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decided how much he should tell her about those seven lost minutes. For now it might be best to minimize the deep weirdness of the experience, see the doctor Monday morning, and even have some tests done. If he was in good health, what had happened in the office this afternoon might prove to be an inexplicable singularity. He didn’t want to alarm Paige unnecessarily.
    “Well?” she persisted.
    With the inflection she gave that single word, she reminded him that twelve years of marriage forbade serious secrets, no matter what good intentions motivated his reticence.
    He said, “You remember Audrey Aimes?”
    “Who? Oh, you mean in One Dead Bishop?”
    One Dead Bishop was a novel he had written. Audrey Aimes was the lead character.
    “Remember what her problem was?” he asked.
    “She found a dead priest hanging on a hook in her foyer closet.”
    “Aside from that.”
    “She had another problem? Seems like a dead priest is enough. Are you sure you’re not over-complicating your plots?”
    “I’m serious,” he said, though aware of how odd it was that he should choose to inform his wife of a personal crisis by comparing it to the experiences of a mystery-novel heroine whom he had created.
    Was the dividing line between life and fiction as hazy for other people as it sometimes was for a writer? And if so—was there a book in that idea?
    Frowning, Paige said, “Audrey Aimes . . . Oh, yeah, you’re talking about her blackouts.”
    “Fugues,” he said.
    A fugue was a serious personality dissociation. The victim went places, talked to people, and engaged in varied activities while appearing normal—yet later could not recall where he had been or what he had done during the blackout, as if the time had passed in deepest sleep. A fugue could last minutes, hours, or even days.
    Audrey Aimes had suddenly begun to suffer from fugues when she was thirty, because repressed memories of childhood abuse had begun to surface after more than two decades, and she had retreated from them psychologically. She’d been certain she’d killed the priest while in a fugue state, although of course someone else had murdered him and stuffed him in her closet, and the entire bizarre homicide was connected to what had happened to her when she was a little girl.
    In spite of being able to earn a living by spinning elaborate fantasies out of thin air, Marty had a reputation for being as emotionally stable as the Rock of Gibraltar and as easy-going as a golden retriever on Valium, which was probably why Paige still smiled at him and appeared reluctant to take him seriously.
    She stood on her toes, kissed his nose, and said, “So you forgot to take out the garbage, and now you’re going to claim it’s because you’re suffering a personality breakdown due to long-forgotten, hideous abuses when you were six years old. Really, Marty. Shame on you. Your mom and dad are the sweetest people I’ve ever met.”
    He let go of her, closed his eyes, and pressed one hand against his forehead. He was developing a fierce headache.
    “I’m serious, Paige. This afternoon, in the office . . . for seven minutes . . . well, I only know what the hell I was doing during that time because I’ve got it on a tape recorder. I don’t remember any of it. And it’s creepy. Seven creepy minutes.”
    He felt her body tense against his, as she realized that he was not engaged in some complex joke. And when he opened his eyes, he saw that her playful smile was gone.
    “Maybe there’s a simple explanation,” he said. “Maybe there’s no reason to be concerned. But I’m scared, Paige. I feel stupid, like I should just shrug and forget about it, but I’m scared.”

6
    In Kansas City, a chill wind polishes the night until the sky seems to be an infinite slab of clear crystal in which stars are suspended and behind which is pent a vast reservoir of darkness.
    Beneath that enormous weight of space and blackness, the Blue Life Lounge huddles like a research