"Closer to me?"

"So she told me."

Godwin's face was white, as if all itscolor had been drawn into the darkness of his eyes. "You're a silly woman,Miss Jenks, and I've had enough of you. I'll ask you to leave now."

"I'm staying here till I see myniece. I want to know what you're practicing on her."

"It would do her no good. In yourpresent mood you'd do no good to anyone." He moved around her to the doorand held it open. "Good night."

She didn't move or look at him. She stoodwith her head down, a little dazed by the anger that had gone through her likea storm.

"Do you wish to be forcibly removed?"

"Try it. You'll end up in court."

But a kind of shame had begun to invadeher face. Her mouth was twitching like a small injured thing. It had said morethan she intended.

When I took her by the arm and said, "Come on,Miss Jenks," she let me lead her to the door. Godwin closed it on her.

"I have no patience with fools," he said.

"Have a little patience with me, though, willyou, doctor?"

"I'll give it a try, Archer." Hetook a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. "You want to know if there'sany truth in her innuendo."

"You make it easy for me."

"Why not? I love the truth. My entire life is asearch for it."

"Okay, was Constance McGee in love withyou?"

"I suppose she was, in a way. Womenpatients traditionally fall in love with their doctors, particularly in myfield. It didn't persist in her case."

"This may strike you as a foolishquestion, but did you love her?"

"I'll give you a foolish answer, Mr.Archer. Of course I loved her. I loved her the way a doctor loves his patients,if he's any good. It's a love that's more maternal than erotic." He spreadhis large hands on his chest, and spoke from there: "I wanted to serveher. I didn't succeed too well."

I was silenced.

"And now, gentlemen, if you'll excuseme, I have hospital rounds in the morning." He swung his keys.

Alex said to me in the street: "Doyou believe him?"

"Unless or until I have proof thathe's lying. He's not telling all he knows but people seldom do, let alonedoctors. I'd take his word ahead of Alice Jenks's."

He started to climb into his car, thenturned back toward me, gesturing in the direction of the nursing home. Itsplain rectangular façade loomed in the fog like a blockhouse, thevisible part of an underground fortress.

"You think she's safe there, Mr.Archer?"

"Safer than she'd be on the streets,or in jail, or in a psycho ward with a police psychiatrist quizzing her."

"Or at her aunt's?"

"Or at her aunt's. Miss Jenks is oneof these righteous women who doesn't let her left lobe know what her right lobeis doing. She's quite a tiger."

His eyes were still on the front of thenursing home.

Deep inside the building, the wild oldvoice I had heard that morning rose again. It faded like the cry of a seabirdflying away, intermitted by wind.

"I wish I could stay with Dolly, and protect her,"Alex said.

He was a good boy.

I broached the subject of money. He gaveme most of the money in his wallet. I used it to buy an airline ticket toChicago and return, and caught a late flight from International Airport.

chapter19

I left the toll road, which bypassedBridgeton, and drove my rented car through the blocks of housing tracts on theoutskirts of the city. I could see the clump of sawed-off skyscrapers in thebusiness district ahead, and off to the left, across the whole south side, thefactories. It was Sunday morning, and only one of their stacks was pouringsmoke into the deep blue sky.

I stopped for gas at a service station andlooked up Earl Hoffman's address in the telephone directory. When I asked theattendant how to get to Cherry Street, where Hoffman lived, he pointed in thegeneral direction of the factories.

It was a middle-class street ofsubstantial two-story houses which had been touched but not destroyed by theblight that creeps outward from the centers of cities. Hoffman's house was ofgrimy white brick like the others, but the front porch had been painted withinliving memory. An old Chevrolet coupé stood at the curb in front of it.

The doorbell didn't work. I knocked on thescreen door. An old young man with more nose than chin opened the inner doorand looked at me through the screen in a sad way.

"Mr. Haggerty?"

"Yes."

I told him my name and trade and where I

© Alexander Sviyash, 2009