Gregory sat in the patio, viewing Olga Nabatova’s lovely garden, running his unburnt hand aimlessly along the grain of the rough redwood table. His right hand still hurt, but it was a distant pain now.
A sparrow alighted on the ground a few feet away. He looked avidly at the bird, as if trying to impress the memory of each bedraggled feather on his mind, to see the thoughts behind the beady black eyes. He felt grateful to the bird. It was alive, real, substantial, even if diminutive in proportion. It followed the natural laws of the world. If he made a threatening gesture, it would fly away. It knew its place and it knew man’s place in the order of things. Such predictability was something to be thankful for. He waved his arm to test the accuracy of his conclusions. The bird hopped, cocked its head, then fluttered away.
Gregory hardly knew how he had arrived there, back at Olga’s house. He remembered thanking Tanner for his time. Olga had taken charge. She had hustled him out in a casual way that had seemed perfectly normal. He had driven back to her house in a daze, and when she had invited him in again, he had just followed her.
He dared not dwell on what had happened; which was why, when the bird left, he focused on a finely veined grape leaf, admiring its sheen in the light.
His head had begun to ache. His eyes felt as if they were straining at the sockets. I mustn’t try to think about it. Inside, the tension was building to the breaking point. Any little thing could happen now, and he would crumble. Why are you doing this to me? He didn’t even know who he was talking to. God? The devil?
“There you go.” The voice was pleasant, controlled. A glass of white wine appeared on the table in front of him. Had he asked for wine? It didn’t matter. He liked the way it glowed, and the condensation on the glass.
Olga Nabatova stood beside him. “Drink,” she commanded. He lifted the glass to his lips. The hand seemed to belong to someone else, but the cold liquid soothed his throat. Perhaps he would be able to talk now.
He turned to thank Olga, but she had gone silently back into the house. He gulped another mouthful of wine. He was glad she approved of alcohol. Alcohol had its purposes. Generally, it had just been the victim of a lot of bad PR. It was actually a fine substance—a lifesaving liquid. It was saving his life right now.
And just then, despite all his efforts, that life of his, the universe he had constructed so carefully for twenty-nine years, tilted crazily, teetered on the edge of the chasm and fell, shattering into an infinite number of fragments.
Olga Nabatova’s voice did it. Olga’s voice that lashed out at him, whipped him, splintered his world.
“Michael!” she cried, and the voice reached the core of his being.
He turned, answering to his own name.
She stood as immobile as a statue, except for her eyes. Those light-filled eyes, they swallowed him.
Then he knew.
And knew she knew.
And felt his insides tie themselves in knots. The lump of knowledge forced itself up from the stomach, past his contracted chest, through the throat, and out as a gigantic feeling of pain and relief.
He put his head on his arms and wept. He felt Olga’s hand resting on his shoulder. And still he wept. He did not want to stop. He wanted to cry until all the pain had left his body. He wanted to cry all the tears he had for Brooke—and for himself. The Brooke he had lost, the life he had lost. The pair of star-crossed lovers they had been. The dreams that had died in the flames.
When he finally stopped crying, Olga handed him a handkerchief.
“I’m sorry I had to do that,” she said, looking concerned. “I saw you were on the verge of snapping. I’ve seen it before. It was too dangerous. You could have gone either way if I had left you alone, and I could not take the risk. I had to do something.”
“Thank you,” Gregory said. He felt purged now; emptied, lightheaded, relieved. All of those things and more. “How did you know?” he asked, his voice raw.
“I recognized you. Not at the beginning, but soon after that.”
“How could you have? I don’t look the same, do I?”
“No, you don’t. I’m not sure how to explain it, but each person has an aura, something that is unique. It’s a quality of being, I suppose. It’s recognizable if you look past the body, the social attitude and all the rest. Of course I suspected it as soon as you started talking about Brooke. Then I became more sure when I saw that you still had the same physical mannerisms. For instance, when Michael was troubled, or thinking hard, he had a habit of rubbing behind his right ear with his forefinger. When I saw you doing that, I was positive.”
“Why didn’t you say anything then?” he asked plaintively, as if it would have saved him all the pain.
She smiled. “Would you have believed me?”
Gregory looked at her and his mouth formed a tentative smile. It became a wide grin. And then he laughed, and laughed. It was wild and uncontrollable. Like the tears he had shed before, it was a form of release over which he had no control.
