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fifty, sixty, seventy, and still be winning trophies. And I'll be dead, dead, dead. Of course I know I can't blame my illness on Brian, but I can still hate him for being so alive. And the deep, deep irrelevance of his shiny life, with the peewee games and the goldens, I can hate that too. The white-bread sitcom cutesiness and the lies of the Nazi church.
    I'm leaning forward with gritted teeth, my face contorted with nastiness. I'm like a bad witch, rotten with curses, casting a spell even I can't see to the end of. And maybe Brian picks up the vibes, because at last he stirs. A soft murmur flutters his lips, and he rolls from his side onto his back. His hands are on the pillow on either side of his head, so he lies defenseless. You could plunge a dagger into his heart.
    Except I have shifted position now too, the roller coaster of my feelings bringing me up from down. Perhaps it's the Xanax starting to work. But suddenly it's like I'm guarding him, watching over the last of my clan, the only one whose luck has held. Oh, I still want him out of there. Back to his sweet vanilla life, every trace of him expunged, all the torrent of stinging memories he has brought in his glittering train. I wish to be left to die in peace. I don't need a brother—it's far too late in the game. But I stand watch anyway, keeping him free of harm as he sleeps, from curses and daggers.
    Tears are pouring down my face, silent and futile, without any reason. Crybaby. Finally I think I will sleep. I stand, creaking the chair again, and I'm superconscious of every broken thing in my body. My eight lesions, my old man's bladder, my nerve-warped knee. I wrap my arms about myself, huddling in my smallness. I take a last long look at Brian, and on impulse I lean above him, hover over his face, and brush my lips against his cheek, just where my own cheek bears the mark. I've never kissed my brother before. He doesn't flinch, he doesn't notice. Then I turn and stumble back to my room, pleading the gods to be rid of him.
     

 

     
    S OME MORNINGS YOU WAKE UP WHOLE. YOU OPEN YOUR eyes, and the ceiling is swirling with light reflected off the ocean. The bright air pours through the balcony doors like tonic. It's not that you forget even for a moment that you're sick. But if you're not in pain, the sheer ballast of being alive simply astonishes. I fling off the comforter, filling the air with feathers like confetti. I rise and caper across the threadbare carpet in my Jockey shorts. I slip through the french doors, the first sight of the limitless blue never failing to catch my heart. I straddle the stucco balustrade like a pony and drink it all in. The smell of sea pine and eucalyptus wafts around me. I don't want anything else but this.
    Except I don't really know if that fits Gray's plans. When he offered the place to me— Why don't you stay at the beach for a while —I don't think he figured to have me all winter. We weren't such very close friends to begin with. He was a regular patron angel of AGORA, five hundred bucks a year, and a big fan of Miss Jesus. We'd known each other in passing for years, plastic cups of Almaden at everybody's opening, but Gray was so buttoned-up and -down, so WASP-geeky, we never seemed to get very far.
    Then it was funerals we'd see each other at. Gradually he began to seem like an angel for real, taking care of mortuary etiquette, comforting mothers and lovers. He'd always provided for artists to sojourn at the beach house, three- or four-week stints, a sort of one-man colony. But here I am two months later, my welcome long overstayed, not budging an inch.
    I catch sight of a pair of birds sailing the updraft at the lip of the bluff. They're white like herons but fat as wild geese, with bands of gray at the head and neck. One of them lights on the post at the top of the beach stairs, and the other cavorts in circles, dipping close tothe swords of the cactus. I can't say what they are. I don't know the names in nature,