face, carefully avoiding even a glance.
With Mozart’s Requiem playing softly on the tape machine, Dyce selected a tray of spicy chicken wings from his freezer and heated them in the microwave. Working with his back to the man, he set up the television tray in front of his favorite armchair and put out his napkin and a fork for the simple tossed salad. The chicken wings he would eat with his fingers. Normally he would not eat during such an occasion, but since it was only a preview, he reasoned, and because he was very hungry and would not want to have to interrupt himself as long as the emotion gripped him, he would do it this way just this once.
Throughout his preparations he felt the excitement of anticipation stirring him. With an effort he made himself slow down and go through every step methodically. Finally, when all was ready and the microwave sounded its buzzer, he took his tray of chicken wings to the television tray, sat in the chair, and for the first time allowed himself to look at the man.
In the gloom of the living room, the pale face and hands seemed to be lit with an inner light. The man’s features had relaxed under the drug and his expression was one of utter serenity. From this distance, Dyce could not see the man’s chest move with his shallow breaths, but, of course, he knew. He knew, and that detracted from the pleasure somewhat. And the man’s color was not yet perfect. It never was while they were alive, but it was close. The difference between what was and the perfection he could so easily attain detracted, too. Life itself was the problem; it refused to be completely disguised. But still, it was close. And as long as they lived, they did not decay.
“So beautiful,” Dyce murmured in the gloom.
He sat perfectly still for a long time before he reached for the first chicken wing.
Chapter 2
Seventy-five feet in the air over Route 87, clinging to a rock with all the dubious tenacity of a cookie magnet to a refrigerator door, Becker came to the conclusion that he must have been crazy. Would a sane man have decided to take up rock climbing at his age? Would a sane man have taken up rock climbing, period?
“There’s a little depression just above your right hand. Not more than eighteen inches.” The voice came from below, which meant it was Alan Something, the kid with the stringy hair. Alan could look at a bare rockface from the ground and see every handhold and piton strike all the way to the top, then leap at the rock as if it weren’t going up straight as a plumb line, and scamper up it with the agility and contempt of a kid vaulting over the neighbor’s fence. Becker didn’t care for Alan very much; he was the expert who had convinced Becker to take the lessons.
“Just eighteen inches. But if you feel you can’t, you don’t have to.” That voice was Cindi’s, the girl who had preceded Becker to the top in what seemed like a minute and a half, finding the holds, wedging the pitons into the cracks so Becker could secure his rope and have a “safe” trip up. Her hair was as stringy as Alan’s, but on her it looked better. “No one will think any the worse of you if you don’t want to try,” she said.
“Except me,” said Becker. His words were muffled by the rock against which his face was pressed as if he could somehow cling to it with lips and cheek.
“Just reach up with your right hand,” said Alan from below. He was having a hard time concealing his impatience. Becker had been frozen in position three-quarters of the way up the one-hundred-foot palisade for almost a minute. To Becker it seemed the better part of a day. His left hand was extended to the side and down, gripping with only the fingertips an irregularity in the rock that was slanted toward the ground. His left klettershoe was firmly planted-or as firmly as anything was ever planted in a sport that sought insecurity as its challenge-but only his right toe had the slightest purchase on a nub of stone. If he reached for the next hold with his right hand, he would have to release his left foot, which was the only thing keeping him up in the air. The other two grips had as much purchase on the rock as tail flaps on a jetliner. They might steer him a bit but they certainly wouldn’t hold him up.
“Your muscles will cramp if you don’t move,” called Alan.
“He’s right,” said Cindi in a softer tone. She was nearly as good in her way as Alan was in his, but with none of his arrogance. Becker liked her, but didn’t want her to see him in this position. The muscles in his left arm and right leg had been dancing for the past several seconds already. He either had to move or be kicked off the rockface by a muscle spasm. The question was, move where? Upward and onward to glory, or the ignominious climb back to the base. “What did you say?”
Cindi was on her stomach on top of the rock, leaning out as far as she could to watch Becker. If Becker rolled his eyes upward, he could just make out the bright red of her helmet. Crash helmet. If Becker kept his eyes strained upward long enough to make out her features, he got dizzy. It seemed a poor choice of pastimes for a man with a tendency to vertigo, which confirmed Becker in his suspicion that he was crazy.
“I can’t hear you,” said Cindi.
“Golf I said golf,” said Becker, turning his lips from the rock so he could be heard. “I could have taken up golf.”
His right leg began to jerk involuntarily.
“What is he doing?” Alan demanded.
“He’s joking!” Cindi called.
“Choking? I know that.”
Cindi lowered her voice so Alan could not hear.
“Do you want me to come down and get you? There’s no disgrace in it. It happens all the time in the beginning.”
“Or tennis,” Becker said. “I actually like tennis.” Tilting his head a fraction more, he could see what Alan was referring to as a handhold. With luck, Becker could get three fingertips on it. That would give him three fingertips and the toe of his spasming right leg to support his weight-to lift his weight- until he found something for his left side. Not only crazy but a danger to himself.
“I’m coming down for you,” said Cindi.
Becker pushed off with his left leg and reached for the handhold. He caught it with the last three fingers of his hand as he straightened his right leg. The edge of rock sliced into his fingers as his body kept swinging to the right, pivoting around his right toe. His hip struck the rockface, his fingers leaped off the grip, and he fell headfirst toward the highway.
The nylon rope secured to Cindi’s piton with a carabiner caught him after a fall of six feet, and he swung into the rock like a speeding pendulum. Becker took the blow with his head and shoulders, rebounded, then bounced in a second time with his helmet. Stunned, he hung upside down for a while before slowly righting himself He dangled in space, the climbing harness digging into his thighs and buttocks. By the time his head cleared, Cindi was at his side and Alan was halfway up the rock.
“Are you all right?” Cindi asked. Becker tried to smile; he was not yet ready to speak. His back was to the rockface now and he saw the police car pull to a stop.
“How is he?” Alan called from below, climbing. “All right, I think.”
Alan was already analyzing the mishap and gave Becker the benefit of his thoughts as he moved upward.
“The problem was you’re not ready for that kind of move yet. You shouldn’t have tried it. That was an advanced intermediate move. You’re not that good, Becker.”
The cop got out of his car and leaned against it, looking up.
“You told him he could do it,” said Cindi.
“I just told him where the handhold was. He’s got to be the judge of whether or not he can do it.”
Alan was just below them now. It seemed to Becker that the young man had made the trip up in three bounds.
Cindi was looking into Becker’s eyes, swinging out from the rockface on the end of the rope she had secured atop the palisade.
“How do you feel now?”
“Stupid.”
