According to Lewis, he talked more often about those who visited more often, which is natural, said Betsy, I think he’s even keeping a tally. And among those who came or checked in by phone every day, the inner circle as it were, those who were getting more points, there was still a further competition, which was what was getting on Betsy’s nerves, she confessed to Jan; there’s always that vulgar jockeying for position around the bedside of the gravely ill, and though we all feel suffused with virtue at our loyalty to him (speak for yourself, said Jan), to the extent that we’re carving time out of every day, or almost every day, though some of us are dropping out, as Xavier pointed out, aren’t we getting at least as much out of this as he is. Are we, said Jan. We’re rivals for a sign from him of special pleasure over a visit, each stretching for the brass ring of his favor, wanting to feel the most wanted, the true nearest and dearest, which is inevitable with someone who doesn’t have a spouse and children or an official in-house lover, hierarchies that no one would dare contest, Betsy went on, so we are the family he’s founded, without meaning to, without official titles and ranks (we, we, snarled Quentin); and is it so clear, though some of us, Lewis and Quentin and Tanya and Paolo, among others, are ex-lovers and all of us more or less than friends, which one of us he prefers, Victor said (now it’s us, raged Quentin), because sometimes I think he looks forward more to seeing Aileen, who has visited only three times, twice at the hospital and once since he’s been home, than he does you or me; but, according to Tanya, after being very disappointed that Aileen hadn’t come, now he was angry, while, according to Xavier, he was not really hurt but touchingly passive, accepting Aileen’s absence as something he somehow deserved. But he’s happy to have people around, said Lewis; he says when he doesn’t have company he gets very sleepy, he sleeps (according to Quentin), and then perks up when someone arrives, it’s important that he not feel ever alone. But, said Victor, there’s one person he hasn’t heard from, whom he’d probably like to hear from more than most of us; but she didn’t just vanish, even right after she broke away from him, and he knows exactly where she lives now, said Kate, he told me he put in a call to her last Christmas Eve, and she said it’s nice to hear from you and Merry Christmas, and he was shattered, according Orson, and furious and disdainful, according to Ellen (what do you expect of her, said Wesley, she was burned out), but Kate wondered if maybe he hadn’t phoned Nora in the middle of a sleepless night, what’s the time difference, and Quentin said no, I don’t think so, I think he wouldn’t want her to know.

And when he was feeling even better and had regained the pounds he’d shed right away in the hospital, though the refrigerator started to fill up with organic wheat germ and grapefruit and skimmed milk (he’s worried about his cholesterol count, Stephen lamented), and told Quentin he could manage by himself now, and did, he started asking everyone who visited how he looked, and everyone said he looked great, so much better than a few weeks ago, which didn’t jibe with what anyone had told him at that time; but then it was getting harder and harder to know how he looked, to answer such a question honestly when among themselves they wanted to be honest, both for honesty’s sake and (as Donny thought) to prepare for the worst, because he’d been looking like this for so long, at least it seemed so long, that it was as if he’d always been like this, how did he look before, but it was only a few months, and those words, pale and wan-looking and fragile, hadn’t they always applied? And one Thursday Ellen, meeting Lewis at the door of the building, said, as they rode up together in the elevator, how is he really? But you see how he is, Lewis said tartly, he’s fine, he’s perfectly healthy, and Ellen understood that of course Lewis didn’t think he was perfectly healthy but that he wasn’t worse, and that was true, but wasn’t it, well, almost heartless to talk like that. Seems inoffensive to me, Quentin said, but I know what you mean, I remember once talking to Frank, somebody, after all, who has volunteered to do five hours a week of office work at the Crisis Center (I know, said Ellen), and Frank was going on about this guy, diagnosed almost a year ago, and so much further along, who’d been complaining to Frank on the phone about the indifference of some doctor, and had gotten quite abusive about the doctor, and Frank was saying there was no reason to be so upset, the implication being that he, Frank, wouldn’t behave so irrationally, and I said, barely able to control my scorn, but Frank, Frank, he has every reason to be upset, he’s dying, and Frank said, said according to Quentin, oh, I don’t like to think about it that way.

And it was while he was still home, recuperating, getting his weekly treatment, still not able to do much work, he complained, but, according to Quentin, up and about most of the time and turning up at the office several days a week, that bad news came about two remote acquaintances, one in Houston and one in Paris, news that was intercepted by Quentin on the ground that it could only depress him, but Stephen contended that it was wrong to lie to him, it was so important for him to live in the truth; that had been one of his first victories, that he was candid, that he was even willing to crack jokes about the disease, but Ellen said it wasn’t good to give him this end-of-the-world feeling, too many people were getting ill, it was becoming such a common destiny that maybe some of the will to fight for his life would be drained out of him if it seemed to be as natural as, well, death. Oh, Hilda said, who didn’t know personally either the one in Houston or the one in Paris, but knew of the one in Paris, a pianist who specialized in twentieth-century Czech and Polish music, I have his records, he’s such a valuable person, and, when Kate glared at her, continued defensively, I know every life is equally sacred, but that is a thought, another thought, I mean, all these valuable people who aren’t going to have their normal fourscore as it is now, these people aren’t going to be replaced, and it’s such a loss to the culture. But this isn’t going to go on forever, Wesley said, it can’t, they’re bound to come up with something (they, they, muttered Stephen), but did you ever think, Greg said, that if some people don’t die, I mean even if they can keep them alive (they, they, muttered Kate), they continue to be carriers, and that means, if you have a conscience, that you can never make love, make love fully, as you’d been wont—wantonly, Ira said—to do. But it’s better than dying, said Frank. And in all his talk about the future, when he allowed himself to be hopeful, according to Quentin, he never mentioned the prospect that even if he didn’t die, if he were so fortunate as to be among the first generation of the disease’s survivors, never mentioned, Kate confirmed, that whatever happened it was over, the way he had lived until now, but, according to Ira, he did think about it, the end of bravado, the end of folly, the end of trusting life, the end of taking life for granted, and of treating life as something that, samurai-like, he thought himself ready to throw away lightly, impudently; and Kate recalled, sighing, a brief exchange she’d insisted on having as long as two years ago, huddling on a banquette covered with steel-gray industrial carpet on an upper level of The Prophet and toking up for their next foray onto the dance floor: she’d said hesitantly, for it felt foolish asking a prince of debauchery to, well, take it easy, and she wasn’t keen on playing big sister, a role, as Hilda confirmed, he inspired in many women, are you being careful, honey, you know what I mean. And he replied, Kate went on, no, I’m not, listen, I can’t, I just can’t, sex is too important to me, always has been (he started talking like that, according to Victor, after Nora left him), and if I get it, well, I get it. But he wouldn’t talk like that now, would he, said Greg; he must feel awfully foolish now, said Betsy, like someone who went on smoking, saying I can’t give up cigarettes, but when the bad X-ray is taken even the most besotted nicotine addict can stop on a dime. But sex isn’t like cigarettes, is it, said Frank, and, besides, what good does it do to remember that he was reckless, said Lewis angrily, the appalling thing is that you just have to be unlucky once, and wouldn’t he feel even worse if he’d stopped three years ago and had come down with it anyway, since one of the most terrifying features of the disease is that you don’t know when you contracted it, it could have been ten years ago, because surely this disease has existed for years and years, long before it was recognized; that is, named. Who knows how long (I think a lot about that, said Max) and who knows (I know what you’re going to say, Stephen interrupted) how many are going to get it.