"So let's leave it there for the moment. And now, moving on to the next item on our agenda-would it be all right, Rob, if we discussed your personal situation?"

Rob frowned. "What for?"

"I can't believe that it's comfortable sleeping outdoors in October." Edwin pushed his empty cup aside and leaned forward on his elbows. "And in no time the snow'll be flying. You can't crash at a fur salon forever, Rob.

Suppose you came and camped out on my sofa-bed?"

"I appreciate the offer, Ed, but no thanks. It would be an imposition."

"All right. How about a homeless shelter? My church helps run one in Silver Spring. They offer job counseling and sleep space."

"An Open Door Center."

Edwin raised an eyebrow. "You know it?"

"There's one in Fairfax too. I sent a bum there once."

"But you've never stayed at one yourself, am I right? So it would be a new experience for you. Why not give it a try?"

Edwin was so persuasive that it was easier to give in. "All right," Rob said. Somehow the former ease of their talk had slipped away. He sat silent, staring down at his hands folded on the red Formica tabletop.

Edwin rubbed the back of his neck. "Look, Rob, I have to ask you this. I know you said you were giving it up. But, except for just now-have you been messing with my head?"

Rob looked up, shocked and yet unsurprised. "No! I mean-I don't know, Ed. I haven't deliberately done a thing, I swear it. But-I told you, about Angela and Davey. I do stuff without knowing it. I'm so damned strong. That's why it would be crazy to stay on your sofa. I can't get too close to anybody. I don't dare. It's not safe. I'm not safe. Maybe even this homeless shelter is a dangerous idea, maybe even the street. Sometimes I think I should get right away from everybody, live in the Arctic tundra-"

Edwin reached a sympathetic hand across the table to touch his clenched fingers. Rob jerked away from the contact, the words trembling on the tip of his tongue, You don't see me! But Edwin spoke first, cutting them off: "It's okay, Rob, it's okay! You don't have to escape. Everything's fine!"

"There, you see?" Rob said bitterly. "How did you know that I was going to tarnhelm, unless I transmitted it to you?"

"Sherlock by name, Holmes by nature," Edwin said. "I didn't need the weirdness. Anyone could see what you were going to do, written in your face. I didn't mean to upset you, bud. It's just that-the things you told me Thursday would unsettle anybody. And when it began raining cats and dogs I woke up in the middle of the night on Friday and thought, Is Rob out in this? And then I lay in the dark and thought, Is he making me care, making me get involved? So it sort of got on my nerves."

"Oh god, I wish I were dead."

"Don't say that! It's okay, Rob, truly it is. If you're drawing me in, that's fine. I-I consent, all right? People need to care more, not less.

I'm a younger brother. I can deal with strong-minded people. You must meet Carina sometime. No one could stand up against your deliberate manipulation, you've proved that, but your unconscious influence can't be malevolent."

"Not malevolent?" Rob demanded incredulously. "And you're supposed to be smart. I told you about New York!"

"That wasn't really you, Rob. You recognized that yourself. This whole thing had dropped on you like a grand piano, and you were miserable. You aren't really a bad person."

"It wasn't really me," Rob repeated. The kindly words were an overwhelming relief. He himself wasn't the liar or rapist; it was some separate unsavory entity that he could expel or defeat. But Rob felt impelled to add, "But I'm still dangerous."

"Dangerous, what's to worry? We'll deal with it somehow. In the meantime, what I want to deal with now is dessert. Our family motto is, Dessert Always."

With a flourish he held a dessert card out. Rob took it, saying, "I appreciate your trust, Ed. But you're crazy, you know that."

"I may not get to do many crazy things in future," Edwin said absently, studying the menu. "No scope for it in the space program. Hot fudge for me-how about you?"

CHAPTER 3.

Rob had never set foot in a homeless shelter before. The Open Door Center was in Silver Spring, a suburb a couple of miles around the Washington Beltway from NIH. A big crumbling gray bungalow on a transitional street had been converted into offices and dorm space. Rob gave the man at registration a minimum of information, pocketed the house rules without reading them, and went straight to bed in the men's dorm room at the back of the ground floor.

