Harlan Mallory had always hated hospitals. Ruth called them “Germ convention centers” and insisted on giving birth to Robert at home. “I would no more have a child in a hospital because there was a chance that something might go wrong,” she had explained in a calm unemphatic tone of voice that brooked no argument, “Than I would eat every meal in the hospital commissary because there was a chance I might get food poisoning.”

Her own father had gone into Saint Vincent’s for a minor case of pneumonia and wound up dying from a staph infection. Harlan himself had almost died at the lowly Nantucket Cottage Hospital years ago because of a miscalculated course of anesthetic during a simple umbilical hernia operation.

Hospitals were death traps.

But that was the least of it. He hated them for their antiseptic smell and their fluorescent lighting and most of all for the way they institutionalized illness. Being sick was normal in those places. He hurt a rib during a late fall surf session one year,  -- 2004? ?2005? -- and thought he was having a heart attack. The morbid vampire gusto with which they sealed him into an examination room and stuck him with needles and hooked him up to drips and monitors opened a grim doorway to a life incarcerated by disease and ruled by the officious warders of disease, who would have liked nothing better than to lock him away from the living forever.

At least that was how it seemed at the time.

Fortunately he had been given a clean bill of health and he walked away from the squeaking linoleum and the “Dr. Pincus to ICU STAT” public- address system and the nurses with needles and the interns with clipboards that same afternoon. He remembered gulping the raw November wind as he stepped into the parking lot.

The Nantucket air had never felt so good.

Walking to Lenox Hill hospital from his townhouse on Riverview Terrace, Harlan felt like he ought to be checking in to the hospital, himself. There was a witless smirking irony there, which he chose to ignore. Irony was always a cheap shot. He wasn’t hurt that badly, anyway. But injuries made you feel your age, older than your age. He inventoried the damage as he struggled uptown on First Avenue, limping to mkeep the wright off his sore right knee (of course he would have to fall on the gimpy one): a couple of damaged ribs (bruised, cracked, broken; did it really make any difference?); road rash on both hands where he’d caught himself as he fell. His jaw felt loose and his teeth didn’t seem to meet properly. He had taken a couple of punches to his stomach. The marks were hidden, but the pain made it hard to stand up straight. Then there was the black eye, now fully blooming in grey and purple and yellow, every color but black – at least that hadn’t been showing yet, when Bobby bailed him out of the tank. His sunglasses hid the shiner fairly well, but the day was overcast and the way he was inching along, the Maui Jims just made him look like a blind man with a runaway dog. There was more: a sore wrist, swollen knuckles (he had landed at least one good shot), a stiff back.

What an idiot. He had gone down to Chinatown for Dim Sum and wound up in a bar, arguing with a couple of loudmouthed Giants fans about Bill Bellichick. That old cheating bullshit. As if the Patriots needed to cheat. He knew Bill – the coach had a house on Nantucket, they ran into each other at Marine Lumber a couple of times a year. He had bought a couple paintings off Harlan and stood him to more than a couple of rounds of drinks. He was a good guy, an old school hard ass and anything but a cheat.  He had shrugged off the accusations, but then again he shrugged off everything. Harlan could imagine Bellichick’s response to the Second Coming, Jesus showing up on the field after an AFC playoff game:

"I'm glad he waited until the game was over. Uh uh. He looked good, he's held up well.  He could use a shave and a haircut. He's the Messiah. What you see is what you get. There's a lot of days in the end of days, we're taking it one day at a time. Rapture? No I wouldn't say rapture. I'd call it the satisfaction. I was satisfied. Within obvious limits. Heaven or hell, it's going to be a long slog. We're talking about eternity here. We'll see how it goes."

Harlan smiled; at least he amused himself.

The thugs in the bar, not so much. They didn’t like being called liars and sore losers. So someone took a swing and the next thing he knew they were all in jail. No one pressed charges; he would have been out on the street by morning, but he couldn’t stand it in that cell. So he’d made the call.

