“Thirty-one.”
Then came a swift series of questions. Color of hair, eyes, skin, favorite perfume, texture and size index. “Have you a dimensional photo of her? A tape recording of her voice? Ah, I see you do. Good. Now—”
An hour later, George Hill was perspiring.
“That’s all.” The dark man arose and scowled. “You still want to go through with it.”
“Yes.”
“Sign here.”
He signed.
“You know this is illegal?”
“Yes.”
“And that we’re in no way responsible for what happens to you as a result of your request?”
“For God’s sake!” cried George. “You’ve kept me long enough. Let’s get on!”
The man smiled faintly. “It’ll take nine hours to prepare the marionette of your wife. Sleep awhile, it’ll help your nerves. The third mirror room on your left is unoccupied.”
George moved in a slow numbness to the mirror room. He lay on the blue velvet cot, his body pressure causing the mirrors in the ceiling to whirl. A soft voice sang, “Sleep…sleep… sleep…”
George murmured, “Katherine, I didn’t want to come here. You forced me into it. You made me do it. God, I wish I weren’t here. I wish I could go back. I don’t want to kill you.”
The mirrors glittered as they rotated softly.
He slept.
* * *
He dreamed he was forty-one again, he and Katie running on a green hill somewhere with a picnic lunch, their helicopter beside them. The wind blew Katie’s hair in golden strands and she was laughing. They kissed and held hands, not eating. They read poems; it seemed they were always reading poems.
Other scenes. Quick changes of color, in flight. He and Katie flying over Greece and Italy and Switzerland, in that clear, long autumn of 1997! Flying and never stopping!
And then—nightmare. Katie and Leonard Phelps. George cried out in his sleep. How had it happened? Where had Phelps sprung from? Why had he interfered? Why couldn’t life be simple and good? Was it the difference in age? George touching fifty, and Katie so young, so very young. Why, why?
The scene was unforgettably vivid. Leonard Phelps and Katherine in a green park beyond the city. George himself appearing on a path only in time to see the kissing of their mouths.
The rage. The struggle. The attempt to kill Leonard Phelps.
More days, more nightmares.
George Hill awoke, weeping.
* * *
“Mr. Hill, we’re ready for you now.”
Hill arose clumsily. He saw himself in the high and now-silent mirrors, and he looked every one of his years. It had been a wretched error. Better men than he had taken young wives only to have them dissolve away in their hands like sugar crystals under water. He eyed himself, monstrously. A little too much stomach. A little too much chin. Somewhat too much pepper in the hair and not enough in the limbs…
The dark man led him to a room.
George Hill gasped. “This is Katie’s room!”
“We try to have everything perfect.”