CHAPTER TWELVE

The next two weeks went by quickly and easily. My students in Houston were cramming for exams, so I held a couple of intensive review classes that nobody wanted to skip.

My student in Chicago had become susceptible to bribery, so I knew that if I promised to swim with him afterward, he would behave well during the actual tutoring sessions. Once Bram Cortez joined us and once he did not. I told myself that the aquatic interludes were equally fun on both days.

I passed one weekend shopping in Atlanta and one weekend hiking through the mountains near Denver—where it was actually colder than it was in Chicago. Marika said she had not thought such a thing was possible.

The following week was sultry in Houston and downright gorgeous in Chicago. “We can’t stay inside on this beautiful day,” I told Quentin. “We have to go outside. We have to go to the beach. Where are those Kevin braces you told me about?”

His face lit up. “Do you mean it? Do we have to study when we go to the lake?”

“Oh, we’ll be working,” I assured him. “You just wait and see. Where are your Kevin things?”

“Kevvi braces,” he said. “I think Bram has them.”

Better and better. “Then let’s call him.”

A few minutes later, Cortez was inside the room with Quentin, and I was out in the hall, not allowed to watch the apparently intimate process of attaching the device. I’d called Francis to ask him to either delay Dennis’ arrival or tell him where we were going so he could join us, but Francis said Dennis had taken the day off anyway. Perfect. No reason to hurry back for anyone.

The door flew open and Quentin walked out. I felt a moment’s disorientation at seeing him out of his wheelchair. For one thing, he was much taller than I had realized, still thin as a stick but somehow older-looking, more mature, now that I saw him stretched to his full height. For another, the braces were an imperfect invention, and he moved with a slightly jerky motion, slow and halting, as if he wasn’t certain where the floor was. But he looked so delighted that I couldn’t dwell on this, and I couldn’t help but give him a hug.

“Let me see them,” I demanded. He hiked up his pants to display tiny black wires spiraling up his legs, then turned his head so I could see a similar spider’s web of connectors tapping into the base of his skull. “Wow. Weird,” I said. “Does it hurt?”

“Nope,” he said. “I’m a little dizzy, but if I hold on to you or Bram—and it always gets better—”

Bram was instantly at his side, wrapping an arm around Quentin’s shoulder. “You know the rules,” he said. “The minute you get tired, you tell me. Because if you overdo it, you’ll get sick, and I won’t take you back out again.”

“I know, I remember,” Quentin said. “Let’s go!”

Francis was at the teleport station with a duffle bag full of beach items he had collected—a couple of blankets, some water bottles, an assortment of food, and a Frisbee.

“You’re amazing,” I said to him. “You want to come with?”

“I don’t believe so,” he answered with a smile. “But thank you all the same.”

The next problem, of course, was logistical. Teleport systems had one great flaw, in that they could not instantaneously transmit two adult individuals. Most booths could handle one large and one small body—a parent and a child, or an adult and a pet—and “family-friendly” stations were set up to accommodate groups at the more heavily traveled destinations. In addition, all booths contained a FOLO key that ensured that anyone who hit the same button would end up in the same place. But it still wasn’t ideal, and most people who wanted to travel in packs had to regroup after they’d relocated.

“I want to go first,” Quentin said right away.

Cortez didn’t even hesitate. “No. Taylor goes first.”

“But Bram—”

“Ladies always do,” Cortez said.

This shut Quentin up. It made me a touch indignant, but I made no protest. I didn’t have much appreciation for chivalry, but I did have deep admiration for any argument that would let you get your way with Quentin. I picked up the duffle bag and stepped into the chamber.

“See you there,” I said and fizzed on over to Oak Street Beach.

This particular stretch of shoreline, one of the few accessible public areas snuggled up to Lake Michigan, is always crowded. First day of spring when it’s really too cold to sunbathe, middle of summer when the alewives are rotting in the tide, late September when winter is hovering balefully just across the waves—the beach is always a mob scene. Because, in Chicago, if you wait for perfect weather to go down and play in the sand, you’ll never get a chance to do it.

