H2O: The Novel Part 4

Candice smelled like cabbage. The odor reminded me of my grandmother, the cabbage-and-potatoes queen. Boiled cabbage, steamed cabbage, cabbage soup-and every night, potatoes served a new way. I used to kid her that she'd forgotten she left Ireland and could at last buy real food in America. Each comment earned me a painful rap with the back of a huge wooden spoon, her primary culinary instrument and disciplinary tool.

I a.s.sociated the cabbage odor with people who didn't bathe often, and I suspected Candice was no cabbage cook. Her blue polo shirt and pants were dingy, like she'd worn them for several days in a row. But no one cared, least of all my soft new squeezy friend.

Her hug was genuinely strong. At last, I wiggled her away to an arm's length, her eyes gleaming. "Thank you," I said. "I'm glad to see you, too."

"Sit here!" Candice exclaimed, and pointed to what I knew was her favorite spot. Some child had once carved the rough figure of an elephant in the top of one of Hiram's round oak coffee tables. A few years of spilled coffee and the doodle etching of patrons' ballpoint pens had filled the indentation with a curious palette of blue, black, and red. She called the engraving a "funt," which I presumed to be her abbreviation of elephant.

I took the crudely engraved table, and she polished the top with ceremony, flourishing her white cotton rag. Five minutes later, I'd warmed up with a deadly hot cup of strong imported roast. She wouldn't let me buy it. Free coffee-my favorite Sumatran blend-made the ignominy of yesterday's fall worthwhile.

"I got this for you, Kate," Hiram said, sneaking up behind me a few moments later. I nearly tossed hyper-hot java on both of us. He handed me a crudely wrapped package, something the size of a coffee-table book bound in last Sunday's comic strip.

Dilbert. My favorite.

"For me?" I asked. I couldn't remember the last time someone gave me a gift. Not even Xavier. This was like Christmas, but better. People give at the holidays because they have to. Hiram, all six foot two of a walking hairy mop, cared about me. I lowered my eyes, afraid they might give away the pain that tried to swim out, then wiped at them while he spoke to Candice. His words to her drifted out as a gentle breeze; he weas ever her loving mentor, never the boss.

"It's the least I could do after what happened last night, Kate," he said later with a smile. "Besides, I'm desperate for your business." Brilliant white teeth emerged under the cover of brown, his beard and long curly locks a hairy frame that surrounded an orthodontist-perfect set of pearlies. He watched with antic.i.p.ation while I unwrapped the package. Candice took a place at his side, bouncing on her toes and clutching her rag in giddy silence. She watched him, waiting on his signal to scream with joy.

As I ripped away the funny papers, I could see it. For Hiram, this was the equivalent of donating his right arm. Or worse. He had the arm, but money was as scarce as instant coffee in this place. A shiny white MacBook, probably a used one he'd cobbled together from the bright plastic parts of others that he'd restored in his spare time-but a welcome window back into my digital world. He handed me a business card.

"The pa.s.sword's on the back, Kate. Free Wi-Fi for my friends," he said with another poster-child smile. "Sorry about yesterday. Maybe this'll get you online until you go to work Tuesday."

What was it with this day? A little boy befriends me and takes me to my dream boat. Then a big boy lays an even bigger gift on me, just at my point of need.

What was it Mother used to call this? "Tiny blessings"?

"Thank you, Hiram. And Candice. I . . . I don't know what to say."

"Say you'll bring all your friends to ISIP," Hiram joked. "That would be a nice start." He extended a hand. "Thanks for coming back, Kate. This means a lot."

I stood and extended my good hand, but Hiram threw his arms open and pulled me into a hug. Even taller than Xavier, Hiram felt solid and warm. Like a cup of his powerful coffee on the way down, his tight embrace made me tingle. I'd not felt that way in a long time, and I confess I hung on to him much longer than I should have. He tensed at last and released me.

