That night she'd first considered going to St. Vincent's Hospital emergency room for the gunshot wound but then she'd thought it over and decided there were too many things to explain that couldn't be explained Instead she just went home and washed the wound and filled it up with Neosporin. She didn't even tell Nina. The next morning, scar tissue was already forming. Now it was completely healed and even the scar had all but disappeared. Had the Beta really worked? She wanted to tell Stone about that possibility, but she wasn't sure how he would take it. And she absolutely did not want to end up in the book. She pulled on a terry cloth robe and slippers and padded her way into the kitchen. She wasn't hungry, but she felt like a glass of wine. She poked around in the wine rack in the kitchen closet and came up with a bottle of Bordeaux. Stone was cracking large white eggs into a stoneware bowl. "Sure I can't make some for you?" he asked, leaning over to buss her hair as she searched in the drawer for a corkscrew. "I'm gonna throw in some cheddar, but I'll leave it out if that doesn't work for you." "I just want a glass of red wine," she said, retrieving the corkscrew. "And I need a memory jogging. What's a word that makes you think of living a long time? I . . . I want to look up something on the Internet and I don't know how to start." "What kind of word is it?" he queried. "I'm a wordsmith. Twenty questions. Is it a noun, a verb, an adjective?" "If I could remember that, I might be able to come up with it." He was tossing a quarter stick of butter into the pan. "Hey, I once learned hypnosis. Why don't you let me take you under?" "Does that really work?" "It's how I come up with interview stuff sometimes, from years ago. We really do have a complicated memory system. I think everything you ever knew is buried somewhere, maybe in a tiny little wrinkle." She suspected he might be right. In this case the repressed info was still there; it just had been deliberately covered over and hidden. "So do you want to hypnotize me? You're sure you know how?" "I'm not boasting, but I could make Methuselah remember the day he first got out of diapers." She stared at him. "My God, I think that's it. Methuselah. I think that's the word I couldn't remember." She kissed him on the mouth enthusiastically. "I've got to check something." She popped the cork and poured herself a glass. "Want some?" "I'm not sure what goes with eggs at this time of night. Probably tequila." "Good luck. You know where to find it. There're some limes in the fridge. Right now I'm going to fire up the Dell and do a little search." "Now? " His face dropped. "How about a little romantic . . . whatever?" "Come and join me. Bring your plate. We'll go exploring in cyberspace. It'll be a romantic voyage. I've got a hunch about something."