“I’m sure you do,” he said. “But you actually flew this time.”

She was up and back at the bar by then, after speeding through her prep. She’d never felt better in her life. She loved this combination of serving and cooking, performance art without fussiness. It was a warm day in April, and women outside were forcing summer in short skirts, their pale legs mottled with the effort. Barry, who’d been in twice before, was tall, with curly brown hair and a long, lumpy, Celtic face that would probably droop later in life. He’d been monosyllabic on earlier deliveries until he had a glass of something, and she’d caught him watching her, but he seemed curious, not creepy. He simply seemed to like her, and this was endearing compared to Mark, who now was leaning on a weary arm and lecturing him on psychology. Mark was writing a novel about a shrink, and he’d spent the last month testing his theories on Polly.

Still, she felt good, clean and strange after the shock. “I’m remembering things I haven’t in years,” she said. “I had a theory when I was a kid that people didn’t die, they just found a new life and started over in a different place, as children. My aunt and grandfather were killed in an accident, and I thought I would find them.”

“A dream, darling,” said Mark. “Not a memory.” He thought her family had encouraged an unhealthy fantasy life. She’d told him very little, but now she wished she’d told him nothing.

“No,” Polly said. She had a theory, and the whole world was a story, and every story she’d ever heard had a point. “I can track it back. I remember remembering.”

“What she isn’t mentioning is that her whole family is strange,” Mark said to Barry. “Maybe they reinforced this.”

“You’ve never met my family, Mark.”

That snapping sound in the background was a last vestige of affection, puffing away like a dandelion, popping like a lightbulb element, henceforth unfathomable. Polly had been on her way to this point, but now she achieved several stages in a matter of seconds. She couldn’t believe she’d slept with him; she couldn’t believe she’d touched him.

“Did you ever feel like you’d found them?” Barry asked.

“Once, in the Village,” she said. She stood still, singed brain seeing Jane ironing with starch, hearing the hiss and crackle and smell while Walter Cronkite or Chet Huntley talked about death. A casket, more weeping, beautiful horses towing a box with a body through crowds. How would magic be done with so many people watching?

“Tell me about it,” said Barry.