Istvan just nodded, and closed the door as Carlucci entered.
Istvan led the way among tables and shelves, through two small rooms filled with boxes and albums of stamps, to the kitchen in the back. The kitchen was tiny, but bright, full of windows that looked out onto the street.
“Sit down,” he said. There was a square, wooden table with two chairs. In the middle of the table was a crystal vase with blue and yellow flowers. “I’ll make coffee.” He seemed sad and resigned, as though giving in to the inevitable.
When the coffee was done, they began. Carlucci told Istvan everything he thought might have any relevance, from the day Caroline asked him to help find Tito, to the quarantines imposed by the CDC. Istvan listened, asking an occasional question. They drank strong black coffee, and Istvan, after closing the kitchen door so the smoke would not get to the stamps, smoked one cigarette after another. For the first time in a year or two, Carlucci felt that strong craving again.
When he was finished, he handed the sketch artist picture to Istvan, who took it from him and studied it. They sat in silence for several minutes, Istvan continuing to smoke as he thought and studied the picture.
He nodded once, then looked at Carlucci, his expression still sad. “I’ll find her for you,” he said.
“Thank you, Istvan.” He paused, wondering if he could be convincing. “This will be the last time. I mean it. The next time I come to see you, it will be just for a visit. Just two old friends, talking.”
“Don’t bother,” Istvan replied. “We are not friends anymore.” He shook another cigarette from his pack and lit it. “I’ll call you.”
CHAPTER 32
It was raining again, and the sound of it spattering against the windows was soothing. Caroline lay on top of the sleeping bag spread across the old wood and canvas cot, eyes closed, listening to the rain. She was sick, and she was afraid to tell Cage.
Fever made her head swim, and she felt sick to her stomach. Swallowing was difficult, and there was a sharp and throbbing pain at her temples. It had come on so quickly, she hadn’t been prepared for it. All this time, struggling with her fear of the Gould’s., and now she may have contracted a disease that would kill her in a matter of days, not years. Crazy.
She opened her eyes and sat up slowly, leaning back against the wall for support. Where was the telephone? She couldn’t remember. Her eyes ached. Maybe it was just a bad flu. Yeah, and maybe she was going to live to be ninety years old.
She looked around the room, and finally saw the phone on top of the small bookcase near the window. She had to call Cage, if only to tell him to stay away. She had volunteered to help out at the street clinic, and when she didn’t show up, he would come looking for her.
After resting for a minute or two, she got to her feet and walked over to the phone. She picked up the receiver, then sat in the chair by the window. She raised the window and stuck her empty hand out into the rain. Yes, it was cool. She cupped her hand, let it fill with rainwater, then brought it back in and splashed it across her face. It felt great. She did it twice more, then sat back in the chair and punched in the clinic number.
Cage came anyway, as she’d known he would.
“Don’t touch me,” she told him when he came into the apartment. “Stay away.” And she was reminded of Nikki sitting at the curb outside the clinic after crashing the pedalcart, yelling at Cage to stay away from her.
But he didn’t stay away. “You know how many times I’ve been exposed to this disease?” he said. “Between Nikki and Tito and the other people I’ve seen at the clinic in the past few weeks? Way too many times. I must have some kind of natural resistance or immunity to it.”
“Lucky you.”
“Besides, we don’t know that that’s what you have.” She glared at him. “Yes we do.”
He shook his head. “The incubation period’s too short. Even if you were exposed to it the very first day you were in the Core, it hasn’t been nearly as long as the time between Nikki’s exposure and when she came down with it.”
“We don’t know when I was exposed. Besides…” She frowned, thinking about Rashida. “The incubation period has been getting shorter.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
She told him what Rashida and the Fat Man had said about the changes they’d noticed, their thoughts and speculations about the disease.
He didn’t say anything after that, but he made her take something for the fever, then put her back to bed. After making some tea for both of them, he sat in a chair that he pulled up near the bed.
“You should go,” she tried again. “You should just leave me alone.”
Cage just shook his head. She lay back on the cot and closed her eyes. She was glad he was here.
CHAPTER 33
Cage felt as if his life were coming apart on him. He thought maybe the whole world was coming apart.
He sat in a chair by the open window of what had once been Nikki’s apartment, listening to the night sounds of the Tenderloin and watching the lights and people on the street below. Caroline was sleeping on the cot just behind him, and he listened to her breathing, which at the moment was calm and even.
Core Fever. There wasn’t much doubt now. She had it, and she had it bad.
He couldn’t believe he was going to go through this all over again. He’d never had much of a chance to recover from Nikki, and he felt completely unprepared to watch Caroline die. But, like so much else these days, he didn’t have a choice. Not one he could live with, anyway.
It had been just two days since she’d called him. He had brought one of the clinic cots and moved into the apartment; he’d also brought extra sheets and blankets for Caroline to sleep in instead of the sleeping bag, hoping to make her more comfortable. He still worked his shifts at the clinic he had to; things were falling apart there, too but he slept and ate here, and nursed Caroline, feeding her when she could eat, making broth and tea for her, providing her with a steady stream of cold damp cloths for her face. He helped her make her way to the bathroom, and helped her shower once or twice a day to stay clean and cool. She tried to get him to wear gloves whenever he touched her, but she had given up on that after the first day.