Alfred hadn’t been angry, or even disappointed, just weary. That was the worst part, that gathering of the old man’s forces, the immense effort it obviously took to sound so calm and non-judgmental. Harlan hated that fatalistic sigh.

A bad night, all around.

And now he was about to get himself into more trouble. What had Alfred said? “My dear boy, you are incorrigible.” That could be his epitaph, and he’d be needing one soon, at this rate.

At Sixty fourth street he gave up and hailed a taxi.

 He folded himself into the back seat and cracked the window to fell the cool breeze on his face. He shut his eyes for a second and when he opened them the driver was turning west on Seventy-second street. In this light traffic they’d arrive in five minutes at most. Time to start collecting himself. The cab swerved around a bus and accelerated through a changing light. Harlan was pressed into the seat back and felt a surge of resistance. Or was it fear? This was a bad idea. He hadn’t seen Oliver since Ruth died. The last time was in this very hospital, he realized. Oliver had been out of the country for the memorial service and Harlan remembered feeling an embarrassed tug of relief when he got the condolence letter with that Spanish postmark: one less difficult moment to deal with on a bad winter afternoon.

Harlan sat forward as they turned north on Third Avenue.

He had sketched some trees in the park the day before – it had seemed like a better gift than flowers. But once he had decided to bust Oliver out of the hospital, the gesture turned pointless: why bother to decorate a room Oliver was going to be vacating anyway? Now he wondered. It might have been best to just drop off the pictures, say a few awkward words and scram. They could easily have nothing to say to each other, after all this time. And now he was walking in empty-handed. He certainly wasn’t going to buy some cheap bouquet in the hospital gift shop. He was about to tell the driver to go back, so he could grab the sketchbook. But his own indecision irked him. He was doing the right thing. This was Oliver Graeme he was going to see, not some stranger. The fifteen years were nothing -- just a loop in an otherwise straight string. He released a long breath and settled back to watch the city jolt past the window.

He had to admit it: the wide dirty street, with its clustered store fronts and massed post war apartment buildings, still felt like home. Nantucket turned into a dream when he got back to the city, still, even after all these years: one of those flimsy recurring sleep landscapes. It couldn’t survive the hard autumn daylight, it splintered against the asphalt like glass on porcelain --  one of those stemless wine glasses Ruth had loved so much,  slipping between his wet fingers, hitting the sink.

He had exiled himself from Manhattan, he realized that now. Manhattan never rested; it had no time for nostalgia. Manhattan was the future.

Maybe it was time to move back.

Lenox Hill Hospital was the same bustling necropolis he remembered from the gold days, twelve stories of red brick and tempered glass, as inspiring a housing project, taking up most of a block, a small city unto itself. Harlan eased between a cop car and a parked ambulance, under the big green blue overhang and into the rush and clatter of the lobby.

He inquired after Oliver at the main desk and one of the harried concierges (The place did remind  Harlan of a Hyatt in downtown Cleveland or Des Moines)  glanced up from his computer screen long enough to say “Oncology, sixth floor.”

Harlan got off the long empty elevator car on six and walked past the nurse’s station. The big Jamaican nurse on duty glanced up as Harlan walked past, and he thought: that could be a problem. Oliver wouldn’t be able to take the stairs, and they’d look suspicious, standing around waiting for a ride down to street level.

Room 623 was almost at the end of the corridor. It was quiet up here; no sounds but the muffled beep of a monitor behind a closed door, the mutter of a conversation at the desk behind him, and the squeak of his shoes on the shiny linoleum. The complaint of rubber against vinyl pricked his nerves, a grim bird-call, common to all the institutions that had oppressed him throughout his life: schools, military bases, the DMV; and places like this. Mostly places like this. Let me just drop dead in the street, he thought as he pushed open Oliver’s door. Let a bus take me out, let some mugger shoot me -- just don’t let me wind up here.

