The crowd quieted down.

"Okay, everybody," she said, standing up on her chair. "This is my last shot. Keep your fingers crossed."

Universal murmurs of support, encouragement, confidence, love.

She glanced over at me and smiled. "I'm really scared, Daddy," she whispered.

I tried to smile back, and couldn't. "You'll get her this time."

She nodded, faced forward, took a deep breath.

Pip. For the second time, the IR scanner vanished. Pop. So did Erin.

Pop. She was back.

Alone.

Crying her eyes out.

12.

G.o.d'S IDEA OF SLAPSTICK.

In the last a.n.a.lysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.

-Dag Hammarskjold.

I simply have got to stop killing wives," I said. "They spot you the first one-anybody can f.u.c.k up once-but two in thirty years is just sloppy performance. It's starting to cause talk. Hear it?"

One of my eyelids was peeled up, and the other rose halfway to join it. Doc Webster, inches away, held up something that ignited and became a star.

"Oh, hi, Sam. Deja vu all over again, huh? What are you gonna do for me this time-send me to a bar called Callahan's Place? I think you're a little late." I giggled. "I think we're all a little late."

The sun died. He put a handcuff on me. No, took my pulse, more likely. Possibly my blood pressure.

"You must think I'm crazy, huh? You'd probably give anything to have another year-even a bad one. Zoey would have given anything for five more minutes. Thirty more seconds. And here I am, p.i.s.sing and moaning because I probably have another couple of decades of good health to spend feeling sorry for myself."

"Tragedy has no pecking order, Jacob," the Doc said. "Pain is pain, and all pain is infinite and eternal."

"You've got stuff that will put me out," I said dreamily.

"Yes. You can't have any."

"I can't?"

"Not yet."

"Why the f.u.c.k not?"

"I want you to have a debate with your daughter first."

"Huh?"

"Sit up."

I was so irritated, I let him help me do so. I was on a lounge chair at poolside. Erin sat in a deck chair on my immediate right. Doc stood to my left. A few other people stood around solicitously, but I didn't even bother to register who. "What debate?"

''Which one of you killed Zoey?"

"I did," Erin and I said simultaneously, and at once we were yelling at each other.

"-if I'd gotten the G.o.dd.a.m.n calculations right-"

"-if I hadn't opened my stupid moron mouth and suggested using the f.u.c.king belt to her-"

"-if I'd just had the sense to Transit straight home instead of-"

"-if I hadn't been too lazy to find a G.o.dd.a.m.n telephone in the city of Miami-"

"-if I hadn't been careless enough to let that gorilla get cuffs on me-"

"-if I hadn't decided to let my little girl fight my battles for me-"

By now we were both at the top of our lungs, but Doc Webster has a superior instrument; he overrode us both easily.

"-if Zoey hadn't done something uncharacteristically stupid-"

We both shut up, shocked.

"If I hadn't been silly enough to ignore cla.s.sic early-warning diagnostic clues of brain tumor-a subject I've lectured on, for Chrissake ..." He dropped his volume back. "People make a hundred mistakes a day. Every once in a while the punishment is wildly disproportionate. No invisible hand makes it just or fair. Jake, a few seconds ago you referred to the circ.u.mstances of our meeting."

"Yeah." Over a quarter of a century ago, now. I'd been in a car wreck. The brakes had failed. Trapped in my seat, I had watched my first wife, Barbara, and our daughter, Jessica, burn to death. Sam Webster had been the ER resident who treated me for attempted suicide that night. His prescription-a visit to Callahan's Place-had saved my life, and changed it forever.

"Whose fault was that crash?"

The day before the accident, I'd done my own brake job at home, using one of those Chilton auto repair books. I'd saved almost enough money to buy my daughter a birthday present.

"How many years did you walk around believing the crash was your fault?"

I shrugged. "Ten. A hundred. A thousand. One of those."

"And then one day Mary Callahan proved to you that the brakes you replaced weren't the ones that failed. Right?"

"Yeah, so? I was mistaken then, so I must be now?"

"You sentenced yourself to ten years of mortal guilt you didn't deserve, because you rushed to judgment, and because something in you decided even guilt was easier to bear than your naked grief. So in the first place, the universe owes you ten years you prepaid ... and in the second place you should maybe use it to make d.a.m.n sure of your facts this time.

