sustained by the DNA in my skin cells was cumulative because my body could not repair it. A measured minute of exposure each day for two months would have the same catastrophic effect as a one-hour burn sustained in a suicidal session of sun worship.
My parents had impressed upon me, from a young age, that the consequences of a single irresponsible act might appear negligible or even nonexistent but that inevitable horrors would ensue from
Even with my head tucked down and my cap visor blocking a direct view of the egg-crate fluorescent panels, I had to squint against the glare that ricocheted off the white walls. I should have put on my sunglasses, but I was only seconds from the end of the hallway.
The gray-and-red-marbled vinyl flooring looked like day-old raw meat. A mild dizziness overcame me, inspired by the vileness of the pattern in the tile and by the fearsome glare.
I passed storage and machinery rooms.
The basement appeared to be deserted.
The door at the farther end of the corridor became the door at the nearer end. I stepped into a small subterranean garage.
This was not the public parking lot, which lay above ground. Nearby were only a panel truck with the hospital name on the side and a paramedics’ van.
More distant was a black Cadillac hearse from Kirk’s Funeral Home. I was relieved that Sandy Kirk had not already collected the body and departed. I still had time to put the photo of my mother between Dad’s folded hands.
Parked beside the gleaming hearse was a Ford van similar to the paramedics’ vehicle except that it was not fitted with the standard emergency beacons. Both the hearse and the van were facing away from me, just inside the big roll-up door, which was open to the night.
Otherwise, the space was empty, so delivery trucks could pull inside to off-load food, linens, and medical supplies to the freight elevator. At the moment, no deliveries were being made.
The concrete walls were not painted here, and the fluorescent fixtures overhead were fewer and farther apart than in the corridor that I had just left. Nevertheless, this was still not a safe place for me, and I moved quickly toward the hearse and the white van.
The corner of the basement immediately to the left of the roll-up garage door and past those two waiting vehicles was occupied by a room that I knew well. It was the cold-holding chamber, where the dead were kept until they could be transported to mortuaries.
One terrible January night two years ago, by candlelight, my father and I had waited miserably in cold- holding more than half an hour with the body of my mother. We could not bear to leave her there alone.
Dad would have followed her from the hospital to the mortuary and into the crematorium furnace that night — if not for his inability to abandon me. A poet and a scientist, but such similar souls.
She had been brought from the scene of the accident by ambulance and rushed from the emergency room to surgery. She died three minutes after reaching the operating table, without regaining consciousness, even before the full extent of her injuries could be determined.
Now the insulated door to the cold-holding chamber stood open, and as I approached it, I heard men arguing inside. In spite of their anger, they kept their voices low; an emotional note of strenuous disagreement was matched by a tone of urgency and secrecy.
Their circumspection rather than their anger brought me to a stop just before I reached the doorway. In spite of the deadly fluorescent light, I stood for a moment in indecision.
From beyond the door came a voice I recognized. Sandy Kirk said, “So who is this guy I’ll be cremating?”
Another man said, “Nobody. Just a vagrant.”
“You should have brought him to my place, not here,” Sandy complained. “And what happens when he’s missed?”
A third man spoke, and I recognized his voice as that of one of the two orderlies who had collected my father’s body from the room upstairs: “Can we for God’s sake just move this along?”
Suddenly certain that it was dangerous to be encumbered, I set the suitcase against the wall, freeing both hands.
A man appeared in the doorway, but he didn’t see me because he was backing across the threshold, pulling a gurney.
The hearse was eight feet away. Before I was spotted, I slipped to it, crouching by the rear door through which cadavers were loaded.
Peering around the fender, I could still see the entrance to the cold-holding chamber. The man backing out of that room was a stranger: late twenties, six feet, massively built, with a thick neck and a shaved head. He was wearing work shoes, blue jeans, a red-plaid flannel shirt — and one pearl earring.
After he drew the gurney completely across the threshold, he swung it around toward the hearse, ready to push instead of pull.
On the gurney was a corpse in an opaque, zippered vinyl bag. In the cold-holding chamber two years ago, my mother was transferred into a similar bag before being released to the mortician.
Following the stone-bald stranger into the garage, Sandy Kirk gripped the gurney with one hand. Blocking a wheel with his left foot, he asked again, “What happens when he’s missed?”
The bald man frowned and cocked his head. The pearl in his earlobe was luminous. “I told you, he was a vagrant. Everything he owned is in his backpack.”
“So?”
“He disappears — who’s to notice or care?”
Sandy was thirty-two and so good-looking that even his grisly occupation gave no pause to the women who pursued him. Although he was charming and less self-consciously dignified than many in his profession, he made me uneasy. His handsome features seemed to be a mask behind which was not another face but an emptiness — not as though he were a different and less morally motivated man than he pretended to be, but as though he were no man at all.
Sandy said, “What about his hospital records?”
“He didn’t die here,” the bald man said. “I picked him up earlier, out on the state highway. He was hitchhiking.”
I had never voiced my troubling perception of Sandy Kirk to anyone: not to my parents, not to Bobby Halloway, not to Sasha, not even to Orson. So many thoughtless people have made unkind assumptions about me, based on my appearance and my affinity for the night, that I am reluctant to join the club of cruelty and speak ill of anyone without ample reason.
Sandy’s father, Frank, had been a fine and well-liked man, and Sandy had never done anything to indicate that he was less admirable than his dad. Until now.
To the man with the gurney, Sandy said, “I’m taking a big risk.”
“You’re untouchable.”
“I wonder.”
“Wonder on your own time,” said the bald man, and he rolled the gurney over Sandy’s blocking foot.
Sandy cursed and scuttled out of the way, and the man with the gurney came directly toward me. The wheels squeaked — as had the wheels of the gurney on which they had taken away my father.
Still crouching, I slipped around the back of the hearse, between it and the white Ford van. A quick glance revealed that no company or institution name adorned the side of the van.
The squeaking gurney was rapidly drawing nearer.
Instinctively, I knew I was in considerable jeopardy. I had caught them in some scheme that I didn’t understand but that clearly involved illegalities. They would especially want to keep it secret from me, of all people.
I dropped facedown on the floor and slid under the hearse, out of sight and also out of the fluorescent glare, into shadows as cool and smooth as silk. My hiding place was barely spacious enough to accommodate me, and when I hunched my back, it pressed against the drive train.
I was facing the rear of the vehicle. I watched the gurney roll past the hearse and continue to the van.
