Well, Kevin continued. The gods sometimes granted sleep also. It was one of those things they could do, close the eyes of mortals. But the nepenthe would make them forget all their sorrows, for a few hours at least.

Sounds like Ecstasy, Douglas remarked.

Kevin ignored him. That’s the challenge, he thought, to serve them a meal, one dinner, something that will intoxicate them, distract them, bring them back to their bodies. He stood now and looked out the window again. The man was still pacing the shuffleboard court, hands in the pockets of his coat. Douglas was up to forty-two sit-ups.

I’m going to bring him something, Kevin announced.

Who?

The Bulgarian.

Douglas got off the floor and went to the window too. His chest was heaving from the sit-ups and he elbowed sweat from his face, then placed two moist hands on Kevin’s shoulders.

I’m going to bed, he said. Are you coming?

In a minute, Kevin answered distractedly. He was still staring out the window.

Douglas pinched the muscles on Kevin’s shoulders, and Kevin nearly leapt. He was so tense, so hair-trigger (the house so full) and no one—least of all Douglas—had touched him in so long. He pulled away and searched for his slippers in the dark.

I won’t be long, Kevin lied, cinching the robe around his waist.

Douglas mumbled something and headed back to bed. Kevin nosed his feet into slippers. The bedsprings twanged as he slipped out the door.

Downstairs, the lights were burning in the hallways. Someone had left the front door open. He went through the drawing room, shutting off lamps, closing windows, and through the dining room and entered the library off the back hall. What could he bring the Bulgarian? Some kind of nightcap, a soothing broth, a calming tea? He switched on a sconce in the library, walked to the cookbooks—he liked to collect them at estate sales—and pulled down volumes. The Fannie Farmer, the Brillat-Savarin, Elizabeth David. He checked the Platina, the Epicurean (he knew of him from his days as a classics student). There was nothing in the indexes under “Nepenthe.” He pulled down an old volume of Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent and flipped through yellowed pages. Under “Sleeplessness Distress,” he found a recipe for “Velvet Cream” and one for “Sleep Aid Concoction.”

In the kitchen, the stockpots had been scrubbed, the rubber mats hung over the sides of the sink. He lit the stove, set a copper pot on the burner. The velvet cream would have to wait; for now he heated milk, orzata, shook cinnamon, grated nutmeg, poured a splash of whiskey, then another splash—and one more for good measure: his own prescription. When the mixture was steaming and tiny bubbles gathered at the edge of the pot, he lifted it from the stove and poured the scalding liquid into a ceramic mug.