"What else?"

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. What else?" The waitress brought her second glass, but she only put her hand around it.

"I get off the train carrying two big duffle bags with me. In one of them are two pairs of red silk underpants I got for you when I was in Paris. As the train comes to a squeaking stop, I see you and Papa standing maybe twenty meters down the platform. You wave to me and start to run, but he holds you back."

Her eyes still closed, she spat out, "The little shit. I'll remember that the rest of my life. What nerve! He grabbed my arm and said so loudly that everyone around us could hear, 'I go first. You think he wants to see you before he sees his father?' I was so embarrassed to be there with him anyway. People would think we were related or something."

"The end of the dream is looking over his shoulder as I hugged him. I wanted to see where you were. You were the first one I wanted to see."

She gave one hard laugh, almost a grunt. "I know. That's what you told me that night." She opened her eyes. "You dreamed that?"

"You're not surprised?"

"Why? I believe in reincarnation. I thought something was strange about your wanting to come and talk to me. After I saw your face I was sure something else was going on inside you."

"Then I want to tell you some other things."

We were there an hour. In between she made a phone call to the man watching Lillis and said she would be back soon.

I told her everything but what had happened with the computer and the fairy tale. The dreams, the prophetic visions, the deaths of my friends. Unlike the first time we'd met, she was quiet, but when she did speak, it was to ask an interesting or perceptive question. I began to understand why her husband had cared so much for her. When I was almost finished I described my experiences with the man on the bicycle and how he'd welcomed me "back" as Rednaxela.

"I'm cold."

"Would you like to put on my jacket?" I started to take it off.

"That won't help. I'm cold inside. There's nothing you can do about that. My friend Herr Lachner has met his sister from their last incarnation. She lives in Perchtoldsdorf. Now I've met my husband. Looking at you, I'm not surprised."

She was suspiciously calm. Had I gotten through?

"Mrs. Benedikt, let's say it's true. Let's say I am your late husband and Kaspar Benedikt has returned too, as the man on the bicycle."

"That's why I'm cold. I think it's true. I want to know what he'll do to us this time. You've seen Lillis. What more could he do?"

"Do you know why he hurt your son?"

"He was also Moritz's son. Have you ever seen a man with no Spatzy?"

"Spatzy? What's that?"

"A penis. Prick. Pee-pee."

"No."

"I have: Kaspar Benedikt. A midget with no prick. Can you think of a worse combination? I always wondered how he made Moritz. Once, I went into the store to meet Moritz for lunch. The old man didn't know I was there and walked out of the back room with only a shirt on. No pants or underpants. I couldn't help looking, you know? I saw it for only a second or two, but there was nothing there, or it was smaller than the eye could see. It was only red down there and, I don't know, shiny. Like a scar from a burn."

"Rumpelstiltskin."

"What?"

"Nothing. What did you do when you saw it?"

"Choked. Made some shocked noise because that's when he saw me."

I sat forward. "What did he do?"

"The pig! He pulled up his pants fast but then asked me if I wanted to lick him there. That's when we really started hating each other. I don't let anyone talk to me like that. Nobody."

Almost to myself I said,. "He isn't human."

"Whatever he is, or whatever he was, wasn't very human. You don't know how the man treated me, even before we knew Lillis was coming. I tell you, he hated me because he knew how much his son loved me. In the beginning he only ignored me. But when he knew how much love there was between us, he got a million times worse.

"I hate to think he might be back. I was so happy when I heard he'd hung himself. The worst night of my life there I was, laughing and crying because they'd found him with a rope around his neck down on the Graben.

"You know what I did with the body?"

"Yes. Why aren't you more . . . shocked that you might be sitting across the table from Moritz?"

"Because you're not Moritz. You look like him and you remember things about me, but I don't feel anything for you. It's like bumping into an old friend forty years later. Maybe the face is familiar and maybe there are some good memories, but it's not the person you gave your soul to. The only thing that would make me jump or faint now would be to see him walk into this room. I'd know it was him just as I know you're not. He'd come over here and say things only the two of us knew."

"I know some of those things, Mrs. Benedikt."

"So what? You don't know them all. That's the difference between you and Moritz. Scattered little pieces don't make a person. It's all the pieces put together that does."

A week later I made a huge mistake. Maris had been doing well in the hospital and they were talking about letting her go home early if she continued to progress.

On the other side of town, I was regressing. One night I dreamed I was a young male prostitute in Vienna at the turn of the century. None of it made sense to me, but on waking I remembered what "Papa" had said about my thirty-one lives and knew this had to be one of them. It was a violent, sensual dream full of homosexual opera singers, barons in drag, and a brothel straight out of a Jean Genet play.

"Come here, little boy. I've bought your breath."

For the first time in those other worlds I'd traveled (lived?) in, I felt thoroughly trapped and afraid. I have never been to a whore, but if their world is anything like that, they have my full sympathy. All that mattered there were orgasms and fantasy. But the orgasms came too quickly (or not at all) and the fantasies were like bad stage sets. I didn't even know my name because the men called me different things. It was not a degrading experience because I felt so distant from what was done to me. No, the fear came from feeling this is it, I'll never leave here. This will be where I end my life.

The morning after, I got out of bed and immediately began looking through Maris's boxes for her tarot cards. After an hour I realized she often carried them in her purse, so there was a good chance she had them at the hospital.

In a great mood when I got there, she hesitated only a bit before agreeing to do a reading for me. How could I have been so selfish and thoughtless? Why didn't I once think that her problem might be due to my magic, or "Papa," and not natural causes? So much else had gone wrong because of those things. Perhaps I didn't consider them because I wanted the doctors to be right – it was a baby, this happened often, it was medical, and not unnatural.

From the first card she turned, I knew it was wrong to ask. The Tower. The Eight of Swords, the Nine of Swords, Death . . . Any good card was upside down, the bad cards in every important place. I know nothing about the tarot, but I could read her face and that told me enough. By the time she turned the last one, her hand was shaking.

"Forget it." I started to sweep the cards up in my hand.

She grabbed it. "Don't do that! Don't touch my cards! I have to do it again. Give them to me, Walker. Now!"

"Forget it."

"Give them!"

"It doesn't matter, Maris!"

"It does. I have to do it for me too. Don't you understand?"

I handed them back. After shuffling many times, she laid down exactly the same hand.

"Oh, God. Walker, call the doctor. I think I'm bleeding again."

She was, and this time there was a rush of doctors and hurried talk.