14

MARGUERITE WAS ARRANGING her birthday cards on the dining room mantel. “You spoke to Gerard?” she asked.

Valerie told her what he’d said about Andre and his trapped friend.

Marguerite looked sad. “Your son will be one of the fortunate ones.”

How do you know that?

She put the cards down and turned to face Valerie. “The TV says those trapped higher up sautent par les fenêtres.”

She didn’t even try it in English.

Jumping out of the windows.

***

Andre might help others escape down the stairwell. James was in the building opposite his.

“So high up…”

No. James wouldn’t fall like that. He wouldn’t break like a clay pot. He wouldn’t die today.

When James died, he’d evaporate like beeswax, like the candles on the altar at mass. A lit substance melting into air.

She felt Marguerite’s arm around her.

“The trapped man, was he someone you knew?”

“Know.”

“I should not have mentioned what I heard. Je suis desolée.”

James would dissolve into light.

Time and space are a mystery. Valerie had seen Mr. Groves’ plane as it melted into the sky. Except for Matt (and later, Gerard), no one had believed her.

The plane was never found.

Maybe it’s still in flight, she thought.

James, too.

***

The years dissolved. She was only nine, standing in front of the newsstand on Washington Street, staring at a copy of The Island Banner with a photo of Mr. Groves’ Piper Cub taking off from the island airport. Because she was a child with a good imagination, she saw the plane vanish a second time — first the nose, then the fuselage, then the wings and tail fading, and she broke out in a cold sweat, walked away from that headline as fast as she could. It was disappearance that terrified her. She remembered her big red ball blinking like a sightless eye as it rolled into the storm sewer at the curb on Willow Road, and how she ran home upset, wanting it back, certain that if something so large and bright could fall through that opening and vanish, then so could she. One day she’d step off the curb, her foot in front of the small dark archway in the stone, and gravity would reach up and grab her by the ankles. Down she’d go.

This was worse.

She’d pushed her way into Charlie Reilly’s store, its screen door banging behind her. Victory Home Supplies, full of bric-a-brac. It was calm in there. Matt’s dad, Charlie, was at his work-bench, buffing some tarnished silver. He waved hello.

***

“Would you like me to shut the window?” asked Marguerite.

Valerie didn’t realize she was shivering. As you pass through time, she thought, the temperature drops.

“I’m going to water the plants,” she said.

***

“You might say my dad was ahead of his time,” said Matt once.

Valerie thought this was a bad pun.

Yet even as a nine-year-old, she’d known there must have been a reason why Charlie Reilly had given up his clock-making trade for commerce in useless junk. Unlike other businesses, his shop felt like a refuge, and he didn’t mind little kids wandering around and touching stuff they’d never buy. Stained-glass table lamps, cathedral radios, painted chinaware from the Melba Theatre giveaways in the Bronx, trays jammed with cameos and brooches, crystal beads and silver lockets — memories tangled up in each other, poignant with the weight of years. Along with more than a few grinding, wheezing, tickety clocks, not one keeping time with another, all of them telling time as we know it on earth, although Mr. Reilly believed that we’d run out of time, in the true sense of that expression.

He looked up at her. “Something wrong, honey?”

She shook her head, no.

Of course there was something wrong. He was a war vet. He knew there was something wrong.

***

According to Matt, no one ever realized that the junk shop was Charlie’s hideout, that the real Charlie had disappeared.

Valerie felt certain that Andre would vanish if he lost James. Fluent in French, he’d melt away into Paris or Nice, where the two of them had vacationed. He’d abandon his name, his profession, his driver’s license, his email address. He’d have to rediscover who he was.

***

Or else, Andre, you’d be like water, cupped in James’ hands, warmed by them. You’d become gaseous, invisible, floating away into air.

You’d be one of the lucky ones.

***

Eyes shut, she steps inside Charlie Reilly’s shop which is still open, which will stay open until the end of time, where there are piles of abandoned cell phones ringing woe, along with the echo of a front door jangling, of ghostly shoppers coming in to buy trinkets or to bring in broken castoffs. All rivers run to the same sea. The old world has vanished, only to come crashing down again, and she imagines Andre and James and Mr. Groves and the poor secretary who wore some precious bauble to work in the tower this morning, the bride who touched her wedding ring as the plane took off. Mr. Reilly would have welcomed their business. He could refurbish anything, although he didn’t believe in clocks anymore. He worked alone.

The world was running crazy, on Charlie Reilly’s time.

Andre could learn the clockmaker’s trade.

He, too, could hide.