Replay

SEVEN

He was surrounded by darkness, and by screams. A pair of hands clutched at his right arm, fingernails stabbing through the fabric of his sleeve.

Jeff saw before him an image of Hell: weeping children, shrieking and stumbling as they ran, unable to escape the black, winged creatures that swooped and pecked at the children’s faces, mouths, eyes …

Then an icily perfect blond woman pulled two of the little girls into an automobile, safe from the onslaught. He was watching a movie, Jeff realized; a Hitchcock movie, The Birds.

The pressure on his arm subsided along with the scene’s intensity, and he turned his head to see Judy Gordon smiling a girlish, embarrassed smile. On his left, Judy’s friend Paula snuggled into the protective curve of young Martin Bailey’s arm.

1963. It had all begun again.

"How come you’re so quiet tonight, honey?" Judy asked him in the back seat of Martin’s Corvair as they rode to Moe’s and Joe’s after the movie. "You don’t think I was silly to get so scared, do you?"

"No. No, not at all."

She intertwined her fingers with his, leaned her head against his shoulder. "O.K., just so you don’t think I’m a ninny." Her hair was fresh and clean, and she’d dabbed a few drops of Lanvin on her slim, pale neck. Her sweet scent was exactly as it had been on that awkward night in Jeff’s car, twenty-five years ago … and before that, almost half a century ago, on this same night.

Everything he’d accomplished had been erased: his financial empire, the home in Dutchess County … but most devastating of all, he had lost his child. Gretchen, with her gangly almost-woman manner and her intelligent, loving eyes, had been rendered nonexistent. Dead, or worse. In this reality she had simply never been.

For the first time in his long, broken life he fully understood Lear’s lament over Cordelia:

"What’s that, honey? D’you say something?"

"No," he whispered, pulling the girl to his chest. "I was just thinking out loud."

"Mmmm. Penny for your thoughts."

Precious innocence, he thought; blessed sweet unawareness of the wounds a demented universe can inflict.

"I was thinking how much it means to me to have you here. How much I need to hold you."

His old boarding school outside Richmond, like the Emory campus, remained unchanged. Some aspects of the place seemed slightly askew from his memories of it: The buildings looked smaller; the dining commons was closer to the lake than he recalled. He’d come to expect that sort of minor discontinuity, had long ago decided it was due to faulty recollection rather than to any concrete change in the nature of things. This time, nearly fifty years of fading recollection had passed since he’d last been here. A full adult lifetime, though split in two, and now begun again.

"College treating you all right?" Mrs. Braden asked.

"Not too bad. Just felt like getting away for a couple of days—thought I’d come up and see the old school."

The plump little librarian chuckled maternally. "It hasn’t even been a year since you graduated, Jeff; nostalgia setting in that soon?"

"I guess so." He smiled. "It seems a lot longer."

"Wait until it’s been ten years, or twenty; then you’ll see how distant all this can seem. I wonder if you’ll still want to come back and visit us then."

"I’m sure I will."

"I do hope so. It’s good to know how the boys turn out, how all of you deal with the world out there. And I think you’ll do just fine."

"Thank you, ma’am. I’m working at it."

She glanced at her watch, looked distractedly toward the front door of the library. "Well, I’m supposed to meet a group of next year’s new students at three, give them the twenty-five-cent tour; you be sure and look up Dr. Armbruster before you go, won’t you?"

"I’ll be sure to."

"And next time, come by the house; we’ll have a glass of sherry and reminisce about the old days."

Jeff bade her good bye, made his way through the stacks and out a side exit. He hadn’t intended to talk to any of the faculty or staff, but had known when he’d driven up here that a chance meeting or two would be inevitable. All in all, he thought he’d handled himself pretty well with Mrs. Braden, but he was relieved that the conversation had been brief. He’d grown confident about handling such encounters at Emory now, but here they would be much more difficult to deal with; his memory of the place, the people, was so distant.

He ambled down a path behind the library, into the secluded Virginia woods that surrounded the campus where he’d grown from adolescence to young manhood. Something had drawn him here, something stronger, more compelling than mere nostalgia. Christ, by now he’d had far too much fulfilled nostalgia thrust upon him to seek out any more.

