Well, thanks for the advice, I said.

  Or do nothing, he said. Simply leave. Any comfort you give will only serve to confirm him in his current state of delusion. C’est exact? How is it said? You let him off a hook.

  Off the hook, I said.

  You let him off the hook, he said.

  Are you finished? I said curtly. I have no idea what you’re even talking about.

  I am not, alas, he said. I have failed to make the thing clear. To you, or to him. For all its enormity. I seem—I seem to lack the necessary skill.

  His evident frustration touched me.

  Ours is not an easy road, I said.

  He looked at me. I had not been looked at so intently in quite some time. I felt the warmth rising into my cheeks.

  You will see, he said. I will help you see. He is no good. I am off now, to seek a different method. Une approche alternative.

  He gave a curt bow and burst out through the wall, contorting himself into the balled-up configuration of someone leaping into a pond for relief from the heat.

  Only to thrust his head back in again seconds later, tears running down his face.

  Honesty compels me to admit, he said. It was also of my doing. I had a hand in the invention of the beast.

  What beast? I said.

  Quelle horreur! he cried.

  And then was gone again.

  * * *

  —

  Reentering the orb of my charge’s thoughts, I found him attempting to counteract the unsettling effects of the Frenchman’s intrusion by recalling his childhood kitchen and its associated smells:

  Lard, iced tea, fried meat, bleach.

  In a patch of untended weeds outside the back window lay the familiar burn pile. So many happy moments had been spent at that small homebuilt table, the six of them talking, laughing, playing Nail Your Neighbor for pennies.

  He let his mind roam over the pile, imagining certain items that had accumulated there over the course of his childhood: a rimless tire, a rusted length of dog chain, the nicked brim of a baseball cap, the pink arm and head of Minky, beloved doll of his sister Willamina, who had one day, for reasons unknown, torn the thing apart in a rage.

  I’m gonna need that sink, handsome, said his mother.

  His father was washing up, sleeves rolled back, face red with sun, chaw tin in his back pocket.

  My charge was a child then, a dreamy child resting one hand on a familiar kitchen counter of warped, stained plywood.

  What would he do with his life?

  What did he want to be when he grew up?

  Wake up, bub, Father said. Tables don’t set themselves.

  And why’s your mouth hanging open like that, said Mother.

  These memories were having the desired effect of driving away that vision of a crazy foreigner dancing on his feet talking nonsense. They stemmed from that period when he’d first realized he’d probably always be the shortest.

  Did I look the shortest? he’d asked after his eighth-grade recital.

  You looked fine, Mother’d said warily.

  But that night from his bed he’d heard them talking.

  We might think about some taller shoes, Father said.

  Five inches taller? Mother said.

  Then there’d come a silence that felt like shared stifled laughter.

  He’ll grow, Mother said.

  Hope so, Father said. Seemed like a third grader’d somehow snuck up there.

  Well, Father had since met three governors. Had shaken hands with the great Bob Feller. Mother’d once had coffee with Charlton Heston.

  They’d lived bigger lives, those simple Wyoming folks had.

  Because of him.

  Through his good offices.

  He’d sent them to the Holy Land. By way of Paris. Only the best hotels. Cars, tour guides, the whole enchilada.

  Suddenly irritated, he sternly, even rudely, addressed an underling. An underling who was soft and admired him. Perry. Why the hell had Perry let that Frenchie in here? Did Perry cogitate? Was he capable of using his noggin? Could he apply that lump of flesh taking up so much damn space there at the end of his neck to solve a thing? Could he at least do that?

  Seemed he couldn’t.

  Well, get out.

  Get out, Perry.

  Have a think about all I’ve said to you.

  Maybe I’m wrong.

  Been wrong before.

  Although not very damn often.

  Perry, get out.

  Send in Lars. Send Marie in. Tell her don’t dare bring that goddamn graph back in here. It stinks to high heaven. Communicates zilch. How much did that piece of trash cost me? Remember those folks called shareholders? Who trust us with their money? That they worked hard to accumulate?

  His wife woke, rose, checked a bedside monitor, placed a palm on his forehead, and returned to the love seat, pausing to adjust the position of her slippers such that the invisible person was no longer pigeon-toed and was facing not the couch, but the window, as if looking out of it.

  * * *

  —

  I did not understand how the Frenchman’s nonsensical ravings could have upset such a serious and confident man.

  But they had.

  Outwardly my charge remained motionless (on his back, eyes closed, one hand under the covers, the other above), while inwardly (that is, as he imagined himself from within the dreamlike state in which his illness had trapped him) he rocked from side to side, as if bound and in distress.

  I gently urged him back toward those memories of home (those kitchen smells, the burn pile, those games of Nail Your Neighbor).

  He was having none of it.

  That dope, what crap, he thought angrily. What did that frog know about it? Had Pierre here ever roustabouted in heat over a hundred under Gleb damn Neeling? Who’d give a guy a stout poke in the ribs with a wrench because some minor safety protocol had been (briefly) neglected? Well, Neeling had been right to do it. He sure had. Safety first. Injuries cost a company. You didn’t want to see a fellow injured. So, therefore: firmness. Be a little rough. That way, the lesson got in there.