Anyway, there’s something mesmerizing about the water. When I was in high school, I used to study on the lakefill built just to the east of the Northwestern campus in Evanston. Bring a blanket and a sack lunch, find a big boulder that no one else had claimed, and plop down for the afternoon. Half the time I spent just watching the water, the gentle encroach and retreat of the waves, the endless varieties of blue over blue as the sky changed color and the water changed color while the sun made its lazy journey to nightfall. The lake is so big that you can’t see to the other shore. You can imagine it’s an ocean; you can imagine it’s the end of the world. There is something majestic about it, something both calm and infinitely dangerous.

And, apparently, half the population of Chicago agreed with me and had turned out this afternoon to bask in the same sense of wonder. Sure, any of these people could hop on over to Tahiti at any point in the year to enjoy the surf and the sun, but it takes time and effort to gather your things and lumber through international teleport terminals to spend an hour lolling on the beach. But if you live in Skokie or Mount Prospect, you can wink on over to Lake Michigan with five minutes of prep and spend your whole day at the water’s edge.

I barely had time to step from the teleport pad, glance at the people arrayed on the sand, and settle the strap of the bag more securely over my shoulder before Quentin came stumbling out of the gate. Oak Street Beach is a popular enough destination that there are three portals lined up right in a row, but Quentin emerged through the same one that had carried me.

“Wow! That’s superjazz,” was his first enthusiastic comment. I put out a hand to steady him, and he took it with complete unselfconsciousness.

“Haven’t you teleported before?” I asked.

“Yeah, but not for months and months. It’s just—suddenly you’re someplace else and you can’t even feel it.”

I supposed that for someone whose transit even through the relatively restricted confines of his house was something to be accomplished only with great effort, the marvel of teleportation must seem even more miraculous than it did to me.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I said, smiling at him, and then Bram Cortez materialized beside us.

“How you doing, Quin?” he asked. I was still physically attached to Quentin, my hand in his, but apparently I was invisible. “Did that shake any of your braces loose? You still feeling okay?”

“I’m great, Bram! This is so stratospheric.”

“You let me know the minute you feel tired—or sick—or funny.”

“You bet. Hey, can we go sit over there? We can watch them play volleyball.”

Indeed, some enterprising young men and women, stripped down to way too few clothes for this early in the season, had stretched a net across the sand, and they were energetically knocking a white ball back and forth. To me, it looked too cold and too exhausting to be fun, but they were all clearly having a grand time.

“Not too close,” Cortez said. “I don’t want a ball hitting you in the face. Come on. Over here.”

And just like that, he detached Quentin’s hand from mine, wrapped it around his own waist, and led the boy away. I followed, loaded down like a mule, and thinking, Two women left him, and it wasn’t even because he was spending more time with the kids than he was with them. Amazing.

But secretly, I have to admit, I was a little dazzled. I knew he adored Quentin, but I’d never seen him demonstrate quite this level of care. It was attractive. It was sexy. It just would have been a little more sexy if I’d felt part of the circle.

In a few minutes, we were situated on a blanket and looking through the bundle of goodies Francis had packed.

“Hey, look, cookies,” I said. “And candy bars. And soda.” I looked up, grinning. “We are gonna be so sick by the time we get home.”

“Can we go swimming?” Quentin asked.

“No,” said Cortez.

“Why not? I won’t be cold.”

“The water’s a lot colder than the air is right now,” Cortez responded. “So, yeah, you’d be freezing. Anyway, you can’t get the braces wet, you know that.”

“Anyway, you’re supposed to be working,” I told him. “Remember? This is a study hour. We’ve just had a change of venue.”

“I thought maybe you’d forget,” Quentin said.

“Damn unlikely,” I replied.

He giggled, flashed a look at Cortez to see if I’d be rebuked for swearing, and took a bite of his cookie. “I didn’t bring any books,” he said.

“We don’t need books. We’re going to talk about a couple of poems that I know by heart. So you just get yourself comfortable.”

Quentin squirmed a little where he sat and pulled his sweater tighter around his shoulders. Cortez stretched out next to him and threw his arm over his eyes to block out the sun.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I said.

I could see his smile, partially shaded by the angle of his arm. “I don’t have to study,” he said. “I can get as comfortable as I like.”

“Did you know there are poems about almost everything on the planet?” I asked Quentin in a very schoolmarmy tone of voice. “There’s even a poem about your friend Bram here.”

“There is?” Quentin demanded. “I don’t believe you!”

“Well, it’s not exactly about him,” I conceded. “But it’s about someone named Cortez.”