They were seeing probable new cases of Core Fever every day at the clinic, and there was nothing they could do for those people. They had no facilities to care for them, no rooms or beds or staff. All they could do was send them home, where they were more likely to expose family members and friends and neighbors.
As far as Cage was concerned, the quarantine around the Tenderloin had become completely unconscionable. Clearly a majority of cases were inside the Tenderloin, but more cases of Core Fever were appearing outside the Tenderloin every day. In fact, cases were being reported outside of San Francisco, even as far away as New York City not in the traditional media, which was being uncharacteristically reticent about those cases, but among doctors and other health professionals.
But the CDC was still claiming that the cases outside the Tenderloin were not Core Fever, and so maintained the need to continue with the quarantine. With no real hospital facilities in the Tenderloin, and no effective ways to isolate those who came down with Core Fever, the quarantine was turning a bad situation in the Tenderloin into a nightmare leaving people who were dying without even the benefits of comfort care, and severely exacerbating the transmission of the disease.
Eric Ralston had become unreachable. The number he’d given Cage had been disconnected, and calls to the CDC in Atlanta went nowhere. If nothing else, he wanted to try to shame or guilt Eric into arguing with his colleagues for a dismantling of the quarantine, but he couldn’t do that if he couldn’t even talk to him.
The only positive thing Cage had heard in recent days were a couple of unconfirmed reports of people surviving Core Fever. But with no way yet to make a certain diagnosis, no antibody test or anything like it, it was impossible to know for sure if the survivors had actually contracted Core Fever rather than some other
serious illness.
Yes, he decided, the whole world was coming apart. “Cage?” Caroline’s voice was quiet.
He turned around and looked at her. She was lying on her side, eyes barely open.
“How are you feeling?”
“Terrible.”
“Do you think you can eat anything?”
“No. But I’m thirsty.”
The water pitcher beside the cot was nearly empty, and the water was tepid, so he fixed a fresh batch of ice water, filled a glass, and held it for her, putting the straw in her mouth so she could drink without raising her head.
When she finished, she turned onto her back and closed her eyes. “Thanks,” she said.
“Sure. Anything else?”
“Not right now.”
There was a long silence, and he thought she had gone back to sleep. He sat and watched her steady breathing, feeling an ache in his chest. He hadn’t known her very long, but he’d come to like her quite a lot, and he couldn’t believe he was going to lose her before he’d even had a chance to really know her.
“Cage?”
“Yes.”
“Have you told my parents yet?”
“No.” He hesitated. “I wanted to be sure. I was going to call them tomorrow.”
“Don’t.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Don’t tell them.”
“Why not?”
“What’s the point? So they can worry themselves sick, waiting to hear that I’ve died? They can’t come here to see me, I can’t get out, so what’s the point?” She closed her eyes again, breathing hard for a few moments.
“They’re your parents. They’d want to know. They’d want to talk to you. You might want to talk to them.”
“No,” she said one final time, opening her eyes to look at him. “Wait until I’m dead.”
CHAPTER 34
Carlucci was driving himself and Andrea crazy, wandering around the house, unable to sit still, until Andrea told him to stay put somewhere or get the hell out of the house. So he finally retreated to the basement and his trumpet, hoping that music would relax him.
It didn’t help.
He was waiting for too much, unable to do anything except wait for the quarantine to end so Caroline wouldn’t be trapped inside the Tenderloin; for Istvan to get back to him about the missing woman; for some other break to materialize from Ruben and Toni or one of the other teams; for some resolution to the Core Fever situation. It was all making him nuts, and he felt like he was on speed, frazzled and jittery and wanting to rip off his skin.
The basement door opened, and Andrea came down a couple of steps. Miles Davis was on the stereo, the sound track from Siesta, haunting and beautiful.
“Turn that off, please.” Andrea had to raise her voice above the music, but her tone was strangely uneven, her expression fixed and lifeless.
Something was wrong.
He grabbed the remote and cut off the music. The sudden silence was disquieting. He set his trumpet beside him on the couch and sat forward.
“What is it?”
Andrea took another couple of steps down, then sat on the stairs.
“Cage called.”
“Caroline?” He wanted to stand up, but he felt suddenly immobile.
She nodded. “She’s got it. Core Fever. She’s got it.” She gazed helplessly at him. “She asked him not to call us. But he thought we would want to know.” She slowly shook her head from side to side. “But I don’t,” she said, her voice getting quieter, harsher. “This is something I don’t want to know at all.” And then she put her face in her hands, elbows on knees, and began to cry.
Carlucci felt dizzy, a terrible ache in his chest. He struggled to his feet, knees weak. When he was sure he wouldn’t lose his balance, he walked to the stairs, grabbed on to the railing, and pulled himself up, one difficult step at a time until he reached her. He sat beside his wife, put his arm around her, her shaking driving through him, and then he, too, began to cry.