Inside, Oliver was propped up in bed, painfully thin and flimsy, talking to Robert. Robert had just said something that made Oliver laugh; a chuckle that turned into a choking cough. What did comedians like to say? I killed last night.

Leave the old man alone.

Harlan stood in the doorway waiting for them to notice him, recalibrating the next few minutes. He should have known this would happen. Maybe he had known it would happen; maybe he had even wanted it to happen. He had given Bobby fair warning, what had he expected the kid to do? Sleep in and chicken out? That wasn’t his style, give him that much credit.

Robert looked up and saw him, “Hey Dad.”

“Harlan,” Oliver said.

The voice was weak. You could always tell how people were doing from the strength in their voices. Harlan had listened to Ruth’s lovely crisp contralto crumble to a slurred whisper, in the weeks before she died.

“How are you, Ollie? Can you walk?”

He took off the sun-glasses and Robert flinched backwward 

“Holy crap! Look at your face!” Robert said. He looked genuinely concerned. “I had no idea last night -- ”

“A lucky punch,” Harlan said. “Or three.”

“You need to see a doctor.”

“I’ll heal.” He turned to Oliver. “On the other hand, you look pretty good for a dead guy.”

“The doctors do seem to be rushing me. I think they want to clear the bed. There’s quite a waiting list for these accommodations.”

“Well, that’s why I’m here, buddy.”

Oliver smiled at him. Harlan had read somewhere that it took dozens of facial muscles to finesse the hydraulics of that expression; frowns were easy by comparison. All the effort was visible this morning but Oliver’s smile was sincere.

The silence lingered. It seemed like only the air conditioning was breathing. Harlan noted the electronic buzz of the nurse’s station telephone, picked up after one ring, the steady electronic pulse of the cardiac monitor.

“Ollie -- ”

Oliver pulled in a long harrowing breath. “Sorry dear boy. I just wanted to look at you for a moment, to … absorb the fact of your presence and assess the toll the years have taken. I’m disappointed to conclude that you appear to be alarmingly robust. A full head of hair, still no glasses – even to read?”

Harlan shook his head.

“Maddening. And you’ve even lost some weight. Still thrashing through those unforgiving South shore waves on your longboard?”

Harlan nodded.

“And not drowned yet. By some miracle. And the young women, still flocking to you like pigeons to the breadcrumb lady?”

“I wouldn’t say -- ”

Oliver laughed; another feeble bleat that tripped into a cough.

“Please. You wear your modestly poorly, Harlan. Like .. tennis whites.” He turned to Robert. “Your father prefers to play tennis in blue jeans and flip-flops. That’s his natural plumage. Perhaps a t-shirt from some island tile-setter or housepainter. It created a terrible stink at the Yacht Club, as I recall.”

“Until I paid for the last renovation.”

“But the hunt continues?”

Harlan thought about Julia Copenhaver, walking away from him, disappearing around the corner of Fair Street.

“With age-appropriate women,” he said.

“Why does feminist cant always sound so trite and stilted? And worst of all – so insincere. Why not say … ‘the woman I’m courting these days voted for Jimmy Carter, and regretted it bitterly and now feels guilty for regretting it, just like I do.’ That would be charmingly elliptical, and yet so much more informative. I might actually be happy for you.”

“Let’s not rush into anything. But seriously, Oliver -- how are you doing? Are you as sick as they say?”

 “I’m not sure what they say. One is always the last to hear about these things. But I can tell you I’ve been -- how to put this? -- winnowed down to my essence, I suppose. Nothing remains but a highly polished nub.  That’s on the good days. On bad days, most days … I’m more like a toy version of myself, too fragile to play with. An Oliver Graeme action figure, best kept in the box and saved as a collector’s item.”

Harlan snorted – it sounded like he was about to hack out gob of spit. But he just shook his head. “They’ll pack you away for good if you stay here much longer.”

