PART X: WE LAUGHED UNTIL WE WERE NO LONGER PEOPLE 2004

There is a black raincloud inside the car. I am a dog being driven out to the country only to be ditched on the side of the road—except that we’re in Friday morning rush hour heading into the city from the airport. I don’t dare look Dan in the eye when he swings his head toward me in the backseat of his new sedan where I’m huddled up wet. His rainy beard rubs against the headrest. Keep your eyes on the road, I want to tell him, even though he’s in the passenger seat. The road is barely visible through the veil of rain around us. Jules says nothing, her hands on the wheel at ten and two. I bet she offered to drive so she wouldn’t have the chance to hit me. They called her number on my emergency card from the airplane. What a shock that must have been. A privilege, really, to get a telephone call from thirty thousand feet in the air. She might have cried. But I already apologized, I think. I’m not going to say it again.

I realize that I got overwhelmed on the plane and that jumping would have been nuts. It would not have gotten me closer to Nicolette. Because it would have killed me. I’m getting distracted from the logic. I have to find a quiet place to read over my mathematical proof, starting back at Premise 1.

“So you’re off your meds, I take it?” Jules asks the road whizzing under us.

Isn’t that funny—we talk about being off or on meds like it’s a trampoline, when really they are in you, undoing you. “I’m a little too soaked to talk right now,” I say. Which is true, after standing outside with that Homeland Security guard—a Hasid—waiting at the airport. We stood in the rain like it wasn’t raining at all. I’d hidden the painting tube the best I could under my shirt. One of those big New York summer rains, but not warm. As if a whole season passed since I was here last, which is wrong because that was only three days ago.

You were just testing back there, Tricky Voices. Is that what it was, a test? You knew the plane door was not the right door. But what is the right door? I must get out from under Dan’s gaze in order find it.

Dan turns to face me as much as his bulk will let him. “The least you could do is treat your sister with respect and answer her question.”

“I don’t like the tone of her question,” I say calmly, one hand on the tube beside me.

“He’s a shoteh,” he says, turning back to Jules.

“Dan!” Jules looks at him sharply. “I don’t know what that means, but don’t say that.”

“It means he’s an imbecile. He thinks he’s not responsible for his actions.”

“It’s normal,” Jules says to him, “if you do a stupid thing like getting off your meds.”

“I left my prescription at home,” I say. “I would have filled it when I went to visit Mom.”

“You should have filled it days ago! And let’s not even start about how you ran off to Mom’s. I can’t believe she dropped you at the airport like this. She must have noticed. She just didn’t want to deal with you herself.” Jules glances at me in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t mean that. She probably didn’t know. How could she? She hasn’t been here.”

“She cried. When she drove me,” I say.

“I knew it,” Jules says. “Just once, she could have acted responsibly.”

“Your mom always cries,” Dan offers.

“That’s true, she always cries.” Jules looks back at me. “We’re going to the hospital.”

I use my low and serious voice. “I can’t go today. There’s too much to do. Right, Dan?”

“You’re asking me?”

What a bad liar, I think loudly. “Please, Jules, just—we’ll swing by my apartment and get my prescription. Then we’ll go to your place so you can keep an eye on me like you’ve done before and it’ll be fine.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know they aren’t my own. Dan inserted the idea of going to my place. He thinks Nicolette is there, or a clue to her. Taking thoughts out of my head and replacing them with his. “I feel totally great right now, anyway. I just had a bad moment is all.”

But it wasn’t all bad. That little slip on the airplane has put me closer to Nicolette and the portal. To loosen my mind, to rid myself of fear. It was all preparation for the right door. Just tell me where is the door!

“You’re going to the hospital today,” Jules says. “No arguments.”

My cell vibrates in my pocket, but Dan is watching so I can’t look at it. “Jules, you don’t know what you’re doing to me. I need a day, at least. There’s this guy. I have to find him. He owes me a bunch of money and if I don’t get it now, I’ll never see it. A lot of money. It’ll help with the hospital bills.”

It’s the only thing I can think of to stall. I know it isn’t over. It can’t be over. I will find the portal.

“What guy? Why does he owe you money?”

