The next thing I knew, I was staring at my hands. They were holding a strawberry milk shake in an old-fashioned fluted glass. They were “my” hands again—no liver spots, bread-dough skin sagging in tired layers, no knuckles the size of walnut shells protruding from beneath. Instead, the skin was a healthy color, not the patchwork quilt of sickly hues and spots it had been in Vienna.

Slowly, I curled one into a fist and was thrilled as a child to feel no pain slither up through it. But before I got too excited, I uncurled the hand just as slowly to see if it worked the other way too. Success. Was I back? Was I me again? Putting the hand flat down on the red Formica counter, I felt the cool of the plastic beneath my reborn palm. I slid it back and forth across the smooth surface. Then I lifted my hand a few inches and had the fingers do a little dance to celebrate our return.

“Are you going to drink that milk shake or are you trying to hypnotize it?”

I knew it was too good to be true. I knew the voice and did not want to see the face it came from. But against the advice of every atom in my body, I turned the rotating stool to look.

I was in Scrappy’s Diner in Crane’s View. Scrappy’s is never empty from the minute it opens at six in the morning until it closes at midnight. But the joint was empty now. That is, except for me and good old Astopel sitting way down at the other end of the counter. Watching me, he smiled like a son of a bitch.

“Couldn’t I just have had thirty seconds of happiness alone before I saw you again? Isn’t there a law against too much you in one lifetime?”

“You can have all the time you want, Mr. McCabe. But your clock is ticking.”

My throat was dirt-dry so I sipped the milk shake, which tasted as good as sex at that moment. In fact I couldn’t stop sipping, which turned into glugging until the glass was empty. Even my throat felt younger, it was so happy and eager to belt the sweet stuff down.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “All right, what clock is ticking?”

“How did you like your death? It’s certainly dramatic.”

“Is that really how I’m going to die?”

“Yes, a motorcycle in the head.”

“I’ll be killed by a motorcycle in the head in Vienna when I’m a hundred years old and so worn out and cantankerous that I should have died years before. Now that’s something to look forward to.”

“Not quite one hundred, I’m afraid.”

“How old?”

“I cannot tell you. You must find out all those things yourself. But at the rate you’re going, you won’t even find that out before your time is up.”

“Explain.”

He slid off his stool and went behind the counter. He walked toward me, picked up my glass, and poured more into it from a metal shaker. He placed it in front of me. “Strawberry, right? That’s the flavor you prefer?”

“You made this? It’s good.”

“Thank you. ‘Consider the last of everything and then thou wilt depart from the dream of it.’ Do you know that line? It’s from the Koran.” He drew a glass of Coke from a machine and to my astonishment, put it in a microwave oven. Setting to its highest temperature, he waited till it pinged seconds later. Removing the glass, he took a sip of what must have been six-hundred-degree Coca-Cola and smacked his lips in delight.

“Astopel, tell me you didn’t do that. Is your tongue asbestos? Or are you the devil? Is that what all this is about?”

“You keep looking for easy answers, Mr. McCabe. Unfortunately there are none. Perhaps you should find a better way of looking.”

“Yeah? Well, a moment ago I was too busy being traumatized as an old man and wearing a motorcycle for a hat.”

“That’s a pity. Because you only have four more chances to go back to your future before the week is over. When you return is up to you, but you have only these six days—

“What do you mean, six? You said seven. You said I had a week.”

“Look outside.”

It was pitch-black out there. “Today’s over?”

“Today is over.”

“Today is Tuesday.”

“Was.”

“I have until next Tuesday either here or in my future to figure this out?”

“Correct.”

I tapped the edge of my glass on the counter. “Or else?”

“Well, remember what Antonya Corando told you.”

“She said she didn’t kill herself. Said someone else did it to her.”

Astopel nodded. “And not only your own well-being is at stake now. A great many others’ as well. You have seven days because you have seven days. You can spend your remaining time trying to understand why, but I think that would be a waste.

“Perhaps it will comfort you to know there are others in the same situation as you right this minute, Mr. McCabe.”

“Who have to do the same thing as me?”

“Yes.”

“They’re in Crane’s View?” “No, all around the world.”

I drank the last of the strawberry shake. It didn’t taste so good this time.

“Two other things to know, Mr. McCabe. You can return to your future whenever you want this week. Say the phrase ‘holes in the rain’ and you will go. Once there, however, your return to the present is out of your hands—it will simply happen.

“The second thing to know is when you visit the future, it will always be to the day previous to the one you experienced. So your next visit will be to the day before you died.”

“This is completely crazy.”

“Hopefully it will eventually make sense to you.” He finished his drink and came around the counter. Without looking back, he moved toward the door.

“Wait! One more thing: Why did I marry Susan Ginnety? Did something happen to Magda? Will something happen to her?”

He raised his head and looked at the ceiling. “Something happens to everyone, Mr. McCabe.” And then he left.

The streets of Crane’s View were empty and still as I trudged home from the diner. Night keeps its own sounds to itself because most of them come from the other side of silence. Because there is so little noise after midnight, your ears perk up and strain to hear anything in their neighborhood. So used to being flooded with everyday white noise, they don’t know how to relax. Ears are not happy with hush; it’s not their domain. So they turn up the volume on the single-engine plane flying by far overhead, or the lone car moving its way across the night five blocks away.

And when those were joined by the screech of a cat being humped at that quiet hour, it was the sound equivalent of a pair of scissors jabbed into your ear. But all of them came from here and now, this moment, not the future—now. I welcomed them and wished there were more to reassure me I was back in the time where I wanted to be.

As often happens when I’m confused, I started talking to myself. It’s a helpful habit I developed in Vietnam while trying anything to keep from going crazy in that hell.

With the utmost concern I asked myself, “Are you all right?”

Pause. Scowl. “All right? I’m alive. That’s it. I’m alive and don’t know what the fuck to do. What the fuck I’m supposed to do. I know zero but am still supposed to figure all this stuff out in a week. Or else. Good luck, daddy-o.”

Looking around at the quiet familiar surroundings, the combination of rancor and confusion for what had happened to me, combined with the love in my heart for where I was almost made me dizzy. “That’s what this whole thing does—it makes me dizzy!”

I needed a lot of Crane’s View to regain my balance that night, so I took the long way home despite the late hour. I purposely passed the Schiavo house just to see if anything else had happened there. What was left of the burnt-out ruin was dark and silent. A few minutes later I stood in front of George Dalemwood’s place. As usual the downstairs was lit up because George doesn’t like the night. He says lit bulbs keep him company. I would have loved to knock on his door and gone in for a long talk about everything but didn’t. I knew that before I spoke with him again about any of this, I needed to think things through carefully. I was sure sometime in the future I’d want his help, so presenting the details to him clearly and calmly was essential. George was a patient, open-minded man but hearing what had happened to me that night, especially if I told it the wrong way, might make even my good friend reach for a butterfly net.