He began to get a stitch in his side, spurred on by Olga’s own girlish, infectious laughter. He wrapped his arms around his belly and bent over. Finally it subsided, slowly, to spasmodic chuckles, and then to a goofy smile.
“I’m no psychic, Mrs. Nabatova,” he said after a while. “My rational mind wouldn’t let me even consider it. And I’m still not sure. I mean, past lives! Good God! It seems too fantastic to believe. And yet…”
Olga Nabatova cupped her glass in her hands and looked down at it. He had a sudden vision of her when she was younger. She was more serious then, but he thought he had liked her. Brooke’s friend. She had always been “Brooke’s friend” to him.
Her smile grew wistful. “It is ironic that what we call the rational mind is so irrational.” She looked up at him. “You will find that it is going to be your greatest enemy in the coming days.”
“What do you mean?” He was alarmed. There had been no time as yet even to consider the future. He remembered his earlier thoughts, his conclusion that his life had changed. They seemed trivial in view of what had now happened.
“Your so-called rational mind will try to destroy you,” Olga said. She raised a mocking eyebrow. “Oh, I don’t mean it to sound as melodramatic as all that. What I mean is that it will cause you to doubt yourself. It will tell you that this has been your imagination at work, that none of this is real. It will suggest that you are unhinged. Perhaps it will suggest that you seek what is foolishly called ‘professional guidance.’ You must not listen to it. You must believe what you see.”
“Believe what I see?”
“I think your memory will return to you—the memory of your last life—if it hasn’t begun already. It may happen in stages, or it may happen whenever you put your full attention upon it. When it does happen, do not try to analyze it too closely, just accept it as true, as you would accept your memories of yesterday. Have faith in yourself.”
Faith in himself? He could see why Olga considered it important. Yes, at this particular moment, it was easy to have faith in himself. Right now, he remembered being Michael Richardson, what it had been like to be that person. In fact, as he sat there, the memories flooded in, almost too fast to assimilate. But would they fade later? And if they didn’t, what would happen if he told his friends all this? Would they laugh at him, be afraid of him, pity him? Would he have faith in himself then?
Gregory stood up and turned to Olga. “I must go. I think I need to be alone for a while. It’s all too new for me to absorb.”
Olga nodded in agreement. “Come back tomorrow, Gregory. By then you will probably have a lot of questions. Perhaps I will be able to answer some of them, or suggest people who can.”
There was a moment when he thought he saw commiseration in her eyes, and it disturbed him.
Her last words came just before he drove away. She leaned on the car window and said, “By the way, I would suggest you do not talk about this to anyone for a while. Their reactions could shock you. Live with it by yourself until you feel comfortable with it.”
He drove to the ocean. When he was a child he had always gone to the beach when he needed solitude. It had seemed the logical thing to do then. Nowadays, and especially on the beaches in Venice and Santa Monica, you had to step between the bodies and mark off your little patch of privacy with hostile glares. You could swim out beyond the surfers, of course, but then the lifeguards bellowed for you to return. In the city of Los Angeles, a man’s most private place was the interior of his car.
Years before the influx, Los Angeles must have been a beautiful city. Must have been? He remembered. Even in the forties, when the first buds of growth had begun to blossom and attract the fast-buck entrepreneurs like bees to pollen, it had been beautiful—large expanses of wild land where there were now cities; farmland where there were now freeways. It had been the promised land then, a land of milk and honey and sensual sunshine. The mistake had been to announce it to a world that was always looking for a haven, for the world had literally beaten a path to this golden city. It had beaten down the fields, beaten down the trees, cemented the rivers and streams, crowded the open spaces, polluted the clean air, and threatened the safe streets.
Gregory drove down the hill from Pacific Palisades, wondering why his thoughts were so somber. After all, whether for better or worse, something truly remarkable had just happened to him. He considered this as the breeze touched his face, blowing inland. He could smell its burden of salt. The ocean sparkled in the brilliant afternoon sunshine. He turned right on the Pacific Coast Highway. There was a quiet stretch of beach below the Getty Villa.
Gregory parked, left his shoes and socks in the car, and rolled up the legs of his jeans. The sand felt good on his bare feet. The horizon, unbroken except for some distant sails, suggested the infinity of the universe. There were only a few dozen people on the beach. Some young families, joggers, residents of the area walking their dogs.
