Oh.

"Good morning," she said. She was sitting on the bed, nude, propped on some pillows with her feet out in front of her. She took a drag on her cigarette. She was so heartbreakingly beautiful I thought I might cry.

"Please," I croaked. "Don't smoke so loud."

"Pretty feeble. You did a lot better last night." But she stubbed ii out.

"I was feeling a lot funnier last night."

"I was just sitting here wondering," she said. "While you woke up on your feet, l mean. It took a while for your eyes to focus."

"They aren't focused yet."

"Yes they are." She stretched, and I guess she was right. It was impossible not to focus on someone as spectacular as that.

"What I was wondering is, what woke you up? I didn't hear anything and I didn't do anything. Brit brother, you sure as hell woke up."

"What time is it?"

"Eight-thirty."

I sat on the edge of the bed and told her about my alarm clock. What I had to assume was I had just pulled a variation of the old story about the man at the lighthouse. Twenty years he sits out there, and the foghorn goes off in his ear every thirty seconds. One night it misses a blast and he jumps out of bed screaming, "What was that?"

She listened solemnly, reached for another smoke, looked at me, and decided against it.

She held out her arms.

"Bill. Listen to me. You've been asleep for one hour. Your Mister Petcher can handle your duties this morning. Come back to bed. I'll rub your back."

I sat back down, and she did rub it. She used a lot more than her hands, too, and I didn't complain. Then I did the hardest thing I ever did. I stood up.

"Got to get to work," I said.

She sat there like something out of the middle of Penthouse, even to the vaseline on the lens -- though that might have been simply the condition of my eyeballs. She just kept looking up at me.

"This job is killing you, Bill."

"Yeah. I know."

"Stay with me today. I'll show you San Francisco."

"I thought you had to go at ten."

Her face fell. I didn't know what I'd said. She hadn't exactly said where she had to go at ten. Maybe to visit her baby in the hospital.

The shower curtain rings rattled as she yanked the curtain open and stepped in with me.

She shuddered when the cold water hit her and for a moment we clung together like children.

I turned the tap over toward warm, and hugged her. She leaned back in my arms. I saw that her nipples hadn't crinkled up from the cold like my wife's used to in a cold shower. Funny the things you notice at a time like that.

"I don't like to see you killing yourself. Take the day off."

" Louise, don't bitch at me. I have a job, and I have to do it."

"Don't work late, then. I'll be here at ten this evening: "That I can do. I'll be here, too."

Testimony of Louise Baltimore

He left, and I had no idea what he was going to do that night. Either way, it didn't look good.

He could go to the hangar, meet me, and screw up the timeline.

Or he could not go to a place I'd already been, to a place that, in my version of reality, he had already been. I didn't know what that would do to me.

Either way, sitting there on the bed in my damp skinsuit, I figured I could be smoking my last cigarette. I made it last, savored every carcinogenic puff.

Then the Gate arrived in the bathroom and I stepped through. For all I knew, there might be nothing on the other side. The thought didn't bother me much. For a night, anyway, I had lived.

Testimony of Bill Smith

There were two cops at the desk as I went through the lobby. They were talking to the manager. I didn't think about it until I got outside and saw two more cops, two police cars, and a tow truck pulling Louise's Italian sports car out of its parking slot.

I started over there. I was going to ask what the hell was going on, but something made me stop. Instead, I found a spectator and asked him what was going on.

"The cop said it was stolen," the man said.

"Stolen?"

"That's what be said. Must have been a kid. Who the hell else would be dumb enough to steal a thing like that? I bet there's no more than six or seven of them in the whole country."

I got out of the elevator and ran down the hall toward my room. I was getting out my key when a strange noise started. l looked around, up and down the hall, but I couldn't locate its source.

We weren't that far from the airport, so I dismissed the noise. l had my key, so I started to put it in the lock.

At least, I tried to.

The door bulged away from me, like it was made of rubber.

I almost fell over; putting out a hand, I caught myself against the wall, which had also distorted. Then, slowly, it eased back into position.

I stood there, sweating. I backed away from the door, studied it and the wall. No paint was cracked. I ran my hand over the door, and around the frame. Nothing was warped, there were no splinters.

Jesus. I'd had bad hangovers before, but nothing like that. I rubbed my hands over my face, and unlocked the door.

For just a second it looked very odd in there. At the far end of the room were sliding glass doors that led to a coffin-sized balcony. The doors were shut, but the drapes were blowing as if in a high wind. I couldn't feel the slightest breeze. And everything in the room seemed to be coated with ice.

Maybe ice isn't the right word. Frost, or powdered sugar.

I blinked, and it was all gone. The curtains were barely stirring, and there was nothing wrong with the walls or the unmade bed.

She was gone.

I did everything I could think of. It didn't bring her back.

The balcony door was locked from the inside. I opened it and stepped out, looked around, couldn't see how she could have gotten out from the fourth floor. There was no rope of knotted bedsheets or anything.

I hadn't been gone that long. I suppose she could have come down one elevator while I was going up the other, or she might have used the stairs, but there was something that made me doubt that. Her clothes were still there. All of them, from the brown shoes to the cotton bra.

Her purse was gone, though. Could she have had some clothes in there? The only other evidence she had ever been there was the stained sheets and the heaping ashtrays.

I stayed in the room for almost half an hour, trying to put it together.

A stolen car. A night to remember. A strange story about a place where everybody died.

A dead or stillborn or heroinaddicted infant.

Oh, yes, and two more clues. In the bathroom trash can I found a Vicks inhaler and an empty package of Clorets breath freshener. I sniffed at the inhaler and wished I hadn't.

Whatever was in the thing, l didn't want any part of it.

Chalk it up to experience, I told myself, only it didn't help. You're supposed to learn something from experience, and all I had was questions.

I decided not to tell the police anything about her, at least not until I'd had a chance to talk to her myself. Maybe she needed help. I didn't think she was dangerous.

I had to call a cab to get to the airport. When I arrived, I went straight to the United desk, and around back to where Sarah Hacker had her office.

She looked like she'd had about as much sleep as I had. Maybe there are worse jobs than personnel and public relations for an airline that's just lost a plane, but I don't know what they are.