tear his cover from his hands. Down the alley behind the hotel, he found the service entrance door he had propped open. It was still open. He dropped the soggy brown carton and went up the stairs, shoes resounding, the smell of something stale and sweet in the air.
He opened the door carefully and struggled to catch his breath. No one in sight to his left. Down the corridor two old men in tuxedos who had ducked out on the conceit stood smoking. He pulled out his comb, used it, and decided he couldn't wait to fully control his breath.
Harvey eased out of the stairwell and into the men's room. Empty. He washed his hands, looked at himself in the mirror, brushed back his wisps of hair, splashed his face with cold water, and stepped into the hall near the performance room. Empty except for the two men smoking and whispering, not looking his way.
Harvey slipped into the conceit room. Rows of backs were to him. No one seemed to turn. On the raised platform before the several hundred people on cushioned folding chairs, a thin, young Oriental woman attacked a violin, eyes closed to show her intensity and commitment. Harvey eased into the chair he had moved to the rear of the room. Ken and Betty Franklin were hi the second row, wedged in.
Harvey picked up the small tape recorder from the floor under the chair, clicked it off, and dropped it into his pocket. He would listen to the tape as soon as he could, listen for anything unusual, a slight mistake or miscue, a coughing fit, something he could refer to, to prove he had sat through the performance.
The instruments came to a shrill decision to end. Applause. He had made it back with more than twenty minutes to spare. The two old men who had been smoking in the corridor came in and stood, joining the applause and the bows of the performers.
People filed past Harvey, talking of where they were going to get coffee or a drink, making soft patter about the performance.
The Franklins found him. They were older than the Ro/iers by almost twenty years, a pair of surrogate parents and much more. She a handsome society joiner. He the senior partner of the law firm of Kyle, Timkin, and O'Doul, with offices on the same floor as Harvey's in the John Hancock Building. Harvey had left his Lexus in the garage 'in case Dana might need it' and had reluctantly agreed to go with the Franklins and let Ken drive. This was shortly after Dana had become nauseated just before they were scheduled to leave. Nothing terrible, but nothing pleasant either.
Touch of the flu. It was going around. People had even been hospitalized.
When the Franklins had arrived, Harvey insisted on staying home. Dana insisted that he go and have a good time. The Franklins promised to bring him right home after the concert.
'Did you call Dana?' Betty asked.
'No,' said Harvey.
'Perhaps you should…' Betty continued.
'I don't want to wake her if she's managed to get to sleep.'
'Let's just get you back home and see how she's doing,' said Ken.
Harvey let himself be driven, forced himself to engage in small talk about brunch on Sunday and whether they should try to get a box together for the opera season. The Lyric was doing two Verdis. Dana loved Verdi.
Thirty minutes after they left the Bismarck, they stepped out of the Franklins' Lincoln and saw the broken dining room window and bloody footprints in the driveway.
Harvey ran to the door. Unlocked. He opened it and ran in, being sure that Ken was right behind him and Betty a few steps behind, bleating like a goat.
Harvey started for the stairway.
'This way,' Ken shouted and led the way along the trail of blood to the kitchen.
The long night had just begun for Harvey Rozier.
Doctors
The doctor did not like Chicago.
The doctor, who had been in the city for almost four months now, thought that Chicago was a very dangerous place. Certainly much more dangerous than East Lansing, Michigan, where he had spent almost two years treating and being exposed to AIDS patients.
His name was Berry, Jacob Berry. He was thin, nervous, and wore a starched blue lab shirt with his last name stitched in an even darker blue on the pocket just to the left of his heart. Dr. Berry's principal source of income was giving annual physicals to Chicago Police Department officers and personnel, a noncontract deal Jacob's brother had wrangled through a political connection in the Cook County Democratic party.
Jacob turned to the policeman in the chair, hoping he was giving off the aura of an experienced, calm, and all-knowing physician. It was difficult with these policemen and women, nothing like the dead-eyed men and women at the AIDS clinic in East Lansing from which he had escaped 122 days ago. He counted the days but he was about to give up counting. East Lansing and the AIDS clinic were not as frightening as Chicago.
'You hate it in Lansing. So come to Chicago,' his brother, also a Dr. Berry, had urged.
'Isaac,' he answered. 'I have no hospital affiliation, no patient history, very little saved, a…'
'I'll find you something,' Isaac Berry said to his younger brother. 'A deal here. Nice and simple. I find you something, let you know, and you can say yes or no. Can it hurt?'
'No,' he answered, intrigued by the possibility of escape from the faces of endless agony. Until Isaac's call he had not admitted how depressed he had become at the AIDS clinic. When Isaac, as good as his word, called back in less than three weeks with a fully equipped suite in Uptown he could rent at a very reasonable rate and the guarantee of an average of twenty-five full physicals and other referrals from the Chicago Police Department, Jacob took it. He had no idea what Uptown was. Now he was finding out.
The Uptown suite had three rooms, all small. The waiting room had five chairs covered in faded orange Nauga-hyde, a small book rack containing nothing, white walls that needed painting, and two reproductions of paintings by van Gogh, both of flowers. The reception desk was enclosed with a sliding glass door. Jacob Berry had not yet hired a receptionist and the prospect of having a nurse to help him was well into the future. The office/examining room held an old wooden desk with a wooden swivel chair behind it, a row of wooden book racks containing his small supply of the thick and the deadly, an examining table with two chairs, a tiny sink in a corner that was very stingy with hot water, and a white metal cabinet containing a minimum of samples from the drug company detail men who had welcomed him to his new practice. It didn't seem like much.
But the men had come. Policemen of all sizes and ages and problems, ranging from near exhaustion to failing eyesight, cancer, and long-abused organs. There were those who had bodybuilder torsos and those, like the one he had to talk to now, who looked like a good breeze would carry them out to Lake Michigan.
Their eyes were the same. A moist knowing. They looked around slowly, usually without moving their heads. And then when you spoke to them, their eyes met yours and held. The cops in general made Dr. Berry uncomfortable, but a lot less uncomfortable than the patients in East Lansing. It was the city that had gotten to Jacob almost from the minute he arrived. Dark shadows, insane headlines, sullen and frightened people walking the streets, cursing each other, making offers.
The policeman's name was Abraham Lieberman. He was almost dressed. He glanced toward the window as an el train screeched into the Argyle Station going south. The noise wasn't deafening, but since the platform was only fifteen feet from the window, its arrival gave pause to the conversation and reminded Dr. Berry of why his rent was so low. The rapid deterioration of the neighborhood, the Vietnamese gang extortionists, the el train almost within touching distance had certainly sent the previous occupant fleeing to the suburbs.
'Well,' Dr. Berry tried again, looking at the clipboard containing lab results and notes and trying to strike a relaxed pose as he leaned against the sink and adjusted his glasses. 'I've got the results of your lab tests here and-' And he suddenly remembered. His pink face went white.
'Doctor,' said Lieberman, 'are you all right?'
'I… yes,' Dr. Berry said as the train pulled away.
Two days earlier Dr. Berry had made the mistake of opening the blinds to let in some natural light. He had been carrying a syringe filled with a flu injection for the policewoman sitting on the examining table. A train had pulled in next to his window and a trio of young men, dark and grinning, had been looking at him. One of the young
