Alex shook himself out of his body and went for a walk, just his spirit. Things looked different; he had a hard time remembering his name, or what he looked like.

He was walking down G Street next to the parking garage when he saw two people carrying a body down the ramp. He followed after them, worried in a way that didn’t have anything to do with urgency.

They couldn’t see him, of course, but one of them — it took him a second to put the word woman to her — held up her hand. “Ware,” she said. “Something’s here.”

The other one — a man? — looked around nervously. “Whadda weedo?” The sounds were right but the words were wrong in Alex’s ears.

“Go back to the hotel,” she said. “If it’s his. We pay the manager there, he can take it off us with the Paul-god. If it’s his.”

“Whaddifa tain’t? Whaddif fitz sum on ills?”

The woman shrugged. “Shouldn’t bother us none, then. Just passing by, maybe, and got curious.”

After they left, Alex knelt and looked into the face of the dead man for a long time before he was sure it wasn’t his own.