Perhaps it was the fact that this was the last significant living environment of his life that he had not replayed, and that still existed as he remembered it. He’d already been back to his childhood home in Orlando, had twice returned to Emory. And the places he had originally lived after college, where he’d been a young bachelor and later married to Linda, contained no part of him in this life or the one he’d most recently been through. Here, though, he was remembered; he had put his own small stamp of personality upon this school, just as it had, in this existence as well as the others, had its greater effects on him. Maybe he simply needed to touch base here, to confirm his own being and remind himself of a time when reality was stable and nonrepetitive.

Jeff pushed back the overhanging branch of an elm that was drooping over the path, and without warning he saw the bridge that had haunted him with guilt and shame for all this time.

He stood there in shock, staring at the scene that had troubled five decades of his dreams. It was just a little wooden footbridge across a creek, a simple structure not more than ten feet long, but Jeff could barely control the panic that rose in his chest at the sight of it. He’d had no idea this was where the path was leading.

He let go the elm branch, walked slowly toward the diminutive bridge, with its hand-sawn planks and lovingly crafted three-foot guardrail. It had been rebuilt, of course; he’d always assumed that. Still, he’d never come back to this spot again while he was in school, not since that day.

He sat down on the creek bank next to the bridge, ran his hand along the weathered wood. On the other side of the stream a squirrel nibbled on an acorn that it held between its paws, and regarded him with a placid but wary eye.

Jeff hadn’t really been a shy boy, that first year here at school; quiet, and serious about his studies, but by no means timid. He’d made several friends quickly, and joined in the boisterous dormitory horseplay: shaving-cream battles, draping another student’s room with toilet paper, that kind of thing. As far as girls went, he’d had as much, and as little, experience as might be expected at fifteen, in that more innocent year. There’d been one steady girlfriend his last year in junior high, but as yet no one special among the high-school girls who came in from Richmond on weekends for the dances here on campus; that fondly recalled encounter, with a girl named Barbara, would have to wait until he was sixteen.

That first year, though, he fell in love. Thoroughly, mind-numbingly in love with his French teacher, a woman in her mid-twenties named Deirdre Rendell. He wasn’t alone in his obsession; roughly eighty percent of the boys on the all-male campus were in love with the willowy brunette, whose husband taught American History. Each night at dinner, there would be a mad scramble for the six student seats at the Rendells' table in the dining commons; Jeff managed to grab himself a place there two or three nights a week.

He was convinced she felt a special something for him, more than just the bright warmth she displayed to the other boys; he was positive he perceived a special glow, a flame, in her eyes when she spoke to him. Once, in class, she had stood behind his chair and slowly, casually massaged his neck as she led the students in reciting Baudelaire. That had been a moment of high erotic intensity for him, and he’d basked in the envious glares of his classmates. For a while he’d even stopped masturbating over the Playboy centerfolds, had reserved his sexual fantasies for Deirdre, as he thought of her privately, for Deirdre alone.

By the end of November it became obvious that Mrs. Rendell was pregnant. Jeff did his best to ignore what that implied about the health of her relationship with her husband, and focused instead on the fresh beauty that impending motherhood brought to her face.

She took her maternity leave in the winter, and another teacher took over her classes until she was able to return. The baby was born in mid-February. Mrs. Rendell was back at the couple’s table in the dining commons by April, her breasts gorgeously swollen with milk. She kept the infant in a portable bassinet when she didn’t have it in her arms; and her husband doted on her constantly from the seat next to her. Between the two of them, they captured almost every moment of her cherished attention; Jeff could no longer imagine he read secret endearments in the rare smiles she bestowed on him.

The Rendells lived in a house off-campus, on the other side of the woods behind the library. On sunny days, Mrs. Rendell liked to walk to and from school, through the peaceful stand of elms and birches. There was a well-worn footpath that led that way, though it was broken by a small creek. In the fall, she’d been able to ford the narrow rivulet easily; but now, pushing the baby in its perambulator, the stream presented a serious obstacle.

Her husband labored for six weeks, building the little bridge. He cut the lumber to size on the band saw in the school’s shop, planed the wood to smoothness, made the joists and crossbeams of the tiny span twice as sturdy as they needed to be. The night of the day it was completed, Mrs. Rendell kissed him right at the table in the dining commons, kissed him long and lovingly. She’d never done anything like that in front of any of the boys before. Jeff stared at his uneaten food, his stomach tight and cold.

The next day he walked into the woods to be alone, to sort out the awful feelings that overwhelmed him; but something seemed to snap inside when he came across the bridge.

