“Back when we read these books, Mr. Keller, when we read Heinlein or Simak or Edmond Hamilton, we longed to immerse ourselves in the strange… the outre. And now—well—here we are!” He smiled breathlessly and summed up his thesis. “Immersed in the strange. All it takes is time. Just… time. Shall I put these in a bag for you?”

He bagged the books without looking at them. When I fumbled out my wallet, he raised his hand.

“No charge. This is for Lorraine. And to thank you for stopping by.”

I couldn’t argue… and I admit I didn’t want to draw his attention to the paperbacks, in the petty fear that he might notice how unusual they were and refuse to part with them. I took the paper bag from his parchment hand, feeling faintly guilty.

“Perhaps you’ll come back,” he said.

“I’d like to.”

“Anytime,” Ziegler said, inching toward his bead curtain and the musty stairway behind it, back into the cloying dark. “Anything you’re looking for, I can help you find it.”

Crossing College Street, freighted with groceries, I stepped into the path of a car, a yellow Hyundai racing a red light. The driver swerved around me, but it was a near thing. The wheel wells brushed my trouser legs. My heart stuttered a beat.

… and I died, perhaps, a small infinity of times.

Probabilities collapse. I become increasingly unlikely.

“Immersed in the strange,” Ziegler had said.

But had I ever wanted that? Really wanted that?

“Be careful,” Lorraine told me one evening in the long month before she died. Amazingly, she had seemed to think of it as my tragedy, not hers. “Don’t despise life.”

Difficult advice.

Did I “despise life”? I think I did not; that is, there were times when the world seemed a pleasant enough place, times when a cup of coffee and a morning in the sun seemed good enough reasons to continue to draw breath. I remained capable of smiling at babies. I was even able to look at an attractive young woman and feel a response more immediate than nostalgia.