Todd held his breath as the dressing which the bandages had kept in place was gently teased away from his face. It felt as though a layer of his skin was coming away along with the gauze. He heard a little intake of breath from Maxine. "What?" he murmured.

"It's okay," Burrows said softly. "Please hold still. This is a very delicate procedure. By the way, when I put the new dressing on, I'll be leaving holes for your eyes, so you'll be able to ... very still, please ... good, good ... so you'll be able to see."

"Maxine ... ?"

"Please, Todd. Don't move a muscle."

"I want her to tell me what it looks like."

"She can't see yet, Todd."

Burrows said something to his nurse, half under his breath. Todd didn't catch the words. But he heard the gauze, which had now been stripped from his face completely, dropped with a wet plop into a receptacle. He imagined it soaked with his blood, shreds of his skin stuck to it. His stomach turned.

"I want to puke," he said.

"Shall I stop for a moment?" Burrows asked.

"No. Just get it over and done with."

"Right. Well then I'm going to start cleaning you up," Burrows said. "Then we'll see how you're healing. I must say, it's looking very good so far."

"I want Maxine to take a look."

"In a minute," Burrows said. "Just let me -- "

"Now," Todd said, nausea fueling his impatience. He raised his hand blindly and pushed at Burrows. The man moved aside. "Maxine?" Todd said.

"I'm here."

Todd beckoned in the direction of Maxine's voice. "Come and look at me, will you? I want you to tell me what I look like."

He heard Maxine's heels on the polished wood floor.

"Hurry." Her step quickened. Now she was close by him. "Well?" he said.

"To be honest, it's hard to tell till he -- "

"Christ! I knew it! I fucking knew it! He fucked me up!"

"Wait, wait," Maxine said. "Calm down. A lot of it's just the ointments he put on you. Let him clean it off before we get hysterical." Todd reached out to her. She caught hold of his hand. "It's going to be okay," she said, though her grip was clammy. "Just be patient. Why can't men be patient?"

"You're not patient," he reminded her.

"Just let him work, Todd."

"But you're not. Admit it."

"All right. I'm not patient."

Burrows set to work again, meticulously swabbing around Todd's eyes, cleaning his gummed lashes. The stink of cleaning fluid was sharp in his nostrils, his sinuses ran, and his eyes, when he finally opened them, were awash.

"Welcome back," Maxine said, unknitting her fingers from his, as though a little embarrassed by the intimacy. It took a couple of minutes for Todd's sight to clear, and another two for his eyes to become accustomed to the dimmed light in the room. But part by part, face by face, the world came back to him. The large, half-blinded window, and the rain-lashed deck beyond it. The expensive ease of the room; the Indian rug, the leather furniture, the Calder mobile, in yellow, red and black, which hung below the sky-light. Burrows' knitted brow, and fixed, nervous smile. The nurse, a pretty blonde woman. And finally Maxine, her face ashen. Burrows moved away, like a portrait painter stepping back from a canvas to check the effect he'd achieved.

"I want to see," Todd said to him.

"Give yourself a minute," Maxine said. "Are you still feeling sick?"

"Why? Is it going to make me heave?"

"No," she said. He almost believed her. "You just look a little puffy, that's all. And a little raw. It's not so bad."

"You used to be such a good liar."

"Really," she insisted. "It's not so bad."

"So let me look." Everyone in the room remained still. "Will somebody get me a mirror? Okay -- " He started to push himself up out of the chair. "I'll get one myself."

"Stay where you are," Maxine said. "If you really want to see. Nurse? What's your name?"

"Karyn."

"Go up into the bedroom, and you'll find a little hand mirror there on the vanity. Bring it down."

It seemed to Todd the girl took an eternity to fetch the mirror. While they waited, Burrows stared out at the rain. Maxine went to refresh her stinger.

Finally, the girl returned. Her eyes were on Burrows, not on Todd.

"Tell her to give it to me," Todd said.

"Go on," Burrows said.

The nurse put the mirror into Todd's hand. He took a deep breath, and looked at himself.

There was a moment, as his eyes fixed on his reflection, when reality fluttered, and he thought: none of this is real. Not the room, nor the people in it, nor the rain outside, nor the face in the mirror. Especially not the face in the mirror. It was a figment, fluttering and fluttering and --

"Jesus ... " he said, like Duncan McFarlane, "look at me -- "

The strength in his hand failed him, and the mirror dropped to the ground. It fell face down. The nurse stooped to pick it up, but he said: "No. Leave it."

She stepped away from him, and he caught a look of fear in her eyes. What was she afraid of? His voice, was it? Or his face? God help him if it was his face.

"Somebody open the blinds," he said. "Let's get some light in here. It's not a fucking funeral."

Maxine went to the switch, and flipped it. The mechanism hummed; the blind rose, showing him an expanse of rain-soaked deck, some furniture; and beyond the deck the beach. One solitary jogger -- probably some famous fool like himself, determined to preserve his beauty even in the pouring rain-was trudging along the shore, followed by two bodyguards. Todd got up from his chair and went to the window. Then, despite the presence of strangers, he lay his hand against the cold glass and began to weep.

FOUR

Burrows had brought both painkillers and tranquilizers that Todd supplemented with a large order from Jerome Bunny, a ratty little Englishman who'd been his supplier of illicit pharmaceuticals for the last four years. Under their influence, Todd spent the next twenty-four hours in a semi-somnambulant state.

The rain was unrelenting. He sat in front of Maxine's immense television screen and watched a succession of images of other people's pain -- houses gone, families divided -- dreamily wondering if any of them would exchange their misery for his. Every now and then a memory of the visage he'd seen in the mirror -- vaguely resembling somebody he'd known, but horribly wounded, filled with pus and blood -- would swim up before him, and he'd take another pill, or two or three, and wash it down with a shot of single malt, and wait for the opiates to drive the horror off a little distance.

The new dressings Burrows had put on, though as promised they indeed left his eyes uncovered, were still oppressive, and more than once Todd's hands went up to his face unbidden, and would have ripped the bandages off had he not governed himself in time. He felt grotesque, like something from a late-night horror movie, his face -- which had been his glory -- become some horrible secret, festering away beneath the bandages. He asked Maxine what movie it was -- some Rock Hudson weepie -- in which a man was covered up this way. She didn't know.

"And stop thinking about yourself for a while," she said. "Think about something else."

Easily said; the trouble was thinking about himself came naturally to him. In fact, it had become second-nature to him over the years to put all other considerations out of sight: to care only about Todd Pickett, and (on occasion) Dempsey Not to have done so would have meant a diminution of his power in the world. After all, he'd been playing a game which only the truly self-obsessed had a chance of victory. All others were bound to fall by the wayside. Now, when it would have been healthier to direct his attention elsewhere, he'd simply lost the knack. And he had no dog by his side to love him for being the boss, whatever the hell he looked like.