The Awakening of Dr. Brown

Chapter 10

Children’s voices drifted upward into the heat-hazy sky along with a golden cloud of dust.

“Hey, battah-battah-battah…”

“Throw it here, throw it here!”

“Throw it-No, throw it to first, throw it to first!”

“Go, go, GO!”

“Way to go, man, way to go.”

“Oh, man…”

“That’s okay, we’ll get the next one… Hey, battah-battah…”

“What about it?” Ethan said. “Want to stay and watch awhile?”

Beside him, Michael shook his head and restlessly joggled the basketball he carried in his arms. His face wore a look of disdain.

“You know,” Ethan pointed out, “Michael Jordan played baseball, too.”

Michael threw him a startled look but recovered in time to say with a sniff and a carefully offhand shrug, “Yeah, but he stunk at it.” Still, he lifted one arm and pointed. “Basketball court’s over thataway.”

“Right…” Ethan sighed inwardly. He’d figured he could probably hold his own when it came to baseball, but basketball…that was another story.

As they crossed the grassy verge that separated the baseball diamonds from the jogging path, inspiration struck. “Hey, Tom,” he called to the tall black man who happened to be coming along the path just then, “you ever play any basketball?”

The Secret Service agent was wearing jogging shorts, a loose-fitting tank that neatly hid his weapon, a towel around his neck and a shine of honest-to-God sweat. He paused to wipe some of the sweat from his face with one end of the towel before he said without any discernible signs of amusement, “You’re kiddin’ me, right?”

White, liberal, awash in chagrin, Ethan stammered, “Well, uh…I mean, I just thought-”

“I’m six foot seven and black-what do you think?” Tom Applegate looked down at Michael, who was gazing up at him in utter awe, and winked. “North Carolina Tar Heels-NCAA champs my senior year.”

Not one to allow himself to be intimidated for very long, Michael put a hand on his hip and stuck out his jaw, aiming it upward in the general direction of the Secret Service agent’s altitude. “Hey-you know Michael Jordan?”

Ethan shrugged Tom an apology; forget those Tar Heels, man-this was the only test that mattered. He didn’t know who was more surprised-him or Michael-when Tom nodded and said, “Sure I know Michael. Played basketball with him, too. We went to high school together.”

Michael’s mouth was hanging open. He didn’t have to close it to say, “Uh-uh!”

He looked for verification to Ethan, who again shrugged his shoulders. “Hey-if Tom says so, it must be true. Secret Service agents never lie.”

Michael slanted Tom a suspicious look with one eye closed. “What’s a… S-Secret Service agent? Is that like some kind of cop?”

“Sort of.” Tom plucked the basketball from Michael’s arms. “So, you want to go shoot some hoops, or not?”

He gave Ethan a look, and as they began to move along the jogging path together, Michael sandwiched between them, muttered under his breath, “Sir…straight ahead, about…ten o’clock? Just to the left of that tree…”

His heart rate mysteriously accelerating, Ethan followed the agent’s directions. A woman was standing there, casually watching them from the shade of some pin oak trees, one shoulder leaning against a lichen-encrusted trunk. She was tall and willowy, and wore a long white skirt of some kind of gauzy material that started low on her hips, with a white stretchy top that left her shoulders and most of her middle bare. A white cowboy hat worn straight on her head shadowed her face and completely hid her hair.

Ethan looked back at Tom, eyebrows raised in question. Tom lifted a hand and spoke briefly to his wristwatch, then nodded. “Go ahead-Carl’s got you covered.”

Ethan muttered, “Thanks,” gave Michael’s shoulder a squeeze and added, “Catch up with you in a few minutes.” then angled off the path, jogging across the grass toward the trees. The smell of crushed grass drifted up from his feet, filling his senses and adding itself to the list of things he knew he would ever afterward associate with Phoenix.

Still twenty feet or so away from her, for reasons he didn’t entirely understand he paused, bent down and plucked a dandelion from the grass. He straightened and stood looking at her, holding the stem of the fragile white puffball in his fingers.