His mind was blank with unaccustomed rage when he picked up the first large rock from the creek bed, hurled it with all his strength at the wooden guardrail.

Again and again he heaved rocks, the heaviest ones he could find and lift. The buttresses were the hardest parts to crush; they’d been built to last, but under Jeff’s furious assault the beams finally gave way, collapsed into the creek along with the splintered remains of the rest of the bridge.

When it was done, Jeff stood staring at the sodden wreckage, his breath coming in great gulps of exhaustion and anguish. Then he glanced up, and saw Mrs. Rendell standing in the path on the other side of the stream. The face that he’d adored for so many months was an expressionless mask as she looked at him. Their eyes locked for several seconds, and then Jeff bolted.

He assumed he’d be expelled; but nothing was ever said about the incident. Jeff never sat at the Rendells' table again. He avoided seeing either of them as much as he was able. She remained unfailingly polite, even pleasant, to him in class, and at the end of the year he received an A in French.

He tossed a pebble into the lazy creek, watched it bounce off a rock and plop into the water. Destroying the bridge had been a vile, unforgivable act. Yet Mrs. Rendell had forgiven him, protected him, had even had the good sense not to shame him further by expressing her forgiveness in words. She must have understood the lonely, mindless fury that had led him to such an extreme, must have recognized that in his childlike way he had seen her love for her husband and baby as betrayal of the deepest sort.

And it had been, in Jeff s crush-distorted view of things. It had been his introductory encounter with the death of hope.

Now he knew what had drawn him back here to the school, to this quiet clearing in the woods of his youth. He must again face that emptiness of infinite loss, but this time on a more complex level. This time he knew he could not crack beneath the weight of the intolerable. There were no more bridges to destroy; he must learn to go forward, and to build, despite the torment of his daughter’s death, of knowing what could never be.

At a quarter to eleven on a Friday night, at least twenty couples embraced in the shadows outside Harris Hall: arms around each other, faces pressed together for a last few minutes of fevered contact before the young women would be called into the dorm by their vigilant housemother. Jeff and Judy shared a stone bench away from the huddling pairs. She was upset.

"It’s that Frank Maddock, isn’t it? It was all his idea; I know it was."

Jeff shook his head. "I told you, I suggested it to him."

Judy wasn’t listening. "You shouldn’t hang around with him. I knew something like this would happen. He thinks he’s so cool, thinks he’s Mr. Sophistication. Can’t you see through that act of his?"

"Honey, it’s not his fault. The whole thing was my idea, and it’ll work out fine. Just wait’ll tomorrow, you’ll see."

"Oh, what do you know about it?" A chilly night breeze came up, and she took her hand from his to pull her rabbit jacket closed. "You’re not even old enough to go make the bets yourself; you have to get him to do it."

"I know enough," Jeff said, smiling.

"Sure, enough to throw all your money away. Enough to sell your car. I still can’t believe that—you actually sold your car to bet on a horse race."

"I’ll buy another one tomorrow afternoon. You can come with me, help me pick it out. What would you like, a Jaguar, a Corvette?"

"Don’t talk foolish, Jeff. You know, I used to think I knew you pretty well, but this…"

The wind picked up a fallen dogwood blossom and dropped it in her hair. He reached to retrieve the flower, and the motion became a caress. She softened at his touch, and he gently ran the white petals along her cheek, pressed them lightly to her lips and then to his.

"Oh, honey," she whispered, moving closer to him, "I don’t mean to be a scold. It’s just that this has got me so worried for you, I can’t—"

"Hush," he said, holding her face in both his hands. "There’s nothing to worry about, I promise."

"But you don’t know—"

He quieted her with a kiss that lasted until a woman’s harsh voice interrupted them, calling, "Curfew in five minutes!"

Girls hurried past them as he walked her to the brightly lit front door of the dorm. "So," he said, "do you want to go car-shopping with me tomorrow?"

"Oh, Jeff." She sighed. "I’ve got a term paper to finish tomorrow afternoon, but if you come by around seven I’ll buy you a burger at Dooley’s. And don’t get too depressed when you lose; at least it’ll be a good lesson."

"Yes, ma’am." He grinned. "I’ll be sure and take notes."

A red-jacketed valet parked the Jaguar for them at the Coach and Six. Jeff slipped the wine steward a twenty, and nobody asked for Judy’s ID when he ordered them a magnum of Moët et Chandon.