He woke the next morning to raindrops on his face. For a second Rob was back on the park bench in New York City again, despair filling his chest like quick-set concrete, but then he came fully awake. A large grayish stain was spreading on the plaster ceiling above the folding cots, and water dripped down. A few beds over, another man burst into tears, and someone else bellowed, "Hey! The fucking roof is fucking leaking fucking again!"

Rob rolled out of bed, muttering, and put his shoes on. Wasn't anyone going to pick up the ball? Going up the stairs he met a very pink young man coming down. "The roof is leaking down here," Rob barked. "What's being done?"

"Um, I don't know. Let me go check the volunteer's manual."

The carrot-headed young man skittered on downstairs. Growling, Rob ascended to the smaller upper floor and went from room to interconnecting room inspecting the ceilings, ignoring the sleepy complaints of the mothers and kids. He was looking for an attic access hatch. He found it in the bathroom ceiling. By standing on the old-fashioned bathtub's rim he was able to pop it open. The pink youth came in just as Rob was preparing to climb higher.

"You got a flashlight?"

He blushed even pinker. "You're not supposed to be here. This is the women's John!"

"The roof is leaking," Rob explained patiently. "You never ignore a roof leak. Especially when it's not even raining. Now-I need a flashlight."

After some delay a flashlight was found. Rob hoisted himself into the attic. The slanting ceiling was so low he had to squat. The space was cobwebby and littered with mouse droppings, but quite innocent of insulation. This at least made it easy to find the large pool of water on the floor near the dormer. "You should insulate," Rob said.

The young man stood on the bathtub below, staring through the hatch as if Rob were proposing to hang upside down from the rafters like a bat. "That would cost a fortune!"

"You probably blow a fortune in oil every winter-this place has oil heat, right?" Rob could feel the old Harry Home-owner instincts kick in. Leak first, then insulation! He shone the flashlight at the pool of water on the floor. Where was the water coming from? Not from overhead-it was a frosty clear morning outside. He peered between the louvers of the gable vent. "I get it, here's your problem. Look at that!"

"What is it? What is it?"

"The gutters. Come on." Rob climbed down again, swinging by his hands from the edge of the hatch until he could balance on the tub. "You got a ladder?"

"No, of course not."

Rob swept past him and down the stairs, where one of the boards was missing, to the front door. The front porch spanned the width of the house and had once boasted gingerbread and fretwork railings, all broken and faced with plywood now. Rob climbed up and stood on the rickety rail, and then shinned his way up the corner porch post. Leprous chips of paint and chunks of spongy rotten wood shredded away under his hands and legs. "Don't do that," the young man begged from the unkempt lawn below. "We should ask the committee! We should call Pastor Phillipson!"

Rob sat on the edge of the porch roof and glared down at the little twit.

If there was anything he despised it was deliberate incompetence. But after all, the kid was a volunteer. "How old are you?"

"Uh, nineteen. I'm Jonathan, by the way."

"I'm Rob. Shouldn't you be in school?"

"I am! At Montgomery Junior College. But I don't have Monday morning classes, so the college fellowship tapped me for the Center here."

"Well, Jonathan, maybe they haven't taught you yet that dealing with gutters is one of an American male's duties and prerogatives."

"You're kidding!"

"Says so right in the U.S. Constitution-go look it up. It's just after the right to bear arms." Jonathan actually seemed to be seriously considering this. "Besides, the ladies admire this kind of work," Rob couldn't resist adding. "Girlfriends. Mothers. That's the sort who particularly abhor roof leaks. You should take this opportunity to learn about them. It will have a significant impact on your relationship with the opposite sex."

"Golly! Maybe I better take you up on it."

Rob gave him a hand up onto the porch roof, thinking, If I teach him, then the next time this happens he can fix it. And I won't be climbing on a rickety roof at eight A.M. "See, here's the attic. This flat bit must be the roof over the men's dorm. And here's the water. It must be coming in under the dormer, and then on down into the bedrooms."

"Wow! No wonder it's leaking! Why doesn't it run down to the ground?"