Automobiles, trucks, and buses zoom along the highway. They seem to move faster than they did thirteen years ago, but perhaps my memory is faulty, since the fastest thing in Town is a ten-speed bicycle. The vehicles zipping by also seem louder and dirtier than before. The exhaust they belch is stomach-turning; the honks they emit are earsplitting. Town may have its flaws, but at least the air is clean and the worst noise is a tone-deaf townie lying to himself that he can master the saxophone.

I stand at a crosswalk with two girls, both wearing striped wool sweaters unraveling at the waist, pink tutus(!), and thick-soled oxblood boots. One of the girls, the one with big eyeglasses, says to the other, “You’re so bogus!”

Seeing the girl’s glasses, I realize I still have my twenty-twenty vision. I wonder if you will recognize me without eyeglasses. What am I thinking? Of course you will. Will I recognize you is the question I should ask. You have aged thirteen years. Perhaps your hair is salt. Perhaps you are flabby, jowly, and wrinkly.

The light turns green, and I cross the highway. More fast-food joints have sprung up. Despite how garish the jumble of fluorescent signs is, I am awed. After all, heaven has no giant yellow sombreros advertising tacos and no giant dancing lobsters promoting seafood. The lobsters, I must say, seem overly happy for crustaceans that will be torn asunder and have their flesh sucked out of their claws.

The sidewalk here is no safer than before. The strip of lawn between it and the oncoming traffic is so thin a car could easily jump the curb and strike a person. I hope you always remain alert as you walk to work.

I spot a baseball cap lying in the grass. It is all blue except for a red letter C (the Chicago Cubs). I adjust the back strap and don the cap, pulling the visor down low. I should be an incognito ghost, just in case I bump into somebody who knows me.

Should I just walk into Clippers and say, “Hello there, Mother and Father”? You may accidentally jab your customers in the eyes with your scissors. Or faint and strike your heads so hard you get a concussion. Casper says it is now ten after four. Should I wait outside your shop till your customers leave? Will Zig give me enough haunting time?

An eighteen-wheeler roars past, beeping its horn. The noise is like an electric prod, and I start to run. I run at top speed till I reach the strip mall and then slow to a jog. I pass the druggist’s, the pizza parlor, the pet shop, and the dry cleaner’s, and I cannot believe my eyes. I stop dead in my tracks. Your barber pole is no longer there! The red and white stripes are gone. The blood and the bandages are a thing of the past.

Like a fifty-year-old townie, Clippers has vanished. Poof!

In its place stands a plant shop called Back to the Garden. I hurry to the window. Baskets of flowers have replaced your bottles of shampoos and hair tonics. Hung on the window is a poster of Adam and Eve, their bodies covered in vines. The sign reads, PLANTS: A GIFT THAT GROWS ON YOU. I press my nose against the glass and see an Asian man dressed in an apron who is selling a bouquet of gerberas to an old lady with lavender hair.

Where are you, dear Father and Mother?

There is a phone booth outside the pet shop. I trot back and leaf through the white pages. I find all the Dalrymples living in Cook County. Eight listings, but none of the names are yours or even Aunt Rose’s. I flick through the yellow pages so wildly that I rip a page in half. There is no Clippers among the barbershop listings.

I rest my forehead against the glass of the booth. “Help me, Zig,” I whisper, my hope fading. “You brought me here. Tell me what to do.”

I see a cat sleeping in the pet-shop window. A Siamese. Then I notice the shop’s name on its front door.

In 1979, the pet shop was called Animal Lovers.

Today its name is Zoo.

Lordy! Lordy!

I hurry out of the phone booth and push open the shop’s front door. A bell jingles, and the cat in the window lifts its sleepy head and throws me a look of ennui. Behind the cash register stands a young woman in a purple velour tracksuit. She is affixing discount stickers to boxes of birdseed and barely gives me a glance.

The name cannot be a coincidence, can it? I wander the aisles pondering what to do. The only customer in the store is an older teenager whose kneecaps stick out of big holes in his pale blue jeans. He is grimacing as he drags a hefty bag of dog kibble to the checkout counter.

I end up at the back of the shop in the rodent department, which smells strongly of wood chips. Shelves are stacked with terrariums of gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rats, and mice. I drum my fingers against the glass of the mouse terrarium and eight pairs of nostrils sniff the air. The mice stare at me, beady-eyed and alarmed. As a ghost, I am only scary enough to give the willies to a litter of mice.

There are also tanks here containing tarantulas and lizards, and I notice a pair of beautiful geckos whose yellow bodies are covered with dark spots like a banana going mushy. Their little pink tongues dart in and out, reminding me of Pierre.

Another tank catches my eye. It is filled with insects crawling all over one another. Holy moly! They are death’s head cockroaches! Dozens and dozens of Blaberus craniifer! I remember that this roach species is often used as lizard food.

Behind the wall of terrariums is a small area where employees tend the animals. Someone is there now. I see the person between the tanks. He is standing at a sink. His back is to me, but I see his dark ponytail, which extends to his shoulder blades. He is wearing khaki shorts and a sweatshirt.

The little hairs on the back of my neck go stiff.

I know this man.

He turns around and approaches the wall of tanks, lifts the wire-mesh lid of a terrarium, and drops in an empty paper-towel roll for the gerbils to chew apart.

Petrified, frozen in place, I watch the man. From somewhere in the shop, a parrot emits a loud squawk, and the cashier calls out, “Shut up, Aristotle!”

Johnny Henzel looks exactly the same as he does in Town. His hair is the same length, as is his beard. His cheekbones are just as sharp, his eyelashes just as dark. He even has the same pimple on his cheek.

He tried telling me the truth years ago. He was still in a coma here in America, he said. Rover was a bug, he claimed, but in the sense of a listening device that transmitted the voices of those around his hospital bed. Only he could hear those voices.

I did not believe him. He was a half-deader, but I thought him half-mad.

Patients in long comas often wake forgetting their past. Has Johnny forgotten his? Has he forgotten all about Town? All about me?

I step closer to the terrariums, my face between the gecko tank and the lizard tank. I remove my Cubs cap and drop it on the floor.

Johnny has turned away from me. He takes a bag of rabbit pellets from a shelf and cuts it open with a pair of scissors.

I begin to hum a song, quietly at first and then louder.

The song is by Cole Porter, its lyrics a portmanteau.

Johnny puts down the pellets and turns slowly around. He knits his brow, creating the approximately-equal-to symbol (≈) in the middle of his forehead.

He takes a few steps forward and stares at my face between the terrariums. His mouth falls open. His eyes go wide.

I stop humming. In a loud whisper, I say, “Boo!”