"To Chateaugay," Jeff toasted when the champagne was poured.

Judy hesitated, holding her glass in midair. "I’d rather just drink to tonight," she said.

They clinked glasses, sipped the wine. Judy looked wonderful tonight, in a dark blue low-cut gown she’d bought for the spring formal: halfway between a girl playing dress-up and a vibrantly sexy woman. He had been too quick to dismiss her before, had been seeking a woman whose experience would match his own. But of course that was an impossible goal. Now he basked with delight in the warm honesty of her ingenuousness, so different from Sharla’s cheap eroticism or Diane’s cold, sophisticated manner. Such innocence deserved to be nurtured, not denied.

The fare at the Coach and Six was standard upscale American, nothing adventurous on the menu, but Judy seemed impressed, was obviously taking pains to stay on her best adult behavior. Jeff ordered lobster for her, prime rib for himself. She watched to see which forks he used for the salad and the appetizer, and he loved her for her open artlessness.

After dinner, over Drambuie, Jeff handed her the little blue Claude S. Bennett jeweler’s box. She opened it, and stared at the perfect two-carat diamond ring for several moments before she started to cry.

"I can’t," she murmured, closing the box carefully and setting it down on his side of the table. "I just can’t."

"I thought you said you loved me."

"I do," she said. "Oh, damn, damn, damn."

"Then what’s wrong? We could wait a year or two if you think we’re too young, but I’d like to make our plans official right now."

She dried her eyes with a napkin, smearing what little makeup she wore. Jeff wanted to kiss the streaks away, wanted to bathe her with his mouth as a cat would a kitten.

"Paula says you haven’t been to class in weeks," she told him. "She says you might even flunk out."

Jeff beamed, took her hand. "Is that all? Honey, it doesn’t matter. I’m quitting school anyway. I just won seventeen thousand dollars, and by October I can make … Look, it’s nothing to be concerned about. We’ll have plenty of money; I’ll always see to that."

"How?" she asked bitterly. "Gambling? Is that how we’d live?"

"Investments," he told her. "Perfectly legitimate business investments, in big companies like IBM and Xerox and—"

"Be realistic, Jeff. You got real lucky on one horse race, and now all of a sudden you think you can strike it rich in the stock market. Well, what if the stocks go down? What if there’s a depression or something?"

"There won’t be," he said quietly.

"You don’t know that. My daddy says—"

"I don’t care what your daddy says. There isn’t going to be any—"

She set her napkin down, pushed her chair back from the table. "Well, I do care what my parents say. And I hate to even think how they’d react if I told them I was getting married to an eighteen-year-old boy who’s dropped out of school to be a gambler."

Jeff could think of nothing to say. She was right, of course. He must seem an irresponsible fool to her. It had been a terrible mistake to tell her what he was doing.

He slipped the ring back in his jacket pocket. "I’ll hold on to this for now," he said. "And maybe I’ll reconsider about school."

Her eyes went moist again, their vivid blue shimmering through the layer of tears. "Please do, Jeff. I don’t want to lose you, not because of some craziness like this."

He squeezed her hand. "You’ll wear that ring someday," he said. "You’ll be proud of it, and proud of me."

They were married at the First Baptist Church in Rockwood, Tennessee in June of 1968, the week after Jeff received his M.B.A. Just four days before the date he’d met Linda—twice, with such drastically different outcomes—in those other lives. Rockwood was Judy’s hometown, and the reception her parents threw afterward was a big, informal barbecue at their summer place on nearby Watts Bar Lake. Jeff noticed that his father’s cough was getting worse, but still he wouldn’t listen to his son’s entreaties that he stop chain-smoking Pall Malls. He wouldn’t quit until the emphysema was diagnosed, years from now. Jeff’s mother was happier than she’d been at his weddings to Linda and Diane, though of course she had no memory of either occasion. His sister, a shy fifteen-year-old with braces on her teeth, had taken to Judy right away.

The Gordon family, likewise, had welcomed Jeff into the fold wholeheartedly. He had transformed himself into the very image of a perfect catch: twenty-three, good education, industrious, responsible. A nice little nest egg already set aside and a conservative but steadily building portfolio of stocks in his and Judy’s names.

