Caleb got the phone on the second ring and sighed inwardly when he recognized the caller.

"How was your day?" Rick asked.

The question had an intimacy Caleb found himself resenting vaguely. It was the sort of question he and Chris had asked each other at day's end. He tried to a.n.a.lyze his reaction, tried to remember at what stage of their relationship he and Chris had started calling each other "dear" and caring deeply, had started asking "How was your day?" and really giving a d.a.m.n.

"What're you doing tonight?" Rick asked.

He'd planned to catch up on all the things he hadn't done yesterday because he was with Thinnes. He hadn't told Rick about Wisconsin. "I really hadn't any firm plans."

"Come to the game."

"I can't," Caleb said, trying to remember if the baseball play-offs were finally over and which of the three winter teams he'd heard mentioned on the news earlier.

"You just said you don't have any plans."

"Who's playing?"

"That's a good one, Doc," Rick said.

"Jack," Caleb reminded him. He hated Doc.

"I got two tickets for the best seats in the house-center ice, front row, first balcony."

The Blackhawks.

When Caleb didn't respond enthusiastically, Rick reminded him, "This is the last season in the old stadium."

Caleb had never been to see the Hawks at the stadium. In fact, he couldn't recall having attended a live hockey game since high school. And he was too tired to think of a plausible excuse not to go. So he didn't argue when Rick told him, "I'll pick you up. No use two of us driving. And no sense taking a chance with that car of yours. See you tonight."

Hawks versus Sharks. Bread and circuses or, in this case, beer and circuses-there were at least twice as many beer vendors as at a Bulls game. The crowd was mostly male and almost universally white, as well as merciless, vociferous, and vulgar. Regulation jackets, hats, and other Hawks paraphernalia-with the high cost of tickets, and more than forty home games-marked many of the fans as truly dedicated. Rick was one of them.

Below Rick and Caleb, on the main floor, the fans seemed more civilized and better dressed. Above, in the second balcony, the crowd was rowdier and more inebriated. Above and below, people were plugged into personal radios-addicted to the constant prattle of other people's voices or, perhaps, unable to interpret things for themselves.

The huge neon Indian glowed on the scoreboard above the ice, and colorful ads glowed from the boards around it. The teams came out at opposite ends of the arena and circled like the predators they were named for. Warming up. Unashamed to be labeled patriotic, the fans stood for the National Anthem, clapping and whistling, increasingly louder, until the roar was like the shock wave of an explosion in slo-mo. Caleb recognized that the appeal was as old as time, though he felt personally alienated from the spectacle. His perceptions began to blur from the sensory overload.

The game was very fast and not too subtle. It resonated in the cerebellum, the old brain, and the collective unconscious. The players were ritual killing machines, their fans drawn like predators to blood. Caleb didn't grapple strenuously with the rules.

Base chords from the stadium's organ vibrated below the human noises. The pressure of the sound wave swelled Caleb from within like the first waves of a building o.r.g.a.s.m. Ecstasy.

Eight minutes into it, a Shark shot the puck past the Hawk goalie, scoring. A fight broke out. Joyful mayhem compared to the carefully ch.o.r.eographed battles of professional wrestlers, but catering to the same needs. High on the most ancient drug, the crowd tongued its cheerful blood l.u.s.t. Then there was outrage from the crowd as the announcer reported Cam Russell being ejected.

Moments later, the Hawks evened the score, and Rick jumped to his feet screaming, "Yes! Kimble!" When Poulin scored as well, two minutes later, the whole audience rose to its feet to recite his name.

As Caleb watched Rick pound the air in a Dionysian frenzy and give high fives to the equally insane fans around him, he thought the younger man's face, in the reflected light from the arena, seemed as beautiful as the G.o.d's.

And then, the first period was over.

Smoking was prohibited in the stands, but a hazy miasma floated above the lines waiting, between periods, for beer. As they stood meekly in the queue, Caleb felt withdrawal setting in-the wolves were turning back to cattle.

Second period, there was a lot of activity but no action. Caleb found himself devoting as much attention to the fights in the stands as to the activity on the ice. The man to Caleb's left became progressively drunker. He put each new beer inside the previously emptied cup, and by the end of the second intermission, he'd collected nine of them.

"The offense really sucks tonight," Rick told Caleb, shortly after the third period began.

A fan behind them reiterated: "Yeah, f.u.c.kin' pacifists!"

"They seem tired," Caleb said.

"Yeah. Well, they did play yesterday," Rick admitted.

"Who?"