He walked down toward the sea. The harder damp sand near the water’s edge exhilarated him and he broke into a trot, enjoying the sound of his breath, the effort of his body, the wind on his face. A wave came in and splashed water on his pants. He zigzagged away, slowed to a walk, and turned up into the softer sand. He sat down panting with his back against a rock, and faced the ocean.
Michael Richardson. Gregory remembered the small biography he had read at the Institute. “…born June 9, 1918, San Francisco, California…” He had been born in Oakland, not San Francisco. He was sure of it. There was a house. Victorian. White, he thought. With… with extravagant gingerbread ornamentation protruding from every angle. The trim had been done in… blue. Right, blue. He closed his eyes to envision it better.
The backyard. What was it? Yes, lawn, then farther back, a vegetable patch to the left, a huge tree on the right; an oak. He had climbed it as a child. Fell off once and broke an arm. The tree house! Yes, he had built a tree house with scrap lumber he had cadged off his father.
He opened his eyes. The ocean was still serene, for all its ceaseless assault on the sands. A dog ran past, followed by a pretty girl in shorts and a halter top. She looked at him and smiled, a flash of white teeth against brown skin.
He closed his eyes again. His father. Tools. Worked with his hands. A builder? No. A carpenter! He had been a carpenter. Jason was his name. A big, bluff, hearty man with arms as thick and strong as tree branches.
The workings of his mind amazed Gregory. How, after focusing on a detail, something specific, the other memories would roll by like the surf he could hear in the background. All he had to do was have faith in his ability to recall, not argue with the pictures his mind presented to him.
His father, Jason Richardson. He had prospered in business. People liked him and referred him to their friends. Even during the Great Depression he had always had work. Yet his parents had never moved from the small Victorian house. Instead, Jason repaired it and kept it painted and clean. “It’s our home,” he used to say with irrefutable practicality. “There’s nothing wrong with this house. No reason to move.”
His mother had never argued with her husband. Her name was Miriam. A small, content woman who was happiest in the garden with dirt in her fingernails and mud sticking to her knees. But she never shirked her duties. She ran the house like a military installation. Breakfast at seven. Dinner at six. She never deviated. She was much younger than Jason, still almost a child when Michael had been born. But she loved her husband devotedly in her own quiet way.
Gregory remembered that they had both still been alive when he had died. The fire had been in 1949, so he was about thirty-one then. How had his parents taken it? He had been their only child, and they had maintained a close relationship, even after he had come to Hollywood and grown successful and affluent by the standards of the day. They had been proud of his achievements.
There was a scream down the beach to his left, and he opened his eyes again. It was a little girl, five or six, he guessed. The child’s mother had her by one arm and was spanking her vigorously. What had the child done to offend her mother so grievously? He couldn’t hear what she was shouting over the screams of the child. They were both out of control and he wanted to go and tell the mother to calm down, but he decided not to interfere.
The shadows had lengthened on the sand and a few people were straggling up the embankment to their parked cars.
It was strange, he thought, how his lives had repeated themselves. For how many lifetimes had he been a writer? Was it the same for everybody? Even the child crying on the beach?
What of all the other people he had known, loved, hated, been indifferent to? Where were they now?
And what of Brooke?
He had avoided thinking about it. The possibility that she too was somewhere in the world of today, with a new body, a new name, perhaps in this very city, perhaps walking along this beach right now, unrecognizable to him, unknown—the very idea of it tore him apart. Why had he, out of billions of people, fallen into a strange pattern that allowed him to remember his past life? Was it that the powers that be, whoever or whatever they were, had determined that his past life had been cut unfairly short and that he deserved another chance? Would he then be predestined to find Brooke again?
One thing was certain. Olga Nabatova had been correct when she predicted that he would have many, many questions. His mind swam with them. But would there be any answers?
His thoughts were interrupted by a thunk! in the sand beside him, followed by a loud bark and the hurtling body of a dog. Triumphant at the retrieval of its ball, the dog sprayed him with sand and water.
“Red! Red! Come here!” The girl came running up. He had seen her walk by earlier with the animal.
She grabbed the dog’s collar. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Red gets a little carried away sometimes and I never learned to throw a ball in a straight line.”
“That’s all right. I always expect to get sand thrown on me by a bully at least once when I’m at the beach. I didn’t think the bully would be a dog, though.”
He looked at her face. It was pretty. A slight spray of freckles around her nose, a wide mouth, and a definitive chin—all in all, a pleasing collection. She looked familiar. He frowned at her.