It hadn’t been easy. The five years of school were tough enough, forcing himself back into the long-abandoned regimen of studies and term papers and exams; but the hardest part had been contriving not to get rich. The last time he’d been this age he’d been a financial wunderkind, the major partner in a powerful conglomerate. Such a sudden infusion of massive wealth would have thrown Judy off balance, would have created significant problems between them. So he’d passed up the Belmont and World Series bets entirely, and had painstakingly avoided the many high-yield investments with which he could easily have made another multimillion-dollar fortune.

He and Frank Maddock had drifted apart soon after the Kentucky Derby this time. His unknowing one-time partner at the pinnacle of corporate success had finished Columbia Law School and was now a junior attorney with a firm in Pittsburgh.

Jeff and Judy assumed the mortgage on a pleasant little fake-colonial house on Cheshire Bridge Road in Atlanta, and Jeff rented a four-room office in a building near Five Points that he’d once owned. Five days a week he put on a suit and tie, drove downtown, bid his secretary and associates good morning, locked himself in his office, and read. Sophocles, Shakespeare, Proust, Faulkner … all the works he’d meant to absorb before but had never had the time to read.

At the end of the day he’d dash off a few memos to his partners, recommending perhaps that they not risk investing in an unproven company like Sony, but should keep their gradually growing principal in something safe, such as AT&T. Jeff steered the small company carefully away from any sources of sudden wealth, made sure he and his associates remained comfortably but unspectacularly entrenched in the upper middle class. His partners frequently followed his advice; when they didn’t, the losses tended to balance out the gains, so the net effect remained as Jeff intended.

At night he and Judy would cuddle in the den to watch "Laugh-In" or "The Name of the Game" together, then maybe play a game of Scrabble before they went to bed. On warm weekends they’d go sailing on Lake Lanier, or play tennis and hike the nature trails at Callaway Gardens.

Life was quiet, ordered, sublimely normal. Jeff was thoroughly content. Not ecstatic—there was none of the sense of absolute enchantment he had felt in watching his daughter, Gretchen, grow up at the estate in Dutchess County—but he was happy, and at peace. For the first time, his long, chaotic life was defined by its utter simplicity and lack of turmoil.

Jeff dug his toes into the sand, raised himself to his elbows, and shaded his eyes from the sun with one hand. Judy was asleep on the blanket beside him, curled fingers still holding her place in a copy of Jaws. He gently kissed her half-open mouth.

"Want some Pina Colada?" Jeff asked as she stretched herself awake. "We’ve still got half a thermos left."

"Mmm. Just want to lie here like this. For about twenty years."

"Better turn over every six months or so, then."

She twisted her head to look at the back of her right shoulder, saw it was getting red. She rolled faceup, close to him, and he kissed her again; longer this time, and deeper.

A few yards down the beach another couple had a radio playing, and Jeff broke the kiss as the music ended and a Jamaican-accented announcer began reading about John Dean’s testimony that day in the Watergate hearings. "Love you," Judy said.

"Love you," he answered, touching the tip of her sun-pink nose. And he did, Lord God how he did.

Jeff allowed himself six weeks of vacation every year, in keeping with his pretense of a regular work schedule. The arbitrarily imposed limitation made the time seem all the sweeter. Last year they’d bicycled through Scotland, and this summer they planned to take a hot-air balloon tour of the French wine country. At this moment, though, he could think of no place he’d rather be than here in Ocho Rios, with the woman who had brought sanity and delight to his disjointed life.

"Necklace for the pretty missy, mon? Nice cochina necklace?" The little Jamaican boy was no older than eight or nine. His arms were draped with dozens of delicate shell necklaces and bracelets, and a cloth pouch tied at his waist bulged with earrings made from the same colorful shells. "How much for … that one, there?"

"Eight shilling."

"Make it one pound six, and I’ll take it." The boy raised his eyebrows, confused. "Hey, you crazy, mon? You s’pose go lower, not higher."

"Two pounds, then."

"I’m not gonna argue with you, mon. You got it." The child hurriedly took the necklace from his arm, handed it to Judy. "You wan' buy any more, I got plenty. Ever’body on the beach know me, my name Renard, O.K.?"

"O.K., Renard. Nice doing business with you." Jeff handed him two one-pound notes, and the boy scampered away down the beach, grinning.

Judy slipped the necklace on, shook her head in mock dismay. "Shame on you," she said, "taking advantage of a child that way."