Rick looked at him as if he were suddenly psychotic, and the fan behind him demanded, "What planet are you from?"

Rick leaned over to shout, "Boston!" in Caleb's ear.

"But they won?" Caleb persisted. He found himself comparing Rick to Thinnes. Unfavorably. The two men were as unlike as dog and cat, and that-he realized with an unpleasant shock-was what bothered him about Rick, what made him unsuitable as a companion. Rick was one of those who needed constant rea.s.surance; Caleb knew his charming narcissism would lose its appeal. Like Freud, he failed to fill Caleb's deepest longings, but unlike the cat, he made demands the doctor found annoying.

A few minutes further into the period, Caleb began to feel that the stadium was warmer. The crowd seemed closer and louder. A free-for-all erupted in the upper levels, and security guards in yellow jackets pushed their way among the boisterous to eject the instigators. Rick leaned over and said, into Caleb's ear, "This isn't going anywhere. What say we blow this pop stand?"

Caleb agreed.

As they climbed into Rick's Blazer, he consoled himself with the thought that it could have been worse. It could have been next Sunday and he'd be missing Trovatore.

The worst of it was that any of the guys at Spaulding House would have killed for his ticket.

Forty-Seven.

The blinking readout on Caleb's answering machine was announcing five messages when he got home. He would have ignored it-in an emergency, he'd have been paged-but Rick's eager, "Aren't you going to check your messages?" seemed like the perfect excuse to call off the rest of the evening.

The first message was: "Yo, Jack. Need to check the Mann." Rafe.

The next was a hang-up; it was followed by calls-each sounding more concerned-from Brian, Lenny, and Paul asking Caleb to get in touch. Manny was obviously having some sort of crisis.

Caleb picked up the phone and hit the auto-dial b.u.t.ton for Spaulding House.

Brian answered. "Jack! Thank G.o.d!" Caleb waited. "Manny's IV came out, and we can't find a vein we can get a needle into."

"Why didn't you take him to the hospital?"

"He won't go. He's afraid they'll keep him."

It was a realistic possibility.

"I'll be right there." Caleb put the phone down and turned.

"I heard," Rick said. "A suicidal client?"

"A friend with AIDS."

"At Spaulding House?"

Caleb nodded. He went to the closet and got his medical bag. "There's probably no point in your waiting. I could be half the night."

"Let me go with you."

Caleb felt a stab of disappointment. Was that what Rick had been angling for all along-a chance to get in at Spalding House? He shrugged mentally. If he was that determined, he'd get in somehow, sooner or later. And it might be a good test of character-to see how he'd react. "Only if you promise you'll respect our right to privacy."

Rick's gray eyes widened, a model of injured innocence. "Of course."

Brian, the cynic-who, under normal circ.u.mstances, would have slit his wrists before he'd show concern for anyone-was waiting by the yard gate. Hands in pockets-he never wore gloves-he shivered in his too-large coat. His hair looked black in the orange glow of the alley light. His eyes were dark holes in a skeletal face. When they got close enough, Caleb could see tears glistening on his cheeks. And his breath rose like a ragged prayer.

Rick had driven west down the alley. So Brian could see Caleb through the window of the Blazer as it approached. He opened the gate for them and closed it when they'd pa.s.sed. Caleb scarcely waited for the car to stop before he was out, running to the house.

He took the stairs two at a time, with Rafe on his heels. The others followed, Rick bringing up the rear. They filed into Manny's room and surrounded the bed like a pack of interns on rounds. Worry made them forget their usual manners and crowd in where they usually gave visitors time and s.p.a.ce to get used to them. Objectively, they resembled escapees from a horror film. Paul, the most attractive, could have been a possessed Holocaust survivor, his movements manic, his eyes glittering with fever. Bill's face was pocked with herpes sores, Brian's blotched by Kaposi's lesions. Lenny displayed a textbook case of thrush run amok. Rafe, who wasn't afflicted with HIV, was scowling with worry and looked like the heavy from a violent action film. Caleb felt, rather than saw, Rick shrink back from them. Whatever he'd expected from Spaulding House, this-apparently-wasn't it. With a single glance at him, Caleb took in all the signs of stress, then put Rick out of mind. He wasn't the patient.

The hospital bed, the medical supplies on the bureau, and the IV stand with its pendant envelope of fluid, furthered the hospital atmosphere. On the center of the bed, Manny looked like an Egyptian mummy-sans wrappings-desiccated and faded to a jaundiced yellow. He seemed to have shrunk to child size and looked dead. The noise of their arrival reanimated him. He smiled at Caleb. "Hi, Jack."

