While I laughed, Barry lifted his thumb and began carefully writing with it in the air. As his finger moved, two words in thick white script appeared between us and hung there unmoving: HRATZ-POTAYO.

“Where is that?”

“Seen from the earth, it is behind the Crab Nebula.” “Oh. So you rats are behind the crab. That’s fitting.” I pointed to the lunatic words hanging in the air, as vivid as if they were on fire. “If it were any other time, seeing this would impress the hell out of me, Barry. But you know what I feel now? Tired. That’s all—just fucking tired. Let’s go see if you’re telling the truth.” Now I was the one who started walking toward the market, although I didn’t know if that was where we were supposed to end up.

He hesitated. Reaching toward the white words he plucked them out of the air and put them into his pocket. “It wouldn’t be good for others to see them there like that. Who knows what they would think.”

“Whatever. Are we going to the market?”

“Yes. That’s what I want to show you.”

Long before we got there I knew it was all true. I knew Barry was the real thing. I knew that what I was about to see was impossible but I was about to see it anyway. I could already hear it. And what I heard half the Western world would have killed to hear.

I stopped and looked at the spaceman, but he continued walking. Without looking at me he said, “Come on, you’ll hear better inside.”

At the market door he pushed it in. The moment the door swung open the music swelled louder and I almost swooned. I could not believe it. You know instantly when music is live compared to when it’s on the radio or piped-in shit. The hyped-up rawness of it, the blare and bang of too much guitar, feedback wrecking your ears, or drums that push everything else out. This was live and it was them because now I could see them. And Jesus Christ, it was them.

I had been in the market a thousand times before but it had never looked like this. Where aisles of food should have been, a stage had been erected in the middle of the store. But nothing professional—you must understand that. Nothing glitzy, expensive or in any way appropriate to who was standing on that stage playing live for only Barry and me.

They saw us moving toward them but none reacted with anymore than a shrug or a hi-how-you-doin’ head tip. Their indifference said we weren’t interrupting them because they were used to an audience.

John Lennon sat on the edge of the small stage with a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth and a Rickenbacker guitar held in his hands. He looked twenty-five years old, maybe thirty—they all did. Paul stood on the other side of the stage next to George. The two of them were weaving back and forth, goofing around. Paul sang a lousy version of “I Feel Fine.” At the back of the stage Ringo played the drums with eyes closed. “I Feel Fine” performed badly by the Beatles. Bad or not, it was the boys and their sound was un-fucking-mistakable.

That’s what I’d asked Barry to show me and that’s what this was a quarter of a century after the group broke up, twenty years after Lennon was murdered. For a million reasons I wanted to reach out and touch Lennon’s arm—only that—but I resisted the impulse. He must have sensed my excitement and awe though because he abruptly looked up and wiggled his eyebrows at me. It was the same expression he’d used in a famous TV interview he’d done after the group broke up. I had the interview on tape at home. I owned way too much Beatles memorabilia because no one, not no one, was ever better than they were.

The Beatles, dead and alive, together again in the Crane’s View supermarket. Brought to you courtesy of the Rat’s Potato, that friendly little planet just behind the Crab Nebula.

On finishing their own song, the Fab Four started playing the Zombies’ “She’s Not There,” another of my all-time favorites. It was a song in the McCabe Music Hall of Fame. But why were the Beatles doing a cover version of this one? None of them said anything—just moved from one tune right into the other. I sighed like a boy who’s fallen in love. I didn’t even have to die to know that this was heaven.

As they reached my favorite part of that eerie song, Barry leaned over and asked, “Would you like to talk about it now or wait till the music is over?”

“Now. If I stay any longer I’m never going to leave here.”

“Okay, let’s go back outside. As long as we remain here they’ll continue to play.”

The Beatles were playing only for us? I moaned, “Is that true?”

“Yes. They’re what you wanted, Mr. McCabe, so as long as you stick around here they’ll just keep playing your favorite songs.

“Help!” My head flooded with songs I loved – “For No One,” “Concrete and Clay,” “Walk Away Renee”... They would have played those too, I suppose. Just like I said—Heaven. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” On the way out I didn’t risk looking back over my shoulder. But for the first time in my life I understood why Lot’s wife wasn’t so stupid after all.

Out in the sunglare and heat of the parking lot things were quiet again. All the music was gone and I knew that meant they were gone too. If we’d walked back into the store it would only be a market again—cans of Campbell’s soup and frozen legs of lamb back where they belonged, having replaced my dream come true for a little while.

Two crummy green lawn chairs had appeared in the middle of the parking lot. On the seats were large Styrofoam cups. Somewhere nearby a person was cutting wood with a chainsaw. The sound and smell were on the air. A dog barked wildly– row-row-row—like it was going out of its mind. A car pulled into the lot. Someone whistled high and long. A woman’s voice said hello. The day was wide-awake and coming downstairs for breakfast.

Coffee was in the Styrofoam cups, perfectly sugared and boiling hot—exactly the way I liked it. None of this surprised me. Barry was turning out to be a dandy host. Sitting on the edge of the cheap metal chair, I stared across the lot at the parked ambulance. For a few moments my heart started doing its weird jumpy dance again. Blowing on the steaming drink, I took it in quick careful sips. “All right, story time. Tell me what’s going on.”

“You’re not very religious are you, Mr. McCabe?” “No, but I believe He’s there. I believe that wholeheartedly.” “Oh, He is, but not in the way you think. Would you like me to describe this situation in detail or would you prefer an abridged version?” He was grinning when he said it but I knew he was serious.

“Abridged, Barry. I’ve got Attention Deficit Disorder. I have a hard time sitting still very long.”

“All right. Then the best way for me to begin is to quote something to you from the Bible:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.

“That is a passage from Genesis, a word that literally means ‘a coming into existence.’ That first chapter of your Bible is where the creation of the universe is accounted for.”

“The universe? I thought Genesis only described the creation of life on earth.”

“Noooo, it is the origin of everything—every planet, every being, every cell. But mankind is predictably vain and sees things only in relation to itself. The most important thing in all this is that symbolic seventh day when God had finished His work and rested. That day is now coming to an end, Mr. McCabe. We’re getting very close to the time when He will wake again, so to speak, and reassert his authority.”

“Armageddon?” I asked the question in the same tone I once asked an emergency room doctor, “Am I dying?” after having been shot and feeling myself dropping steep into a coma.

This pleased Barry. Having just heard the most frightening word in the human vocabulary, he chuckled and took a long swallow of coffee. “No, it’s much more interesting than that. For a moment think of God as a bear.”