"Could have been worse." Jeff smiled. "Another minute or so and I might have bargained him up to four or five pounds."

She looked down to rearrange the necklace, and when her eyes met his again there was sadness in them. "You’re so good around children," she said. "That’s my only regret, that we’ve never—"

Jeff placed his fingers lightly on her lips. "You’re my baby girl. All I need."

He could never tell her, never even let her guess, about the vasectomy he’d had in 1966, soon after they’d started making love. Never again would he give life to a human being, as he had to Gretchen, only to see her entire existence negated. To everyone but Jeff, she did not even live in memory; and on the unthinkable chance that he might be doomed to repeat his life yet again, he refused to leave in that sort of absolute limbo someone he’d not only loved, but had created.

"Jeff … I’ve been thinking."

He looked back at Judy, tried to keep the pain and guilt from showing. "About what?"

"We could—don’t answer right away; give yourself time to consider it—we could adopt."

He didn’t say anything for several seconds, just looked at her. Saw the love in her face, saw the need for even more of an outlet through which to express that love.

It wouldn’t be as if the children were his own, he thought. Even if he grew to love them, he wouldn’t be responsible for their having come into being. They already existed, had been born, whoever they might be. The worst could happen, and they’d still exist, though with a different life in store for them.

"Yes," he told her. "Yes, I’d like that very much."

The put-in was at a place called Earl’s Ford, at the southern edge of the great Appalachian forests, near the spot where North and South Carolina met the upper tip of Georgia. There were six rafts in all: black, ungainly-looking things, inflated at the base camp and hauled with difficulty to the edge of the Chattooga River. Jeff, Judy, and the children shared one raft with a jolly, gray-haired woman and a guide who looked to be of college age, his face and arms brown from the sun.

As the raft slid into the clear, leisurely-flowing water, Jeff reached to cinch April’s life vest tighter around the child’s thin frame. Dwayne saw the paternal motion and tightened his own vest, a look of manly determination in his young eyes.

April was a charming little blond-haired girl who’d been severely abused by her natural parents; her brother was an intense, very bright child whose mother and father had died in an automobile accident. The children’s names weren’t necessarily what Jeff or Judy would have chosen to call them, but they’d been six and four years old when they were adopted, and it seemed best not to further disturb either one’s sense of self by changing their given names.

"Daddy, look! A deer!" April pointed at the far bank of the river, her face agleam with excitement. The animal stared back at them complacently, poised to run if need be, but unwilling to interrupt its feeding simply for having seen these strange apparitions.

Soon the wooded banks on either side began to rise, become a rocky gorge. As the canyon deepened, the river’s speed increased, and before long the flotilla of rafts had entered the first set of rapids. The children whooped with pleasure as the craft bucked and swayed in the downward current.

Jeff looked at Judy after they had cleared the white water and were again drifting smoothly downstream. He was gratified to see that her earlier anxiety had been replaced with an exhilaration matching that of the children. She’d been worried about taking them on this outing, but Jeff hadn’t wanted the children to be deprived of anything so joyfully inspiring.

The expedition pulled ashore at a small island, and Judy spread out the lunch she’d packed in a watertight chest. Jeff munched on a chicken leg and sipped his cold beer, watching April and

Dwayne explore the triangular wedge of land. The children’s curiosity and imagination never ceased to fascinate him; through their eyes, he had come to appreciate this tired world anew. When he and Judy had decided to adopt them, he’d bought some Apple and Atari stock at the right time; not much, just enough to edge the family’s income up a couple of notches. They’d bought a larger house, on West Paces Ferry Road; it had a huge backyard, with a shallow fishpond and three big oak trees. Perfect for the children.

The rafts got underway again, breached another, larger set of rapids a mile or so downriver. The current was moving much more swiftly now, even in the blue-water segments of the journey; but Jeff could see that his wife had lost her fear of the river, was caught up in the beauty and the thrill of it. She held his hand tightly as they shot through the torrent of Bull Sluice Falls, and then it was over, the water calm again and the sun retreating behind the pines.

April and Dwayne were manifestly sad to see the bus that stood waiting to take them back to Atlanta, but Jeff knew their adventures, like the summer, had scarcely begun. He’d soon be taking his family on an unhurried, two-month drive through France and Italy; next year he planned a trip for them to Japan and the newly accessible vastness of China.

