"Okay," I said, "It means something."

"Oh, thank G.o.d."

"Wait. Hold on a minute. When you get your messages or whatever, is it a voice in your head? Or is it like a text message on a computer screen?"

"It's sort of both and neither. It's more a thing that pa.s.ses through you, like when you leave the house and you realize the stove is still on. It defies words, and yet at the same time, it is words."

That sounded real enough. "Do you see his face?"

"No. But I can definitely feel him near." "So you can't tell me what he looks like - it's not like I want proof - I'm just curious."

"Okay. I'd say he's taller than you - six something -mouse-brown hair, not thinning, gray-green eyes. That's not much to go by. I could have made that up."

"It's close. Very close." It was bang on.

Allison asked, "What does it mean, then? It's a weird message."

"I can't tell you."

"Okay. Fair enough."

"Tell me, Allison, does a person have to be dead in order to send you voices or words?"

"From what I've read, not necessarily."

"Does this voice say anything else to you?"

"No. Not words."

"What do you mean, 'not words'?"

"Just what I said. The voice - male, fifties maybe? - says 'Oh I say,' and then there's this weird laughter. But it's not like real laughter. It's fake."

"Oh, Jesus." I put the phone down. I could hear Allison on the other end calling "Heather?

Heather? Heather?"

"Allison, where are you calling from? What's your number?"

She gave it to me. I asked if we could meet soon. She couldn't make it today, so tomorrow it is - in the morning, down at the beach.

It was bedtime. We'd see what tomorrow would bring.

Sunday afternoon 3:30

Oh Lord. What am I to do? I arranged to meet her at the fish-and-chips stand between Ambleside Beach and the soccer field. Jason always liked going there, so I figured it would increase the chance of a Jason vibe. Did I just write the word "vibe"? I hope that doesn't betoken the start of something bad. I was bleary-eyed and freezing, and the twins didn't seem to notice or care - oh, to be young and have a proper thermostat again. So I waited for this Allison woman.

The stand was closed, and we were alone save for a few unambitious seagulls trolling the metal litter drums for snacks. The air was salty and nice, clean smelling. I turned to look at the waves, at the little tips of whitecaps, and I turned around, and there was Allison, older than I'd thought, about sixty, and smaller too, her body like a pit inside a large prune of teal-green fleece and zippers. She wore tight black leggings so maybe she was a walker. Do I care? Yes. I care. This woman was my lifeline.

"Allison?"

"Heather?"

"I'm glad you could come meet me here."

Allison said, "How could I miss it? This is the first interesting thing to happen in my life since my husband died."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be. It was horrible for him. When he went it was a blessing."

"Is that when you first decided to try your hand at being psychic?"

"At first. I missed him like I'd miss sight or taste or hearing - he was an extra sense for me. I felt like I'd been blinded. I wanted him returned to me any way I could manage."

We all walked toward the soccer field. "What happened then?"

"First I went to other so-called psychics; they all checked me out and picked up on the fact that I'd recently lost Glenn. Something in my eyes, or maybe the fact that I hadn't bothered to pretty myself up. I know all the signs now. These psychics would mostly milk Glenn's death - 'I think it was a quick death - no! It was a slow death. He wanted you to be brave and not to worry.' None of it was of any consequence, but it made me feel good at a time when other things weren't working. You don't need to be a psychic to know that, but when the message comes from the spirit world, wow, you almost swoon from the illusion of contact."

"Why did you decide to do it yourself? Don't you think it's sort of mean for pseudo-psychics to lead people on?"

"Mean? No. Like I told you last night, it's harmless stuff, and even the worst psychic made me feel a heckuva lot better than all the Wellbutrin or Tia Maria I swallowed. Psychics are no different from quack vitamins or aromatherapy or any of that stuff you see ads for. And I'll tell you this: When people come to me, I really do help them. And you'd be amazed at the problems everybody has."

"I work as a court stenographer. I think I see more problems than most people."