We've already climbed these stairs together, you and I, Jake-and I won't be around for the next flight. Why don't you learn from your mistakes: this time try just a.s.suming that you're not a worthless piece of s.h.i.t and get on with your life, and see how that works out?"

I hadn't often seen the Doc this angry; it would have been startling, if I'd cared. "What difference does it make?"

His eyes flashed. "If you had broken, bay whack when I first met you, it would have been the tragic waste of lun more wife. If you break now, it's the end of The Place and you f.u.c.king nell wo it ... and you will not dishonor my memory that way or I will haunt your a.s.s, you binny skin of a such!" He turned on his heel and strode away. Mei-Ling, whose presence I had failed to note, went after him.

n.o.body else said anything. I had no idea what to say or do. I looked over at Erin, and she was as clueless as I was.

Long-Drink McGonnigle dropped into a chair next to me and put his feet up on my thighs. Someone gasped. "Look at it this way, Jake," he said. "First time out, you croaked a wife and kid. This time you still got the kid." He spread his hands. "Clearly you're improving."

I stared at him and then stared at his feet across my lap and then stared at him, and just then, deadpan, he let loose a fart they must have heard up on Duval Street, that went on long enough to plant beans in it.

I roared with laughter. I didn't want to; I just couldn't help it. After a moment of shocked silence, several other people lost it, too. "Chuckles the Clown," someone said, and the laughter redoubled.

Somehow Drink knew or guessed how long it was going to take me to segue from laughing helplessly to sobbing like a baby; when that happened, he was kneeling beside me with his long wiry arms around me, and he held me until I had accomplished all I could that way. Somewhere in there Erin joined the huddle from the other side, crying just as hard as I was, and I managed to get an arm around her, too.

Finally we all pulled apart and located tissues or sleeves. "I'm sorry, Daddy," Erin said, in a way that meant not I admit blame but simply I am sad.

I nodded. "Me too, honey," I said, and just then Field Inspector Ludnyola Czrjghnczl sat down heavily on my lap. The tall mug of Irish whiskey in her hand slopped over, and a goodly hot dollop landed on my hand. I winced, drew in breath to swear ... , and let it out again. Suddenly something was clear to me, for the first time-several things. "You know," I told her, licking my hand, "I think I understand why you p.i.s.s me off so-"

"Shut up," she said. "Please." She held up her mug, emptied it as if it were so much hemlock, and tossed it into the pool. "I cannot drink any more courage than this or I shall throw up, so I must do this now." She paused to wipe whipped cream off her upper lip and sat up straighter on my lap. "I realize I am the lashed-the last person here you want to talk with now. And I am certain I understand less about what went on here tonight than anyone present. But it seems to me that you people are not being very scientific."

She had managed to engage my attention. My att.i.tude toward her had been evolving lately, but- "Not scientific? Lady, we saved the universe once. And the world twice. Nikola Tesla hangs out here, when he's on earth. Why-?"

"What is the scientific method?" she interrupted.

"Find puzzle. Form hypothesis. Perform experiment. Revise-"

"Stop right there!" she commanded. "Why have you not experimented?"

"We did," Erin said mournfully. "Twice."

Ms. Czrjghnczl shook her head violently. "Not what I mean." She lurched up off my lap, reeled over to Erin, and took her hand. "Look, I like your logic for one hour or twenty-four, right? Nothing else makes sensological-makes psychological sense, okay? Only it didn't work. So there's got to be something you're missing. Something, maybe some little something you don't understand about the way that belt works. Like some cars pull to the left."

Erin stared up at her.

"Fine," I said. "So what the h.e.l.l are we supposed to do about it?"

"Experiment," she insisted, still looking at Erin.

Erin's eyes widened. "Oh, my G.o.d," she said slowly. "Oh, I am a major fool." She turned to me. "How long have you had that d.a.m.ned belt?"

I was lost. "I don't know. Fifteen years-twenty, maybe. You'd have to-" I shut up. On automatic pilot, I'd been about to say "you'd have to ask Zoey." Suddenly I could see that my future was going to be an infinite series of such unexpected knifings in the back of the heart.

Erin failed to notice. "But way before I was born, right?" "Sure. Since well before I opened Mary's Place and met your mother."

"Where in Mary's Place? Where did you keep it?" "In an old footlocker under the bed."

"Always? Even before you met Mommy?"

