“Go out. Wait downstairs.”

“Miranda—”

“Do it, Frannie. Just go.”

He hesitated, then put his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll be outside in the hall. Just outside if you need me.”

“Yes. All right.”

The moment he closed the door behind him, the room fell silent.

“Miranda, would you do me a big favor?”

There had been so much noise, so many loud and clashing voices seconds ago that this one with its simple question rising so suddenly out of the new silence was especially disturbing. Because it was a man’s voice and very familiar.

“Sure. You want a backrub?”

“No. I’d like you to go with me to the drugstore.”

“Right now? Dog, I’ve got to be at the airport in a few hours and you know how much I still have to do.”

“It’s important, Miranda. It’s really important to me.”

My back was to the door. Turning around, I saw an entirely different room behind me: a hotel room in Santa Monica, California. Doug Auerbach sat on the bed in there. A game show was yapping on the television. Doug was watching me as I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a white towel.

It was the day we went to the drugstore because he’d dreamed about doing that together. The day I flew back to New York and saw the woman in the wheelchair by the side of the freeway.

I stood in the corner watching a part of my life happen. Again. Only this time there were two me’s in the room—the one living the moment and the one who watched.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” James Stillman said as he walked out of the bathroom. Dog Auerbach and Miranda continued talking. They did not react to him. “Where’s Waldo?” James smirked, and that look, that one precise facial expression I remembered so well down the years was as frightening in that moment as anything else.

“Why am I here, James? What am I supposed to do?”

“Stop whining and asking questions. You’re here because someone wants you here, Miranda. Figure it out! Stop playing the poor little puppy. You waste so much time crying why me.”

His voice was cold and mean. I stared at him and he stared right back. I began to move around the motel room, looking carefully at everything, hoping for a clue, listening to the two talk. Light from the window lit the half-filled water glass on the night table. An orange candy bar wrapper lay twisted on the floor. A book. A green sock on the bed.

“Can I touch things?”

James smirked again. “Do whatever you want. They don’t know we’re here.”

I reached out and touched Doug’s arm. He didn’t react. I shook him, or rather I shook but he didn’t move. He continued talking. I picked up an ashtray and threw it across the room. It banged loudly against a wall but neither of them acknowledged the sound.

I walked to the window and looked out. The afternoon sun was a used-up yellow-orange. Out on the sidewalk a bum wearing a brightly colored serape and a black beret pushed a supermarket cart filled with junk. Two kids on skateboards whizzed by. He shouted at them.

The first surprise was that I could hear every word the bum said, although the window was closed. Next was the realization, like a hard, unexpected slap in the face, that I suddenly knew everything about this man. His name was Piotr “Poodle” Voukis. Sixty-seven years old, he was a Bulgarian йmigrй from Babyak who had worked as a janitor at UCLA for twenty years until he was fired for drinking. He’d had two sons. One was killed in Vietnam.

On and on, my mind flooding with every detail of this man’s life. I knew his most intimate secrets and fears, the names of his lovers and enemies, the color of the model motorboat he had built and sailed in Echo Park with his sons when they were young and life was as good as it would ever get for him. Then I saw the room at UCLA hospital where he spent desolate months sitting by his wife’s bed as abdominal cancer dissolved her insides until there was nothing left but a dark and fetid pudding.

Everything about him, I knew everything in his now dim and addled brain.

Aghast, I turned away. The second I did, my mind emptied and I was myself again. Only myself.

For a moment.

James said something and without thinking I looked at him. At once I saw the rushing view through the windshield of his car as it sped toward his death in Philadelphia. I saw the tattooed words on his last lover Kiera’s wrist. I experienced his feelings for Miranda Romanac—nostalgia, resentment, old love… all wrapped tightly around each other like leaves on a cabbage.

As with the bum on the street, the moment I looked at James Stillman I became him.

This time I screamed and staggered. Because of a fear that was not my own: James was absolutely petrified of me. Having become him, I knew why he was afraid and what had to be done. I am not a brave person and have never pretended to be, so what I did next was the bravest act of my life. I have regretted it ever since.

Looking around, I saw what I needed, but was so unbalanced that I scanned the room twice more before it registered. A mirror. A small oval mirror above the desk.

I looked into it.

A man in a black suit and floor-length silk cape stood alone in the middle of the stage of a giant theater. He was tall and handsome, immensely alluring in a frightening way. Everything about him was black—his clothes, patent leather shoes, gleaming hair like licorice. Even the intense whiteness of his skin accentuated the darkness. Just looking at him, I knew here was a man capable of real magic.

Staring directly at me, he said my name in a thundering voice. How could he know my name when I had never seen him before this night? With one languid hand, he beckoned for me to join him on stage. I looked at my mother and father, who were sitting on either side of me. Both smiled their permission and enthusiasm. Father even put his hand against my back to move me more quickly. The audience began to applaud. I was terribly embarrassed to be the center of attention, but loved it at the same time. I sidled out of our row and walked down the wide aisle to a short staircase on the side of the stage.

At the top of the stairs an easel supported a large poster announcing the name of the performer:

As I climbed the stairs the audience clapped harder. Worrying I would trip and fall in front of everyone, I walked carefully to center stage, where the man in black stood.

He put up a hand to stop the applause and it died instantly. There was a stop while all of us waited for what he would do next. Nothing. He simply stood there with his hands behind his back. It went on too long. Unmoving, he stared into the audience. We waited restlessly but it went on and on.

Just as people began to whisper their dismay, shifting impatiently in their seats, a dalmatian wandered out onto the stage. It darted back and forth sniffing the floor excitedly and came to us only after it had jittered around like that awhile. Some in the audience laughed or scoffed out loud.

Shumda did nothing to stop the titter. He continued his silence and staring. We stood in front of hundreds of people but the only thing that had happened since I’d stepped onto the stage was the arrival of the dog. When it felt like the whole theater would explode with tension and exasperation, the dog leaped in the air and did a perfect back flip. On landing, it bellowed out in a beautifully deep man’s voice, “Be quiet! Have you no manners? What’s the matter with you people?”

Deadpan, Shumda looked at the dog, then at me. He gave me the smallest possible wink. He looked back at the audience, same deadpan, and slipped his hands into his trouser pockets.