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    isn't it?''
    `Ì suppose so. Look at me, Clyde.''
    My heart stuttered but my head stayed down and my eyes kept tracing over BEverley 6 4214. Part of me wondered if
    hell was hot enough for Mavis Weld. When I spoke, my voice came out steady. I was
    surprised but grateful. `Ìn fact, I
    might take a whole year of sick days. In Carmel, maybe. Sit out on the deck with the
    American Mercury in my lap and
    watch the big ones come in from Hawaii.''
    ``Look at me.''
    I didn't want to, but my head came up just the same. He was sitting in the client's
    chair where Mavis had once sat, and
    Ardis McGill, and Big Tom Hatfield. Even Vernon Klein had sat there once, when he got
    those pictures of his daughter
    wearing nothing but an opium grin and her birthday suit. Sitting there with the same
    patch of California sun slanting
    across his features--features I most certainly had seen before. The last time had been
    less than an hour ago, in my
    bathroom mirror. I'd been scraping a Gillette Blue Blade over them.
    The expression of sympathy in his eyes--in my eyes--was the most hideous thing I'd
    ever seen, and when he held out
    his hand--held outmy hand--I felt a sudden urge to wheel around in my swivel chair,
    get to my feet, and go running
    straight out my seventh-floor office window. I think I might even have done it, if I
    hadn't been so confused, so totally
    lost. I've read the word unmanned plenty of times--it's a favorite of the pulp-smiths
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    and sob-sisters--but this was the
    first time I'd ever actually felt that way.
    Suddenly the office darkened. The day had been perfectly clear, I would have sworn to
    that, but a cloud had crossed the
    sun just the same. The man on the other side of the desk was at least ten years older
    than I was, maybe fifteen, his hair
    almost completely white while mine was still almost all black, but that didn't change
    the simple fact--no matter what
    he was calling himself or how old he looked, he was me. Had I thought his voice
    sounded familiar? Sure. The way your
    own voice sounds familiar--although not quite the way it sounds inside your own head-when you hear it on a
    recording.
    He picked my limp hand up off the desk, shook it with the briskness of a real-estate
    agent on the make, then dropped it
    again. It hit the desk-blotter with a plop, landing on Mavis Weld's telephone number.
    When I raised my fingers, I saw
    that Mavis's number was gone. In fact, all the numbers I'd scratched on the blotter
    over the years were gone. It was as
    clear as . . . well, as clear as a hardshell Baptist's conscience.
    ``Jesus,'' I croaked. ``Jesus Christ.''
    ``Not at all,'' the older version of me sitting in the client's chair on the other
    side of the desk said. ``Landry. Samuel D.
    Landry. At your service.''
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    V. An Interview with God.
    Even as rattled as I was, it only took me two or three seconds to place the name,
    probably because I'd heard it such a
    short time ago. According to Painter Number Two, Samuel Landry was the reason why the
    long dark hall leading to my
    office was soon going to be oyster white. Landry was the owner of the Fulwider
    Building.
    A crazy idea suddenly occurred to me, but its patent craziness did nothing to dim the
    sudden blaze of hope which
    accompanied it. They--whoever they are--say that everyone on the face of the earth
    has a double. Maybe Landry was
    mine. Maybe we were identical twins, unrelated doubles who had somehow been born to
    different parents and ten or
    fifteen years out of step in time with each other. The idea did nothing to explain the
    rest of the day's high weirdness,
    but it was something to hang onto, damn it.
    ``What can I do for you, Mr. Landry?'' I asked. I was trying like hell, but my voice
    was