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  Arizona ’s lack of confusion and fear only made me more frantic. Up until that point, she’d seemed fluttery and ethereal, like a butterfly or a wispy cloud or some fey creature. Here, in this place that I couldn’t account for, she seemed solid as stone and as dangerous as rattlesnake backed into a corner.

  “How did we get here?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It just happens.” Arizona said. “It has something to do with this.” She caught the edges of her jacket and held it out from her hips.

  The red jacket with its gold embroidery had seemed strangely familiar and strange from the moment I saw it. But that was some jacket if it could take me on a LSD trip without the LSD. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’ll come clear.”

  “Stop saying that! This doesn’t make sense. Did you drug me? Have I passed out? Is this a dream?” Would I wake up in a few minutes, annoyed that the alarm clock had gone off and that yet another boring, plodding day was beginning?

  “We’ve traveled in time.”

  “What?” That made even less sense, and now I was starting to get angry. I kept trying to remember if she’d touched my food. Or if I’d put my water down on the bench between us.

  “I don’t know how it works. I just know it happens. And we’ll know what needs to be done. Once it comes clear.”

  For some reason, I wanted the panic of my first few minutes back. It seemed like a solid, logical response. At the same time, it didn’t seem right, that a guy as big and broad as me should turn into a gibbering mess while a tiny woman stood by so coolly.

  Arizona seemed to understand. She took my hands in hers, and it was only because her hands seemed so hot that I realized how cold my own were. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “I promise. It scared me, too, the first few times, but I got used to it.”

  “How many times has this happened to you?”

  “I don’t know. I quit counting after a while.”

  “How long is ‘a while’?”

  “I don’t know. Ever since I bought this jacket at a junk auction. A long time, I think.”

  I circled the room. I stopped in front of the door and put my hand on the knob. The dull, tarnished gold of it was cold and solid in my palm. It gave me an idea.

  I rushed over to the window and shoved the heavy curtains aside. The sliding glass door opened onto a dinky balcony that overlooked the street below. In the hotel parking lot right below was a mint Volkswagon van that I would have killed for in my youth. It had the finest psychedelic paint job I’d ever seen, even down to the giant peace sign on the front. And down the street, a yellow Corvair and a red Ford Mustang mixed in with a dozen huge, heavy period cars. So much for the theory that it was all just an elaborate joke. A newspaper could be faked, but an entire street of 1960s vehicles?

  As I stepped back into the room, there was rattling and coughing behind a door that I assumed was a bathroom. A woman cursed softly under her breath. There was the sound of water running. More cursing, then the bathroom door opened.

  I gasped, so loudly that the woman who strolled into the room should have heard me.

  She looked exactly like Janis Joplin. The Janis Joplin I’d listened to long after my parents thought I was asleep. The Janis Joplin who epitomized everything I’d wanted in the depths of my unsolid soul when I was thirteen.

  The woman walked past as though I weren’t even there. I put out my hand to touch her, and it was like touching a cloud. It was like on the television when someone touched a ghost. My hand went right through her shoulder.

  The Janis lookalike didn’t even flinch. She just walked past and threw herself down on her stomach on the bed. The springs squeaked under her weight, then settled.

  “What the hell!” There’s only so much even a rock-steady guy like me can take. I crossed the room in what seemed like only two giant strides and grabbed Arizona. Her shoulder was thin, but solid. “What the hell’s going on here? What kind of game is this?”

  “No game.”

  But my mind wouldn’t stop gibbering. It carried my tongue right along with it. “What’s going on? I want to know right now. What is this, some kind of set-up? And where did you find that woman? She looks just like Janis Joplin.” I knew about look-alikes, those people who do impersonations of celebrities. I’d seen a couple that could make you stop in your tracks, but this one… This one could have been Janis Joplin’s twin.

  “She is Janis Joplin,” Arizona said, as matter of fact as if she’d been discussing next week’s menu. “I told you. We’ve moved through time. You’re connected to her somehow. That’s why we came here, to this time. This place.”

