When I got there, I didn’t recognize the bartender, which was probably a good thing. If anyone knew me here, I doubted they would serve me. I sat at the end of the bar and tried to hold back the flood of memories from that night. Me confronting the man four seats down, his girlfriend telling me to mind my own effing business, him throwing a drink in my face. It was a karaoke bar, and I could still hear someone doing a painful rendition of “Coma” by Guns N’ Roses as the soundtrack to the fight.

“You want a drink?” the bartender asked me sullenly. She was an Asian girl with cherry-red hair.

“Vodka rocks,” I said. Then, as she walked away, I stopped her. “Hang on. Forget that. Just club soda.”

She shrugged. “Whatever.”

When she brought me the drink, I sat and nursed it with a clear head, and then I ordered another. I tipped her like I’d ordered Grey Goose. The bar began to fill up as the after-work crowd arrived, and people came and went over the next couple of hours. By six fifteen, Roscoe hadn’t shown up, and I began to wonder if he was planning to pretend that I’d been a figment of his imagination.

However, at six thirty, he slid onto the seat next to me. His eyes took note of the club soda, but he didn’t offer to join me in my sobriety. Roscoe had always been a Southern Comfort man, even as a priest, and he still was. He ordered it on the rocks and said nothing until he had it in his hand and had taken the first sip.

“I drove by your office,” he said. “Although I guess it isn’t really your office, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Dylan was inside. I saw him. Then I drove straight over here, no stopping, and here you are. I needed to see it with my own eyes, know what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

He shook his head. “Many Worlds, Many Minds. I looked it up. The whole thing sounds pretty crazy to me.”

“That’s how I felt about it, too. But that’s what’s happening to me.”

“You’re a different Dylan. I mean, you’re the same, but you’re different.”

“That’s right.”

He eyed me as he sipped his drink. “It’s easier to believe when I really look at you. You’ve got a different edge, no doubt about it. It’s in your face, your eyes, how you hold yourself.”

“I met another Roscoe who told me the same thing.”

“You’re more like my Dylan was a few years ago. He’s changed since then. You? Not so much. You haven’t found yourself yet, not the way he did. Although I like the not drinking part. That’s a start.”

“You’ve changed, too,” I told him.