"Anyway . . . gotta go. Candice will bring you whatever you need. Now, get online, girl. Probably a thousand e-mails waiting for you out there." With that, Hiram headed back to what he did all day-roasting beans or grinding a new blend in the back. Candice rocketed off to intercept a new customer. I was alone at last. With a much-needed coffee, a "new" laptop, and my blessed Wi-Fi.

Wireless Internet is a curious thing. A signal surrounds you nearly everywhere in Seattle with the instant ability to transport you anywhere in the world. It's like a mysterious electromagnetic fog, harboring strange digital wonders. That little signal could carry me to the office or across the world to someone's living room and their own computer. I loved it. Best of all, Hiram's wireless-his Wi-Fi-beat anything else in Seattle. Like broadband over the air, I could surf anywhere as fast as I wanted.

I opened the laptop gingerly, remembering too well the crippled feel of my shattered MacBook Air and its keyboard confetti.

Consolidated Aerodyne had closed for a three-day weekend, but thanks to Hiram, it was a short digital trip into the server that controlled our e-mail. A few keystrokes later and I'd joined my account with its three hundred messages. A few more keystrokes and I was "in the office," with full access to all corporate files. Everything digital that spilled on last night's coffeehouse floor waited safely in a duplicate file just five floors above the parking lot. Auto-backups work so well these days that I forget I'm using them. Sometimes the stuff you take for granted saves your life when you least expect it.

Hiram's place is no restaurant, but he does have one food item that he serves to special friends and family. Long after noon, perhaps two hours into a mountain of office work, my hairy friend brought out his simple but exquisite specialty. He cooks Seattle's finest grilled cheese sandwich: a three-cheese phenomenon flowing over thick chewy slices of San Francisco sourdough, smothered in real b.u.t.ter and grilled to a golden brown. Just what the heart doctor might ban, after I'd just slammed three cups of eye-popping imported caffeine. He set it down without a word, winked, and left. Hiram loved privacy. He was a computer weenie, after all. We had a lot in common.

Eleven years ago, I stood in his shoes. I was a budding computer nerd at the threshold of my career, living on the edge of the economy while I hung on for dear life. Three thousand miles west of Mother and Father, in a mouse-and-roach-infested one-room garage apartment in Redwood City north of San Jose, I'd declared my independence at the raw age of eighteen. As far from my parents as I could get yet still be in the continental US. On my own, with no sermonettes from Mother, no cramped family brownstone in Queens, and no gossiping noisy relatives. I earned eight dollars an hour and loved it, as a part-time secretary for a software company, with thirty hours of New York junior college and two programming courses to my credit.

I was in heaven.

Hiram rounded the coffee bar as I watched, on a beeline back to the kitchen and his wife. He pecked her on the back of the neck with a kiss, and she whirled around into his arms with a funny nasal laugh. Then she pushed him away, giggling, and shoved a grinder into his empty hands. Hiram shrugged and turned back to the kitchen while she watched, eyes sparkling.

I wish I had that.

This couple couldn't put together enough nickels in a year to make a month's payment on my Ice Rocket, yet they were happy. My old life in Redwood City, poor as it was, had that same magic sparkle, like the lilt in her laugh and the joy in his quirky smile. Forgotten fingers lingered on the steaming sandwich, still so hot in the center that it would sear skin off the roof of my mouth. I eyed the bubbling b.u.t.ter, counting the calories, mentally measuring my midriff. Fat lost the standoff; my stomach won as teeth tore into toasted sourdough and hot cheese.

My mind wandered back to California.

"Can you do it?" my tall bearded boss asked eleven years ago during the heyday of his startup business in Silicon Valley. "I need someone who can program this thing." I jumped at the chance, with no earthly idea what I faced, but was determined to break out in this office. Measure up? I'd jump higher than anyone else, to prove that the programming could be done.

Dr. Thomas Cook's business in Sunnyvale, California started small-just me and three overs.e.xed college boys, all of them in jeans, sandals, and Hawaiian shirts, our eyes glued to computer screens for twelve to fourteen hours a day. We loved it. The token girl, they pegged me as a hungry and independent college coed, the office fax queen, and a dependable copy mistress. But I could program computers, too. The b.u.t.thead boys in Birkenstocks hated that.