He didn’t know what to make of her-or of himself, and the way he felt, seeing her. He thought of all he knew about her-and how little. He knew that, however unintentionally, he’d made her want him, that last night’s kiss had been as real for her as for him. But real for whom? Whom had he kissed last night, Joanna, or Phoenix? The way he understood it, Phoenix wasn’t even a real person, she was a persona, an invention, a collection of personalities that could be changed at will to fit the demands of a fickle record-buying public. A man would have to be insane to allow himself to fall for one of them, when she might be gone tomorrow…like a dandelion in a puff of wind.

And as for Joanna…he had no idea in the world who she was, much less how to find her again.

She smiled when he started forward again, but crookedly. “I wondered when you were going to notice me.”

He smiled back, the same way, and nodded, taking in her costume. “Another nice disguise.”

She hitched one shoulder as she pushed away from the tree. “I prefer to think of it as protective coloring.”

“Whatever it is, it didn’t fool Tom for a minute-he’s the one who spotted you.”

“Yeah, well, that’s his job.” She held out her hand when she saw the dandelion. “Is that for me?”

He offered it to her with a curious reluctance, his heartbeat tapping in quick time at the base of his throat. “If you want it,” he said. She took it from him, holding it as he had been, with the delicate stem between two fingers and thumb. He expected that she would immediately lift it to her lips and blow it to pieces.

She did raise it to her face, but instead of blowing the fluff away, cupped her other hand around it as if to protect it from stray breezes while she studied it. Her features were grave and still. Then her lashes lifted and her eyes came back to Ethan, and he was caught off-guard by the sadness in them. “It’s so perfect, isn’t it? By tomorrow it will be gone, you know.”

He nodded, a lump coming into his throat. “That’s true.” What was she telling him? A warning? That whatever this was between them would be gone tomorrow, too? That, he already knew.

“I guess…some things you just have to enjoy while you have them,” she said on a lightening breath.

They began walking by mutual unspoken consent, it seemed, through the trees, paralleling the jogging path, Phoenix still holding the dandelion with a hand cupped protectively around it.

“I wasn’t stalking you, you know,” she said after a moment, flashing him a smile. “I was just…curious.”

“To see if I was really going to the park…or who I was going with?” Ethan said, teasing her.

She dismissed that with a little spurt of laughter. As if… She aimed a smile at her sandaled feet as though she found it entertaining to watch them play peekaboo with the hem of her skirt. “No, actually, I wanted to see what ‘regular’ people do on a Saturday in the park.”

“Well,” Ethan said, looking around as they walked, “as you can see, that covers a pretty wide range.”

Her gaze followed the same path his had taken, touching on groping lovers, picnicking families, joggers, bicyclists, in-line skaters, a toddler chasing squirrels, a young man throwing a Frisbee to a dog wearing a bandanna around his neck, and a group of out-of-shape men with their shirts off courting heart attacks with a game of touch football in the muggy heat.

She nodded toward a family setting out food on a table nearby. “I actually thought about that-bringing a picnic.”

Ethan grinned broadly at the thought of Phoenix toting a picnic basket. Little Red Ridinghood? Look out, Wolf! “You did?”

She nodded. “Yup. Then I remembered I don’t own a picnic basket. Or anything to put in one, for that matter. Kind of put a damper on the whole idea.” Her smile turned wry. She gave a shrug that seemed defensive, somehow, and looked away. “So-I just came. Without even so much as a bottle of water. Which reminds me-I’m thirsty. You don’t suppose…”

“There’s probably a drinking fountain around here somewhere.” A thought struck him. “By the way, how did you come? Did somebody bring you? How did you know which park?”

She gave him a look that managed to be both direct and secretive. “I took a cab,” she said evenly. “And, I told the driver to take me to the park that’s closest to South Church Street-that’s where your clinic is, right? Must be, because here I am. And here you are…” She was silent for a moment, once again watching her feet flash rhythmically in and out of view. Then she threw him another look, an altogether different one. Uncertain…almost shy. “You don’t mind, do you? That I came? Because if it’s not okay, just say so. I’ll go.” Her voice was gruff but her gaze was unflinching, and it came to Ethan that in a way she was opening herself to him, offering her vulnerability like a gift.

Unbelievably touched, he thought of the dandelion she still held cupped in her hands, and for the first time it occurred to him that perhaps it wasn’t what was between them she was symbolically protecting, but only her own fragile self.