“That may well be, dear boy. But I have very little choice in the matter.” He took a breath, settled himself more comfortably against the pillows. “I read a lovely piece in the Times about your Retrospective,” he wet on, shifting the subject, as he might have moved a chair in the old days, adjusting its angle to the couch.  “Harlan Mallory at the Guggenheim! That would be something to see.  I doubt I’ll be permitted to attend, alas. Perhaps you can get me a copy of the catalog.”

Harlan nodded and behind him the doctor on his rounds, followed by a dozen interns, crowded into the room. Oliver raised an arm in greeting.

“Good morning, Dr. Kwan.”

The doctor stopped around Harlan and glanced from him to Robert.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I feel it is inappropriate for visitors to be -- ”

“These men are family,” Oliver assured him. Of course there was no family resemblance: with his pale coloring and the small features huddling in the middle of his flattened parchment face, he hardly seemed like a part of the same race, or even the same species. Death had turned Oliver into a kind of insect, all hard surfaces and mandibles. He was a tough little bug, though, and Harlan could see he wasn’t going to back down for the doctor.

“So,” Kwan said. “You are related by blood?”

A thin smile. “No, Doctor. Not by blood. By choice.”

“I understand that, but these matters are private and hospital policy has clearly identified certain parameters that -- ”

“There are twelve strangers in the room,” Robert broke in.

“They’re doctors,” Kwan pointed out.

“Not yet,” Harlan said.

They had him triangulated. The interns were amused.

“I suggest you demonstrate the improvisational dexterity you routinely demonstrate in the operating room,” Oliver said. “And adjust with some aplomb to the trivial unorthodoxy of the situation. The gentleman towering over you is listed in my paperwork as next of kin. That, in addition to being a major figure in the artistic history of last century art, even if we are still waiting for him to make his mark on the new one.”

“Thanks,” Harlan said, oddly stung. They might as well be brothers; Oliver had a sibling’s skill with the needle.

“Truth is the official policy here, dear boy. Dr. Kwan is a high priest in the cult of unflinching honesty. He treats other peoples’ bad news with a hard-earned tranquility and stoicism which one can only admire.” He tilted his head toward Robert. “This young man is the executor of my will, Doctor, and this motley pair is as close to family as I’m likely to find at this late date. So please… proceed.”

Kwan nodded and lifted the chart from the foot of the bed. He addressed the students: “The patient suffers from stage 3b lung cancer centered in the lymph nodes. An operation was ruled out due to his age and the strong probability that the procedure would render the other side of his body more vulnerable if the cancer returned or spread. Continuing decline after three courses of chemo renders a fourth course problematical at best. The patient has declined further medication, in any case. He has opted for palliative care, and points out, not without some justice, that many people live longer, and with less discomfort when treatment options are less… aggressive. The patient’s mental function, will, and force of personality remain largely unaffected by his ailment, now in the terminal stages. In other words. He’s a stubborn little bastard and he drives us all crazy!” The interns laughed nervously. “Yet we still love him, and enjoy his company very very much. A medical mystery!”

He turned to Oliver.

“So, my friend … how is the pain today?”

Oliver gave him a tired smile. “The pain is strong and healthy, Dr. Kwan. I, however am weak and infirm.”

“I understand. This is why I – listen to me,  if you would just agree to take the opiates I prescribed, the pain could be greatly reduced. Very greatly reduced.”

“Yes, well ... this may sound perverse or senile, but I prefer my own pain to your brand of numbness. My body is telling me things, Doctor. However unpleasant the message, I prefer to listen.”

Kwan turned back to the interns. “You see what I mean? The man is impossible.” Then, to Oliver, “As you wish. My friend. I’ll be back tomorrow – the test results should be in by then. Try to eat dinner tonight.”

“A little wine would work wonders.”

“I’ve told you over and over - no wine.”