I zip my lips, afraid they’ll know if I lie again.

“You can have a few hours,” she breathes.

“We didn’t discuss that,” Dan says. He’s too obviously annoyed for his annoyance to be true—he’s happy to have a close watch over me and get some answers before locking me away.

“A few hours,” Jules says, “and then I’m taking you this afternoon. Six at the latest. All right?”

“Not all right,” I say. It isn’t enough time to decipher Nicolette’s tableaux code, get her the painting, and save Jules, all with Dan around me every second.

Dan’s facing front again and I peek at my phone. There’s a voicemail from a number I don’t know, which has to be Jill. I can’t risk listening now.

“That’s my best offer,” Jules says. “Hospital right now, or hospital at six. Up to you.”

The rain has let up and there’s a hint of sun. We peel around Bowery and onto Broome, then slam into a free space directly across from my apartment, below the psychic’s neon sign.

“Did you feel that?” Dan asks. “I think we ran over something.”

A man is running up to the car, flailing his arms, screaming at us in Chinese. Jules locks the car doors and stares.

“That’s Tachi,” I say.

“What does he want?” Dan asks.

“How would I know?”

Tachi pounds on my sister’s window and then mine. I roll mine down.

“Hi, Tachi,” I say, and then remember that’s not his real name. But he doesn’t notice.

“My car, man. My car,” he says, close to tears.

“This is not your car, this is our car,” Jules says, tilting her face toward my open window.

He ducks and thrashes his arms around under our car. I lean out the window a little to get a better view as he lifts his crushed remote-controlled monster truck.

The corners of his eyes turn a bright, wet red. “You must apologize,” he says to me.

“But,” I say. I fumble for the words. I do want to say them. But the words won’t come. “I didn’t run over it,” I say. I put my hand to my neck and shake my head. If I told them I’d like very much to say it but can’t, they wouldn’t believe me.

Jules rolls down her window. “I didn’t see it. I feel awful. Oh, West, apologize.”

My throat is tight and dry and I think I’m choking. “I apologize!” I yell.

Dan leans back toward my open window. “How much?” he asks Tachi.

Jules digs in her purse and hands Tachi a twenty-dollar bill.

“Are you nuts? This is a hundred fifty at least,” Tachi says, still choked up.

“One-fifty?” Jules says. “I don’t have that. You shouldn’t have been driving your toy in the middle of the street. It was bound to happen. Dan? West? Do you have any money?”

“That’s plenty. It was an accident,” Dan says.

Tachi scoffs. “It was not a toy.” Leaving the money, he sulks off to his stoop a few feet away, cradling his truck, and stares at us.

This is a sign: every victory comes with a price. I am still on track.

“I’ll run up,” Dan says, opening his door. “You two stay here.” He reaches between the front seats and holds his hand toward me, palm open. I stare at it. “Keys?”

“Thanks a lot,” I say to Jules. “I can never show my face in this neighborhood again.” I dig into my jeans pocket and place the keys in Dan’s palm a little too hard. “It’s probably on the kitchen counter,” I tell him. “Or the nightstand. Or the windowsill.”

“I’ll find it.” Dan sprints across the street, agile for such a burly guy.

This is my chance to talk to Jules alone but it’s hard to figure out where to begin without wasting time. Do I tell her about the painting? Or about Dan and the Hasidim at the landmine house? Or Nicolette and time travel? But it’s a terrible thought that makes me ram my head into the back of Jules’s headrest—I just let Dan go up to the apartment. Alone. As in without me. He could be doing anything. He could be bugging the walls and mirrors. He’s probably looking in my closet for Nicolette. Ransacking for clues.

I don’t bother shutting the car door behind me. I dash across the street and punch a bunch of numbers until someone buzzes me in. My legs are Jell-O, running up the stairs. I pull them by the knees to make them go. Jules must have caught the front door before it shut because I hear her padding up behind me. Catch my breath on the landing between the third and fourth floors. But Jules is only a flight below, huffing up, faster than me. I climb the last flight and a half—and there’s Dan, coming out of my apartment with my prescription and my messenger bag.

“When was the last time you cleaned up in there, bud? Whewee.” He waves his hand in front of his face.

