Overwhelming Grace

By J. K. M. Taylor

Detectives Lucas Baldwin and Mark Rawlings are surprised to find themselves on their way to the Grande National Hotel, the site of the annual Modern Language Association Conferenceto an academic conference, of all places!where the book-and-urine enshrouded body of Blake scholar D. Q. Manchester has been discovered and from which guest speaker H. M. Grace has vanished. As they investigate the suspicious death of one and the disappearance of another of the group of six faculty members who had come to consider themselves an island in a sea of educational malfeasance, their respect for these dedicated professors and scholarsand for education itself grows. They also come to realize that the supposedly hallowed halls of academia may be even more frightening than the decidedly mean streets of the city.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543461985

J. K. M. Taylor

J. K. M. Taylor has been a resident of Connecticut, Kentucky, Nebraska, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin and a faculty member of universities in three of these states. Among the research volumes in which some of the many of Taylors studies of authors and their writings may be found are Longer Narrative Fiction, Notable Playwrights, American Poets Since World War II, and Th e African American Encyclopedia.

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Copyright © 2017 by J. K. M. Taylor.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2017916677

ISBN:                  Hardcover                      978-1-5434-6196-1

                            Softcover                         978-1-5434-6197-8

                            eBook                              978-1-5434-6198-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Book 1   Requiescat In Pace

The Shroud

Book 2   Hail Mary

H. M. Grace

Book 3   St. John And St. John Of La Paz

The Mantle

Book 4   Vive In Pace

Saving Grace

About The Author

About The Book

The goal of the forces of evil: overwhelming—overcoming—good

The goal of the forces of good: become overwhelming—become overpowering

—D. Q. Manchester

BOOK ONE

REQUIESCAT IN PACE

THE SHROUD

H OW THE MIGHTY have fallen.

Take that, you bastard!

Yeah. And that.

Rest in p …

Did you hear that? Someone’s coming?

*     *     *

D. Q.? What’s keeping you?

*     *     *

By the time D. Q. was a half hour … then forty-five minutes … then an hour … late in joining their party for dinner, and when he had answered none of her repeated phone calls, the fidgeting Ri had completely lost track of what the others were saying. She told herself repeatedly that it wasn’t unusual for the scholarly D. Q. to become so engrossed in a piece of writing that he forgot the time. But she had had time enough to drink more than enough. She missed him. She was hungry. She really missed him. And she was beginning to worry.

I know that he’s excited about his presentation tomorrow, but this is ridiculous, Ri said to the circle of hopeful diners who had also taken full advantage of the time they had had to drink more than enough while they waited for their missing colleague. She left the table as abruptly as she was able and made her way, as steadily as she was able, to the room in which she had left him working prior to going on before him to meet their friends in the ballroom reserved for attendees of the Modern Language Association’s yearly conference.

She was surprised to find the door locked. But, after knocking and getting no answer, she fumbled impatiently in her handbag and finally found her key. Inching the door open slowly, not wanting to disturb him if he was talking on the phone but wanting him to have her as excuse to end his call should he have been detained by someone from whom he could not disengage himself, she called again: D. Q.? Seeing D. Q.’s cell phone on the table just inside the door and hearing no evidence of his talking to anyone on the bedroom phone, she tried another tack: We’ve got a few drunken and hungry conferees downstairs. How’s that for an attempt to lure you from whatever it is that’s been keeping you?

Still no answer. She had closed the door behind her and settled her bag onto the table beside D. Q.’s phone before she noticed the trail of papers leading from the entrance to the living area, through the suite, and into the bedroom. Crumbs of knowledge for me to follow? she asked, following said crumbs.

"D. Q.? Is this your lure? Is this your attempt to lead me into temptation? I can imagine no other reason for Your Tidiness to have left such a mess." Smiling, she began to remove the scarf that had made evening wear of her tailored silk suit.

Reaching the end of the trail, however, she found what she truly could never have imagined. She screamed and screamed.

