Right to Die

separately, telling them their father was... dead.”
    “Bo, I’m sorry.”
    “Hey, it’s not so bad. Life on the road, I mean. And once a year, right around the holidays, I go back.” Bo passed a hand over an ear. “I get spruced up a bit, and I hitch my way to where they live now. First time, Adele got flustered, introduced me to the girls as a friend of their dad’s from the old school. They were so little when I went away, and I’d changed enough in the years since, they didn’t recognize me at all. They ask me questions about what their dad was like when I taught with him, and I get to talk with them about me, sort of, only with no pressure, no... expectations.”
    “You never tried to...”
    “What? Get back together again?”
    “Yes.”
    “No. No, Adele and I knew that wouldn’t work out. Only one thing worse than losing the people you love, John.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Losing them twice.”
    The eyes moved away to MIT, the right hand massaging the left wrist. “I’m sorry, John.”
    “About what?”
    “About dragging my life into yours.”
    “Bo, that—”
    “No. No, it was my deal, and here I’ve gone and broke
    it.”
    After a minute I said, “You know that Gore-Tex suit?” Bo’s face came back to me. “Huh?”
    “Before you left. You said I’d be needing a Gore-Tex running suit.”
    “Oh. Oh, yeah, right.”
    “I got one for Christmas. Any suggestions on when and how to wear it?”
    He let the wrist alone and, for a moment, seemed not to breathe. Then, “Well. Well, now, a couple of things...”

    I spent most of the rest of that January day at the office, servicing some smaller cases and trying not to dwell on Bo. At home, I got a call from Inés Roja. She confirmed that there still had been no more notes. Roja also told me that Andrus and Tucker Hebert were back from the Caribbean and that the professor still wanted to meet me that next morning. At the Ritz-Carlton, no less. Inés sounded embarrassed saying that she thought the Ritz required a jacket and tie, even for bacon and eggs.

    I followed the maître d’ through the first-floor dining room. The high windows permitted only filtered light from Newbury Street to strike the crystal and silver spread before the men and women attending power breakfasts.
    “We’re targeting the ten highest risk companies in the...”
    “...course, five years down the pike, will I still be...”
    “And our long-term resources just might be compatible with your short-term...”
    “...in which case, it would be mainly a northeast program with an acronym of its own.”
    Maisy Andrus treated me to a radiant smile over the rim of her china cup. She wore a white cotton turtleneck under an Icelandic sweater, the hair a shade lighter from the tropical sun. Her face was tanned, but without the worry lines or leathery look some women her age suffer.
    The perfect example of the good life. Maybe an hour earlier. I’d left Bo, in rags on a cold bench.
    Andrus suddenly appeared concerned. “John, is anything wrong?”
    “No. Just thinking about something else.”
    The waiter came over with a cut-glass bucket of fresh juice and took our food orders.
    I said to Andrus, “How was the trip?”
    The blazing smile again. “Indescribable. I hadn’t realized how much pressure I’d let build up inside, but Tuck was right. A vacation in the sun with him was all I really needed.”
    “Good weather, then?”
    “Perfect. We stayed at a place called Little Bay Beach Hotel, around a point from the Dutch capital. Early mornings until the tournament started, we’d snorkel out to the point. Just light enough to see but before everyone else was up. Huge boulders covered with sea urchins, black pin cushions with glass spines you have to avoid. All kinds of other reef life: fish, stingrays, even what Tuck called a ‘rogue barracuda.’ My God, it must have been five feet long, hanging in the water, inches under the surface. Tuck said it was nothing to worry about, that it was just waiting for us to kill something it could share.”
    Andrus shivered, rubbing the back of her neck through the cotton. “Most days, we stretched out on lounge chairs, sometimes in the sunshine, sometimes back under thatched roofs on poles. I drank when I wanted and devoured twenty thick paperbacks just for fun. We wandered all over the island. The French side is more pastoral, with sort of country restaurants, the Dutch side more glitzy, with casinos and discotheques. I’d