I’m so sorry,” as though she had been waiting for this call and as if
in the ringing of her phone she had heard the same ominous note that
Orson and I had heard in mine.
I bit my lip and refused to consider what was coming. As long as Dad
was alive, hope remained that his doctors were wrong. Even at the
eleventh hour, the cancer might go into remission.
I believe in the possibility of miracles.
After all, in spite of my condition, I have lived more than
twenty-eight years, which is a miracle of sorts-although some other
people, seeing my life from outside, might think it a curse.
I believe in the possibility of miracles, but more to the point, I
believe in our need for them.
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Sasha promised.
At night I could walk to the hospital, but at this hour I would be too
much of a spectacle and in too great a danger if I tried to make the
trip on foot.
“No,” I said. “Drive carefully. I’ll probably take ten minutes or
more to get ready.”
“Love You, Snowman.”
“Love You,” I replied.
I replaced the cap on the pen with which I had been writing when the
call had come from the hospital, and I put it aside with the yellow
legal-size tablet.
Using a long-handled brass snuffer, I extinguished the three fat
candles. Thin, sinuous ghosts of smoke writhed in the shadows.
Now, an hour before twilight, the sun was low in the sky but still
dangerous. It glimmered threateningly at the edges of the pleated
shades that covered all the windows.
Anticipating my intentions, as usual, Orson was already out of the
room, padding across the upstairs hall.
He is a ninety-pound Labrador mix, as black as a witch’s cat.
Through the layered shadows of our house, he roams all but invisibly,
his presence betrayed only by the thump of his big paws on the area
rugs and by the click of his claws on the hardwood floors.
In my bedroom, across the hall from the study, I didn’t bother to
switch on the dimmer-controlled, frosted-glass ceiling fixture.
The indirect, sour-yellow light of the westering sun, pressing at the
edges of the window shades, was sufficient for me.
My eyes are better adapted to gloom than are those of most people.
Although I am, figuratively speaking, a brother to the owl, I don’t
have a special gift of nocturnal sight, nothing as romantic or as
thrilling as a paranormal talent. Simply this: Lifelong habituation to
darkness has sharpened my night vision.
Orson leaped onto the footstool and then curled on the armchair to
watch me as I girded myself for the sunlit world.
From a pullman drawer in the adjoining bathroom, I withdrew a squeeze
bottle of lotion that included a sunscreen with a rating of fifty. I
applied it generously to my face, ears, and neck.
The lotion had a faint coconut scent, an aroma that I associate with
palm trees in sunshine, tropical skies, ocean vistas spangled with
noontime light, and other things that will be forever beyond my
experience. This, for me, is the fragrance of desire and denial and
hopeless yearning, the succulent perfume of the unattainable.
Sometimes I dream that I am walking on a Caribbean beach in a rain of
sunshine, and the white sand under my feet seems to be a cushion of
pure radiance. The warmth of the sun on my skin is more erotic than a
lover’s touch. In the dream, I am not merely bathed in the light but
pierced by it. When I wake, I am bereft.
Now the lotion, although smelling of the tropical sun, was cool on my
face and neck. I also worked it into my hands and wrists.
The bathroom featured a single window at which the shade was currently
raised, but the space remained meagerly illuminated because the glass
was frosted and because the incoming sunlight was filtered through the
graceful limbs of a metrosideros. The silhouettes of leaves fluttered
on the pane.
In the mirror above the sink, my reflection was little more than a
shadow. Even if I switched on the light, I would not have had a clear