A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

writing," he told him.
       "Thanks." I could feel James searching for me.
       "See you tomorrow." Mr. Brown raised the window. "How the hell did I get on this street?" I looked back, as we glided away, to see James walk his bicycle toward the garage. It was a light blue house, peeling, with ivy growing up one side and a fig tree in the lawn. The number over the door was 723. The side mirror on the bike flashed as he rolled it into the darkness of the garage. I made a wish as if I had just seen a falling star. I wished that James were my host. A thrill burned through me like a fast wick. Seven twenty-three. I repeated it over and over like an incantation.
       When we arrived at Mr. Brown's house a few minutes later, a dreadful thing happened. When he entered the house, I could not. I was as barred from moving through the doorway (or the wall, for that matter) as a leaf would be when blown up against a solid pane of glass. Instead of flowing through the door as he closed it behind him, I bobbed against it. I floated to the window where I could hear faint sounds from the kitchen. I could touch the outer walls in my benign way, but I could not enter. I didn't mean to, but I cried out, like a child fallen down a well. My spec tral voice frightened the crows in the oak nearby, and this sobered me, for a while. I paced round and round the small house, looking in at every window. As when I wished to be one of the actors I watched on a stage far below, I had made a grave error in judg ment.
       I tried to thrust my arms through the wall and cleave to Mr. Brown again, as I had with my Knight, but I couldn't. If you love me, I thought at him, invite me in. But I knew better. It wasn't a matter of love. It was only nature. I hadn't so much broken the rule of proximity as the mysterious rule of devotion. I had wished for another host. My spirit had wandered off, and this had severed our tie like a blossom cut from the vine. The old pain would be returning soon. Stubbornly I bumped against the same window time and again, like a moth with no memory. I found that the bedroom window was half open, but still I could not enter. I waited there, my face at the brink of the opening, my hands gripping the window frame like prison bars, waiting for my hell to come for me.
       Mr. Brown came in and sat on the bed, looking troubled. His wife followed and went to the mirror, taking a clip from the dressing table and looking at herself in the glass as she twisted and fastened up her hair. She saw Mr. Brown in the reflection and asked, "What's wrong?"
       "Nothing," he said, but when he tried to smile, she turned and looked at him.
       He shrugged. Mrs. Brown came over and sat beside him. "Really," she said.
       He lay down on his back, gazing at the ceiling. "I don't know."
       She lay on her side by him, raised up on her elbow so she could observe his expression. "Tell me."
       He looked so worried, but he played absently with the fingers of her right hand as he spoke. "It's like I have the feeling I lost something or I forgot something. It keeps bugging me."
       Mrs. Brown leaned over and gave him a short kiss on the shoulder. "It'll come back to you." Then she said, "Did you mail that package to my sister?"
       "Yes."
       "Well, that was probably it."
       "It doesn't feel like that," he said. "It's like when you know you dreamed about someone, but you can't remember what hap pened in the dream. I feel as if I can't remember...." He stopped. Mrs. Brown stroked his chest, drawing soft circles over his heart.
       After a moment he said, "What if I've forgotten a person?"
       "Like your first grade teacher, you mean? Someone like that?"
       "Is there a moment when you'll never be able to remember something again?"
       "No," said his wife. "Your mind will never lose anything for ever that's worth keeping." She gave his temple a playful push, and he let his head fall to one side. "It's all in there."
       Something