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God."
    "Amen to that, brother."
    "You did die, didn't you, Vincent? I did go to your funeral. You were sick and then you died, right? All of my memory is totally confused and distorted. When I saw you in the restaurant today I almost wet my pants. I went to your funeral! I went to St. Julian's hospital when you were there and brought you flowers!"
    Ettrich picked up a pen and wrote "St. Julian's" on the bottom of Isabelle's letter.
    "Yeah, it's true, Bruno, but I don't remember any of it either. Or any of what happened to me. I had to be told. And when I didn't believe it she showed me. She had to prove it to me."
    "Exactly! Exactly! That's what happened to me too. So where can we meet? Can we do it now? I'm going out of my mind. Nothing's changed, Vincent. I died and I'm back but nothing's changed! I don't remember anything except what he told me and then showed me in the restaurant."
    Ettrich frowned. In his mind he saw Coco talking to Bruno in Acumar. " He? Who's he?" "Brandt. The man you were sitting with in the restaurant— Edward Brandt."
    "I was with a woman, Bruno. I introduced you two. Her name is Coco Hallis."
    Bruno cackled a crazy laugh that stopped as fast as it began. "It was a man, Vincent. I met a man at your table, no woman. You introduced me to Edward Brandt."
    On each end of the connection, both men wore almost exactly the same bewildered, haunted expression. They thought the same words too—Oh my God.
    Before he left the apartment to meet Bruno, Ettrich made one more call. He didn't want to make it but knew he had to.
    He called Kitty and she wasn't happy. She immediately asked what he wanted in a peeved voice and said it was very late, please be quick. In as nice a voice as he could muster, he asked if she had heard anything more from Bruno Mann's wife. In an even more irritated voice she asked why Nancy Mann would call her?
    "Well, you know, because of what happened to Bruno." "What happened to him?"
    Without being aware of it, his voice took on an edge. "Kitty, you called me this afternoon. You said— "I said nothing. I've been out all day, Vincent. I was busy. Why would I call you ?" She hung up.
    To her and the rest of the world Bruno Mann had never died.
    On his way to meeting Bruno, Vincent Ettrich performed his first miracle. He lived on the south side of town, Bruno way in the western suburbs. They agreed to meet at an upscale bar named Hof's that specialized in rare kinds of whiskey. Ettrich liked the place because Isabelle Neukor had introduced him to it. One of her many remarkable surprises. At work one day he received an e-mail from her. Isabelle loved any kind of mail and often wrote him three or four times a day when things were going well between them. Some•times a letter in the post to his office, others waited in his computer like kisses made of words. This time she sent him only the name and address of an unfamiliar bar and told him to be there at one that afternoon for a surprise. He smiled, thinking she'd arranged over the telephone from Vienna for him to be served a nice lunch, her treat. When he arrived, Isabelle was sitting at a table talking to Margaret Hof, the owner of the bar. It astonished but didn't surprise him.
    Once when they were in bed, Isabelle asked him to describe her in one word. She was always doing things like that—asking him to condense his world into one word or phrase or picture that showed her how he saw things. He thought a while and then said, "An Italian opera."
    She shook her head. "That's three words."
    "There's no one word that can contain all of you, Isabelle." "Try."
    He thought some more and abruptly the right word came to him. "Sea." "'C'? Like the letter?"
    "No, like the ocean." There was a glass of water on the night table. He lifted it. "Most women I've known are like
    this glass of water. You're the sea."
    This memory crossed his mind as he waited on the street for a taxi. To his surprise tears came to his eyes. But tears often came to his