“Of course it’s okay. I’m glad you came,” he said softly. And reached over and took her hand.

The dandelion, suddenly robbed of its buffer, caught a capricious breeze and exploded in a tiny blizzard of fluff. Phoenix gave a stricken cry and halted, her free hand making an involuntary movement toward the drifting feathers, as if trying to catch them, to bring them all back somehow, if only she could…

Ethan caught her hand and, holding it tightly together with its mate, turned her toward him. “It’s all right,” he said in a fierce and unfamiliar voice, words that hurt his throat, “I’ll get you another.”

“Hey-nothing lasts forever.” She said it lightly, but in the shadows beneath the brim of her hat, the skin around her eyes had a damp and fragile look.

He didn’t know what to say to that. He wanted to deny it, argue the point, but didn’t see how he could. The fact was, nothing did last forever. So he just looked at her. And then, because her lips looked so soft…so tender and sweet…he leaned over, tilted his head to avoid the hat brim, and gently kissed her.

He heard-no, felt-the small intake of breath…as if, he thought, he’d caught her by surprise; the slightest trembling, as if she were a maiden unaccustomed to being kissed. And he suddenly remembered what her piano man, Rupert Dove, had told him.

“What you got to understand about Phoenix is, her heart’s still a virgin…”

He thought about that, and about the dandelion, while he held her hands enfolded and tucked between his chest and hers, and lightly brushed her warm, soft lips with his. He drew back to find that her eyes were bright and sharp with panic.

“I don’t know what to do about you, Doc,” she said fiercely. She pulled her hands from his and moved away, and he let her go, not following until there was an arm’s length distance between them.

“You got to go slow…and expect some resistance.”

After a moment she laughed, her famous chortle. “I can’t get you out of my mind-why do you suppose that is?”

It was a rhetorical question, and he didn’t reply-though he could have told her he was having the same sort of problem himself. But he suspected she already knew that.

After a few more silent steps, she went on in a musing tone. “I told you last night that I’d meant to seduce you-” she gave a little gulp of laughter “-God, what a self-conscious little word that is-but you knew what I meant. You said you did.” She glanced at him. He nodded gravely and she looked away again. “I thought it would be so easy-out of arrogance, at first, maybe, but later because…I felt something…” She left it dangling, while her finger made a jerky waggling motion between his chest and hers.

“It should have been easy.” She halted and turned to him, her voice tense, hushed…angry. “It would be…so easy…for us to be together, Doc. Rock-and-roll legend and First Son, or Leroy and Joanna-take your pick-we’re both consenting adults, without prior commitments-Lord knows, we’ve got the chemistry. Dammit, why can’t we just…be together? Why does this have to be…why does it feel so hard?”

Ethan cleared his throat; he’d never had a conversation like this before, which was perhaps why his voice felt rusty. “Maybe,” he ventured finally, “because we both know it’s not that simple.”

“I know that,” she snapped, brittle and dissatisfied. “What I don’t understand is why.”

He took a deep breath and caught himself just before he drove his hand through his hair-his father’s favorite gesture when emotionally frustrated. Dear God, was he becoming so much like his dad-starched, Phoenix had called him!-uptight and unable to express his feelings? Valiantly, he tried.

“I can’t speak for both of us, but for me, I guess it’s because…just being together-for the sex-isn’t enough.” And even while the words were coming out of his mouth, he knew how priggish they sounded.

So he wasn’t at all surprised when she smiled at him and murmured teasingly, “Oh, come on…you’ve never been with someone ‘just for the sex’? Not ever?”

He felt his skin warming, but he smiled back. “Well…okay. I guess maybe there were times…” He shook his head and the smile faded. “But not…this time.”

“Why is that?” she whispered, looking into his eyes.

He shook his head. The easy answer, I don’t know…hovered on his tongue, but he knew she wanted more, and in a strange sort of way he felt he owed it to her. He drew another hard breath and began slowly, navigating through treacherous shoals of feelings he hadn’t even sorted out for himself yet.

“I think…it’s because I want more from you than that.”

“That’s what scares me, Doc,” she said in a breaking voice, which she instantly halted, and calmed with a breath. And another. Whispering again, she went on. “What I’m afraid of is, maybe you want something from me that I can’t give you.”

