Especially if, for example, in a window of the old Murphree house, on that dull dark rainy morning, a single candle burned.

  Which would be spooky.

  But in a good way.

  Only this year: uh, no, everything was wonky in the extreme all of the sudden. The heat positively crushed a gal all through October (Halloween being a big sweatfest because one had chosen to be, duh, a bear) and then more of the same in November, until finally you had to, sadly, bail on the four new sweaters Mom had bought you at Target (sorry, guys, maybe next year) and then came a freaky snow so heavy or even copious it cracked a beam in the roof, or so said Dad, who ought to know, since he spent half his life up there. Which snow was, at least, you know, seasonal. Like, festive and all? But then, for two solid days (in December!) August returned, and one morning the yard was this total sudden lake from all the melting snow, and the swing set tipped all the way over on its own for no reason whatsoever just because something underground had fritzed out or whatnot from all the melting (!).

  Then, a week later, as you were helping Mom get the Christmas tree in (because that’s the kind of super-thoughtful kid you were, ha ha, but seriously), both of you just pouring off sweat, because it was like eighty or something, you started back for the new tree stand in the trunk only to find hundreds of hailstones zipping down like little lunch boxes or whatnot, and you and Mom had to wait on the porch for the utter madness out there to abate (meaning “stop”) or else get good and brained, which, meanwhile, smaller hailstones kept plunking down and bouncing back up out of the trunk as if the trunk were not a trunk at all but a gosh-darned trampoline, didn’t it seem that way? Mom said.

  And she had to admit, yes, exactly, spot-on observation, Mom.

  * * *

  —

  The Frenchman stepped abruptly out of me.

  And I was suddenly no longer that girl.

  How I missed her, missed being her, missed knowing I was lovely, missed looking forward to high school, where, I felt sure, I would do great and make just a ton of new friends.

  The Frenchman looked at me with alarm.

  That? he said. That is what you take away? From this expérience extraordinaire? That I have provided you? That she is lovely? That she will have friends? Mon Dieu!

  Well, also, I said (trying to somewhat redeem myself in his eyes), something’s off with the weather.

  Voilà, he said, and cut his eyes down at my charge. Through his words and deeds, he must bear an outsized responsibility.

  For the weather? I said.

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

  So you’ve said, I said.

  Quelle horreur! he cried.

  So you’ve said, I said.

  Do not mock me, he said. My shame is well-founded. See for yourself.

  He skim-popped me lightly across the head with the palm of his hand.

  And just like that, I was him, briefly, the Frenchman, in a mechanic’s jumper, crouching before some sort of metal contraption in a squalid barn smelling of cow dung and gasoline. With a bang the thing went off. From one end protruded a metal claw, which suddenly started turning. Oily smoke from the contraption poured forth from the barn, drifting over a nearby meadow lush with wildflowers, where I would sometimes go to sit against a boulder while working through a particularly difficult engineering problem.

  I had done it.

  Triomphe, I had done it!

  Wait, I said. You invented the engine?

  To my shame, yes, he said.

  Well, I beg to differ, I said.

  For me? Former me? Jill “Doll” Blaine? My auto, my car? My “lime-green” Chevelle? In those bygone days? In “Stanley, Indiana”? Had been a source of such happiness. To get in it, when it was new, a gift from “Dad,” and drive around town, and have the other kids notice, and wave? At me? Former big nobody? To cruise, on a Friday night, down Pope Street, in that wonderful new-car smell, and join the long line of other gleaming cars, all filled with kids from school, and park at the Aurora for Cokes, then slowly cruise back out, to wave at and flirt with boys who, at school, in real life, I would never even have dreamed of speaking to?

  And he, the Frenchman, had played a part in that?

  In making thousands, maybe millions, of young teens happy?

  Not to mention: family vacations, ambulances, trucks delivering all sorts of wonderful things to people all over town who needed them?

  You don’t understand, he said.