*     *     *

Having waited for another half hour for Ri to return with D. Q., the party of four—that was to have been a party of six—ordered dinner. Like Ri, briefly, before she learned the untruth of the assumption, they assumed that D. Q. had decided upon a more private evening with his ladylove. And by this time, they’d all had more than more-than-enough to drink. They felt the serious need for food—for medicinal purposes, they said. All ordered the Dover sole, the first recommendation given them by their waiter.

But you don’t like sole, John had said softly—or so he thought—to Marie after the waiter had begun to scribble the order.

The waiter paused, but Marie waved him on with a brusque, Just bring the food. Turning to John after the waiter had left for the kitchen, she said, "It could have been something I really hated. I just need to add something solid to all the liquid I’ve imbibed."

While diners at surrounding tables could hardly have missed the exchange, they did miss what it was that the four who remained at the table Ri had just abandoned found so hilarious about one of their number’s not hating what she had ordered—without even examining the menu and its offerings of other overpriced selections. They discussed among themselves how a group of individuals so elegant in appearance could behave in so inelegant a fashion. And each secretly wondered whether he or she might be looking in a mirror in some measure as flattering or unflattering—or both—to him- or herself.

The smaller-than-intended party broke up at midnight. They agreed to meet at breakfast the next morning as they bade their noisy farewells before retiring to their respective suites.

*     *     *

Have you seen or heard from either D. Q. or Ri? Matthew asked John as they filled their plates at the breakfast buffet. Lucia said that she had tried to call Ri before she came downstairs. And we looked for them before we staked out our table.

I tried calling their room before I came down. We hadn’t heard from them, and I haven’t seen them, John answered. "Marie’s a little under the weather this morning. I don’t think that Ri called her. I’m almost certain that she—Marie—didn’t try to call anybody. Not even—or, I suppose, especially not—the kids. I guess their mom needs to get out more. Socially. Or maybe not so much."

The two men laughed as they joined Lucia, who was only looking at the fruit and coffee she had selected to give a sort of legitimacy to her holding their table in the crowded room.

You two won’t have time enough to finish those platters of grease before lunch! Lucia joked; though, judging from the look on her face, she actually saw greater cause for nausea than laughter in the vision of plates heaped high with eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, and buttered toast. She looked decidedly like a woman who would, like her female dining companion of the evening before, have rather remained abed.

*     *     *

By noon, Marie was seated at a table for six in the dining room, though she could only manage tea and dry toast as her order for brunch. (Breakfast had seemed impossible, and lunch, nearly so.) When John, Matthew, and Lucia sat down at the table, she asked, How was D. Q.’s presentation? Was he brilliant? Is he basking in the glow of the accolades of his inferiors?

He was a no-show, Matthew answered. After a ten-minute wait, we were told simply that Dr. Manchester seemed not to have made it to the conference—that he hadn’t registered and he hadn’t called to say that he wouldn’t be presenting. We were told that we might wait—that he might just be running late. And that we might begin an informal discussion on our own.

A few of us waited and talked for a while, hoping, still, that he would sail in on an apology and a smile and plunge right into his promised discourse, Lucia told her. "There were, naturally, enthusiastic—then disappointed—Blake scholars in the room. D. Q. is a brilliant guy, she added, responding, now, to Marie’s question as posed. And he’s a good speaker. His topic and his write-up in the program, as anticipated, had filled the auditorium. Humor isn’t an expected subject at these so-called celebrations of scholarly endeavor. Turning, she asked John, Have you read anything that he’s published on Blake’s humor? I was disappointed not to hear him talk more about what he’s been working on."

"He’s talked to me about various aspects of it. He’s definitely smitten by his subject—even by its sound: The Apocalyptic Humor of William Blake. Which is why I’m so worried about his nonappearance this morning, John said as he once more punched in D. Q.’s cell phone number. Has anyone seen Ri?" he asked as he listened to the seemingly ceaseless ringing of his cell.

