“You must’ve on some level. Before you spoke, Bob had just said, ‘What’s wrong with seeming desperate if you are?’”

It was such a plaintive, naked question that hearing it took some of the absurdity out of the situation. Poor Bob. I could identify.

But I still couldn’t see him.

“You getting anything?” Graham asked.

“I have this vague feeling that someone else is here, but that’s it. I can’t see or hear him.”

“Huh. Any ideas, Bob?”

Graham listened.

“He says you won’t see him unless you really want to.”

“I do want to!”

“Some part of you doesn’t, he says.”

Great. I was being psychoanalyzed by a walking piece of invisible deep shag.

“Well, it’s not a part that’s listening to the rest of me. I don’t know how to want to see him more than I already do.”

Graham looked pensive. “Hey, let me go make a call, okay? Someone who’s been around longer than I have might have more ideas.”

“Wait! You’re not leaving me here, are you?”

“I’ll just be a few feet away. Don’t worry — Bob wouldn’t hurt a fly. A stray cat, maybe, but not a fly.”

Graham grinned at me, then got up and walked toward the car, sliding his cell phone out of his pocket. He faded into the night.

I started to feel very afraid. I couldn’t see Bob, but Bob could see me, and he was huge. I reminded myself that Bob seemed more like a schlemiel than a monster. Sure, a schlemiel with big teeth, some other part of me answered. I shivered. I swear I felt him looming over me, reaching for me with ragged claws, breathing dead-cat breath on me.

I sensed another attack coming on and scrambled up.

“Graham? Graham!”

Graham didn’t come.

I felt sick and dizzy. I tried to run, but my legs wouldn’t hold me up, and I flopped back down to the ground.

Just as my vision started to tunnel, I glimpsed a face, more like a remembered image than the face itself. Then an impression of color — a silvery white. Then a sense that someone was speaking just a bit too softly for me to hear.

Clutching my chest, I stared at the place Bob had seemed to be when Graham was talking to him. It was like looking at that duck-rabbit illusion. I always saw the rabbit and had to force myself to see the duck.

Finally, I saw the duck.

It’s not that he shimmered into view. He was just suddenly there. All eight furry feet of him. I sat there staring at him until I could get enough air in my lungs to speak.

“Wow. Um. Hi, Bob.”