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“You’re going to enjoy it; you’ve read all the right books. That’ll pull you through when things start to become strange.”

“I feel as though I’ve known you all my life.”

“That’s a kind of afterglow of me knowing you; it’s very alluring to be known intimately by a stranger, isn’t it?”

“It surely is,” I say. We smile at each other. There are years of deep affection in her eyes. With her tousled hair and her bedspread outfit she looks like a punk-goddess-fairy-godmother. She looks like wish fulfillment. Perhaps all the choices I’ve already made have narrowed down to this night in this big, cold house in a northern city, far away from my family and anyone else who might stop me from taking my chances.

I hear footsteps in the hall and then the door opens. Alba comes in holding a pile of clothing and a pair of black boots. “Here,” she says, and tosses the clothes unceremoniously into her other self’s lap. She gives me a guilty look. I hold out my hand and she gives me my jacket. When I put my hand around my phone it’s hot. I hold it up and say, “Did you find anything?”

“Nope,” both Albas say in unison. Standing, the older Alba says to her younger self, “Don’t worry. He’s okay, he’s ours. Thanks for the clothes.”

Alba says, “No problem. Are you helping out, tonight?”

“Yeah, just enough to prevent disaster.”

“It’ll be okay, then?” I feel regret for something that hasn’t happened yet and wonder if there’s a name for this. Maybe in German?

“No, not really,” says the older Alba. “This is almost the stupidest thing I’ve ever participated in, but it has one redeeming feature.” She gives me a benevolent smile. I open my mouth to ask a pile of questions. She holds up a silencing hand. “No,” she says. “Go on, now. I’ll see you when you catch up with me.” She makes a shooing gesture at us.

I look back at her as Alba shuts the door: She is standing in the middle of the room and one split second before the door closes she peels off the yellow bedspread with a flourish and stands gloriously naked, smiling at me, her arms spread out . . . the door closes and I’m standing in the dark hallway. I close my eyes and an afterimage of Alba blooms and fades. “Wow,” I say, and Alba replies softly, “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” I feel her cold hand on my wrist, leading me toward the stairway.

Alba: We end up back in the bedroom with all the black coats on the bed. It’s quiet now. Zach extracts his phone from his jacket and checks the time. “It’s nearly three,” he says. “Let’s go downstairs.”

“I’m thirsty,” I say. I point to his phone and make the sign for who’s listening?

“Mind reader,” Zach replies. He covers the phone’s mic, leans over and whispers in my ear, Wednesday. Finally I get it. Rosa must be Zach’s connection to tonight’s operation. (Rosa’s dad, Gomez, tried to name her Wednesday but her mom wouldn’t let him. Addams Family jokes abound in their family.)

I notice Nadia’s red high heels on the floor. I put them on the nightstand, where they look quite holy under the lamplight.

“Nice,” Zach says. “Hey, what did she—I mean you—mean by ‘when you catch up with me’? And don’t you get kind of confused, pronoun-wise?”

“She meant that she’ll see you when you get to whatever year she was coming from. The pronoun thing is fluid—I’ll understand if you say ‘you,’ and you mean some later or earlier version of me. I’m always myself, I don’t care enough to have a policy about it.”

“Saying ‘she’ when I mean ‘you’ implies that you are two separate people.”

“We are, and we aren’t. An older version of me knows stuff I don’t know, a younger version might need my help. By the way, you won’t meet any younger Albas, because I just met you.”

Zach covers his eyes with his fingers. “My head hurts. Let’s go find the bar.”

Downstairs, most of the partygoers have settled down; some people are talking quietly, paired off with drinks in their hands, heads close together; some are cocooned in sleeping bags on couches and on the floor; the band’s instruments are huddled in a corner of the dining room. I spot Nadia and Junior on a love seat in the dim family room. He is smoking and reading his phone, she is asleep, curled around him, her poufy dress engulfing his legs; she snores in little sighs, like a cat. Junior spots us as we pass through and gives us a wink. Zach gives him a thumbs-up. Rosa is in an armchair nearby, her eyes glued to her phone. She’s wearing earbuds and doesn’t look up as we pass. Wednesday, my ass. We backtrack into the kitchen.

Nick and Caralora are sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, surrounded by mountains of party detritus: beer bottles, used wineglasses, stacks of pizza boxes, empty six-pack holders, ashtrays, recycling bags full of liquor bottles, overflowing trash bags. Their hands are clasped across the table; they are silently staring into each other’s eyes like lovers. C-lora’s makeup is streaked, but she doesn’t look upset. They unhand and sit up as we hesitate at the kitchen door.

“Hey,” Nick says, “come and have champagne with us.”

“Sure,” I say. “Are we celebrating?”

“Always,” Caralora says.

Nick delves into the depths of the fridge. “I hid this, I figured we might want it about now.” He pulls out a bottle of Bollinger, then washes four glasses and dries them carefully on his shirttails. I clear some of the funk off the table. Nick, moving with the deliberation of the moderately drunk, uncorks the champagne with a neat pop and pours. He raises his eyebrows at me and nods toward Zach, who is staring absently at Caralora. I smile and nod. In the harsh overhead light of the kitchen the champagne is pale, almost clear. Nick hands us each a glass and we sit, tired but expectant, glasses raised.

Nick toasts, “To us.”

Caralora smiles and says, “To new beginnings.”

“‘To world enough and time,’” I say. It was my dad’s favorite toast.

Zach simply says, “To peace.” We touch glasses and drink.