"Yeah, that’s just part-time," Izzy said. "I’m also the Emperor of the Magellanic Clouds."

"That still don’t let me out of having to be back at Gibson’s 8:30 a.m. Monday morning though," Izzy said, "unless I want to be docked for the time, which I don’t."

"Dualism!" cried Lila Kodzi. With Sarvaduhka, she had found a way up from the base of the rest stop cafe rocket ship desert concession. Sarvaduhka had become too frightened to remain in my shadow below. "Dualism! You are not both here and there, liar! If you are an Emperor, you are not a lathe setup man as you claimed to me in our conjugal bed at the Cairo Khan Suites Hotel. Izzy Molson, I abjure all past relationship with such as you."

"That suits me okay," said Izzy. "I’m working on a little something in Tonawanda, anyways, name of Fay."

"Creep!" She abruptly turned away, grabbed Sarvaduhka’s jaw and kissed him passionately and long. He squealed. He stopped squealing. He kissed her back.

I stared at Nora, and the world dissolved. Let the Space People devour Shaman. Let Izzy install Johnny Abilene on the throne of the SMC and himself take up the Imperial Scepter of the combined galaxies, while punching in and out at his Lockport factory. Let Sarvaduhka have his female action, and Lila her one divine nature of Christ. Gypsy was dead, but bodies aren’t important. Nasser was dead too.

"Nora…" I said.

"It’s impossible, Mel," she said.

"Why? We’ll go to Sanduleak together and live there forever, Abu al-Hawl and the Queen of Punt, Mel and Nora Bellow."

"You know it’s impossible, even by epoche. You have to go back to Sandy, to release Abu, to return, to become one again on the neutron star. You’re half-Magellanic. I’m just an Earther. And I’m pregnant."

"I love you, Nora."

"I’ll raise our child, my grandchild, your sibling."

"I won’t poke my eyes out, Nora."

"I’m not asking you to. Keep them open. Keep them wide open."

"I will… Hey!" The cafe was shaking and whipping like a flame in the wind. Izzy was beeping again. "Izzy, who’s doing an epoche?"

"I am, Melba," Izzy said. "There’s a number of things wrong here. I don’t like monarchies in North America, or Vietnamese troops either, not yet; also, this rest stop belongs in Texas, and Abu?which means you?better haul ass back to the Magellanics right now, if I’m gonna have time to patch you permanent and still make coffee and Danish before the morning shift. Keep a tight ass now, Melly, but don’t bother to buckle up. Ten… nine… eight…"

"Take this, son!" Johnny threw me his guitar.

The relic background radiation spiked to three point eight, then dipped to three again, and we were gone.

Izzy’s epoche left Nora standing between the zucchinis and the cherry tomatoes behind the house Johnny Abilene had built her in upstate New York. Somehow, a year had passed, and her mouth was full of clothespins. She found herself hanging diapers to a yellow nylon line while she stared southwest at dusk’s rosy fingers. She was in the wrong hemisphere to see the Magellanic Clouds. But I could see her?and Junior too, inside, in the wicker basket next to Nora’s bed: