Текст книги "Illusion"

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She smiled up at him and he could see admiration. “Hey,” he said, “don’t be too impressed. Mandy was the real teacher.” She laughed. It eased him a bit. “So first we move in the slot, six count, I start with my left, you start with your right, I step back …”

Step forward, step forward, tap, two steps backward and a triple step …

Spinning into open position, connection, and counterbalance …

Before long they were moving with the music and she was following his lead, stepping, styling, syncopating in the slot. His lead was subtle, experienced, on time every time so she knew just what to do on which count and where she would arrive after each variation.

And that’s what turned on the ideas. They began to fire like sparks in her mind and body, which brought her joy, which brought her more ideas, and she could imagine how it must have felt to be Mandy Collins dancing onstage with her man. Safe. Free to create, take a chance, tease a little, feel the joy, then snap right back into the shelter of his arms, his touch, her creativity always secure.

Imagining the feeling became the feeling. She squealed with delight and did a spin on her way out of the slot, and right out of the spin, there was his hand to take hers and draw her back. Safe. Home. She was lost in the dance, moving, alive.

All the moves came back and he fell into the routine with no need for thought or plan, leading Ellie as he’d led Mandy for thousands of shows, connecting, protecting, and turning her loose to light up like a sparkler. He was onstage again, and Mandy was there in Ellie’s eyes, in her rapture, her playful tease, her every fluid step. Ellie wasMandy. She …

He drew her in, she slid past, and an idea sprang from the last one, starting on the andbefore the onecount.

But he dropped his hand from hers. She went into a spin but it fell behind the count; a triple step died beneath her; what may have been her next idea turned to blowing sand; she sank to the earth, heels and toes on the floor.

He looked at the fire, the cake on the coffee table, even at the ceiling, but not at her. “Anyway,” he said, “that’s how we did it.”

Her heart was falling out of orbit. She forced a smile, a little laugh. “That was great. I’ve never had so much fun.” She even squeezed his arm, her cheek touching his biceps.

But he wasn’t there.

“Guess it’s time we tackled those dishes,” he said.

chapter

29

She kissed him on the cheek as she went out the door, stepping carefully on the icy walkway to her Bug. She wore her hooded parka over her dress, her winter boots over her pantyhose. It made a great picture, sort of like Big Bird in black, just goofy enough to end the evening on the right note. They had a great time.

Dane carried his notebook computer into the living room. The lights were still low, the fire was down to glowing embers, the tree was the same cheerful clarion of joy. He sank into the couch, flipped the computer open, and waited for words to come.

Tremendous Christmas, spent in the company of …

His fingers hung over the keys, drummed in space, then went to the delete key and held it down. He folded his arms, stared at the tree, watched the glowing embers in the fireplace, and finally tapped:

I suppose I should have found a church by now and some friends closer to my own age.

Better talk to Arnie, get him up here, let him see the show, and get her working.

Maybe on a cruise line far, far away.

He closed the computer and went to bed.

He couldn’t sleep.

She would have kissed him. She really would have. If he’d turned his head just a little bit she would have gone for it, honest to God.

Ohhh, and that would have been so terrible. That would have ruined everything. He would have banned her from the ranch and never let her anywhere near him ever again.

She rolled over, fluffed her pillow for the umpteenth time, and buried half her face in it, not sleeping, not sleeping.

What time was it? Almost midnight.

She would think about tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. What were they doing tomorrow? Blocking out the second half of the show. They had almost an hour’s worth, the best of the Wallace show, the McCaffee’s show, and anything else that plays big. Those doves were really getting the hang of it. She’d have to warm them up in the morning, refresh them on release and return. She’d have to make sure they had enough greens …

Ohhh, the way he looked at her. Did she really see what she thought she saw—

No, no way, that was ridiculous. It was all in her head. He was an old man, a Daddy. Sixty. The big Six Zero.

She would think about curtains. Right. Curtains for the stage. Well, it was best not to need them, to find other transitions. She never knew where she’d have to perform.

But wow. His wife’s name was Mandy! Now, what kind of God thing was that?

“Mandy—I mean, Eloise, it’s nothing!”

But that had to be cool being his wife, dancing with him in every show, going home with him every night. Kissing him … being in his arms …

A thrill coursed through her and made her wriggle.

Oh, Lord, I’m terrible, I’m terrible!

She smelled something burning.

And I think it’s love …

Oh, cut it out!

Something wasburning.