When John announced that he was going upstairs to check on his friend, Marie picked up a piece of dry toast and said that she was going, too. The caustic Marie of the previous evening and the noon hour just past seemed no longer inclined to snipe at the scholarship of the brilliant D. Q. Manchester. John’s worry seemed to have infected the group. Matthew and Lucia followed, the noisy foursome of the previous evening having been subdued by something more, now, than their evening’s overindulgence.

*     *     *

The door to the suite was open. John called out before entering: Ri? D. Q.? Are you decent? Marie tittered a bit at this. John shushed her.

He took two steps into the room, and his eyes fell upon the trail of paper and books. If we don’t find them naked and exhausted from a wild and crazy night of lovemaking, we’ll know that something’s very wrong, he said. "It’s not D. Q.’s nature to have anything but neat stacks of work neatly positioned on whatever desk or work table he’s taken possession of. He feels the need to re-create his perfectly appointed and arranged office—offices—wherever he goes. Ri might put up with this. She might even have made the mess. But D. Q. would not have made, and he surely would not have left, this mess. Unless Ri has taken his mind off everything but Ri." John’s nervous—his long-winded and unneeded—explanation of D. Q.’s neatness, which was not uncommon knowledge, was making Marie increasingly nervous.

He followed the trail to the bedroom while the others waited in the sitting room. When he reached the end of the trail, he staggered. His hands flew to his mouth, as if to prevent an outcry inappropriate to the man he considered himself to be; they moved slowly downward to rest uneasily on his chest, as if to slow the too-rapid beating of his heart. His breath became labored. When he was able, he whispered, Oh, my God! D. Q.! No! Oh, my God. Looking around him, he tentatively called, Ri?

Marie hesitantly approached the door of the sleeping area. She could not see past John—who, ashen-faced, turned and ushered her out of the room. To her and to the others, he only said, Don’t go in there. He fell heavily into the nearest chair and put his face in his hands.

When Matthew chose not to follow his order and looked for himself at what John had found in the other room, he added his remonstrance to the women: Don’t go in there.

The two men said in unison, What shall we do? Lucia stood with her hand on Matthew’s shoulder after he, too, had slumped into the nearest available chair.

After a moment, Matthew rose resignedly, dragged himself to the phone on the desk across the room, and asked the operator to call the police. There’s been … there’s a … I’ve found D. Q. Manchester … d-dead. In room 513.

*     *     *

Detective Mark Rawlings entered the room, carefully avoiding the papers and books that he now saw strewn throughout the suite. It was immediately apparent to the current residents of that room that the careful, seemingly tentative step belied the direct manner of the gentleman, who asked immediately, Which of you found the body?

John, still badly shaken, made a gesture that approximated the response of one of his students reluctant to venture an answer to one of his classroom questions. Come with me, ordered the detective, taking the gesture for I did.

Did you touch anything? Rawlings asked.

Of course not.

"Was anyone else in the room? Either with you or alone?"

Three of us … two of us, really … were in the room. I turned Marie … my wife … away before she could see what had happened. Matthew saw … saw D. Q. after I did. Neither of us, obviously, had any desire to linger.

Rawlings, while direct, was not completely without sensitivity. His hand on the shaken professor’s shoulder, he led him back to his chair and the comfort of the group from which he had taken him. By this time, Mark’s partner, Lucas Baldwin, had joined that group—his presence making the truth even more real: instead of their hope of finding a frolicking or a happily exhausted couple, they were about to be questioned about the fate of their good friends. They were going to have to answer questions about a couple that would never again frolic. Or even be a couple.

Luke, why don’t you go in and take a look, Rawlings said to his partner. And, Did any of you see anyone leaving the room or in the hallway as you approached the room? he asked of the initial group of four. The so-recently voluble, more-recently silent unit only shook their heads.

Baldwin’s God, the stench! broke the silence in a big way.