Jules comes running up after me. “West, what are you doing?”

“I forgot—I need—”

“I grabbed you a few pairs of clean underwear and some shirts just in case, hope you don’t mind,” Dan says, smiling away. “Don’t know how long your stay at the hospital will be.”

The stairs pulse. There’s a hissing, someone left the gas on and then you, in an ugly, hissing voice: shove him, just shove him, you idiot. The top stair I’m teetering on is lighting up orange, I have to move now.

Jules grabs my arm and pulls me down.

At Jules and Dan’s sink, they watch to see my meds, prescription newly filled, land solidly in my stomach, when Jules’s cell rings on the counter. She looks at it askance. “It’s Dad,” she says. “What does he want?”

“Don’t answer,” I say.

She answers. I flop down on the couch.

“Hi, Dad,” Jules says. “Guess who’s with me now. There was a little trouble on the plane. He’s going back to the hospital.… Yes, he’s fine, pretending to be asleep…he said what?”

“He’s just now calling you about that? Jesus,” I say. She shoots me a look.

“He told you that? Are you sure? Because he’s mistaken. Yes. I’m not anything of the sort…I would tell you. You know how he is. He says things.… Yes, we’re all fine here. Don’t worry. Thanks for checking in.… Okay, I’ll let you go now…okay. You too.”

Jules puts the phone down calmly, walks to the couch, picks up a pillow as if to fluff it, then smacks me with it across the head. A fair punishment. Dan and I watch her huff away into the bedroom. I want to ask Dan why she didn’t tell Dad the truth, but I know everything out of his mouth will be a lie.

“You should get some sleep,” Dan says.

“I don’t need sleep. It’s ten a.m.”

“You were on a red-eye. We’ve all had a long morning.”

“Don’t you need to go to work or something?”

Dan says, “I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t remember asking for it.”

He stands over me, trying to be intimidating. His skin is from a black-and-white movie. “I don’t really care what you think of me or what your problem is, but you need to shape up your attitude with your sister.”

“You need—”

Then Jules comes out with a blanket and throws it at me on the couch before turning back into her bedroom and slamming the door.

When I wake a little later, Dan’s watching a tennis match with the volume low and Jules is reading at the kitchen table and the rain has restarted.

“Should I turn it off?” Dan asks me.

“No,” I say.

“You like tennis?”

“No,” I say. “I’m asleep.”

“Tennis is a disappearing American pastime.”

Dan turns it off anyway. I sneak a peek at the painting tube, which I slipped under the couch when Dan wasn’t watching. Dan goes over to where Jules is sitting. She stiffens. I close my eyes and listen to them talking when they think I’ve gone back to sleep.

“Why don’t you just tell him?” Dan asks quietly.

“Because. It’ll make him worse.”

“You should try thinking about yourself sometime. You should’ve told your dad.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I told him West was wrong and he was, technically. I don’t want my dad’s phony sympathy anyway. It’s not like he cares.”

“He’d want to know that his daughter had a miscarriage.”

“Dan! He can hear you.”

There’s a pause and I lie perfectly still.

“He’s asleep,” Dan says. “Anyway, he should know. He’s your older brother. He’s supposed to support you.”

One of them taps their fingers on the table to rhythm of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

“I don’t know how West knew,” Jules says. “He always knows things he shouldn’t.”

There’s some shuffling and murmuring, and I peek ever so slightly to see Dan on his knees with his head in Jules’s lap and a hand on her belly. He only touches her because he thinks I’m not watching. His back is shaking and I think he’s crying. Jules leaves her hands on the arms of her chair, looking down at his head without touching him back.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he says in nearly a whimper. “My ba’al teshuva.”

“It happens to many women,” Jules says formally. “It’s God’s whatever. Not something we should break down about.” Then she lifts her eyes and looks straight into my squinted ones, or seems to. I don’t wait to find out. I shut my eyes hard and don’t open them until noon.

One time, when Nicolette had me lying supine on the hardwood floor, and it was getting cold, she put down her paints and came to lie with me. I had just finished telling her about pulling Jules’s hair and wanting her to take back what she said about me dying. She led my hand down her blouse, guided my fingers to untie it, then lift it off her. And it was as if I had lost all motor control; I would not have been able to tell my hands what to do if she wasn’t helping. I could not tell my hands from hers.