“I want to hear it,” he said.

First, I gave him a little background on Keats, and the Romantics in general. Shelley and Byron are far more interesting stories, but I glossed over them because Quentin was a very young nineteen. Sex and booze and poetry; debauchery hadn’t really changed that much over the centuries.

Then I launched into a declamation of “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer.” I have to confess here that I always hurry through the first octet, because I find it labored and somewhat boring; all the good lines come at the end. But they are very good lines, describing that great magical sense of discovery:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific—and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Maybe it didn’t register with Quentin exactly the way I’d hoped, though. “Stout Cortez,” he repeated and tried to smother a laugh.

Cortez grunted. “Scrawny Quentin,” he replied without taking his arm off his eyes or making any other sign of sentience.

“Well, let’s move on,” I said. Now I turned to Shelley and “Ozymandias,” because if any sonnet can be said to be popular with my students, this is it. Maybe they like the moral in the poem, the lesson that time erodes even the most sublime arrogance. Maybe they just groove on the theme of destruction. In my opinion, it’s one of the most vivid pictures painted in poetry, of the great, monstrous, sneering sculpture toppled to the ground:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal work, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

“I like that,” Quentin said. “Say it again.”

So I repeated the poem, then I recited “Chapman’s Homer” again. We talked about rhyme scheme and the structure of the Petrarchan sonnet, and how the lines with the most impact were, in each case, the final lines—and how, in each case, they were composed of simple words, declarative sentences, descriptive phrases that conjured a sense of vastness and awe.

Quentin stretched his hand out to indicate the beach around us. “The lone and level sands stretch far away,” he intoned.

“I wish they were lone,” I said. “But that’s the idea.”

Quentin poked at stout Cortez, who gave every evidence of having fallen asleep. “Hey, Bram, do you know any poems? Taylor knows lots.”

Cortez stirred, but merely dropped one arm and lifted the other to shield his face. “A wonderful bird is the pelican,” he said sleepily. “His bill can hold more than his belly can. He can take in his beak enough fish for a week, though I’m damned if I see how the hellhecan.”

Quentin shouted with laughter at this, though I grimaced. “Just my luck, that will be the poem he remembers from today’s session,” I said severely. “You have, with one limerick, undone all my hard work.”

Now Cortez rolled to his stomach and pushed himself up on his elbows. He was smiling. “Are you guys done?”

Quentin glanced at me. “I think so.”

“Oh yes,” I said.

“Good. Let’s play Frisbee.”

There wasn’t much room on our corner of the beach to play a running game, and I wouldn’t have thought Quentin was up to it anyway, but naturally I underestimated the lengths to which Bram Cortez would go to make everything all right for Quentin. He staked out a small triangle for us near the edge of our blanket, then proceeded to throw the Frisbee with amazing gentleness and accuracy right in Quentin’s direction. We must have played for an hour; Cortez never once missed. Quentin never had to leap or stoop for the plastic toy, which came twirling right into his outstretched hands.

I, on the other hand, had to catch Quentin’s wildly uneven passes, so I was running and jumping all over the place, tripping on other people’s discarded backpacks, skinning my knees as I dove into the sand. I was comforted by the fact that my own throws were not much better, and Bram Cortez had to leap just as high and run just as furiously to catch some of my more ill-considered tosses. He never missed one, though. Never dropped one. Is that the ease of the natural athlete or the tutored physical ability of a man trained to kill another man with his bare hands? Either way, he was impressive to watch.

The exertion tired us all out, and we dropped to the beach exhausted but happy. Cortez quizzed Quentin for five minutes about his state of well-being. “How are your legs? Does anything hurt? How about your lungs? Any trouble breathing?” After Quentin’s first few reassuring responses, my attention wandered.

“Hey! There’s an ice cream truck!” I exclaimed. “Anybody want ice cream? My treat.”

Everyone, it turned out, wanted ice cream, not just the three of us. I waited in line about fifteen minutes before I was able to return with my treasures, cones for them and a Dreamsicle for me. We ate in contented silence, then the two of them dropped down to the blanket for a nap. After Cortez again asked Quentin how he was feeling, nobody spoke for about half an hour. I really think both of them fell asleep.

