“Is it you?” she asked a man who stood reading a newspaper.

“Pardon me, I thought you were someone else,” she said to a worker fixing a vending machine. “Are you someone else?”

These were all “tells” to be sure, and now that she was up and about, there was one more thing to give away the fact that things weren’t quite right. It was her dress. It was beautiful, it was elegant, and it still had a price tag hanging from the back.

***

The living world had not been kind to Mary Hightower in the week she had been in it. Resilient and adaptive though she was, there were simply some situations she was unprepared for. It wasn’t only that her sensibilities were suited to a kinder, more genteel time, but she had also forgotten the endless inconveniences of the human body.

First there was the weakness brought on by hunger and thirst, which nearly caused her to faint several times during her first few days alive. The need for nourishment was an ever-present nuisance. She abhorred theft of any kind, so she hoped simple human compassion might sustain her. She was appalled at how few people were willing to share their food with her when asked politely. In the end she had to resort to taking food from abandoned plates after the diners had left—and even then she was constantly shoed away by heartless restauranteurs.

She quickly became disgusted with bodily functions as well, but discovered that ignoring them was not a good idea—and then there was this awful business of body odor. In Everlost she always smelled faintly of lilacs and wildflowers—just like the fields around her on the day she died. Well, the living body did not smell at all floral, and although she had worn the same green velvet dress for more than a hundred years, in just a few days it had become so dirty and so foulsmelling that people would keep their distance from her.

Over the week, as she traveled west, she had come across several men who appeared gallant, and willing to help her—such as the man who purchased for her the lovely dress she now wore. However there was nothing gentlemanly about them at all. In fact, they turned mean when she didn’t return their affection, and left her.

Well, she thought, at least I have my self-respect, and a new dress.

On the night before her arrival in Little Rock, she bathed herself in a fountain to wash off the stench of living, and groomed her hair with a brush she had found in a drainage ditch.

“Meet me in one week’s time,” Milos had whispered to her on that terrible day in Graceland. “One week’s time, at the train station in Little Rock.”

No matter what she was forced to endure during this terrible week, she was determined to look her best for Milos.