Marie, seemingly trying to rid herself of the guilt of having, possibly, in her query as to his morning’s reading, been thought to insult the man who lay dead in room 513, now directed a withering look and what she hoped would be a withering comment to Baldwin: You boor! How can you mock a man—and a dead man at that—for something over which he had no control!

John, Matthew, and Lucia expressed the same sentiment with only minor variations in expression:

How can you be such an ass!

Public servant, par excellence, aren’t you?

You, of course, will die in a bed of flowers, with yourself the most fragrant flower of them all.

M-my God, stuttered Detective Baldwin, recognizing the difference between what he had said—between, at least, what he had meant—and what they had heard. Looking to his partner for help, he asked, Did they think that all of those papers had been … um … d-destroyed by the victim himself?

We hadn’t reached that point in our discussion, Rawlings answered. "I hadn’t even … conclusively … reached the conclusion that you seem to have drawn." He glanced furtively at the now-angry foursome.

Sorry, said Baldwin, whose crestfallen look showed that he most truly had not meant to say—and was most definitely ashamed of—what he had said. "Didn’t you all see that the books and the papers were soaked with urine? I mean soaked! And it isn’t only where you’d expect to find evidence of a victim’s relaxed … um … muscles. It came from over and from either side of the victim. And didn’t you see the handwritten ‘R. I. P.’ on the page on top of the typed pages? His audience shifted in their seats. Were they not so shocked, muttering would surely, once more, have ensued. Man, I am so sorry. I came late. I thought that you all knew. I never meant to mock the man himself. Was he your friend?"

Let’s start from the beginning, Rawlings said before anyone could address his partner’s question. Friendship seemed less relevant to the senior detective than others of the questions he wanted answers to. It was, given what he had seen and Baldwin’s conclusion, with which he now concurred, most probably a murder investigation. (The two had discussed, on the way to the hotel, the improbability of a murder at a gathering of university types.) There had already been, he thought, enough tiptoeing and soft-pedaling and making nice.

First—take all this down, Luke—we’ll need your names and how you all happened to … No. Wait. I’d better start again. First, who’s the guy under the shroud of urine?

Marie had never seen her husband’s face as pale as when he had turned her away from the doorway to the bedroom of D. Q. and Ri’s suite. Seeing that pallor increase upon his hearing the detective’s description of D. Q. as the guy under the shroud of urine, she grew even more alarmed. It was becoming clear to her—it was, however unimaginable, the clear reality to her, now—that Ri had lost D. Q. That John’s face looked at this moment to be the face of a dead man made her ready to do serious battle for her man—in this case, in her man’s stead—in this, his hour of need.

Please, Marie began. How can you be so crass? Your partner ascribed his disrespectful outcry to his ignorance of what we knew. How can you excuse your own expression of disrespect? Might you please try to show some … some respect. She felt a pang of guilt as she found herself judging her failure to vary her expression in her peroration—at harboring such a thought at such a time. After dismissing the question she couldn’t help asking herself—What’s another word for respect?—she went on, determined not to let her momentary failure of vocabulary stop her defense—to stop what even she recognized as her diatribe. "Do you think yourself capable of showing respect (oh, God) to the deceased and to those of us who have made this dreadful discovery? The gentleman to whom you refer was a renowned scholar. He was our colleague. And, yes, she said, looking now at Luke, he was our friend. He was John’s best friend. That gentleman was D. Q. Manchester—Doctor D. Q. Manchester."

And you are? queried the second duly admonished but not completely deflated detective.

I am Marie St. John. And this is John St. John, my husband. Our friends are Lucia Martinelli and Matthew McCall.

Thank you, Ma’am. I add my apology to my partner’s. We’re not as sensitive of speech, obviously, as we ought to be in such distinguished company as the present. But we are not insensitive to the loss of a friend and colleague. We’ve lost friends and colleagues, ourselves. And I know that I can speak for Luke—though I don’t have to, his being right here and all—in saying that we’re very sorry for your loss.