Not me. I sat up and watched the pageant before me. The volleyball game—or another one in the long round of the tournament—was still in progress. One pretty redheaded girl seemed to be the most popular player of the event, and in between serves her male teammates clustered around her with a flirtatious attention. I spared a moment to hope she was good-natured as well as beautiful. A few feet from our blanket, on the side away from the volleyball game, a young mother was helping her toddler learn to walk in the sand. He kept turning up his face to give her a toothless smile of such delight that even I would have bent over him for another backbreaking hour to help him navigate the unfamiliar terrain, and I’ve never been a sucker for babies the way Marika is.

But mostly I watched the lake, the endlessly fascinating, endlessly changing, briefest imaginable sculptures of waves poised upon the water. How many centuries had the tides crashed and receded just like this, before there were human eyes to watch and wonder? When we were all dead, starved off our planet or blasted off by our own apocalyptic weapons, how long would the water ceaselessly, indifferently, continue to pound out its own rhythmic heartbeat, diastolic, systolic, ebb and flow? I don’t spend much time pondering the great cycles of the universe, but an afternoon at the beach gives me a shivering sense of eternity and reminds me how insignificant a span my own lifetime is in comparison.

I glanced down at the men to find Cortez awake and watching me. “You look so serious,” he said. “What are you thinking about?”

“A poem.”

He grunted. “Why am I not surprised?”

Quentin stirred. It seemed entirely natural that he would waken at the first sound of voices. “What poem?” he asked.

I gestured at the water. “‘Dover Beach.’ There’s a line—someone’s watching the ocean—and he talks about how the waves ‘bring the eternal note of sadness in.’ I think of that every time I’m near the water.”

“I don’t feel sad,” Quentin said.

“That’s good.”

“How do you know so much poetry?” Cortez asked. “I mean—it seems to be in your head the way other people have memories in their heads. Like it’s always there.”

“It pretty much is always there,” I admitted. “And they are memories. Little stray thoughts organized as gorgeous rhymes.”

“Did you learn them in school?” Quentin asked.

“Some. Some I found on my own, just reading anthologies. And some,” I sat up straighter, launching into casual-lecture mode, “like ‘Dover Beach,’ in fact, I learned through unusual channels. Like science fiction.”

“I guess you’ll explain that,” Cortez said.

“I read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 when I was a teenager. That’s the temperature at which paper burns, and in this story, banned books are being burned to keep people from reading them. Anyway, at some point in the book, all these refugees are sitting around a fire. And they get up, one by one, and recite some famous piece of literature that they have memorized. And in this way, they plan to make sure that, even if all the great works are destroyed, these passages will be passed on to the next generation. Someone recites ‘Dover Beach.’

“Well, I just fell in love with it, and I memorized it the next day. Then I memorized a dozen other poems that seemed important to me—things by Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson and Sharon Olds. If someone bans the Norton Anthology of Poetry, I’m ready. They’re not going to burn down the libraries without a fight from me.”

I could tell Quentin liked this idea. “Maybe I should memorize a poem,” he said.

“Maybe you should,” I answered. “Is there one you really like?”

He debated. “Something by A.E. Housman.”

“Good choice. You think about it during the week. We’ll pick one, and then I’ll give you some time to memorize it, and then I’ll test you on it one day.”

“But what if I forget it?” he asked. “I mean, you know, after you test me. What if I forget a month later, and they burn all the books?”

I hid my smile. You can’t make fun of the very motivation you’ve used. “You have to practice it on a regular basis,” I said solemnly. “Maybe the first Monday of every month you recite it again, or write it out. That way you’ll always remember.”

“Okay,” he said happily. “Bram can learn one too.”

I didn’t even glance at Cortez. “Excellent idea,” I said. “Then we’ll have a lot of good poems around our little fire.”

Quentin leaned back on the blanket and closed his eyes. “Dennis too,” he said drowsily. “And maybe Francis.”

For a moment, I thought he was drifting off to sleep again, maybe to dream in rhyme and meter. Then suddenly Cortez lunged to his knees and started shaking Quentin by the shoulder.

“Quin? Are you okay, buddy? Quentin, are you all right? Can you hear me?”

