who need your help into better fighters and every day be around what matters most to you. What a gift to yourself that would be—every day to be around what you love. You can do that here, or in L.A. Your mother, I’m sure, would prefer to have you back. You might meet someone. The long-suffering loner is a popular option with some women. So much is still possible for you, Julian. Going back is only one of your choices.”
Motionless, Julian sat.
“When you first met her,” Devi said, “you thought you had forever. And the first time you went back for her, you thought you had forever. The second time at the Silver Cross, you were afraid and didn’t know of what. The third time, you felt doom but didn’t know when. The fourth time with Mirabelle, you knew exactly when. And last time, for the first time, Shae herself knew what was coming. How did that work out? What’s next for you two, I do not know. What is left for you to show her and for her to show you? Perhaps how to live amid death, as we all must learn. But”—Devi folded his hands—”if you choose to go back, it will be for the last time.”
The ducks in the Long Water were flapping, splashing. Somewhere a baby cried. Two women walked by, wrapped around each other. A man and woman perched on a bench, licking around the same cone of ice cream.
“You said seven.”
“Did you listen to a word I said?” Devi exclaimed. “Why do you keep repeating things over and over? You had seven.”
“The first time doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was just my life. I lived it.”
“It may have been your life, but it was her last life. That counts, no?”
“No.” Julian’s legs felt numb, the nubs on his hand pulsing.
“All the other times you’ve crossed the meridian and gone back in time,” said Devi, “you entered her life, not yours.”
“So?”
“Julian, you can’t breach a life in which you yourself exist.”
“Why not?”
Devi tried to stay patient. “How can you be inside a time in which you already are?” He enunciated every word. “In that one unique, singular spacetime, she exists in your world. You do not exist in hers.”
“What’s the difference?”
Devi sighed. “What are you going to do with yourself when this old crippled body crawls out into Los Angeles and encounters the younger, spry, horny you chatting her up in Book Soup?”
“That’s the other guy’s problem.”
“Instantly it will become your problem. It can’t happen is what I’m saying. There can’t be two of you,” Devi said. “You get that part, don’t you? One body, one soul. Not two bodies, one soul. Not two souls, one body. Not two souls, two bodies. One body. One soul.”
Julian sat. “What do I do with the other me?”
“There is no other you!” Devi said. “There is only this you. Right here, where your soul is, on the bench by the Serpentine. Your soul cannot be divided. You are not—what’s the thing that’s all the rage these days—you’re not a Horcrux. You are not a clone, a body without a soul. You can’t compete with your material self in the material world, you can’t co-exist with yourself in Los Angeles. How can you be so hostile to the thing that’s obviously true? Only one of you can touch her.”
At last Julian understood.
He wasn’t prepared for it. It was like another thing had been severed.
* * *
In the middle of March, in the middle of the night, Julian banged on Quatrang’s door.
“This has to stop,” Devi said, half-asleep in a black silk robe, letting Julian push past him and inside. “I have a life. I have to function during the day. I’m not a nocturnal like you.”
“What do I do, Devi? I don’t know what to do. Help me.”
“Would you like me to give you something to help you sleep?”
“Are you saying you don’t know how to help me save her, how to help me change her fate?”
Devi spoke low. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t know how to help you change her fate.”
“But seven is not enough!”
“Seven is not enough,” Devi repeated dully. “Look what you’re doing, you’re making me repeat things, infecting me with your disease. Once more is not enough for you. Six journeys through time is not enough for you. Seven weeks is not enough for you. And if you had seventy times seven, what would you say? Would that also not be enough? And if