And now we know, thought Jack. His gaze fell upon his friend’s ravaged face, the death’s-heads tattooed and branded and scarified across his wiry arms and the arc of glowing chips above his left eye. Nothing was left of the smooth-skinned boy Jack had loved except his eyes, which had never been boyish at all. The rest Leonard himself had smelted away, leaving bones and scars and unruly pockets of flesh; the only things that had ever interested him, anyway.
“Fifty years,” whispered Leonard. “You know what he was like? Have you ever seen a picture of Padmasambhava?”
Jack made a face. “Not in Yonkers. Not recently.”
“Really? Well, here, look—” Leonard rummaged in a knapsack until he found a battered leather wallet, opened it, and flipped through its contents. “This guy,” he said, holding up a little rectangle like a trading card, its lurid colors tempered by a crosshatch of tears and folds. “Padmasambhava. He’s a Tibetan magician, this legendary yogi. Anyway, that’s who Dr. Hanada looks like.”
Jack took the picture. It showed a demonic-looking figure with madly rolling eyes standing on one leg. In his left hand he clutched a staff almost twice his height, impaled with human skulls.
“Right,” said Jack. Very deliberately he placed first the picture and then the vial of Fusax into Leonard’s hand. “You know, I don’t think I want to hear any more about any of this, Leonard. Thank you all the same. And I’m pretty tired, so maybe we could see about getting together some other—”
“It’s the cure, Jack.”
Jack gaped at him. His friend stared back, his expression withdrawn, almost hostile, then Leonard dropped the picture of Padmasambhava. It wafted across the floor and beneath the bed.
“The cure.” Leonard held up the vial so light from the window flowed over it, gold and green. “A miracle, Jackie.”
Rage swelled inside Jack. “What?”
“You heard me, Jackie.” Leonard’s eyes glittered. His mouth stretched into a grin as broad as it was merciless. “All that other stuff they’ve been giving to us all these years? It’s bullshit, sweetheart. Bullshit—
“This is it. This is the cure. For AIDS, for petra virus, all of it. This is what’s going to change fucking human history. Fusax.”
Jack stared at the corona of light around Leonard’s hair, the little bottle in his hand like a bright grenade.
Then, “You fucking son of a bitch,” said Jack.
And he decked him.
“Hey—!”
Leonard crashed to the floor. Jack heard the crack of his friend’s skull against wood and felt his heart start joyously, as though a lover had called his name.
“What the fuck?” Leonard flung his arms across his face, the bottle rolling toward the wall. “WHAT THE—”
Jack ignored him. He walked over to where the vial had come to rest against the leg of his father’s old desk. He picked up the bottle and eyed it warily.
He pondered the indecipherable Japanese characters above the Latin name. But of course they had nothing to tell him, good old dependable Jackie-boy. Mysterious doctors never shared their secrets with him, and the only demon Jack had ever known sprawled on the floor, moaning and cursing.
“…fucking nuts, Jackie, you know that? Fucking…”
Jack continued to stare at the vial, giving it this last chance to redeem itself. At last he turned, facing the window with its rippling carnival light, and with all his strength hurled the bottle from him.
“JACKIE! NO—”
He had expected it to shatter against the pane. Instead the vial shot right through the glass, leaving a surprisingly small neat opening, like a bullet hole. Jack walked over and examined it.
“Wow.” He crouched down and eyeballed it, shaking his head in wonderment at a hole the size of an old-fashioned silver dollar. There was no radius of cracks, no broken glass. Just that perfect bull’s-eye. “I was sure it would break.”
Behind him Leonard stumbled to his feet and limped to the window. Jack flinched, but the other man seemed not even to notice him. Leonard put his hands upon the glass and pressed his face close, his breath fogging the pane as he peered at the lawn below. A bruise was already darkening his left cheek. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Me neither.” Jack glanced at him warily, but his friend only stared outside. His dark eyes were filled with tears.
“Oh, shit.” Jack’s bravado melted into remorse. He’d only seen Leonard cry once before, at Rachel Gardino’s funeral. “Leonard, I’m—oh, Jeez, Leonard…”
“I can’t believe it. I was only trying to—trying to—”
Jack shook his head. “You’d better go,” he said. His knuckles throbbed from where he’d struck Leonard. He felt like he was going to burst into tears himself. “Okay? I just think you’d better go.”
Leonard turned.
“I know why you did that.” He rubbed his bruised face almost lovingly. “Jackie. You really need to get over it. You’d be a lot better off if you learned how to deal with your feelings for me, you know that? All that rage? It’ll kill you, Jackie-boy. But this—”
He gazed out the window, to where the lawn shimmered beneath the golden sky. “—this,” he repeated, his voice starting to shake. “You may really have fucked up this time, Jackie.”
Jack stared. Was Leonard threatening him? But then Leonard laid his hand upon Jack’s shoulder.
“I have to leave now,” he said. “And I’ll be gone for a while. I’ll call you when I get back.”
Leonard’s grip tightened, his fingers digging through Jack’s robe until they fastened on a cord of muscle. Jack writhed and let out a small moan.
“ Ow—”
“You better ‘Ow.’” The placebit in his front tooth sent out a ruby flare. “Pissing off Padmasambhava like that.”
With a smile he let go of his friend. Jack fell back against the bed. Leonard picked up his bags, then headed for the door. In the hallway he stopped.
“I’m not angry, you know, Jackie.” He hoisted a bag over his shoulder, bones and mirrors clattering. “Believe it or not. I really do understand—”
He cast Jack a sly look, then, grinning, began to recite.
He grinned wolfishly. “Watch your back, Jackie-boy—”
And with a soft clatter upon the stairs he was gone.
It took Jack forever to fall asleep that night. His fever was back, his hand ached, he felt guilty and ashamed and generally overstimulated. An hour-long search of the grass beneath his window had failed to turn up anything except for a few rusted malt liquor cans and an IZE ampoule. He didn’t find so much as a shard of glass. When evening fell he had Mrs. Iverson bring dinner to his room, canned beef bouillon and a glass of tepid water. Exhausted, he fell into bed before nine o’clock, and proceeded to toss and turn until eleven-thirty, marking the hours by the chiming of Lazyland’s clocks. He finally resorted to his grandfather’s remedy and crept downstairs to warm some milk on the Coleman stove, adding a shot of Irish whiskey from his grandmother’s precious hoard. By the time he’d mounted the stairs again to the top floor, he was yawning and feeling pleasantly high. He sank back into bed and soon was breathing deeply.