"Are we talking about the chick again?"
"You know her name."
"Ivy. Symbol of faithfulness and remembering. Is there some message you're trying to send her?"
"I have to convince her that I love her."
"That's it?" Lacey made a face. "That's it?"
"I think it's probably my mission," Tristan said.
"Oh, puh-lease."
"You know, I'm getting pretty tired of your sarcasm," Tristan told her.
"I don't much enjoy your silliness," she replied. "Tristan, you are naive if you think the Number One Director would go to all the trouble of making you an angel so you could convince some chick that you love her. Missions are never that simple, never that easy."
He wanted to fight with her, but her melodramatic hand-waving had ceased. She was serious.
"I still don't get it," he said. "How am I supposed to discover my mission?"
"You watch. You listen. You stay close to the people you know or the people you feel yourself drawn to-they're probably the people you've been sent back to help."
Tristan began to wonder who in his life might need special help.
"It's sort of like being a detective," Lacey said, "The hitch is, it's not just a whodunit. It's a who-done-what. Often you don't know what the problem is that you've been sent to solve.
Sometimes the problem hasn't happened yet- you have to save the person from some disaster that is going to occur in the future."
"You're right," said Tristan. "It's not simple."
They had walked their way past the tennis court and around to the front of the house. Ella, who had been following them, scurried ahead and up the front steps.
"Even if it is something that will happen in the future," Lacey went on, "the key is often hidden in your own past. Fortunately, time travel is not that hard."
Tristan raised his eyebrows. "Time travel?"
Lacey hopped up on Gregory's car, which had been left in the driveway in front of the house.
"Traveling backward in your mind, I mean. There are a lot of things we forget if we remember only in the present. There may be clues that we didn't pick up in the past, but they're still there and can be found again by traveling backward in our minds."
As Lacey spoke she stretched out on the hood of the BMW. She looked to Tristan like Morticia Addams doing a car ad.
"Maybe," she baited him, "I'll teach you how to travel through time, too. Of course, traveling backward in someone else's mind, that's not something for an amateur like you to fool around with. There is some danger in all of this," she added. "Oh, cheer up, Dumps."
"I'm not down. I'm thinking."
"Then look up," she said.
Tristan glanced toward the front door. Ivy stood there, looking out toward the driveway, as if waiting for someone.
"'It is my lady, O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were!'" said Lacey.
Tristan kept his eyes on Ivy. "What?"
"Romeo and Juliet. Act two, scene two. I auditioned for it, you know, for Shakespeare in the Park. The casting director wanted me."
"Good," Tristan said vaguely. He wished she'd leave him alone now. All he wanted was to be alone, to revel in the sight of Ivy, Ivy stepping out onto the porch, Ivy with her hair blowing gold as she gracefully moved to the top of the steps and picked up Ella.
"The director said my kind of talent was to die for."
"Great," said Tristan. If only cats could talk, he thought. Tell her, Ella, tell her what you know.
"The producer, a major artsy-fartsy, said he wanted someone who had a 'more classic' face, someone with a voice that wouldn't lapse into New Yorkese."
Ivy was still standing on the porch, cuddling Ella and looking toward him. Maybe she did believe, Tristan thought. Maybe she had a faint sense of his presence.
"That producer is in New York for a couple of weeks, getting a road show ready. I thought I'd pay him a visit."
"Great," Tristan repeated. He turned his head when Ivy did, hearing the whine of a small car climbing to the top of the hill.
"I thought I'd murder him," Lacey added, "cause a traffic accident that would kill him on the spot."
"Terrific."
"You're pathetic!" she said. "You're really pathetic! Were you this gaga in life? I can only imagine you when you still had hormones pumping through you."
He turned to her angrily. "Look," he said, "you're no better than I am. I'm in love with Ivy, you're in love with you. We're both obsessed, so back off."
For a moment Lacey didn't say anything. Her eyes changed ever so slightly. A camera would not have caught the flicker of hurt feelings. But Tristan did, and knowing that this time she wasn't acting, he regretted his words.
"I'm sorry."
Lacey had turned away from him. He figured she'd be off anytime now, leaving him to fumble his way through his mission.
"Lacey, I'm sorry."
"Well, well, well," she said.
"It's just that-" "Who is this?" she interrupted him. "Tweedledee and Tweedledum come to mourn with your lady?"
He turned to watch Beth and Suzanne get out of the car. As it happened, they were both wearing black, but Suzanne had always liked black, especially scanty black, which was what she was wearing-a cool halter-top dress. Beth, on the other hand, was wearing clothes typical of Beth: a loose shift, black with small white flowers on it, whose ruffled hem blew a couple of inches above her red plastic sandals.
"They're her friends, Beth and Suzanne."
"That one is definitely a radio," said Lacey.
"A radio?"
"The one who looks like she's wearing a shower curtain."
"Beth," he said. "She's a writer."
"What'd I tell you? A born radio."
Tristan watched Ivy greet her friends and lead them into the house.
"Let's go," Lacey said, springing forward. "This is going to be fun."
He hung back. He had seen her kind of fun earlier.
"Do you want to tell her you love her, or don't you? This will be good training for you, Tristan.
You've got it made, the girl's an absolute radio. Good radios don't even have to believe," she added. "They are receptive to all kinds of things, one of those things being angels. You can speak through her-at least, you can write through her. You know what automatic writing is, don't you?"
He had heard of it. Mediums did it, their hands supposedly writing at the will of someone else, relaying messages from the dead.
"You mean Beth is like a medium?"
"An untrained one. A natural radio. She'll broadcast you-if not today, then tomorrow. We've just got to establish the link and slip into her mind."
"Slip into her mind?" he asked.
"It's pretty simple," Lacey said. "All you need to do is think exactly like her, see the world the way Beth sees it, feel as Beth feels, love whomever she loves, desire her deepest desires."
"No way," said Tristan.
"In short, you have to adopt the radio's point of view, and then you slip right in."
"You obviously don't know the way Beth's mind works," said Tristan. "You've never seen her stories. She writes these torrid romances."
"Oh… you mean the kind where the lover stares longingly at his beloved, his eyes soulful, his heart aching so that he cannot see or hear anyone else?"
"Exactly."
She tilted back her head and smirked. "You're right. You and Beth are certainly different."
Tristan didn't say anything.
"If you really loved Ivy, you'd try. I'm sure the lovers in Beth's stories wouldn't let a little challenge like this stop them."
"How about Philip?" said Tristan. "He's Ivy's brother. And he can see me shimmering."