Very sorry, said Luke in a nearly inaudible voice. Still looking repentant, the younger detective now looked as though he thought he needed permission to speak from an instructor who had chastised him for blurting out an obscene phrase in the middle of her lecture. Dr. D. Q. Manchester! Jeez, thought Luke. That was D. Q. Manchester. He was a guest speaker in one of my classes at the university. I didn’t really look at the face of the man in there. I only saw the stained books and papers. I only reacted to the smell. Jeez. D. Q. Manchester. He was the most interesting person who ever faced me from the other side of a desk or podium in all my years in school.

And how was it that you came to discover Dr. Manchester’s body? Rawlings continued. Resolving, as he spoke, to speak with care.

John looked at Marie with gratitude. While sometimes brash, she was more often, John thought, when he thought of it, the perfect spouse. She had given him time to gather himself to the extent possible in such a circumstance and within such a time frame as this. Better able to do so now than before Marie had provided the reprieve, he answered the detective’s questions: When he failed to present his paper at the conference this morning, after failing to appear at dinner last evening, I was worried. I came to his room. And I found him as you saw him. In there.

You were to have dined with him last night? He didn’t show up? And you didn’t worry then?

No. Not then. Ri—Ria Gracia—went to check on him after we’d all waited for about an hour. When she didn’t return, we thought that the two of them had found a … a more interesting way to spend the evening. So we ordered our meals, expecting to see them at the conference today.

And where is this Ms. Gracia? asked Detective Rawlings.

Taking pity on her colleagues, Lucia—who had felt but had not acted upon that pity prior to this moment—answered the relatively simple question: We haven’t seen her since she went to check on D. Q. last night. Lucia’s cheeks grew slightly pink when Rawlings turned his attention to her.

And didn’t you find it strange when she didn’t let you know that she wouldn’t be rejoining you? Or why the two of them wouldn’t be joining you?

Matthew, now, to the rescue: "As John said, we thought that the two of them had decided to spend the evening alone. We were to have been a party of six. We thought that they might have reconsidered their evening’s plans, finding a party of two more to their liking. They were very much in love. I’m very concerned now at our not hearing from Ri."

You said ‘conference.’ Is there a chance that … Wait. Rawlings still had so much to ask these people. He wondered whether the loving couple were wed or were doing their coupling on the side—on the side of other, more permanent relationships. He wondered whether, having coupled, however they coupled, Ri had gone to her own room. He wondered whether she might be at the conference now, unaware of what had happened to her playmate. He wondered how to frame his questions to these people who were so finicky about what anyone said—and, maybe even more, about how they said it. Thank God he could still wonder in his own language. But how, now, to communicate with them in theirs? He couldn’t believe that he—he, whose ease of communication was legend in his department—was having such a hard time framing his questions and getting the answers that he needed from these people. He had, for crying out loud, to get even more answers than they could give. But he needed their information to build on.

Do you have any idea how we might find Ms. Gracia? Is this … No. That’s not good. Does she have her own room? That may not have been much better. But, hell …

Feeling protective of two of the people she most enjoyed spending time with, Lucia was less reluctant than before to provide an answer to the detective’s question. She spoke up before one of the others, their defenses down, might give these gauche policemen more cause for indelicate comment: I’m sure that that is a question you should direct to someone at the desk who will know how to answer it. Somewhat pleased by the ambiguity of her statement, she still wished that she could say, directly, Their living and sleeping arrangements are really none of your business; but, with D. Q. lying dead in the next room, she feared that everything about D. Q. and Ri would be open to these ungentle men’s investigation.

Following her mental outburst, Lucia’s more gentle side came, as it always did, to the foreground: Oh, come on, Luc, she thought. The young one felt terrible about what he said, and the other told us that they, too, have lost colleagues. They may not be well-spoken, but they know loss. Can anyone say the right thing to those who have lost a loved one? And even I have been afraid to speak at times in Marie’s presence.

