He got down from the bench and headed across Grand Army Plaza, past people who were now about one-half sandy-haired and sweatered and the other half just random people. He realized that the repeated person hadn’t seemed to crowd the city any more than usual. They weren’t new, then. If anything, they were replacing the others.

Abruptly, he decided to go into the Plaza Hotel. There were two of them in the lobby, talking quietly with one another, in French. He walked past them toward the Oak Bar; he would get a Perrier in there.

In the bar, three of them sat at the bar itself and two of them were at a table near the front. He seated himself at the bar. A man in a brown sweater turned from where he was washing glasses, wiped his hands on his jeans, came over and said, “Yes, sir?” The voice was gravelly with a slight French accent, the face blank.

“Perrier with lime,” Harold said. When the man brought it, Harold said, “How long have you been tending bar here?”

“About twenty minutes,” the man said and smiled.

“Where were you before?”

“Oh, here and there,” the man said. “You know how it is.”

Harold stared at him, feeling his own face getting red. “No, I don’t know how it is!” he said.

The man started to whistle softly. He turned away.

Harold leaned over the bar and took him by the shoulder. The sweater was soft—probably cashmere. “Where do you come from? What are you doing?”

The man smiled coldly at him. “I come from the street. I’m tending bar here.” He stood completely still, waiting for Harold to let go of him.

“Why are there so many of you?” Harold said.

“There’s only one of me,” the man said.

“Only one?”

“Just one.” He waited a moment. “I have to wait on that couple.” He nodded his head slightly toward the end of the bar. A couple of them had come in, a male and a female as far as Harold could see in the somewhat dim light.

Harold let go of the man, got up and went to a pay telephone on the wall. He dialed his psychiatrist. The phone rang twice and then a male voice said, “Doctor Morse is not in this afternoon. May I take a message?” The voice was the gravelly voice. Harold hung up. He spun around and faced the bar. The man had just returned from serving drinks to the identical couple at the far end. “What in hell is your name?” he said, wildly.

The man smiled. “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he said.

Harold began to cry. “What’s your goddamned name?” he said, sobbing. “My name’s Harold. For Christ’s sake, what’s yours?”

Now that he was crying, the man looked sympathetic. He turned for a moment to the mirrored shelves behind him, took two unopened bottles of whiskey and then set them on the bar in front of Harold. “Why don’t you just take these, Harold?” he said pleasantly. “Take them home with you. It’s only a few blocks from here.”