Robert Wilson - The Divide

She stretched him out across the bed. “John? Can you hear me?”

He turned his face toward her. His eyes were glazed but attentive. He nodded.

She put her hand across his forehead and drew it quickly back. The fever was intense and Susan felt a surge of panic. She couldn’t deal with this! She wasn’t trained for it! He needed a doctor, a hospital—

He reached up suddenly and took her wrist in a clamping grip.

“I need aspirin,” he said. “Maybe cold compresses. This will pass.”

She nodded until her agreement registered and his hand slipped away.

She undressed him and pulled blankets over him, then hurried down to the hotel’s convenience shop for a bottle of Bayer’s. When she got back, he was shivering and moaning. She fed him three tablets with a glass of tap water and pulled up a chair by the bedside.

The snow that had been predicted all day had settled in by nine o’clock. Susan watched it through the hotel window. It was a picturesque, gentle, persistent snowfall; the big flakes danced against the window and drifted onto the ledge outside. The snow obscured the city lights and softened the murmur of the traffic.

With the snowfall, John’s fever began to retreat.

Susan pressed a damp washcloth against his forehead. He had been sleeping restlessly for the last two hours; it was only forty-five minutes since the fever had broken and his temperature had dropped back to normal. He needs the rest, Susan thought. But when she took the cloth away, he sat up.

“I did what you told me,” Susan said.

“You did fine.”

“Are you better now?”

“Better than I was a little while ago.”

“Is this it?” Susan asked. “Is this what Dr. Kyriakides said would happen?”

“Let’s not talk about it now.”

She took a shower. She immersed herself in the hot rush of the water. Washing away the fear, she thought. Washing away today and washing away tomorrow.

She wrapped herself in a towel and entered the darkened bedroom. John was propped up in the bed, a faint silhouette. Susan toweled her shoulders a last time, then climbed in beside him.

The bed was hot and faintly damp. A sickroom bed. She didn’t care. His body was warm, but it was an ordinary warmth now. Because she was afraid, Susan pressed herself against him; he turned to face her.

“This might happen again,” she guessed.

He nodded. She felt the motion against her cheek.

“Might be worse the next time?”

“It might be.”

She absorbed this information.

She said, “Did it mean anything to you, what that man said about ‘the warehouse?’ ”

“It’s an empty building down by the lakeshore—Amelie told me about it. He might have taken her there. We’ll go tomorrow and have a look.”

“In the snow?”

“In the snow. I’ll be all right.”

The snow fell steadily far into the night. Susan heard it tapping against the pane of the window. Begging admittance, she thought. But it can’t come in.

Neither of them slept. The silence was a vast tapestry, stitched with the sound of their voices.

“Why me?” Susan asked. “Why did you choose me?”

To be with him in this bed, she meant. To touch him in the darkness.

He said, “Because we’re alike.”

“Are we?”

“In a way.”

“What way?”

“Because both of us have lost something. A certain kind of connection.”

“I don’t understand.” The wind rattled the window.

“We’re orphans,” he said. “Isn’t that obvious? We’re feral children. We don’t know how to be human.” He touched her cheek. “That’s what we have in common.”

Susan was too sleepy to explore this in all its nuances.

She said, “What we have in common is what we don’t have.”

“Yes.”

“A father.”

“Lineage,” John said. “Ancestry.”

“A father,” Susan confirmed. In the tranquility of the snowbound darkness she was able to admit it. She had been looking for a father ever since her father died; she had found a sort of father—at least temporarily—in Dr. Kyriakides.

She was embarrassed to realize she had said this out loud.

“But you want more than that,” John said. “Something finer and better.”

She nodded.

He said, “You would have slept with him—if he’d asked.”

“Yes. I guess I would have. I almost did. Isn’t that strange? There was one time … he took me to dinner … but he said he’s not interested in women. In men, once, but even that was a long time ago.” She rolled over and felt John’s hand slide up her shoulder. “He’s not a good man, is he? But still … at least he’s been able to help you.”

“No,” John said. “I’m sorry, Susan. No, he hasn’t.”

“Not cure you. But he said he gave you a prescription—”

“He gave me dopamine. It’s what they give Alzheimer’s patients. In my case, it’s not much more than a placebo.” Susan turned to face him. He smiled in the dark. “Max can’t do anything to help me. He never could. That’s not why he came looking for me.”

“Why, then?”

“Guilt,” John said. “Remorse. And to finish the experiment.”

Later, he said he was thirsty. Susan brought him a glass of water from the bathroom tap. He sipped it in the dark.

She said, “Do you know everything about me?”

“Yes,” he said solemnly. “And you know everything about me.”

But not really. Not everything.

Curled against him, she whispered: “Will you die?”

She strained to hear his answer against the hissing of the wind.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’ve thought about it. What’s happening to me is very powerful, a powerful process. I feel it. It’s like an engine running inside me. Very strong. It’s not something you can simply resist. You have to bend—this way or that. But that’s the hard part. Even if I can bargain with it, I’m not sure … I don’t know if it’s a deal I want to make.”

He held her against him; but Susan was wordless in the dark, and this time the silence lingered.

Amelie knew where her brother had taken her: it was the place they called “the warehouse.”

At least, she and Roch had called it that. It wasn’t really a warehouse. It was a big abandoned building beside the railway tracks, where the CPR line ran along the lakeshore west of the city. Many years ago, Roch once told her, the building had contained a fur-storage business. Now it was a cold, dark warren of cavernous rooms and windowless chambers. And she was confined in it.

She remembered how she had come here—but dimly, dimly.

She had gone into the city to meet her mother, but it turned out that there was no bus from Montreal scheduled at that hour. So she had milled around through the crowded, oppressively hot terminal for almost an hour … and then Roch put his hand on her shoulder, and she knew it was Roch, knew it instinctively and immediately. He took her arm. She wanted to break free but couldn’t. He led her out to his van and then he locked her in the back.

They drove to a vacant lot by the CPR line and Roch parked and climbed in back with her. He had something in his hand: a syringe—

Memory clouded. But she remembered him carrying her through the snow at dusk, his strong arms enfolding her. She had recognized the way to the warehouse, where they used to go when there was nowhere else to sleep. But only in summer. It was winter now, and cold, and the snow was deep and getting deeper. Someone will see us, she thought. The railroad police will see us for sure. But the railroad police, who sometimes parked along these tracks, weren’t here now. The snow was too deep and recent. Everybody had gone home. Everybody had found a warm place to stay.