He said, “Other than the security company that supplies twenty-four-seven gate guards, my staff consists of just Rudy and Norma. And while I trust them both, I see no need to put temptation in their way. And the temptation to peek at the unsuspecting is a strong one, wouldn’t you say?”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I could have. My mouth was as dry as old carpet. There were a dozen monitors in all, stacked in three rows of four. Jacobs pushed the power button on RESTAURANT CAMERA 3. “I believe this is the one we want.” Cheerful. Like a cross between Pastor Danny and a game show host.

It seemed to take forever before a black-and-white picture swam into view. The restaurant was large, with at least fifty tables, but only one was occupied. Two women were sitting there, but at first I could only see Jenny Knowlton, because Norma blocked the other one out as she bent to serve them their bowls of soup. Jenny was pretty, dark-haired, mid-fifties. I saw her mouth move in a silent thank you. Norma nodded, straightened up, stepped away from the table, and I saw what remained of the first girl I ever loved.

If this were a romance, I might say something like, “Although necessarily changed by the passage of years and somewhat wasted by the depredations of disease, her essential beauty remained.” I wish I could, but if I begin lying now, everything I have told so far becomes worthless.

Astrid was a crone in a wheelchair, her face a pallid pouch of flesh from which dark eyes stared listlessly down at food she obviously had no interest in. Her companion had put a large knitted cap—a kind of tam-o’-shanter—on her head, but it had slipped to one side, revealing a bald skull fuzzed with white stubble.

She picked up her spoon with a scrawny hand that was all tendons, then put it down again. The dark-haired woman exhorted her. The pallid creature nodded. Her tam fell off when she did, but Astrid appeared not to notice. She dipped into her soup and raised the spoon slowly to her mouth. Most of its cargo fell off during the trip. She sipped what was left, pooching her lips out in a way that reminded me of how the late Bartleby would take a slice of apple from my hand.

My knees unhinged. If there hadn’t been a chair in front of the bank of monitors, I would have gone straight to the floor. Jacobs stood beside me, gnarled hands clasped behind his back, rocking to and fro with a slight smile on his face.

And since this is to be a true account rather than a romance, I must add that I felt a sneaking relief. I would never have to keep my half of our devil’s bargain, because there was no way the woman in the wheelchair was coming back. Cancer is the pitbull of diseases, and it had her in its jaws, biting and rending. It would not stop until it had torn her to pieces.

“Turn it off,” I whispered.

Jacobs leaned toward me. “I beg your pardon? My ears aren’t as good as they used to be these da—”

“You heard me perfectly well, Charlie. Turn it off.”

He did.

 • • •

We were kissing beneath the fire escape of Eureka Grange No. 7 as the snow swirled down. Astrid was blowing cigarette smoke into my mouth while the tip of her tongue slipped back and forth, first along my upper lip and then inside it, lightly caressing the line of my gum. My hand was squeezing her breast, although there wasn’t much to feel because of the heavy parka she was wearing.

Kiss me forever, I thought. Kiss me forever so I don’t have to see where the years have taken us and what you’ve become.

But no kiss goes on forever. She pulled back and I saw the ashen face inside the fur of her hood, the dusty eyes, the slack mouth. The tongue that had been inside my mouth was black and peeling. I had been kissing a corpse.

Or maybe not, because the lips rose in a grin.

“Something happened,” Astrid said. “Didn’t it, Jamie? Something happened, and Mother will be here soon.”

 • • •

I jerked awake with a gasp. I had gone to bed in my skivvies, but now I was naked and standing in the corner. I had the pen from the bedside table curled in my right hand and was using it to jab at my left forearm, where there was a small but growing constellation of blue dots. I dropped it on the floor and staggered backward.

Stress, I thought. It was stress that brought on Hugh’s prismatics at the Norris County revival, and it was stress tonight. Besides, it’s not like you poured salt in your eyes. Or came around to find yourself outside gobbling dirt.

It was quarter past four, that deadly time of morning when it’s too late to go back to sleep and still too early to rise and shine. I pulled a book from the smaller of my two bags, sat down by the window, and opened it. My eyes took in the words just as my mouth had taken in Norma’s soup and salad: without tasting. Eventually I stopped trying and just looked out into the darkness, waiting for dawn.

It was a long time coming.

 • • •

I took breakfast in Jacobs’s suite . . . if you can call a single piece of toast and half a cup of tea breakfast. Charlie, on the other hand, worked his way through a fruit cup, scrambled eggs, and a goodly heap of homefries. Skinny as he was, it was hard to tell where he put it. On the table by the door was a mahogany box. In it, he told me, were his healing instruments.

“I no longer use rings. No need of them, now that my performing career is over.”

“When are you going to start? I want to get it over with and get out of here.”

“Very soon. Your old friend dozes through her days, but doesn’t sleep much at night. Last night will have been a particularly difficult one for her, because I told Miss Knowlton to withhold her midnight pain meds—they depress the brainwaves. We’ll do our business in the East Room. It’s my favorite at this time of day. If you and I didn’t know God is a profitable and self-sustaining construct of the worlds’ churches, the morning light would be almost enough to make us believers again.”

He leaned forward, looking at me earnestly.

“There’s no need for you to be a part of this, you know. I saw how upset you were last night. I’ll need your help this summer, but this morning either Rudy or Miss Knowlton can assist me. Why don’t you come back tomorrow? Pop over to Harlow. Visit your brother and his family. I think that, were you to do that, you’d see an entirely different Astrid Soderberg on your return.”

In a way, that was exactly what I was afraid of, because since leaving Harlow, Charlie Jacobs had made a career of trickery. As Pastor Danny, he had displayed pigs’ livers and declared them to be extracted tumors. It was not a résumé that inspired trust. Could I be absolutely sure the haggard woman in the wheelchair actually was Astrid Soderberg?

My heart said she was; my head told my heart to be careful and trust nothing. The Knowlton woman could be an accomplice—a shill, in carny terms. The next half hour was going to be an ordeal, but I had no intention of ducking out and allowing Jacobs to affect a sham cure. Of course he would need the real Astrid to pull it off, but many lucrative years on the revival circuit made that a possibility, especially if my long-ago girlfriend found herself hard up financially in her old age.

An unlikely scenario, to be sure. What it came down to was the responsibility I felt to see this through to what was certain to be a bitter end.

“I’ll stick around.”

“As you like.” He smiled, and although the bad side of his mouth still wouldn’t cooperate, there was nothing sneery about this one. “It will be nice to work with you again. Like the old days in Tulsa.”

A soft knock came at the door. It was Rudy. “The women are in the East Room, Mr. Jacobs. Miss Knowlton says they’re ready when you are. She says the sooner the better, because Miss Soderberg is in a lot of discomfort.”