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warm patina on them Mrs Sanchez’s kitchen is as beautiful as the finest antique, with the priceless patina of a life’s work and of cooking done with pleasure and with love

I sat across the table fro to keep the, Odd Thomas"

Invariably she uses both names I sometimes suspect she thinks Odd is not a name but a royal title, like Prince or Duke, and that proto­col absolutely requires that it be used by commoners when they ad­dress , reduced to tattered circu of respect

I said, "Late, yes, I’"

She doesn’t know about h problees to her garage

"Can you see what I’?" she asked worriedly

"Pale yellow slacks A dark yellow and brown blouse"

She turned sly "Do you like the butterfly barrette inyour hair back with a yellow ribbon It looks nice that way"

As a young woman, Rosalia Sanchezadded a few pounds, having acquired the sea experience, she possessed the deeper beauty of the beatified: the sweet hulow of care and character that, in their last years on this earth, no doubt marked the faces of those ere later canonized as saints

"When you didn’t coht you’d been here but couldn’t see ht I couldn’t see you

anymore, either, that when I became invisible to you, you also became invisible to me"

"Just late," I assured her

"It would be terrible to be invisible"

"Yeah, but I wouldn’t have to shave as often"

When discussing invisibility, Mrs Sanchez refused to be amused Her saintly face found a frown of disapproval

"When I’ve worried about becoht I’d be able to see other people, they just wouldn’t be able to see or hear me"

"In those old Invisible Man movies," I said, "you could see his breath when he went out in really cold weather"

"But if other people become invisible to me when I’m invisible to them," she continued, "then it’s like I’m the last person in the world, all of it e around alone"

She shuddered Clasped in her hands, the coffee ainst the table

When Mrs Sanchez talks about invisibility, she’s talking about death, but I’m not sure she realizes this

If the true first year of the new eneral, it had been bleak for Rosalia Sanchez in particular, beginning with the loss of her husband, Herone to sleep next to the man whom she had loved for more than forty years - and awakened beside a cold cadaver For Herently as it ever does, in sleep, but for Rosalia, the shock of waking with the dead had been trau her husband, she had not gone with her three sisters and their faland On theof Septeht out of Boston had been hijacked and used as a guided h Rosalia had wanted children, God had given her none Herman, her sisters, her nieces, her nephews had been the center of her life She lost the

Sometione a little crazy with grief Quietly crazy, because she had lived her entire life quietly and knew no other way to be

In her gentle e that they were dead They had merely become invisible to her Nature in a quirky ht at anyall her lost loved ones visible to her again

The details of all the disappearances of ships and planes in the Berle were known to Rosalia Sanchez She’d read every book that she could find on the subject

She knew about the inexplicable, apparently overnight vanishment of hundreds of thousands of Mayans froras, and Palenque in AD 610

If you allowed Rosalia to bend your ear, she would nearly break it off in an earnest discussion of historical disappearances For instance, I know more than I care to know and immeasurably more than I need to know about the evaporation, to a man, of a division of three thou­sand Chinese soldiers near Nanking, in 1939

"Well," I said, "at least you’re visible this ot an­other whole day of visibility to look forward to, and that’s a blessing"

Rosalia’s biggest fear is that on the saain, she herself will vanish

Though she longs for their return, she dreads the consequences

She crossed herself, looked around her ho"

"You could bake anything" I said

"What would you like me to bake for you, Odd Thoet to work"

She acco "You are a good boy, Odd Thoars," I said, "except you don’t play poker, drink whiskey or drive fast cars"

"That’s sweet," she said "You know, I thought the world and all of Pearl Sugars She was so feested

"Exactly At the church’s strawberry festival one year, there was this rowdy s or drink Pearl put him doith just two punches"

"She had a terrific left hook"

"Of course, first she kicked him in that special tender place But I think she could have handled him with the punches alone I’ve some­times wished I could be more like her"

From Mrs Sanchez’s house, I walked the six blocks to the Pico Mundo Grille, which is in the heart of don Pico Mundo

Everybeca of the word rew shorter beforeblacktop, fros as the griddle that I would soon be attending

The air lacked the energy toliher than they had at dawn, far up where thinner air held the heat less tenaciously