She sat up and sniffed. The room was dark but didn’t seem smoky. She saw no haze in the amber streetlight coming through the windows.

But the windows were wavering like heat waves, shifting sideways.

Oh!She felt something that startled her, then made her wriggle again. Her right hand was resting in his hand—not here, not now, but somewhere and soon. She could feel the warmth of his palm, his embrace upon the small of her back. Another thrill coursed through her, feelings like colors, a trembling, and she reached as she sat in the bed, knowing she’d find his shoulder. She closed her eyes …

And saw herself, far away, circling, floating through the dimensions, the layers, the walls, windows, lights and sounds of several worlds passing by each other right in her apartment. She was gliding and turning like a princess, every sequin of a beautiful blue gown flinging jewels of light about the room.

Sitting on the bed, she could feel the floor under her, the air moving through her hair, the flight of her soul as music bore her aloft. She lifted the sheets aside …

Her feet alighted on the apartment floor and she danced through the dream, touching notes and rests with heel, with toe. She opened her eyes. All around her, the apartment was a carousel of colors, sounds, times, and places.

And she was the dancer wearing the gown, the center of a galaxy, dancing through dimensions, floating above worlds, embraced by strength, safety, and …

She was wandering carefree, lost in wonder, heart flooding with …

A song played inside her, a song that had waited for this time, this now, a song of …

Everywhere rushed inward, becoming here and now within her, drawn from afar by …

She knew herself, knit into one by …

The floor pressed evenly, steadily against her feet. She came to rest while multirealities swirled around her, and let herself think the word.

Love.

At home within her, gathered from her scattered worlds and now her very own, so new and still so known. She closed her eyes to seal it in, folded her arms about herself to hold it close like warmth inside a blanket.

This was God’s gentle, loving doing, speaking to her through the mystery, showing her a glimpse of a faraway light she had long and secretly hoped for …

There was a man in her bed.

She jolted with a yelp, which made him jolt and then start to curse, “Holy …” He clamped his fingers over his mouth, dumbstruck, staring, looking her up and down.

She covered herself with her arms, though she was modestly dressed—in thrift store pj’s.

He was young, probably in his thirties, not too bad-looking with curly black hair, a Tom Hanks kind of face. Now she could see that he wasn’t in her bed, but in a metal-framed single bed against a strange wall in a room she’d never seen before. She’d seen those blankets and sheets before—in the hospital.

“Who … don’t be afraid,” he said as if addressing a timid spirit.

Well now, just who was the ghost here? She could see him, but she could also see her own bed in her own room in the same place, all mixed together like a double image, and he was looking a little transparent himself. She didn’t move, afraid the whole jackstraw pile of dimensions would blow and flutter away, including this man, before she found out who he was.

“Can you see me?” the man asked, propping himself on his elbow.

She nodded.

“My God,” he said. “Oh, my God!” He sat up slowly, as if trying not to frighten her. “Who are you?”

Around her, worlds still moved, crisscrossed, swirled. Even her visitor, his bed, and as much of his room as she could see, were rippling, fading, reappearing.

The only thing not moving was she—and she felt that way, inside and out. She knew the answer to his question, the only answer, and she spoke it clearly for anyone in any world to hear her. “I am Mandy Eloise Whitacre.”

That seemed to horrify him even more. He couldn’t even manage another “Oh, my God!” He was about to say something …

His image got wavy, began to fade behind a tea-stained shadow. “No, wait!” he said, hand extended. “Wait! Don’t go away. I won’t hurt you!”

He was gone.

She was staring at her own bed, standing nowhere else but in her little apartment. The alarm clock said half past midnight. She looked down. Thrift store pj’s, bare feet, plain wooden floor in the amber streetlight coming through the windows.

Who was he? Was he even real? Was anythingreal?

With no answers, ever, she could only tuck such questions away to wait for their time. She would remember his face. For now, she was swept up in everything else that had just happened, and what remained.

“Mandy,” she said. The dancer was Mandy. She was the dancer. She enfolded herself with her arms. The warmth had not left her. “Mandy Eloise Whitacre.”

There had been a development. Dr. Jerome Parmenter could see it in the face of Loren Moss, his project manager. Moss was wan and shaken as he closed the door to Parmenter’s office and sank into the chair facing the older gentleman’s desk.

“What’s happened?”

Moss had been manning the lab while the rest of the staff was away for the holidays. Now fear lingered in his eyes. “I saw her.”

The news was not a surprise, but it was not welcome. “Where?”

“In the staff room, not more than ten feet from me.”