Is it possible that she is looking for you all at the conference? Now?

Matthew answered that it seemed highly unlikely that Ri would, of her own volition, have failed to attend D. Q.’s presentation that morning. Though, of course, D. Q. did not speak that morning. He had expected that the two would have been together at the conference. As I said, I am very concerned. He didn’t want to think, now, about what had happened last night when she had gone to find D. Q. He hoped that they had had time to share their love. He hoped that nothing had happened to Ri. He knew—didn’t he? —that Ri … But this is all too terrible. What …? Who …? D. Q. Manchester is dead. And we have no idea of whether Ria Gracia knows that he’s dead. Or whether something has happened to her. Matthew’s face had taken on an eerie resemblance to those of his male colleagues in room 513: every vestige of color had drained from his countenance.

Rawlings turned to his partner. Did you get all that, Luke? Be sure to add these folks’ contact information to your notes. Turning back to the party of four, he asked, Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm Dr. Manchester?

The four looked at each other with expressions on their faces that definitely caught the attention of the two detectives.

*     *     *

Honoria Marietta Gracia, whose parents had bestowed upon her the name that they continued to find mellifluous and meaningful, found the man she thought the noblest in the land lying beneath a mound of books, topped by hundreds of pages of the manuscript upon which he was currently working, and topped again by a single page, blank but for the three crudely scrawled letters R. I. P. She noted, too, with more than her eyes, that D. Q.’s manuscript had been soaked with urine.

She screamed and screamed.

*     *     *

The patient in room 302 is screaming again, the young duty nurse whose badge read Sofia Mendoza said to the less-young duty nurse, Jasmine Albright—known as Jazzie to her friends. Which were legion.

I’ll go, Jazzie said. "Poor thing. She keeps saying, ‘He’s dead.’ But when I ask her, ‘Who’s dead?’ she gets all confused. I ask her whether she’s had a bad dream. And I’m not sure that she knows whether he is someone who died in her dream. Or someone who’s really dead. I don’t want to push it. Just the two words seem to wring her dry. I think that she’s cried herself dry. And hollow. She seems to respond to me, though. Her chart shows that she hasn’t responded to any of the other nurses. Or doctors. They’ve pretty much relied on sedating her. She’s at least talked to me some—about where she is now and about some of the people we’ve seen walking by her room. I’ll see if I can help her."

Jazzie can help her if any of us can, thought Sofia, watching the stately woman, whose coffee-and-cream complexion shone with confidence and compassion, stride toward the as-yet- unidentified woman so in need of that compassion in room 302.

*     *     *

There, there, Honey. You’re awake now. Did you have a bad dream?

Oh, God. I saw him. He was dead.

Who was dead, Hon?

I’m not sure. Someone I cared about.

Someone in your dream?

"Yes … No … I don’t know. I was so afraid. I am so afraid. How did I get here?" she asked, looking around her.

"An ambulance. A nice young couple saw you walking alone. Crying. They stopped to ask you if they could help—if they could take you somewhere, but you only kept crying. When they asked you who they might call for you, you yelled at them to leave you alone. They were worried about you. When you wouldn’t let them help, they called 911.

You haven’t told us your name. ‘Jane Doe’ doesn’t suit you somehow. How about my changing that for us?

Ri. He called me ‘Ri’.

Who called you that, Hon … Ri? May I call you ‘Ri’?

I don’t know. I don’t care. I need to be alone. Turning her face to the wall, Ri said a quiet but clear, Good night. As she pulled the door behind her, Jazzie saw Ri’s shoulders shudder.

At least she’s not shaking herself to pieces. Not now, at least, she said to Sofia when she returned to the nurses’ station.

*     *     *

Ri, I’m Dr. Hathaway. Do you think that you can talk to me this morning?

I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?

Yes. I’ve stopped in several times since you arrived. You’ve felt too unwell—too unready—to talk to me. How are you feeling now?