"Software's for guys," one of the "testosterone team" remarked early in my career. I think he felt threatened, but I loved the compliment. They knew I consumed every programming course I could squeeze in at night-and I wore a skirt every day because I wanted to. That wardrobe choice drove them nuts, but not because of bare legs or libido. The red cape of my hemline taunted the bullish macho in those three male nerds.

Dr. Cook took me in after we met one Sunday over a free-sau-sage-sample table at a Whole Foods store in Redwood City, the commercial cornucopia where I cruised every weekend to make a meal. I alternated trips to big supermarkets where sausages, crackers, and cheese were the fare of freebies, and then to the mall's food court, where a couple of laps around the plaza would fill you up on toothpick-skewered samples of chicken. Grab a free cup of water and leave well fed.

Apparently, Dr. Cook had dined like that often enough during his college days to recognize a fellow "grazer," and he offered me a job cleaning his tiny office so that I could afford to eat. "Can you type?" he'd asked one day just a week after he hired me, when he caught me diving into a jar of mints.

Type? Who can't?

"Sure. I'm a programmer," I'd answered, stretching the truth to the limit. I had six measly credit hours in computer applications, but I'd say anything for the big break. "And if you need a secretary . . ."

"Don't have one, so I guess you're it," he replied with a huff. That was eleven years ago. Until I came to Seattle, Dr. Cook could claim to be the only employer I'd ever had.

"Can you do it?" he'd asked that lucky day a year after I fell into the typing job, throwing me into a programming task that changed my life.

I bit into Hiram's luscious b.u.t.ter-toasted cheese, three layers of delight mixing into one as I pulled the melted strings away from the sandwich. I fought back mental images of Xavier peering over his hawk nose at me, eyeb.a.l.l.s-become-lances that shredded my pants to pull a virtual measuring tape about my too-soft belly. I squeezed my eyes shut to block out his face, my ears ringing from tensed muscles, then I peeked through partially open lids to make sure he'd run away.

I wondered why Dr. Cook ever gave me that magical chance to excel. He had no reason to share his success, but he did. Freely. He gave me a ticket to the enchantment of Sunnyvale and San Jose, where the recently rich arose from the most humble and unlikely beginnings. Some of them simple people like me. Plain California girls who crashed the breakfast bars at Hampton Inns to save spare change, and smashed roaches in their apartments at night to save exterminator fees.

But even simple people can spout great ideas. Ten years ago, I came up with a doozy.

E-mail is a pain. You have to open it, read it, reply to it or forward it, then save it or delete it. So many actions that it's hard to hold a running conversation with a girlfriend. It's not social at all, an impossible medium in which to keep a dozen conversations going at once. I used to complain loudly about that problem when I'd flip from one computer application to another, mult.i.tasking between a friend's story about a neighbor's break-in and finishing a boring typing job for Dr. Cook. There had to be a better way. I believed I could solve that annoying mult.i.tasking challenge.

I was nuts.

What began as a personal struggle to network with my friends eventually turned into Dr. Cook's golden egg. No. More like a golden goose laying lots of golden eggs. My idea for social networking eventually caught the ear of the boss, a brilliant Rice grad who'd always been on the lookout for the breakout opportunity. When I got frustrated one day and drew my idea on a white board, angry I couldn't talk to five people at once, he understood me. We birthed a networking software that ran smack dab into another startup in the same town. The other company grew famous and won that market, but Dr. Cook walked away with several zeroes worth of cash in a sale of our intellectual property. My fledgling software venture actually worked, through sheer brilliance and dumb luck. Dr. Cook peddled our software to an MIT dropout on the rise to stardom, and the sale changed my life. Money can do that.

Sharp cheddar warmed my mouth, its soft tendrils sticking to the gaps at the base of my teeth. I could probably afford to buy Hiram's coffeehouse now, along with his sandwich recipe, but somehow getting the meal for free made this dining experience all the more special.

