“I trust him, I trust him,” I started to say, but Larwin cut me off. “Look, young lady, he’s coming out to see you. You must sign things. I can’t do it. It’s a changing of the guard, you see. Even your contracts can’t get you out of it.” He coughed a phlegm-rich cough. It occurred to me he was probably dying. “Signatures are needed. You understand. It’s all formality. He won’t bother you, you can meet him in the middle of the driveway if that’s what you want, and then he can turn around and go. But you must see him if you want someone minding the store.”

“Fine,” I told him. He gave me a date and time I forgot as soon as I hung up, the numbers meaningless.

I went outside and walked around. The weather was still cold, but with each passing day there came another few minutes of warmth, glimmers of spring. The snow had melted. I had seen the intruders three times since February, but even when I called to them in what I thought was a friendly voice, they turned and ran. And each time I ran after them, they disappeared into the woods and down the mountain.

I walked behind the perimeter of the city on the side abutting the forest. Only ten or twenty yards of grass lay between the line of trees and the backdrop that marked the city’s border. I rarely walked there, as it showed the whole ass of the operation—walking on this side exposed the back of the canvas, which in some places had been torn and frayed by weather. But I craved something new. The fourth walls were demoralizing me again, mocking me with their unfinished business. I missed television. I kept thinking, If only I could be Furley! Or Terri! Terri had a definite job, bleak as it was—emergency room nurse. But it would get me out of that apartment, away from those walls! Oh, how I yearned to switch over. My plan, though, was a commitment, and the only thing I was hanging on to at that point, so I would remain Cindy for the remaining nine months.

My drudgery brought up so many questions, though. At what point does it stop being a dream when you’re dreaming other dreams? Can a person strangle a fantasy with rules carried over from another place? If one constructs a separate reality, should not that reality dictate its own rules? On and on. All of these philosophical quandaries nauseated me. I felt adrift, no longer in the safe harbor of nostalgia that was the early 1980s, busied with everyday concerns. I was sinking in the sallow current year of myself, anxiety-ridden Bonnie Lincoln.

A clatter sounded to my left, near the trees. At first I thought it was an animal breaking through the brush, but the steps were heavier. More regular, more menacing. And there was more than one of whatever it was.

I stopped and waited. I could hear murmuring. Human voices. Then, up ahead of me, a group of maybe five or six people emerged from the trees.