I checked Amy's watch. 6:40 p.m. My God, it must be Friday already, I thought. I must have been a toilet for over… 20 hours? If so, this meant the infamous party-the “Best of Philly,” where Susannah would be all alone, needing Paul's protection-started in twenty minutes. And if my hunch was correct, it wouldn't be Paul showing up to take care of her. It would be Brad Larsen, showing up to really take care of her. And I had to stop him before he scotched my entire investigation.

I flipped the note over. On the back was nothing but an address:

473 Winding Way, Merion PA.

I didn't recognize the address-I wasn't even sure if it was close to the city. Merion? Could be a small hamlet outside of Pittsburgh. What was Amy/Alison supposed to do with it?

The answer was sitting across the room, my desk, in the form of a present.

I walked over to the record player on my desk. It had a silver bow and a yellow note attached to it: Play Me. There was a 45 record on the platter. The label had been ripped off. I lifted the arm and dropped the needle into the groove. A familiar guitar note wailed, and rhythm guitars kicked in.

If I could make a wish… I think I'd pass…

Oh God. Not that song.

Can't think of anything I need…

I could feel the tears forming in my/Alison's eyes, and our body starting to tremble. She was remembering. Triggered by the Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe.” The song she died to. The song that would blast open all the doors in her psyche. In a split second, I relived every torment. And so did Amy. After all, songs pinned down times and places like nothing else.

Bodily control was jerked away from me, and I was back in the Brain simulation of my apartment. (It was kind of like the two different viewpoints you get when you shut one eye, then the other. Subtle, but a shift nonetheless.) I felt us moving toward a mirror. She glared into it, hair in her face, cheeks wet. “Who am I?"

I formed a mental mike and spoke to her. It's me, Del. I'm here to help you Am… Alison.

“I remember,” she said.

I know you do.

“I remember everything."

Yes, I understand.

“I want my husband back."

Okay, Alison. Let's go get him.

Twenty-Three

The Spirits of ‘76

Finding the party wasn't tough. The Philadelphia Art Museum is one of the most obvious landmarks in the world. Somebody had decided to put it right at the end of a parkway that cut a diagonal right across the ordinarily precise grid that was Center City. (Just to shake things up, one presumes.) And that night, in case you were confused, helpful folks in tuxedoes were only too glad to point you in the right direction. A year later, a movie about a scrappy boxer from the slums would seal the Museum's fate, and countless tourists would be compelled to run up this marble torture mountain.

The hardest part was walking in two-inch heels. It was the dressiest thing Alison had in her closet, and they made those damned Museum steps an absolute horror. It was the goddamned Mount Everest of Culture. Do people love art this much? At the top of the 42 million steps, another kid in a tux told us the entrance for the party was around back. I asked Alison if she was okay with taking over her body for a while-after all, she had more experience with these things. She agreed.

We walked around the huge piece of land, and up a sloped driveway to the back, which was littered with Cadillacs dropping people off. At the door, a pimply kid in an ruffled tux shirt three sizes too big asked us for our ticket. Alison started to stammer, so I offered to take over again. We were a spiritual tag team.

“We're on the list,” I said.

“We?” he repeated.

Whoops. “I mean, I'm on the list. With my guest."

The kid nodded and checked his list-a tattered mimeograph. Then he frowned and looked back at us. “Uh, what's your name?"

“Guest of Richard Gard."

It took him a full five minutes to find the Gs. “Right. Gard. He's already inside. With a guest."

“I'm his mistress,” I said, and pushed my way past him.

“Wait!” he called after me. “You forgot your sticker!"

“Stick it up your ass,” I shouted back, which earned me strange looks from some well-dressed bystanders. I smiled coquettishly and kept walking. It was fun being a woman.

I walked down a hallway and into the main hall, the heart of the party. This wasn't your usual swanky affair. The room looked more like a carnival, with booths and tables set along the perimeter of the hall, stocked with beef and booze and deserts and whatever else the editors of the city magazine had deemed “the best.” Smelled like a scam to me. Taste was a highly subjective thing. Frankly, this seemed like a lame excuse to stock a room full of advertisers and have them cater the thing for free. Including, no doubt, the mini Big Band wailing a jazzed-up version of “Turn the Beat Around” over in the corner of the museum.

I nabbed a cup of beer and a cracker full of some kind of seafood and started the search for my body.

Before long, I found it. Brad and our client were standing near a booth sponsored by Wyborowa Vodka, which was giving away free samples in tiny cups. It looked as if Brad had told a joke, because Susannah was laughing and brushing her brown hair back over her ears. Clearly, he hadn't told her yet. I doubt her reaction to “By the way, you're the bitch who knifed me” would be laughter. What was he waiting for?

I passed a silver punch bowl and caught my reflection, which answered my own question. Of course. He's waiting for me. The Alison me.

No, Brad wasn't expecting his bride-in-a-robot to show up here, now. He'd intended her to show up much later in the evening, around 9:30, say, at 473 Winding Way in Merion. For whatever reason.

It was time to liven this party up.

“Hi there, Pauly boy,” I said. Because in this context, it was his name. Paul After. Protector of innocents. Killer of men. “Long time, no see. Who's the tramp?"

I watched Susannah's eyebrows lift in confusion, then suddenly plummet in contempt. “Paul…?” she asked.

The color drained from Brad/Paul's face. I could practically smell the smoke burning in his fevered brain. Was he trying to figure out how his dead wife showed up here, ahead of schedule? Or was he trying to calculate a way out of this without ruining his master plan?

Either way, it didn't matter. I used the opportunity to launch myself out of Amy/Alison's body, right into his eyes, and back into my own body.

To be honest, I wasn't sure I could do something like that. It'd always been the opposite: sucking somebody else in-absorption, not active possession. The thing seemed to work both ways, however. I saw the world in front of me enlarge, as if I were moving my head closer and closer to a photograph. Paul's eyes grew as immense as national monuments, and I dove right in.

It's hard to describe what happened next in physical terms. Kind of like tackling somebody to the ground, only using your head. In other words, it hurt like the dickens.

Next thing I knew, Brad and I were rolling around on the Brain Hotel lobby floor. I was back. Yes, praise the Lord, I was home. I lifted myself up to my knees. It was time to reassume command of this vessel, damn it.

Brad threw a fist into my gut.

Or, to be technical about it, he threw a fist into the part of my soul that equated with the human stomach. I buckled over for a moment, then tossed a fist back into the part of him equated with the human nose.