  I’m afraid I don’t, I said.

  It poisons, madame, he said. I did not know it then. But I know it now. I have been corrected. As he must be. And you? You are here to help. To help me. Help me correct him. Which you will do. Make no mistake.

  He was scaring me a little, to be honest.

  And what did he think I was going to be able to do about it, anyway?

  Lie on top of him, he said.

  I beg your pardon? I said.

  Lie on top of him, he said. Let yourself sink in. Enter him, show him. Show him what I have shown you. That girl, her feelings, the weather. Then I will leave you to your work. If, that is, you still wish to do it.

  My charge’s legs were swollen, his breath terrible, his color bad, his features painted with the early signs of encroaching death, the lips beginning, already, to arrange themselves into the death-sneer.

  Why don’t you do it? I said.

  I no longer have it! the Frenchman cried. I gave it to you. Besides, he has an aversion to me. And is therefore unlikely to receive from me. Do it. Do it now. Lie on top of him. Sink in. Breathe in, breathe out. Then abide there for, perhaps, another full minute. Just to be sure. Come now: no more delays.

  Always, in the bygone days, men would tell me with great certainty what I should do and then, if I hesitated, would tell me again, towering over me, smelling of cigars and mouthwash, superior smirks creeping over their huge-pored faces, and then I would, often, nearly always—well, I would do it. I would do whatever that man had asked me to do, within reason, seeing this as a form of kindness on my part, so as to not force the poor fellow, who no doubt had a lot on his mind, to, uh, raise his voice or otherwise become, well, frustrated.

  Frustrated with me.

  The Frenchman was frowning.

  It was always their disappointment that got me.

  Even more so than their anger.

  I suggested that, rather than entering him, I might, perhaps, hold my forearms above the torso of my charge? Like so? Then briefly dip them in?

  I demonstrated, stopping just short of entry.

  No, no, lie on top of him, he said. Enter him. Don’t be obtuse. Trust me. It will be more powerful that way. He will be more apt to receive.

  Well, I was not the passive woman I had once been.

  I had been elevated, was stronger now, could do what I thought best.

  I’ll try it my way, thanks, I said, and thrust my forearms in.

  At which the Frenchman let out a terrible groan.

  Idiote! he shouted.

  But I could tell, by a certain sensation at the base of my skull and the look that passed over my charge’s face, that, yes, he saw.

  Somewhat dimly, somewhat partially.

  But he saw.

  Saw the Pennsylvania girl.

  My God, woman! the Frenchman shouted. I gave that to you. Do you not see? I no longer have it. Here within me. To give. Nor do you have it within you. Quel désastre! You have wasted it! Look: he barely felt it. You have no idea what you have done. Quel imbécile! What an excellent chance you have tonight forfeited!

  Well, let’s see, I said. Let’s at least wait and—

  His natty suit was suddenly a dull gray and the hat on his cane was no longer spinning.

  It was not easy, he said. Extracting that. Bringing it back here.

  I’m sure, I said.

  Pennsylvania is far, he said.

  Must have been very tiring, I said.

  And I did it with such admirable quickness, he added sadly.

  Then began to visibly age, while regarding me with a withering look of reproach.

  As he aged, he shrank, became bent and thin, rotated in space, was soon lying horizontally and, in that position, passed away.

  Then manifested as he actually was, now, back in that former realm: a thin layer of dried bonedust in what remained of a rotted coffin in an obscure quarter of a Parisian graveyard.

  I will do my best to return, a voice said from within the layer.

  Then the coffin vanished, a ripple ran through the now-floating layer of bonedust, which retracted sharply into a single mote, and then even that much of him was gone.

  Adieu, I said, perhaps rather small-mindedly.

  * * *

  —

  Did this glimpse of his true state, as he was now, back in that former realm, put me in mind of my own true state?

  Of course.