I really don’t know. I’ve been having bad dreams. I wake crying. Someone gives me something she says will make me feel better. I sleep. I dream. I take—I’m given—something. Ri paused. Seeming to catch her breath mentally, her doctor thought. Before going on. "I do seem to feel better now. But I still can’t remember getting here. My latest dream was a good dream. Which, I suppose, is why I feel better.

Please don’t give me anything! Ri said, a note of panic replacing the former note of something that might almost be said to have begun to resemble confidence in her voice.

"You don’t seem to need anything that I can give you—at least not anything that you can take. But how do you feel about talking about your good dream?"

I did wake feeling so good. So loved.

Anne Hathaway held her breath, literally—not wanting to say a word or make a move that would discourage what she hoped would be the beginning of a conversation. A conversation that could lead to the healing of the patient about whose healing she hadn’t been overly optimistic on her previous visits.

"In my dream I heard the door open, and he called to me: ‘Are you decent?’ I was so excited to hear his voice—he had such a beautiful voice.

"I answered, ‘Depends on what you mean by decent.’ He laughed.

"He asked why I had left an SOS on his cell phone. I felt a little guilty then. But I brought him a glass of his favorite wine. And I said that I just needed to see him. ‘Just to see me?’ he asked. He was smiling when he asked if I only wanted to see him.

"And I said, ‘No, of course not. I just needed to hold you.’ And he held me, and he kissed me. And he held me, and he kissed me some more. And I knew—I felt—how much he loved me. And the next thing I knew, you were asking me whether I wanted to talk.

I’d like to have continued to dream my dream. But if there’s anything I want to think about in this wakeful state, it’s that feeling of being loved.

Who is the man with the beautiful voice? The man who was making you feel so loved? Anne felt, at this point, that it was safe to seat herself next to Ri. As she sat, her patient continued.

Each time I see his face and hear his voice, my mind jumps to what a very kind nurse told me about how I came to be dreaming in a hospital instead of … I don’t seem to be able to remember where I should be dreaming and waking. Or what I should be doing after dreaming and waking.

Do you think that you can talk about your bad dreams?

Not now. Please don’t ask me to do that. You’ve been kind to listen to me talk about the only pleasure I can recall. I think that I’d like to be alone now to replay that dream in my mind until I can pin it down. No. I don’t mean that. Not pin it down. What a horrible action to attach to so beautiful an image. I’m picturing a butterfly pinned as I … I want to savor the dream—the sensations, the beauty of being held and being loved—for as long as I can.

That sounds like a perfect idea, Ri. I’ll stop in later to see how you’re doing. Hopefully, to talk a little more. Dr. Anne Hathaway looked back to see that her patient, eyes closed, was smiling. "We’re—she’s—getting somewhere," said Ri’s doctor quietly to herself.

*     *     *

So, Luke. What do you think? Exactly what kind of hoity-toity conference is this, anyway?

"Dr. Manchester is—was—an expert in Romantic and Victorian literature. He spoke at our university. That was a part of the announcement posted: ‘Expert in Romantic and Victorian Literature.’ Oh, yeah. And, specifically, he specialized in William Blake. I groaned when our professor told us we had to attend. But he—Manchester, not my professor—was really something. He started out telling us that Charles Dickens had changed how things were run in England. He told us how the children and the poor were not only ignored but mistreated, not only by the government but by the public. And how Dickens made the public—and even the government—care about what was going on. He asked us if any of us had read the V comic books. Have you read them? Or seen the film?" He went on, warming to his subject, before his partner had time to even process the questions.

"In V—in the film, at least. I haven’t read the comics—the hero keeps saying that the people shouldn’t have to be afraid of the government. That the government should have to be afraid of the people it’s supposed to serve. Well, Dickens, long, long before this, had made people see and feel that they should—that they had to—speak up. That they simply could not—should not be able to—live with themselves if they continued to accept what the government had made them think