And he was appalled that he had let things come this far without confessing to her, without telling her how short, how terrible their time was bound to be.

Storm buried his face in Sophia’s hair, sick with himself and sick with love. He closed his eyes and breathed in her scent and wanted this to be what the world was like forever. Maybe it would turn out all right somehow, he thought. Maybe the doctors had been wrong. It could’ve been one of those farcial mistakes. Like Send Me No Flowers, with Rock Hudson and Doris Day. He felt fine. He felt good, in fact. Since that one night all those weeks ago. There’d been nothing. Some headaches. Which anyone could have. A little weakness in his left arm—but only sometimes, only off and on. And other than that, he was terrific. Great. Excellente, Clemente. Life wouldn’t make sense otherwise. God wasn’t going to teach him to feel like this for someone, make someone so dear to him, and then just snuff him out. Was He? Come on. Not a swell guy like God.

Sophia let her arms fall to the mattress on either side of him. “Gosh, I’m so hungry”, she said. She clasped him again. Hummed. “Was that all right? Was it all right for you? Gosh, I’ve never felt so hungry.”

His heart swam in blood because his legion of sins had made him a monster in God’s holy eyes.

Or, as he put it to himself, Oh, Magoo, you are such a shmuck.

7

Now at about the same time Storm and Sophia were starting back across Waterloo Bridge, as they were heading for their drink in the Savoy Hotel bar, the taxi numbered 331 was driving down the Strand past the hotel’s entrance. With the scarred man squinting his piggy eyes at the windscreen, the cab chugged along in the thick traffic without stopping. Just ahead, teeth bared, the city’s griffin loomed rampant on its pedestal. Harper Albright looked out at it from the cab’s backseat.