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once more.
    Der Führer made another headlong start. Another perfect landing, maybe half a foot beyond the lip of the hot tub cover. She should start holding up cards, awarding points out of ten.
    Or not, bearing in mind what happened the last time she made any kind of critique.
    Der Führer scrambled back into position. His feet pounded down the length of the table and he hurled himself into the air. His landing was a bit off. He wobbled backward and then overcorrected. He staggered toward the tub’s center.
    Then he was gone.
    The hot tub cover collapsed in a brutal V.
    Every hair on Lily’s body stood straight. “Hey, kid,” she called down. Her hand went by instinct to her hip, but she didn’t have pants and didn’t have a pocket and she didn’t have a goddamn phone . The day went wonky. All the colors crisped. She’d taken the Red Cross babysitting class. A little card in her wallet said she knew CPR, but all she could recall was the dummy’s plastic lips, their red worn away in patches.
    â€œKid!” she called again.
    She saw a small sneakered foot and pulsed with bright relief.
    Then the foot twitched and she worked out the physics. If it was above water then the rest of him was under.
    Her bones went hollow. She made it off the roof, and then into her grandmother’s kitchen. There was no phone anywhere. She checked the living room. The bedroom. The weird little desk alcove where she spied one beneath a sheaf of papers. That kid. That poor kid. The time she had cost him. She should have had her cell. The landline buttons sank in when she pushed them, nine then one then one. The phone was blue, with a blue tangle of cord. There was an impossible amount of wire involved in getting the signal out.

A KIND OF TIME TRAVEL
    T WO YEARS BACK, IN THE lead up to the presidential election, the Colliers had spent their weekends going door to door. They hosted debate-watching parties and framed the same Shepard Fairey poster that everyone suddenly had on display. They decided to ditch Alison’s pills; the stick said yes just before the inauguration and they joked about a fertility bump across liberal America. Optimism babies, a kindergarten crowded with wee Michelles and Baracks.
    And now they lived in Arizona, the only place left where John McCain was routinely televised. Every time the senator appeared, Seth felt a brief, fierce dart of relief, like it was 2008 again. It was embarrassing. And it wasn’t just the senator. It was the throng of men here made in his image. Anyone with that high, arcing hairline or an off-kilter lump on his cheek. They walked The Commons en masse, geared up for golf. Seth had always gotten a kick out of offbeat collective nouns. He’d hung a list in his old classroom: a congregation of alligators, a convocation of eagles, a phalanx of storks. Quorum would be apt here. A roving quorum of McCains.
    Arizona.
    They’d leased a condo fifteen minutes from The Commons. Columns at the entry meant to look like stacked stones, sage-colored bathroom tiles, a patio that bordered an electric blue communal pool. The walnut grain of their good furniture looked fusty and wrong in that condo. The blinds in the bedroom were no defense against the morning light. They hadn’t unpacked the Shepard Fairey poster yet, and Seth hardly needed his English degree to get a read on that symbolism.
    But the grief books said that was okay.
    The grief books said they should give themselves time.
    At the books’ encouragement, they held fast to their routine. They took the free Commons shuttle to work together and they took it home again. On Saturday mornings they made pancakes. On Wednesdays after work they went for burgers at The Homeplate and watched whatever classic baseball game the restaurant decided to screen. The old games ran clean and uncluttered by advertising popups. Seth liked that. It was a kind of time travel. Tonight was Mets versus Braves, July 4