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again. “You look like you’ve lost some weight.”
You should talk, I thought. “I’ve been sick. Caught a twenty-four-hour—” That was where I
stopped.
“Jake, what’s wrong?”
I was looking at Al’s framed photographs. When I’d gone down the rabbit-hole, there had been a
picture of Harry Dunning and me up there. We were smiling and holding up Harry’s GED diploma
for the camera.
It was gone.
3
“Jake? Buddy? What is it?”
I took the aspirin he’d put on the counter, stuck them in my mouth, dry-swallowed. Then I got up
and walked slowly over to the Wall of Celebrity. I felt like a man made of glass. Where the picture of
Harry and me had hung for the last two years, there was now one of Al shaking hands with Mike
Michaud, the U.S. Representative from Maine’s Second District. Michaud must have been running for
re-election, because Al was wearing two buttons on his cook’s apron. One said MICHAUD FOR
CONGRESS. The other said LISBON LUVS MIKE. The honorable Representative was wearing a
bright orange Moxie tee-shirt and holding up a dripping Fatburger for the camera.
I lifted the photo from its hook. “How long has this been here?”
He looked at it, frowning. “I’ve never seen that picture in my life. God knows I supported Michaud
in his last two runs—hell, I support any Democrat who ain’t been caught screwing his campaign aides
—and I met him at a rally in double-oh-eight, but that was in Castle Rock. He’s never been in the
diner.”
“Apparently he has been. That’s your counter, isn’t it?”
He took the picture in hands now so scrawny they were little more than talons, and held it close to
his face. “Yuh,” he said. “It sure is.”
“So there is a butterfly effect. This photo’s proof.”
He looked at it fixedly, smiling a little. In wonder, I think. Or maybe awe. Then he handed it back
to me and went behind the counter to pour the coffee.
“Al? You still remember Harry, don’t you? Harry Dunning?”
“Of course I do. Isn’t he why you went to Derry and almost got your head knocked off?”
“For him and the rest of his family, yes.”
“And did you save them?”
“All but one. His father got Tugga before we could stop him.”
“Who’s we?”
“I’ll tell you everything, but first I’m going home to bed.”
“Buddy, we don’t have a whole lot of time.”
“I know that,” I said, thinking All I have to do is look at you, Al. “But I’m dead for sleep. For me, it’s
one-thirty in the morning, and I’ve had . . .”—my mouth opened in a huge yawn—“. . . had quite a
night.”
“All right.” He brought coffee—a full cup for me, black, half a cup for him, liberally dosed with
cream. “Tell me what you can while you drink this.”
“First, explain to me how you can remember Harry if he was never a janitor at LHS and never
bought a Fatburger from you in his whole life. Second, explain to me why you don’t remember Mike