Praying for Sleep

decided you weren’t coming. I called you and got your machine. Well, it’s good to see you.” She heard the nervous out-pouring of her words and fell silent.
    “I got a ride. Figured, why bother them?”
    “It wouldn’t have been a bother.”
    “Where were you guys? I looked upstairs.”
    Lis didn’t speak for a moment but merely stared at the young woman’s face, her blond hair—exactly Lis’s shade—held back by a black headband. Portia frowned and repeated her question.
    “Oh, we’re out by the lake. It’s a strange night, isn’t it? Indian summer. In November. Have you eaten?”
    “No, nothing. I had brunch at three. Lee stayed over last night and we slept late.”
    “Come on outside. Owen’s out there. You’ll have some wine.”
    “No, really. Nothing.”
    They headed back down the path, thick silence filling the short distance between them. Lis asked about the train ride.
    “Late but it got here.”
    “Who’d you get a ride with”
    “Some guy. I think I went to high school with his son. He kept talking about Bobbie. Like I should know who Bobbie was if he didn’t give me his last name.”
    “Bobbie Kelso. He’s your age. His father’s tall, bald?”
    “I think,” Portia said absently, looking out over the black lake.
    Lis watched her eyes. “It’s been so long since you’ve been here.”
    Portia gave a sound that might have been a laugh or a sniffle. They walked the rest of the way to the patio in silence.
    “Welcome,” Owen called, standing up. He kissed his sister-in-law’s cheek. “We’d about given up on you.”
    “Yeah, well, one thing after another. Didn’t get a chance to call. Sorry.”
    “No problem. We’re flexible out here in the country. Have some wine.”
    “She got a ride with Irv Kelso,” Lis said. Then she pointed to a lawn chair. “Sit down. I’ll open another bottle. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
    But Portia didn’t sit. “No thanks. It’s still early enough, isn’t it? Why don’t we get the dirty work over with?”
    In the ensuing silence Lis looked from her sister to her husband then back again. “Well . . .”
    Portia persisted, “Unless it’d be a hassle.”
    Owen shook his head. “Not really.”
    Lis hesitated. “You don’t want to sit for a few minutes? We’ve got all tomorrow.”
    “Naw, let’s just do it.” She laughed. “Like the ad says.”
    Owen turned toward the younger woman. His face was in shadow and Lis couldn’t see his expression. “If you want. Everything’s in the den.”
    He led the way and Portia, with a glance at her older sister, followed.
    Lis remained on the patio for a moment. She blew the candle out and picked it up. Then she too walked to the house, preceded by sparkling dew lifted off the grass and flung from the tips of her boots, while above her in the night sky Cassiopeia grew indistinct, then dark, then invisible behind a wedge of black cloud.
     
    He walked along the gritty driveway, passing through pools of light beneath the antiquated, hoopy lamps sprouting from the uneven granite wall. From high above, a woman known to him only as Patient 223-81 keened breathlessly, mourning the loss of something only she understood.
    He paused at a barred wooden door, beside the loading dock. Into a silver plastic box—incongruous in this nearly medieval setting—the middle-aged man inserted a plastic card and flung the door open. Inside, a half dozen men and women, wearing white jackets or blue jumpsuits, glanced at him. Then they looked away uncomfortably.
    A white-jacketed young doctor with nervous black hair and large lips stepped quickly to his side, whispering, “It’s worse than we thought.”
    “Worse, Peter?” Dr. Ronald Adler asked vacantly as he stared at the gurney. “I don’t know about that. I expect pretty bad.”
    He brushed his uncombed sandy-gray hair out of his eyes and touched a long finger to a thin, fleshy jowl as he looked down at the body. The corpse was huge and bald and had a time-smeared tattoo on the right biceps. A reddish discoloration encircled the massive neck. His back was as dark with sunken blood as his face was pale.
    Adler motioned to the young doctor. “Let’s go to my office. Why are all these people here? Shoo them out! My office. Now.”
    Vanishing through a narrow doorway the two men walked down the dim corridors, the only sounds their footsteps and a faint wail, which might have been either Patient 223-81 or the wind that gushed through the