“You are right about one thing. With Zack here, I can’t fully commit myself to this fight. He needs to go. I need to know he’s out of here, he’s safe. There is this place, in Vermont—”
“I am not leaving.”
Eph took a breath. “Just listen.”
“I am not leaving, Eph. You think you’re doing the chivalrous thing, when, in fact, you are insulting me. This is my city more than it is yours. Zack is a great kid, you know I think that, but I am not here to do the women’s work and watch the children and lay out your clothes. I am a medical scientist just like you.”
“I know all that, believe me. I was thinking about your mother.”
That stopped her in her tracks. Nora’s lips remained parted, ready to fire back, but his words had stolen the breath from her mouth.
“I know she’s not well,” he went on. “She’s in early-phase dementia, and I know she weighs on your mind constantly, same as Zack does on mine. This is your chance to get her out too. I’m trying to tell you that Kelly’s folks had this place on a mountain in Vermont—”
“I can do more good here.”
“Can you, though? I mean—can I? I don’t even know. What’s most important now? Survival, I’d say. That’s the absolute best we can hope for. At least this way, one of us will be safe. And I know it’s not what you want. And I know it’s a ton to ask of you. You’re right—were this a normal viral pandemic, you and I would be the most essential people in this city. We would be at the crux of this thing—for all the right reasons. As it is now, this strain has leapfrogged our expertise entirely. The world doesn’t need us anymore, Nora. It doesn’t need doctors or scientists. It needs exorcists. It needs Abraham Setrakian.” Eph crossed to her. “I know just enough to be dangerous. And so—dangerous I must be.”
That brought her forward from the wall. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m expendable. Or, at least, as expendable as the next man. Unless the next man in question is an aging pawnbroker with a bad heart. Hell—Fet brings much more to this fight than I do now. He’s more valuable to the old man than I am.”
“I don’t like the way you’re talking.”
He was impatient that she accept the realities as he understood them. That he make her understand. “I want to fight. I want to give it my all. But I can’t, not with Kelly coming after the people I care about most. I need to know that my Dear Ones are safe. That means Zack. And that means you.”
He reached for her hand. Their fingers intertwined. The sensation was profound, and it occurred to Eph: how many days now had it been since he had experienced a simple physical contact with another person?
“What is it you plan to do?” asked Nora.
He knit his fingers more firmly into hers, exploring the fit as he reaffirmed the plan taking form in his mind. Dangerous and desperate, but effective. Maybe a game-changer.
He answered, “Simply to be useful.”
He turned away, trying to reach back for the bottle on the sink edge, but she gripped his arm and pulled him back t
oward her. “Leave it there,” she said. “Please.” Her tea-brown eyes were so beautiful, so sad—so human. “You don’t need it.”
“But I want it. And it wants me.”
He wanted to turn but she held him fast. “Kelly couldn’t get you to stop?”
Eph thought about that. “You know, I’m not sure she ever really tried.”
Nora reached for his face, her hand touching first his bristly, unshaven cheek, then the smooth side, stroking it gently with the backs of her fingers. The contact melted them both.
“I could make you stop,” she said, very close to his face.
She kissed the rough side first. Then he met her lips and experienced a surge of hope and passion so powerful, it was like a first-time embrace. Everything about their previous two sexual encounters came swarming back to him in a hot, anticipatory rush, and yet it was the fundamental human contact that supercharged the exchange. That which had been missing was now craved.
Exhausted, strung out, and utterly unprepared, they clung to each other as Eph pressed Nora back against the tile wall, his hands wanting only her flesh. In the face of such terror and dehumanization, human passion itself was an act of defiance.
INTERLUDE II
OCCIDO LUMEN:
THE STORY OF THE BOOK
THE BROWN-SKINNED BROKER IN THE BLACK VELVET Nehru jacket twisted a blue opal ring around the base of his pinkie finger as he strolled the canal. “I have never met Mynheer Blaak, mind you. He prefers it that way.”