Parmenter turned to the computer console adjacent to his desk. “Did you note the time?”

“December 26, 12:22 A.M.”

Parmenter scrolled through the readings and found a spike in activity at precisely that time. “A 23-degree fluctuation in the Kiley, 19 in Baker …” Unbelievable! “ 42in Delta! Initiating at 12:22:04, resolving 12:23:36.”

“That was it. It felt like a small earth tremor, and it woke me up. She knocked some books from the table, and my water bottle went rolling.” Moss leaned forward. “She had at least 50 percent opacity, and I’m guessing I had the same opacity to her. We could see and hear each other. I asked her who she was, and she responded. She gave me her full name, Mandy Eloise Whitacre.”

“Did you tell her who you were?”

“The corridors diverged before we got to that. But she was startled and disoriented. I don’t think she had any idea where she was or what was happening.”

“Does anyone else know about this?”

“No one.”

Parmenter immediately scrolled to the readings he’d obtained in the coffee shop. “During her levitation she deflected the Delta 29 degrees and I thought thatwas extreme.”

“She only deflected 17 during the Wallace performance, but collectively there was a trend outward.” Moss shook his head grimly. “She’s becoming very adroit at this, to the point that her inputs have priority over ours.”

Parmenter sighed, sharing the frustration. “We set, she resets, we reset, she resets again. She’s getting so we can’t keep up with her.”

“And she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. This latest event was clearly involuntary, which confirms for me that many of the events we’ve observed were also involuntary, triggered by emotions, her subconscious, maybe stress …”

“Maybe even … her spirit?”

Moss paused to weigh that. “If there is such a thing, it would correspond to what we’re observing, yes.”

“To a substantial degree, I would say. It’s a niggling question we try to avoid, but we’re not dealing with a lab rat here, or even a monkey. I believe there are aspects of Mandy Eloise Whitacre that our science can never touch or control.”

Moss considered that. “And that would provide an explanation for her behavior and these events.”

“Yeah, well, DuFresne and the others are never going to buy it, but here’s my take on it: we’ve stolen her away and she’s trying to find her way back. We can alter and revert every atom of her being, but at a certain level beyond our reach, she knows who she is and where she belongs.”

Moss sighed, visibly burdened. “So we’ve crossed the line.”

“Oh, we did that a long time ago.”

Moss looked away. “And not with impunity.”

Parmenter felt a visceral response: fear for his friend. If Mandy Whitacre’s corridor passed through the staff room only ten feet from him and only a few yards from the Machine …

“Loren, are you all right?”

Moss only looked at him, the answer in his eyes.

“Oh, no …”

“I remember everything.”

Parmenter’s hands went to his face.

“I remember volunteering and everything that happened before that: the first experiments on the lab animals, the installation of the additional mass, working with you on the Kiley/Baker protocol. All of it. A whole year.”

“We’ll have Kessler examine you.”

“The cancer’s back. I can feel it. It was a pronounced and sudden change, quite noticeable.”

The worst had occurred. Neither man could speak for a moment.

Moss offered, “The deflection of her corridor encroached on mine and overwhelmed it. Similar to what happened to the soldier, Dose.”

Parmenter looked at the computer. All the data that once promised discovery now confirmed failure. It was like reading a postmortem report.

“We saw this coming,” said Moss.

The elder scientist agreed. He just couldn’t bring himself to say it, not yet.

But Moss had had time to think about it—and now had nothing to lose. “The early models all predicted inexorable return to equilibrium, and sure enough, all the inanimates, and then the rats, and then the monkeys retraced. We could push the deflection debt ahead of us, but …”

Parmenter nodded ever so slowly, scrolling through the data on his screen. “But you can only stretch the universe so far. Looking through the lens of dead rats and monkeys—”

“ Anda retraced soldier anda retraced scientist,” Moss reminded him.

“These figures all make sense.”

“And all proverbial hell is going to break loose with Mandy Eloise Whitacre thepivotal factor.”

Parmenter hated being so cornered. “And DuFresne and Carlson in sole possession of the ears and pockets of the military.”

“I don’t suppose a moral argument will work?”

“Coming from us?” That made Parmenter chuckle in bitterness. “We’ve already explained our way around the data, disposed of the rats, incinerated the monkeys, held back what we were really thinking—that we were exploiting and jeopardizing human lives.” The moral question had always been clouded by bitter divisions over secrecy, propriety, national security, and the omnipresent god of funding, but now it was as clear as the data on the screen—and the dying scientist sitting across from him. “It’s going to be a terrible note to end on, wouldn’t you say?”

