“What are you talking about, Foster?”

“I’m talking about the coming wave of brand-new cancers spreading everywhere like the common cold during the global red tide of the immediate futures.”

“Futures?”

“Sure. The future is the aggregate of all tenable futures of individual selves,” exclaimed Foster, as if to a child. Then he declared, “You know, Andrew, I really admire the work you do with the homeless.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that.”

Now in the red library the light was diminishing; evening was falling and the winter sky outside looked ashen against the clear windowpanes overlooking the east. What time was it anyway? That glum hour before moonlit night. The cocktail hour. Why wasn’t there a fire in the hearth? Where was Spooner? Spooner always carried hooch.

“After all, aren’t we all indigent, in a metaphysical way?” Foster was saying to Andrew, intensely. Foster’s face was red and his eyes burned with belief in something larger than himself. Our Foster has at one time or another shrilly publicized the most amazing things: synchronicity, interspecial telepathy (animals read our minds), seraphic intervention (angels help us succeed in life), morphic resonance (every member of a genetically interrelated family group, no matter how widely dispersed or apparently dissimilar, will immediately comprehend or embody the changed attributes and learned abilities of one individual), Possible World Theory, Chinese astrology, and assorted ancient divinations of planetary transformation in the years after the millennium. If Foster has his way, we’ll all be abandoning our depressions in favor of united, heartfelt crusading for wide-scale spiritual reform. In this respect—this grave interest in working for causes—grandiose Foster is not unlike his more pragmatic brother Andrew, who often takes time out during family functions to pass the hat for donations to aid the residents of the flourishing tent city that has sprung up, virtually overnight it seems, in the untilled meadow beyond the garden gate, just outside our walls.

I always give Andrew whatever silver comes from my pockets. You can see their fires out there, late at night.

“Is it cold in here or is it me?” whispered Virgil.

“There is definitely a draft,” I told him. His body, squeezed close beside mine on our tasseled and embroidered love seat, felt damply warm; his cheeks and white forehead wore that pasty sheen that accompanies Virgil’s recurrent nighttime fevers. “Do you want my sweater?”

“No.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Once Hiram gets the fire going I’ll be fine.”

“Sure?”

“Positive.”

“Let me know.”

“Kind of you. Thanks.”

We turned our gazes then to take in the scene around Maxwell. The fallen man was laid out on his back and surrounded by feet. Maxwell wasn’t moving. His clothes were a mess. At his head knelt Barry. Other men peered from behind Barry, and behind these were more looking down with eyes fixed on Max’s face and the doctor’s hands. Barry seemed to be reaching inside Maxwell’s mouth. Yes, Barry did have a hand in Maxwell’s mouth, fishing around there. Then he removed the hand. He took a vast inspiration of breath. Barry pinched Maxwell’s nose shut between fingers and thumb, lowered his own mouth to Maxwell’s, and blew a series of puffs.