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WPA, a great castle with turrets and benches made of native stone. It is on the property of
the state mental hospital, and so hardly anyone knows it's there. They are alone as they
leave the car and walk up the crumbling steps to the flagstone stage.
She is entranced. She stands in the middle of the stage, facing the benches. He watches
as she raises her hand, speech waiting at the verge of her lips. He remembers something.
Yes, that is the gesture she made when she bade her nurse farewell in Romeo and Juliet.
No, not made. Will make, rather. The gesture must already be in her, waiting for this stage to
draw it out.
She turns to him and smiles because the place is strange and odd and does not belong in
Provo, but it does belong to her. She should have been born in the Renaissance, Charlie
says softly. She hears him. He must have. spoken aloud. "You belong in an age when music
was clean and soft and there was no makeup. No one would rival you then."
She only smiles at the conceit. "I missed you," she says.
He touches her cheek. She does not shy away. Her cheek presses into his hand, and he
knows that she understands why he brought her here and what he means to do.
Her breasts are perfect but small, her buttocks are boyish and slender, and the only hair on
her body is that which tumbles onto her shoulders, that which he must brush out of her face
to kiss her again. "I love you," she whispers. "All my life I love you."
And it is exactly as he would have had it in a dream, except that the flesh is tangible, the
ecstasy is real, and the breeze turns colder as she shyly dresses again. They say nothing
more as he takes her home. Her mother has fallen asleep on the living room couch, a jumble
of the Daily Herald piled around her feet. Only then does he remember that for her there will
be a tomorrow, and on that tomorrow Charlie will not call. For three months Charlie will not
call, and she'll hate him.
He tries to soften it. He tries by saying, "Some things can happen only once." It is the sort
of thing he might then have said. But she only puts her finger on his lips and says, "I'll never
forget." Then she turns and walks toward her mother, to waken her. She turns and motions
for Charlie to leave, then smiles again and waves. He waves back and goes out of the door
and drives home. He lies awake in this bed that feels like childhood to him, and he wishes it
could have gone on forever like this. It should have gone on like this, he thinks. She is no
child. She was no child, he should have thought, for THIEF was already transporting him
home.
"What's wrong, Charlie?" Jock asked.
Charlie awoke. it had been hours since THIEF brought him back. It was the middle of the
night, and Charlie realized that he had been crying in his sleep. "Nothing," he said.
"You're crying, Charlie. I've never seen you cry before. "
"Go plug into a million volts, Jock. I had a dream."
"What dream?"
"I destroyed her."
"No, you didn't."
"It was a goddamned selfish thing to do."
"You'd do it again. But it didn't hurt her."
"She was only fourteen."
"No, she wasn't."
"I'm tired. I was asleep. Leave me alone."
"Charlie, remorse isn't your style."
Charlie pulled the blanket over his head, feeling petulant and wondering whether this
childish act was another proof that he was retreating into senility after all.
"Charlie, let me tell you a bedtime story."
"I'll erase you."
"Once upon a time, ten years ago, an old woman named Rachel Carpenter petitioned for a
day in her past. And it was a day with someone, and it was a day with you. So the routine
circuits called me, as they always do when your name comes up, and I found her a day. She
only wanted to visit, you see, only wanted to relive a good day. I was surprised, Charlie. I
didn't know you ever had good days."
This program had been with lock too long. It knew too well how to get under his skin.
"And in fact there were no days as good as she thought," Jock continued. "Only
anticipation and disappointment. That's all you ever gave anybody, Charlie. Anticipation and
disappointment."
"I can count on you."
"This woman was in a home for the mentally incapable. And so I gave her a day. Only
instead of a day of disappointment, or promises she knew would never be fulfilled, I gave
her a day of answers. I gave her a night of answers, Charlie."
"You couldn't know that I'd have you do this. You couldn't have known it ten years ago."
"That's all right, Charlie. Play along with me. You're dreaming anyway, aren't you?"
"And don't wake me up."
"So an old woman went back into a young girl's body on twenty-eight October 1973, and
the young girl never knew what had happened; so it didn't change her life, don't you see?"
"It's a lie."
"No, it isn't. I can't lie, Charlie. You programmed me not to lie. Do you think I would have let
you go back and harm her?"
"She was the same. She was as I remembered her."
"Her body was."
"She hadn't changed. She wasn't an old woman, lock. She was a girl. She was a girl, jock."
And Charlie thought of an old woman dying in an institution, surrounded by yellow walls and
pale gray sheets and curtains. He imagined young Rachel inside that withered form,
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