of the cameras had a view of the table; the one in the far corner
showed no one standing there. The one over the office door, however, said there was. The person
was mostly hidden behind the front door frame but Dov could see enough to recognise the coverall.
He could even see part of the sign on the truck and that she had left the back doors open.
He went out to the store. No one was there; the truck was gone. Still, he went all the way out to
the table and stared at it for some ridiculous length of time. Two teenaged girls who had been
looking through a pile of old postcards stopped to give him a wary look. Dov flashed them a
perfunctory smile and went back to the office.
The far corner camera showed him what he had just seen; the other was still watching the
woman from OnWatch flipping through the prints.
And the camera across from the counter showed him sitting behind the counter, reading a
paperback.
Dov and the display blinked together. He fidgeted through fifteen seconds before the screen
showed there was no one behind the counter. Something flickered or twinkled in the lower lefthand
corner of the monitor but it was too small to make out even with his reading glasses. He had to get
the magnifying glass out of the drawer to see they were numbers, tiny little white numbers changing
so quickly they were flashing. Would a time stamp have that many digits? Before he could see
whether they were going backwards or forwards, they disappeared.
He straightened up, rubbing his lower back although he felt the ache only distantly.
The woman said they archived the recordings. Maybe they’d been re-running the feeds to
synchronise them. Maybe the clock on that thing was out of step with the one at OnWatch.
Only then did he realise that the woman had never answered his question about how far back the
recording went.
He heard a single, polite ding! from the bell on the counter. The screen showed the girl from the
record store waiting at the register from three different angles and then his own back, as transfixed
as a dog watching a light beam play over a wall.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, hurrying over to wait on her. She had two of the old restaurant-style
creamers, one with a blurry pink floral pattern, the other with two thin austere green lines around
the base.
“I see you’ve got them, too, now.”
He paused with his fingers on the register buttons. “Pardon?”
She pointed at the camera behind her, nodded at the other two.
“For the insurance company,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Don’t ask me, I just work here.
You know?”
“Yeah. I heard some places just have dummy cameras. They print up stickers with a company
name that sounds authentic but it’s fake.”
“Good luck to them, I hope their insurance company never finds out.” Dov wrapped each small
pitcher in a sheet from the financial section, then discovered he was all out of bags, except for the
ones he used for Kitty’s prints. He hesitated, then searched the shelves under the counter more
thoroughly. Still nothing, probably plenty back in the office –
 The girl was eyeing the cameras with an odd, wary expression.
“They’re all real,” he told her. “Personally, I try to avoid looking directly at them.”
Her eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “You do?”
“Yeah. You know, like Ghostbusters. Don’t look directly at the streams.”
Her puzzlement intensified. “I thought it was don’t cross the streams.”
The idea bloomed all at once and fully-formed in his mind. “Maybe you’re right and I’m
thinking of something else,” he said, and gave her an extra twenty-five cents with her change.
-
The ladder was old but solid; he used it hundreds of times to change lights, put up shelves and
take them down again but he hadn’t ever needed to do anything up near the ceiling before. And he
didn’t need to now, either, insisted the still, small voice of his common sense. Ignoring it was—
dared he even think it?—fun. Weird, silly fun, which would probably end right sharpish when he
got a call from OnWatch asking him why he was tampering with the cameras.
He could tell them he’d thought the angle looked wrong, like maybe they’d slipped a little.
Oh, good, claim Fabiola had done shoddy work, get the poor woman in trouble—was he
a mensch or what?
He decided to compromise—he wouldn’t touch the office camera or the one pointed at the
counter, just the other two. If they’d even move—for all he knew, they were nailed, screwed, and
glued in one position.
But they weren’t. The range of movement was limited but just enough that he was sure each
camera could see the other two. He adjusted them, readjusted them, paused to ring up a Coney
Island plastic tumbler and a black and brown serving tray with an only slightly scratched bamboo
pattern, and re-readjusted them before finally allowing himself to check the results on the monitor.
He stared for a while, then tried again, changing the positions as much as he could without
tearing the cameras out of the brackets. Then he changed the third camera so it was pointed at the
other two.
The result was the same. Which was to say, the displays were at less-than-optimum angles to
view the store but showed the areas on the walls up near the ceiling perfectly. The feeds were as
clear as ever and still changing every five seconds. They just didn’t show any cameras. The cameras
saw everything except each other.