  “I’m not connected to her. She died thirty years ago! Today.” I picked up the paper from the floor and shook it at Arizona. “She died on this day. When I was just a kid.”

  Arizona nodded, but she wasn’t paying me any attention. She was watching the woman on the bed.

  She had rolled over on her back and pulled a large cloth purse up off the floor. Propping the bag on her stomach, she dug into it, scratching around as if whatever she was looking for was eluding her. Things began to fall out of the bag, an ink pen, a wad of papers, keys.

  The next thing she found was a cigarette pack. She ran her finger down in it, then shook it, as if there had to be just one more cigarette in it. When it stayed empty, she gave a sound of disgust and threw it into the overflowing ashtray on the nightstand. Then she sat up and pulled open the nightstand drawer and stuck her hand in. She found another empty cigarette pack. She cursed, eloquently and musically.

  That’s when I knew, really knew, that this really was Janis Joplin. Because a lookalike might fake her pockmarked face, or her eyes, or the frizzy hair. But no one, no one, could sound like Janis. No one could sound like that, rough and sweet, gravel on satin.

  Then she pulled something else out of the nightstand. A paper bag, brown and so new it sounded crisp. She slowly opened the bag and upended it. What toppled out made my breath freeze in my throat.

  Janis stared at what had spilled out of the bag… a syringe, a small folded packet that looked like wax paper, a spoon, a short piece of rubber hose. Even a stolid and plodding guy like me recognized a drug kit when he saw one.

  Janis picked up each item one by one and turned them over in her hands. She picked up the wax paper packet last, opened it slowly. It had fine white powder in it. I knew what it was. So did she.

  She looked like she might cry. Or laugh. Or scream.

  I looked back at Arizona. She was watching us, her gaze flitting back and forth between my back and the packet in Janis’ hands.

  “Has it ‘come clear’ yet?” she asked. “Why we came here?”

  In a flash, I remembered why I’d never taken my duffel bag with its carefully folded clean socks and my guitar and hopped a train for Haight-Ashbury. It was because of Janis Joplin.

  Janis Joplin was a Texas girl whose hometown was just like mine, uptight and boring and predictable. But unlike me, she’d escaped. She’d lived her dream. I’d dreamed of hopping a freighter for California and standing right in front of the stage for one of her concerts. I’d dreamed of being carefree and unpredictable, of living for the moment.

  Then Janis Joplin had died.

  First Hendrix, then Janis just a couple of weeks later, of a heroin overdose.

  And suddenly, I’d seen the dark underside of the carefree, hippie lifestyle. Several months later, Jim Morrison also died. But Janis’ death had been the end of my dreams of Haight-Ashbury and life as a barefoot, dancing flower child.

  I wheeled to Arizona. “I just remembered. This is why I didn’t run away from home. Janis died, and all the light seemed to leak out of my dreams.” I wasn’t sure the light had ever come back.

  Arizona nodded and smiled.

  “Does that mean…?” I stopped and squeezed my temples between my palms. It was all so weird, so very far out, that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it. But I’d read science fiction, like every other kid
with dreams of something different, something better. Some of the stories about time travel had stayed with me. “Does that mean that if I save her… my life will change? Does that mean that I’ll be the person I always wanted to be?”

  Arizona sort of shrugged and smiled and nodded, all at the same time.

  I started to question that weird, ambiguous response, but I was too taken with the idea that I might not have to be stolid and plodding. That the woman behind me on the bed didn’t have to die. But how would that work if I couldn’t even touch her?

  As I thought it, Janis jumped backward, sending the drug paraphernalia scattering across the bed. “God damn, man! Where’d you come from? How the hell did you get in here?”

  She could see me! She was talking to me! For a minute, I just stood there, a big, dumb rock. Janis Joplin could see me. Janis Joplin was talking to me!

  “I asked you what you’re doing in here?” She was regaining her equilibrium, coming up on her knees on the bed, reaching for her purse.