Moss sighed and rubbed his eyes. “You could say that.”

chapter

30

That evening, Eloise knocked on Sally and Micah Durham’s door. It had been so long, and the Durhams were so happy to see her. Yes, Rhea was still doing hair. Darci had moved back to Sioux Falls, Iowa, and was engaged. Two new girls, Shelly and Doris, were staying in the home as part of their probation. Sally and Micah were fine. Micah had a job with flexible hours, so he could help out more.

And how was Eloise? Once she got past “Fine,” “Doing all right,” and “Staying busy,” she sat with them in the cozy living room and got down to the main purpose of her visit: “I’m ready to tell you now. I haveto tell you. Eloise is actually my middlename… .”

The Monday after the New Year’s weekend, Arnie Harrington, fresh up from Vegas, got his first look at the Collins-Kramer-Morgan Magic Theater. “I’ll be jiggered!”

For a training stage built in one end of a shop building, the stage was one impressive piece of work. It had footlights fashioned from work lights, movable access stairs, backdrops that rolled into place on casters or lowered into place on cables, teaser curtains, a rack of lights Dane bought secondhand from a concert promoter, a spotlight, and one main curtain operated by a revamped garage door opener.

“The birthplace of exciting new talent and many new wonders to come, I trust,” said Dane.

Wow. If Eloise Kramer’s act had benefited from the same Dane Collins touch… “So where’s our magician?”

“I think I heard her Bug coming up the driveway.”

The shop door opened and she stepped in wearing a hooded parka and pulling off her gloves. “Well, hi!”

“Hi there!” said Arnie. What a picture. The Gypsy Hobett Coffee Shop Girl had an entirely different air about her in this place. You’d think she grew up here.

Dane exchanged a warm smile with her and a thumbs up.

She made a whimsical, tentative kind of face and pulled back the hood of her parka.

Dane became frozen in time.

Arnie stared unabashedly.

Her hair was blond, golden through and through. She cast them a little sideways glance as she hung up her parka and pulled off her boots, but said not a word.

“What’s this?” Arnie asked.

“You did it,” said Dane.

Her hand went to her hair, fingers combing, fiddling with it. “I did. I had my girlfriend put me back the way I was.”

“The way you were?” Arnie asked.

“She’s naturally blond,” said Dane, and he loved how it looked, it was rather obvious.

“Huh.” Arnie was still staring, getting a little message. “How ’bout that.”

“The roots were growing out anyway, and it just came time to be myself,” she explained.

Arnie nodded and forced a smile—it wasn’t a very good one; he was trying to hide a gut feeling.

“Anyway,” she said, offering her hand, “it’s wonderful to see you again.”

“Yeah,” he replied as he shook her hand with a sideways glance at Dane. “I guess it’s been a long time.”

Arnie sat in a folding chair just ten feet from the stage, the Kubota tractor at his back. Dane manned the lights and curtains, Shirley doused the shop lights and cued the music, and Eloise Kramer, in her one and only stage costume, did her show with playful, high-energy confidence, performing for Arnie as if he were the only one there. She made eye contact, she dazzled, she teased, she mugged, and most of all, she wove the wonder through everything she did.

The cards flew from her hands, arced from one hand to the other, sailed over Arnie’s head and back to her hand, vanished as if they were never there; the bottles popped and multiplied out of nowhere and sang in harmony; choreographed tennis balls bounced and teased all over the stage as she danced with them; doves materialized from her empty hands and circled the room, only to vanish into snowflakes; her microphone had clones that sang in orbit around her.

She got a hula hoop spinning around her waist, then stood still while the hoop continued to spin on its own. As she gestured magically, it rose around and then above her body until it was spinning in midair over her head. Then it became her partner and she danced with it, leaping through it, dance-dodging it, flipping and twirling it around herself like a cowboy with his lariat, and all without touching it. The hoop split into two, the two hoops circled around her like two unicycles without riders, then merged into one hoop again.

The finale went off like a fireworks display: the music crescendoed, and Eloise took her grand ta-da pose flanked by tennis balls bouncing, hula hoops spinning, doves doing figure eights over her head, and playing cards shooting like a fountain from her hands.

The music thundered and drummed to a big finish, Dane closed the curtain on Eloise’s triumphant tableau, and Arnie rose to his feet, applauding and whistling. “In-credible!Absolutely astounding!” Dane opened the curtain again so she could perform a graceful dancer’s bow.

