“Emmy?”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, then widened. “Oh, my God, Wyatt Leonard! What are you doing here?” She brought her hands together in front of her face and clapped them quickly like a delighted little kid. I had to touch her to see if she was real. I did. She was.

“Do you have some time?”

“Of course! It’s so good to see you! Where have you been? It’s been so many years!”

While we were sitting down at the table, my shock left, and one word came to mind that explained everything: Strayhorn. Last night’s dream. Knowing the names in the graveyard had been Part One of whatever was going on. This was Part Two. Everything was happening at once. Dinner in a dream with a dead man; breakfast in real life with a dead woman.

I was astonished, but I knew since last night’s dream that my life had shifted into high gear, at which any speed or event was possible. Now it was up to me to handle it. So instead of running away or going mad because I was sitting down to coffee with a dead friend, I spoke as normally as I could and did okay. Now and then I caught myself hyperventilating or wetting my lips for the hundredth time, but generally I was all right.

The greatest horror was that she didn’t know. The woman did not know she was dead. We talked like old pals catching up. About mutual friends, evenings shared, what we’d been doing since we last met. She filled me in on everything but what was most important.

How then did I know for certain that she was dead? Because I had read accounts in different newspapers of her accident. Because I’d actually heard the funeral described by two people who were there and saw her body in the open casket. What other proof was there? The most important of all: she glowed, exactly like Philip Strayhorn. Was I the only one who saw or noticed it? I don’t know. Certainly no one in the café seemed to take any special notice, except for one young man who couldn’t take his eyes off her and was clearly smitten. I wanted to go over to him and ask, “Do you see it coming off her skin? That faint blue? The slight shimmer like a road mirage in summer?” But he wouldn’t have seen it. These things were only mine today because of the Strayhorn dream and because I was dying.

While working for the publisher in New York, Emmy had met a man and fallen deeply in love. He was the most extraordinary person she had ever known and she was convinced he was the one for her. She lived on the top floor of joy for a few exquisite months. Then this special man told her she bored him and he was leaving. I admired her for admitting that; it would have been easy to say only that they broke up, and left it at that, but she didn’t. “He said I bored him and told me exactly why. You know what the most painful part was? He was right. I was a bore.”

What followed was a wretched series of exaggerated, supercharged affairs with men she initially welcomed but quickly grew to despise. She slept with them to try to find some kind of replacement for the one she could never replace. She was destroyed and knew it, but because she was beautiful there were always men around who were eager to try, and she let them. She let too many of them try, and their touching enthusiasm and desire only made things worse. She felt that she was suffocating inside her own life; as if it were one of those plastic bags dry cleaners put over clothes. When she breathed, she inhaled herself and her failure. There was no more air.

“It was becoming all bad, Wyatt, so I decided to cut everything loose and travel a while. That’s when I came to Europe.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I’m embarrassed to say. Almost three years ago.”

I needed a moment to let my heart slow before I asked the next question. “Emmy, what was the last thing you remember doing in America before coming over here? The very last thing.”

“I remember very well. I went horseback riding with my brother Bill. Why do you ask?”

Smiling, I tried to think of something logical to explain the question but couldn’t think of anything. Luckily she made a little face of dismissal and sipped her tea. “Not that it’s been much better here. I just don’t have any urge to go back to America. Does that make me an expatriate? I need to be something these days.”

“What have you been doing since you got over here?”

“I take a job when I have to. Nothing spectacular. You glide over the days and from city to city and nothing much happens, but you’re basically all right. You live in this strange state of okay most of the time. You get by. There aren’t a lot of highs or lows. Nothing really memorable or perfect ever happens, but nothing bad either. Livable. Halfway between blah and hooray.”

“Are you with anyone?”

“No, not for a long time. That’s what I mean—I’m not closed off to men, but I haven’t met one I want to be with. It’s all right, though; I’m content being alone.”

“And you live in Vienna? What do you do here?”

For an instant, half a second, it was plain she didn’t know. Her face went blank. She didn’t know because there was nothing but memories and vague shadows left.

“Um, I’ve been working as a secretary at the American embassy. It pays the bills.”

I have never read Dante’s Inferno but vividly remember looking through an illustrated copy and seeing a picture of two people floating in the air, reaching out desperately to touch each other. As I remember, their sin had been that they were illicit lovers in life and were now condemned to this situation in Hell—close enough to see, smell, hear the other, but never for eternity allowed to join again.

Emmy Marhoun was in exactly the same place. For whatever reasons, in death she was damned to existing so close to life that she thought she still was alive. Never again allowed to touch the fullness and pulse, the body of real life, she nevertheless recognized and remembered it completely. Hell for her was walking around in life almost alive but not knowing the difference anymore.

Is that what Death would be, not knowing? Strayhorn had said nothing about that, but Jesse insisted Death wasn’t to be trusted. My mind was exhausted, overflowing. I could no longer sort or decipher, and it wasn’t even noon yet. I had raised the dead and met the dead and had hundreds of new questions, but now I had no more energy and felt close to collapse.

As calmly as I could, I told Emmy I had to go. I asked her to call me at the hotel so that we could meet again while I was in town. She said I looked washed-out and should take it easy. I paid the bill and we left together. On the sidewalk we kissed, and her cheek on that summer day was neither warm nor cold.

Luckily there was a taxi stand nearby and I was home in a few minutes. When I asked for the key to my room, the concierge handed me several messages, which I ignored. It was time to rest, and if that meant seeing Philip Strayhorn again, fine. But at the moment sleep was more important than answered questions.

I am running across a bridge. I know this bridge but cannot remember why. It’s very long—goes straight into the horizon. I know I’ll never be safe unless I get to the other side. But the wolf is very fast and is catching up. This wolf which comes after me so many nights. It does not have eyes but, rather, two large X’s where eyes should be, like the ones you make in a tic-tac-toe game. It’s mouth is gigantic, full of white pointy teeth, a rubbery red tongue that goes up and down and around its lips in circles. When not drooling, the wolf grunts and growls or laughs like a hyena, because it’s getting closer and closer. When it catches me it’ll kill and eat me. It’s wearing orange overalls that are buttoned across one furry shoulder; the other flap is broken and jumps wildly as the wolf comes full killer-speed at me. He also wears a black stovepipe hat that slides back and forth across his head as he runs. Behind me are big brown puffs of dirt to show how fast I’m going. Both of us make the sounds in a cartoon—screeching, bells clanging, brakes screaming—but none of this is cartoon for me. It’s real and terrifying, my world when I was seven years old, scared awake night after night by the same dream: the wolf chasing me across the endless bridge, me always knowing I’d be caught. The moment that happened, he would whip out a cannibal’s pot and logs from some deep pocket, start up a snarling fire, and throw me into the pot, now magically filled with water. I usually awoke, petrified, just as the final water started to burn me. I can’t begin to express how frightening it was even though I knew the dream by heart, having had it over and over again.