The Future, in a Past Life Back in 1989, the publishing company then known as E.P. Dutton was an old-fashioned kind of place. Wide-sashed windows opened to the weather; an orange carpet was duct-taped together where it had frayed; the telex machine buzzed and spit out missives from abroad. I was a young editor, newly enough promoted to still be dazzled by lunches with agents who drank me under the table and left me with the check. And, it was the era of the slush pile - a mountain of hard-copy manuscripts sent in over the transom, with postage stamps enclosed for the return journey. Once someone (not me, unfortunately, as I was surviving on lentils and credit cards and could have used it) ripped open an envelope to discover a $20 bill instead of return postage. Magic like that happened, sometimes. So did other kinds of magic - my first fiction acquisition came from that pile. One day, a more senior member of the editorial department corralled us all into a conference room. She wanted us to meet a prospective author who was a clairvoyant medium. We were instructed to bring a small belonging worn on our person, like a piece of jewelry, for a psychic reading after the pitch. This was a welcome diversion from our usual frantic deadlines, and we assembled, fairground-style, for his presentation about reincarnation and spirit guides. I considered myself impervious to this kind of charlatanry, so I was not surprised that when my turn came, otherworldly signals failed to arise from my little gold ring. Impatiently, the medium seized my hand and went silent. "Your spirit guides are here," he said, at last. The room perked up: thus far, we had not entertained any spirits, only general information about past events and a few predictions. One of them is your mother's sister. My mother didn't have a sister. Yes, she did. I felt vaguely affronted. Three brothers. No sister. She had a sister - she died before your mother was born. Her name began with the letter V. Oh. A "ping" of forgotten information bounced like a pebble against my wall of certainty; suddenly I felt a little shaky. There had been such a child, a daughter who had died of diphtheria in the 1920s. All I knew about it was that my grandmother had been devastated by the loss, and that Viola's ashes were kept on a high shelf in her closet. There's someone else, also on your mother's side. She's not speaking English. No, my mother's family all spoke English. Here I was back on firm ground. Her name begins with ... an E or an F. And her husband died of a wound to the head ... he's speaking now, I can understand him. His name begins with A ... she's very insistent! An E or an F, you don't remember? He glared as though I should be contributing more to this odd exchange, and began listing possible names. Then it floated back to me, the name of my mother's only French-speaking relation in an iron-spined family of English Canadians. "Florange," I said. Aunt Florange. I'd met her only once, on a family trip. Yes, that's it! He dropped my hand. My colleagues rustled and murmured. They have a message for you. I said, feeling I was being made ridiculous. They want you to write. Write? Flap copy? I waved the typed pages I'd ferried to the meeting. Write. My heart sank. And, strangely, lightened. "What I really want to know," I said, deflecting the subject, "Is am I going to die in a plane crash?" But change your diet. Later, I called my mother. Mom, who was Aunt Florange married to? Uncle Alan. Um, how did Uncle Alan die? He fell off the roof and hit his head. He already had shrapnel, though. Well, you'll never believe this, but a psychic was in our office today and he told me that Uncle Alan died of a head wound and that Aunt Florange is my spirit guide. I didn't mention Viola. Well, you could have picked someone better! She and I never got along. I didn't pick - do you believe in this stuff? It was hard to imagine that my mother would entertain the idea of life after death, not to mention spirit guides. She always worried that you wouldn't remember her. She did? Goodness knows why. She was an old lady. You were a little girl. And then I remembered: we had written each other letters. A month or so later, the psychic came back in for a second meeting. This time, he said that he saw me on a street corner in Paris, sometime in the last century, in a long skirt, holding an umbrella. In a past life, I was something like a streetwalker, but not exactly. "And you," he pointed to one of my co-workers, a woman, "Were one of her clients! As a man," he added. I can see you with your cape and cane. Then he stood up and said, "I don't know why I'm here. This company is going to close. I can see boxes lined up all down this hallway and you're packing up to leave. So, you're clearly not the publisher I am looking for. We all looked at each other, perplexed. Then got back to work. The E.P. Dutton we knew, along with its editorial staff was, in fact, dissolved shortly after that - perhaps a month or two later. The company was absorbed into its corporate parent, part of an industrywide wave of reorganizations that perhaps wasn't so hard to see coming, although it was certainly a surprise to us. The day we were told happened to be Halloween, and we repaired to the restaurant across the street, where the entire wait staff was in costume. Ghouls and ghosts served us our lunch, a long and boozy one. Then, back at the office, boxes were packed and stacked in the hall. The hidden gift of unemployment was that I was able to spend more time at home with my mother, who was ill, and who died the following year. As for writing, that went slowly. My pragmatic side, as well as all of the parental voices and silences of my upbringing, restrained me. Professionally, I heeded the publishing industry's taboo against editors writing, even when my heart pulled me in that direction. But, in the margins of regular life, to the side of all the clamor, I did begin to listen more deeply. To find the voices of the past, those women on street corners, blinking in the sudden light. Florange and the others didn't seem to mind waiting. Compared to bosses, editors and authors, they were quite patient. In fact, they gave me a whole new view of the word "deadline." They seemed to be saying that I had all the time in the world. Carole DeSanti, an editor at Viking Penguin, is the author of the novel "The Unruly Passions of Eugénie R."