I never told her that I had a vision when I came inside her. A minor episode. It might have made me stay away from her if she hadn’t held me after like she knew. In the vision, I saw Nicolette disappearing under me. She was a ghost. And then she had never existed, sucked away from me, before and after and forever, all because I’d touched her. But when it was over, she was there, and her flesh was sweaty, and she was smiling, and she held me so tight I thought she’d break my ribs. We gripped and pulled our bodies together. Shoulders to shoulders, hips to hips. We couldn’t get close enough to each other. We couldn’t become the other.

You are absolutely right: her miscarriage was my fault. I left Jules behind and something terrible happened, just like we thought it would. I am selfish and cruel. No better than them. I couldn’t solve it in time. This is my punishment. And the cost.

But I can stop it. If I take Jules back in time with me.

The apartment is quiet. I stare out at the gray streets from the enemy’s camp. The storm’s let up, and there’s a light drizzle. I don’t like that I can’t see the rain until it hits the ground. A shadow of a man has snuck in through the front door but I don’t see Dan.

This whole apartment is oozing with red-level danger. But this is my only chance to listen to that voicemail. It’s Jill reminding me to meet him at 101st Street and Fifth Avenue at six p.m. and to bring all my meds, whatever I can scrounge up. He doesn’t say why. I’m tempted to call him back and say: this is what’s called a double-cross. But I don’t know yet what the double-cross is.

“What are you doing?” a voice behind me asks. It’s Dan, standing by the front door, the shadow hovering near him, apart from him. I have to get out of here. I’ll say anything to get out of here. I focus on his black-suited shoulders. Seems there’s a little dandruff problem there. “Just do what your sister asks today, please,” he says. “She’s had a hard few days.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“Reading. Let her rest a bit.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“It’s not my place to talk about it.” His voice is thicker and his eyes moisten. “The doctor said it might have been stress. Who knows? It couldn’t have been prevented.”

Couldn’t it have? But it seems I’m not the only one being punished.

“Why was she stressed?”

“It’s hard to say, West.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like it here.”

“She’s very happy here. Just because you’re not—” He straightens his shoulders. “I have to go. Please be gracious. Go to the hospital when Jules says it’s time. If you won’t do it for yourself, at least do it for her. It’s no good for anyone, her having to take care of you like this.”

“She doesn’t need to take care of me. I need to take care of her.”

He grabs an umbrella from beside the door. The morning’s rain falls from the metal tip.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Not that it’s your business, but I’m going to Chelsea for a lunch meeting with some colleagues, then to work.”

“Fuck,” I say. Chelsea. The gallery. The Hasidim. I rest my head on the window to cool it. It’s too late. Is it too late?

He shakes his head. “Try to think what you can offer to deserve the loving-kindness your sister gives you.”

Then his face starts coming apart. I don’t know who I’ve been talking to. And then it’s Dan again.

“Don’t hurt Jules,” I say.

“I never would. I believe you know that.” He sounds so weak and tired, I almost believe him. Pathetic, rather than suspicious like usual. I laugh at him so he knows I’m not fooled. But he must know it’s my fault she lost the baby.

“I’m sorry, West,” Dan says. And then he leaves.

This is the mouth of the cave and Dan is the throbbing, prickling tongue of the dragon, angered by what I’ve cost him. I need to get Jules far away from here before Dan comes home. To another year or decade. I have to find the portal now.

Jules is startled to see me standing over her when she wakes. “What are you doing?”

She fell asleep with a book open on her chest: The Best of Jewish Parenting. She pulls the sheets up to her neck, even though she’s totally covered and her head in a scarf.

“We have to leave,” I say. “Now.”

“Then let me get ready.” She shakes her head at herself. “Letting you drag me around.”

While I’m waiting, the rain stops. I think through all the clues, everything that happened in the last week, moving backwards through time. The plane, the bluff, visiting Mom and Ralph and Miles, stealing the painting, planning with Jill, meeting Jill, going to the gallery for the first time, talking with Jules, seeing the landmine house.

