Four

"A lifetime," she said. "And you? You're so old. How did all that time go by? How does any time go by at all?"

"Last time I saw you," Tommy thought, "was in high school, I think. You were going out with Captain. That's what we called him, anyway. I forget what his real name was."

"George Capelli," she said, and he thought he felt a smile in her voice.

"All those names," he sighed, "who can ever keep track? We meet so many people, here in the city. We see them by the hundred, by the million, every day and every one of them has a name, and they come and go so fast, and you never know their story, certainly not the whole of it. Don't you ever wonder? Don't you ever imagine how it could possibly happen? Each and every person you meet has come a whole lifetime to that point of contact and you could never track back the lines, and even the fact of you meeting them could have been prevented or avoided by any one of a billion tiny actions and reactions and rearrangement of the elements. That you and I even knew each other once upon a time is almost, almost but not quite, impossible."

"I remember you from science class," she said. "We were partners, remember? Lab partners. That's when I called you Tommy Turtle."

"Everybody called me Tommy Turtle," he replied, "because I was always so slow, and because of my last name too, of course."

"I thought I made it up," she said and he shook his head. On the outside Jimmy Blanks noticed that shaking and shook his own. The old man's dreaming, he said to himself.

"Maybe you did," Tommy told her. "Who can remember?"

"It was because of your glasses," she said, "you had those tortoise shell glasses. I think you were even the only kid in our grade to did wear glasses. It made you look smart."

"Fooled you, huh?" he wanted to laugh. So that's why she volunteered to be his lab partner. He had thought that maybe she liked him. That's what had set the whole thing off, the dreams and daydreams, the fantasies and hopes, the million hours up there in his head where he and Margaret Garfield would be kissing or at least holding hands so that everyone in the school would see, but it was only because she thought he was smart, because he wore glasses, when really the reason he wore glasses was that he just couldn't see very well. It had nothing to do with intelligence. She must have figured it out sometime, because they both did really lousy in that class. The experiments never went well. Either he'd set something on fire or stuff would blow up. The things that were supposed to turn blue overnight never did. They never even turned anything.

"I guess I dragged you down," he wanted to apologize.

"I was just as dumb as you," she confided. "Probably dummer. I didn't care about anything in school. All I cared about then was whether or not George Capelli had noticed me that day. I was after him for years. You're right, though. I finally did get him, in high school, for about a month, until I let him go all the way. Boy, that was stupid. That was the last time I ever 'had' George Capelli."

"He was like that," Tommy said.

"I know!" she replied, "I even knew it then. He'd done the same thing to every other girl who let him. Still, he was the captain."

"All aboard," Tommy muttered, and Jimmy Blanks shook his head once again.

"Still nothing?" asked the prettier nurse, the one who didn't try to run him over every time she came by.

"He's just mumbling nonsense," Jimmy told her.

"Hey," he called out before she got away, "did those blood tests come back?"

"Yes," she said, "the doctor has seen them. You'll have to ask him."

"Where is he?" Jimmy asked, looking around.

"He got called into surgery," she shrugged. "Be back in a while."

"That's just peachy," Jimmy sighed after she left. "I sure could use a cup of coffee," but he didn't get up. He was certain that someone was guaranteed to swipe that chair if he so much as stood up once again, and he was damned if he was going to let that happen.

"I'm not going to stand here all night." he declared.