Sympathy Between Humans Part 10

"What about me?"

"You're not going to try to sleep on the exam table, are you?"

Cicero laughed. "No, don't worry," he said. "I keep late hours."

"But-"

"If it gets that late, and I need to go to bed, I'll wake you and kick you out. I'm not Mother Teresa."

When he was gone, I stripped down to the sweater and my underwear and wondered: Was it right to get in in the bed? That seemed so personal, but I didn't want to wake up in an hour, on top of the covers, because I was cold. the bed? That seemed so personal, but I didn't want to wake up in an hour, on top of the covers, because I was cold.

I slipped experimentally between the comforter and the blanket, a compromise that made sense to my alcohol-and-exhaustion-clouded mind, and turned off the lamp.

An indeterminate time later I awoke in darkness. Where the h.e.l.l was I? I heard masculine, adult voices from behind a door and the sound filled me with a dread I didn't understand. My heart jumped up from its slow sleeping rhythm.

Then two words became distinguishable: pecho pecho and and fiebre. fiebre. I recognized the voice of Cicero Ruiz, and heard a baby's hoa.r.s.e cough. I closed my eyes and slept again. I recognized the voice of Cicero Ruiz, and heard a baby's hoa.r.s.e cough. I closed my eyes and slept again.

When I raised my head again from sleep, I sensed that hours had pa.s.sed. Something had wakened me, though, and I looked around and saw the low form of Cicero in very dim, flickering light. He was placing a lighted candle on the table of family photos; there was another candle already on the table, flame still and steady. my head again from sleep, I sensed that hours had pa.s.sed. Something had wakened me, though, and I looked around and saw the low form of Cicero in very dim, flickering light. He was placing a lighted candle on the table of family photos; there was another candle already on the table, flame still and steady.

"What-" I said.

"The storm came in," he said. "The power's out. I was afraid you'd wake up in a strange place in the dark and not be able to find your way around."

I sat up, facing him and the end of the bed. "Oh," I said, and rubbed at my face. "What time is it?"

"Nearly two," he said.

"I'm sorry," I said. "You should have got me up."

"Well, you're awake now. Have you slept enough?"

"Yes," I said. "I feel a lot better. Can I use your bathroom again?"

Cicero held out the candle. I threw back the comforter and slid down the bed, climbing over the low footboard at the end. Too late it occurred to me to be self-conscious about being half dressed. But Cicero had seen it all before. He was a doctor. I took the candle from him.

In the bathroom, I found toothpaste in Cicero's medicine chest. I rubbed some on my tongue and spread it across my teeth and gums, then spit and rinsed my mouth out. I splashed water on my face afterward. The makes.h.i.+ft ritual made me feel like a normal human being again. It helped that my left ear felt better. It was sore, but sore in a way that was far preferable to the pulsing, sharp pain of this afternoon. I chanced looking in the mirror. I'd expected to be bloodshot, but my eyes were surprisingly clear.

I took the candle back into the bedroom. The way Cicero watched me walk was familiar.

"You're giving me your field sobriety test, aren't you?" I said.

"I want to be sure you're okay to drive," he said. "Sit down and talk to me for a moment. I'm going to tell you two important things."

I sat on the edge of the bed, and he rolled closer.

"First, I want to see you again in forty-eight hours, to check that your ear is healing properly."

I nodded a.s.sent.

He picked up a slip of paper. "The second thing: this is a prescription for an antibiotic. It's likely your body can lick this without penicillin, but it'll do so faster with help."

"I thought you didn't prescribe," I said.

"The pad was brought to me by a patient," Cicero said. "I didn't even want to know where she got it. I don't use it. But I'm making an exception." He paused, underscoring that this was serious business. "This prescription comes with conditions. First: you tell no one I have a prescription pad here. I never tell people, myself."

"I won't," I said.

"Second, a prescription for antibiotics shouldn't raise a red flag for the pharmacist. Antibiotics aren't commonly sought in prescription fraud."

"You're saying there's a chance that, if I go fill this, I could get busted?"