Ten years after I'd left New York, I was running on the frantic front end of a roller-coaster software business as secretary, programmer, and then web developer, and life eventually lost its glamour. No balance and no roses. Just money . . . lots of money . . . and endless software deadlines. No relationships, no personal life . . . and a desperate need for a change. Dr. Cook hated stress more than he loved the money. That's why he sold out. Annual Christmas letters remind me each year that he moved to a little ranch near Austin, Texas, to rebuild old Farmall tractors and work with the Boy Scouts. I opted to change locale and move up the ladder. Life had to be easier somewhere else, somewhere slower-paced, like Seattle. Dr. Cook knew better. I should have followed him to Texas.

I polished off the last of the sandwich and hit Send on my last message. The digital day was done and now I could play. As the loaner laptop slid into my bag, I could imagine Dr. Cook's hearty laugh and deep gray beard during our early days at the cramped office in his garage. Dr. Thomas Cook, the world's hardest-working man, quit cold turkey and headed to a Texas Shangri La to repaint antique tractors. To his credit, he still had the first dollar bill he'd ever been paid. It wasn't cliche. Unfortunately, my money discipline left something to be desired.

I had a condo, a motorcycle, and a closet full of Fendi stilettos to pay for-and no idea where to find the last dollar that I'd earned.

I couldn't afford to quit yet.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE BLUE fleck paint job of my Ice Rocket matched the azure tint of Lake Wenatchee as I rode through the mountains east of Seattle, late on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. The bike is a sky blue with a tinge of purple, and what you see depends on the sun and the time of day, like with sea ice. The painter got it just right. At noon, you might see deep sapphire, but the purple deepens as evening overtakes you. And chrome frames it all, flashy silver that runs from one end of the bike to the other.

Other than standing under a steaming showerhead, my favorite place to be is wrapped in tight black leather, reclining on my monster-a horsepower wedge slicing through air. Hugging my contoured metal steed, there's no sitting back. You lean into it or it will kill you. I'm a pulsing extension of its power, and it thrusts me forward at speeds that blur thought. Once, as a little girl on a field trip in northern New York, I lay down on a giant fallen spruce, wrapping my legs and arms best as I could around the monster. Strapping myself on the Ice Rocket reminds me of straddling that tree. I'm leather skin on a cobalt-blue metal beast.

Stevens Pa.s.s Highway climbed through the Cascades, where I headed east from Seattle. It's a winding road, and I occasionally roared past a car on a curve and scared both of us. In a few wide-open stretches I opened her up. I raced from a dead stop to a hundred in a few seconds, anything along the road was just a smear. Towering gray granite ridges dotted with green spruce and fir made a wall on both sides of the road as the highway rose two thousand feet up to Coles Corner and Lake Wenatchee. Snow still topped the peaks, melting into tumbling streams that ripped away at the sides of the mountain. Near the base of some slopes, emerald gra.s.ses covered sandy loam, highlighted in the red and orange of wildflowers still in bloom. The rugged beauty of the landscape complemented the pummeling velocity of my ride. If you could harness a killer whale, or strap yourself to the top of a log in a lumber flume, surely it would feel like this, a tiny black leather body wrapped like a leech around blue and silver road rocket.

Toilets in gas stations are generally sorry experiences wherever you live. No different here, at a tiny fuel-and-snack stop deep in the Cascades. After two hours strapped to the Ice Rocket, every rumble vibrating a strained bladder, any convenience was welcome-filthy or not. I needed relief more than the Ice Rocket needed gas. The bell on the gas station door jingled as I exited, hands dripping wet, wishing for a hand towel. I immediately felt the hot spotlight of someone's eyes.

"D'you ride that thing . . . or does it ride you?" a driver asked with a lecherous glance as he jumped off the running board of his logging rig. The man must have loved cool weather, clad only in a T-shirt that proclaimed his allegiance to red razorbacks. He was a long way from Arkansas. And it was too cold for T-shirts.

"I ride it. Sort of like strapping yourself to the hood of that rig," I said, casting a glance at his Peterbilt. "But it's a lot faster."

