“I know,” said Luke. “Marchant.”
“Of course you know.” She laughed. “Or you think you do, but you don’t. He was Rick.”
“No.” He sighed, sounding bored. “He’s Marchant disguised as Rick, but he’s always Marchant. Never forget that. You’ve seen him in your dreams—first as Marchant, then as Billy Rapp… he’s like an actor playing a part.”
“But he’s Rick. He was special this time. And you’re wrong—Marchant, Billy, and Rick—he’s always different. This one was unique.” She folded her arms and turned to look at him.
Something in her stance or features seemed to make him pull back and look at her. “What’s wrong?”
“So we’re tied together—you, me, and Rick?”
“You and Marchant.”
“Rick,” she corrected him. “How does this curse work?”
“Well, your life is pretty normal, until you meet Marchant or some version of him, and then it always goes wrong and you…” He paused. “Well, you call me to intervene. It’s like a loop, always the same. The dreams you have are part of it. All the different versions of you need to reconcile into one person, so the dreams start, but they don’t start before you call me. I’m your administrator. I look out for you. Think of me as a guardian angel.”
“Or the opposite.”
He nodded. “Or the opposite. How you look at it is up to you.”
She held up the letter. “Rick is volunteering to go over there… to take pictures. Then he says he’s coming here, after.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that he do that, nor that you encourage it.” Luke leaned over and put her face in his hands and pulled her close—so close their lips were almost brushing against each other. “You made a bargain and there are consequences.” He shook his head and laughed bitterly. “It has always… always… been you. I have a choice, remember that. Marchant doesn’t, but I do. It’s forbidden for me to love you. There have been consequences for me to love you and still I choose to do it over and over. You are mistaken if you think this version of him is genuine. He isn’t. He’s not capable of it.”
“What consequences are there for you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does. You can’t say something like that and not finish it. What are you? What consequences do you have for loving me?”
Luke got up and walked away but seemed to rethink something and came back. He grabbed Sandra and kissed her, deeply. She stood up and pulled him closer, swaying for just a moment. Like an imprint, she remembered every patch of stubble and smooth part of Luke’s face as she touched him.
Finally, she pulled away. “No.”
He shrugged his shoulders for her to continue. “What?”
“I’m not falling for this again. You controlling the shots of what I know and don’t know. What are we, Luke?”
He looked puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.” His eyes were the deep blue of the sky in Taos.
“I don’t know what I am.”
He looked down at the floor. “Does it matter?”
“Very much. I’m not mad about you not telling Nora she was going to die, but I’ve noticed something—you keep things from me. You think it’s best that I not know them, but that isn’t your right.”
He looked down.
“You think you’re helping me, but you’re not. And since I’m here because of a curse, I assume that you’re a demon of some sort? Isn’t that what my administrator is? Paul and Marie, too? There’s a version of them in each of my lives.”
He met her eyes, and there was defeat in them as though he’d been kicked. “They’re lesser demons.”
“So, by the same token, should I assume that I’m some kind of demon as well?”
“No.” He ran his hands through his hair. “You’re a witch. Like your mother.”
She looked down at the letter. “That’s bullshit. This whole thing is bullshit. You saved Rick, not me. This power that I have, let’s not fool ourselves. You’ve created it for some entertainment purpose this time around, just like you created this sham of a recording studio. If making this record wasn’t Hugh’s dream, I wouldn’t let the charade that we’re making an album continue.” She pulled back from him and began to walk toward the steps.
“You’re wrong, Sandra.” His voice was quiet. “I didn’t save Rick, you did. Do you recall Nora being able to make Lillibet forget she’d seen her? That was the first time I noticed that something was going on. Something more. You’re getting more powerful in each life.”
“What are you talking about?” Sandra cocked her head.
He was silent.
“Oh. You won’t tell me? This is madness, you know. That you let it go on again and again is madness.”
“You don’t think I hate this?” Never had Luke looked at her with such intensity. “I am powerless. Do you know what my sole reason for existing is? You.”
“Well, if I’m your sole purpose, then you do a lousy job.” As she said it, Sandra knew she’d gone too far.
He laughed bitterly and looked up at the chandelier above them. “Maybe I have done a lousy job. It doesn’t matter that I watch you fall in love with someone else again and again. I’m always picking up the pieces after Marchant is done with you, like now.”
“Well, that’s the job, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s pathetic because I know as I stand here that in another forty years, I’ll do it again with another version of you. My only fucking hope in the next life is that the new version of you isn’t as big a bitch as this one seems to be.”
He walked off and didn’t look back.
The house was quiet for the rest of the day. He didn’t come to the studio.
Late that night Marie fried up burgers with chilies and melted cheese and left one on the counter for Luke, but it went untouched. On the radio in the kitchen, President Nixon was giving a speech to the nation about the war. Now, with Rick over there, the war was more personal to Sandra, and she found herself sinking on the sofa next to Marie to hear him. As night fell and the temperature dropped, Sandra excused herself to go to her room. As she walked down the hall, she knocked on Luke’s door. His face was weary when he saw it was her.
“I thought it was Marie with dinner.”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.” He stood back from the door.
“I don’t want to fight with you.” The feeling of his lips on hers still burned.
He sat on the bed and folded his hands in defeat. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. It wasn’t true.”
“Me too. You don’t do a lousy job. I know you try your best.” Sandra thought he resembled an inmate in a prison cell, biding his time. “I think you hoped that I’d get my Nora memories back and we’d just resume as things were. Where we left off.”
“I did. We were happy.” He raked his hands through his hair, looking strained. In the lives she’d been shown, he hadn’t looked this strained, old even. “You don’t seem happy. I can help you, if you’d let me.”