”Not even one glass? “

“Not even one glass. I’ll see you tomorrow. No hi-jinks until then, all right? Good. Behave yourself and no more flirting with the nurses. They are in a tizzy and very unproductive because of you. Onward, children.”

He led the group out of the room.

“I like this guy,” Robert. “He doesn’t seem like a normal doctor.”

Oliver nodded. “He told me it took almost twenty years to recover from medical school and become human again.”

Harlan took a breath: no time like the present.

“Speaking of hi-jinks,” he began, “I’m busting you out of this joint. I’m taking you to Nantucket and I’m going to feed you Bouillabaisse and garlic bread and gallons of wine and then we’re going to look at the ocean and walk in the moors, and -- ”

“They don’t even think I can walk here. They cart me about in a wheel chair.”

“That’s so you can’t sue them if you fall down. That’s what they’re thinking about. The lawsuits. Fuck them. You need someone to think about you for a change.”

‘That’s a lovely thought, dear boy – but the test results -- ”

“I’ll give you the test results. You’re getting sicker and you’re going to die. Welcome to the club. In the old days you just died – now they have a million names for it and a thousand ways to stall it and a trillion dollar industry to cook up the snake oil. But people keep dying. They haven’t cured anything since Polio. So fuck them. We’re outta here.”

“I have a plan,” Robert said

Oliver cocked an eyebrow at him. “You knew about this?”

“I knew he was planning it. I wasn’t sure he’d go through with it.”

Harlan stared at his friend. “You in? I’m not knocking you out and carrying you.”

Oliver nodded. “If I have to die, I would very much like to do it among friends, drinking gallons of wine and eating loaves of garlic bread and smelling the good sea air. So yes, Harlan. I’m in. What do you think of that?”

“I think we should get you dressed. Where are your clothes?”

“Wait a second, Dad,” Robert said. “You haven’t thought this through. As soon as he disconnects from that cardiac monitor it’s going to flatline and you’re going to have the whole nursing staff, and a bunch of couple of doctors not tom mention a couple of big ass orderlies in here with the oxygen and the needles and those electric paddles. And they’re all going to want to know what the hell happened.”

Harlan watched his son carefully. “But you have a plan?”

“I didn’t just come here to say goodbye.”

Robert unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off. Then he started on Oliver’s pajama top, lifting the old man up gently and easing the flimsy garment off him from behind. “Okay. This might not work but it’s worth a try.” He pointed at three white discs pressed to the old man’s torso with wires running out of them. “The monitor works off these three electrodes. I’m going to shift them onto me, one at a time, fast, between heartbeats. Hopefully there’s enough conducting jelly on the pads to make the connection on my skin. There should be some minor disruption in the signal, and the beat will be stronger afterwards, but the nurse on duty might not notice if she’s busy or bored. I know it’s not perfect. But it might just work.”

Harlan was impressed. “You did your research.”

“What was your idea?” Robert asked him.

“I suspect Harlan was planning to sweep me out in great cloud of bluster and intimidation,” Oliver said.

Harlan shrugged. “Something like that.”

Robert expelled a breath that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “You might actually have pulled that off, Pop. But this is better. There’s a stairwell at this end of the corridor. Call me on my cell when you’re leaving the lobby. 212-989-7649, can you remember that?”

Harlan pulled out a pen and his checkbook, scribbled on the back of a deposit slip.” Two one two, nine eight nine seven six four nine. Got it.”

“When I get the signal, I’ll unplug the monitor, pull the electrodes and hit the stairs. They’ll think the machine failed at first. They’ll be confused. That should me a second or two. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Oliver took Robert’s wrist. “Thank you.” He turned to Harlan. “Both of you. This is going to be a splendid caper.”

“Ss long as you can walk,” Harlan said. “I’ll walk between you and the nurse’s station, and block the sightlines. But if they recognize you, we’re fucked. Bobby – lend him your watch cap. They’ll be looking for a bald guy in a hospital nightie. That’s an advantage. As long as the elevator gets there in time.”

