I looked down at them and saw the deep, purpling crescents on the backs. I remembered clutching them together, digging in with my nails, feeling it but unable to stop. And I remembered Staub's eyes, filled up with moonlight like radiant water. Did you ride the Bullet? he'd asked me. I rode that fucker four times. 'Son?' the man driving the pick-up asked. 'You all right?'
'Huh?'
'You come over all shivery.'
'I'm okay,' I said. 'Thanks again.' I slammed the door of the pickup and went up the wide walk past the line of parked wheelchairs gleaming in the moonlight. I walked to the information desk, reminding myself that I had to look surprised when they told me she was dead, had to look surprised, they'd think it was funny if I didn't . . . or maybe they'd just think I was in shock . . . or that we didn't get along . . . or . . . I was so deep in these thoughts that I didn't at first grasp what the woman behind the desk had told me. I had to ask her to repeat it.
'I said that she's in room 487, but you can't go up just now. Visiting hours end at nine.'
'But . . .' I felt suddenly woozy. I gripped the edge of the desk. The lobby was lit by fluorescents, and in that bright even glare the cuts on the backs of my hands stood out boldly-eight small purple crescents like grins, just above the knuckles. The man in the pick-up was right, I ought to get some disinfectant on those.
The woman behind the desk was looking at me patiently. The plaque in front of her said she was yvonne ederle.
'But is she all right?'
She looked at her computer. 'What I have here is S. Stands for satisfactory. And four is a general popula-tion floor. If your mother had taken a turn for the worse, she'd be in ICU. That's on three. I'm sure if you come back tomorrow, you'll find her just fine.
Visiting hours begin at-'
'She's my ma,' I said. 'I hitchhiked all the way down from the University of Maine to see her. Don't you think I could go up, just for a few minutes?'
'Exceptions are sometimes made for immediate
family,' she said, and gave me a smile. 'You just hang
on a second. Let me see what I can do.' She picked up
the phone and punched a couple of buttons, no doubt
calling the nurse's station on the fourth floor, and I
could see the course of the next two minutes as if I
really did have second sight. Yvonne the Information Lady would ask if the son of Jean Parker in 487 could come up for a minute or two-just long enough to give his mother a kiss and an encouraging word-and the nurse would say oh God, Mrs. Parker died not fif-teen minutes ago, we just sent her down to the morgue, we haven't had a chance to update the com-puter, this is so terrible.
The woman at the desk said, 'Muriel? It's Yvonne. I have a young man here down here at the desk, his name is-' She looked at me, eyebrows raised, and I gave her my name. '-Alan Parker. His mother is Jean Parker, in 487? He wonders if he could just . . .' She stopped. Listened. On the other end the nurse on the fourth floor was no doubt telling her that Jean Parker was dead.
'All right,' Yvonne said. 'Yes, I understand.' She sat quietly for a moment, looking off into space, then put the mouthpiece of the telephone against her shoulder and said, 'She's sending Anne Corrigan down to peek in on her. It will only be a second.' 'It never ends,' I said.
Yvonne frowned. 'I beg pardon?'
'Nothing,' I said. 'It's been a long night and-' '-and you're worried about your mom. Of course. I think you're a very good son to drop everything the way you did and come on the run.'
I suspected Yvonne Ederle's opinion of me would
have taken a drastic drop if she'd heard my conversa-tion with the young man behind the wheel of the Mustang, but of course she hadn't. That was a little secret, just between George and me.
It seemed that hours passed as I stood there under the bright fluorescents, waiting for the nurse on the fourth floor to come back on the line. Yvonne had some papers in front of her. She trailed her pen down one of them, putting neat little check marks beside some of the names, and it occurred to me that if there really was an Angel of
