The darkness of the alley swallowed him. He saw nothing.
“Where?”
He was shoved roughly from behind and fell to his knees on the garbage strewn pavement. Fear pounded through Vincenzo as he realized he was being mugged. He’d heard about the predators who’d begun stalking the defenseless Mary-hunters. The papers had dubbed them “Holies-rollers.” He began shouting for help until a heavy boot slammed into his ribs and drove the wind out of him.
“Shuddup, asshole, an’ gimme your wallet!”
Vincenzo shouted again and was kicked again. The mugger grabbed his wrist and pulled off his watch.
“Where’s your wallet? Gimme your fuckin’ wallet or I cut you!”
Vincenzo was reaching for his back pocket when he heard a groan above him. He heard scuffling feet, and then a heavy weight slammed onto the pavement next to him.
“Did he stab you? Do you need a hospital?”
Vincenzo recognized the accent—the little bearded fellow who’d been sitting on the bench with him moments ago.
“No. I’m only bruised. Could you help me up, perhaps?”
He raised his hand and felt another grasp it and pull him to his feet.
Immediately the man began to move off.
“Wait. I haven’t thanked you. There must be something—”
“You can say nothing of this,” the fellow said, stopping and turning. “That will be thanks enough.”
“But people should know! You’re a hero!”
“That man behind you will be dead before help arrives. I am a stranger in this country. I do not wish to be arrested.”
“What did you do to him?”
“My knife did to him what his knife was going to do to you.”
“But why?”
“I needed to.”
Weak and trembling, Vincenzo leaned against a wall and silently watched the stranger hurry off. The parting words turned over in his mind. I needed to. Something about the way he’d said that...
Needed to what? Help somebody...or stab somebody?
He turned for one final look into the alley that might have been his grave and saw her.
She was only a few feet away, moving closer...flowing toward him...her faint glow a beacon in the black hole of the alley. Her robes were the same as in Cork, only now he was close enough to make out some of her features. The tears in his eyes blurred them but he thought he detected a hint of a smile as she looked at him.
“It’s you!” he sobbed, overcome by an unplumbed longing within. “I’ve been searching for you. I knew I’d find you again!”
She flowed closer without slowing...closer...
Vincenzo backed up a step but she never slowed her approach. It was as if she didn’t see him. When she was within inches he cried, “Stop!” but she continued her irresistible course, pressing against him—but he felt nothing. She had no substance. And then his vision was filled with light that blotted out the alley and the street and the city, light all around, light within him...
Within him...
The apparition had merged with him. Was he within her or was she within him?
He froze, he sizzled, dazzling spots flashed and swelled and danced before his eyes, he floated, he plummeted...
And then the light faded and the city night filled his eyes again. He whirled and saw the apparition directly behind him, flowing away.
She walked...right...through...me!
And then she began to fade. Within seconds Vincenzo was alone again. The wonder that filled him also began to fade as the pain began, searing bolts of agony lancing through his chest and abdomen, doubling him over, driving him to his knees.
IN THE PACIFIC
7o N, 150o W
The clouds and wind have organized into a pocket of turbulence with sharply demarcated borders. The pocket begins to drift eastward, drawing warm moist air up from the ocean surface into its high, cool center where the moisture condenses into droplets. Thunder rumbles and lightning flashes as rain and wind whip the churning ocean surface to a froth. The storm swells as it accelerates its eastward course.
EIGHTEEN
Manhattan
“Okay, Monsignor. Another deep breath, and hold this one.”
Vincenzo Riccio filled his lungs while Dr. Karras’s fingers probed his abdomen under the lower right edge of his rib cage. The young oncologist’s normally tanned-looking skin was relatively pale today. The overhead fluorescents of the examining room reflected off the fine sheen of perspiration on his forehead.
“Damn!” he muttered as his fingers probed more deeply under Vincenzo’s ribs.
“Something wrong?” Vincenzo said, exhaling at last.
“No. I mean, yes. I mean...”
Vincenzo sat up and pulled down his undershirt.
“I don’t understand.”
Karras ran a hand through his short black hair. “Neither do I.”
“Perhaps you’d better tell me the problem, Doctor. I think I deserve to know.”
The examination had started out routinely enough, with Vincenzo arriving at the outpatient cancer clinic, reading in the waiting room until his name was called, and then being examined by Dr. Karras. But after examining him just as he had now, Karras had stepped over to the chart and pulled out yesterday’s blood test results. After checking those for what seemed like an unduly long time and shuffling through the sheaf of previous reports, he examined Vincenzo’s abdomen again, then sent him for a CT scan of the liver, with comparison to the previous study.
“Stat,” he’d said into the phone. “Double stat.”
So Vincenzo had allowed himself to be swallowed by the metal gullet of the scanner where his liver could be radiographically sliced and diced, and now he was back again on the examining table. He had an inkling as to the nature of Dr. Karras’s discomfiture, but dared not voice it...dared not even think it.
“The problem is—”
The intercom beeped. “Doctor Weiskopf is here.”
“Weiskopf?” Karras said. “From radiology? What’s—? Oh, shit. Excuse me.” He all but leapt for the examining room door.
A few moments later he was back, trailing in his wake a tall, bearded man whom he introduced as Dr. Weiskopf. He looked about fifty and wore a yarmulke; a large manila x-ray envelope was tucked under his left arm.
“I’ve never met a walking miracle,” Weiskopf said softly as they shook hands.
Vincenzo suddenly felt weak. “Miracle?”
“What else can you call it? I looked at your scan from today, then called up your initial scan from July, and I said to myself, Moshe, a trick this Karras kid is playing on you, trying to make a fool of you by asking you to compare the very sick liver of one man to the perfectly healthy liver of another. And then I spied an osteophyte—doctorese for a bone spur—on one of the vertebrae of the new scan; much to my shock, there was the very same spur on the old scan. So I had to come and see this man for myself.”
Vincenzo looked from Weiskopf to Karras. “What...what’s he saying?”
“He’s saying your liver scan’s normal, Monsignor.”
“You mean the tumor’s shrinking?”
“Shrinking?” Weiskopf said. “It’s gone! Pfffft! Like it was never there. On your first scan your liver was, if you’ll pardon the term, Swiss-cheezed with tumors—”
“Nodular,” Karras added. “And half again it’s normal size,”
“But now it’s perfectly homogeneous. Not even a little fatty degeneration.”
“And it’s back to normal size,” Karras said. “I can barely feel it anymore.”
“Is that what you were doing to me?” Vincenzo felt giddy and dizzy, wanting to laugh or cry or both, wanting to fall to his knees in prayer but struggling to maintain his composure. “For a while there I thought you were trying to feel my spine from the front.”
Karras smiled weakly. “Last week your liver was big and nodular. Your liver enzymes were climbing. Now...”
“Maybe we’re onto something with this new protocol,” Weiskopf said.