Incredibly, the day got even worse. He would not have thought it possible.
Andrea was sitting out in the backyard, staring at the garden, or perhaps at nothing at all. She hadn’t moved for more than an hour after asking to be left alone. He stood at the kitchen window, looking out at her, wishing he could do something to comfort her, wishing he could do something to comfort himself, and wishing more than anything else that there was something he could do for Caroline. But he had been wishing that for years, and he could no more do anything for her now than he ever could.
The phone rang, and when he answered it there was someone babbling hysterically at him.
“Wait a minute, wait… just a second and calm down. Who is this?”
The babbling finally broke, there was some sniffling and wheezing, then, “Mr. Carlucci?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Paula. Paula Ng.” Christina’s roommate.
“Paula, what is it?”
“Oh, Jesus, Mr. Carlucci. It’s Tina, I think she’s got it.”
He thought his heart stopped. Certainly his breathing did, and a strange, very quiet rushing sound filled his ears, and something funny happened to his vision, as if it had become pocked with bits of glitter.
“You think she’s got what?” he finally managed to say, wondering if his voice was loud enough for her to hear. He could imagine only one answer to his question, but he had to ask it anyway.
“Core Fever. Oh, God, Mr. Carlucci, I don’t know, maybe it’s not, but she’s so sick, and she was getting those rashes across her chest, and we didn’t know what else it could be, but no one out here’s supposed to be able to get it, but what else, I don’t know, Tina got so scared and I got scared and—”
“Where is she, Paula?”
“On her way to St. Anthony’s. I called an ambulance, I gave them Tina’s insurance chip, and they took her to St. Anthony’s, and they left me here, and I don’t know what to do, I wonder was I too close to her or did we drink out of the same glass or what, am I going to get it too—?”
He hung up on her. He knew it was rude, he knew it was an awful thing to do, but he couldn’t take it anymore, he couldn’t listen to one more word of it.
There was a deep, thrumming ache driving through him, and he was barely aware of anything else. He felt as if his heart had collapsed, and could hardly beat anymore. He didn’t move for a long time, several minutes, maybe longer. When he did finally move, it was only to return to the kitchen window and look out at Andrea, wondering how the hell he was going to tell her.
They sat together in the tiny visitors’ lounge at the end of the corridor, gratefully alone. Christina was in an isolation room, in a drugged sleep. When Carlucci and Andrea had arrived, Christina had been scared, and became hysterical when they had come into the room with gowns and gloves and masks on; the doctors would not let them enter the room otherwise. She would not calm down, and eventually Dr. Sodhi had sedated her.
Technically Christina was diagnosed as ill from an unidentified agent, probably viral or bacterial, but they all knew. Dr. Sodhi pointed out that the CDC was not currently recognizing any cases of Core Fever outside of the Tenderloin, though they were asking that all presumptive cases be reported to them. This was Dr. Sodhi’s second patient with Core Fever. The other had been Cage’s friend Nikki. Nikki had lived for two or three weeks. Christina probably wouldn’t.
Carlucci held Andrea’s hand, the two linked hands resting on his thigh. Neither of them had spoken for a long time.
“Both of them,” she said. “We’re going to lose both of them.” She began to slowly shake her head from side to side, making a faint, high keening sound. Then everything stopped, she dropped her hands to her side and opened her eyes, and turned to look at him. “I feel a little bit insane. And I want to become hysterical.” Something like a smile appeared. “I can’t quite believe this is happening, because I don’t see how I can actually stand it if it really is, I don’t see how I can stand it without going insane.” Then
the strange smile disappeared. “You know that feeling of relief you get when you wake up from a particularly disturbing dream, that almost rushlike sensation when you realize that it was a dream, and that you won’t actually have to face whatever it was that was happening?”
Carlucci nodded, knowing exactly what she meant.
“I want that feeling, Frank, I want it so badly I could scream, and I know, I know I am not going to get that feeling. And that makes me want to scream even more.” She paused, staring hard at him.
He continued his silence, helpless and paralyzed by grief.
“For Christ’s sake, Frank, talk to me!” She pulled her hand back, balled it into a fist, and swung, punching his arm. “Talk to me!”
She struck him twice more, but he still could not say anything. Then she stopped, threw her arms around him, and buried her face in his shoulder.
CHAPTER 35
She awakened, and opened her eyes. But the light hurt, and she closed them again. She felt awful. Was she alone? She listened, heard sounds from the street coming in through open windows, but nothing from the apartment.
“Cage’?”
“Yes.”
“Are you here?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
She heard floorboards creaking, the sounds of Cage settling into the chair beside the cot, then felt his hand take hers. She tried opening her eyes again, just a crack this time, wanting to see his face. Yes, he was there, looking down at her. She hadn’t been sure. She thought about raising her head to look around, look down at her arms, see if the rashes were there yet, but she didn’t even try. It was impossible.
“Can I get something for you?” he asked.
She closed her eyes once more. “What time is it?”
“Uh, three-thirty, four, something like that.”
“In the afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me how Nikki saved your life,” she said.
“Now?”
Carlucci's Heart Page 27
