"To perfection," she said.

"To 1987," said Mr. Hennessey.

While Mr. Hennessey was in the bathroom, Ginny realized she was drunk. It felt good; it felt as if she'd needed to get drunk for a long time.

"Personally, I think the whole endeavor is overrated," she said as he reclaimed his place beside her.

"Which endeavor is that?"

"Life. The pursuit of happiness. Love."

"Is that so."

"That is definitely so. I swear by it. My kids, for example. My cla.s.s. They're so suspicious and disengaged. I think they sense something insincere in me, and they hate it. They hate my cla.s.s."

"Is there something insincere in you?"

"No. Well, yes. I mean, teaching. I'm not sure I want to be a teacher anymore."

The words hung in the air; Mr. Hennessey didn't seem to have a response. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to burden you with all this stuff. I just thought you might have some advice."

He leaned back against the couch. "Tell me," he said. "What do you think will become of Julia?" She didn't blame him for changing the subject; she hadn't meant to dump her life in his lap.

"I don't know. She's so sensitive, I worry. I think either she'll have to toughen up, or the world will toughen her up." Ginny had noticed that people didn't seem to value sensitivity much. "Don't be so sensitive!" they'd shout-not the most delicate way to handle a finely attuned person-as if sensitivity were voluntary.

He smiled. "Or not."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe she'll find a way to capitalize on her sensitivity."

"I doubt it."

"Why's that?"

"I just do." Ginny thought about the way Julia's hands shook when it was her turn to read aloud, how the skin on her arms turned to gooseflesh whenever she read a sentence that was especially moving.

"You don't think it could ever be an a.s.set-perhaps her greatest a.s.set?"

"No." Ginny laughed. "I don't."

Mr. Hennessey gave her a funny look. Interesting, his expression said. "Would you mind if I asked you a personal question?"

"That'd be only fair."

"What was your poem? When I had the students memorize their favorite poem and recite it."

"Oh, G.o.d, I don't remember. That was so long ago. I couldn't begin to remember."

He smiled an enigmatic smile she didn't appreciate. He was sitting only a foot away, and she found herself partly wanting to scoot over next to him and partly wanting to reach for her purse and flee.

He leaned forward and set his bottle down on the table. "Well, I'd say if you truly don't enjoy teaching, you should leave. But if you do enjoy it, you should stay. Personally, I can't picture you as anything other than an excellent teacher."

"But-I'm not like you. I'm not the way you were."

"You're like yourself," he said. "Even better."

"You don't know me," she said, becoming annoyed, wishing she hadn't accepted that last beer. Or was it that she felt as if she were only seventeen again? Her father had taken her aside that year, told her he was worried about her, that she was like a turtle without a sh.e.l.l. "You don't know me," she said again. "I toughened up. I grew a sh.e.l.l. I'm not-"

He put his hand against her back but, oddly, she felt it in her stomach. "Your sh.e.l.l is papier-mache," he said. "You are a pinata."

She looked into his face. It was still so handsome. You were my favorite teacher, she wanted to say, but she was too embarra.s.sed, too afraid she would sound like a schoolgirl with a crush. You were everybody's favorite.

He held her eyes. "And I'm no good at being in love, either," she said abruptly, shifting away from him. She sometimes had a talent for dispelling awkward moments by making them even more awkward. "I don't like the idea of giving yourself up, of surrendering. Why does it have to be like that? Who invented this system, anyway?"

Mr. Hennessey appeared stunned, and she wondered if she'd scared him.

"Did you put truth serum in my drink?" she said, hoping to recover a little. But he had grown pensive. For the first time, she recognized the expression she knew from the cla.s.sroom.

"I don't know that you necessarily have to give yourself up," he said. "Maybe your self just becomes larger."

"Spoken like a lifelong bachelor," she said, but when she saw his face, she regretted it.

"I was engaged once," he said, turning to the window. Outside, the sun was setting, and the western sky was the colors of a bruise: purple and yellow, fading to gray. "She was curious about everything. And what a heart." As he spoke, the room seemed quiet in a way it hadn't before. Ginny sat perfectly still.

"Her name was Isabel," he said. "When she left, it took something from me. Changed me. I almost feel as if I've been in hibernation. For a while, I suppose I was waiting for her to come back. But at a certain point, I imagine one's supposed to give up." His face had a vulnerability she'd never seen in it when he was her teacher. "I guess I just never knew when to give up."

He seemed about to say more, but then he stopped. He pressed his lips together. If I see this man cry, Ginny thought, it will break me. If I see him cry, I will break in two. But instead of attempting to say more, he just smiled-a broad, apologetic smile-as if he were laughing at his own predicament, at how funny it was to have been through such heartache.

"That was five or six years ago now," he said, sitting up. "The interesting thing is, I stayed friends with her father. He lived right up the road. I used to go over and help him out with repair-type stuff around the house, things he was too weak to do himself. Sometimes we'd just sit and talk. But we never mentioned Isabel. One day, one of the last times I saw him before he died, he looked at me and said: 'Arthur, G.o.d answered all my prayers. All my prayers in life-except for one.' I knew he was trying to help me."