  Net result?

  Fewer people hurt.

  Neeling was a doer, God love him, the whoring old bastard.

  You know one thing you rarely heard about in the good old U.S.A. anymore? Monsieur Frog? A young fellow dying of appendicitis. At twenty-eight. Like Grandpa’s brother had. Because a road got washed out. And the horse-drawn cart couldn’t make it through. Imagine you go back in time and drop that young guy into the backseat of a big old SUV, fly him over a perfect four-lane to some gleaming modern hospital, save his life.

  There was a story often told. Perhaps you’ve heard this one. Don’t stop me if you have, though, ha ha (I dearly love to tell it): Little boy’s grousing: doesn’t like cars. Because of “the pollution.” You know where this one’s going, I bet. The father pulls the car over to the side of the road. “Then I suppose you’ll want to walk.”

  End of objections from el kiddo.

  Your choice, Jacques.

  Dying in the back of a horse cart stuck in the mud? Or zinging toward help, air-con blasting?

  Anyone with a lick of sense would choose the latter.

  We had.

  The world had.

  That was what was so damn stupid about it. People forgot the empty larder. Forgot drought, forgot famine. Forgot what it was like to be at the mercy of the world. The Nesbitts’d brought over a charity basket. During that lean period. After the hay burned up, the little feeder stream went dry, Bremer refused to re-up their loan. You best believe I was drooling. Father shot me a look. Move the slightest muscle toward that basket, my young swain, his eyes were saying, you’ll find yourself bunking down in the barn with the heifers.

  The bread in that basket was rock-hard and the bacon stringy and the apples home to more than a few worms.

  But to us it was a feast.

  Whereas nowadays folks padded past climate-controlled cases of out-of-season vegetables and fish from faraway seas and meat from animals who fed in meadows under mountain ranges whose names a person could hardly pronounce, thinking, Yap, yap, yap, big deal, pork from Denmark, salmon from the Bering Strait, loaves of woven bread from Ferrara, all of this is my right.

  When what it was, was a goddamn miracle.

  How had that bounty made its way here?

  Did it walk?

  Just magically appear?

  Go waltz on someone else’s feet, Henri.

  A wave of pain washed over him, causing his mind to forgo all nonessential activities.

  Golly, goddamn, he thought.

  It would pass.

  It had to. Had to.

  Well, it wasn’t.

  It. Was. Not.

  Breathe, I said.

  He startled, amazed at how much the voice in his head sounded like the voice of a real woman speaking to him from just a few inches away.

  Don’t be afraid, I said.

  You’re with Frenchie, he said.

  He was, of course, in a sense, correct.

  I allowed him in, yes, I said. As a courtesy. My mistake. I most sincerely apologize. It will not happen again, I assure you.

  I said all this in my gentlest voice, which never fails to charm. A charge, frightened, resides alone in the baffling country of their illness. Their separation from the world has begun. They delight in any prospect of an ally. The rest of creation has dimmed. Everything on which they have depended begins crumbling away before their very eyes.

  Then I appear.

  Get lost, he said angrily. I don’t want you.

  This was—

  Unusual.

  To say the least.

  Normally I am received quite warmly.

  Get thee behind me, he growled. Satan.

  In his mind (and only in his mind, for he had not moved or been outwardly conscious for many hours now) he drew back his arm in an awkward, preparing-to-throw-a-karate-chop motion that, in his vital years, he had often directed at underlings who annoyed him beyond a certain limit.

  As if intending to strike me (!).

  Well, I never.

  * * *

  —

  I launched out through the wall, floated to the ground, stumbled across the drive, past the auto and the fountain of the golden dog.

  Because upset, I found myself sinking into the earth to such an extent that soon only the tip of my hairdo was visible, scootering along that asphalt surface, somewhat resembling the fin of a shark.

  A solitary nightbird stood in my path, watching as my hairdo tip progressed toward it, perhaps mistaking it for prey, until my fin passed directly through its puffy chest, giving it a fright, sending it up to the lowest branch of an overhanging tree to sit there flustered, wondering what had just happened to it.

  Managing gradually to compose myself, I returned to the surface and found myself standing before a redwood fence hung heavily with star jasmine.

  From the other side came the sounds of the wedding crowd.

  Feeling peevish, I passed through.

  The ceremony was over, dinner about to begin.

  From across the yard came a smell I associated with (my goodness) “Jardine’s Smorgasbord”: a combined smell of “mashed potatoes,” “green beans,” and “just-baked bread.”

  Oh, gosh, yes: “Jardine’s.”

  In “Indiana.”

  Along a wide bend in “Sherwood Ave.”

  Among that familiar row of “scrawny pines.”

