company on the Internet, but something just wouldn’t let him do it. And it wasn’t the money. For each person there is a theoretical sweet spot, a specific point value of wealth beyond which money is no longer really of concern. That point is different for different people, but Silas had reached his version of that point several years ago. Money no longer mattered to him. He supposed that on some basic level he must actually enjoy yard work, though in the heat of it, it never seemed so. Perhaps it was the gratification of crafting order from disorder, of taking something alive and fashioning it to the likeness of some inner model that only he could see. Perhaps he just liked the warmth of the sun’s feet on his neck.
But the sun was long gone now. Above him, between the grasping branches of oak, the vault of the sky spread in muted black, and dim stars struggled at the edge of visibility. Silas searched for Orion, but the glow from the city hazed out the constellations. The great archer would be shooting blind tonight.
He slid the Courser beneath the ascending door and into the garage, the one part of his house where he accepted a certain buildup of clutter. He didn’t think of it as messy, though. The garage was a functional room, utile, and as such, he simply let it find its own level. Fight too hard against the natural grain of entropy, and sometimes that drives out what grace there might be.
His father, after all, had been a tool man. Over the years, most of those tools had found their way to the shelves and clasps against the back wall. There were enormous rusty C-clamps, wrenches in all manners of configuration, pliers, and things that looked more like medieval weaponry than instruments of some craft. Some, certainly, were already old when his father first came by them. Tools can be immortal. They hung neatly from the Peg-Board in no discernible pattern. To Silas, many of these rusty tools were like bones washed up on an alien shore, their provenance cloaked in mystery, but he kept them anyway. Mementos of a man he’d never known.
He turned off the ignition and pulled at his earlobe to ease the pressure. The pain was back tonight.
He tried to put the gladiator out of his mind. His late-night walk at the lab. The feel of the steel bars, cold in his hand. The fierce, glaring eyes.
Silas climbed out of his car. The soft tick-ticking of the engine walked him inside.
Vidonia was in the kitchen, waiting for him in his white cotton socks and nothing else. His smile came again, but she did not match it. Her expression was serious business. It was the expression of thirst, or hunger. And it was devoid of pretension.
Then she was in his arms, and down the hall, and on his bed. His mouth was against her cries as they moved together again, skin on skin, doing the thing they were for.
Afterward, she laid her head across his chest, and then her smile came. He shut his eyes, and in the darkness experienced her as tactile sensation only—a warmth upon him, a coarse tangle of tresses that sprawled across the low juncture of his neck. A leg, hot and soft, moved across his. A finger traced his jawline.
“Tell me about you,” she said, and he knew it was a way not to talk about what would happen between them when the competition ended. It had been on his mind for several weeks. He knew it had been on her mind, too.
“What do you want to know?” he said. Officially, her tenure as consultant would be over at the start of the Games. Unofficially, well, that subject hadn’t been broached.
“Everything. You never talk about yourself.”
“It’s hard to begin with everything,” he said.
“Tell me what you were thinking when you were lying there quietly a moment ago.”
Silas smiled. No way she was getting him that easily. “You’d only be disappointed. It’s not exactly what I’d call romantic.”
“Doesn’t have to be.”
“You sure?”
“Most definitely. Perhaps it’ll be the key that finally unlocks that big head of yours.”
“Okay, now I know you’re going to be disappointed.”
“Just tell me,” she said, and smiled, pinching him.
And he almost told her. Almost told her about the fear that he’d barely articulated to himself. That there would be more death around this animal.
“I was just thinking how much my damn ear hurts,” he said.
“Your ear?”
“Told you you’d be disappointed.”
“Not at all. ‘Intrigued’ is the word I’d use.”
“You’re intrigued about an ear infection?”
“Yes. Now you’re not so perfect. I think I like that.”
“In that case, I get them all the time.”
“Even better.”
“Couple times a year, at least.”
“I’ve never been with a man who suffered from chronic ear infections.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not surprised. We’re a special breed. Born, not made.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Which ear?”
“This one.” He pulled her hand to the side of his head.
“It’s hot,” she said, and her tone changed slightly.
“Mmm.”
“I thought only little kids got this way.”
“You should have seen me when I was a kid.”
She pulled away from him and sat up.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Stay here, I’ll be right back.” She flipped the covers over and slipped across the room, her naked body shining in the half-light as she jiggled to the bathroom. He wanted her again, in that instant.
The bathroom light clicked on, and a moment later he heard her rummaging around in his cabinets. “What are you looking for?” he called.
“Found it.” She returned with a satisfied smile. In one hand she held a little brown bottle; in the other, a towel.
“Peroxide?”
“Your ear,” she said.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“In Brazil, doctors and antibiotics were expensive. Peroxide is cheap everywhere.”
“Will that really work?”
“My mom used it on us, so probably not. Now lie back.”
He did as he was instructed, and she slid the towel under his head and sat on the bed next to him. She gently tilted his head to the side, bad ear up. The chemical smell stung his nose as she twisted the lid off the brown bottle. She turned the lid upside down, then poured a thimble-size draft into the little white cap.
“This won’t hurt a bit.”
“Whoa. Why are you bringing pain into this conversation?”
“Because it isn’t going to hurt.”
“I wasn’t thinking about it hurting until you said that.”
She pushed his head back to the towel. “Baby,” she said. The tip of the lid touched his earlobe, and then she upended the contents into his ear canal.
Sound exploded, an apocalypse of hissing and popping and static, so loud it drowned out everything else. The sensation of cold ran deep into his head, driving away the familiar soreness. He wasn’t sure if it was working, but the ache was gone, replaced by something too weird to be called pain, exactly.
“Is it supposed to sound like that?”
“You don’t have to shout. You’re the only one who can hear it.”
The hissing continued, growing softer, quieter. She poured again, and sound exploded anew. She wiped the foam from the edges of his ear, where it had overflowed.
“There’s a lot of bubbling. That means a lot of bacteria. Haven’t you ever gone to the doctor for this?”