Shirley threw the wall switches in the back, and the shop lights came up. Arnie kept clapping and Eloise, high as a kite, sprang from the stage and leaped into Dane’s arms for a congratulatory hug, and then a laughing, father/daughter hug, and then a hug between two friends. Arnie found himself calling out a few extra bravos and extending his applause so the hugs wouldn’t outlast it. What would he have to do next, sing some background music? Finally, when the student and her master were aware of someone else in the room, Arnie stepped forward and extended his hand. “You’ve definitely fulfilled my highest expectations and, uh, more besides.”

They debriefed in rapid chatter, they reviewed, they fired off ideas as they came:

“Now that we have the routines just about timed out, we can get Robbie Portov to work up a music score,” said Dane.

“And costuming. Better costuming,” said Arnie. “Something brighter, eye-catching …”

“Something that follows her and accentuates her moves.”

“Several changes if we can swing it.”

“But with class.”

“Like Mandy made famous.” Arnie’s eyes asked if the reference was okay.

“Well … exactly,” said Dane. “Is Keisha Ellerman still designing?”

“And how.”

Dane sighed through pursed lips. “Budget, budget. We’d better talk venues first.”

“Let me take you to lunch.”

“Great!”

“I guess I should change,” said Eloise.

“Just Dane,” said Arnie.

There was a short, awkward beat, and then she recovered. “Oh. All right.”

Arnie smiled and explained, “We’ve come to that point, kid: Dane and I need to talk about you behind your back.”

Dane patted her shoulder. “That means things are getting serious.”

Arnie didn’t build on that comment. He just let the sideways stretch of his mouth and the arch of his eyebrows concede.

She smiled, adjusting. “I’ve got some housecleaning to do.”

Dane took Arnie to Rustler’s Roost, a log-structured, ranch-style barbecue place with log furniture, red checkered tablecloths, and waitresses in cowboy hats. It wasn’t Vegas, was definitely Idaho, and had plenty of room so they could find an isolated table and talk privately.

“They have great food,” Dane assured Arnie.

“Bring it on.”

They ordered, then Arnie gave Dane a look he’d seen before, a look that meant this lunch could go kind of long, Arnie had a difficult topic on his mind.

Dane thought he might be able to steer around it. “You know, I was thinking it would be a great idea to get her booked on Preston’s show. Maybe she could even take up a challenge. That would get her in the public eye and give her something unique to say for herself.”

“He’d take her apart,” said Arnie.

“Well, not if we set it up right. Maybe we should leave out the challenge part and she can just be a guest magician.”

Arnie repositioned himself on the log bench as if his rear end were getting sore already. “First let’s talk about Eloise.”

“I thought that’s why we were here.”

“I don’t mean the business part. I mean the other part.”

Oh, brother. We’re going to go there.“You mean, umm …”

“I mean, I want to know if I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

Cornered.Arnie wasn’t blind and he wasn’t stupid. “She … she tends to be affectionate. She has no parents. I guess I’m like a father to her.”

“Dane …” Arnie put up his hands. “Listen, if that’s the case, or even if you have something more going with this girl, I’m not your parents or your pastor, I’m okay with it. I work in Vegas, I see everything.”

“It’s not like that.”

“But do you know what it islike? As your friend, that’s what I want to be sure about, that whatever it is, you know, you really know.”

“What it’s … what are you talking about?”

“All right.” Arnie leaned toward him and made an effort to keep his voice down. “I’m thinking about you and me on the street outside that coffee shop, and you going on and on about that girl looking and sounding just like Mandy. You do remember that?”

Dane couldn’t hide the fact that he did.

“And now I see this same girl”—Arnie balked, waiting for words—“the blond hair. I just—”

“It’s her natural color.”

Arnie waved his hands as if erasing everything and starting over. “Okay. Umm, let me just spell it out for you and then you tell me if I’m wrong, okay? Friends?”

“You’re wrong.”

“Hear me anyway.”

He would have to. There was never any turning Arnie around. “Go ahead.”

Arnie tiptoed, one word at a time. “You’re a widower, you’re lonely, you miss your wife, you have money and connections … and then, somehow, this young, good-looking, ambitious girl catches on that she resembles your wife.”

Dane shook his head in dismay. “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. You have no idea.”

“That performance I saw today. That was Mandy. Move for move, the gags, the expressions, the hair, everything! She’s done some homework, she is into the role.”

