Then Rainie prayed successfully to the Baby of Sorrow and the evil card she drew was an event, not a power.

"TAKE A BREAK" everyone relax, eat some food (at host's expense) call your spouses or whatever. After all, what's life for?

"About time!" said Tom. "I'm hungry."

"You've had your hands in the potato chips all night," said Douglas.

"That just means my hands are greasy."

"Nobody can eat just one," added Raymond.

They were already up from the table and moving toward the kitchen. "Should I draw another power card to replace this?" asked Rainie.

"Naw," said Jack. "When the card says take a break, we take a break. You can finish your turn when we get back."

In the kitchen, Douglas was nuking some lasagna.

"It doesn't have that revolting cottage cheese this time, does it?" Raymond was asking when Rainie came in.

"It's ricotta cheese," said Douglas.

"Oh, excuse me, ricotta cheese."

"And I made the second pan without it, just for you."

"Oh, I have to wait for the second pan, eh?"

"Wait for it or wear it," said Douglas.

Rainie pitched in and helped, but she noticed that none of them seemed to expect her to do the dishes. They cleaned up after themselves right along, so that the kitchen never got disgusting. They weren't really little boys after all.

The lasagna was pretty good, though of course the microwave heated it unevenly so that half of it was burning hot and the other half was cold. She carried her plate into the family room, where most of them were eating.

"They'll call them `the oughts,'" Grandpa was saying.

"They'll call what `the oughts?'" asked Rainie.

"The first ten years of the next century. You know, `ought-one,' `ought-two.' When I was a kid people still remembered the oughts, and people always talked about them that way. `Back in ought-five.' Like that."

"Yeah, but back then they still used the word ought for zero, too," said Douglas. "Nobody'd even know what it meant today."

"People won't use ought even if they ought to," said Tom. Several of the men near him dipped a finger into whatever they were drinking and flicked a little of the liquid onto Tom, who bowed his head graciously.

"What about zero?" said Raymond. "Just call the first two decades `the zeroes' and `the teens.'"

"People aren't going to say `zero-five,'" said Douglas. "Besides, zero has such a negative connotation. `Last year was a real zero.'"

"Aren't there any other words for zero?" asked Rainie.

"I've got it!" said Tom. "The zips! Zip-one, zip-two, zip-three."

"That's it!" cried Raymond.

Douglas tried it out. "`Back in zip-nine, when Junior got his Ph.D.' That works pretty well. It has style."

"`I know what's happening, you young whippersnapper,'" said Cecil, putting on an old man's voice. "`I remember the nineties! I didn't grow up in the zips, like you.'"

"This is great!" said Tom. "Let's write to our Congressman and get it made into a law. The next decade will be called `the zips!'"

"Don't make it a law, or they'll find a way to tax it," said Raymond.

"Fine with me," said Tom, "if I get a percentage for having thought of it."

Rainie noticed when Grandpa got up, set his plate down, and stepped outside. Probably going for a smoke, thought Rainie. And now that she thought of smoking, she wanted to. And now that she wanted to, she found herself getting up without a second thought. It was cold outside, she knew, and her coat wasn't that warm, but she needed to get out there.

And not just for the cigarette. In fact, when she got outside and looked into her purse, she realized that she didn't have any cigarettes. When had she stopped carrying them? How long had she not even noticed that she didn't have any?

"Nasty habit," said Grandpa.

She turned. He was sitting on the porch swing. Not smoking.

"I thought you came out here to smoke," said Rainie.

"Naw," he said. "I just got to thinking about the people I knew who remembered the oughts, and I liked thinking about them, and so I came out here so I could hold the thought without getting distracted."

"Well, I didn't mean to disturb you."

"No problem," said Grandpa. "I'm old enough that my thoughts aren't very complicated anymore. I get hold of one, it just goes around and around until it bumps into a dead brain cell and then I just stand there and wonder what I was thinking about."

"You're not so old," said Rainie. "You hold your own with those young men in there."

"I am so old. And they aren't all that young anymore, either."

He was right. This was definitely a party of middle-aged men. Rainie thought back to the beginning of her career and remembered that in those days, people in their forties seemed so powerful. They were the Establishment, the ones to be rebelled against. But now that she was in her forties herself she understood that if anything middle- aged people were less powerful than the young. They had less chance of changing anything. They seemed to fit into the world, not because they had made the world the way it was or because they even particularly liked it, but because they had to fit in so they could keep their jobs and feed their families. That's what I never understood when I was young, thought Rainie. I knew it with my head, but not with my heart -- that pressure of feeding a family.

Or maybe I did know it, and hated what it did to people. To my parents. Maybe that's why my marriages didn't last and I never had any babies. Because I never wanted to be forty.

Surprise. I'm past forty anyway, and lonely to boot.

"I've got a question I want you to answer," she said to Grandpa. "Straight, no jokes."

"I knew you'd get around to asking."

"Oh, really?" she said. "Since you're so knowledgeable, do you happen to know what the question is?"

"Maybe." Grandpa got up and walked near her and leaned against the porch railing, whistling. The breath came out of his mouth in a continuous little puff of vapor.

He looked unbearably smug, and Rainie longed to take him down just a notch. "OK, what did I want to know?"

"You want to know why I called you a ghost."

That was exactly what she wanted to ask, but she couldn't stand to admit that he was right. "That wasn't my question, but as long as you bring it up, why did you say that? If it was a joke I didn't get it. You hurt my feelings."

"I said it because it's true. You're just haunting us. We can see you, but we can't touch you in any way."

"I have been touched in a hundred places since I came here."

"You got nothing at risk here, Ida Johnson," said Grandpa. "You don't care."

Rainie thought of Minnie. Of Douglas and his kids. "You're wrong, Grandpa Spaulding. I care very much."

"You care with your heart, maybe, but not with your soul. You care with those feelings that come and go like breezes, nothing that's going to last. You're playing with house money here. No matter how it comes out, you can't lose. You're going to come away from Harmony Illinois with more than you brought here."

"Maybe so," said Rainie. "Is that a crime?"

"No ma'am. Just a discovery. Something I noticed about you and I didn't think you'd noticed about yourself."

"Well ain't you clever, Grandpa." She smiled when she said it, so he'd know she was teasing him, not really being snide. But it hurt her feelings all over again, mostly because she could see now that he was right. How could anything she did here be real, after all, when nobody even knew her right name? In a way Ida Johnson was her right name -- it was her mother's name, anyway, and didn't Douglas Spaulding have the same name as his father? Didn't he give the same name to his son? Why couldn't she use her mother's name? How was that a lie, really, when you looked at it the right way? "Ain't you clever. You found out my secret. Grandpa Spaulding, Gray Detective. Sees a strange woman in his parlor one November evening and all at once he knows everything there is to know about her."