It was becoming windy, and our voices were being swept away. Allison said to me, "Heather, please don't tell me anything about yourself. Please. If I'm going to be genuinely psychic here, I don't want the results to be influenced."

Just then the kids found a dead crow and shouted, "Aunt Heather!" and I looked at Allison and said, "Well, now you know at least that much."

I suggested we go talk someplace warm. We went to the cafe adjacent to the ball pit at Park Royal mall, where the twins romped among filthy colored-plastic b.a.l.l.s with germ loads reminiscent of the Black Plague.

Allison said, "I'll be frank with you. I don't know if you're married or single or divorced or lesbian or anything else. And I'll say it again: I don't know where I got these voices, or why."

She paused. I tried to conceal my hunger for more contact from Jason. "Allison, did you get any more, uh, messages last night or this morning?"

Allison said, "I did. One."

"What was it?"

She sighed. "I can tell you, if you like, but I have no idea what it means."

"What is it? What did you hear?"

She screwed up her head as if she was about to sing an aria, but instead she spoke in a high, cartoonish voice: "Hey! I'm in dreamland and I got the best table here." She repeated the phrase and then relaxed her head. "That's what I heard."

"Hey, I'm in dreamland and I got the best table here" was a running gag of Froggles, which we used at night before going to sleep. Hearing the words made me high and low at the same time, like a cough syrup high. My face felt like it was morphing into some other face, and my emotions were trying to escape through my bones.

Allison asked me, "Shall I say it for you again?"

"No!" I fairly yelled. I asked Allison to watch the kids for me and I ran out of the small cafe area beside the pit and headed to the bathroom, where I sat for ten minutes and cried. It's a credit to the human race that several women knocked gently on the door and asked if there was anything they could do. But there wasn't. I sat on the toilet and finally realized that Jason is probably dead; to keep thinking otherwise is simply delusional. The effort I've been putting in, being the rock, keeping it together for the sake of Barb, the kids, Reg and Jason's mom. n.o.body else has to go back to an apartment where there's a man's wallet with credit cards collecting dust on the counter by the banana bowl, or a bar of orange English soap that's begun to crack beside the bathroom window. I've been trying to keep Jason's aura alive, but every night after work I walk into that apartment and it's leaked away just that much more. His clothes don't look like they're ever going to be worn again, but I can't give them away. So I keep his stuff there. I dust his shoes so they don't look . . . dead. I keep his wallet beside the fruit bowl because it looks casual, so when he returns he can say, "Ha-ha, there's my wallet!"

Just listen to me. I'm crazy. I wasn't going to let this happen to me. I wasn't. I was going to be cool, but that's not an option anymore.

Finally, Allison knocked on the stall door. She said she was sorry, but she had to leave. I asked her not to, but she said she didn't have a choice. "I told the girl at the ball pit entry way to keep the kids there until you return."

"Thanks."

I am not a stupid woman. I am aware that there is a world out there that functions without regard to me. There are wars and budgets and bombings and vast dimensions of wealth and greed and ambition and corruption. And yet I don't feel a part of that world, and I wouldn't know how to join if I tried. I live in a condo in a remote suburb of a remote city. It rains a lot here. I need groceries and I go to the shopping center. Sometimes they'll be rebuilding a road and putting those bright blue plastic pipes down in holes; there'll be various grades of gravel in conical piles, and I almost short-circuit when I think of all the systems that are in place to keep our world moving. Where does all the gravel come from? Where do they make blue plastic pipes? Who dug the holes? How did it reach the point where everyone agreed to be doing this? Airports almost make me speechless, what with all of these people in little jumpsuits eagerly bopping about doing some highly qualified task. I don't know how the world works, only that it seems to do so, and I leave it at that.

