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By Root 681 0

of my bed and he said, ‘I’m glad you found love, Joe. You have a lot to give. I love you, Jojo.’ And then, he faded.” His voice cracked a little, and she thought she caught a glimmer of a tear in his eye, but his smile belied any sadness. “Maybe it was, you know, a cobweb of wishful thinking. Or one of those hypnogogic things, where you’re still half asleep and a dream seems real even when you’re awake in your bedroom. But it was some kind of gift. I believe it. Maybe I choose to, because it makes it all easier. It didn’t change my core beliefs. But it showed me that there’s something else out there. Something we don’t yet understand. He was as real as you are, right here. I think maybe we have these kinds of experiences all the time, only we don’t know how much of a gift they are. And it made me remember all the good things. All the things about him I’d pushed aside because of our differences. All the wonderful things he had been to me, despite his worst nature.” Then, he gave her a look she thought of as his “wait a second!” expression. “You must’ve had some kind of…unusual experience…or you wouldn’t be picking up books on the afterlife, right?”

“No,” she said. Thinking of what she saw in Apartment 66S. The face that was not there. The blur of movement that was the figure of a man. Only not a man. But I am losing it now. I am seeing things that are not there. I won’t mention this to Joe. Not yet. He’ll look at me sweetly and sadly and tell me that it’s normal to see faceless men after a tragic death. “Nothing. I think mom wants me to feel better. She’s got the hots for this psychic.” She brought The Life Beyond out and showed the cover to him, with Michael Diamond on it.

“Oh, him,” Joe said. “He’s so serious looking, isn’t he? Like the Professor from Gilligan’s Island. I guess I’ve caught his show a couple of times. He’s a complete fake. He has to be. His stuff is too good. When a psychic’s that good, there’s some trick going on. I don’t think psychic stuff is like a McDonald’s or something. I don’t think one psychic can serve a billion customers. I think it’s more personal. You should have a psychic reading sometime. They can be really good. I know this woman who does them. It’s not creepy at all, believe me.”

8

After coffee, they walked through the old neighborhood. Joe updated her on each window, who lived there before, who had moved, who was turning into the cat lady, who had become the Neighborhood Watcher, and what had happened to the little old man in the fedora who used to feed pigeons on the rooftop, thus pissing off everyone who lived on the block because of the increased birdshit on the street. They wandered over to a bakery that was renowned for its cupcakes, and split one, and then went over to another bookshop nearby, called Three Lives & Company. It was a small, quaint bookshop packed with books. “Remember this place?”

She drew a blank. “Sure.”

He made a face that she could only classify as dimwitted. “Julie. It’s where we met.”

“Oh,” she said, clapping her hands together. “How could I forget that?”

“Yeah, some strange chick coming up to me telling me that I shouldn’t read Mary McCarthy because she claimed she was a fascist, when in fact it was Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian I had in my hand.”

“I don’t know why I was so hard on Mary McCarthy. She wasn’t a fascist at all. I loved The Birds.”

“And I told you that Ayn Rand wrote books for humorless Sarah Lawrence girls who wanted to get laid but still feel smart afterward,” he said. “And then you said that I was sexist and probably racist and probably homophobic. And I said…”

“You looked at me as if I had just slapped you hard in the face and said, ‘I can’t be homophobic because I’m a homo,’” she chuckled. “Whatever happened to those two stupid young people?”

“I don’t know, but I read Atlas Shrugged all the time and it never helped me get laid,” he said.

Finally, he walked her to where her car was parked, and kissed her on the cheek. “You need anything, I’m here. Rick and I can be out in the ’burbs on a moment’s notice.”

“I thought you were