  My voice came back in a rush. My muscles decided they wanted to work. “I’m sorry, Miss Joplin, for scaring you. I just came for… I just came for this.” I leaned over the bed and gathered up the drug stuff, dropping the syringe, dropping the hose, but making sure I tucked the little wax packet of white powder into my pocket. Then I gathered up the rest of it a second time and stuffed it back into the sack.

  At any moment, I expected Janis to whack me over the head with her bag, or reach into it and pull out a gun, or start screaming her head off. But she just gaped at me, opening and closing her mouth like a guppie. When I got back to normal, if I got back to normal, maybe I would have a good laugh over making Janis Joplin tongue-tied.

  “What-? How-? Who the hell are you, man? How the fuck did you get in here?”

  “It’s kinda hard to explain.” I grinned with what I hoped was a reassuring expression. “I’m just a fan. A fan from Texas. I’ve been listening to your music… Well, all of my life, and I just-well, it’s really great.” I knew I was starting to babble, but, hell, who wouldn’t babble, standing near enough a childhood hero to smell her toothpaste?

  Arizona touched my elbow. Actually, she sort of pinched my elbow. Her fingers dug into the soft flesh right above it. I could see the sparkles starting around her head. She was losing her solid edge. Did that mean that we’d done what we were supposed to do?

  But there was still one more thing I needed to say, even if it didn’t help in the long run. “You’ve been clean for months now. You need to stay clean, to make more music for all your Texas fans.”

  Janis nodded, staring at my face. She was slowly losing her solidity, just as I suspected I was losing mine. The sparkles grew larger, stronger, and the burning arcs clouded my vision. The room around me faded, the flowered comforter and the wadded pillows at the head of the bed, and the petite, rumpled woman in front of them, losing their sharp edges. Janis had become even more transparent than Arizona had ever been.

  Weirdly, as the room faded, it seemed to double. As though I were seeing two cloudy, see-through Janises, two fuzzy hotel rooms, slowly splitting apart, slowly, slowly becoming separate, y-ing out in two different directions. But there was only one Arizona, only one me, in only one of the rooms. The last thing I knew of the time and space we’d been in was Janis Joplin’s husky, trademark voice, saying softly, “Godd-d-d damn!”

  Going back, or traveling through time, or coming down from the trip, whatever it was, wasn’t as easy as going out had been. Going had been like expanding, like turning into a sparkling cloud. Coming back was like being stuffed into a container that was much too small. Like being split in two, then twisted back together. The sparkly, transparent Charles was twisted and shoved and collapsed back down into solid Charles, and it hurt.

  I hit the ground hard. Like falling out of the sky without a parachute. The scent of crushed and bruised grass slammed into my lungs. My eyes filled with tears. The weight and pressure of now was almost more than I could stand. The brown paper bag fell out of my numb fingers.

  It was a rude way to ride back into San Francisco. I lay on the ground, gasping for breath, and watched Arizona rematerialize above me. Obviously, she had a better handle on time travel tripping than I did. It looked almost as if she floated into being, slowly becoming solid enough that I couldn’t see the clouds above me.

  Arizona leaned down and held out a hand, as if a flyweight like her could pull someone as solid as me up. “Are you okay?”

  I was. But I wasn’t, too. I felt weird and different. But… the problem was, I didn’t feel different enough. I didn’t feel like jumping up and running around Hippie Hill in my bare feet. I didn’t take her offer of help. I just lay there, staring up at her and her faded red jacket, outlined in blue sky.

  “I don’t feel any different,” I said. “If we just changed my past, why don’t I feel different? Shouldn’t I have different memories? Shouldn’t I remember running away? Shouldn’t I be-” I stopped myself before I could say it. “A better person.” A better person. It was a revelation to realize that deep down, I’d always seen myself as a coward and a cop-out because I hadn’t had the courage to make my dreams come true.

  I sat up and picked at the knees of my wool-blend trousers, wiped a piece of grass off the toe of my shiny dress shoes. What if I’d changed my whole life, and it didn’t make any difference? What if I was destined to be stolid and plodding and solid, no matter what? “Shouldn’t I be a different person with a different job and, maybe, different clothes?”