Caleb put on the surgical gloves Rafe handed him and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Making trouble again?"

"Right up to the end. Job security for you."

Distracted, Caleb nodded and pushed first one, then the other of Manny's oversize sleeves up his arms in search of veins. He decided the left arm showed the most promise and looked at Rafe, who handed him the black rubber tourniquet. There was complete quiet, and everyone seemed to hold his breath as Caleb put it on Manny's arm and swabbed the arm with cotton soaked in alcohol. Then he squeezed Manny's hand and rubbed the forearm to raise a vein. Rafe handed him a syringe with its needle bared. Caleb carefully threaded it into the vein, and dark blood began to seep into the syringe. A collective sigh broke the silence.

"With a little practice, you could get quite good at this, Jack," Manny said, as Caleb carefully traded an IV line for the syringe.

"Not something I want to have to practice, Mann."

"Just until January," Manny said. "Don't want to f.u.c.k up Christmas with a funeral."

Caleb nodded, feeling his eyes liquefy. He took a deep breath to distract himself-Manny didn't need tears.

"Holding out for Martin Luther King Day," Manny went on. "It's already pretty lugubrious. That the right word, Jack? Lugubrious?"

"It is."

Rafe ended the awkward moment by turning to the spectators, growling, "Don't you chumps have sumpthin to do?" He swept the used syringe and cotton into a plastic box labeled BIOHAZARD WASTE and threw his gloves in the wastebasket. Then he pushed between Bill and Lenny, who were blocking the doorway, and vanished.

Rick had watched Caleb work on Manny with the fascination of a spectator at an accident site. Now his attention wandered, as if Manny's symptoms were too terrible to consider. He stared at the wall covered with graffiti.

Manny smiled. He noticed Rick and said, "You'll have to excuse Rafe. He went to the Mr. T school of etiquette. But he's a sweetheart."

Rick nodded dumbly, looking shocked.

"He's beautiful, Jack," Manny continued. "I'm happy for you. I was afraid you were gonna die an old maid."

Rick blushed.

Paul, Bill, and Lenny used the pause that followed to come up and put their hands on Manny under the guise of hitting him on the chin and shoulder. Brian edged his way around the bed and sat on it, back against the headboard, and took Manny's right hand in both of his, resting them on his lap. "What's he do?" he asked Caleb.

"Rick's a writer."

"You going to immortalize us?" Brian asked, his sarcasm restored by Manny's improved prognosis.

"If you'll let me." Beyond that he seemed at a loss for words. So much for his determination to write about a hospice.

Manny's eyes were creeping shut. He opened them wide and looked at Rick, yawning. "Maybe tomorrow."

"I'll hold you to it." Rick still seemed uncomfortable.

Manny yawned again and turned his head to look directly at Caleb. "Bring him back tomorrow. When you come to read..."

Caleb glanced at the copy of Inferno on the bedside table. The bookmark had advanced noticeably. They were all worried Manny wouldn't live to hear the denouement and were hurrying things along by reading it to him whenever he was lucid. Rafe had told him it was replacing the soaps, for some of them, as a filler of time. Caleb bent and kissed Manny on the forehead. When he stepped away from the bed, Manny opened his eyes again and turned his head toward Rick. "Nice meeting you." His hand quivered.

Caleb watched a sardonic smile form on Brian's face as he recognized Manny's effort to offer Rick his hand. He stared at Rick and lifted Manny's hand up. It was a test. It was like the climax moment in a TV disease-of-the-week movie, where the protagonist must confront his fear of AIDS by embracing a disease-ravaged victim.

Rick held Brian's gaze long enough to make it clear he understood what was going on. He stepped over to the bed and gently closed his hand around Manny's and raised and lowered it. "The pleasure's mine." He let the hand down gently on the bedcover and backed away.

Rick stopped the Blazer in front of Caleb's building and put it in park but didn't turn it off.

"Aren't you coming up?" Caleb asked.

"It's late. And I have to be up early."

Relieved, Caleb nodded.

"Were they all friends before they came to Spaulding House?" Rick asked.

"None of them had ever met, to my knowledge."

"They seem so close."

"Is this off-the-record?"

"Nothing you tell a writer is ever off-the-record. Everything he sees, or hears, or feels goes down on paper." He smiled. "But I've been known to change names to protect the guilty."

"I have a theory about attachment."

"Which is?"

"Humans can't remain neutral about anything they give their time or labor to. Whatever we take care of, we either come to love or hate."