The answer he won’t give is no, not yet. Not until the trails of slime he’s left in the heads of God knows how many people are washed away by the brain’s remarkable ability to heal itself. But in another week, another month at the outside, Brady will be all gone.

“Yes,” he says. “And Holly? Thanks for programming that text alert. The home run boys.”

She smiles. “What was it? The text, I mean?”

Hodges struggles his phone out of his coat pocket, checks it, and says, “I will be goddamned.” He begins to laugh. “I completely forgot.”

“What? Show me show me show me!”

He tilts the phone so she can read the text his daughter Alison has sent him from California, where the sun is no doubt shining:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DADDY! 70 YEARS OLD AND STILL GOING STRONG! AM RUSHING OUT TO THE MARKET, WILL CALL U LATER. XXX ALLIE

For the first time since Jerome returned from Arizona, Tyrone Feelgood Delight makes an appearance. “You is sem’ny years old, Massa Hodges? Laws! You don’t look a day ovah sixty-fi’!”

“Stop it, Jerome,” Holly says. “I know it amuses you, but that sort of talk sounds very ignorant and silly.”

Hodges laughs. It hurts to laugh, but he can’t help it. He holds onto consciousness all the way back to Thurston’s Garage; is even able to take a few shallow tokes on the joint Holly lights and passes to him. Then the dark begins to slip in.

This could be it, he thinks.

Happy birthday to me, he thinks.

Then he’s gone.

After

AFTER

Four Days Later

Pete Huntley is far less familiar with Kiner Memorial than his old partner, who made many pilgrimages here to visit a long-term resident who has now passed away. It takes Pete two stops—one at the main desk and one in Oncology—before he locates Hodges’s room, and when he gets there, it’s empty. A cluster of balloons with HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD on them are tethered to one of the siderails and floating near the ceiling.

A nurse pokes her head in, sees him looking at the empty bed, and gives him a smile. “The solarium at the end of the hall. They’ve been having a little party. I think you’re still in time.”

Pete walks down. The solarium is skylighted and filled with plants, maybe to cheer up the patients, maybe to provide them with a little extra oxygen, maybe both. Near one wall, a party of four is playing cards. Two of them are bald, and one has an IV drip running into his arm. Hodges is seated directly under the skylight, doling out slices of cake to his posse: Holly, Jerome, and Barbara. Kermit seems to be growing a beard, it’s coming in snow-white, and Pete has a brief memory of going to the mall with his own kids to see Santa Claus.