Dov left them that way for an hour. OnWatch did not phone demanding to know what he was up
to. Finally, he put them all back the way they had been, or as near to it as he could remember,
checking the display for each one. When he was satisfied, he found an old sweater on a coat-hook
and threw it over the monitor till McTeer came in.
It wasn’t until he was almost home that he realised he hadn’t seen Kitty even once.
-
She came the next day before he had even opened, materialising on the sidewalk just as he put
up the trestle table.
“Early for you, isn’t it?” he said with a broad grin.
“You, too.” Kitty looked at the watch pinned to her scrubs. Pale blue floral today, over darker
blue trousers; they didn’t quite match.
“I woke up at five-thirty and didn’t feel like going back to sleep.” He glanced at his wristwatch,
did a double-take, and held it to his ear.
“A ticking watch?” Kitty’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “How retro.”
He saw she had the same time he did: 8:15. “I’m an old-fashioned boy. I like a watch I can
wind.” He gave the tiny knob an extra twist before he went in to get the prints. To his surprise, there
were only about half as many in the box as there had been yesterday. There was always a little
variation in the number of prints beyond what he sold but never anything this large.
 Kitty had never mentioned coming back to buy prints when he wasn’t there but he supposed she
did, and if so, she was under no obligation to report in to him about it. Nor was it impossible that
other people also bought them from McTeer or whoever took over for him at six. For all he knew,
the store had a whole different life after he left, with regular customers unfamiliar to him buying
inventory he wouldn’t recognise. Maybe the night staff kept the place open past ten till two or three
in the morning or held raves on Sundays when it was supposed to be closed. Then they cleaned up
after themselves and by the time he came in the next morning, he saw only what he expected to see.
There was no way of knowing –
Yes, there was.
He stood in the doorway with his arms folded, looking at each of the cameras in turn. Possibly
for five seconds each but he wasn’t counting.
Kitty’s quiet voice broke his rhythm. “You seem very serious today.”
Dov’s smile was perfunctory. “Why didn’t you come yesterday?”
“Busy day,” she said, not looking up from the box. “The ER’s part organised chaos, part
systematic crisis, part random lightning strikes, running on coffee, adrenalin, and the triage nurse’s
last nerve.” She paused at one of the prints, hesitated, then flipped past it. He waited for her to say
something about there not being as many in the box as usual but she didn’t seem to notice.
“What happens when the triage nurse’s last nerve goes?” he asked.
Her eyes twinkled as she glanced up at him. “By then they’ve all grown back.”
“That’s amazing.”
“It’s a gift.” She slipped two prints out of the box and held them out to him. “I’ll take these.”
Number 82 and number 11 were both black-and-white photographs. The former showed an
enormous cloud of thick, dark smoke and, at the bottom in the centre, a lone firefighter seen from
behind, spraying a stream of water into it. The latter showed a gigantic Ferris wheel caught either
by the shutter or in fact at a forty-five degree angle between the white sky above and the city below.
Dov fetched a bag for her, trying to remember the last time Kitty had bought even one photo and
couldn’t. If there’d been a camera out here, he’d be able to keep track.
As if she had caught a sense of his thoughts, Kitty said, “So can Big Brother see me from in
there?”
“Only partly—the door jamb’s in the way. Were you worried?”
“Just curious.” She traded him a couple of crumpled bills for the bag.
“Well, for what it’s worth, you haven’t shown up on the monitor at all yet,” he said, laughing a
little. “Whereas I’m the star of the sh –” he cut off, remembering the glimpse he’d had of himself
behind the counter. It had to have been a recording, of course. “Star of the show,” he finished.
Instead of hurrying away, she lingered, watching him put out the photos and the postcards along
with some novelty bookends and a tray of assorted picture frames. He was about to make a joke
about her breaking routine and buying something other than a print when she said, “I bet the last
thing Orwell ever imagined was that we’d make Big Brother into a game show.”
He had to think for a moment. “Oh, right. Is that still on?”
“No one ever went broke underestimating etc, etc,” Kitty said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dov said. “If that isn’t rock bottom, it’s close. The novelty’s bound to wear
off pretty soon.”
“It’s no-cost entertainment. All you need is a camera and pretty soon, you won’t even need that
because you’ll always be in sight of at least one lens.”
Dov’s chuckle was uneasy. “Not getting paranoid on me now, are you? Or is it just that your
nerves haven’t grown back yet?”
She was silent for a moment. Then: “Do you remember when you asked me about the difference
between wave functions that hadn’t collapsed and those you didn’t know had already collapsed?”
