They smoked a joint together in the nude, not exchanging a word. Whoa, it was stronger stuff than they used to know. By nine that night, they were both dressed but had done it so dancingly, so leisurely-ly, they seemed teleported into her car with no memory of how they got there, and were now backing down the driveway like a make-believe married couple. Would this be their life if they’d gotten romantic decades ago? Would they have had kids? Nah, no kids. No kids. They’d prefer continuous fucking. The condom, what a wonderful invention.

As she drove, high, fighting the giggles, she imagined she was chauffeuring him to the late shift, brown-bag supper in his briefcase, change for the pop machine in his pocket. Nah, nah, nah, to read the ten o’clock news at KCAL. Nah, nah, nah, to his high-paying job measuring earthquakes at Caltech. It felt true, for one, two, three minutes. They were time travelers. They’d dipped backward and bent the clock, broke it maybe. How could they possibly be thirty? That was old. They smelled of the same soap, the same shampoo. They were passing through the same streets they knew. Come on. Really. They were fifteen, playing house. That thing with the other girl, whatshername—that wasn’t real. This thing, this was real. They were destined, him coming back just when she most needed a big bump in her life. Like that guy in Terminator. What was his name? What was his name? Oh . . . Kyle Reese! she shrieked. What? he said. It’s like she’d conjured him up with some kind of voodoo. Wait, had she though? Honestly she couldn’t even remember. So what if she had? He was looking so damn cute she had to lean over to french him.

He tasted like soap. Floral, but bitter. Huh. She turned back to the road. Huh. There was something not right with her passenger. He seemed replaced, like an artificial breast grafted from a thigh. The effects of time travel, she supposed. It changed you from minute to minute. She peered in the rearview mirror: oh whew, she was still fifteen . . . ish.

When she pulled into the Slumber Inn lot, Bluto was fast asleep, his fingers draped over her knee. She woke him by blowing air across his lashes.

Outside room 105, he lifted a hand to wave goodbye but it appeared to take a great deal of effort. His arms, those heavy arms, were slack. His face, on the other hand, was waking up, and growing gently confused.

At three in the morning, Kate was awakened by the phone. She expected to find Bluto in his doggy bed when she opened her eyes, but seeing it empty, she remembered with a jolt that he was dead—and buried. Never again would he sit on the bathroom floor and gaze up at her blankly while she shaved her legs.