"Yeah, sure. Why?" But even as I asked the question, the answer was beginning to come to me. "Holy s.h.i.t. There wasn't an Erin around then."

"Right," she said. "I can go back to then and get the belt, and experiment with it at my leisure until I understand exactly what I got wrong, and then put the belt back right where I got it!"

"But-but-but you've already used up your windows-"

"No, I didn't! I stutter-stepped, remember? To minimize my own exposure. Out of every two seconds, I was only there for half a second or less. I still have seventy-five percent of each window left! I'll have to do some fancy timing, but-" She broke off, stood up on her chair, and kissed Ludnyola Czrjghnczl on the cheek. "Thank you!" she said. Then suddenly she was on my lap, without having covered the intervening distance. She was a h.e.l.l of a lot lighter than the Field Inspector had been. Her smile was so beautiful, I felt an impulse to shield my eyes. "Wish me luck, Daddy!" she said, and kissed me on the mouth, and by the time I could get my mouth open again to say good luck, she was gone.

No, I was mistaken. There she was. Over there by the side of the pool, standing next to that big good-looking naked broad yelling "H-O-L-Y s.h.i.t!" who was my wife, Zoey. I tried to get up and found I was paralyzed; she had to come to me.

It took a ridiculously long time to explain to her what had just happened-even after I could talk again. From her point of view, she had pushed the b.u.t.ton on the Meddler's Belt ... and then for a second or two it got very dark and cold and she felt just terrible all over ... and then she was standing naked by the pool, and everybody she knew was staring at her and grinning and crying and applauding. (I've had dreams like that.) When she finally got it, she hugged me and Erin so hard, I heard bones creak in all three of us. It was something like ten minutes before we could stand to stop hugging, even for long enough to go to the bathroom.

So as you can probably imagine, there then ensued a certain period of celebration, raucous enough that a few cops came down from Fantasy Fest to see what all the fuss was-and ended up staying, fascinated by Alf, Ralph, and Pixel ...

... and then, a few hours after sunrise, after most of the wounded had tottered off to their homes, Zoey and I held a somewhat shorter but just as gratifying period of private and most personal celebration, raucous enough in its own way that Fast Eddie next door threatened to turn a hose on us and Pixel the cat thereafter regarded me with a new respect ...

... and then there was a fairly long period of unconsciousness bordering on clinical coma ...

... and finally an informal group gathering around the barbecue table, which started out as a walking-wounded taking-light-nourishment-with-their-medication sort of thing, and then, as the medication began taking hold, evolved into the first brunch I'd ever attended that began at sundown and would still be going strong at midnight. Erin was finally thirteen years old again, as G.o.d had clearly intended from the start, and it was so wonderful to have her back, Zoey and I couldn't stop smiling at each other; it was so miraculous to have our Zoey back that Erin and I couldn't stop smiling at each other. I kept b.u.mping into things, cross-eyed because I could not bring myself to take my eyes off either of them for a second. You don't know what you've got until you lose it. If you then get it back, you're Lazarus on laughing gas.

So it wasn't until sometime well after 9 P.M. that Ludnyola Czrjghnczl was able to get me aside and say, "You never got a chance to tell me what it is about me that-"

"p.i.s.ses me off?'

She blushed and nodded. "I presume you mean something beyond the obvious, something other than my job and the ... trouble I've been making for you." She dropped her gaze. "Something personal."

I tried to blow it off. "Look, somebody comes up with the idea that saves my wife from certain horrid death, that's all they have to do to get a free pa.s.s from me. You can p.i.s.s me off any time you feel like it."

"I'd still like to understand."

I thought about it. "Pull up a chair," I said, and we took a table behind the fireplace, where we were unlikely to be interrupted by merrymakers. Along the way I signaled Tom for two coffees. We've evolved a fairly sophisticated signal system over the years. When he dropped the coffees off at our table and she'd taken a sip of hers, she looked up at me and said, "This is just the way I take it."

"One sugar, regular milk, touch of nutmeg," I agreed. "I noticed earlier. Comes with the job."

She nodded slowly, sipped more coffee, and said, "Go ahead."

I sipped some myself. Two sugars, 18 percent milkfat cream, half a shot of the Black Bush. "You're right, it is something beyond your occupation, and its intersection with my little scene here. But it isn't personal. Exactly. Well, maybe, in a sense-"

"I see," she said, deadpan. Was that a little dry wit in there?