Funny how, when men insult me, I always think back to my father. I compare every man to him, and, generally speaking, my parent loses. But not this time. One thing my easygoing father was not-a leering womanizer, what Justus once called a "man wh.o.r.e." He treated Mother with the greatest respect, and he honored me in every way. You could barely get my father off the couch, but he did have one hot b.u.t.ton I could depend on. He'd "go native" and rip the eyes out of any ape who mistreated me. I loved that about him. Too bad that quality didn't rub off on more guys. It certainly didn't on this loser.

"Ever lay it over? I mean, in the driveway?" another voice asked from a distance. It was an older man, about my father's age. He watched me from the station's one gas pump as he refilled a dusty maroon Suburban.

"As in 'fall over?'" I asked, pulling my helmet on.

"Yep. As in forget the kickstand. Ever do it?"

"Nope. I'd never get it up."

"That's what I thought." He went back to his gasoline and looked away, but kept talking. "You headed west?"

"I am. Headed back to Seattle." I looked up at the sun, rays of gold, purple, yellow, and orange firing through a base of scattered clouds. I had about an hour, perhaps more, until the sun set over the city. It was a two-hour ride home.

"Pretty sloppy back that way. Storm's movin' in."

I love to get wet.

I zipped the leather up to my chin. "Good. Rain hits like paint b.a.l.l.s when you're going a hundred."

"Have it your way, little lady. Just a warning."

I nodded as I slung a leg over my blue beast. The clientele in the gas station ogled out the window, waiting for the "little woman" to climb on her mean machine. I could imagine the catcalls, and jiggling bellies with belt buckles the size of saucers.

Five seconds later, Coles Corner and the leering eyes disappeared behind me in a flurry of dust. A hundred miles of curves lay ahead, and two hours of blessed mental rest. I lost myself in thought atop the blue metal steed.

Control. The word was tattooed on my mental horizon as I raced back to Seattle.

Life revolves around control. Mother controlled me, dictating skirt lengths and the duration of phone calls to boys. Her loving but voluminous instructions about food, hygiene, makeup, and school were all part of her insatiable focus on her only child, a precious daughter. She'd been nice enough about it, but gave me no room to be myself. What else do you call that if not control? Yet, her structured environment never seemed to include my father, a man over whom she had no control. They were polar opposites-a woman dominated by the determination to get things done, and a loving but lazy father who did nothing. Perhaps my role was to serve as the only human in our home whom she could control.

Father didn't seem to care. He loved television. He lived for television. His home? A chair the permanent shape of his b.u.t.t, and the right arm of his leather recliner permanently dented with the weight of an arm that forever held a cola, a sandwich, or the remote control. I can't remember when I saw him sit without food in his hands. He gripped the next bite like smokers clutch a forgotten cigarette, a perpetual counterweight as he filled his head with the latest images on the b.o.o.b tube. We had drawers full of old remote controls and extra batteries. You could never have enough. Television and life were synonymous.

Dark clouds snuffed out the red and orange darts of a setting sun ahead of me. My special headlight oscillated gently left and right like a locomotive headlamp. It would scare the pants off drivers coming my way, and no one ever veered my direction from opposing traffic, fearing that perhaps they'd wandered onto a train track. In the gathering dusk, I could see Mother with her ap.r.o.n and the dreaded willow switch. "You come in this minute!" I was out way past my playtime, and Mother would never approve of this. Loose in the wild mountains, riding a light-speed blue gazelle.

The wind is a memory, vivid as it hits you, then blowing past and gone. I could smell the approaching storm front rolling in from the west. Warm downdrafts mixed with cold tubes of wind, burbling down from gathering black clouds above me. The ride home threatened wet. And wonderful. I loved the rain.

