Note: Title copyright Simon and Garfunkel.

CHAPTER ONE

He woke up biting back screams. There was a pulsing pain under his left floating ribs and his shoulders were shrieking at him, telling him to say whatever they wanted to hear and to say it right now! Now!

He clutched his side with his right hand, balling his left into a fist and ramming it into his mouth, rocking and trying to calm down. He bit down on his phalanges, the real pain helping to dissipate the spectral agony. He drew thin, panting breaths and tried to stay quiet so he wouldn't wake his wife.

When he had recovered sufficient control to make his limbs obey him he got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. Locking the door so that he wouldn't be interrupted—she had done that before—he climbed into the tub in the dark. His groping hand found the cold water faucet, and he turned it on full force. He popped the lever that diverted to the shower, and with a bang inside the wall the water changed its course and the deluge washed over him from above, pounding on his head and running over his face and down his chest and back. The chill of the water numbed him and made his shoulders twitch. It felt good. He started to shiver and he sat down in the tub, wrapping his arms around his knees. He tilted his head upwards, filling his mouth from the stream of cool water from above. He sloshed it around and spit. The next time he swallowed, then he turned his face so that the thin jets of water pelted his eyelids.

His teeth began to chatter and he turned off the water. He lay back in the empty bathtub, draping his arm over the side. The water started to evaporate off of his skin and the shaking grew in intensity. It felt good, anchoring him as it did firmly in reality, in the present. When he was younger he had hated the cold with a vengeance, having spent too many ill-clad winters in New York. But that was before he had known how horrible it could be to be hot, day after day and night after night as the months turned to years. To sweat until you couldn't feel the heat because you were delirious with it, to fight the pain of breathing air warmer than blood, to try to hide your aching eyes from a sun that cooked the skin like a piece of grilled fish. There were times when a man needed to be cold, and this was one of those times.

When his body was dry and the shivering had died to the occasional ecstatic paroxysm he got out of the tub and fumbled for the light switch. His satin smoking jacket was hanging on the back of the door, and he wrapped it around himself, cinching the sash around his middle. He looked at himself in the mirror. Forty-five and still a good-looking stud. He ruffled his hair, which had gone curly from the wetting. His hand moved unconsciously to his chest where the smoking jacket formed a V of flesh. His finger traced a jagged white line standing out against his cold-reddened skin, caressing it nostalgically. It was his favorite scar, and he had so many to choose from.

He grinned. Nineteen fifty-one. High school diploma in hand, free at last, newly seventeen, his own master. He divided his time between the upper Manhattan night life, excursions out to Long Island on his newly acquired motorcycle (second-hand but still the fastest thing he had ever ridden) and rehersals. He was Young Siward in a Shakespeare in the Park production of Macbeth. He'd just had a fight with Dorcas, the doll who played Lady Macduff—could she ever do Damsel in Distress! She'd caught him kissing Hecate (that girl was magic, even in the makeup) between scenes. So Dorcas had snuck the tip off of Macbeth's foil, and the death-thrust that was supposed to be an illusion had ripped right through his costume and sliced a zigzag line from his breastbone to his shoulder. The director had been furious, the star had been sick with contrition. Siward himself had required four stitches and got an extra twenty bucks out of the debacle.

His wandering hand found another mark below that one, a thick, puckered ridge. His smile dissolved. If you split a shaft of green bamboo lengthwise at just the right angle, you got an edge like a knife, except that it still retained all of the snap and flexibility of bamboo. And if you hit a bound man with it it hurt him like hell.

He needed a cigar, he decided, and he needed a drink. He switched off the light and found his way through the dark to the kitchen. Here the streetlamps filtered their light through the lace curtains and internal illumination was unnecessary. There was a box of cigars in the china cabinet, next to the menorah. He too out one long, thick cylinder and unwrapped it. Usually he did so lovingly, the way one would undress a beautiful woman, but tonight he needed the smoke, not merely wanted it. He bit off one end and spit it into the sink, then lit a match and drew the first quick, sharp puffs. When the tobacco caught he shook the match out and filled his mouth with the fragrant smoke. Another little pleasure keeping him in the moment.

He went to the liquor cabinet and took out a decanter of golden whiskey. The tumblers were in the next cupboard. Even when he was bent on drinking a bottle dry he used a glass.

He took another long drag on the cigar, exhaling voluminously. Sitting at the table, he poured a tumblerful of whiskey and took a swallow. The potent liquor burned its way down his esophagus and warm him from the inside out. He swung his right leg so that his bare foot hissed against the cool linoleum. He alternated between the glass and the cigar, filling the former whenever it got too empty. The cuckoo clock in the sitting room sounded off three a.m. He smoked the cigar down to a stub, snuffed it in the ceramic ashtray next to the vase of daisies, and poured one more half-tumbler of liquor, draining it with a grimace. He got to his feet, stumbling unsteadily to the cabinet. He put the almost-empty decanter back in the cupboard, set the tumbler in the sink and started back towards the bedroom.

His wife was lying where he had left her. He took off his smoking jacket, draped it carefully over the chair of her vanity, and climbed into bed beside her. She stirred a little as his cold feet brushed her warm ankle, but she didn't wake up. She had been sleeping much heavier than usual lately. Time was she'd wake up if he sneezed, never mind getting out of bed; now she hardly even moved. Too bad. The alcohol was doing its work and he could have done with a bit of bingo-bango-bongo. But she was asleep, so he buried his head in the pillow instead and slipped into a drunken sleep.