Panic strung all my veins to wire. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Cortez slapped a hand to his right ear, activating his EarFone. “Rush Pres,” he barked out, then scooped Quentin up in his arms. Rush Presbyterian was one of biggest hospitals in the Chicago area. As soon as someone answered, Cortez started firing off orders. “Tell Dr. Hammond or someone in the exotic diseases department that I’m bringing Quentin Phillips in. Emergency,” he snapped. “Prepare an adrenaline injection, prepare for possible transfusion. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

And he started running toward the line of teleport gates with the boy in his arms. He was barefoot, as was Quentin; their shoes and some of their clothes were back on the blanket. I scrambled after them.

“Bram! What’s wrong with him? What should I do? Do you have to notify his father if he needs medical treatment?”

He didn’t even look back at me. “I’m authorized to sign anything. Call Francis. He’ll know what to do.”

“But I—”

It was pointless. Even with Quentin in his arms, he was running so fast I couldn’t keep up. I jogged to a stop and stared after him. No surprise that the cluster of people waiting at the teleport gates fell back to allow him instant access to one of the portals. He was still talking—to the hospital, to the people at the gate, to Quentin, I couldn’t tell—and he seemed both completely in command and absolutely cool. He placed Quentin with infinite gentleness inside the small cubicle and punched in the codes—including, I knew because I had done it myself, the delay code that would allow him to retreat and close the door before the transmission began.

The look on his face as he watched Quentin disappear through the glass made me want to stumble toward him across the sand and put my arms around him to offer comfort.

But he only stood that way, desolate and afraid, for about five seconds. Then he pushed his own way into the portal, closed the door, and vanished.

I turned back to our rumpled blanket on the sand, gathering up the candy bar wrappers, the soda cans, the discarded shirts and shoes. Then I plopped myself down in the middle of the blanket and called Francis.

“It’s Taylor,” I said. “Cortez has taken Quentin to Rush Presbyterian. I think you should tell his dad.”

“Certainly,” he said, in his calm, reassuring voice. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

“Everything was fine,” I said, feeling my body start to tremble. Aftershock, maybe. “We worked a little, we played Frisbee—but it wasn’t like Quentin was running around too much, we tried to make sure he didn’t get overtired—and then we ate some cookies. And some ice cream. I don’t know, Francis, maybe he had too much sugar. Is that a problem for him? But Cortez was watching him so closely, I don’t think he would have let him eat something that—anyway, then he just sort of sank back on the blanket and wouldn’t talk—”

“Sometimes exertion brings on these spells,” Francis said. “He’ll probably be just fine. They’ll know what to do for him at the hospital.”

“I feel so dreadful,” I said. “I’m the one who said we should come out to the lake, and then he was walking, which he doesn’t usually do, and I know it tired him out, but he—”

“It’s not your fault, Taylor,” Francis said. Since he always called me Ms. Kendall, his use of my name gave me a small, brief rush of warmth. “It’s the fault of the Kyotenin degradation. And his father.”

I hadn’t expected the sudden, quiet, almost deadly venom—from Francis, of all people—while I was sitting in this happy, sunny place miles away. “His father?” I repeated stupidly. I didn’t really think he’d elaborate.

But. “For not getting Quentin the treatment that could have slowed down the degeneration,” Francis replied instantly.

“The organ donation? I understand that didn’t have the beneficial effects they hoped.”

“There were other treatments he refused,” Francis said coldly.

I put a hand over my eyes. I was having a little trouble coping with the unreality of the place, the event, and the conversation. “Yeah. I think he has a lot to answer for,” I said. “But I guess you have to tell him anyway. Is there anything else I can do?”

“No, Taylor. Thank you for calling.”

We disconnected. I looked around again, at the sand, the water, the parade of people. The volleyball game continued uninterrupted, and the mother of the toddler now was rocking him to sleep in her arms. No one seemed to have noticed our quick little moment of trauma. No one else seemed terrified, or lost, or even uncertain. How was it possible that one great event could have so little consequence to anyone but me?

I stuffed the extra shoes and shirts down into the bag, resolving to wash the clothes at my own place so I could return them, clean and fresh, to their respective owners. Then I stood, brushed sand off my pants, shook out the blanket, and draped it over my shoulders. No reason to go back to the mansion now, so I trudged to the teleport pad and headed straight home.

*

Dennis met me at Rush Pres that evening. “Goddammit” had been his reaction a few hours earlier when I called him. “He’s been doing so well lately.”

