Eventually, all of this would pass. And the memory of it would give way to embellishment, fantasy and outright distortion until it was hard for Hal Hefner to remember what he was really like back then, when he still carried in his head the sound of a made-up perfect voice, the voice that could speak its heart, the voice he used to wish he had, until the day he stopped wishing he sounded like anyone else and just started talking as he was.