  But I was not bothered. I knew very well where “I” was: underground, Stanley, Indiana, “Sacred Heart of Mary Cemetery,” beneath a willow, fifteen feet from a stone bench upon which “Slurpee cup” rested and had been resting now for the better part of a year, and what: a desiccated brownish-green figure of medium height (length), cleaved in half at approximately the hip-line, left arm disconnected at the shoulder, a fuzz-beard of mold on what was left of its cheekbones, wearing, still, the outfit Lloyd had picked out for me (beige skirt, pale pink blouse, black pumps, my favorite in life, a fact Lloyd had sweetly remembered even in his grief), all of it marked by a disappointingly economical stone reading: J Blaine, Wife, 1954–1976, the best Lloyd, an assistant deputy, could afford.

  But (joy, joy!) that hideous figure was not me, not anymore; nor was I the woman that figure had been when vital, i.e., before her demise, odiously burdened with her stunted diction, her limited view, her nominal ability to comprehend, her constrained love, which she could direct only toward those precious few with whom she had been randomly placed into proximity, i.e., friends, family, husband.

  No: this, this now, was me: vast, unlimited in the range and delicacy of my voice, unrestrained in love, rapid in apprehension, skillful in motion, capable, equally, of traversing, within a few seconds’ time, a mile or ten thousand miles.

  The champion of a cause I would never forsake:

  To comfort.

  To comfort whomever I could, in whatever way I might.

  For this was the work our great God in Heaven had given me.

  * * *

  —

  Despite the Frenchman’s assertion to the contrary, the mind-sample delivered by my forearm-immersion concerning the lovely girl in Pennsylvania seemed, indeed, to have had some effect on my charge.

  He was unhappy and anxious, the fingers on his right hand making rapid infinitesimal typing motions.

  Can a fellow get some water around this joint? he said.

  Ask, I said.

  You again, he said.

  Ask aloud, I said. Your wife is just there. You’ll need to be loud enough to wake her.

  Water, he said.

  But again he did not succeed in actually speaking.

  I’ll die of dry, he said. What a sorry pass. For a man of my caliber.

  In a Dumas bar long ago a drunk’d been shoved down and couldn’t get up. Just kept calling out from where he lay heaped in a corner, under the punching bag you paid to punch. Man of my caliber, man of my caliber, he’d kept pathetically calling.

  What a dope that guy was. He’d quit trying. That was his sin. A person could do anything if he put his mind to it. That drunk’d be lying under that punching bag forever at that rate.

  A guy had to fight.

  So, you were a fighter, I said.

  My charge lay there deciding whether to engage with this figment of his imagination.

  Was and am, sister, he said.

  Despite his disbelief in my reality his mind reflexively tumbled forth, seeking to demonstrate that he was and always had been a fighter:

  At Michigan, freshman year, he’d been taking some guff. About his height. Also, was considered a Wyoming hick. Who, his classmates joked, must play a mean banjo.

  He’d felt like packing it in, going home.

  Well, here’s how that deal’d worked out:

  Summer before college, he’d worked in the oil patch. Near Gillette. So, when field camp rolled around after junior year, he knew a thing or two. About the rigs. It could get scary. Some of the fellows got rattled. By the heat, by the noise. They’d turn to him: K.J., am I doing this right? Am I about to get hurt like this? About to get my arm yanked off by that chain right there? I feel like I maybe am.

  So from a short little Wyoming hick nobody he’d become a wiry bantam rooster of an expert moving low and fast among his bigger, less-experienced, citified classmates, snapping out brisk orders, which they (who previously, some of them, used to do that condescending thing he hated of ruffling his hair like he was a little boy) now obeyed unquestioningly.

  Some dunce would be joking around, doing a comedy routine off the radio, not paying attention, about to get himself sucked into a gearbox, and he’d grab that bozo by the arm and yank him over somewhere safe and hiss a few harsh words into his ear there and give him a brotherly pop on the hard hat. Back in town that night the guy whose bacon he’d saved would buy his beers, by way of thanks.