“Do I know you?”
“My name’s Jenny Royal,” she said. “You’re Gregory Thomas, aren’t you?”
He remembered. She was an actress he’d met at a director’s party a few months before. She’d been wearing a long dress then. And her hair had been blonde.
“You’ve changed your hair,” he said.
She looked pleased at his memory, and her hand drifted up to touch her auburn hair in a feminine gesture.
“That was just for a part,” she said. “I don’t normally bleach it.”
“Do you live down at the beach?”
“Just over there,” she said, pointing in the general direction of a group of houses. “Would you like to come up for a drink?”
“Love to,” he said, without hesitation. He got to his feet and brushed himself.
She had long legs and matched his stride as they walked along the edge of the waves. The dog ran ahead, dashing in and out of the water and barking playfully. Gregory asked about her work.
“I’m doing quite a lot right now,” she said, with just the right touch of modesty in her voice. “I’m starting an Altman movie in about a week. How about you?”
He told her vaguely that he was working on something, and then she pointed at some wooden steps. “Up here,” she said.
He followed her up the stairs, admiring her figure. The house was small and sparsely furnished, but bright and comfortable. She seemed to suit the house. A direct, no-nonsense girl, a rarity in his circle. He asked for white wine and she brought him a glass of cold Chablis. They went outside and sat on the porch with their glasses, facing the ocean.
“You were looking thoughtful on the beach,” she said.
“Just stunned by the sun,” he replied, trying to laugh it off. Then he had an impulse to talk. “Do you know anything about reincarnation?”
She blinked at the question. He noticed that she had long, thick eyelashes. “Not much. Why?” she asked.
“I’m doing a story that involves it,” he said. “But I’m just in the research stage right now.”
“I’ve seen some articles and I’ve heard about Hindu beliefs,” she said. “But I’ve never studied it.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
She smiled and shifted on her chair. “I don’t know. A lot of wilder things have been proven true. I just take each day as it comes. I can’t be bothered thinking about what happens after I’m dead. It’s hard enough trying to get through the week without worrying about the next thousand or million years.”
“Don’t you find it hopeful, though,” he persisted, “the thought that we might all get another chance?”
She thought about it and screwed up her face. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. But you could also say that we have to live with our mistakes. And live with them, and live with them. Nothing hopeful about that. If that were true, death wouldn’t be the escape that we all hope for, would it? What’s the point? We just have to keep coming back and coming back? Till what? It’s sort of a depressing thought.”
“Well, we might also learn from our mistakes and not repeat them,” Gregory murmured, more to himself than her. “And there might be some plan to it that we don’t know about.” He knew he was just echoing Olga’s idea. It sounded inane, put that way, but he wondered if there might not be some truth to it.
“What a drag! That would make us puppets,” she said, puckering her brow.
That wasn’t necessarily so, Gregory thought to himself, but he felt the subject was getting out of hand. They talked about other things for a few minutes, and then he looked at his watch.
“I must go,” he said, rising. “Thanks for the drink.”
“Why don’t you stay a while? I’ll cook us something, if you like,” she said with a direct look.
The invitation was unmistakable. He looked at her mouth, parted now in a slow smile, and considered it, tempted to escape for a few hours into a stranger’s warmth. He felt himself respond to her physical presence. But then he thought of Sharon, waiting at home. And Brooke. What of Brooke now? And what would that do to his relationship with Sharon?
“Thank you, but I have an appointment in town,” he lied pleasantly. “Let me take a rain check.”
Disappointment crossed her face, but she quickly recovered. “Any time,” she said, still smiling. “I’m listed under J. Royal. No address.”
He walked back along the beach. The sun had dropped over the edge of the sea and there was a chill in the air. A gray-haired man walked briskly past him in the opposite direction, pulled on a leash by a Great Dane.
Gregory realized he had hardly thought of Sharon at all during the day. It sobered him. What should he tell her? How much? Should he tell her at all? He didn’t know. Then he remembered Olga Nabatova’s parting words—“Do not talk about this to anyone for a while.” It was good advice.
He picked up a stone and flicked it out at the waves. It skipped twice and disappeared below the swirling water. His life had changed. The realization hit him again. It was no small change, like getting a new job or buying a new house. It had changed sweepingly, drastically, and there was no way to change it back. That damned road again! He had now taken another irrevocable step along it.