By minute fifteen she began seeing flashes of their lives in snippets, apart and together, playing side by side like a film. A wedding, maybe, probably. Aldo wouldn’t want one but Masso probably would, and Regan would invite Madeline happily and her parents less happily. But they could be there, because she had taken away their ability to hold any power over her happiness （okay it was an ongoing effort, but she had started it and that counted for something）， and they could watch as she said to Aldo: I do. In another frame, they break up and she moves to Italy or something. She fucks a series of younger and younger twenty-year-olds until they exhaust her, and then she comes back with her life in pieces to find that Professor Damiani is busy, can I take a message? and she says, No, no, never mind, this was a mistake. In another frame she turns to Aldo and says, You know, one of the little quirks of this mortal prison of mine is it can make other humans if you want it to, and he smiles in a way that means: Yes. In another frame she watches him leave her on a loop, on repeat, and her feet are trapped in place like it’s a nightmare—and it is, isn’t it?—so she thinks no, not this one, next. The next frame has her sleeping beside him; that’s it, just sleeping. He leans over and kisses her forehead while she sleeps on, ignorant and stupidly peaceful. It is free of time entirely, belonging to no special hour. This, she thinks, this is the one.
Somewhere in the universe a star exploded or someone was born or they died or time passed while Regan stood there and missed him, while she mourned him, and then she thought with an equally quiet violence: Maybe I do not have to do it alone.
By minute fifteen he was finally gone, turning abruptly and half-sprinting for the doors, and in his absence Regan emptied, watching all their alternate lives begin to wilt. She mourned them like her children, holding their lifeless corpses to her chest, and then she forgot them, slowly, each one vanishing without a trace, until she held nothing at all.
Eventually she looked down at her empty hands and thought: Damn it.
Damn it, I love him.
Then, after the smoke cleared, she could see nothing else.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
He answers the phone on the second ring; he didn’t think she would call.
She hadn’t planned to, but here she was.
（Silence.）
For what it’s worth he’d hoped she would. But then again it’s not strictly within his skillset to hope.
She disagrees. His profession is built on hope, isn’t it?
Funny she should say that. He was just starting to think she might be right.
（Silence.）
Well, anyway, they didn’t need to get into that again. Not yet.
Yet?
No. Actually, she called to tell him something.
Oh?
Well, more accurately, she called to talk to him about something. She wants to have （and here, another breath of pause）： A Conversation.
Okay. （Is he smiling? He is.） Okay, he’s free, he can talk. What does she want to talk about?
She wants to talk about time.
Time?
Yes, time.
He thought time was his thing.
Well, it’s about his thoughts on time, so yeah, it is.
Okay, tell him.
Well, she was thinking about what he said; about how he could turn a corner and walk into some other situation that was nearly the same but different. What exactly did he mean by that?
（A pause.）
Well, he thinks time is some sort of cycle or loop, right? But seeing as it’s more likely to be a hexagon than a circle, because of nature etc etc, that means time must have corners.
So, she could turn a corner and end up as … what, exactly?
She’d still be herself, only she’d be herself as she would have been in the direction time was moving at that point.
Okay, so say she turned a corner and she was … maybe eighteen years old or something, but say she carried with her some vague memory of who she’d been before. Could she do that?
She can do anything she wants. （He sounds like he means it.）
Okay, cool, so she turns a corner, she’s eighteen, it’s a past that isn’t her actual past, so she’s in love with him but she doesn’t know it yet.
If she’s eighteen, then they don’t know each other at all.
Right—not yet, but maybe they meet a different way that time. Say they meet at a party, for example.
A party? （He’s skeptical.）
Yes, she knows, just go with her here—
Okay, okay, if she says so …
She’s holding a beer and looking around like, Fuck this shit, and naturally he sees her.
Because she has an energy?
Yes, exactly, because she has an energy and he recognizes it. He’s seen it before.