They nodded, but there was nothing more to say. Harlan rummaged for clothes in the little free-standing dresser while Robert prepared to shift the electrodes. Then he stopped.

“Hold it,” he said. “I think we have to do these all at once. I don’t known how these machines deal with a mixed signal. Probably they don’t. Dad, come here. Can you help, Ollie?”

Oliver nodded.

“Okay … Ollie, take the one off your left chest one and put it on my left; Dad, do the right side. I’ll do the lower one. And press hard, there won’t be as much jelly on the pads.” They each touched their assigned pad. “Okay,” Robert said. “After the next beat when I nod my head. Ready?”

“Will this really work?” Oliver asked.

“We’re about to find out,” Harlan said.

“I’d better do yours and mine, Ollie,” Robert said. “You just lie back.”

“Excellent idea.”

They waited; finally Robert nodded to Harlan

“Bee-beep” the monitor said

They made the switch, pressed the pads down, waited.

“Bee beep,” the monitor said. “Bee beep, Bee beep.”

They all seemed to exhale together.

“Right,” Harlan said, “Let’s go.” He eased Oliver to a sitting position. “So far so good?”

“Good is rather a lavish term for it. But yes.”

Time was short – at any moment a nurse could come in with some medication or to check the IV bag that Robert was disconnecting. Harlan slipped Oliver’s socks on over hard, scrabby toenails, thinking: old men need pedicures more than young girls. Nothing shows your age more, not even your neck. Pants next; Oliver rocked from side to side on the bed to get them all the way on. Harlan slipped on his brogans, good old school English leather shoes purchased at Barkers in Cheapside more than thirty years ago.

“Okay,” Harlan said, straightening up. “Now you stand up.” He leaned over and got his wrists under Oliver’s armpits, and fork-lifted his friend off the bed. “You all right?”

“Dizzy, but it will pass. Just let me …”

He grabbed Harlan’s elbow, shifted his weight and after a few seconds he let go. Harlan watched him as carefully. It was like spotting a gymnast, in these twilight days when just standing up had become an Olympic event,

“Triumphantly vertical,” Oliver said. “Get me my shirt.”

Five minutes later he was dressed, further disguised by Robert’s watch capo and Harlan's sun-glasses.

“Ah, Maui Jims,” Oliver said, turning them over in hand and slipping them on. “My favorites. Very dashing. They add a much-needed note of glamour to the proceedings."

He took a cautious step or two on his own, teetering but reckless. Harlan, poised to grab him, thought of Robert’s toddler days. Oliver walked across the room and back, lifted his hands palm up in a “voila!” gesture.

“Time to go,” Harlan said. “This is going to be a hell of a long walk. I’ll keep up some patter. You just nod.”

“Perhaps I’ll chuckle as well. Terminal patients rarely chuckle.”

“Good idea.”

“I might even giggle. Or guffaw.”

“Don’t push it, old man.”

Oliver walked around the bed, clasped Robert’s hand. “If I don’t see you again …I’m counting on you to become a Mandarin, like your father and I.”

Robert smiled. “I don’t drink enough.”

“That doesn’t matter. All that matters is finding the intersection. Find it, recognize it. And embrace it.”

“The intersection?”

“Your father will explain. And thank you for this. For impersonating my heart. It’s never sounded stronger.”

They listened for a few seconds: Bee-beep, bee-beep, bee beep.

Then Harlan led Oliver out of the room.

“Since you need to be talking for cover, dear boy,” Oliver said as they started squeaking their way down the long glare of the  polished linoleum passageway, “Perhaps you could explain what we’re going to do, if and when we get out of this place. Nantucket seems very far away this morning.”

“Then you obviously haven’t traveled much as an invalid. All that handicapped access stuff –elevators and ramps and special busses. It used to piss me off – just a bunch of politically correct bullshit. But it looks real different when you actually have to cart someone around in a wheel chair. They have it down to a science and they treat you like royalty. You’re gonna love it.”