“I just wanted to let you know,” I said. “I thought about going down to the hospital, but I don’t want to get in the way.”

“Well, I’m going,” he said. “When do you want to meet?”

“And where,” I added. “Because I’ve never been there.”

“Wait for me at the teleport gate,” he instructed. “Eight sharp.”

He was there before me, even though I was early. He looked like he’d spent the day getting a haircut and crying. His face had an exposed, vulnerable look, and his eyes were squinched up tightly as if against an internal pain. I couldn’t stop myself from placing a hand on his arm.

“Dennis,” I said urgently. “Are you all right?”

He smiled tightly and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. “Oh, this was just what I needed to take my mind off my own troubles,” he said lightly. “Really. I mean it.”

“If you want to talk about it—”

“Got plenty of people to pour my heart out to, sweetie. But thanks for the offer. We’re here for Q.”

I glanced around. Like Oak Street Beach, Rush Pres boasted a row of three teleport terminals at the main entrance. Beyond them, the hospital opened up into a huge, echoing space, all white corridors and chrome fixtures and that pervasive, unsettling smell of chemical intervention. “I don’t even know where to go. Bram said something about the exotic diseases department? Dr. Hamilton?”

“Hammond,” Dennis said confidently. He took my hand and led me down the hallway. “Been here lots of times, sweetie. I know exactly where I’m going.”

“Bram said he was authorized to get Quentin medical treatment. Are you, too?”

Dennis nodded. “And Francis.”

“Does his dad do anything for him?”

“Not that I’ve ever noticed,” Dennis said bitterly. “Encouraged him to die, maybe.”

I glanced at him. His open, handsome face was still clenched, still angry. Was this because of a fight with Gregory, or was this because of his fear for Quentin? “Francis mentioned something,” I said hesitantly. “About Duncan Phillips not agreeing to some treatment.”

Dennis nodded. We had reached a hallway of elevators, and he pushed a button for going up. “Several treatments, in fact. Some pretty dangerous, some not so much. No to all.”

“So then—I mean, he must be on some kind of—drugs, or—I mean, he’s getting physical therapy, I assumed—”

“He sees the doctor once a week. Bram or Francis or I take him. Gets an injection, gets his responses tested. Routine stuff. But he’s not on the gene therapy program. He didn’t participate in the organ transplant project. Both of those failed, didn’t help the kids at all, so, okay, maybe no harm done. Well, jury’s still out on gene therapy, but it doesn’t look promising. There was a new drug about a year ago, pretty risky, but we knew a few patients who started taking it. So far, no results. Duncan Phillips wouldn’t even consider it. Wouldn’t even look at the data. Just said no.”

The elevator pinged! and the doors slid open to reveal an empty, sterile cubicle. We stepped inside. I said, “Maybe he just doesn’t want to endanger Quentin. Or maybe he doesn’t want to raise Quentin’s hopes and then see them destroyed—”

Dennis looked at me with dead hatred in his eyes. “He doesn’t care if Quentin lives or dies,” he said and dropped my hand.

We made the rest of the journey in silence, up the elevator, down the corridors, stopping at a nurse’s station to explain our mission. I had to fill out a visitor’s form; Dennis, apparently, was a familiar face. The nurse shot a scan gun at both of us to check for fever and infections, then waved us down the hall.

We turned two more corners before we came upon Bram Cortez sitting on a molded plastic chair outside a closed door. He had a tablet in his hand and appeared to be staring at its screen without absorbing anything it showed him. He was wearing shoes and a different shirt, so either Francis had dropped off a change of clothes for him or he’d found time to swing by his own place in the past few hours. He glanced up when he heard our footfalls, and I thought I saw a look of relief or pleasure cross his face. He rose to his feet.

“How’s he doing?” Dennis asked.

“Sleeping now. The epi woke him up, and he was responsive—a little slow, but within tolerances. Could move his extremities, remembered all the relevant data, wasn’t having trouble breathing. Hammond seemed to think he’d be fine, but wants to keep him here a day or two.”

“Can we see him?” I asked.

“When he wakes up. Should be another hour or so.”

Dennis looked at his watch. “Then let’s go eat something.”

Cortez gestured at the door. “I don’t want to leave him.”

“Have you eaten?” I asked pointedly. “Since the ice cream cone?”

“No.”