"A very small chance. Usually people who try to fake prescriptions get caught because they don't know how to write scrips. Doctors and pharmacists communicate with each other in a language all their own. It's not easy to fake. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with the way this one is written, except that the license number I wrote is completely invalid," he said. "If they do bust you, they'll probably go in the back, call the police, and then stall you until the cops arrive."

What a sordid little story it would make: Hennepin County detective caught scamming prescription drugs.

"So if it takes more than ten minutes for them to find your prescription, if they say they can't track it down, just leave," Cicero told me. "But this is the second condition: if you do get caught, this doesn't come back on me." He held out the prescription, but just a little, bargaining. "I have enough problems. I do not need to get arrested. If you give me your word you won't give me up, that's good enough for me."

"I give you my word," I said.

He gave me the slip of paper.

"Why, though?" I asked him. "Why do you trust me?"

"I don't know," he said. "I just do."

A silence settled between us. The candlelight flickering on the family photos made the table look like an altar to the spirits of Cicero's ancestors, although at least one of the prints was recent: it was Cicero at what must have been his med-school graduation. His smile looked genuine, not the tense rictus some people produce when faced with a camera and a demand to smile. He was easily half a head taller than the people surrounding him.

Half a head taller. He was standing. He was able-bodied. He was standing. He was able-bodied.

"How tall were you?" I asked without thinking.

"Were?" he repeated.

Heat immediately rose to my face. "I'm sorry," I said. "I meant-"

"Six feet," Cicero said. "The tallest man in my family, ever."

"I didn't mean-"

"It's all right," he said.

My embarra.s.sment began to recede slightly, but still I looked down at my bare feet. "I should go."

"Sarah," he said, "are you afraid to touch me?"

It was true, we were sitting close together, and I had been careful not to let our limbs touch.

"Of course not," I said. "You examined me, for G.o.d's sake."

"That was me touching you," he said. "That's not the same thing. Does it disturb you that I'm paralyzed?"

"I'm married," I said.

"I see," Cicero said quietly. "You wear no wedding ring and are free to stay out until two in the morning, but when I make an overture to you, suddenly you're married."

"My husband is in prison," I said.

He didn't believe me; I could see that.

"He got sent up for auto theft," I said. "He's in prison in Wisconsin."

Cicero's expression didn't change, but at last he said, "Then I suppose you should go."

"It's not because you're paralyzed," I said. I don't know why it was important to me to establish that. I leaned forward and laid a hand on his thigh. It was stupid, a chickens.h.i.+t half measure.

"I can't feel that, Sarah," Cicero said. "You don't have to do anything to prove to me that you're open-minded. But if you're going to touch me, do it somewhere I can feel it." He reached over and took my hand. "Let me show you something," he said.

With his other hand, he pulled up his s.h.i.+rt. "A lot of people think a paraplegic's body has one sharp line between sensation and no sensation, like the line that divides light and dark on the moon," he said. "But it's more like the way twilight falls on the earth."

He placed my hand high on his rib cage. "Here, I can feel everything." He slid his hand and mine, underneath it, a little lower. "Down here, only temperature, but not pressure. Down here," a little lower still, "full dark."

Keeping eye contact, I laid my left hand on the other side of his rib cage, and Cicero put his hands on my hips, pulling me toward him. There was nowhere to go but onto the wheelchair, and cautiously I put my knees on each side of his thighs, on the edges of the seat, so I was kneeling in front of him.

He had no insecurity about having to tip his face upward to kiss a woman, and when he did it, he went deep almost immediately, probing with his tongue. It shocked me; that kind of deep, invasive kiss from a virtual stranger was disturbing and exciting and I felt something roll over deep in my stomach, like nerves, except warmer.

Our dim reflection in the mirrored closet doors showed man, woman, and chair; a s.e.xual tableau I'd never expected to be a part of. Men had taken me into their homes before, and into their beds. But in climbing onto Cicero's wheelchair, I was being taken into the very center of his life, almost his body. It made me wonder if Cicero Ruiz had a special insight into how it felt to be penetrated.

