I remember reading somewhere that devoutly religious people despise psychics, Magic 8 b.a.l.l.s, fortune-telling, fortune cookies and anything of that ilk, considering them all calling cards of the devil. So I was pretty sure that when I told him about Allison he'd blow up or go into his lecture mode, but he didn't, and yet it was unmistakable that he disapproved. He asked, "Tell me more about the words 'Oh, I say.'"

"It was this character Jason and I had between us."

"And?"

"He was a giraffe. Named Gerard."

"Why did he say, 'Oh, I say'?"

"Because he needed to have a cheesy tag line every time he appeared on our stage, so to speak."

It felt uncomfortable, if not obscene, discussing the characters with an outsider. Especially with Reg, who as a child probably spent his Sundays scanning the dot patterns in the weekend funnies with a magnifying gla.s.s in search of hidden messages from the devil.

I told Reg about Froggles, too. "Reg, my point is that these were characters shared solely between Jason and me. n.o.body on the planet could possibly have known about them."

Reg was silent. This drove me nuts. "Reg, say something, at least."

He poured the tea. "I guess what's strange for me here is to learn that Jason had an inner world that included all these characters and all the things they said."

"Well, he did."

"And that he spoke with them all the time."

"He didn't speak with them, he was them. Or rather, they were us. We both have our own personalities, but when we went into character mode we became something altogether different.

You could give me a thousand bucks and I couldn't think up a single line for them to say. Jason, too. But me and Jason together? There'd be no stopping us."

"Do you have any wine?"

"White or red?"

"White."

I took the bottle out of the fridge and poured it for him. He said, "Ahhh, G.o.d bless vitamin W."

I asked him if the psychic aspect of these events upset him for religious reasons.

"Psychics? Lord, no. They're all quacks. I don't believe G.o.d speaks to humans through them. So if a psychic's sending you messages, either the psychic's faking it, or something unG.o.dly is coming through."

"Yeah, well . . ."

"Look, Heather, I know you're upset that I don't believe in your psychic."

"She gave me evidence, Reg - "

He raised his hands as if to say, Nothing I can do about it.

Meanwhile I had to make dinner. I had no idea what was in the fridge to eat - fat-free yogurt?

Limp celery? I got up to inspect. I had this thought: "Reg, is all this supposed to make us better people? I mean, is that why we're going through this - so that our souls can somehow improve?" I found a plastic tub of frozen spaghetti sauce.

"Maybe."

I was so mad that I slammed the sauce onto the counter and the lid popped off. "Will you just tell me why it is that the only way we ever seem to take steps forward in life is through pain? Huh?

Why is exposure to pain always supposed to make us better people?" "Heather, it's grotesque to think for even a moment that suffering in and of itself makes you a better person."

"I'm listening."

"Heather, I'm having one of my good days today. I'm not feeling as full of doubt as last time.

Doubt comes and goes. And my thinking today is that it's equally grotesque to think that a lack of bad events in your life means you're a good person. Life is only so long. The whistle gets blown, and "when it does, where you are is where you are. If people lived to be five hundred, that's probably be about long enough for everybody to have experienced most of what there is, and to have done all of the bad stuff, too. But we check out roughly at seventy-two."

"So?"

"So if we a.s.sume that G.o.d is just - and I think He is, even after everything that's happened - then justice can still be done. Maybe not here on earth, or in our own lifetimes, but for justice to happen then there has to be something beyond this world. Life on this plane is simply too short for justice."

"Huh."

"Some people even give the impression that they've escaped all the bad stuff, but I don't think anybody does. Not really."

"You don't?"

"No."

"I used to be a really nice person, Reg."

"I can't say that about myself."

"But now something's changed and I'm not a nice person anymore. It happened to me today in the mall's bathroom when I was crying. I stopped being nice."

Reg said, "No, no, that's not true."

In any event, I was heating the spaghetti sauce, and I dropped the subject of psychics, evil, Froggles, and Jason, and spoke about those things that float on the surface, things without roots: current events, TV and movies. The moment Reg left I pounced on the phone and called Allison, but she didn't pick up and there was no machine.

