above the back door. He tossed several more gravel stones before the window swung open and the gray sleep-tousled head of Caitlin Sweeney poked out.
'Get away from here, youl' she called down and waved her hand at him like 'a brown sock. 'This house is still mine, and I won't have you driving me out until my proper time is up.'
'Your time isn't up .yet, Caitlin Sweeney,' Carl called back.
'Come down here and let me in.'
Caitlin leaned farther out the window and stared down at him. 'Who are you?' she asked, almost in a growl.
'Don't you recognize me, Caity? Has my voice changed, too?'
'You sound like-' she began, then looked more closely. 'You couldn't be.'
'Take another look,' Carl said, removing his sunglasses.
'Caity, it's me, Carl.'
Caitlin's scream knotted in her throat, and her aghast expression collapsed to a wondering stare. 'Carl?'
She rubbed her whole face and looked intently at him. 'Carl-can this be? Jesus-'
'It is me, Caity,' Carl said. 'Come on-let me in.'
'Sweet, sweet Jesus,' she mumbled and disappeared.
Moments later the back door flung open and she stood timebent in the doorway, staring at him in pale disbelief.
'I've got more hair and muscle,' Carl admitted. 'And my face is a little stronger-looking, I think. But it's me. Remember that morning I spilled hot coffee in my lap while I was counting the strands on my head, and you said I had to work on my image? Hah!
Remember?'
'It is yowl' Caitlin screamed and rushed into his arms. She pulled back enough for her rheumy eyes to study the small details of his face. This pugnacious, blond face was Carl's, slimmed down and tautened. And finally recognizing him, she grabbed his thick shoulders and dropped her whole weight into his embrace. 'Carl( I must be dead. I can't believe you are really here. You're more solid and real than ever.'
'I have a lot to tell you,' he said, unprying her lamprey hold.
'Let's go inside. I have to tell all this to someone.'
Caitlin immediately called Sheelagh, who was now living in the dorms at CCNY. While they waited for her, Caitlin listened, and Carl lied. He told her about his riskful adventures gambling his small savings against stock index futures and then reinvesting in a dangerous but high-yield emerald-mining cartel in Bolivia.
She bought the whole story, especially after Carl made a few phone calls and arranged to buy back the Blue Apple from the bank that was foreclosing on it.
The startling change in his physical appearance he accounted for as cosmetic surgery and honest labor in a weight lifters' camp.
Carl had been sorely tempted to tell the old woman the truth, but the subtle energy sluicing into him from his umbrella dissuaded him. And more than that: After the initial excitement wore o$; Caitlin became remote. Much more than Carl's appearance had 'changed. He smelled different. The tailoring by the eld skyle of his alpha androstenol did not appeal to Caitlin. Though she did not know why, she was uneasy about Carl, and only his generosity with his stupendous wealth kept her from saying so.
The sight of the Blue Apple's interior, where he had worked so hard and .where his old dreams had thrived, charged him with a brilliant euphoria. This had been the center of the universe for him, and now, with all the bottles, chairs, and tables removed, it was the husk of his former life-and the power in him gleamed to be here and yet so very, very far away from all that this had been.
Everything looked smaller and cheaper, to him now, including Sheelagh. She entered the Blue Apple in a fleecy sweater, tight jeans, and boots. While her mother relayed Carl's storyful lie; Sheelagh walked her amazement around Carl. 'It really is you, isn't it?' she said several times, her eyes threaded with a wondering light.
'We thought you died in your apartment fire.'
'I heard about that fire,' Carl said, looking at Sheelagh's blond-downed features, slender and attractive, yet petulant, shallow with the youth of her life. And he wondered how he could have loved this woman so madly. She had none of the clarified power that auraed Evoe, none of the sexual poise that haunted his memories of his woman one hundred and thirty billion years away.
'Yeah,' Carl continued, 'I even heard that I 'died' in that fire.
But the delicate deal I was muscling through in La Paz didn't allow me to acknowledge my real identity. I had to let it go. And now that the deal's gone through, I'm back. I really want to make up for the anxiety I've caused you girls. We are going to celebrate.'
'Buying back the Apple was a good start,' Caitlin said, hugging him again but holding her breath.
'That's just the beginning, friends.' Carl felt expansive staring into these two well=known faces, and he made no effort to disguise his shining feeling. 'Tomorrow, we're going to buy you a couple of condos uptown and a car or two if you want. Clothes.
Servants. Whatever you want.'
The two women stared at him with baffled excitement, hardly believing this was real.
Sheelagh brushed her honey-toned hair back from her face, as though she needed more sir to keep from fainting. 'This is so unreal.' She touched the strong cast of his face. 'You really have changed. I never
would have thought it was possible.' She put her hands inside the cool gray silk of his jacket and hugged him