crop up more often than they
should in folks who are marked with a debility. It's the old
compensation story. Look at my weak right arm. What she had said about
_expecting_ to find me on the roof sounded like precognition. And she
sniffled and sniffled. Maybe it was one more of those tied-in hysterical
Psi weaknesses.

"What are you doing out here?" I asked her.

"Resting," she said wearily. "I just hit town today."

"And tired already?"

"I was broke," she said. "Worked in a hotel laundry till dinner time to
get eatin' money. Hot work. But I swiped a nice dress to wear when I
went looking for you, Billy Joe."

"Yeah," I said, hiding my snicker over the dress. "Say, I wanted to
thank you for handling my chips. I'd have lost my shirt if I hadn't let
you show me how. I wanted to slip you a cut, but you bugged out of
there."

"I figured you should handle our money, Billy Joe," she said. "Anyway,
can't take money for my gift."

She had me shaking with excitement. "You have a gift?" I said, trying to
keep my voice calm.

"Just some nights. Since I broke my vow, I've lost most of my prophecy.
My real gift is healing. Lost _all_ of that," she concluded, not
bitterly. "God is punishing me."

Gravel crunched as she came slowly across the roof toward me. The fag
end of her cigarette made a spinning arc in the night as she snapped it
over the side of the roof. Now there was no way to see her at all.
Perception is nice in the dark. I tracked her automatically.

"What was the vow you broke?" I said.

She sighed, near me. "I divorced my husband, my own darlin' Billy," she
said. "There's no divorce in Heaven."

"Tough," I said. I thought _I_ was her darlin' Billy. Talk about
Double-think! "Will you miss never having a man again? I mean, once
you've been a wife--" I added, letting it drift off.

"God has been good to me," she said out of the dark. "He let me see my
own future, that he would give me a husband again."

That was a curve. "Isn't that an even worse breaking of vows?" I said.
"I mean, if in God's sight you're still married to Billy Joe?"

"Would be," she conceded from the black, now right next to me. "But He
told me that the man I should seek _would be_ Billy Joe--hit's a miracle
worked for me." Her voice lowered. "A miracle that come to pass tonight,
my darlin' Billy." A shiver ran its fingers up my spine. She meant every
word of it. I _was_ her darlin' Billy.

* * * * *