I tried again an hour later. Nothing.

I would have called her every three minutes, but then I realized how uncool it would look if Allison came in, looked at her call screening display, and saw that I'd phoned her seventy-eight times. So instead I phoned her three more times, and just now took a sedative my doctor had given me back when Jason first disappeared, but which I've so far refused to take. I'm going to bed.

Monday night 7:00

Work today was hard, and I screwed up several times. I pa.s.sed on lunch with Jayne from the court next door, and I bought a tuna salad sandwich and some chocolate milk. It sat beside me untouched on the courtyard steps while I began phoning Allison's number once again. How many times had it been, at that point - ten? But I couldn't help it: her number was the combination to a safe, and I desperately wanted in.

By the end of lunch hour, I felt sick - well, more freaked out than sick. I clocked out and drove home, as if home would afford me any comfort. I phoned Allison twice again and then decided at the last minute to visit Jason's mother at the extended-care facility off Lonsdale. She was awake and for an instant seemed to recognize me, but quickly forgot me again. She kept asking for Joyce, Jason's old dog, but I told her about ten times that because I was allergic to her, Joyce was living with Chris down in Silicon Valley. Then she asked how Jason was. I said he was fine, and then from the innocent expression on her face I time-traveled just a few months in the past to a world where Jason was still here. I felt relief that we'd decided to not tell her the news.

Tuesday morning 5:30

Allison won't answer her phone, and I'm ready for murder. For the love of G.o.d, how many times do I have to dial her? I threw all caution to the wind and put her number on autoredial for the entire evening. Then I went and bought a copy of every local newspaper and checked out all the psychics, looking for her.

I went through the Yellow Pages and the Internet, and still nothing. She must have some sort of business alias. I called all the psychics I could, asking who Allison might be, but n.o.body knew.

Some of them tried reeling me in by fishing for what Allison might have been onto. Sc.u.m. But all leads went dead. The nerve of this woman - the nerve - she knows darn well what it's like to endure what I've endured, and she doesn't return my call.

I can't sleep. Instead, I just think about her more and more, and then I think about Jason, somewhere out there in the afterworld trying to reach me, and instead all he connects with is Allison in her teal-colored fleece - pilled fleece, at that - who tells me right out of the gate that she's in the business of being a liar. I walk around the condo, talking aloud, telling Jason that he could come directly to me, instead of wasting his time trying to go through this uncommunicative Allison b.i.t.c.h.

I then felt uncharitable and petty. I thought that maybe if I drank a couple of gallons of water, it'd de-gunk anything in my veins or muscles that might be blocking Jason from reaching me directly.

Then I figured I was maybe too clear, so I drank a shot of tequila.

Oh, G.o.d, I think I'm looped right now - but it was only one tequila shot, and my period was a week ago, so I don't know why I'm so wound up. It's going to be light soon. It'll be a clear, cool day, like summer, but the sun's too low on the horizon.

Seasons have always had a strong effect on me. For example, everyone has a question that a.s.saults them the moment they're awake in the morning - usually it's "Where am I?" or sometimes "What day is it?" I always wake up asking "What season is it?" Not even the day but the season.

A billion years of evolution summed up in one simple question, all based on the planet's wobble.

Oh, but I wish it were spring! And oh - if only I could smell some laurels in the path outside the building! But then, on the other hand, if I'm honest, I have to remember that it takes bodies longer to decompose in fall and winter. Oh, Jason, I'm so sorry, honey, I'm sorry I just thought of you like you were merely bioma.s.s like potting soil or manure or mulch. That's obviously not true. I don't know what happened to you, but you're still just Jason. You haven't turned into something else yet.

And Allison, you evil cheesy witch. You won't pick up the phone. How dare you. I'm going to find you. Yes, I'm going to find you.

Tuesday morning 11:00

I'm writing this directly into the courtroom's system. Who cares?