He nodded.
“I thought you would.” And then she was hurrying away toward the hospital while he stared
after her.
-
 Customer traffic was brisk throughout the morning into the lunch-hour, with everyone
apparently in the mood to spend money—retail therapy, they called it now—but the day went at a
crawl. Dov stepped into the office whenever he could to check the monitor but there was no time
for more than a quick glance. Sometimes he would have sworn that the system was actually looping
the same ten minutes over and over again. It was just that he was busy, he thought. Plus, he was
getting a double dose of the store now, with his own eyes and on the monitor, so of course he was
coming down with a case of déjà-vu all over again.
He tried an assortment of busy-work to keep himself from haunting the office every few
minutes, rearranging the window, rotating stock, even taking a quick-and-dirty inventory of the
tacky souvenirs. There were half a dozen new snow-globes, albeit with glitter rather than fake snow.
Most of the globes had glitter these days. Maybe the fake-snow globe was becoming an endangered
species, he thought, as he picked up one of the larger ones and gave it a shake. Glitter swirled
around an Empire State Building being scaled by a giant blonde woman in a pink evening gown,
with a tiny gorilla tucked under one arm. He hadn’t thought there’d be that much wit in the tacky
souvenir industry. He stashed it under the counter and made a mental note to ask the owners where
it had come from and if there were any more around.
But nothing he did would make the day pass any more quickly. It was hard to believe he had
seen Kitty only that morning—he felt as if it had been at least a whole day. He told himself he ought
to try to appreciate it, it was better than feeling as if time were pouring away like fast-running water.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the photos Kitty bought, the firefighter and the Ferris wheel, then
glanced at his watch: it was two minutes later than the last time he’d looked. Irritated, he took it off
and put it in the register, in the always-empty slot meant for fifties and hundreds.
-
As always, the customers thinned out after lunch-time. He was serving the last few customers
when a teenaged boy dropped off a brown paper bag containing lox on a bagel with a perfectly-
applied schmear, an assortment of carrot and cucumber sticks, and a can of cream soda. The boy
was long gone by the time Dov opened the bag. He was about to call the deli and tell them their
delivery boy had made a mistake when he saw the note on the bag—Nosh! xx Kitty.
He spread a napkin out on the counter then paused, looking up at the camera. The owners
probably wouldn’t approve. Gathering everything up, he started toward the office, then stopped.
The idea of eating while that eye blinked at him every five seconds threatened to kill his appetite.
Knowing that every fifteen seconds, he’d be treated to the sight of himself eating lunch gave him
indigestion before he’d even taken a bite. Or he could hide in the lav.
He sat at the register with the bag in his lap.
McTeer was a no-show at six. At six-thirty, the owners’ secretary phoned to say he should close
up and go home. She was cordial but offered no explanation. Apparently there was no one to plug
this evening’s personnel gap, Dov thought. Maybe McTeer had run off to the Bahamas, leaving
them shorthanded. He started to turn off the lights and then, on impulse, called back and offered to
stay on until ten.
The secretary’s cordial tone had a hint of steel in it as she told him that wouldn’t be necessary
and he should have a good evening.
“Well, okay,” he said to the phone receiver, although the woman had already hung up. “Don’t
ask me, I just work here. Till six.” Again, he went to turn out the lights and then remembered the
table was still outside.
He brought everything in, folded the table legs down and left it behind the display window
where he always found it in the mornings and put the box of prints on the floor nearby. Then he
went back to the office for a final look around to make sure everything was all right, even though
he’d already done that at least half a dozen times already.
There was nothing to see on the monitor now, except for the office feed. Because he still had the
light on. He flipped it off and watched the screen as it blinked through a series of vague shadows. It
seemed like a big waste to keep them on all night when they had no night-vision utility.
 Not his problem. He should go home and have a good evening, he thought as he sat down and
pushed the keyboard aside so he could put his feet up on the desk.
-
He had no idea how long he’d actually heard the sharp sound of metal rapping on glass but he
thought it must have been a while. Awareness flooded in accompanied by aches and pains in every
part of his body. He lifted his head and gasped slightly at the flare of sharp pain in his neck. His
shoulders and back chimed in as he straightened up.
The rapping sound went on, someone knocking urgently on the window with a coin or a key. He
ignored it while he pushed himself to his feet, groaning as his knees cracked and popped. How the
hell had he fallen asleep here? With his head on the desk, no less. Why hadn’t he gone home? His
head didn’t want to turn. He’d probably have to put some chiropractor’s kids through college before
he’d be able to look both ways crossing the street.
