'Pamela—'
'What year is it? How long do we have?'
He couldn’t keep it from her; she had to know. 'It’s 1988.'
She looked back at the trees, the coppery leaves drifting and! swirling everywhere about them. 'It’s already fall!'
He smoothed her wind-mussed hair, wished that he could stave off the truth for one more moment; but it would not be denied. 'October,' he told her gently. 'The thirteenth.'
'That’s—that’s only five days!'
'Yes.'
'It’s not fair,' she wept, 'I’d prepared myself last time, I’d almost accepted—' She broke off, looked at him with new bewilderment. 'What are we doing here together?' she asked. 'Why aren’t I at home?'
'I … I had to see you.'
'You were kissing me,' she said accusingly. 'You were kissing her, the person I used to be, before!'
'Pamela, I thought—'
'I don’t care what you thought,' she snapped, jerking herself away from him. 'You knew that wasn’t really me, how could you have done something so … so perverse as that?'
'But it was you,' he insisted. 'Not with all the memories, no, but it was still you, we still—'
'I can’t believe you’re saying this! How long has this been happening, when did you start this?'
'It’s been almost two years.'
'Two years! You’ve been … using me, like I was some kind of inanimate object, like—'
'It wasn’t like that, not at all! We loved each other, you started painting again, went back to school…'
'I don’t care what I did! You seduced me away from my family, you tricked me … and you knew exactly what you were doing, what strings to pull to influence me, to … control me!'
'Pamela, please.' He reached for her arm, trying to calm her, make her understand. 'You’re twisting everything, you’re—'
'Don’t touch me!' she shouted, backing off the bridge where they’d embraced just moments before. 'Just leave me alone and let me die! Let us both die, and get it done with!'
Jeff tried to stop her as she fled, but she was gone. The last hope of his last life was gone, lost on the path that led to Seventy-seventh Street, into the anonymous, devouring city … to death, immutable and certain death.
TWENTY-ONE
Jeff Winston died, alone; yet still his dying wasn’t done. He awoke in his office at WFYI, where the first of his many lives had so abruptly ended: Reporters' schedules posted on the wall, framed picture of Linda on his desk, the glass paperweight that had cracked when he had clutched his chest and dropped the phone so long ago. He looked at the digital clock on his bookshelf:
12:57 PM OCT 1988
Nine minutes to live. No time to contemplate anything but the looming pain and nothingness.
His hands began to shake, tears welled in his eyes.
'Hey, Jeff, about this new campaign—' Promotions director Ron Sweeney stood in his open office door, staring at him. 'Jesus, you look white as a sheet! What’s the matter?'
Jeff looked back at the clock:
1:02 PM OCT 1988
'Get out of here, Ron.'
'Can I get you an Alka-Seltzer or something? Want me to call a doctor?'
'Get the hell out of here!'
'Hey, I’m sorry, I just…' Sweeney shrugged, closed the door behind him.
The tremors in Jeff s hands spread to his shoulders, then to his back. He closed his eyes, bit his upper lip and tasted blood.
The phone rang. He picked it up in his shaking hand, completed the vast cycle that had begun so many lifetimes ago.
'Jeff,' Linda said, 'We need—'
The invisible hammer slammed into his chest, killing him again.
He woke again, looked in panic at the glowing red numbers across the room:
1:05 PM OCT 1988
He threw the paperweight at the clock, smashed its rectangular plastic face. The phone rang and kept on ringing. Jeff blotted out the sound of it with a scream, a wordless animal bellow, and then he died, and woke with the telephone already in his hand, heard Linda’s words and died again, again, again: waking and dying, awareness and void, alternating almost faster than he could perceive, centered always on the moment of that first heavy agony within his chest.
Jeff’s ravaged mind cried out for some release, but none was granted; it sought escape, whether in madness or oblivion no longer mattered … Yet still he saw and heard and felt, remained alert to all his torment, suspended without surcease in the awful darkness of not-life, not-death: the eternal, paralyzing instant of his dying.
'We need…' he heard Linda say, ' … to talk.'
There was a pain somewhere. It took him a moment to identify the source of it: his hand, rigid as a claw where he clutched the telephone. Jeff relaxed his grip, and the ache in his sweaty hand eased.
'Jeff? Did you hear what I said?'
He tried to speak, could issue nothing but a guttural sound that was half-moan, half-grunt.
'I said we need to talk,' Linda repeated. 'We need to sit down together and have an honest discussion about our marriage. I don’t know if it can be salvaged at this point, but I think it’s worth trying.'
Jeff opened his eyes, looked at the clock on his bookshelf:
1:07 PM OCT 1988
'Are you going to answer me? Do you understand how important this is for us?'
The numbers on the clock changed silently, advanced to 1:08.
'Yes,' he said, forcing the words to form. 'I understand. We’ll talk.'
She let out a long, slow breath. 'It’s overdue, but maybe there’s still time.'
'We’ll see.'
'Do you think you could get home early today?'
'I’ll try,' Jeff told her, his throat dry and constricted.
'See you when you get here,' Linda said. 'We have a lot to talk about.'
Jeff hung up the phone, still staring at the clock. It moved to 1:09.
He touched his chest, felt the steady heartbeat. Alive. He was alive, and time had resumed its natural flow.
Or had it ever ceased? Maybe he had suffered a heart attack, but only a mild one, just bad enough to