A half-hour ago the unthinkable happened: my cell phone went off in the middle of a cross- examination. Whole years go by without people even noticing we exist. We're not supposed to draw attention to ourselves - and so there I sat looking like a twit to everybody in the room, phone bleeping away. Granted, it was probably the most interesting thing to happen in that courtroom since the double murder trial back in '97, but people are staring at me, willing my cheeks to flush red, trying to make me know that they know about me. If you were looking at me as I write this, you'd never know that all I want to do in this world is kidnap Allison and tie her to a rack and demand that she tell me what's going on with Jason.

As I turned off the phone, I checked the call display, and of course it was Allison, finally. It's all I can do right now to not climb the walls with my teeth.

Oh, G.o.d. Look at these men. What drudgery are these dirtbags discussing now? They're all crooks. You can't imagine all the mining and real estate and offsh.o.r.e c.r.a.p that wends through this room. You'd be shocked. They'll bankrupt widows and they'll only get a minimum fine and some golf tips from their lawyers. I bet Allison was married to one of these guys. What was his name?

Glenn. Uh-huh. Glenn, who probably had a 23 handicap, a cholesterol count of 280, and a handful of semitraceable sh.e.l.l corporations. I've met enough Glenns in my time. Some of them hang around at the end of the day and try to pick me up, which I didn't use to mind because it meant that at least I wasn't invisible. But now? Glenn. Now I hate Glenn, because Glenn is connected to Allison, and Allison is a witch.

Oh Lord, when is this morning's session going to end?

And Heather, aren't you the one who's up the creek, paddle-free, once they read this transcript?

Screw it. n.o.body ever does.

What has happened to me? I've gone crazy. I have. Allison isn't evil. She's just stupid. She probably forgot to recharge her phone. Why all of a sudden do you accuse her of treachery when stupidity may be her only failing? Wait a second - Allison is way too young a name for a woman aged sixty-ish. She ought to be called Margaret or Judy or Pam. Allison? Only women my age are called Allison. Or Heather. When we all start dying in another forty years, they'll look at the obituaries, see our names and say to themselves, "Isn't it weird? All the Heathers are dying."

A bit later

Okay, there was one time when I suspected something dodgy with Jason, just one time, down in Park Royal maybe two months before he disappeared. We were walking down the main atrium in the south mall, returning a shirt, and in mid-conversation Jason froze. I looked at whatever it was he was seeing; there was just this guy sitting there eating ice cream on a bench with a woman who looked to be his mother. He was a big guy, kind of Eastern European looking, and his clothes - they were like what a nightclub bouncer in Vladivostok might choose, thinking that this was how hip Americans dress. His mother was like something from the tuberculosis ward on Ellis Island circa 1902.

"Jason?"

"Don't move."

"Huh."

"I said, don't - "

"Jason, you're scaring me."

The guy looked our way, and in slow motion put down his ice cream. He then rolled up his pants leg, and I thought he was going to pull out a handgun, but instead I saw that he had a metal prosthesis. The guy knocked on it, looked up at Jason and gave a creepy smile.

The next minute Jason had whisked me away and we were standing in front of the Bootlegger jeans store. He was obviously stressed out, and when he saw that we were in front of the Bootlegger store, he became even more so - he said, "Not this place." So we escalatored up to the next level. I looked down, and the one-legged guy was looking up at us.

By then I was curious but also quite angry. "Jason, what was that all about?"

"A guy I used to work with." "It doesn't look to me like you were friends with him."

"He burnt me on some money he owes me. He's a crazy Russian guy. Those people will do anything."

"That's racist."

"Whatever. That guy is bad news."

I saw the wall slam down. I didn't bother pursuing the question, as past experience had taught me the futility of trying to breach the wall.

Jason said, "Let's go to the parkade."

"What? We just got here. We haven't even returned this shirt."

"We're going."

And so we left.

And for the weeks after that, Jason was jumpy and tossed in his sleep. Maybe there was no connection to the disappearance. What am I saying? I don't have a clue. But if I ever see that guy again, he's got a lot of questions coming his way.

Tuesday afternoon 1:30