Criminal charges… a civil suit… complaint to the hospital board. What else could go wrong?
And this visit from a police detective—what was that all about? He could have called and told her all this. Why go to all the trouble to come over and tell her in person? , Alicia groaned. "I hope he's not interested in me."
But the more she thought about it, the more she was sure that was it. Detective Matthews's personal interest in this case was just that… personal.
"Forget about it, Will," she muttered. "You don't know what you're getting into."
2.
Jack bounded up the stairs and knocked on the sturdy oak door—or more precisely, on the countless coats of paint that blunted the details of the door's carved surface. Four A was spelled out in brass at eye level, and he wondered why the "A?" This was the only apartment on the floor.
He'd pushed to meet her here because he wanted to get more of a handle on the enigmatic Dr. Alicia Clayton—treater of children with AIDS, buster of child-molester skulls, and would-be burner of ancestral homes.
The door swung in and Alicia stood there, staring at him—a little tentatively, he thought—with those steely eyes. Her black hair was pulled back into a short ponytail, giving her an almost girlish look. She was wearing dirty gardener's gloves.
"You're not breathing hard," she said.
"Well, I admit you're attractive, but I don't think—"
She smiled. "No-no. I mean, the walk up the steps. Most people are winded by the time they get here."
Winded? Why?
"Oh, yeah," he said. "Me too. Really winded. Can I come in and rest?"
She hesitated.
"I won't bite," he said. "Promise."
"Sorry," she said, and stepped aside to let him in. "It's just that you can't be too careful, you know?"
As she closed the door behind them, Jack popped the Semmerling out of his sleeve and held it out to her. She gasped when she saw the tiny pistol.
"Take it," he said. "It's loaded. The world's smallest four-shot .45. Keep it handy while I'm here."
She stared at it as if it were alive and going to bite her. "That's okay. Really."
"Sure?"
When she nodded, he tucked it into a pocket. He didn't know who was more relieved right then: Alicia, because he'd offered her the weapon, or himself, because she hadn't taken it. He didn't feature anyone else messing with his Semmerling.
She led him out of the foyer. "Come on. We can talk in here."
Jack followed her as far as the threshold, then stopped, staring.
A jungle. A high-ceilinged room, almost a loft, with big skylights, and green everywhere. Not houseplants. Trees. Little trees, yes, but trees. Some with their tops wrapped in clear plastic, like oxygen tents, and others with bandages around their trunks.
"What is this?" he said. "A tree hospital?"
She laughed, and Jack realized this was the first time he'd heard that sound from her.
"You ought to do that more often," he told her.
"What?"
"Laugh."
Her smile faded. "I might do just that… once the house is gone." Before Jack could say anything, she turned and waved a gloved hand at the room. "Anyway, this is my hobby: plant grafting."
"No kidding?" he said, stepping into the room and looking about. "That's a hobby?"
"It is for me. Or maybe it's therapy of sorts. Whatever it is, it gives me… pleasure."
For an instant there he'd had the strangest feeling she was going to say "peace."
"How'd you get into something like this?"
"I don't know, exactly. It started in college. There was this sickly tree right outside my dorm window. All the other trees around it were doing fine, but this one was stunted, had fewer leaves, and those it did have were shriveled and smaller than its neighbors'. I took it upon myself to save it. It became my mission.. So I watered it, fertilized it, but no good. It just got worse. So I asked one of the grounds-keepers what he thought, and he said, 'Bad roots. Nothing you can do about bad roots.' They were going to rip it up and plant a replacement there."
"Don't tell me," Jack said. "You started a save-the-tree movement."
"Yeah, right… 'Woodsman, woodsman, spare that tree.' " She shook her head. "Believe me, between my pre-med courses and my waitressing job, I barely had time to sleep, let alone become some sort of tree-hugging activist. No, I simply read up on grafting, took a couple of cuttings—they're called 'scions'—from the sick tree, and cleft-grafted them onto a branch of a healthy one, then I sealed the union with grafting wax. Shortly after that, they cut down the sick tree and replaced it. But it wasn't really dead, you see. Part of it was alive and well on its neighbor. By the time I graduated, the grafted limb was growing like crazy—easily the leafiest branch on the tree."
Her blue-gray eyes beamed at the memory.
"Congratulations," Jack said.
"Thank you. After that, I sort of got the bug. I go to a nursery—the plant kind—and pick out the sickliest-looking sapling. I buy it for a song, along with another healthier looking tree of the same or similar species, bring them home, and graft the runt onto the healthy one."
"Does that make you the tree world's Florence Nightingale, or its Frankenstein?"
"Florence, I hope. The graft union is actually stronger than the rest of the tree, and the scion usually grows faster and lusher than the understock's own branches. But maybe there's a little Frankenstein in me too. I've got what you might call a 'lymon' tree over there: I grafted a branch from a sickly lime tree onto a healthy lemon tree. In a few years it'll yield lemons and limes."
"Sure," Jack said. "And what are you asking for that nice bridge to Brooklyn?"
"No, it's true. You can cross-graft the same species, but you can't cross genera."
"You're losing me."
"Lemons, limes, grapefruit are all in the citrus group—one will usually accept another of the same species. But that lime scion wouldn't have taken if I'd grafted it to, say, apple or pear understock."
Jack walked around the room, checking out the recovering plants.
"So… you take two trees and make them into one."
"It's a strange sort of math," Alicia said. "As one of my grafting books put it: One plus one equals one. And the nice thing is, there's no loser. The understock's roots are getting fed by the scion's leaves."
"I bet you wish you could do that with people."
When Alicia didn't answer, Jack turned and found her standing rigid in the center of the room, staring at him. Her face was pale, and her voice sounded strained when she finally spoke.
"What did you say?"
"I said it would be great if it were that easy with people. You know, cut them loose from their crummy roots and let them grow free and uncontaminated by their past."
She seemed even paler.
"Is something wrong?"
"No," she said, but Jack couldn't believe it. "I just want to know why you said that."
"Well, I was thinking of your AIDS kids. I mean, they inherited their sickness from their roots… too bad you can't find a way to graft them onto healthy stock that'll allow them to grow up disease free."
"Oh." She visibly relaxed. "You know, I never thought of that. But it's a wonderful thought, isn't it."
She still seemed troubled, though, as if she'd taken a step back into another dimension, and only appeared to be in the room. Jack wondered what nerve he'd touched, what region of her psyche it sprang from, and where it led.