Sunday night 7:00

Barb gets home in a few minutes. From now on I'll have to write this using my Soviet coal- powered Windows system. I also phoned Reg, and asked him to come for a late dinner at my place tonight. I feel like I need family. My immediate family's all over the country, so Jason's family will do in a pinch. I'd like to be able to call Jason's mother at the extended-care facility, but . . . when she's on, she's great, but when she's off - which is nearly all the time now - I might as well be talking to a tree with its branches flapping in a storm.

No friends to visit. They're either married and moved away, or single and moved away. I could phone them, but they're spooked by Jason's vanishing. They feel sorry for me. They don't know how to discuss it, and when they phone, I'm wondering if they get a poor-Heather thrill at the fact he's still missing.

Any news?

Nope.

None?

Nope.

Oh. So, um - what are you up to lately?

You know. Work.

Oh.

Well. . .

See you one of these days.

'Bye.

I've gone through my memory with a lice comb, and I still can't find any evidence that Jason was connected to ugliness or violence that might in some way have led to his disappearance. I've seen killers galore in the courtroom, and despite all of those he-was-just-a-quiet-man-a-perfect-neigh- bor things you hear on TV, the fact is that killers have a deadness in their eyes. Their souls are gone, or they've been replaced with something else, like in a body-s.n.a.t.c.her movie. I was always happy to be invisible in a courtroom when a murder trial was happening, but it was always the killers who tried hardest to make eye contact with me. During a month-long trial I'd typically look in their direction just one time, and there they were, meeting my glance head on. So no, Jason was no killer. I knew his eyes. He had a fine soul.

Did Jason have a secret life before me? No, nothing scary. He was a contractor's a.s.sistant. He picked up drywall, he cut tiles, and he did wiring. His friends weren't truly friends but glorified barflies. The more they wanted to know about the ma.s.sacre, the less Jason spoke with them. I'm sure they must have been spooked by this, but n.o.body was ever surprised. His boss, Les, was a good-time Charlie whose wife, Kim, monitored him like the CIA. We had a few barbecues and company picnics together. Les is about as dangerous as a squeak toy.

I tried asking Jason to open up about his past. This was surprisingly hard to do. I know that most guys aren't talkative about themselves, but Jason, good G.o.d, it was like pulling teeth out of Mount Rushmore getting him to tell me what he did before he got hired by Les. He'd been working in a kitchen-cupboard-door factory, it turned out.

"Jason, my two cousins work for Canfor's wood panel division. What's the big deal?"

"Nothing."

I pushed and prodded and pleaded, and finally it turned out he was ashamed because he'd only taken a factory job so that he wouldn't have to speak with people during work.

"There's nothing wrong with that, Jason."

"I went for almost four years without having a real conversation with any other human being."

"I -".

"It's true. And I'm not the only one. Those guys you see driving in trucks and wearing hardhats and all of that, they're doing the exact same thing that I was doing. They want to get to the grave without ever having to discuss anything more complex than the hockey pool."

"Jason, that's cynical and simply not true."

"Is it?"

Was it?

Getting Jason to discuss Reg was easy. All I had to do was say that Jason's mom saw Reg in the magazine shop on Lonsdale. Instantly: "That sanctimonious b.a.s.t.a.r.d sold me to his G.o.d for three beans. That mean, sour freak. He should rot."

"Jason. He can't be all that bad."

"Bad? He's the opposite of everything he claims to be."

Is he? No.

Sunday night 11:00

The sky was orange-before-the-dark, and I was in the vestibule organizing all of Jason's rubber workboots when Reg showed up. Pathetically, I was hoping the boots' odor might remind me of Jason. Reg's knock was startling, and when I answered the door, Reg looked at my face, and I could see he knew I'd given finally given up hope.

In the kitchen he put on a pot of water for tea and took Jason's wallet from beside the fruit bowl.

He removed the contents item by item, laying them out on the countertop. "So there he is." Laid out were Jason's driver's license, his North Van library card, his Save-On- Foods discount card and some photos of Barb, the kids and me. Reg said, "Heather, something happened today. Tell me what it was." He took the water off the stove before it screamed. He didn't want any extra drama.