Jackie was looking the other way.

“Troy,” she said.

“What?”

Troy was casually trotting across the road, and then he was gone down a side street.

“You go meet the man in the tan jacket. I’m going to find out what Troy’s doing here.”

Jackie took off after him, running as hard as her pain-racked body would let her, which wasn’t fast, but it was going, all right, and in the right direction, dammit. Shock waves of agony exploded up her legs as she ran.

“Wait, Jackie,” Diane called. “We shouldn’t get separated. This place is wrong. I don’t know if we’ll be able to find each other again. Jackie!”

But Jackie was gone. Diane started after her but stopped, thinking of Josh. Josh was what mattered. Jackie could take care of herself. She needed to find Josh. She sighed and walked across the street to the building. It was brick, with a mirrored front window, and a small plastic card that said CITY HALL on the door.

“Okay,” Diane said, as loudly as she could. “Here we go.”

She pushed open the door. Somewhere else, at that same moment, she was petting a kitten in a shelter pen. The kitten purred and rolled on its back. “I have to take this one,” she said. Somewhere else she was repainting an old dresser. Somewhere else, she was standing in a fish market, overpowered by the smell. Somewhere else, at that same moment, she was dead. She did not feel anything at all from that version of herself. It was just a gap in her consciousness, a nothing superimposed on her multiplying selves. The door of City Hall shut behind her.

43

Inside City Hall there were stacks of files and papers around a groaning titan of a copier, the machine constantly churning out paper, collating it, and then pushing it aside onto the floor as more came. A woman in a dress with a dizzying pattern of blue roses repeating against a white background sat at a desk next to the copier. As Diane pushed open the door, the gust from outside caused the sign-in sheet in front of the woman to flutter into her face. She did not seem to notice.

Behind the woman’s desk was an enormous oil painting of a man in a tan jacket. His face was clear. It was more or less symmetrical. He was not quite smiling, but not quite frowning either. Was that not quite a smile? She could remember everything about the painting when she looked away from it. She looked back and then looked away again. Her memory retained all of it.

“Can I help you?” said the woman, without looking up. She was typing away at her computer, which did not appear to be on. She was crying, silently and profusely.