"It's tedious," my replacement added. I grinned at him. "Old ground, shiny new costumes."

"I think he'd like to go out though," Mara waved a forkful of sausage before taking a bite. "Remember that little jazz club we used to go to?"

"I think so," I said. "The one with the rotten bartender who watered your margarita if you asked for it blended?"

"Where Angie did a striptease for the pianist," Steve said. Angie elbowed him and rolled her eyes at the kids.

Had that been me, in the club, cheering that business on? I remembered it, so it must have been, but it seemed more like something I'd watched on television once. Television itself seemed like something I'd read about in a book. I didn't own one in the village. A television, I mean. I owned a lot of books.

"Anyway, Chris, it's closed up but the little Chinese place next to it is now a hookah bar," Mara continued.

"A what?" I asked.

"Turkish food and hookahs. All legal, of course. Tobacco only."

"Yes – let's take him there, he'll love it," Brent said.

"Chris the romantic," Angie added, winking at me.

"You liked Casablanca, didn't you?" Steve asked.

"You wore blue; the Nazis wore grey," Mara quoted. Misquoted, actually.

"I'm afraid I can't," I answered, hoping I didn't sound as sharp as I suspected. A roomful of smoke would get me no gold stars from the doctor. "Business, you know how it is. I'm not in town long enough for much pleasure."

"Business? What business?"

"Oh, dinners and meetings and things," I said vaguely. They were dissatisfied with this reply, but nobody protested too loudly. After all, they'd found a new replacement Chris, which was just as well.

They moved on to other things, and I sat back and listened. Angie's husband seemed nice, and Steve's wife got him to stop drinking quite so much. Mara and Thomas and Brent were working their way up their respective career paths. The children were adorable, and Derek knew enough about literature to pass muster. They were getting along just fine without me.

The one true redeeming quality of that morning's brunch was that it gave me something noisy and distracting to play back in my head later that day. I'm not one to say that modern medicine is a horrible thing, as I've reaped my share of benefits from it, but there is some terror involved. Terror! Giant whirring machines – x-rays bouncing off my insides – tubes where tubes should never be – sterile jars, cold stethoscopes, paper gowns, biopsy needles, and thick folders with charts stapled to them. The whole ghastly mess, in some kind of cyclical rerun of the time when my father's heart was failing him in the hospital and the doctors whispered to me that I ought to have mine looked at, if I really had been feeling uneven beats for a few months. I hadn't wanted to die like dad, so I'd put it off – until I realized that putting it off was probably what had killed him.

All this sounds more dramatic than it actually was, but I spent that day and most of the next in the hospital, while my health insurance adjusters probably groaned and made a note to raise my rates. My city doctors showed me into a conference room at the end of it and shrugged at me. Stress-induced heart failure, yes, but there was no further damage to the heart itself. I should learn to expect the arrhythmia. I could try surgery, but –

No, I couldn't. I didn't want to. I was scared, and why shouldn't I be. The mortality rate was high, the return uncertain, and I lived a quiet life.

More shrugging. It's your health, Mr. Dusk.

And with that I fled, signing all the proper forms and collecting all the paperwork and running away to Eighth Rare Books. It was the next best thing to my home – my village, my bookshop, my upstairs bedroom and tiny kitchen.

Marjorie understood, of course, so she coddled and entertained me while I nursed the bruised places where they'd poked me and the bloody places where they'd stuck me. We sat and talked about the usual subjects (books, writers, politics) until we were both talked out and her customers had grown annoyed with the rumpled young man who was taking up all of her time.

***

Thankfully, the weather held while I was in the city. The train ride back to the village that Friday was pristine and beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that I stepped onto the platform at my stop with the sudden realization that I should have called Charles before leaving the city. I would be waiting for quite a while in the dry but chilly afternoon before he showed up, if he was even able to get away and drive out to meet me.

I needed to call him, but I also knew that I'd need to find a telephone and money for the call, which was more organization than I was willing to cope with immediately. I'd just come from the warm, comforting rocking of the train into the freezing country air with my coat half-on while I carried my bag towards a windbreak.

"Hi! Hello there, Saint Christopher! Come and say hello!"

I looked up from fumbling attempts to button my coat and saw a young woman in a thick woolen dress and dark heavy boots hurrying towards me. Beyond her, an older man was securing the door of a camper-trailer hooked to a large, battered pickup truck. Two Low Ferry boys were loitering around the camper, looking curious.

"Gwen!" I said, startled. "Is that you?"

"Who else?" she said, stopping in front of me and looking me up and down. "Well. I heard you'd died but you don't look resurrected."

"Who told you – never mind," I said, because the children turned guilty faces towards me. One of them was the boy Lucas tutored.