The landmine house. My mom said it, she said it so clearly in the car—about what my dad did to win her back after a fight: I have to knock on Nicolette’s door. I have to go back to the landmine house.

Jules finally opens her door. She has on a short black wig that makes her look like she fell out of a beatnik film. She’s wearing all black—black slacks and a black long-sleeve T-shirt. She looks so pretty. It’s something Nicolette would wear, except tighter and nicer. She looks so much like Nicolette right now.

“What time is it? You’ve got three hours and then the hospital.”

“You look pretty,” I say.

She sighs. “Where to?”

And I say, “The Bronx.”

Today everyone in the subway looks familiar. Everyone I pass is someone from my past. Two people in this car are connected to my future. But they’re all pretending not to know me.

“I don’t think it’s safe here,” Jules says, looking around us. I look around, too, try to quantify the danger level, but what she means is: we’re the only white people on the train. I don’t bother telling her she’s racist or that she ought to look a lot closer to home to know who she should really be fearful of.

There is one Hasid on the train and I don’t know who could be undercover. But they can’t stop us. We’re going to the point at which it all started. The place where Nicolette left the last clue, which is the first clue, where the tableaux will unlock the secret to time traveling. The secret to finding her.

The train breaches ground on the other side of the river. There’s the waxy-looking water, and the water-streaked storefront windows. Nicolette has been hiding the answers here all along, the code to sequencing the tableaux—a time traveler’s manual. It’s so obvious now. She hid it in plain sight, those dangerous words: the script along the trim of the landmine house.

We get off at 231st Street. There’s a church half a block south of us, looming and harboring obvious danger. And look at that sleepy-eyed man standing at the bus stop a few feet away who keeps nodding north.

“Why can’t I ever say ‘no’ to you?” Jules whispers, eyeing him suspiciously.

I have a sieve or net in my brain, weeding out the irrelevancies and keeping the bounty. But something’s not right. Do you feel that? There’s a rip in my net, letting too much through—stitch that up if you get the chance. All the streets look like the right street. I’m not seeing straight.

“I’m not seeing straight,” I say to confirm. “Straight to the words before it falls away.”

“West, please focus. Where does your friend live? Let’s do this fast. No dawdling.”

I grab Jules with one hand, the birthday-wrapped painting in the other, messenger bag strapped across my shoulder, and lead her under the overpass, cars pressing on my brain, traffic mixing with river sounds. Then, out of the corner of my eye, just behind us, a black fedora, a Hasid’s mean mug. I don’t waste time getting a good look. I pull Jules faster.

“What are we doing?” Jules shouts.

There’s an empty shopping cart blocking the sidewalk and we scuttle around it. The sidewalk trees whisper insults. Slut! Fuck-up! I don’t have time to stick up for her.

“This way, quickly.” I hold her forearm and pull her after me. They must know I have the painting with me. They must know I’ve finally found my way to Nicolette.

You’re right. To get to the landmine house we have to cross Broadway. Jules and I teeter on the curb. Four lanes of heavy traffic.

“Let’s go to the crosswalk,” she says, trying to pull her arm away.

“We’re not safe, we have to get to the other side.” And then I pull her into the street. Quickly through the first two lanes, three car horns in a row. I hold her wrist in the air so she won’t stumble. We wait between the yellow lines of the turning lane. Cars on both sides of us going sixty miles an hour. They come up fast and blue. She’s flipping her head wildly at each passing car. She tries to squirm away from me but I squeeze hard.

“West, stop! Let’s just make it to that street lamp,” she pleads, pointing back to where we came from. “See? It’s close. That’s our goal.”

I see the street lamp. It’s glinting red. Danger. “This way,” I say.

She glares at me. She’s hiding her terror inside her lips. But I know she won’t let me cross by myself. To her I’m the monster under the bed. But I can’t stop now, they’re gaining on us. She’ll thank me later.

“Motherfucker,” a man yells out his car window. From above we are wild stars, wobbling in a dead sky. Or maybe we are road kill. Failure! Fuck-up, you’re going to die. Jules already thought I was a failure. The incessant honking, like flatlining. Yet I can hear her heart beating louder even than the traffic. I hate you. It’s Jules, under her breath. I hate you. I hate you. It’s you, screaming in my ear as we dash across the last two lanes.

