It was a feeling, though, not like being
there, not like having anything explained."
"Is that going to happen?" Mimi asked Brad.
Brad looked down at the table. "'Answer unclear, ask again later.'
That's what this Magic 8-Ball I bought in a store once used to say."
"Does that mean you don't know?"
"I think it means I don't want to know."
#
"Don't worry," Bert said. "Kurt's safe tonight."
Alan stopped lacing up his shoes and slumped back on the bench in his
foyer. Mimi had done the dishes, Bill had dried, and he'd fretted about
Kurt. But it wasn't until he couldn't take it anymore and was ready to
go and find him, bring him home if necessary, that Billy had come to
talk to him.
"Do you know that for sure?"
"Yes. He has dinner with a woman, then he takes her dumpster diving and
comes home and goes to bed. I can see that."
"But you don't see everything?"
"No, but I saw that."
"Fine," Adam said. He felt hopeless in the face of these predictions, as
though the future were something set and immutable.
"I need to use the bathroom," Billy said, and made his way upstairs
while Alan moved to a sofa and paged absently through an old edition of
*Alice in Wonderland* whose marbled frontispiece had come detached.
A moment later, Mimi joined him, sitting down next to him, her wings
unfolded across the sofa back.
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