“Arnie—”

“Dane. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, and so have you, come on.”

“I coached her, remember.”

Arnie rolled his eyes heavenward, seeking wisdom with a frustrated pat on the table. “All right. Let’s start here—and then you can talk me out of it. I’ll let you try, okay?” He took a breath and tried again. “Nobody can look and act that much like Mandy without reallytrying, and it’s easy to see that she has an emotional effect on you and knows it. She’s an incredible performer, but given what I’m seeing, I don’t trust her, and because I don’t trust her, I don’t like her, and because I don’t like her, I can’t be her agent. All right. Let’s start there. Go ahead.”

Arnie took a bite from his barbecue beef sandwich and waited.

Dane tried to think of a gradual way to ease into it, but finally resigned himself to the one overarching question in his mind. “What if she isMandy?”

She trailed the long central vacuum hose behind her as she moved up the stairs one riser at a time, running the brush head back and forth.

Once upstairs, she ran the hose down the hall to the upstairs vacuum outlet, just past Dane’s bedroom door.

The bedroom door was open.

She looked in from the hall. Wow.It had its own fireplace—propane, neat and clean, with a carved mantel. Classy-looking dresser and a full-length mirror. The bed was made. Beautiful bedspread with big, fluffy shams against the headboard.

Would there be—was it snooping?—a picture of his wife anywhere? She leaned in.

Off-limits, Shirley’d told her.

The closet door was open …

She gasped, fingers over her mouth. Oh, no, you’re killing me.

The gown—the blue gown from her vision on Christmas night—was hanging right there and looked exactly as she’d seen it: floor-length, a skirt that would float and billow when she spun, full, sheer sleeves, sequins that could throw diamonds of light upon the walls and ceiling, metallic embroidery about the waist and bodice. She knew that gown, every detail. She’d worn it in another world, another time. Hadn’t she?

And she was dancing, wasn’t she?

Ten steps in and ten steps back out again, that was all it would take. She wouldn’t touch anything. She darted to the south windows and looked toward the long driveway. Shirley’d gone home to take her son Noah to the dentist. Dane and Arnie wouldn’t be back for at least an hour.

I’m not being sneaky. I just … it isn’t everybody who has visions like I do and then sees something … just a few seconds and I won’t touch anything.

The step through the bedroom door brought a pang of conscience; the step through the closet door brought the fear of divine judgment.

But her fingers took hold of the sleeve—just to lift it outward and have a look at it—then the shoulder—yes, same material—and then the skirt of the dress, feeling, remembering, and it was all so real, more than déjà vu. She held the sleeve beneath her nose and inhaled a scent she vividly remembered. Taking the gown on its hanger, she held it against her body—just her size.

She put it back. No, better not.

“She grew up on a ranch, she raised llamas, horses, and doves, her father’s name was Arthur, her mother’s name was Eloise. She knows how to do carpentry and how to fix a leaky faucet, her favorite coffee is a nonfat mocha—”

Arnie held up his hand. “Dane, stop. Hold it a second.”

“She dances like Mandy, she laughs like Mandy, she gets the same look in her eyes—”

“Dane?”

Dane stopped. He was running off at the mouth and knew it.

“Dane, Mandy is dead. Pardon me for asking, but are you aware of that?”

The answer stuck in his brain and wouldn’t go through.

Arnie pressed in. “I was there with you at the hospital the day she died. When she died she was fifty-nine. This girl is nineteen.”

“She’ll be twenty on the fifteenth.”

Arnie’s voice rose despite his effort to keep it down. “What the—what difference does it make? She’s still a different girl, Dane, a different girl who is”—he lowered his voice but he was shaking– “who is forty years younger. Forty years!”

Her jeans, shirt, and shoes lay in a neat pile on a chair next to the fireplace.

The black formal slid over her shoulders and hips and conformed to her body like it was made to be there. She turned in front of the full-length mirror, holding a diamond necklace against her skin to see how it looked with the dress. She’d never worn anything so lovely.

She found a pair of shoes that matched. They slid onto her feet like the glass slipper in Cinderella.

The feeling!

A white, sparkling gown and matching slippers fit just as well, draping from her body in such graceful lines that she had to dance like a princess, circling the room in front of the mirror as the skirt swished through the air and the jewels and sequins sparkled.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Dane admitted.

Arnie’s sandwich lay half eaten on the plate. A waitress had come by to check on them. Arnie quickly told her they were fine, thank you. “Crazy. That’s right.”

“But how else do you explain it?”