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17. THE ELEVENTH HOUR
"No more surprises like that please," Arthur said glumly as Cuphandle drove across town. "What a dreary, rainy city this is."
"Oh, I'm sure they have a few sunny days from time to time. You'll be happy enough here if you let yourself."
"I'll give a little thought," Arthur said.
Cuphandle's cell phone warbled, and he answered. "Yes? Yes? Oh. Yes. Yes. Okay. No. Yes. Okay. Yes. Goodbye." He put the cell phone away in his inner pocket. "New marching orders," he said to Arthur. "We have one more stop to make before I take you to the point of no return."
"I can't wait," Arthur said, pulling into himself, sitting back with his collar up and wishing he could vanish into the seat.
Cuphandle did a U-turn in the middle of a deserted intersection and headed for the opposite side of town. It seemed to Arthur they spent a long time driving on elevated roads, looking down on a glittering river and long stretches of refinery chimneys. Red aircraft warning lights winked atop extremely tall steel towers. Wisps of grayish, desiccated clouds drifted in the chilly wind. Down they came off an aerial exchange and into a part of town that seemed just about as drab as any other around here. After the usual ride through tiny cobblestone quarters, where sewage flowed in the gutters bluish-white like a foul skim milk, Cuphandle pulled over on a little street. He pointed to a brightly lit window a few houses down. "Go on," he said, "I'll go around the corner for a beer. Just come get me when you're done, but don't take more than about an hour. Time is getting critical."
Arthur walked alone down the narrow sidewalk, avoiding puddles. Thick droplets of rain water fell on his head from a broken drain pipe several stories above. As he walked past the window, he could make out dim figures through thick embroidered curtains. He knocked on the door and waited. Presently a young woman opened the door. She was tall and pretty. Wearing a long gray skirt and plain white blouse with a slightly frayed collar, she brightened as she saw him. "Oh, Mr. Latchloose, do come on in." She stepped back and he entered into a warm parlor. Several children were playing on a hard wooden floor. Shadowy adult shapes seemed to be sitting, talking, in recesses. It was a warm, homey atmosphere. "Pardon me," Arthur said, "I'm afraid I am intruding."
"Not at all," the young woman said. "We were expecting you. The Agency called." She closed the door and kicked a soggy towel against its baseboard to prevent the cold from seeping in.
"Agency?"
She smiled patiently. "The people who set things up. You know." She gave him a lingering look. "Maybe you don't know. They have djinns that look after things?"
"Oh yes," Arthur said, "I am acquainted with one." He followed her into the living room. He nearly tripped over a set of wooden toy train cars. Everything here was old, and plain, and worn, but it had a kind of homey charm."
"My name is Daniela," the girl said. "May I take your coat?" She made no effort to introduce him to elderly neighbor ladies who had gathered for a bit of gossip, apparently, while babysitting their grandchildren, of which there were quite a few. The ladies seemed very solid and rooted in their corner chairs and just barely acknowledged his presence before putting their gray heads back together for resumed whispering.
"Sure." He shrugged out of one sleeve, then the other, and let her take his scarf too.
"Mrs. Latchloose!" Daniela called as she went to a side room to deposit his coat. "Your husband is here."
Arthur stood frozen to the spot as Daniela casually pushed open a door-to a rather small, dreary back kitchen, he saw, not unlike his own come to think of it-"Mrs. Latchloose, Arthur is here and I think he only has a short amount of time."
Arthur felt his throat constrict. His eyeballs went dry. His knees started knocking together. He had a steady himself by holding onto the rather hard, wavy back of a wooden chair.
A woman appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands in an apron. For a second he didn't recognize her. Then he thought she was Gretchen . Then she wasn't. They stood frozen like that, looking at each other. She was about ten years older than the Gretchen he'd known, and her blonde hair had gone white, except for some yellowish threads in it. Her skin had aged, and there were wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, but she'd aged well, he thought. "Gretchen ?" he whispered.
She seemed to get over her initial bright aura of shock. "Arthur!" she whispered and ran to him. They hugged each other, and he felt the exact old familiar shape of her. He remembered the feel of her shoulder bones, her upper arms, the way the top edges of her shoulders curved softly. He touched the lower back of her neck with his nose, and she smelled exactly as she always had. He felt her arms closing tightly around him. "Arthur, Arthur," she said softly.
For a few moments they were both overcome with emotion. Daniela guided them to a lace-covered wooden table, and another, younger girl brought them cups of steaming tea. They ignored the tea, however, and sat holding hands and looking into each other's eyes. Arthur was sure his eyes looked to her, much as her eyes looked to him: overjoyed, surprised, and not a small amount troubled. Unanswered questions hung in the air between them, perhaps unanswerable, perhaps not meant to be answered, and perhaps it didn't matter. "I still love you as always," she told him.