The third time I woke up, the flames of the candles were almost completely recessed in deep pits of wax. It no longer mattered; the sky was lightening to predawn blue beyond the window, just starting to illuminate the bedroom. Cicero slept so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his skin. It was rea.s.suring until I saw s.h.i.+loh's old s.h.i.+rt hanging off the back of Cicero's wheelchair, and I felt something cold in my stomach, like I was looking at a map and nothing was familiar. I woke up, the flames of the candles were almost completely recessed in deep pits of wax. It no longer mattered; the sky was lightening to predawn blue beyond the window, just starting to illuminate the bedroom. Cicero slept so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his skin. It was rea.s.suring until I saw s.h.i.+loh's old s.h.i.+rt hanging off the back of Cicero's wheelchair, and I felt something cold in my stomach, like I was looking at a map and nothing was familiar.

I slipped out of bed and put my clothes on as quietly as possible, picked up the prescription, and turned the k.n.o.b of the bedroom door in that time-honored, half-speed way people do when they are sneaking into, or out of, bedrooms.

Cicero didn't even open his eyes when he spoke, and his voice was rusty with sleep.

"It's just a little sympathy between humans, Sarah," he said. "Don't let it ruin your week."

After eight uninterrupted hours of sleep at home, I woke up in my warm, stifling bedroom wanting several things all at once: ice water; a hot, hot shower; and some kind of food I couldn't quite identify. I satisfied the first two needs first, lingering in the shower. It was amazing how much better my ear felt already. It wasn't even sore. It just had that pleasant, empty heaviness that sometimes replaces pain, the way your head feels after a particularly nasty headache rolls out, letting you free of its grip at last. I woke up in my warm, stifling bedroom wanting several things all at once: ice water; a hot, hot shower; and some kind of food I couldn't quite identify. I satisfied the first two needs first, lingering in the shower. It was amazing how much better my ear felt already. It wasn't even sore. It just had that pleasant, empty heaviness that sometimes replaces pain, the way your head feels after a particularly nasty headache rolls out, letting you free of its grip at last.

Dressed in a pair of cutoffs and a tank s.h.i.+rt against the hot weather, I went into the kitchen and looked over the lightly stocked refrigerator and cupboards. Nothing appealed to me. Whatever this odd craving was, it wasn't the usual impulse-eating suspects: caffeine, sugar, salt, or red meat. I went out the back entryway, into the yard.

Last night's storm had left the skies clean, with just a few white clouds left over in the west. The sun was high in the sky, but the overhanging elms filtered out all but a few of its rays. My neighbor's underfed Siamese cat prowled through the overgrown gra.s.s of our narrow, untended backyard, stopped, a.s.sessed me as no threat, and went on. I, also, went on, to the bas.e.m.e.nt door and down into the cobwebbed dimness.

Down here was what s.h.i.+loh called the "Armageddon food," canned things only to be eaten in case of natural disaster, riot, martial law, or nuclear attack. I'd always thought the kind of food that kept well in emergencies- ready-to-eat, low-sodium soups and powdered milk and fruit in syrup- was too depressing to be eaten as the world fell apart. "We need liquor down here," I'd said. "A few bottles of whiskey and some jars of chocolate sauce."

s.h.i.+loh, sitting on his heels in the dimness, surveying the shelves, had dryly agreed. Oh, sure, Oh, sure, he'd said. he'd said. Maybe we should put a bed down here, too. As the world goes up in flames outside, we can give ourselves over to every kind of perversion. Maybe we should put a bed down here, too. As the world goes up in flames outside, we can give ourselves over to every kind of perversion. And then he'd given me that look, the one that reminded me that few people have as deep a pleasure in wickedness as the once devout, like s.h.i.+loh, a preacher's son. And then he'd given me that look, the one that reminded me that few people have as deep a pleasure in wickedness as the once devout, like s.h.i.+loh, a preacher's son.

G.o.ddammit. While it was impossible to forget that I was living alone, that my husband was in prison in another state, every once in a while it hit me afresh that, hey, it's hey, it's s.h.i.+loh s.h.i.+loh who isn't here anymore. who isn't here anymore. And today of all days I did not want to be thinking those kinds of thoughts. And today of all days I did not want to be thinking those kinds of thoughts.

