"So now you see," the voice says. "You seeyourself. "
It's a few minutes later. Sue has climbed back inside the Expedition, wrestling the newfound sweatpants up around her hips. This is difficult enough, holding her hips off the seat by pressing both feet to the floorboard between the gas and the brake, but at the same time she has to keep the cell phone clenched between her shoulder and her jaw. The clothes are too large for her, the sleeves of the sweater flopping over her hands, the sweatpants bagging slightly around the ankles-nothing fits, and the footwear he left for her is a pair of men's snowmobile boots. But at least they're warm. She's got the engine running and the heat on, combating a chill seeping in from the broken window.
Outside, cars are pulling away from Babes, leaving the parking lot, shuffling home through the blizzard. Closing time.
"My scars," Sue says. "What happened to them?"
"What?" he asks.
"The scars from my accident." Once again she runs her fingers over herself and once again she finds the scar tissue missing, supposedly permanent geography erased by an unexpected reversal of time's current. How easily things enter and exit a map. "They're gone."
"You're a smart lady, Susan, you figure it out. Think hard."
"It's like they've been healed."
"Healed?" He sounds disappointed. "That's a meaningless term in this context. You were an EMT for enough years. You know you can't heal something that's already dead."
Meaning her scars, she thinks, dead tissue.
"What about the lobsters?" she says. "I had lobsters in the car. They were boiled, completely dead. But while I was driving, they…" Feeling him waiting, she makes herself say it. "They came back to life."
"Ah."
"But that's not possible."
"There are two kinds of people in the world, Susan. Pragmatists like yourself, who believe what they see, and the rest of the world who, when they see something they don't believe or can't understand, pretend that it isn't there. You've seen these things, and felt them for yourself. So why are you fighting it?"
"It can't be real."
"Oh, but it is real. It's as real as the knife I'm holding to your daughter's throat. And believe me when I say, the longer you wrestle with this, the closer the knife gets."
That punctures the moment for her. She doesn't have to think about it for long before it hits her that this was one of the reasons he chose her. Besides digging up the thing underneath the bridge, she was also, as the voice on the phone said, a pragmatist, one who could be counted on to believe what's in front of her no matter how impossible it seems. So she says exactly what he wants to hear.
"This route," she says, "and these seven towns. When you drive through them in the right order, it brings the dead back to life."
"Bravo."
"But why-"
"Now do you understand the significance of what I'm asking you to do?"
Automatically: "Yes."
"No," he says, "you don't, not yet. But you will."
No, she thinks. All she really understands is that she saw Veda again, touched her and almost got her back. Then she failed. Also she understands that her night is not over-there are hours left until daybreak-and after what she's just done she has no idea what else to expect between now and then.
"Don't worry, Susan. Veda's still safe and sound for the next five hours. She's sleeping. She never saw her mommy standing naked onstage in front of strangers."
He hangs up.
A red light appears in the corner of her eye.