I patted my breast pocket. Notebook, pencils. I nodded.
She ducked under the ring and came toward me. “Hodge....”
“Yes?”
She put her arms on my shoulders, leaning forward. I kissed her, a little absently. “Clod!”
I looked at her closely, but there were none of the familiar signs of anger. “A minute to go, it says here,” I told her.
She drew away and went back. “All set. Ready?”
“Ready,” I answered cheerfully. “See you midnight, July Fourth, 1863.”
“Right. Goodbye, Hodge. Glad you didnt tell Catty.”
The expression on her face was the strangest I’d ever seen her wear. I could not, then or now, quite interpret it. Doubt, malice, suffering, vindictiveness, entreaty, love, were all there as her hand moved the switch. I began to answer something—perhaps to bid her wait—then the light made me blink and I too experienced the shattering feeling of transition. My bones seemed to fly from each other; every cell in my body exploded to the ends of space.
The instant of translation was so brief it is hard to believe all the multitude of impressions occurred simultaneously. I was sure my veins were drained of blood, my brain and eyeballs dropped into a bottomless void, my thoughts pressed to the finest powder and blown a universe away. Most of all, I knew the awful sensation of being, for that tiny fragment of time, not Hodgins McCormick Backmaker, but part of an I in which the I that was me merged all identity.