Memories, like the wind whipping me in the curves toward Skykomish, always flood back when I'm p.r.o.ne on the cycle. There was something about moving, running away from the past as I raced through the present. I could see my youth fleeing fast behind the bike, my gangly days as a skinny girl in a cla.s.s full of short, fat boys. Pimples and freckles and red-hair jokes. My nubile young body changing faster-much faster-than my parents' old-fashioned traditions. Mental images sifted through brain files of boyfriends and telephones, car keys and car wrecks. Broken hearts and that horrible senior prom, failed friendships and the treachery of a girlfriend who stole away the only boy I'd ever loved. Life in Queens, New York? A ma.s.sive disappointment.

I raced on, veering around slow traffic as I approached the slopes of Mount Index, towering to the left. A setting sun peeked out from behind the mountain, barely visible. Rain pelted me with occasional spatters. Low black clouds draped over the curves of the road. I accelerated, reveling in the grip of squeaky-clean tires as the torque threw me through a minirain squall of spray thrown up behind a truck's tires. I could pa.s.s faster than any vehicle on the road and corner better on wet pavement than any race car. I used both gifts to my advantage as I dove headlong into the approaching liquid gray.

Lightning flashed ahead, a brilliant blaze somewhere to the west. I careened down the slick descent, flying through the foothills of the Cascades as rain enveloped me. My black skin shed the storm, icy needles p.r.i.c.king thick leather. I hugged the Ice Rocket even tighter and made my body one with the metal as we shot into wet blackness. The pelt of raindrops on my visor grew to a roar, drowning out road noise and conquering daydreams. The odor of ozone swept under my chin shield, reminding me of the smell of my uncle's copy shop where a dozen laser printers cranked out countless reams of paper. It was the smell of rain. I became the windshield of a jet fighter in a downpour, the leading edge of a s.p.a.ce shuttle roaring off the pad into the throat of a hurricane.

I overpowered the tempest and my control became complete.

Xavier's face filled my vision, somewhere just beyond the smashing drops that exploded by the thousands on my visor. His bald dome, shaved so carefully each day, glistened in the wetness. Straight thin lips made a perfect horizontal line, the base from which sprang a perfect nose, bifurcating at the top into two perfect eyebrow lines like a palm tree above his eyes. He waxed his eyebrows once a week, plucking them into a fine black arc. I've never understood why.

The blue unnerved me, his eyes so cerulean I'd once been convinced that he wore designer contacts. Black pupils dotted irises so perfect they could have been painted on white eyeb.a.l.l.s. But they held no pain, no warmth. They stared like an eighteenth-century canvas of stuffy people bereft of emotion. Perfect eyes that were his eyes but held no zest for life. Dead blue.

Not a wrinkle broke his perfect face. No smiles and no crow's-feet. No frowns and no lines beyond his mouth. No surprise or horizontal lines on his forehead. His was a digital face, just a smooth continuum, broken only by straight lips and the sprouting palm of brows that framed two ponds of penetrating blue. That, and a finger or a hand always held to his chin. He always appeared in thought, but not a thread of emotion ever st.i.tched in his face.

Do I love him?

Xavier never hugged me except in bed. I thought of Candice, shivering at the remembrance of her intolerable breath, but warming at the memory of her strong embrace. She cared for me. I let myself relive the feel of Hiram's st.u.r.dy body and warm muscles rippling beneath my hands as I wrapped myself around him in a hug. Xavier held me on occasion, in moments of pa.s.sion, but I couldn't remember enjoying it the way I had when I'd held Hiram.

I thought of the laptop, Hiram's extravagant sacrifice to make up for my accident, a loaner Apple provided yesterday by a java pauper. Aside from obscenely expensive dinners, I struggled to remember anything that Xavier had ever given me. A car zipped past in the opposite direction and disappeared-like my memory of any gift from him, if there ever had been one. I warmed again at the remembrance of Hiram's Dilbert comics and the crude wrapping paper, of bubbly Candice as she waited for me to unwrap the surprise when I returned to the coffee shop. These were simple people who dripped love. Contented people.

The memory turned sour on the pivot of another word I despised.

Content.

Contentment tasted of mediocrity, and mediocrity meant weakness. I refused to be mediocre, the accommodation swamp of "good enough" that had sucked the life out of my parents and almost claimed me as its next victim. Until I escaped Queens.

