Around the corner.

Past the ambulance yard. Empty. The green-painted tin shade of the huge yellow light over the ambulance entrance fluttering in the night breeze, telegraphing dancing shadows as he pounded alongside.

Past the loading platform of the warehouse next door where a derelict—seen fleetingly in the dark as a form, a blob, an umbra, his father—drained the last drops from a pint and then sent the empty bottle sailing through the unknown after him as he sped, arms pumping now, chased by a backache and the tinkling crash of broken glass.

Round the corner.

Into the darkest stretch, the back of the moon. Past the blank-eyed houses of the blank-eyed colored slum across the street, mercifully asleep.

Past the parked car where the writhing figures did not break their beat but the girl peered over her lover’s shoulder and through the glass at the spectral boneshaker galloping by.

Past the alley where the noise of his feet frightened something small and alive, clawed nails skittering on the hard-packed earth as it fled deeper into the tunnel.

Around the corner.

The street lamps again. His lungs burning, unable to breathe, his head back, a sticking pain in the chest, straining to break the tape as no crowd stood and screamed, he reached Maxie’s, staggered and stopped.

Jesus.

He gulped air, swallowed air, knew he was going to be sick, belched loudly and knew he was not.

He was damp under the arms and between the legs, his face was wet. A fool. Panting, he leaned against Maxie’s window, which creaked ominously, slid down on it until his buttocks rested on the little red-painted wooden ledge that supported the plate glass.

The ledge gritted beneath him. To hell with it, the whites were already dirty.

He threw back his head and looked up at the starless sky.

They have no right to pray to me, he said. Why don’t they ask you for promises?

He dropped the trajectory of his sight a few degrees and he knew the presence of the building only a little lower than heaven, saw the old red brick that had been browned by the dirt and smoke of the city grown around it, felt the stupid patience of the scarred facade.

He remembered the first time he had seen the hospital, only a few months and thousands of years ago.

Book One
The Summer

1

Adam Silverstone

The stars had slowly squeezed into hiding in the bleaching sky. As the asthmatic truck left the Massachusetts Turnpike and chugged through the deserted outskirts, the long line of street lamps bordering the river flickered twice and then died in the gloom. The hot day was coming, but the loss of the line of lights ahead gave a brief, deceptive chill and gloom to the daybreak.

He stared through the dusty windshield as Boston approached, thinking that this was the city that had shaped his father, broken him and ground him down.