That made him laugh a little. Julianne knew him so well... "You remember what you were saying last week in the car, Jul? About how I had changed?"

She opened her eyes. "You've discovered you're gay."

"Cut it out, Jul, I'm serious! Something's happened to me. Not from the fire, but from before. I can do stuff now. Things that nobody can do."

Julianne's raised eyebrows made him stop. "I'm waiting for the punch line,"

she said. "God's gift to comedy you're not, hon. Okay, I'll bite-what kind of things?"

She was humoring him. Rob felt his face getting red with annoyance. "Well, mind reading, for instance."

"Read my mind, then."

"You don't believe me."

"Of course not. C'mon, Rob, let me in on the gag. April Fool's Day was last month. Or-good god! Your head doesn't ache, does it? Do you see spots, or feel numb or anything?" She sat up, staring at him with narrowed hazel eyes and setting down her drink.

"No, no!" Rob exclaimed in dismay. "I feel fine, never better!"

"But it's not like you to talk like this." Julianne advanced purposefully on him. Brushing his protesting hand aside she clapped a chilly hand to his forehead. "I don't know. Let me get the thermometer."

"Look, you want to know what else I can do?" Rob demanded, a little desperately.

"That does it. I'm calling the doctor."

"Julianne, listen to me. I can change your mind. Make you believe me.

Okay?"

"Anything you say, hon. I have the name of that emergency room doctor written down right here."

She had seized the cordless phone and was already punching out the number.

"This is ridiculous," Rob said. "All right. It shall be as I say. Julianne, you do believe me. Everything I said to you is a plain fact."

He watched with relief and a little guilt, as she clicked the cordless phone off and pushed the little antenna back in again. "How-how did it happen, Rob? Did you, like, do radiation treatments as a kid? Get exposed to kryptonite or something?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," Rob admitted. "And I can't think of any way to find out."

"What have you done with it?"

"Nothing much. It's been, gosh, only about a week-I can hardly believe it.

I think I might've made your bus driver sick that day. I guess I should find out about him." Rob winced at the thought of another Vernon Shultz.

"Can you, like, do anything useful?"

"I might've turned some of the Lorton convicts around. I sneaked out yesterday to experiment with it. And I told the office I was there. So when the fire broke out they all swore to the fire department that I was still in the building. I'm afraid I'm responsible for that fireman's death yesterday."

There, it was out. Rob sagged in his chair with relief. Disappointingly, the horror of it didn't seem to strike Julianne very greatly. "That's a fireman's job, hon. They know what they're getting into. And what are you wasting your energy at Lorton for? There's lots of better things to do with this!"

"I knew you'd have some ideas," Rob said with pride.

Julianne began to pace slowly back and forth from the sofa to the TV cart, frowning with thought. "You can tell people what to think. Let me see.

Lobbyist, of course. We get the National Rifle Association or somebody to hire you as a lobbyist, and bingo, all the senators help you ram through gun legislation."

"Holy mackerel!" Rob exclaimed in horror. "You know, Jul, I'm not a mover-and-shaker kind of guy! Besides, I think there are too many guns already!"

"That's just an example, hon. What about PR? Convince everybody to drink Florida orange juice, or buy panty hose. Or, I know! You could run for public office! If you tell people to vote for you, they would, right?"

"Well, sure, but-"

"How lucky that this is the off year! I don't think it's too late yet to file to be on the ballot this November. You could start in one of the local races, say for the state legislature. Then in two years pick up a House seat, run for governor in '98-" Julianne counted quickly on her perfectly-manicured fingers. "You'd be in a good position to make a Presidential run in 2004!"

"But I don't want to be President!"

"But you literally can't lose! So why not?"

Rob almost stuttered, trying to get the words out. "For one thing, if I was President, I'd actually have to do stuff-meet with foreign leaders, declare war, run the government-things like that. And I don't know anything about it."

"So what? Does anybody? What difference will that make?"

"Jul! We live in this country! Do you want it run into the ground by an ignoramus? Suppose I declare war against Canada or something?" Rob tried to stick to the point. "And another thing-would it be right, to make people vote for me? Or to buy orange juice, even?"

"I don't see how that's different from running ads in the paper."

"But you can choose to read the ad. You can choose what kind of juice to buy. If I tell you which kind, you have no choice, Jul-none at all. You'd have more options if I held a gun to your head."

Julianne's eyes flashed. "Well, by that argument, you're just going to sit on this thing, and not accomplish anything with it!"

On Thursday he had sworn there was nothing he wouldn't do for her. Rob felt trapped. He stood up and grabbed her hand. "Look, we don't have to jump into anything right away. What I really want us to think about is, what kind of life do we want? Where do we want to go with this? For instance, have you really envisioned living with the twins in the White House?"

The image made Julianne shudder. "And I never could stand Colonial furniture," she admitted.

"We have all the time in the world," Rob said. "There's no need to rush."

"How do you know that this ability won't just go away, as fast as it came?"

"It's possible, but I don't think so." Rob turned away towards the window and looked out into the back yard. A chain-link fence enclosed the worn grass, and the cement patio was furnished with two aluminum lawn chairs, a rust-streaked barbecue grill, and a turtle-shaped sand box. "I've only gotten stronger, Jul. The number of people I can reach seems to be growing exponentially. Sometimes I wonder, is there any upper limit for me? How much more can it increase?"

Julianne joined him, tucking her arm through his. From upstairs came a small tentative whoop. The twins were awake. "You know, what we do need is a picnic table," she said. "We need money." The ceiling bumped alarmingly above their heads as Angela rocked her crib on its casters. No more discussion was possible.

The rest of the afternoon had to be frittered away on a series of minor errands. Rob bought a kitchen sink aerator and a concrete splash block from Hechinger's, and the kids needed shoes. Angela and Davey were used to visiting the hardware store, but the relative novelty of Kmart intoxicated them. They ran screaming up and down the aisles of the shoe department while Julianne wavered between Barney sneakers and orange canvas high-tops.

"I can't concentrate," she said peevishly. "It's all your fault, you know."

"Me? What about them?" Rob protested, but then he understood. "Right-why can't I have normal ailments, like everybody else?"

She held up a midget pair of sneakers. "Rob, what would happen if you told the clerk we'd already paid for these?"

Rob's mouth opened in dismay. "But-I guess she'd believe me, but-it wouldn't be true, Jul! It'd be shoplifting!"