He shook his head hard, denying it. “I don’t see why. I’m not that demanding.”

“Then what is it you want from me? Tell me!”

“What do I want from you? Nothing so hard, Joanna, believe me. All I want is-” Your heart? Your soul? But he couldn’t say it. It was too much to ask, and way too soon to ask it. He had no right whatsoever to ask it.

She laughed, then, but without amusement, and gave him a long, appraising look that for some reason left him feeling vaguely ashamed. Then she turned and started walking again, with her arms folded now across her bare middle. “You know, Doc,” she said in her rusty Phoenix voice, “I think you disapprove of me.”

“Disapprove of you?” He repeated it in shocked denial. “I do not.”

“Yeah, you do.” And he could see the edges of her sad, ironic smile. “I think you’d like it if you could peel off my Phoenix clothes-my disguises, you keep calling them-and see if there’s somebody else under here-somebody you might like better.” She glanced at him. “You called me Joanna just now.”

Still shocked, and beginning to feel a little abused, Ethan said testily, “It’s your name.”

She made a disgusted sound and a throwaway gesture. “I haven’t been that person for so long, I don’t even remember what it feels like. Don’t you understand? She’s gone, Doc- Joanna’s gone. And you know what? Good riddance. She was a loser-not a good person.” She gave a high, sharp laugh. “Trust me-if you’re hoping to find somebody inside here you think you might like better than me, you’re out of luck. What you see is pretty much as good as I get.”

She ran lightly from him then, before he could even begin to think what to say in reply. He knew a moment’s heart-stopping dismay, something like what he imagined she might have felt when the wind had taken her dandelion. Then he saw the drinking fountain, and he understood that she was running to, not away.

He followed but stood back a ways, watching her step delicately between puddles in the bare patch of sandy ground around the block of stone-crusted concrete that formed the base of the fountain. Entranced, he watched her search out the mechanism that would turn the water on…experiment cautiously with the trajectory of the stream, looking as fearful and fascinated as a child with a mysterious new toy. His heart jolted into his throat when she bent toward the fountain, then halted suddenly, straightened up and carefully took off her cowboy hat. With the hat cradled against one hip she leaned down and touched her lips to the arching stream, and Ethan felt a powerful urge of his own to swallow…

Was this what it would be like, having her always in his life? he wondered. With even the smallest, most ordinary acts seeming touched with magic, as if he was seeing them for the very first time?

Like a long-abandoned piece of machinery creaking to life, he stepped forward to hold the faucet on for her while she stroked cool water onto her cheeks, throat and chest like lotion. He gazed entranced at the glossy black coil of her hair as she smoothed back the sweat-damp tendrils clinging to her forehead, and thought about her nape, and how sweet and vulnerable it looked. Then she straightened and raised both arms, turning slightly toward him as she settled the cowboy hat into place over the mass of her hair, and his gaze dropped to her lithe and supple torso-how could it not?

“Good God,” he said before he could stop himself, “is that a navel ring?”

She laughed, the coughing sound a surly tiger might make, then said dryly, “Yeah, Doc, that’s what it is.” She waited while he brought his guilty gaze back to her face before she shrugged. “See what I mean? You’re shocked.”

“I’m not shocked…” He shouldn’t have been. As a doctor he’d personally encountered pierced body parts he’d have been embarrassed to tell her about. “Just…I hadn’t noticed it before, that’s all.”

“But you disapprove.” And how was it she could sound both amused and sad?

“No, I don’t,” he said, feeling twitchy and annoyed, suddenly, and very misunderstood. Because the truth was, what he found shocking about the navel ring was the fact that he didn’t disapprove. He felt that he should, that ordinarily he would. But for some reason the fact that it was her navel ring made it not only acceptable, but somehow just one more delightful facet of the incredible and fascinating person she was. It frustrated him that he couldn’t tell her that, and it only added to his frustration when a moment later she voiced his deepest feelings almost exactly in her own words.

“It just goes with who I am,” she said in her soft-scratchy voice as they walked on again, not touching. “It’s Phoenix. It’s me. That’s all.” He could feel her turn her head toward him, but felt too exposed just then to face the sadness and irony in her eyes.