“Let go of me,” Jules says quietly, panting at my side.

I swing her arm and the painting tube in either hand, propelling us down the sidewalk, my messenger bag swinging too. Tibbet Road, we’ve made it. I smile at Jules to let her know it’s all right, I’m going to keep us safe. She tries to yank her arm away, but I keep hold.

“Just wait,” I snap at her. I don’t mean to snap.

Finally, the landmine house. It’s quiet. The eye of the storm. I have all my tableaux on file: the bluff, the tunnel, cigarette burns, the café and marionberry pie, my childhood bedroom. On tiptoe we approach until we’re standing hand in hand on the sidewalk in front of the lawn. And then I want to rip my eyes out.

The green trim around the house has been painted over.

Where are the words? No, I’m ready. I’m finally ready to read them and they’re gone!

Could I have been wrong? No, I could not have been wrong. The deductive logic must stand. Did they change the language on me because I got too close? Maybe the words have moved inside. There’s no more landmine sign or barbed wire, but there’s still a divot in the grass from an explosion. The shadows and the houses are spaced too evenly, fake. A little boy placed these houses here in a miniature train scene and we’re just little plastic people, stalled in time.

In the window, a movement.

Nicolette.

Of course. She’s inside. She’s been inside the entire time, waiting to explain those words. That first day, she was there, too, watching me through the window.

I squeeze Jules’s hand—then pull her forward into the minefield and wait to explode.

“I’m calling Dan,” Jules says, using a mean woman’s voice. “He’ll pick us up. After he says ‘I told you so.’”

But Nicolette couldn’t come out of the house that first day because the Hasidim arrived.

Two more giant steps.

“Stop,” Jules says. “I said stop.”

I stop and open my eyes. We’ve reached the front door. I grab the knob. It’s locked.

Three kicks to the door. The stone flowerpot beside it hadn’t been there last time. I lean the tube and my bag against the siding and grab the pot. It’s heavier than I thought, the perfect heaviness. A bud is starting to sprout.

Quickly along the perimeter where house meets lawn, to the first window. But she’s no longer in sight. All I can see in the dusty glass is myself. A little-boy version of me.

A running start and I smash the bottom of the pot into the window. The glass doesn’t break and there’s soil all over my chest. I do it again and the window cracks and splinters, and the third time I have to shake Jules off me and the glass sprays everywhere and almost gets her. I knock the rest of the broken window away with my hand. Jules screams at the same time as my fingers start to bleed and her screams are coming out of my wounds. I turn back to Jules to help her up on the sill. She’s crying up a storm. There’s a storm brewing, big clouds on their way, flying over the roof of the house, coming out of the chimney, they’re coming to drown this whole place, to make an ocean, and the Hasidim are on their way to get me. I have to get in, I have to get in the house, and Jules doesn’t understand. They will take her away from me again if I can’t find the words to go back in time before the first time.

A man is standing in front of me on the other side of the broken window. He’s covered in shadow.

“Let me inside,” I demand of him. “Where is she? Werewolf. Give me the words. Words are for babies.”

“They’re on their way, asshole,” he says.

I turn to Jules for help. Her face is wet with sweat and tears and soot and she is made of plastic. She’s going to run away from me now, and that will be the last I see of her.

But there are her hands on my shoulders and she’s shaking me and yelling and she pulls my head onto her shoulder and I’m crying, too, which I didn’t mean to do.

When I pull away, her snot sticks to my shirt and her tears are everywhere.

“The police are on their way,” she says. “They’ll take you to the hospital.”

But the cops are working for the Hasidim. She must know this.

I don’t believe her. She wouldn’t turn me in. “You don’t understand, understand this,” I say. She wouldn’t have done that to me. I don’t believe her.

“What am I supposed to do?” she says.

“Why don’t you let me help you? Help is on its way and the way is flat from here. Now Dan and his people will hurt you. You might die and I can’t stop it and it’s all your fault.”

Doesn’t she see that I can take her back in time so she won’t have a miscarriage?

