“I wish I’d read it.”

“I might have a copy lying around somewhere I’ll give you. It’s accurate-what I object to is the tone of the article, like I’m accused of throwing the book at defendants. I said, ‘What is the book for if you don’t go by it and, yes, occasionally throw it at a criminal offender.’ They put that in. Then they cite how I reject pleas of leniency. I said, ‘I send people to prison when they kill somebody. I see that as my job.’ They mention that many of my rulings have not been popular and quote my saying, ‘I’m not in a popularity contest.’ When I sentence a man to death by electrocution, it’s because I think he deserves the shock of his life.” Bob Gibbs smiled at her. “Now you got me started.”

Leanne smiled back saying, “This is interesting,” hunching her shoulders and giving them a little shake.

“Listen, I’ve even been accused of having a low opinion of women. Which I’m here to tell you is a lie,” Bob Gibbs said, and grinned.

“Why would they say that?”

“Oh, one time, sentencing a defendant for wife-beating, I happened to say, ‘You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them,’ injecting a note of levity at a serious moment, that’s all, and the media and different women’s groups jumped all over me.”

She said now, surprising him, “What’s your sign?”

Bob Gibbs wasn’t sure. He told her he was born on the second of December without giving the year.

“Sagittarius, the Time Traveler,” Leanne said, “I thought as much. You like to explore and have a highly developed sixth sense that guides you even when you don’t exactly understand where it is you’re going. You do know. It’s just that you aren’t in touch yet with your inner self.”

“That must be it,” Bob Gibbs said, and saw her expression change.

“Oh, my Lord,” her eyes going wide. Now she brought her hand to her mouth and seemed embarrassed.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just had a feeling… Don’t laugh, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“You promise?”

“On a stack of Bibles. What?”

“All of a sudden it hit me, that I may have been your mother in a previous life.”

Bob Gibbs smiled, he couldn’t help it.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh.”

“I’m not. It’s just-I’ll tell you, you don’t look anything like my old mother.”

“I’m talking about way before,” Leanne said. “It could’ve been hundreds or even thousands of years ago when we were both somebody else. You understand? In our past lives.”

She kept staring at him in what he thought of at the time as a cute way she had about her. So serious. This healthy girl, good-looking even with wet hair. She said, “You don’t believe in reincarnation, do you?”

“The metaphysical is out of my jurisdiction,” Bob Gibbs said, “but I do keep an open mind as evidence is presented.” Actually believing this.

“But you’re not too good at being told something and just accepting it. You like to do what you want, huh? I mean even though you’re a judge, you’re not tied down by what people think, you’re unconventional.”

It seemed okay to smile at that. “I could tell you some stories, too.”

She said, “Are you married?” and right away got that serious look, half closing her eyes. “No, you were for quite a few years, but now you’re divorced.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Your wife didn’t like it in Palm Beach.”

“You’re right again. Rosellen, being from Ocala, had trouble adjusting to the life.”

Now she was frowning, giving him a puzzled look.

“But you don’t live right in Palm Beach, do you? I was there once, I loved it. All those big homes on the ocean?”

“No, my property is out in the country. All kinds of trees, flowers…”

“You love nature.”

“I do, yes. I’ll tell you, I like being married, too, and almost was again but changed my mind.”

The reason being, you seldom ever married the woman your wife finds out about and divorces you over. It was another type of law, unwritten, he could have told Leanne about that day at Weeki Wachee, trying to see into her tank top whenever she reached down to scratch at sand fleas biting her legs.

Putting on her serious look, no doubt thinking she was reading his mind, Leanne said, “With your sign, it could happen again when you least expect.”

“I’m ready anytime,” Bob Gibbs said. “How about having dinner with me tonight?”

That was how it began with them nearly seven years ago. Before Leanne had her Experience. Before she hung up her lamé tail, moved to Palm Beach and a few months later they were married.

For a time he continued to accept her strange behavior as part of the cute way she had about her.

Not anymore.

The way it was with them now, Leanne would say, “Big, do you know why you’re not a happy person?”

Here we go.

“Why you drink so much?”

She had told him why enough times that it didn’t matter what he said or if he answered at all. Leanne would maintain that serene, netherworld, airy-fairy expression on her face, one Bob Gibbs had come to believe was pure dumbness, and say, “You’re not happy, Big, ‘cause you let your negative ego control you. You haven’t learned how to open your heart and you won’t even try.”

He might say to her, “How do you know my heart isn’t open?”

“I can see it isn’t.”

“Yeah, how?”

“By your aura.”

“I forgot, my aura. What’s it look like today?”

“It’s bright red.”

“Maybe it’s my high blood pressure. Ask me how come, I’ll tell you.”

“Your aura should be mostly blue. Yours is orangy red, Big, and way too wide. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Only when you bring it up,” Bob Gibbs said.

Then she might get a scared look, eyes rolling up into her head before they closed and opened again and she’d say, in her squeaky little colored-girl voice, “She keep telling you, Judge, what you doing to yourself. She must’ve did a hundred times, you still don’t never listen.”

Sometimes he’d tell her, “Now quit that.” Or he’d snap at her, “What’re you talking to me like that for?”

Leanne might look surprised and say to him in her own voice, “Like what?” Claiming she had no idea what he was talking about. If someone had spoken to him, it was this other person occupying her body.

That was the first year or so of their marriage. Now Leanne claimed she could be present while the other person spoke, the other person occupying only her invisible etheric body, her spiritual self. See, while she remained in her actual body.

The one putting on weight.

Going on seven years of this, since the day she had her Experience.

The way Leanne thought of it, it began just after one in the afternoon of a gorgeous day.

She remembered rising from the underwater chamber behind the screen of air bubbles, their curtain for the show, and seeing the surface of the spring above shimmering in bright sunlight. She remembered flashes going off inside the glass front of the theater, families on vacation with cameras and little girls who wanted to be mermaids. She believed this was the way spirits might see our world, like looking at us through sparkly water and glass from over on the other side.

She remembered they were doing the magic show that day, one of the Kims working dry, playing the theme music and doing the narration topside. Another Kim went into the box they pierced with swords and came out with a few rolls and flutters, smiling, showing the kids she was okay. Leanne remembered swimming to her position, flipping her tail out in the mermaid crawl, holding the end of her air hose and the banana in the same hand. Her part in the show was to make the banana disappear. “How?” asked Kim the narrator. “By eating that banana, sixteen feet underwater!” Actually about twelve feet, closer to the surface than the other four mermaids in the magic show, Kim out of the sword box now getting ready to drink a Coke. “Yes, sixteen feet underwater!” the Kim working dry said. Leanne believed she might have been even a bit closer than twelve feet, because she felt herself rise just a little as she was peeling the banana.