  Under an awning, two chefs sliced away at massive slabs of beef and ham as a third chef fastidiously adjusted the position of an even larger turkey. On the far side of a three-story glass wall, a stream of children appeared, spilling like a candy-colored waterfall down a stairway inside. Two of their number struggled ineptly with a sliding door until a frail old man joined them in the struggle, pulling the door open just wide enough for the child-stream to exit and flow, with a delighted high-pitched interrogatory babble, over to the turkey-adjusting chef. One little girl now reaching up timidly to touch the turkey, the chef wagged a colorfully sprigged leg at her, and the entire child-stream reversed itself in terror and fled back inside through the narrow door-gap, nearly knocking over the helpful old man, leaving behind one little fellow who ran smack into the glass, then sat on his bottom deciding whether to cry. Deciding against, he rose, felt around as if ascertaining what was glass and what was not, then passed tentatively through the gap, rejoining his cohort, which began screaming with delight that he had, after all, not been taken alive by the evil chef. It was agreed collectively that the thing to do was drop to all fours en masse and slip beneath another long serving table and crawl along the length of it, then pop up again on the far end and hop, hop, hop in place, ecstatic to find that there still existed, as far as they could tell, no limit whatsoever on how loud they could be or where in the party they could go. A source of maraschino cherries being located, an approach soon developed: stand tugging at the trousers or skirts of those adults milling around the source until several cherries at once were handed down wrapped in a napkin.

  I found myself getting teary. Like I used to.

  At weddings.

  It was all so dear:

  New dresses, suits, shoes; shiny ties in the torchlight; a man’s large hand resting proudly upon the slender back of his date; mingled smells of perfume and cologne; memories arising of other weddings one had attended, of one’s own wedding, of weddings one had seen in movie-films; the clacking of plates set down upon tables recently unfolded; a feast spread out on a red-clothed table (the beef, the ham, the turkey; Cornish game hens bundled, browned, sauced; steaming heaps of fried calamari; a color-rich cluster of vegetable dishes; a heap of sliced bread); massive (white, brown, yellow) dollops of custard beckoning from a second, yellow-clothed dessert table; and soon the dancing would begin, the dancers, at first reluctant, made gradually bold by drinks and the sideways smiles of their fellow dancers, this collective feeling arising among them: Well, here we are, folks, together, under the moon, still alive, and though, true enough, we’re ruining our new clothes with spilled drinks and sweat, what the hey, use it or lose it, right, kids?

  Goodness, I thought.

  I was more Jill “Doll” Blaine than I had been in quite some time.

  On the other hand: How fun.

  I just felt like pulling that bride and groom aside and hugging them and going, Goshdarnit, you kids really seem to love each other and I wish you all the luck in the world, and I hope, I really do hope, that you’ll be (I truly mean this) as happy as me and this one here, who, though he may not look like much, ha ha, and can sometimes be a real grumpy-puss, I’ll tell you what: heart of gold, and you two should be so lucky, and I hope and pray you will be, too, and wind up just as happy as—

  As Lloyd and I.

  As Lloyd and I had been. Yikes.

  Gosh.

  Anyways.

  That was in the past.

  That was not for me. Not anymore.

  I had been elevated.

  A man holding a drink dragged a folding chair to the fence and stepped up on it, trying for a better look over at the home of my charge. Whisking to him, I entered the orb of his thoughts. He knew my charge by name and reputation, and part of the reason he had agreed to come to this wedding at all, with his sister, who needed a date, was the proximity of the house of my charge, who he very much admired, being as my charge was a self-made guy and knew what was up and got it about the American dream and was someone this gentleman saw himself as emulating though his own business was on a much more modest scale, consisting, as it did, of (only) three oil-change places.

  That is: places one went to get one’s oil changed.

  Lloyd had been an “absolute fiend” about that.

  “Timely oil changes” having been proven to “prolong the life” of the—

  No, no, no.

  My place was not here, among these revelers, but over there, in the house of the (ugh) dying.

  Shame.

  Shame on me.

  I vaulted up, through the branches of a magnolia, into the bedroom of my charge.

  * * *

  —

  The Frenchman sat in an armchair in one corner, as if awaiting me.

  He did not seem the same man. He looked younger, was glowing with good health, was out of his mechanic’s garb and wearing the most beautiful set of evening clothes.

  Was even twirling a top hat on an ebony cane.

  I have found a better method, he said.

  He smiled, stood up, lurched toward me with surprising quickness and, before I could step aside, passed into me.

  What’s happening? I said.

  He abided there, taking a deep breath in, then letting it out.

  And, of the instant, I was not me but a schoolgirl from Pennsylvania.

  The nerve! I felt.

  And yet:

  She had long red hair, was tall for her age, was intelligent, wrote poetry, could do seven back walkovers in a row; was (I could feel it) lovely, and knew it.

  She was thinking, just now (or had been, as he’d sampled her mind) about (of all things) the weather.

  Always, for her fourteen long years on this earth, the seasons had passed in a predictable way: the oppressive close damp heat at the end of August made a girl feel like summer was shutting down (as if August were a dear friend who’d just learned he was to be sent away and was pleading with you not to forget the beautiful times you’d spent together during those first precious weeks of him) and then came fall’s gradual browning/oranging and, oh, the smell of the covers of one’s new notebooks, plus that good old I am back to learning again among my summer-changed friends feeling, and maybe, let’s say, as you walked to school, a drenching autumn rain converted the leaves underboot into a paint-exuding mush that stained the sidewalk purplish, which, she had to admit, she just loved that.