They strolled part the nurse’s station. The big Jamaican woman was engrossed with her computer  -- e-mail or video solitaire?  The other one,  a burly, freckle-faced guy with metal rimmed glasses that looked like a disguise, was talking on the phone. He glanced up, but only for a second.  He didn’t suspect anything. Why should he?  He was willing to bet that no one had ever tried to escape from the oncology ward before. Harlan pushed the button for the elevator, and tensed himself for the wait.

“Are you all right standing?” He asked Oliver.

“For the moment.”

Freckles hung up the phone.

“Make a hand gesture,” Harlan said. “Look lively.”

“You just enjoy bossing me around. That’s what’s really going on here.”

But he did as he was told. The elevator pinged. Just a few more seconds.

As the door opened freckles glanced over at them. Something was bothering him. As if to confirm his suspicions, Oliver lost his balance for a second. Or maybe his knee went out, or his hip. Harlan grabbed him around the waist, holding him up. The man weighed nothing. It was like grabbing a coat out of a closet.

“Everything okay over there?” Freckles called out.

“Fine,” Harlan said as he guided Oliver inside the long metal box. “A little too much to drink last night.” Then, in a harsh whisper as he turned his friend to face front, directly in the sightlines of the big counter, “Look down.”

Oliver obediently stared at the floor; Harlan smiled at the nurse. He felt like those local newspeople, forced to stare at the camera with a mindless grin as the seconds ticked on before the mercy of a commercial break. He jabbed the lobby button, and the ‘close’ button. Where had he read that the ‘close’ button did nothing, it was just there to calm impatient people with the illusion of control?. He believed it now.

“Hey, hold on a second,” the nurse said, rising.

“Thanks, see you later,” Harlan called out as the elevator doors closed, finally.

Then they were dropping toward the lobby.

Now Harlan had to count on the bedrock human traits of laziness and indifference to disperse the nurse’s moment of suspicion. Out of sight, out of mind.

They sauntered across the lobby waiting for the phone call from the sixth floor, the security people trotting after them, the polite questions, the return to captivity. And then what? The police? Did this escape constitute a crime? Was it a misdemeanor --  or a felony? With a nasty twinge he realized that Robert would be in much more trouble than either himself or Oliver, if their little plan went south.

The lobby was crowded, everyone but them seemed to be in a hurry, and Freckles must not have raised the alarm. Fuck him – he had more phone calls to make.

They walked into the bright chilly autumn sunlight. The sky was a harsh blue, scrubbed raw by Canadian winds.

Cabs waited at the curb.

Halfway there, Oliver stopped and took a deep breath. It caught in his chest and started him coughing, but somehow he smoothed it into a rueful laugh. “The sublime dirty air of Manhattan,” Oliver said, patting Harlan’s arm. “It smells like freedom. And diesel fuel. And sewage – ever so slightly of sewage.”

Harlan got him moving again. “I love it,” he said.

“Absolutely. Poets drivel on about April in Paris. Give me October in New York City, any time.”

“Yeah? Wait till you see Nantucket.”

He pulled out his phone and poked in Robert’s number; time for the kid to get out of there. The phone started ringing on the other end: done. He slipped it back into his pocket, hustled Oliver into the first taxi in line at the curb and pushed in after him. Punctuating the single word “LaGuardia” with a slamming door, he sat back against the cracked vinyl seat, glad to let someone else take over for a few minutes. The cab pulled out, heading for Lexington Avenue and the FDR Drive.

Two hours later they were in the air, looking down on the green crescent of Nantucket, floating on the shoal-shadowed Atlantic, alone together with half a lifetime’s worth of bullshit to settle between them. He glanced over at Oliver’s face, features pulled tight with fatigue, dark circles under the wide brown eyes. This trip might have been a tragic mistake. Harlan could see it, the doctors were right.

They didn’t have much time.