I closed my eyes for a few seconds. Then I said, “No, you don’t understand, Plum. It’s the same as telling the horses apart. If you could pass me a knife and a screwdriver and a saw and I don’t know what else, there would be a space big enough to crawl through, and I wouldn’t need the tools to begin with. Like the horses.”

“Look out, Evan.”

“Huh?”

Look out for what, I wondered. And, in answer to my question, something plummeted through the breathing tube and hit me in the mouth. I made the appropriate noise and Plum said that she was sorry but that she had warned me. This was true enough.

I found the thing that had hit me. I said, “Oh.”

“You see, Evan?”

“It’s one of those knives,” I said.

“Yes.”

“One of those knives with a hundred blades in it.”

“Sixteen blades, I think.”

“They sell them in those little schlock shops on Times Square. Swiss Navy knives or something-”

“Swiss Army pocketknives.”

“That’s it.” I began opening the knife. There was a nail file, a tiny pair of scissors, a thing for making holes in your belt-

“It was my father’s,” Plum said. “It was his legacy to me. I always carry it.”

“I didn’t know he was in the Swiss Army.”

“He was in every army at one time or another. My mother told me this. My father was a brave mad Welshman with wild eyes and the soul of a poet.”

I kept on opening the knife. A can opener, a cap lifter, a saw, a couple of cutting blades, a chisel-

“You carry this around all the time?”

“Always, Evan.”

“I’m glad you do, but why?”

“For protection, Evan. A girl my age-”

“Protection?”

“Yes.”

“By the time you found the right blade, and got it open, you wouldn’t have much left to protect.”

She began to giggle. I opened a few more blades and found one that was designed, among other things, for unscrewing screws. I think it also told time, recited the Lord’s Prayer in three languages, and kept bridge scores. Plum went on giggling, and I started doing things to the screws that held the hinges that connected the coffin lid to the coffin.