Dennis took my hand again. “We’ll bring something back for you,” he said.

About fifteen minutes later, the three of us were seated in a circle of uncomfortable plastic chairs, consuming sandwiches from the hospital cafeteria and sharing a large bag of chips. No one seemed very hungry.

“So what happened?” I asked. “Francis said that exertion sometimes brings on these—spells.”

Cortez nodded. “And too much excitement seems to feed into it.”

I spread my hands. “But then, when I said I was taking him out, why didn’t you say no? If you knew this would happen—”

Cortez looked at me, his dark eyes sad and compassionate. “It doesn’t always happen. It’s a roulette game. And can we tell that boy he can never leave the house? Never go play on the beach? What kind of life is that? He had a good day, Taylor. He loves being with you. He’ll remember the poems and the Frisbee game and the ice cream cone longer than he’ll remember one more goddamn visit to the hospital. He’s been here so many times, the trips all run together in his head. Coming here is worth it to him to have a day like that. He’d tell you that himself.”

“Besides,” Dennis added softly, “he has to exercise. If he just sits there in that chair, he’ll die even sooner. That’s why he works out with me. That’s why this wasn’t, really, bad for him. Keep him confined, and you hasten his death.”

“I just feel so responsible,” I said. “No matter what you say.”

Dennis put his arm around me and kissed me on the cheek. “We all do,” he said. “Welcome to a very exclusive club.”

I leaned against him briefly to soak up a moment’s comfort, then straightened up in my narrow chair. “So are you guys going to stay here all night?”

“I might,” Cortez said. He jerked his chin at Dennis. “You shouldn’t. You look like shit.”

“Remind me to give you my assessment of your physical beauty at some time when I have more energy.”

“Dennis is having personal problems,” I said. “But he won’t talk about them.”

He flicked my cheek with his finger. “But I’ll confide in Abramo once you’re gone, Tay-Tay.”

I giggled; I couldn’t help it. “Unfortunately, I can’t stay too long. I’ve got to be in Houston tomorrow morning. But I want to at least be here when he wakes up.”

“Dennis can take you home afterward,” Cortez said.

I shot him an irritated look. “Who are you, my mother? I think I can find my own way back, even at midnight.”

Dennis had an expression of unholy amusement on his face. “I think, Se?or Cortez, if it’s that important to you that Taylor get home safely, you should escort her yourself. I’ll stay with the patient until you return.”

“No one has to—”

“All right,” Cortez said.

I threw my hands in the air. “ Worse than my mother.”

Dennis was rifling through his pockets. “I don’t suppose anyone brought a deck of cards? We could play strip poker.”

Cortez held out his tablet. “Got some gaming apps, if you want to play something.”

“I thought, something the three of us could all enjoy together?” Dennis said.

Cortez was absolutely deadpan. “Taylor could recite some of her favorite poems and the two of us could analyze the rhyme structure.”

“Now, that is an attractive program,” Dennis approved. “However, my hearing—I’m having a little trouble with my ears—”

“You can both go to hell,” I said.

“That’s a promising start to a poem,” Dennis said.

“If you think—” I began, but Cortez threw a hand in the air and tilted his head toward the door. His ears were quicker than mine, because I didn’t hear anything, but when he jumped up and opened the door, we could all see Quentin sitting up in bed. Instantly, we rushed in to crowd around him.

“How you doing, buddy?” Cortez wanted to know.

“Are you mad?” Quentin asked immediately.

Cortez shook his head and reached out to pat him on the shoulder. “Not even a little bit. You can’t help it you got sick.”

“Well, if I’d been there, you wouldn’t have gotten sick,” Dennis said huffily. “I would have made sure you sat very quietly and didn’t run around playing Frisbee and buying ice cream for everyone on the beach.”

Quentin giggled. I said, “I know! I kept saying, ‘Now, Bram, let the poor child sit still for a few minutes,’ but oh no, Mr. Cortez here just had to keep egging you on—”

Quentin giggled again and flashed a quick look at Cortez to see how he was taking the abuse. Cortez was smiling. Quentin said, “Well, it wasn’t all Bram’s fault. I did kind of want to run around and have fun. But it was jazz, wasn’t it, Taylor?”

I leaned over to kiss him on the forehead. “Superjazz,” I said. “Maybe we could go back tomorrow.”