I lifted my head and gunned the bike, determined to outrun average, to veer away from "middle of the road." A gust of wind grabbed me and lifted my torso ever so briefly. I grabbed the handles hard, jerking myself back toward the bike in a struggle against the torrent and blast. It was my one danger, ballooning off the bike like a sail at high speed. Gold Bar, Washington, raced past as I hugged the bike and crossed a double yellow in front of a big rig, with just enough clearance to zip in front of the eighteen-wheeled monster as we entered a downhill curve.

As I accelerated away from the truck, I felt a rivulet of water trickle down my neck. Rain pelted me in the highway gale as I rode on, and more of the wet intruder that ran down my spine slipped in a second time when I turned my head. I could feel the cold now, stabbing aches in joints stiff from too long a ride. Soon, the seep of water breeched my leather neck wall and ran unabated, a cold stream wriggling down to the small of my back, where it spilled left and right to encircle my waist. Shivers grew and my joints felt sandy, grinding as I shifted on the bike to swerve around cars and trucks that slowed for the rain. I roared under an overpa.s.s, a concrete sign of approaching modernity, and nodded at two bikers huddled under the bridge against the storm.

Perhaps I should stop.

Monroe-the outskirts of Seattle-lay just a few miles ahead. I'd press on.

I don't remember coming off the bike.

I recall the sensation of flying, and I know I left the Ice Rocket because my hands flailed. One moment I was speeding across wet highway, and the next: no grip on the handlebars, no more cold steel of the gas tank under my chest, no warm thrum between my knees as blazing cylinders fired me forward into the maelstrom.

I saw colors. Brilliant tints and shades filled my vision. A bold arc swept from left to right, rays of red, orange, yellow. Of green and blue. Faint arcs of light purple, then darker violet. Hue lay upon hue, blazing from left to right as though a ma.s.sive light show pierced me. I could feel radiance boiling up within me as brilliant geysers of light erupted from my face, blasted into my visor, and then reflected back into my eyes. There was no sense of sound. The deafening spatter of rain was gone. Everything whispered, "Quiet."

No-it was not quiet. A high-pitched tone, like a bad case of tinnitus, rang all about me. My joints screamed with cold, stiff pain, but they weren't moving. I tried to raise my hand, but it lay asleep, beyond my control. I knew that I had some connection to life, but could command no movement. I tasted wet copper on my tongue.

The lights grew in their intensity, and I forgot the pain, if only for a moment. Deep blackish red like venous blood morphed into the bright red of maraschino cherries. There was the pink of salmon flesh in perfect slices under my knife. Orange juice bubbled up, frothy delight filled with pulp, swelling in a gla.s.s in slow motion. Yellow brilliance engulfed me. I slid on a mountain of banana peels, dazzling yellow like summer sun. And then the pale green of stylish skirts in a San Jose dress shop, fading to the deep green of gra.s.s in spring as I lay in a park in Queens. Soft green, deep-verdant blades. And blue. Xavier's eyes, skies, and fragrant crayons. I held a box of blue Crayolas kept hidden during the day, smelling their perfect color at night when the lights were off. Images of navy, cobalt, and azure danced before me when I couldn't even see my hands. And purple so deep I could taste it. Royal robes on the priests at ma.s.s, Easter eggs, and ripe grapes. Miles of vineyards on weekend getaways from work. I could see wine, pungent Merlot. Merlot with a bite. Bitter wine. My mouth burned.

Then a Voice in my head rumbled with a timbre I felt certain I knew, but for which I couldn't place a face. ". . . My promise . . ." the Voice said, precious words lost in the milieu of my distraction. Then the arc of brilliant colors disappeared, s.n.a.t.c.hed away by the Voice with the Message.

I hurt.

I smelled cigarettes. Like in a bathroom where acrid smoke mixed with the steam of the shower in a wretched stench. But this was different. I shivered. The pungent stink made me want to retch. Someone breathed the stuff in my face.