Brady watched her wide eyes moving from side to side as she studied the screen, and knew he’d found what he was looking for. The pink fish, he thought. They’re the ones that move the fastest, and besides, red is an angry color. Pink is . . . what? What was the word? It came, and he smiled. It was the radiant one that made him look nineteen again.

Pink was soothing.

• • •

Sometimes when Freddi visited, Z-Boy left his library cart in the hall and joined them. On one of these occasions, during the summer of 2014, he handed Freddi an electronic recipe. It had been written on the library computer, and during one of the increasingly rare occasions when Brady did not just give instructions but slid into the driver’s seat and took over completely. He had to, because this had to be just right. There was no room for error.

Freddi scanned it, got interested, and read it more closely. “Say,” she said, “this is pretty clever. And adding subliminal messaging is cool. Nasty, but cool. Did the mysterious Dr. Z think this up?”

“Yeah,” Z-Boy said.

Freddi switched her attention to Brady. “Do you know who this Dr. Z is?”

Brady shook his head slowly back and forth.

“Sure it’s not you? Because this looks like your work.”

Brady only stared at her vacantly until she looked away. He had let her see more of him than Hodges or anyone on the nursing or PT staff, but he had no intention of letting her see into him. Not at this point, at least. Too much chance she might talk. Besides, he still didn’t know exactly what he was doing. They said that the world would beat a path to your door if you built a better mousetrap, but since he did not as yet know if this one would catch mice, it was best to keep quiet. And Dr. Z didn’t exist yet.

But he would.

• • •

On an afternoon not long after Freddi received the electronic recipe explaining just how to jigger the Fishin’ Hole demo screen, Z-Boy visited Felix Babineau in his office. The doctor spent an hour there most days he was in the hospital, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. There was an indoor putting green by the window (no parking garage view for Babineau), where he sometimes practiced his short game. That was where he was when Z-Boy came in without knocking.

Babineau looked at him coldly. “Can I help you? Are you lost?”

Z-Boy held out Zappit Zero, which Freddi had upgraded (after buying several new computer components paid for out of Al Brooks’s rapidly shrinking savings account). “Look at this,” he said. “I’ll tell you what to do.”

“You need to leave,” Babineau said. “I don’t know what kind of bee you have in your bonnet, but this is my private space and my private time. Or do you want me to call security?”