He was glad he hadn’t when a moment later she added, “You know, Doc, funny thing is, I don’t feel that way about you. I happen to like you a lot-just the way you are.”

He’d never felt less likeable in his life. He felt, in fact, like nothing so much as a contrary child, a mass of confusion and contradictions, inadvertently hurting that which he only meant to hold.

He closed his eyes, needing to be away from her just then, needing to go to his quiet place and try to rediscover himself there-or failing that, at least to find his path again. Somewhere, he knew, there were important things he was supposed to do that he’d lost sight of, priorities he’d set for himself that he’d somehow forgotten. Somewhere along the line he’d wandered off the path on a quest of his own, this search for the ellusive and alluring being named Joanna, who for all he knew might exist only in his own mind. He sensed that he was very close to becoming hopelessly lost, and that he desperately needed some sort of compass to bring him back to where he belonged.

It was at just that moment, like an answer to an unspoken prayer, that he heard a childish voice calling, “Hey, Doc! Doc-where you been? Hey, come on, man.”

He opened his eyes and found Phoenix watching him, blue eyes bright and quizzical in the shadows beneath the brim of the cowboy hat. Beyond her, behind the lattice of a chain-link fence, he could see the basketball court’s cracked pavement reflecting heat in sluggish waves. And Michael, standing at the fence, the fingers of one small hand woven through the chain link, impatiently shaking it while holding the basketball precariously balanced on one scrawny hip. A short distance away, Tom Applegate waited under the basket, patiently mopping sweat.

“Better go,” Phoenix said with a small jerk of her head. She glanced upward and added wryly, “You might want to hurry…”

He noticed only then how dark the day had gotten. The air lay on his skin like a hot, wet blanket, and somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled. He felt as surly as the weather, his thoughts humid and unsettled, confusion and frustration tumbling rampant through his insides. He stood and looked at her, part of him craving the peace and quiet only distancing himself from her could bring, part longing to plunge headlong into the emotional tumult, to hold on to her and never let go.

“Go,” she repeated in a grating voice, forcing herself to smile. She waited until he had nodded and turned away before she sagged against the chain-link fence, shaken…shaking inside.

His eyes aren’t a shaman’s eyes now. The thought gave her a sharp and angry sense of triumph, but no satisfaction. Those emotions she’d been so smugly sure of, those passions she’d sensed churning below the surface of his quietness-all that and more she’d seen just now in those dark and turbulent eyes. But those feelings were in no way hers to control. Foolish, foolish Phoenix, she thought, to ever have imagined they might be.

Control his emotions? How, when she couldn’t even manage her own? Avidly, she watched the trio on the basketball court-which, due to the combination of the heat index, a threatening storm and the sports season, they enjoyed unchallenged-tall, imposing black man in running clothes, cute skinny black kid in clothes several sizes too big, and Dr. Ethan Brown, the president’s kid, blond, conservative and wholesome as shredded wheat in light blue jeans and a pale yellow polo shirt. It was obvious the doc wasn’t much of an athelete; in spite of his size and naturally beautiful physique, he had none of Tom Applegate’s feline grace. And yet of the three out on that court it was he who drew her gaze like filings to a magnet. His moves she followed, standing on the sidelines, clinging with both hands to the chain-link fence like a shunned child, with the ache of yearning behind her smile. She heard a little boy’s laughter, but it was the doc’s face she saw, smiling and flushed with heat and exertion as he scooped up the boy with the ball hugged tight in his arms and lifted him high, high toward the basket. She heard the childish shriek of delight as the ball clanged through the iron hoop, but it was the doc’s quiet “Way to go!” as he executed an endearingly awkward high five that made her breath catch and tears gather sizzling behind her eyes.

What do you want from me? She’d asked him that only minutes ago, hadn’t she? Now she knew she should have asked herself the same question. What do you want from this man, Joanna?

She was suddenly terribly afraid that what she wanted was something she’d have no earthly idea what to do with once she got it. Afraid that if she got it, and if she tried to make it work, she might harm this gentle and beautiful man irreparably. Afraid that with her selfish wanting she would try-and hurt him-anyway.