She digs her face into my hands and cries harder. “Listen to what you’re saying, West. You know it’s not true.”

And there she is—lost to me.

I’ve never blamed her before, but she’s never betrayed me before. You don’t know betrayal like this. Who’s ever left you? Your own sister fouling up your plans to save her, right before you solve everything. Which you should have seen coming. It’s you. It’s your fault.

Or maybe it’s my fault. Or maybe Jules is right. Maybe I want her to be right. That would mean I’m just sick. That would mean she’s not in danger. It would be so much easier if I didn’t have to protect her.

But I know I’m not wrong. I can’t be. Unless I messed up somewhere at the very beginning of the logical argument.

I grab my painting and bag. I can’t force her to let me take care of her forever. She will have to fend for herself. I pat Jules’s dark wig. She doesn’t feel it. “Do you miss your hair, Jules?”

She doesn’t look at me. “No, I don’t miss my hair.”

What do I say after that? Nothing. I will run.

But first I leap at her to scare her away for good.

She really shouldn’t love me.

I am completely alone in the world. Completely and utterly and finally alone except for one man:

Jill is waiting for me on the corner of West 101st Street and Fifth Avenue, like his voicemail said. I’m twenty minutes late but still he waited. He is a giant in his leather jacket.

From the corner, I think he might be make-believe. The words and the landmine house have disappeared, and with it Nicolette’s code-key, and I’m afraid everything else will start disappearing, too, Jill included. Vanished through the ripped seam in the universe.

“You’re late.” He’s real, all right. “Didn’t I tell you I’d find you? And her?” He grins at me. He’s real and safe. Thank goodness for green-level safe. He doesn’t know that after Jules, he and Claire are all I have left.

We walk half a block east. He looks at my wounded hand, which I wrapped in one of the extra T-shirts Dan put in my bag, but he doesn’t ask about it. At a don’t-walk sign, Jill digs into his pocket. “Here, I got something that belongs to you.”

He slips me a half-sized crumpled manila envelope. I let him hold the painting while I open it. Inside are rectangular clippings of naked girls. Not the kind you’re thinking—this man is an art thief, not a pervert. It’s an envelope stuffed with dozens of Renaissance nudey cut-outs.

He leans toward me. “Look closer.”

I look closer. Between the clippings are many twenty-dollar bills.

“Can’t be too careful,” Jill says.

“What’s this for?”

“What do you think? I’m paying you back. I shouldn’t have taken it in the first place.”

I unwrap my hand and drape the bloody T-shirt over my shoulder so I can count it, keeping it in the envelope. “It’s missing three hundred!”

“Four hundred.”

Something else is jiggling around in the bottom of the envelope. “What else is in here?” Peering through, it looks like pills.

“Don’t lose those. She’ll want them. I know she will. Did you bring your meds? You got Xanax?” I nod and pat my messenger bag. Jill leads us to a private-enough alcove by the entrance of a massive stone building I don’t recognize.

“Where are we?” I ask. Gargoyles leer down at us, but the bird poop on their faces make them less threatening. I could kiss them.

“The hospital.”

Has he been talking to Jules? He couldn’t have been. I’ll have to make a run for it again, that’s all there is to it. Goodbye to Jill, goodbye to everything.

“Guess who’s right inside these walls,” Jill says.

“Who?”

“Claire, for Christ’s sake,” he says as if I should have known. “Claire Bishop.”

So I’m going to the hospital after all, just like my Jules wanted. But for another reason.

“What’s wrong with her?”

He lowers his eyes and tosses the painting tube lightly up and down. The birthday paper is torn in places. “We have to act fast. There’s not much time.”

“Why? Did we get caught?”

“No. No one’s getting caught at anything. I know the guards here, if you know what I mean.”

I slip the envelope in my bag and take the painting back from him.

“You don’t know what I mean.” He tells me that the missing four hundred went to the guard he’d paid off, who he told I was Claire’s son, but that I was a bastard kid, and you know how family is, her other kids were always visiting and didn’t want me near, and that’s why we had no choice but to visit at night when everyone else was gone. “I don’t know how long she’s got. Up here,” Jill says tapping his head. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. How long she’s going to be herself. She’s not totally gone yet. But they said she stopped eating. Why would she do that?”