  “You are,” Arizona said gently. “In that other universe.”

  “Other universe?”

  “Didn’t you see it, as we were returning? Didn’t you see it branch off?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Arizona pulled her red jacket tight and sat down beside me on the grass. “I don’t really know how it works. I just know that each time I go back, each time I change something, I see the result splinter off into another future. I’ve done a lot of research on it, and I think it’s got to do with parallel universes. Did you know there’s a theory that there are infinite universes, all running parallel to ours?”

  “I don’t give a crap about parallel universes! I care about this one. I thought I’d be different.”

  “Aren’t you?” Arizona asked. “Aren’t you different, just a little bit? Doesn’t it make a difference that somewhere, sometime, the boy that you were took that step off the edge? Don’t you feel… thinner?”

  I stared at her. A cloud skittered across the sky, across one cheek, up and over her nose, out the side of her forehead. Thinner. Not transparent. She was thinner, so thin I could see through her!

  “Oh, my god.” I looked down at myself, felt my arms, my chest. I felt solid. I couldn’t see the grass through my thighs. I couldn’t see anything through anything. It was the first time in my life I’ve ever been glad to apply the word “solid” to myself.

  “Every time it happens,” she said softly, “a little bit of me splinters off, too. A part of me lives on in those other universes, goes on, in another life. I’ve been doing it so long, there’s not much of me left in this one.” She slipped the faded jacket off one arm. “I knew when you saw me that it was a sign. Then when you told me about what you wanted to be when you were a kid, and about Janis Joplin, I knew you were meant to take the jacket.”

  I could see individual blades of grass, swaying in the breeze, through her thin shoulder. I could smell the salt scent of the bay, blowing through her. I dug my fingers into the grass, into the ground. The earth was solid beneath me. The sky above had never seemed so hard and blue. It was my mind, my thoughts, that seemed wispy and skittering, like clouds. How crazy was she, to think a faded, old jacket could take her back in time? To think that she could pass her craziness on to me? To think that because I liked Janis Joplin’s music, it was a sign.

  She was shifting, trying to slide the jacket off the other shoulder.

  I stood up befor
e she could get any farther. “I-look-I’ve got to get back to work.” I looked at my watch, as if just the act of reminding myself of the time of day could tame the skittering thoughts. As if doing something as normal and monotonous as checking the time could settle the panic that was battering around in my stomach.

  She stopped tugging at the jacket and looked up at me with eyes that seemed to swim and waft and shift, clear, then solid blue, then clear again, like a fish’s eyes. “I thought you wanted to be different.”

  For a moment, I smelled her again, a quick waft of funereal gardenias. I smelled ripe, ready-to-pick pears. Felt the lure of night stars and Janis Joplin’s singular voice. “I’m sorry. I-” I looked at my watch again, but I couldn’t see the hands. “I have to go. It was nice to meet you.”

  Before I could smell that scent again, that scent of Texas night, I rushed away. I hurried across the park, taking shortcuts over the grass. I didn’t stop until I’d joined a clump of people who were waiting at the edge of the park for the light to change. After several seconds, I forced myself to look back.

  Arizona had followed me and was standing several yards away on the grass. She was looking at me, but her expression was remote and sad and disappointed, as if she could no longer see me. She had put the faded red jacket back on. As I watched, she reached inside it and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. They were huge and round, pure Sixties sunglasses, nothing like the tiny, expensive aviator-shaped glasses that were so costly and popular today. She put them on. They dwarfed her small, luminous face.

  Recognition hit me like a blow. I knew the red jacket. That’s why it was so familiar. It was Janis’. There was a picture of her wearing it, on one of her albums. Janis sitting on a motorcycle, wearing a red jacket trimmed with gold embroidery and enormous sunglasses, her frizzy hair lit by the sun. Her expression was luminous and faraway, as if she could see something the rest of us couldn’t.

  The light changed. All around me, people started across the street. A couple of people shoved past me. Another one growled at me to get out of the way if I wasn’t going to cross.