Will floated in a scented sea of light. His sense of humor was still with him. It seemed like Paradise but designed by Muji—all white and uncluttered and beauteous. He willed a great heavy hand on his father’s shoulder, and intellectually connected with the touch somehow. He spoke, though his lips were stone: “Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheeds, And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.”

Henry Stafford picked up the large envelope near the bed, closed his hand over the key, and left the room with its soft exhalations of machinery.

“Melissa, please let me drive you home? It’s been a long night, and you’ve been kind to stay…” His voice trailed off, and the young girl put a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Thank you.” She said no more. It was nearing midnight, and they were both exhausted in every sense. She knew Mr. Stafford a little; her mum occasionally did some extra typing for him. On this night, however, they’d traveled miles together. They were newly forged friends of old.

The run home from Winchester Hospital, where Henry had brought his sons to be born and his wife to die, would take about twenty minutes. They both needed sleep now. And Henry would be glad of Melissa’s silent presence.

His gray BMW was the last car but one left in the visitors’ parking lot. Unbelievably, someone had blocked him in. A blue Lancia had pulled in halfway across the entranceway, obviously in an emergency. Henry preferred to maneuver back and forth rather than find someone who must be suffering a distress of their own, so it took them several minutes before they were clear of the hospital.

7

…Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember the distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

—Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

THE OVERUNIFORMED OFFICER AT PASSPORT CONTROL REMINDED ALEX that 9/11 had cast a long shadow. Gun, cap, and wooden face, the official scrutinized him as if he represented the entire terrorist threat to the U.S.A. Lights flashed and a computer whirred. The officer’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Then benignity was restored, Alex’s passport thrust back into his hand without comment beyond the obligatory “Have a nice day.”

Alex’s attention was markedly elsewhere, already in the lecture he would give his students on the current thinking on cell communication. He found himself moving to security absentmindedly, placing his briefcase on the belt, moving to the scanner, following another passenger through the ritual: he was hardly aware of his physical actions. Something was bleeping. A man behind him, immaculately dressed, three or four places away, hadn’t taken his eyes off Alex. Now other heads were turning.