“You don’t have to worry. She can’t die,” I say with as much certainty as I can muster. “The painting won’t let her.”

In the hospital lobby, the fluorescent lights spill on us, chlorinated pool water. I hold my breath. Jill is beside me, eyeing everyone suspiciously. There’s a doctor talking with a security guard at the reception desk, the words SORRY and CRAZY scrolling on the LCD screen above. It’s evening now. Visiting hours are over. But we stay on a bench in the corner like we know what we’re doing.

“The cops are after me,” I say to Jill, keeping my eyes on the guard and doc.

“What happened now?”

“I smashed a guy’s window.”

He just looks up at the vast skylight.

“And I hurt my sister. She’s never going to speak to me again.”

“Sisters are good at forgiving,” Jill says.

“Do you have a sister?”

“Not exactly. But I know.”

While we’re waiting, I get out my notebook, though I have little to work with now. This is why I stay away from hospitals. They’re outside any Homeland Security threat-advisory system with different rules. I don’t know what’s dangerous and what’s not anymore, what kind of connection to the Hasidim. The clues are a fuzzed-up carpet too tread upon.

And you, Lousy Voices—why are you in such a nasty mood? Telling me I’m wrong all the time, that I should give it up, that my time travel theories come from the movies. I know I’m a failure; tell me something new. Stop with the shadow-chorus of whispers! And turn off those red eyes. I’ve had enough of eyes. You may only remain if you have nice things to say.

But no matter how mean you are to me, I will not stop telling you the truth.

After everything else is gone, there’s still Nicolette’s painting in the tube on my lap. And couldn’t this all be orchestrated by her? This whole thing, the whole mystery, could be one of her installations. And where is she? Laughing in the wings, watching me flit about, ready to jump on stage when I’ve solved the thing?

But there’s only one way to know for sure. I flip to the front of my notebook. It all hinges on Premise 1:

NICOLETTE, THOUGH 26 YEARS OLD IN 2004, PAINTED “THE SUICIDE” IN THE LATE FIFTIES.

Everything follows from there. I add one last link to end the proof:

P8: ONLY TWO PEOPLE CAN VERIFY WHETHER P1 IS TRUE: NICOLETTE AND CLAIRE.

But Nicolette is gone.

Could she have wanted me to give the painting to Claire all along?

Now that the doctor has left, Jill walks up all smooth to have a word with the security guard. Some of the overhead lights have been turned off, and the nurses are switching shifts. The guard points to the elevator bank at the back of the lobby.

Jill waves me over and I follow him there. He and the guard whisper and the guard hands him a plastic badge with a string looped through and Jill hands it to me—a visitor’s pass, photocopied and forged.

“End of the line for me, kiddo,” Jill says, and swoops his hand through his silver hair. It doesn’t light up. It doesn’t do anything. The guard pushes the elevator UP button.

“What do you mean? We’re right here,” I say.

“Nope. Can’t go in. The boss here says only one of us. And you’re it.”

I look at the guard who’s picking his nose nearby, pretending not to pay attention. “I’m sure he’d be happy to take more money for you to come, too,” I offer. “I have the envelope.”

Jill rubs his face with his big hands and I think for a second he’s moved his features around, nose replacing forehead, but I’m mistaken. He just looks tired. The near-ultimate kind.

“I’m asking you for a favor, kid. I need you to make sure she gets it. And that she knows what it is and who it’s from. Got it?”

The elevator door opens, and we look at it, but we don’t move. It closes again.

“You’ll do great. You’re a smart guy. One of the smartest, seriously.” Nothing about his face spins dangerously. He’s telling the truth. Or at least what he thinks is the truth.

“Don’t you want to see her?” I ask.

“It’s my thing. Call it a weakness. Just tell her—tell her hi for me.”

“That’s it? Just ‘hi’?”

“Jesus. Then say—say I couldn’t help her, but I know someone who can. No, don’t say that, I don’t like that. Tell her—nah, nothing. It doesn’t matter anyway. She won’t know the difference.”

Jill shrugs his big, sad shoulders.