I lounged around most of the day, calling clients, doing what I could at home from my laptop, finally venturing out in the late afternoon to get some food. I had hoped to get down to Bertha Palmer for basketball, but I had to call the school to cancel. Friday, to my annoyance, I still had enough anesthesia in me that I continued to be too groggy to do much, but Saturday I woke early. The thought of lounging around the house for one more day made me feel like nails on a blackboard.

Morrell was still asleep. I finished dressing, including putting on a sling that the hospital had given me with my discharge papers, then scribbled a note that I propped on Morrell’s laptop.

When I got downstairs, Mr. Contreras was glad to see me, but not happy when I announced I was going out for a while with Peppy. Even though she’s so well trained she’ll heel without straining on her leash, he thought I should spend the weekend in bed.

“I’m not going to do anything stupid, but I’ll go nuts if I lie around the house. I’ve already spent almost three days in bed-way beyond my lounging limit.”

“Yeah, you never yet listened to nothing I had to say, why should you start today? Whatcha gonna do when you’re out on the Tollway and that shoulder of yours won’t let you turn the steering wheel fast enough to get out of the way of some crackpot?”

I put my good arm around his shoulders. “I’m not going on the Tollway. Just down to the University of Chicago, okay? I won’t go over forty-five, and I’ll stay in the right lane all the way there and back.”

He was only mildly mollified by my sharing my plans, but he knew I was going to go whether he grumped or not; he muttered that he’d walk Mitch and slammed his door on me.

I was halfway down the walk when I remembered that my car was still in South Chicago. I almost rang the bell to get Mr. Contreras to take Peppy, but didn’t think I could face him again today. No dogs on the CTA; I went down to Belmont to try my luck with cabs. The fourth one I flagged was willing to drive to the far South Side with a dog. The driver was from Senegal, he explained during the long ride, and had a Rottweiler for companionship, so he didn’t mind Peppy’s golden hairs all over his upholstery. He asked about the sling and tutted solicitously when I explained what had happened. In turn, I asked him how he came to be in Chicago, and heard a long story about his family and their optimistic hopes that his being here would make their fortune.

My Mustang was still on Yates, where I’d parked it Tuesday evening. My lucky break for the week: it had all four tires, and all the doors and windows were intact. The cabdriver kindly waited until I had Peppy inside and the engine going before he left us.

I drove over to South Chicago Avenue to look at the remains of Fly the Flag. The front was still more or less intact, but a big chunk of the back wall was missing. Pieces of cinder block were strewn around, as if some drunk giant had stuffed a hand through the window and pulled off bits of the building. I slipped on long feathers of ash, the residue of the rayons and canvas that had gone up in Tuesday’s fireball. With my arm in a sling, keeping my balance was tricky, and I ended up tripping on a piece of rebar, landing smartly on my good shoulder. The pain made my eyes tear up. If I injured my right arm I wouldn’t be able to drive, and Mr. Contreras would have a field day, probably field month, full of “I told you so” s.

I lay in the detritus, looking at the low gray sky overhead, flexing my right arm and shoulder. Just a bruise, nothing I couldn’t ignore if I put my mind to it. I twisted around and sat on one of the pieces of cinder block, absently picking through the remains around me. Fragments of windowpane, a whole roll of marigold braid miraculously intact, warped shards of metal that might once have been spools, an aluminum soap dish in the shape of a frog.

Now that was a strange thing to find in a place like this, unless the bathroom had been blown to bits and this had fallen through to the fabric storage area. But the bathroom had been a nasty utilitarian hole: I didn’t remember seeing anything as whimsical as a frog in it. I tucked it into my peacoat pocket and pushed myself back to my feet. Just as well I was in jeans and sneaks for this particular adventure, instead of a backless evening gown: the jeans could go through the washer.

I went as far as the back wall, but the ruin inside looked too unstable to risk going inside for further exploration. The front was intact, but the fire had started in the back, on the building’s Skyway side-out of sight of the street. I could have gone in through the loading dock, but that meant hoisting myself up, and my shoulder gave an almighty jolt when I tried it.

I returned to my car, frustrated by my limited mobility, and headed north, keeping the pace sedate so I could steer one-handed. When we got to Hyde Park, I parked outside the University of Chicago campus, and let Peppy chase squirrels for a while. Despite the cold weather, a number of students were sitting outside with coffee and textbooks. Peppy made the rounds, giving people that soulful look that says, you can feed this dog or you can turn the page. She managed to cadge half a peanut butter sandwich before I called her sharply to heel.

When I had bundled her back into the Mustang, I went into the old social sciences building to scrub the worst of the ash off my clothes and hands: I couldn’t visit April looking like a Halloween ghoul. As I turned to go, I saw the gash in my coat’s shoulder, where they’d cut it away from me in the emergency room. I didn’t look like a ghoul, but a bag lady.

18 Visiting Hours

Balloons and stuffed animals lined the scuffed corridors of the children’s hospital, looking like desperate offerings to the arbitrary gods who play with human happiness. As I wound my way along halls and up stairwells, I passed little alcoves where adults sat waiting, silent, unmoving. Passing the patient rooms, I heard snatches of overly bright talk, moms using sheer energy to coax their children to health.

When I got to the fourth floor, I didn’t have any trouble finding April’s room: Bron and Sandra Zoltak Czernin were fighting in a nearby alcove.

“You were out screwing some bitch and your kid was dying. Don’t tell me you love her!” Sandra was trying to whisper, but her voice carried beyond me; a woman walking the hall with a small child attached to an IV looked at them nervously and tried to shepherd her toddler out of earshot. “You didn’t even get to the hospital until almost midnight.”

“I came here as soon as I heard. Have I left the hospital for one second since? You know damned well I can’t take calls on the truck phone, and I get home to find you gone, the kid gone, no message from you. I figured you and April were out, you’re always taking her off someplace, buying her crap we don’t have money for.

“As far as you’re concerned, I don’t exist. I’m just the paycheck to cover the bills you can’t pay on your own. You didn’t even have the sense or decency to call me, the kid’s own father. I had to get the news off the answering machine, and it wasn’t you who called but that goddamn Warshawski bitch. That’s how I find out my own kid is sick, not from my own wife. Mrs. High-and-Mighty, Virgin Mary had nothing on you for purity, and you wonder why I look for human flesh and blood someplace else.”

“At least you can be sure April is your daughter, which is more than Jesse Navarro or Lech Bukowski can say about their own kids, all the time you spent with their wives, and now, now they’re saying April has this thing with her heart, this thing, she can’t play basketball anymore.” Sandra’s thin aging face was twisted in pain.

“Basketball? She’s sick as a horse, and you’re upset she can’t play a stupid goddamn ball game? What’s with you?” Bron smashed the wall with the palm of his hand.