The knocking was getting louder and more urgent now. Someone wasn’t going to take no for an
answer, although they’d have had to if he’d gone home instead of trying to cripple himself. He
couldn’t imagine who would have come knocking now anyway, nobody knew there was anyone in
here –
His gaze fell on the monitor, blinking every five seconds. No, somebody knew. Somewhere
somebody knew where he was and they knew that he had seen what the cameras had seen.
Rubbing his shoulder with one hand and his lower back with the other, he shuffled out to see
who was scratching up the window.
Kitty’s wide eyes met his. “Uh,” he said. “What time is it?”
“Late,” she said.
He looked at his watch then remembered it was in the register. “Uh,” he said again and leaned
his head against the jamb. “I did the stupidest thing.” He was about to elaborate when his head
exploded.
It might have been minutes later before his vision cleared and he realised he had both arms
around Kitty in a clumsy hug, while she held him up. The sound of the explosion seemed to resound
in his ears and he had the impression that the whole building and a good part of the street had
shaken under him.
Horrified, he pulled away from her. “I did the stupidest thing,” he said again. “I—I did the
stupidest thing –” He tried to tell her the rest of it but his voice refused to come. For several
moments, he floundered while every siren and alarm in Manhattan went off at once, almost
drowning out the shriek of human voices. Overhead, there was something dark in the sky and the air
brought the smell of oil and metal and other things burning.
“I didn’t mean to know,” he told Kitty desperately. “I didn’t mean to!”
“I know,” she said.
A man in a wrinkled grey suit ran past holding a cell phone to his ear shouting, “Holy fucking
shit!” into it over and over. The street began to fill with people all talking at once, to cell phones, to
each other, to anyone who could hear and everyone they saw.
The man in the grey suit came back, still holding the cell phone. “I swear to Christ,” he told the
cell phone. He stopped, looking around as if he didn’t know where he was, then noticed Dov and
Kitty. “I thought a gas main blew up or a gas truck. An airplane crashed into one of the Twin
Towers. A fucking plane! I swear to Christ you never know in this city, you never fucking know!”
Kitty put a finger to Dov’s lips; not really necessary since his voice had deserted him again.
“And you never can tell.”
The second explosion came a little over fifteen minutes later. Then she went back to St.
Vincent’s. When he couldn’t find his way home he went there as well, although amid all the crowds
and the noise and the panic, he couldn’t find her either.
-
 The second explosion came a little over fifteen minutes later. Kitty went back to St. Vincent’s.
Dov went back into the office and watched. Sometimes he saw Kitty looking through the prints. A
few times he saw himself behind the counter, but he always saw himself in the office and, when he
realised he always would, he locked up and went home.
-
Nothing Personal, Alien Crimes, ed. Mike Resnick, 2007.
Among Strangers, disLocations, ed. Ian Whates, 2007.
Stilled Life, Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, ed. Ellen Datlow, 2007.
Found in the Translation, Myth-Understandings, ed. Ian Whates, 2008.
Jimmy, The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Sixteen Original Works by Speculative Fiction’s Finest Voices, ed.
Ellen Datlow, 2008.
Worlds of Possibilities, Sideways in Crime, ed. Lou Anders, 2008.
Not Quite Alone in the Dream Quarter, Fast Forward 2, ed. Lou Anders, 2008.
Tales from the Big Dark: Lie of the Land, Subterfuge, ed. Ian Whates, 2008.
The Mudlark, Jim Baen’s Universe, ed. Eric Flint, Mike Resnick, October 2008.
Truth and Bone, Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy and Horror, ed. Ellen Datlow, 2009.
Don’t Mention Madagascar, Eclipse Three: New Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Jonathan Strahan, 2009.
The Taste of Night, Is Anybody Out There?, ed. Nick Gevers, Marty Halpern, 2010.
Between Heaven and Hull, Haunted Legends, ed. Ellen Datlow, Nick Mamatas, 2010.
We’ll Take Manhattan, Zombie Apocalypse!, ed. Stephen Jones, 2010.
Funny Things, The End of the Line: An Anthology of Underground Horror, ed. Jonathan Oliver, 2010.
Picking up the Pieces, Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy, ed. Ellen Datlow, 2011.
Cody, TRSF: The Best New Science Fiction, ed. Stephen Cass, 2011.
You Never Know, Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction, ed. Ian Whates, 2011.