her to take the witness stand.
Junior must say nothing that could be quoted to a jury. He must not even allow himself as much as a lascivious wink or a quick caress of Victoria's hand.
The nurse gave him another loving spoonful.
Without a word, without daring to meet her eyes and exchange a meaningful look, Junior accepted the oval of ice in the same spirit with which this lovely woman offered it. He trapped the bowl of the spoon in his mouth for a long moment, so she could not easily remove it, and closing his eyes, he groaned with pleasure, as if the ice were a morsel of ambrosia, the food of the gods, as if it were a spoonful of the nurse her self that he was savoring. When at last he released the spoon, he did so with an encircling and suggestive lick, and then licked his lips, too, when the cold steel slipped free of them.
Opening his eyes, still not daring to meet Victoria's gaze, Junior knew she had registered and properly interpreted his response to her seductive spooning. She had frozen, the utensil in midair, and her breath had caught in her throat. She was thrilled.
Neither of them needed to confirm their mutual attraction with even so much as an additional nod or a smile. Victoria knew, as he did, that their time would come, when all this current unpleasantness was I behind them, when Vanadium had been thwarted, when all suspicion had been forever laid to rest.
They could be patient. Their self-denial and sweet anticipation ensured that their lovemaking, when at last they were able safely to indulge, would be shattering in its intensity, like the coupling of mortals raised to the status of demigods by virtue of their passion, its power and purity.
He had recently learned about the demigods of classic mythology in one of the selections from the Book-of- the-Month Club.
When Victoria finally calmed her racing heart, she returned the spoon to the tray on the nightstand, stoppered the carafe, and said, 'That's enough for now, Mr. Cain. In your condition, even too much I melted ice might trigger renewed vomiting.'
Junior was impressed and delighted by her clever assumption of it strictly professional voice and demeanor, which convincingly masked her intense desire. Sweet Victoria was a worthy coconspirator.
'Thank you, Nurse Bressler,' he said most solemnly, matching her tone, barely able to control the urge to glance at her, smile, and give her another preview of his quick, pink tongue.
'I'll have another nurse look in on you from time to time.'
Now that neither of them had a doubt that the other shared the same need and that eventually they would satisfy each other, Victoria was opting for discretion. Wise woman.
'I understand, 'he said.
'You need to rest,' she advised, turning away from the bed Yes, he suspected that he would require a great deal of rest to prepare himself for this vixen. Even in her loose white uniform and stodgy rubber-soled shoes, she was an incomparably erotic figure. She would be a lioness in bed.
After Victoria had departed, Junior lay smiling at the ceiling, floating on Valium and desire. And vanity.
In this case, he was sure that vanity was not a fault, not the result of a swollen ego, but merely healthy self-esteem. That he was irresistible to women wasn't simply his biased opinion, but an observable and undeniable fact, like gravity or the order in which the planets revolved t around the sun.
He was, admittedly, surprised that Nurse Bressler was strongly compelled to come on to him even though she had read his patient file and knew that he'd recently been a veritable geyser of noxious spew, that during the violent seizure in the ambulance, he had also lost control of bladder and bowels, and that he might at any moment suffer an explosive relapse. This was a remarkable testament to the animal lust he inspired even without trying, to the powerful male magnetism that was as much a part of him as his thick blond hair.
Chapter 16
Agnes, from a dream of unbearable loss, woke with warm tears on her face.
The hospital was drowned in the bottomless silence that fills places of human habitation only in the few hours before dawn, when the needs and hungers' and fears of one day are forgotten and those of the next are not yet acknowledged, when our flailing species briefly floats insensate between one desperate swim and another.
The upper end of the bed was elevated. Otherwise, Agnes would not have been able to see the room, for she was too weak to raise her head from the pillows.
Shadows still perched throughout most of the room. They no longer reminded her of roosting birds, but of a featherless flock, leathery of wing and red of eye, with a taste for unspeakable feasts.
The only light came from a reading lamp. An adjustable brass shade directed the light down onto a chair.
Agnes was so weary, her eyes so sore and grainy, that even this soft radiance stung. She almost closed her eyes and gave herself to sleep again, that little brother of Death, which was now her only solace. What she saw in the lamplight, however, compelled her attention.
The nurse was in was gone, but Maria remained in attendance. She the vinyl-and-stainless-steel armchair, busy at some task in the amber glow of the lamp.
'You should be with your children,' Agnes worried. Maria looked up. 'My babies are sitted with my sister.'
'Why are you here?' 'Where else I should be and for why? I watch you over.' As the tears cleared from Agnes's eyes, she saw that Maria was sewing. A shopping bag stood to one side of the chair, and to the other side, open on the floor, a case contained spools of thread, needles, a pincushion, a pair of scissors, and other supplies of a seamstress's trade.
Maria was hand-repairing some of Joey's clothes, which Agnes had meticulously damaged earlier in the day.
'Maria?'
'Que?'
'Widon't need to.'
Two what?' 'To fix those clothes anymore.'
'I fix,' she insisted.
'You know about Joey?' Agnes asked, her voice thickening so much on the name of her husband that the two syllables almost stuck unspoken in her throat.
'I know.'
'Then why?'
The needle danced in her nimble fingers. 'I not fix for the better English anymore. Now I fix for Mr. Lampion only.'
'But he's gone.'
Maria said nothing, working busily, but Agnes recognized that special silence in which difficult words were sought and laboriously stitched together.
Finally with emotion so intense that it nearly made speech impossible, Maria said, 'It is? the only thing? I can do for him now, for you. I be nobody, not able to fix nothing important. But I fix this. I fix this.'
Agnes could not bear to watch Maria sewing. The light no longer stung, but her new future, which was beginning to come into view, was as sharp as pins and needles, sheer torture to her eyes.
She slept for a while, waking to a prayer spoken softly but fervently in Spanish.
Maria stood at the bedside, leaning with her forearms against the railing. A silver-and-onyx rosary tightly wrapped her small brown hands, although she was not counting the beads or murmuring Hail Marys. I Her prayer was for Agnes's baby.
Gradually, Agnes realized that this was not a prayer for the soul of a deceased infant but for the survival of one still alive.
Her strength was the strength of stones only in the sense that she felt as immovable as rock, yet she found the resources to raise one arm, to place her left hand over Maria's bead-tangled fingers. 'But the baby's dead.'
'Senora Lampion, no.' Maria was surprised. 'Muy enfermo but not dead.'