Ginny didn't know what to say. She wanted to help him, too, but she didn't know how. She felt terrible then, terrible that she was considering leaving teaching, terrible that she was such a failure.

"I'm sorry if I let you down," she said softly.

Mr. Hennessey shook his head. "You didn't let me down. You could never let me down." He lifted her chin. "You were my Julia," he said. "You were my quiet ace."

Ginny closed her eyes. " 'Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom,' " she said, and kept her eyes shut, afraid to open them, afraid of everything.

"James Wright's 'A Blessing.' Of course. That would be the perfect poem for you," he said. Then he leaned in and kissed her, respectful and slow at first, then in a way that let her feel his hunger. She kissed him back, raising her hand to his neck. The simple act of touching him with tenderness made the hair on her arms stand up.

When they stopped kissing, he pulled her into a hug, both arms locking her against his body, tight. Then they both started to laugh-real, deep laughter-and the more they laughed, the more they wanted to laugh. It was as if they had just heard the funniest joke in the world. It was as if they were the funniest joke in the world. When they stopped laughing, Ginny felt as if she might start to cry again. She stared at the vertical row of b.u.t.tons on his shirt.

"I can't remember what I used to think was beautiful," she said.

"You're beautiful," he whispered. "You just might be the most beautiful thing."

"You're drunk," Ginny laughed. "And insane. Both." But her giddiness quickly evaporated. She didn't want to hurt him, not Mr. Hennessey, not this great, invisible love of her life.

"I should get going," she said, releasing him and glancing at her watch.

"I'm not sure you're medically fit to drive," he said. "Besides, I was just about to offer you the guest room, and suggest we make pancakes tomorrow morning, then lounge around all day reading books."

"Reading books, eh?"

"Or engaging in stimulating activity of one fashion or another."

Ginny smiled. "I told you, I'm no good at the love thing."

"I'm willing to wager you're better than you think. And who said anything about love? I said pancakes."

She stalled for a moment. She knew she should leave. She knew her pattern, her tendency to leave a broken heart in her wake when she returned to her solitary ways.

"Arthur-"

"Stay."

She reached for her purse. "I can't. I'm sorry. I really have to go." She started for the door.

He took her arm. "Wait," he said. He drew a breath. "I do miss it. I miss every d.a.m.n thing about it. I should never have left. It was ego, pride. I'm envious of you," he said. "I'm jealous."

Ginny sat down, shocked. "What? That's insane. Why don't you go back, teach again somewhere? You could start fresh."

He was shaking his head. "It's not that simple," he said. "I've been away for so long. Sometimes you can miss something even when you know it's not for you anymore."

"That's a load of bull. You were a fantastic teacher. You could get a job again in an instant. Heck, you can have my job. You just have to teach me how to carve tables."

"Cla.s.ses could be arranged," he said, taking her hand.

She slipped her hand away. The clock on the wall read 8:35. The alcohol was wearing off, and she suddenly felt very tired.

"I really should leave," she said.

"Fair enough," he said, and they both stood up. Then he kissed her again, and it was as sweet as before. When she opened her eyes, his pupils were wide.

"Hold on-I'll be right back," he said. "I think I still have something you'll get a huge kick out of." Then he headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

While he was gone, Ginny scanned the room, her eyes lighting on the bookshelves, the stereo, the coffee table. For a moment, she took in the whole scene, herself included, as if viewing it from above. She laughed. She knew then that she would leave teaching; she could see how much it had been misplaced admiration for him all along. And she imagined with equal clarity the possibility that he would return to it. She could see the strands of their lives crisscrossing like two chromosomes.

Outside, the sun had fully set, and a few lights glimmered through the clouds. Somewhere in the darkness a dog barked, and she heard a screen door slam. Ginny took her purse, and without making a sound, went for the door. All of her instincts told her to vanish, to flee. All of her instincts, except for one. The next minute, she was climbing the stairs-very slowly, like a woman sleepwalking, incapable of imagining the dream that awaits her when she wakes up.

THE THING ITSELF.

Something was about to happen. He could feel it. He could feel it with the same eerie certainty he used to have in his school days, when he would know, a millisecond before it happened, whether his bat was going to connect with the ball. He could feel it the way he would occasionally dream of an old friend the day before he received a letter from him; the way he once suddenly understood, watching his mother's car stop at the curb of his school at three o'clock, that his dog had run away again, this time for good. The way, years later, pursuing his favorite hobby, he knew without prior word from his library that Harris's The Art of Astonishment had arrived, and he could drop in on his way home and claim it for the weekend. The way he'd always known a rainy evening in a cloudless day.

