I had a name, although at times Gustav Ungerland was no more real to me than Henry Day. The simple solution would have been to track down Tom Mes and ask him for more details about what had been said under hypnosis. After finding the article in the library, I tried to locate its author but had no more to go on than the address in the magazine. Several weeks after receiving my letter, the editor of the defunct Journal of Myth and Society replied that he would be glad to forward it on to the professor, but nothing came of it. When I called his uy, the chairman of the department said Mes had vanished on a Monday m, right in the middle of the semester, a no f address. My attempts at tag Brian Ungerland proved equally frustrating. I couldnt very well pester Tess for information about her old boyfriend, and after asking around town, someoold me that Brian was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, with the U.S. Army, studying how to blow things up. There were no Ungerlands in our local phone book.
Fortunately, other things occupied my thoughts. Tess had talked me into going back to school, and I was to begin in January. She ged when I told her my plans, became more attentive and affeate. We celebrated registering for classes by splurging on dinner and Christmas shopping iy. Arm in arm, we walked the sidewalks downtown. In the windows of Kaufmanment Store, miniature animatronic ses played out in an endless loop. Santa and his elves hammered at the same wooden bicycle. Skaters circled atop an icy mirror for all eternity. We stopped and lingered before one display—a human family, baby in the bassi, proud parents kissing uhe mistletoe. Our own images reflected on and through the glass, superimposed over the meicals domestic bliss.
"Isnt that adorable? Look at how lifelike they made the baby. Doesnt she make you want to have one yourself?"
"Sure, if they were all as quiet as that one."
We strolled by the park, where a ragtag bunch of children queued up to a stand selling hot chocolate. We bought two cups and sat on a cold park bench. "You do like children, dont you?"
"Children? I hink about them."
"But wouldnt you want a son to take camping irl to call your own?"
"Call my own? People dont belong to other people."
"Youre a very literal person sometimes."
"I dont think—"
"No, you dont. Most people pick up on subtleties, but you operate in another dimension."
But I knew what she meant. I did not know if having a real human baby ossible. Or would it be half human, half goblin, a monster? A horrid creature with a huge head and shrunken body, or those dead eyes peering out beh a sunbo. Or a misery that would turn on me and expose my secret. Yet Tesss reseny arm had a curious tug on my sce. Part of me desired to unpack the burdens of the past, to tell her all about Gustav Ungerland and my fugitive life in the forest. But so much time had passed sihe ge that at times I doubted that existence. All of my powers and skills learned a lifetime ago had disappeared, lost while endlessly playing the piano, faded in the fort of warm beds and cozy living rooms, in the reality of this lovely woman beside me. Is the past as real as the present? Maybe I wish I had told everything, and that the truth had revised the course of life. I dont know. But I do remember the feeling of that night, the mixed sensation of great hope and bottomless foreboding.
Tess watched a group of children skating across a makeshift i