Everyone laughed at that, and we spent a few more minutes in raillery and nonsense. It was obvious Quentin was too weak to talk long, so I wasn’t surprised when Cortez hustled us out of the room before we’d been there a quarter of an hour.

“I’m going to take Taylor home,” he said to Quentin. “But Dennis will stay with you while I’m gone, okay? You all right with that?”

“Sure.”

“Go,” Dennis said, settling himself into a chair next to the bed. “I won’t leave until you finally get back.”

I cast him a doubtful look. “You make it sound like that might take a while.”

The look he gave me in return was wicked. “What could possibly keep him?”

I wanted to hit him, but I contented myself with casting him a fulminating glance. In a few minutes, Cortez and I were out the door and walking down the antiseptic hallways.

“You really don’t have to—” I began.

“I know.”

“I constantly come home late at night without an escort.”

“Not such a good idea, maybe.”

“I’m thirty-four years old and I—”

“Soon to be thirty-five.”

“And I can take care of myself.”

He hit the elevator button before I could even do that small task. “None of us really can take care of ourselves all of the time,” he observed.

And that silenced me for the long walk to the row of teleport gates and the brief moment of transmission. We entered two different booths at the same time, but since there was only one portal on my street, I materialized a few moments before he did. Once he stepped out beside me, we strolled wordlessly down the quiet streets of my neighborhood. It was close to ten o’clock and few people were out. Many houses and apartments had already gone completely dark as the responsible members of society lulled themselves to sleep in preparation for the next day of bustling productivity. The warm afternoon air had chilled to a more normal Chicago frost. Our footsteps sounded loud, significant, almost ominous on the deserted sidewalk. If we had been in a movie, we would have been fighting for our lives sometime in the next few frames.

“So you think he’ll be in the hospital a few more days?” I asked, finally breaking the silence as we moved within sight of my building.

He nodded. “Don’t be planning on a lesson on Friday.”

“No, of course not. But can I go see him then? Or tomorrow?”

“Sure. He’d like that.”

“Will he be home by Tuesday?”

“That’s what I’d expect. I’ll keep you posted.”

At the front doorway to my building, I keyed in the security code, but Cortez made no move to walk away. “Are you coming up with me?” I asked.

“Have to make sure you get home safely.”

“Are you coming in?”

“Just long enough to make certain there are no murderers lurking in the closets.”

“There have never been murderers in the closets.”

“Always a first time.”

And sure enough, he followed me into the apartment, went straight to the hall closet, peered inside, and then headed to the bedroom, where I did not follow him. I had gone to the refrigerator to open a beer.

“All clear,” he said when he rejoined me.

I gestured with my bottle. “Want one?”

He took it from my hand. “Just a sip.”

I watched as he put his mouth to the rim and closed his eyes, taking a long, heartfelt swallow. Then he opened his eyes, smiled, and handed the bottle back. “I have more,” I said dryly. “You could have your own.”

He shook his head, still smiling. “I have to get back. Or Dennis will start rumors.”

“Mustn’t have that.”

“So you’ll come by the hospital on Friday?” he asked.

“Maybe sooner.”

“I’ll let you know if they send him home earlier.”

“All right.”

He headed for the door and I moved behind him, ready to lock up as soon as he left. On the threshold, he turned back to look at me. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It wasn’t mine, either, though it feels like it. Quentin’s sick. We can’t change that.”

“I can’t stand knowing that.”

“I know,” he said. “I can’t either. If it makes it any easier, Quentin adores you. You’ve brightened his life more than I think you realize.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it helps.”

“All of our lives,” he said. And he bent down and kissed me. At first, all I could taste was the beer, on my mouth, on his; or maybe the heady, intoxicating sensation came from somewhere else entirely. He put one hand up to my cheek, and the heat of his skin altered my pores. His mouth on mine felt like fate, like change. I closed my eyes and kissed him back.

We did not touch except for lip to lip, hand to cheek. He was the one to draw away, and he looked down at me solemnly for a moment. I could read strong emotion in his eyes, but not the exact printed text. What was he thinking? What were my own eyes conveying to him?

A moment of that serious, quiet appraisal—then, astonishingly, he smiled. “Don’t tell Dennis,” he said and sauntered out the door, shutting it behind him.

I hadn’t even set the lock before I was phoning Marika.