"Is it serious? Are you dying?"
"Aren't we all?"
He looked hurt and embarrassed, and I regretted the question as soon as I'd asked it.
"It's not what's killing me any more than anything else at the moment," I said. "My heart gets confused sometimes, that's all, and beats a little faster than it should. I wouldn't let them operate to fix it – it's a dangerous procedure and there isn't really any need. Well, there wasn't. It hasn't been fatal before. Not fatal for me, anyway."
"Is that what your father died of?" he asked.
"My family's got bad hearts."
"So you left the city because...?"
I ducked my head. "It was healthier for me here. I didn't want to live the rest of my life not doing what I wanted – resisting temptation – but if I'm in a place where what I want to do is limited by what it's possible to do, and what it's possible to do can't hurt me..." I shrugged. "I didn't want to be The One With The Disease. My friends would have looked at me differently."
"Do they know? Your city friends?"
"No."
"Who does?"
"Well, unless the gossips manage to piece together a few slips I've had over the years...pretty much me, Dr. Kirchner, my city doctors, and you."
"Nobody in Low Ferry knows?"
"That's sort of the point," I drawled.
"That's pretty brave of you."
"Cowardly. What people don't know can't change the way they see me, and I like being normal."
"You're not normal, Christopher."
"In their eyes I am. It doesn't have to be a valid reason for you, I'm not interested in defending myself. But I don't like being the odd one out, the man people stare at and whisper about. Neither do you."
He bowed his head. "I suppose so."
"So you enjoyed yourself, though?" I tried, hoping to change the subject.
"It was..." he looked lost for a minute as he groped for words, then gave up and shrugged. "It's hard to explain. It seems unreal, all the excitement and then all this."
"Well, don't worry about me. The roads are a little rough right now, but there should be a good dry spell in a week or two and I'll see a doctor in the city when I can."
He opened his mouth and it looked like he would say something, but for the longest time he didn't speak. Finally he cleared his throat and tried again.
"We should make sure you don't get any more shocks – no sudden surprises," he said.
"Well, I don't want a completely boring life. And I don't want to be handled, though I don't see how I'll be able to help that." I tried to look reassuring. "I don't want you or anyone else to be afraid of what might happen to me. I can look after myself."
He did look heartened by what I'd said, which made me glad. It had taken me a long time to get to know Lucas, and I didn't want him pulling back again just because he thought I couldn't cope.
"As soon as the roads are decent again, I'll have everything looked at," I assured him. "What time is it anyway? What day is it?"
"November second," he answered. "About dinnertime. Want me to bring you some?"
I slid my legs off the bed and tried standing up – reasonably steady, given everything.
"I need a change and a wash first," I said. "If I feel tired I'll call the cafe, they'll bring me something."
"Do you – " he was about to ask if I wanted some help, but he must have seen the annoyed resignation in my face, because he stopped himself. "If you need anything, I'll be around tonight. I'm staying at the hotel."
"Thanks, Lucas."
He left me alone with an absent farewell that seemed to indicate his mind was on other matters. It was a relief, actually, to have a few minutes to myself. I did wash myself and managed to ease into a pair of loose pajamas, but making or even ordering a meal was beyond me, and soon I was asleep again.
The next afternoon, while I was settling back into my normal rhythm and the pain from the bruises was fading, there was a sudden, unexpected spell of heat in the village. It was brief and powerful and gave way after a very uncomfortable few hours to a startling evening freeze. This melted most of the snow and at the same time hardened all the mud it left behind, clearing the roads handily. It was as though someone had heard me speak.
The weather which allowed me to leave the village safely was strange, but I had told Lucas I would go and so I had to. On the day after the freeze I closed up the shop and let Charles drive me as far as the train station outside Low Ferry, with the promise that I would call him when I needed to be retrieved in a few days' time. I caught the train across the wide flat plains of northern Illinois, and made it in to Union Station in Chicago by early afternoon.
I took a cab to my hotel, which was clean and cheap but most importantly near the hospital. I ate a quick meal, brushed my hair and changed my clothes, and went out to get on the El, to make pilgrimage to Eighth Rare Books.
Chapter SIX
Eighth Rare Books is, as you may have guessed, on Eighth Street in the Near South neighborhood of Chicago. Even when I lived in the city it was well out of my way – my family lived exclusively on the north side, sent me to school on the north side until I was grown, did all our shopping on the north side. Not that there's anything wrong with the north side of Chicago, but you miss a good half of the city if you never go south of downtown, where the east-west streets stop being names and start being numbers.
The bookstore is tucked down a side-street near the Harrison train stop, in a college district but not my college district, which was further south. I had to make friends with a girl who was studying at Columbia before I discovered it, but the books were cheap there and Marjorie took a shine to me so I kept coming back even after my Columbia connection disconnected. Chicago has plenty of good bookstores and a couple of famous ones – Powell's, 57th Street Books – but secretly, from behind a desk in a shop on Eighth Street, Marjorie rules them all.
When I walked into the shop, most of the tables near the front were taken up with college students cramming for exams out of books they couldn't afford to buy, while a couple of their professors stalked the academic shelves towards the back. Marjorie, bent over the crossword, didn't look up until I cleared a pile of books off a chair next to her desk and threw myself into it, sighing blissfully.