Jeff wanted them to see it all, experience every bit of glory and wonder the world had to offer. Still, he had a secret fear that all these memories, along with all the love he had given them, would soon be obliterated by a force he could understand no better than they.

After three days his chest had begun to itch something fierce where the electrodes were taped, but he wouldn’t allow the EKG to be unhooked, not for a minute.

The nurses were full of contempt for him; Jeff knew that. They laughed about him when they thought they were out of earshot, resented having to cater to a perfectly healthy hypochondriac who was taking up valuable bed space.

His physician felt more or less the same way, had said so openly. Still, Jeff had demanded, had been vehement. Finally, after making a sizable donation to the hospital’s building fund, he’d gotten himself admitted for the week.

The third week of October 1988. If it was going to happen, this would be the time.

"Hi, honey; how you feeling?" Judy wore a rust-colored fall outfit; her hair was piled loosely atop her head.

"Itching. Otherwise fine."

She smiled with a slyness uncharacteristic of her still-innocent face. "Anything I can scratch?"

Jeff laughed. "I wish. Think we’re gonna have to wait another few days, though, till I get unwired."

"Well," she said, holding up a pair of shopping bags, one from the Oxford Book Store and another from Turtle Records. "Here’s some stuff to keep you occupied in the meantime."

She’d brought him the latest Travis McGee and Dick Francis mysteries (tastes he had acquired this time around), plus a new biography of André Malraux and a history of the Cunard shipping line. For all she’d never learned about him, Judy certainly understood the eclectic nature of his interests. The other bag contained a dozen jewel-boxed compact discs, ranging from Bach and Vivaldi to a digital transfer of "Sergeant Pepper." She slid one of the shiny discs into the portable CD player at his bedside, and the exquisite strains of Pachelbel’s "Canon in D" filled the hospital room.

"Judy—" His voice broke. He cleared his throat and started again. "I just want you to know … how very much I have always loved you."

She answered in measured tones, but couldn’t hide the look of alarm in her eyes. "We’ll always love each other, I hope. For a long, long time to come."

"As long as possible."

Judy frowned, started to speak, but he shushed her. She leaned over the bed to kiss him, and her hand was trembling as it found his.

"Come home soon," she whispered against his face. "We haven’t even started yet."

It happened a little over an hour after Judy had left the room to get lunch in the hospital cafeteria. Jeff was glad she wasn’t there to see it.

Even through his pain he could see the astonishment on the nurse’s face as the EKG went berserk; but she behaved with complete professionalism, didn’t delay calling the Code Blue for an instant. Within seconds Jeff was surrounded by a full medical team, shouting instructions and status reports as they worked over him:

"Epi, one cc!"

"Bicarb two amps? Gimme three-sixty joules!"

"Stand back…" WHUMP!

"V-tach! Blood pressure eighty palpable; two hundred watt seconds, lidocaine seventy-five milligrams IV, stat!"

"Take a look—V-Fib."

"Repeat epi and bicarb, defib at three-sixty; stand back…" WHUMP!

On and on, their voices fading with the light. Jeff tried to scream in anger because it wasn’t fair; he’d been totally prepared this time. But he couldn’t scream, he couldn’t even cry, he couldn’t do a goddamned thing but die again.

And wake again, in the back seat of Martin Bailey’s Corvair with Judy beside him. Judy at eighteen, Judy in 1963 before they ever fell in love and married and built their lives together.

"Stop the car!"

"Hang on, buddy," Martin said. "We’re almost back to the girls' dorm. We’ll—"

"I said stop the car! Stop it now!"

Shaking his head in bewilderment, Martin pulled the car to a halt on Kilgo Circle, behind the history building. Judy put her hand on Jeff’s arm, trying to calm him, but he jerked away from her and shoved the car door open.

"Jesus, what the hell are you doing?" Martin yelled, but Jeff was out of the car and running, running hard in whatever direction it was; it didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

He raced through the quadrangle, past the chemistry and psych buildings, his strong young heart pounding in his chest as if it had not betrayed him minutes ago and twenty-five years in the future. His legs carried him past the biology building, across the corner of Pierce and Arkwright drives. He finally stumbled and fell to his knees in the middle of the soccer field, looking up at the stars through blurry eyes.

"Fuck you!" He screamed at the impassive sky, screamed with all the force and despair he’d been unable to express from that terminal hospital bed. "Fuck you! Why … are … you … DOING THIS TO ME!"