A large raindrop splashed onto the back of her hand. She looked up, startled, as if such a thing were completely inexplicable and miraculous, and when she did, another drop landed on her cheek. She was wiping it away when the three came, laughing, through the gate.

Tom Applegate was talking to his watch. “Carl’s gone to get the car. He’ll meet us on this side of the park,” he reported when he’d finished.

Ethan glanced at Michael, who was looking mulish and disappointed, then said to Tom, “Why don’t you tell him to meet us over at-” he just did stop himself from saying “The Gardens,” and with a quick, guilty glance at Phoenix made it “-Michael’s place. We can walk back. That way we can stop on the way and get a hot dog-how’s that sound, Michael?”

Michael shrugged and said, “That’s cool,” trying hard to be offhanded. But he couldn’t keep the grin from slipping through his pose of determined indifference.

“How ’bout you?” Ethan said, turning to Phoenix. He wanted to lower his voice to a level of privacy, make a joking remark about “regular people,” maybe say something cute about Leroy and Joanna. But those were things between them, and it felt wrong, suddenly, to share them with anyone, even someone as unobtrusive as the Secret Service, or as oblivious as a child. What he offered instead was a rather stiff and formal sounding, “Would you like to join us for lunch? We can take you home, if you want to, after we drop off Michael.”

“That’s cool,” she said with a shrug, in deliberate imitation of the child. Except that she didn’t smile, and her eyes, before she turned to walk beside him, had a curious silvery brightness, as if a hard rain was falling somewhere just behind them.

Around them raindrops fell only sporadically, making quarter-sized dark spots on the sidewalk. Thunder growled and wind blew in fitful gusts, stirring the pea-soup air like an indifferent chef-though one inclined to carelessly throw in dashes of ozone and hot asphalt now and then for spice.

Thinking the storm only meant to shake its fist and then pass them by, they ignored it, taking their time, walking slowly, Michael bouncing the basketball, the adults taking turns retrieving it when it got away from him. No one talked much-Tom, because it was both his nature and his job to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open, Ethan and Phoenix making the child the center of their attention the way adults do when they need an excuse not to talk to each other. And yet their awareness of each other held more electricity and tension than the storm. It arced between them, bridging the gap between glances that tried hard to avoid meeting; it hummed a background to short, breathless comments and rose to cresendo in the silences. Walking languidly along, Ethan felt a constant need to wipe away sweat, and more winded than when he’d been running in the heat on the basketball court.

They stopped to buy hot dogs from a street vendor who was getting ready to close up shop, and surly about being forced to delay. Then a little later on from another pushcart, ices-a concoction Ethan was sure only a child could find palatable, consisting of sugar water, slush and a dye guaranteed to turn lips and tongues a goulish shade of blue.

While Ethan was paying the vendor for the ices a gust of wind blew Phoenix’s cowboy hat off, and only Tom Applegate’s quick reflexes prevented it from flying into the street.

As he returned the hat to its owner, with a meaningful glance at the darkening sky the agent said quietly to Ethan, “Sir, I think we need to be getting on.”

“Right.” Ethan offered a cone of blue slush to Phoenix. She gave it-and him-a quizzical look but gamely took it.

Knowing it was unwise, he allowed his gaze to linger on her hand as it tentatively enfolded the gaudy paper cone. It came to him as an oddly painful little revelation that it didn’t look like a rock star’s hand-at least not one that went with backless tiger-striped tops and navel rings. The nails were unmanicured but kept short and very clean. It seemed small and somehow defenseless to him, like the hand of a meticulous child.

“Hey, where’s mine?” Michael demanded, handing the basketball off to Tom with a trusting no-look pass and grabbing at the cones Ethan still had in his hands.

“I know your mama taught you better,” Ethan said sternly, holding the cones out of reach. Michael’s face fell. He looked so deflated Ethan had to fight to hold on to his frown. “What do you say?”

“Can I please have my ice?” Michael mumbled, addressing his shoes.

“Much better.” Ethan handed over the cone and gave Michael’s baseball cap a forgiving tug. He offered the last ice to Tom, who declined-with obvious relief. With no other choice left to him, Ethan took a tentative taste. The syrupy sweetness made him shudder.