Its precise dimensions eluded him. There was simply an amorphous excitement, a peripheral tingling that had begun to pervade his waking hours, making it difficult for him to sleep. And when he did sleep, even his dreams were harbingers. They'd become vivid and strange. Never comprehensible, at least not in describable terms, they left a residual scent on his skin-his body, when he awoke, had the faintly metallic sweetness that used to clothe him after hours spent outdoors as a child. How strange that he should awake smelling as if he'd been playing all day in the woods outside Durham, New Hampshire-a place he hadn't visited in more than thirty years.

Such premonitions used to frighten him. Once he seemed to know in advance that he was going to be mugged. He'd just taken a job with the new firm, and for a week he felt overly aware of strangers in his personal s.p.a.ce. On a whim, he decided to photocopy the contents of his wallet, although he couldn't have said why. He thought about asking Daphne, the paralegal who wore low-cut blouses and black fingernail polish, to do it for him. But he'd concluded it was more prudent to do it himself. That night, on the way from his favorite restaurant to his car, he was cornered in the parking lot by a hooded man with a knife. Even as he surrendered the calfskin billfold, he couldn't help thinking, with a dark pride: I knew it!

But he was a man of logic, not superst.i.tion. He was a lawyer. True, he was a lawyer in Los Angeles, but still, there were certain standards. He didn't think he possessed ESP. On the contrary, he wondered if these weren't instances of SSP: subtle sensory perception. Possibly the mugger had been casing him throughout the week, and he'd noticed him subconsciously. Perhaps the old friend had called, and left no message, but he'd seen the name flash by his caller ID. Maybe he'd glimpsed a smudge of tears on his mother's face, or had seen a dog collar or some other token in her steering-wheel hand. There were always explanations for things, if you looked hard enough.

Or so he told himself. Unheeding, his heart beat back its answer: Something was coming. And soon.

"You mean, like the way you know when you're about to sneeze?" Daphne said, crossing her legs on her side of the booth at Bandera. She was wearing black leather boots that laced up to her knees. She'd been an aspiring actress, and still had the clothes.

"Sort of like that," he said. It was possible that telling her had been a mistake. On an impulse, he'd chosen her as the person in whom to confide; she seemed more open to paranormal exotica than his friends. He needed to tell someone, and he couldn't tell his wife. His wife's parents had died in a plane crash when she was in high school. When she and he were first dating, in the mid-nineties, she'd become pregnant and had had an abortion. Then, when they married several years later, she hadn't been able to conceive. Now they were both in their forties, and she more than he was haunted by the one child they seemingly could have had, the gift they'd thrown away. She had little tolerance for talk of "premonitions."

He lifted his gla.s.s, then put it down. "It feels sort of like deja vu," he said. "Except in reverse."

"I'm not sure I know what that means," Daphne said, and he realized she had a point. She sat staring into her globe of merlot, her handsome face catching its scarlet refractions. Was she disappointed she'd never made it as an actress? She was probably in her late thirties-though he'd always had difficulty telling ages-but her heart-shaped face and little-girl voice made her seem younger. If having to give up her dreams had broken her spirit, she didn't show it.

"Unless-do you mean like feeling nostalgic for a place you've never been?" she said.

"Yes," he said. "More like that."

She reached for her purse, a red suede thing with fringes. "Would you like me to read your cards? I have a Tarot deck in here somewhere."

"No, thanks," he said quickly. He was feeling burdened enough by his own presentiments; he didn't need do-it-yourself prophecy added to the mix.

Daphne's hands stopped their rummaging. "I'm not sure how I can help you then, Felix."

"I don't need help, exactly. I just thought I should tell someone." The roots of his hair p.r.i.c.kled with sweat. He knew how they must look to pa.s.sersby: an overweight, balding, nervous-seeming lawyer sitting across from a lithe, semi-Goth paralegal at a steakhouse three blocks from their office. "The last time this happened, I was mugged," he said.

"So you think you're about to be mugged?" she said, snapping the thin thread of understanding he'd hoped was being spun between them. In the two years she'd been working at his firm, she had occasionally entered his fantasies, but he'd never before had the temerity to ask her to join him for an after-work drink.

"No," he said, staring at his untouched gimlet. "It's not that. It's more ..." He struggled for a way to explain the sense of urgency he felt like a rising tide in his blood. "It's more like this b.u.mper sticker I saw on the back of an eighteen-wheeler." He found himself thinking of the tailpipe slogan several times a day; it cropped up, unbidden, in myriad idle moments.

"That said what?"

" 'After a rolling ball comes a running child.' "

She looked at him. Her eyes were smudged with black, like a racc.o.o.n's, and for a second she reminded him of the way his wife used to look, when she was younger, after one of her crying jags.

"Sounds like a line from a poem," she said. She pulled a compact from her purse and began to refresh her lipstick.

"No-don't you see?" he said, shifting in his seat. He tugged at the collar of his shirt. "It's a warning. It's meant to warn people, so something terrible doesn't happen."

Daphne appeared bored and irritated. Her cell phone chirped, and he wondered if she'd somehow willed it to do so. She read the text message eagerly, then slid a ten-dollar bill under her winegla.s.s.

"It's my boyfriend," she said. "I've got to go."