  Suddenly he was cock of the walk.

  Like that.

  Because he hadn’t just flopped down and taken it.

  A tank. His wife had once called him that. He rolled right over whatever life put in front of him. He’d worked his way up. Step by step. To the top. Very top. CEO. About as high as a guy could go. If he did say so himself. Hired and fired, restructured whole divisions, traveled the world, befriended senators, advised presidents.

  Did that frog have any idea how much motor fuel it took? For the U.S. to have one normal year, like we just now had? One hundred and fifty billion gallons. One. Hundred. Fifty. Billion. Try to work your head around that, Pierre. If you can. Get hold of a gas container. Of the type used to gas up a lawnmower. Get hold of a lot of them. By the time I’m done, you’ll wish you were in the gas-can business. Ha ha. Line ’em up side by side. To get to a hundred fifty billion gallons? That line of cans is going to need to go around the world. Wait: not just once, not twice: a thousand times. And somebody has to go out there and find the stuff. Right? Get it out of the ground, process it, deliver it. Was that easy? It was not. Take it from someone who’d actually done it. Otherwise, what? Did the frog want to start rationing? Was that the notion? Rationing fuel? Who was going to run that deal? Some vast international bureaucracy? Feel good about that, Jacques? Think that’s going to be an efficient process? (Been to the U.N. lately? The post office?) And guess who’d get hurt the most? If the handwringers get their way, brought the whole deal to a halt. The poor. That’s who. Those who have the least. What’s the tide that lifts all boats? Continual growth. Is continual growth a given?

  It. Is. Not.

  Any idiot knows that.

  So: don’t rush off half-cocked. That’s all he was saying, all he’d ever said. Let’s not leap off a cliff about it. What’s the rush? Consider the timeline. Cogitate on the complexity of the overall system. Consider Lao-tzu: “Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish—don’t overdo it.” Or, next thing you know, some know-nothing from Washington’s in your bedroom, assessing how well you’re putting on your socks.

  Let’s keep researching, keep investigating. Even if the Hysteria Brigade’s correct, twenty years isn’t going to make a diddly bit of difference.

  Weren’t these the same jackasses who’d predicted a coming ice age?

  Put that in your cheese-smelling pipe and smoke it.

  Mon frère.

  He was a fighter, yes, goddamn it.

  When the going got tough, the tough got going.

  And the going was getting tough just now. Yessir. He was sick. Maybe I’d heard about that? Maybe I’d gotten that goddamn memo? He was starting to lose it. He’d started seeing things. Crazy things.

  Such as? I said and smiled.

  It’s hooey, he said.

  What is? I said.

  That Frenchie is and Walkover Gal is, he said. And you are.

  And yet, I said. What color is my blouse?

  Pink, he said, wondering at the fact that he knew this.

  Pale pink, I said.

  Yes, he had to admit.

  How odd, he felt: an imaginary woman manifesting so specifically.

  What are you then? he said. Ghost?

  Oh, dear man, I said. A friend.

  A friend, he said.

  Of sorts, I said. Here to comfort you. In your hour of need.

  Doing a bang-up job so far, he said. You want to comfort me?

  Yes, I said.

  Keep Frenchie out, he said.

  I’ll do my best, I said.

  But even as I spoke, the Frenchman fell in through the ceiling, so emaciated as to be nearly unrecognizable, all but lost in the familiar pair of mechanic’s overalls.

  He got up, dusted himself off.

  Madame! he said. Tell me: How long does it seem to you? That I’ve been gone? To me? It seems like five years! Vraiment! Five years of toil. Resulting in a tremendous achievement. As you will now see! Let us begin.

  Begin what? I said.

  In response he performed a stiff, hideous dance of anticipation.

  Sweet Christ, my charge whispered.

  Steady, I said.

  Commençons! the Frenchman shouted.

  * * *

  —