“Sir,” Tom said again, quietly urgent, “if I’m not mistaken, the sky’s about to open up on us. Unless you want to get wet, we’d best hurry.”

“What are you, his mother?” Phoenix said, making Michael giggle.

But they started moving again, walking quickly now, with Michael having to hop and skip to keep up. The wind scuttled trash along the gutter and pushed impatiently at their backs, molding Phoenix’s skirt to her legs and slapping the edges against Ethan’s pantlegs. Lightning flickered, and raindrops fell with a spattering sound. Moments later thunder boomed a tympany solo.

“Hey!” Michael cried in tones of outrage.

Tom had time to say only, “Uh-oh, here it comes.” And then the sky did open up.

They ran, Ethan holding Michael by the hand, Phoenix with her hat clasped against her chest, Tom vigilantly bringing up the rear, though he could easily have outpaced them all.

Phoenix ran laughing and gasping, filled with a strange sense of euphoria. They would be thoroughly soaked, there was no way to avoid it; her hat would be ruined, there was nothing she could do about it. And something about that inevitability, and her helplessness in the face of it, was unbelievably liberating. She could have no control over this. And thus she was utterly and completely free.

She was aware that her skirt was plastered to her legs, that her hair had come loose and was clinging in ribbons to her face, neck and back. Blindly she ran, through a veil of rain, following Ethan’s lead, trusting him to know where he was going, leaping flooded gutters, her feet splashing gloriously on the inundated streets. Dance in the rain… She’d told him, hadn’t she, that it was one of her favorite things? At the time, she’d thought she was making it up, but maybe…maybe somewhere inside her, someone- Joanna?-must have known that it was true.

She was conscious of a feeling almost of disappointment when Ethan turned hard to the right and led them up some cracked concrete steps. Still euphoric and half-blinded by the rain and her own streaming hair, she barely noticed the peeling paint on the door frame, the broken pane of glass in the front door, the crumbling mortar. It was only when they were inside the vestibule, laughing, gasping and stamping away water, and the door was closing behind them with a sticky sound, that the first alarms began to ring in her mind. She was like an animal sensing the trap-too late.

Somewhere beyond the accelerated thumping of her own heart she could hear Michael’s voice and Ethan’s, laughing and exclaiming over the drowned remains of their ices. She knew that Tom was starting up the stairs, and that Ethan and Michael were following. She knew that, unless she wanted to stay and wait for them where she was, she would have to climb those stairs, too.

Claustrophobia coiled its tentacles around her, suffocating her with the smells of poverty and decay. It was hot in the vestibule, and even hotter in the stairwell, a dense and muggy heat that increased with every tread she climbed. But in spite of that, she felt chilled. Cold clear through to her bones.

But Momma, I don’t want to go by myself. There’s somebody creepy on the stairs…he looks at me funny. Please, can’t you come with me, Momma?

One level…then another. The smells of cooking, urine and mildew made her want to gag.

She caught up with Michael on the third-floor landing. At the far end of a dusky hallway she could see Tom checking into recesses and doorways, cautiously alert, while Ethan moved purposefully toward him, apparently making for a door halfway down the hall. For some reason, though, Michael was dawdling behind, lingering in front of a door closer to the landing. When Phoenix reached the top of the stairs he turned his head and lifted his eyes to hers, and gazed at her for a long, silent time.

He had strange eyes for a child, she thought-almost yellow, like a hawk’s or a tiger’s, and they seemed to shimmer in the dim gray light. And then somehow, without any idea how it had happened, she found that she was holding his hand.

“This is where I used to live,” the little boy said in a soft, gruff voice. “Before my momma got killed. She was on the balcony and it fell down, and now she dead.”

Phoenix felt her stomach clench as if she’d been punched there, and the air force its way through her lungs to erupt in a soft, wounded gasp. Cold swept her, stinging like an icy blast. A rushing sound filled her ears. Her world seemed to shrink, her field of vision to sharpen and narrow until it contained only Ethan, standing there in the hallway, hand raised to knock, face turned toward her, mouth forming a question, the moment frozen in time as if someone had hit the pause button on a VCR.

“You bastard,” she said softly and distinctly. Then she turned and ran down the stairs and out into the rain.