"I have never stopped loving you," he said holding her hands in his. He kissed them. "I have missed you more than I can say. But I messed everything up. The kids hate me, and I'm very much alone."
"I figured as much," she said, looking regretful. "I'm sorry I had to go, but it wasn't my choice."
"It wasn't mine either."
"I know that, dear." It was her turn to grip his hands tightly in her smaller, paler hands-which now had age spots and wrinkles-and she kissed his hands. "I am glad you came to see me."
"So how does all this work?" he asked. "Did you know I was coming?"
She shrugged. She made a silly face. "Well, the Agency has a lot of new people working for them, and they don't always have their act together. They said you might come, and you might not, and so I decided to play it by ear."
"So you live here now?"
"Next door."
"And Daniela?"
"Our granddaughter. Isn't she lovely? And this is Anne-Marie, also our granddaughter," she said, pointing to the younger girl, who was a slightly smaller copy of Daniela, but with more mischievous eyes. Daniela looked demure and embarrassed, turning red, while Anne-Marie boldly reached out to shake hands. "Nice to meet you," Anne-Marie said.
Arthur took both their hands and held them. "Which of our kids?"
"Eddie," she said. "Eddie and Annie."
Arthur let go the girls' hands. "Honey, that can't be." He tried to remain calm and polite so as not to scare the girls. He felt like bolting from the house and running down the street. Gretchen sensed his emotional state and motioned for the girls to look after the little ones playing on the floor. "Honey," he said, "it's one thing for me to be sitting here talking with my dead wife's ghost. It's another thing to be holding hands with young ladies that don't exist yet, so to speak. I was at Eddie's house, and it's a total mess. They just have babies."
"That's just it," she said. "You have to understand-these are the ghosts of who those children will become."
"I'm lost."
"That's okay, Arthur. You'll find out all about these things soon enough."
"I will?"
She smiled at him with a mix of sadness and anticipation. "You're supposed to join me here not too long from now. By Christmas two years from now you'll be here."
"So you are-"
"Yes, I am the ghost of the Gretchen I would have become had I lived. That Gretchen , the younger one, she lives in another state, but we visit once in a while. She came by with Annie not long ago."
"Funny, I met her with Annie earlier today in a mall somewhere. They had milkshakes and grilled cheese sandwiches. Annie made some kind of a little thing out of straws."
"You mean this?" Gretchen reached behind a pitcher on the table and pulled out a puppy made of drinking straws.
"Yes, only it was a rabbit or something."
"I taught her how to make those."
"So," he said, "the ghosts of who we were and the ghosts of who we will become all mix and mingle behind our backs while we fret and toil and worry ourselves to death as the people we are at any given time? Does that about sum it up?"
"Yes." She started to assume a troubled expression. She took his hands in hers one more time, then released them and clasped her hands together as if praying. "Arthur, I understand there is a possibility that you may not be coming here."
"I-." He felt mortified.
"No, no, it's fine." She clapped her hands softly together several times for emphasis, and knitted her brow, and closed her eyes frowning. "Honestly, Arthur, you have to do what you wish. We were not always good to each other, and while I would promise to make it all up to you if you came here, I'll understand if you don't. I've waited for you for years now, and it won't kill me to wait another two."
They smiled wanly at the joke in that last statement.
He couldn't quite look her in the eye. He looked down and fumbled with a corner of the lace table cloth. "I was so lonely without you, Gretchen , and I was starting to think of moving on when the opportunity came."
He did not see her again. He only heard her voice say: "I'll wait another two years for you, my love. Then I too will have to move on, though I'll pine for you a long time. Not so much because you are charming or handsome, but because of the good times we had, which can never be replaced. Though they can be taken away from us if you go through with your present plan." So saying, she vanished. When he looked up, he was in a bare room without a soul in it beside himself.
Gone were the children, the granddaughters, the kids playing on the floor, the old grannies gossiping in corners. Gone was the tea, the smell of cookies, the warmth in the air. In fact gone were the night and the rain, for it was dry and sunny outside.
The door opened, and Cuphandle stuck his head in. "Hurry, Mr. Latchloose. We're almost down to the wire now."
Arthur rose, his head jumbled with thoughts so that he wanted to pull his hair with both hands to try and straighten his mind out. He followed Cuphandle to that ratty little Trabant, and they drove away.
Nearby, a clock played a lovely carillon of several dozen bells, and then a solitary old bell solemnly rang out the hours one by one. At the eleventh ring, the old bell fell silent, and the twelfth hour began.
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