they made no attempt to engage her in conversation, however, and her attempts to chat with them were always shortlived.

Isolation, she began to realize, could became a problem if she didn't find some way to be accepted into the community, and she started to make a list of possible ways to ease that process. A party, held in the street outside the house, perhaps? Or an invitation to the house for a few choice neighbors to whom she could tell her story.

While she was turning these options over she made a discovery that was to prove strangely influential. She found a started to sort tnrougn Lne votuiiic:n, Ltiat ti.,y dreamed up by Maeve. More likely they'd been smuggled over into the Metacosm (or carried accidentally) by fleshand-blood trespassers like herself. How else to explain the presence of a book of higher mathematics beside a treatise on the history of whaling beside a water-stained edition of the Decameron?

It was this last that most appealed to her, not for the text-which she found dry-but for the black and white etchings scattered throughout it. Two of the artists-the pictures were rendered in three distinct styles-had chosen episodes of great drama to depict, but the third was only interested in sex. His style was far from slick, but he made up for that by dint of his sheer audacity. The people in his pictures were caught in the throes of sexual frenzy, and none of them shy about it. Monks sported huge erections, peasant women lay on bales of hay with their legs in the air, a couple were fucking in mud: all in bliss.

One illustration in particular caught Phoebe's fancy. It pictured a woman kneeling in a field with her dress hitched up so that her amply endowed lover could come into her from behind. As she studied it, a ripple of pleasure passed through her, her flesh remembering what her mind had tried so hard to forget: Joe's hands, Joe's lips, Joe's body. She felt his palms against her breasts and belly; felt the pressure of his hips against her buttocks.

"Oh God... " she sighed at last, and pitched the book back into the closet, slamming the door on it.

That wasn't the end of the story however; not by a long way. When she retired a couple of hours later, the image and its consequences still lingered. She would not be able to sleep, she knew, unless she pleasured herself a little, so she lay there on her mattress-which was still where she'd first set it, in front of the window-and with her eyes on the undulating sky she played between her legs until sleep found her.

She dreamed; of a man. But this time it was not Morton.

were acute enough to make him out. was whatever visible presence he possessed-the shred of self the fire watchers had seen-Awindling still further? He feared so. If they were to see him now he doubted they'd be quite so worshipful.

Several times he decided to leave Liverpool altogether-he didn't find the sights and sounds of reconstruction comforting; they only reminded him of how removed from life he'd become-but something kept him from leaving. He tried to attach some rationale to his reluctance (he needed time to recuperate, time to plan, time to understand his condition), but none of these explanations touched the truth. Something was holding him in the city, an invisible cord around his invisible neck.

Then, one gloomy day while he was loitering down by the harbor watching the ships, he felt something tug at him.

At first, he dismissed the sensation as wish-fulrillment. But it came again, and again, and on the third try he dared allow himself a measure of excitement. This was the first time since the fire watchers he'd felt some interaction with the world outside his thoughts.

He didn't resist the summons. Up from the harbor he went, following the unspoken call.

Phoebe dreamed she was back in Dr. Powell's office, and Joe was out in the hallway, where she'd first seen him, painting the ceiling. It was raining hard. She could hear the deluge slapping against the window of the empty waiting room, and beating on the roof.

"Joe?" she said.

Her lover-to-be was perched on the top of a ladder, naked to the waist, his broad back spattered with pale green paint. Oh, but he looked so fine, with his hair cropped close to his beautiful head, and his ears jutting out, and that patch of hair at the small of his back disappearing under his belt into the crack of his ass.

"Joe?" she said, hoping she could get him to turn around. "I've got something to show you."

As she spoke she went to the low table in the middle of the waiting room and, clearing off all the dog-eared magazines with one sweep of her arm, she lay on it facing him. For some reason the rain had started to come through the ceiling, and it fell on her in sharp, straight drops. they did more than drench her; they began to wash the clothes from her body as if her blouse and dress had been painted on, the colors running off her limbs and pooling around the table, leaving her naked, which was exactly how she wanted to be.

"You can turn round now," she said to him, putting her hand down between her legs. He always liked to watch her play. "Go on," she said to him,

"turn round and look at me."

He'd passed by this house on the hill before, and wondered who lived here. He would soon find out.

He was moving down the path to the steps, up the steps to the door, through the door to the staircase. Somebody at the top of the flight was murmuring: He couldn't quite hear what. He paused a moment to listen. The speaker was a woman, he could make out that much, but he couldn't yet grasp the words, so he started to ascend.

"Joe?"

He had heard her; there was no doubt of that. He'd put down his painthrush and was wiping his hands, taking his time, knowing it only made the moment when their eyes met all the more intense if it was delayed a little.

"I've waited a long time for this... " she told him.

He didn't dare believe what he was hearing. Not the words themselves, though they were wonderful: the voice that spoke them.

Phoebe here? How was that possible? She was in Everville, the world he'd left and lost forever. Not here; not in this musty house, calling to him. That was too much to hope for.

"Oh, Joe the woman was sighing, and God in Heaven, it sounded like her, so very like her.

He went to the door, knowing whoever was speaking was on the other side of it and suddenly afraid to enter, afraid to know it wasn't her. He paused a moment, preparing himself for the pain to come, then slipped inside. The room was huge and chaotic. His gaze instantly went to the bed at the far end. It was piled high with pillows and scattered with pieces of paper, but there was nobody lying there.

Then, from the tangle of sheets on the floor, the voice, her voice, warm with welcome.

"Joe... " she said. "I've missed you so much."

He was looking at her. Finally, he was looking at her. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, descending the ladder and sauntering in from the hallway to the table where she lay, her body wet with rain.

"I'm all yours," she said.

It was her. God in Heaven, it was her! How she came to be here didn't matter. Nor did why. All that mattered was that here she was, his Phoebe, his glorious Phoebe, whose face he'd despaired of ever seeing again.

Did she know he was close?

Her eyes were shut, her pupils roving behind her lids, but he didn't doubt she was dreaming of him. There was sweat on her face, and on her legs, which were bare. He longed for the fingers to pull away the sheet that lay between; for the lips to kiss that place and the cock to pleasure it. to make again the love they'd made those afternoons in Everville, bodies intertwined as though they'd never be separated.

"Come closer," she said in her sleep.

He did so. Stood over the bottom of her bed and looked down on her. If love had weight, she'd feel it now. Or if a scent, smell it, or if a shadow, know it was cast upon her. He didn't care how she came to realize his presence, as long as somehow she did; somehow understood that after the dream of him she would find his spirit waiting close by, ready for the moment when she opened her eyes and made him real.