But to Earl’s gang, only one troubadour counted.
Thousands of tiny flames, each a point of light held aloft, filled the darkness.
Bob Dylan stepped forward on the stage.
Robbie Robertson stood to the right of him, lean as a silhouette hunched over a guitar, The Band at his back.
You say you love me,
And you’re thinkin’ of me,
But you know you could be wrong.
He snarled the last word, loud and long.
The crowd roared the words with him.
“You sing that like you mean it,” Jack MacGregor called to Kelly. Shadows played over his thin face, resculpting its hollows.
“You better believe I do,” she yelled back. Her eyes danced in the flicker of the tiny fires.
Earl had rarely seen her look so radiant.
… you go your way
and I go mine.
It was at that moment she slipped her hand into his and simply held it, the darkness preventing anyone from seeing.
Melanie Collins leaned toward him from his other side. “Some study group,” she said, then laughed.
“And we’ll be payin’ dearly for it, children,” Tommy Leannis added from his end of the row, the musical lilt of his Irish sounding false. His constant fear of failure emanated off him like a bad smell and made him a fifth wheel. Yet he insisted on tagging along whenever they knocked off the books for a night, as if he was just as afraid to be alone with all the material they still had to learn.
“It’s all right, Tommy,” Kelly hollered back at him, never letting go of Earl’s hand. “If an old woman like me can get through, what have you got to worry about? Top five, all of us,” she predicted, sounding confident in the din.
… Then time will tell just who fell,
And who’s been left behind…
Earl’s senses had contracted solely to the feel of her fingers entwined in his. He kept his eyes on the stage, uncertain how to respond. He already knew he loved her, and before that night had wondered if she felt just as strongly about him. But he’d never dared to speak his feelings, frightened that the crystal clarity of such words would shred the fragile, amorphous limbo in which they remained close friends, able to speak intimately of everything else, without ever trespassing on her marriage. Yet this sudden overture – her fingers played over his like flames – invited him to risk that step, and the possibility exhilarated him. Feeling her start to withdraw, he immediately tightened his grip, and she gently squeezed back. He stole a look sideways and saw her staring straight ahead, apparently enraptured by the music. Then she smiled, slowly, as though savoring something delicious, and her hand clung hard to his.
After the concert all of them trooped toward the subway, arms linked and voices raised in loud renditions of what they’d just heard.
Jack, Melanie, and Tommy scooted across the intersection at Forty-second Street ahead of them. “I don’t want to go home,” Kelly whispered, as she and Earl waited at the red light.
“Where then?” said Earl, trembling inside, all the time wondering, What about your husband? But he was too intoxicated by her to put the brakes on.
“Offer to stay behind until I get a taxi,” she whispered before they rushed to join their friends.
He nodded.
“Guys, I’m going to take a taxi tonight,” she announced when they reached them. “It’s too late for a woman alone.”
“You three go ahead. I’ll make sure she gets one,” Earl said, certain they’d see through him. “No cabbie in his right mind would stop for a gang of rowdies like you.”
“Well, I’m insulted,” Jack quipped.
“Come, children. ‘Tis back downtown where we belong,” said Tommy, linking arms again with Melanie. Then all three of them disappeared down the entrance to the Forty-second Street station, their voices echoing back above ground until the noise of traffic swallowed up their off-key singing.
Earl felt acutely self-conscious. What now? he wondered, turning to look at Kelly.
She studied him a few seconds, then moved closer and took his hand. The wind played with her long hair, and strands of it brushed against his face.
“Earl, whatever happens between us, just remember that my marriage to Chaz is finished.” Her voice sounded as steady and matter-of-fact as if she were giving a case history on one of their patients. “He’s a brute, and I intend to leave him. That mess has nothing to do with you.”
Her face upturned to his, the glitter of the streetlights captured in her eyes, the scent of her – all drew him in. He lowered his head and gently kissed her.
He awoke to find Janet leaning over him, her lips caressing his. “Hi, love,” she said, glancing down to where the covers slipped below his waist. “You seem happy to see me.”
Wednesday, November 7, 2:30 A.M.
Geriatric Wing,
New York City Hospital
Bessie woke up shivering.
God, had they turned the heat off?
She huddled deeper under her blankets, and realized her nightgown was soaked, her skin clammy.
What was going on? She’d never had night sweats before.
And they weren’t welcome, usually being the portent of a serious problem. An infection, some inflammatory condition, even an occult carcinoma – her mind automatically scrolled through the list, until she put a stop to it. No point in getting ahead of herself. The proper thing to do would be to see if they kept recurring, then tell her doctors. A solitary sweat didn’t necessarily mean much. But she should take her temperature. Whether she had a fever, and if so, how high, would be important to know. A big spike would shift the diagnosis toward an infectious cause; low grade, it could signify anything.
But she didn’t feel feverish.
If anything, she was really freezing, as in cool to the touch, not hot the way someone feels when they have a fever with the flu or pneumonia.
And she was hungry. Her stomach seemed clamped in on itself because it was so empty. That was new. Since entering the hospital she’d practically no appetite at all.
She reached for her call button to summon her nurse and ask for a thermometer.
Then hesitated.
The night shift here were often a bitchy bunch. Most were floats, especially on geriatric floors where the mission was custodial, not nursing in the curative sense. Always understaffed, they rarely missed an opportunity to express what a burden the elderly were. Most requests for the simplest of items, like a bedpan or medication for pain, they met with rolled eyes and exaggerated sighs. They saved outright contempt for those who committed the ultimate crime of placing extra demands on them by being sick as well as old.
No, better she not invite the witches to her bedside. Leave everything until morning rather than risk trouble now. Not that she’d tolerate any rudeness from one of those shrews. She felt uncharacteristically aggressive tonight.
Curling into a ball, she drew the covers over her head, trying to conserve body heat.
It didn’t help.
He skin continued to feel slimy. The pain behind her eyes grew worse.
She emerged and reached to where the call button was pinned to her bedding. Her hand shook as she gathered it into her palm and pressed.
“They better not mess with me tonight,” she muttered, staring through the gloom at her closed door, waiting for one of them to arrive.
No response.