What I Loved

fire, but there were also what looked like blood spots all over it, deep red stains that closed my throat when I saw them. Lying across the crumpled sheet were the coils of a pale nylon rope and, not far from the rope, a black revolver. I'm quite sure of what I saw, although my glimpse of that bizarre still life had the quality of a hallucination even while I was looking at it.
    Giles tugged on my arm. "Come on in and have a drink."
    "No," I said. "I'll find my room." I dug my heels into the carpet.
    "Come on, Uncle Leo," Mark whined at me.
    I straightened up, moving my spine through ratcheting pain and then shook my arm loose from Mark's hand. My lips were quivering. I moved back from the door, shuffled to the other side of the hallway, and leaned against the wall for a moment before I started to lope away, but Giles leapt toward me and flung out his arm. "Just working through a few new ideas," he said, pointing into the room. I had hunched over again. I simply couldn't endure standing erect. He leaned over me and whispered, "But Professor, aren't you curious about me?" Then Giles put his fingers on my head. I could feel his hand on my scalp, felt him playing with strands of my hair, and when I looked him in the eyes, he smiled. "Have you ever thought of using a little color?" he said. I tried to shake my head, but he grabbed me on either side of my face, pressing the sides of my glasses into my skin, and then he slammed my head against the wall. I grunted with pain.
    "I'm so sorry," he said. "Did I hurt you?"
    Giles didn't let go of me. He continued to squeeze my head with his hands. I flailed, lifted my knee to jab him, but the motion caused new pain. I gasped and felt my knees buckle under me. I was sliding down the wall, and I panicked. Moving my eyes to Mark's face, I said his name, which came like a wail from my throat I called on him loudly and desperately, lifting my hands toward him, but he stood frozen in front of me. I couldn't read his face. In the same moment, a door opened beside me and a woman stepped out Giles pulled me upward and began to pat me tenderly. "You'll be all right," he said. "Should I call a doctor?" Then he backed quickly away from me and smiled at the woman in the doorway. As soon as he was out of the way, Mark moved toward me. He was talking fast under his breath. "Go back to your room now. I'll go home with you tomorrow. I'll meet you in the lobby at ten. I want to go home."
    The woman was pretty and slender with puffy blond hair that fell into her eyes. Behind her I saw a little girl of about five years old with brown braids. She was holding her mother around the thighs.
    "Is everything all right out here?" she asked.
    Giles was pulling closed the door to the room, but I saw her eyes dart through, the crack for an instant. Her lips parted and then she examined Mark, who took a step backward. She looked at me. "That's not your room, is it?"
    "No," I said.
    "Are you sick?" she said.
    "I've thrown out my back," I panted. "I need to rest, but I've had some difficulty finding my room."
    "We took a wrong turn, ma'am," Giles said. He smiled warmly at her.
    The woman examined Giles, her jaw locked. "Arnie!" she yelled without budging from the door.
    I looked at Mark. His blue eyes met mine. He blinked. I read the blink as a yes. Yes, I will meet you tomorrow.
    Arnie led me back to my room. He matched his wife, I thought, at least physically. He was young, with a strong build and an open face. As I walked and tried to control my shaking body, Arnie held my arm. I noticed that his touch was unlike either Mark's or Teddy's. In his tentative fingers, I felt his reserve toward me—that ordinary deference for another person's body that is usually taken for granted but that had been lost to me only minutes earlier. Several times he asked me if I wanted to stop and rest, but I insisted on continuing without a pause. It wasn't until he had helped me into my room and I saw my reflection in the large mirror beside the bathroom door, that I was able to interpret the extent of his kindness. My hair had been pushed to the wrong side of my head, and a piece of it was standing up like a stiff gray stalk. My hunched and twisted body had aged me terribly, turning me into a shriveled old man of at least eighty, but it was my face that shocked me. Although the features in the mirror resembled mine, I resisted claiming them. My cheeks appeared to have collapsed into my three-day beard, and my eyes, pink from