Fortunately, I was almost immediately distracted. As I moved for the stairs with a jar of applesauce and a can of pears in my hands, I tripped in the poorly lit surroundings. The culprit, on the floor, was an old and battered toolbox that I knew held tools we didn't use on a weekly or even monthly basis, unlike the wrench and pliers. But I knew without opening it that it held something else, too: an unregistered .25 with cheap silver plating.

Genevieve's sister, Deb, had given it to me, what seemed like a hundred years ago. She'd come by it innocently enough; it was a relic from her days of living in a bad East St. Louis neighborhood. She was overdue to get rid of it, and I'd promised her I'd take care of that. But immediately after that, s.h.i.+loh's disappearance and our subsequent troubles had wiped my promise from my mind. I'd stashed the cheap little gun in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and here it had remained. Given the suspicion I'd been under in the Royce Stewart case, I'd felt I couldn't simply take it to work and give it to our evidence techs for disposal. That was truer than ever now, with Gray Diaz in town.

I nudged the toolbox away from the base of the stairs with my foot, deciding I'd deal with the .25 soon, but not today.

Upstairs again, I ate the whole can of pears with a little grated cheddar cheese on top of it, and was a quarter of the way into the jar of applesauce when I heard a knock at my door.

The curtains on the windowed top half of the door were sheer, and through them I could see a full, broad masculine form. I pulled back the curtain and saw Detective Van Noord, to whom I'd made my apologies yesterday before fleeing work.

I opened the door. "What's going on?"

"Prewitt sent me," he said. "To see if you were here. We couldn't get ahold of you."

"It's my day off," I said. "Is something going on?"

I meant a public-safety emergency, all hands needed. But the afternoon outside was quiet, no sirens in the distance.

"No, nothing like that," Van Noord said. "But you left so abruptly yesterday, in the middle of your s.h.i.+ft, that Prewitt was worried. He asked me to check on the situation."

"I was sick," I said blankly. "I told you that yesterday."

"I know, and I told him, but he still asked me to check on you, and then we couldn't reach you, not on your cell or your pager-"

"Why didn't you call here?" I asked again.

"We did, and kept getting a busy signal."

"The phone's off the hook," I said, remembering only now the decision I'd made very early that morning. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to worry anyone."

But it still didn't make any sense, Prewitt sending Van Noord here. "Are you shorthanded?" I asked. "I'm feeling a lot better today. I could come in."

"Oh, no, no," he said, waving off the suggestion. "You stay home, take care of that ear. But you might want to keep your cell on. Just so we can get in touch if we need you," he advised.

"Sure," I agreed.

When he was gone, I went into the kitchen and put the phone receiver back on its cradle. Then I poured myself a gla.s.s of water and washed down the first dose of antibiotics. I'd bought them just after leaving Cicero's, at a 24-hour pharmacy, waiting at the counter with a nonchalance so forced it would have clearly broadcast my paranoia to anyone who'd truly been paying attention.

The world had gone crazy, I thought. I was scamming prescription drugs. Lieutenant Prewitt was sending his detectives around to check on sick personnel. The sanest person I'd dealt with in the last forty-eight hours was Cicero Ruiz.

Cicero. Now, there was a problem.

In the brief time that I'd known Cicero Ruiz, I'd seen him not only give an examination and dispense medical advice, but also perform something that qualified as minor surgery. Then he'd revealed himself to be in possession of a prescription pad and willing to write a prescription; I had only his word that he was making a solitary exception in my case. Cicero had incriminated himself as readily and thoroughly as if I'd written a script for him to follow. But I couldn't turn him in, not now. It was as simple as this: I'd given him my word.

He'd extracted that promise from me only in relation to the illegal prescription and the prospect that I'd get caught with it. But in principle, I'd promised something much larger. I do not need to get arrested, I do not need to get arrested, Cicero had said. I'd promised I wouldn't get him in trouble with the law. Cicero had said. I'd promised I wouldn't get him in trouble with the law.