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no wanting to even think about it. So, you see, perhaps Nicholas knew something. Perhaps he didn’t. How could he? I am a man of some education and knowledge of science, Layton, but I have no basic explanation for this – or for you. Except to say: take a few days off and let this go.”
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    7

    And then, on his day off, he saw her again.

    It was just after 9, and the rain began, and he was going to have a late dinner at the Hong Kong Moon restaurant when he saw her walking out of the Quickie Mart with a small bag of groceries. When he caught up to her at her car, she didn’t look happy to see him at all. He wanted to ask about the Lifesavers, but it seemed trivial and stupid now.

    “Oh, hi Layton,” she said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around. My mother died. There was a lot to take care of.”

    “God, I’m sorry.”

    She got in the VW, rolling the window up against the rain.

    He stood there, the blur of the rain on the car window obscuring her features, feeling the shiver of the end of love – not real love, but new love, the moment when it is over.

    And then, she began laughing.

    For just a second – was it the rain? His tears? –he thought that it all shimmered.
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    Not just her, but the rain and the glass and the metal of the car.

    8

    It took Layton twenty minutes to get up the hill, flash his badge at the guards, nod to the night nurse who was surprised to see him, and make his way down the ward. He found Nix sitting up on his mattress, his hair soaked. Nix glanced up, then back down to his own upturned palms. “My nerves are all tingly,” Nix said.

    “Tell me everything,” Layton said.

    Nix didn’t look up from his hands. Then he licked his lips like a hungry child. “You don’t know this for sure, Conner, what you’re thinking. Whatever it is you’re thinking.”

    “Do you know who Angela is?”

    Nix grinned. “I have known many angels.”

    “Angela. She’s the one who gave you the Lifesavers.”

    “I have saved many many lives,” Nix said.

    Layton rushed over and grabbed him by the shoulders, lifting him to his feet. They stared eye to eye; sweat ran down Nix’s face. “What is 60

    it you do? What is it about the baby crying and the woman and the things that you babble about?”

    Nix’s grin faded. “It’s the machinery. It’s how it works. It’s how we work. It’s how the world changes in the dark, Conner. It’s how when light particles are lessened, it’s not just about seeing, it’s about how in absolute darkness it can change. We can change.”

    Layton pushed him back down on the bed. “Half an hour ago you were a woman in a car.”

    “Was I?” Nix asked, almost slyly. “Was I? Well, then, Nurse Conner, you have already begun your journey. Do you remember being inside her, this Angela? How you pushed in, how she opened, how she made those little noises that made you push to greater and greater heights, how she turned twenty one week and how she told you all about her dying mother and how you fell in love and how she broke your heart one night in the rain? Do you remember playing with her body, or asking her to do something that you find in your heart of hearts to be repulsive and lowly but which brings you great pleasure? Do you remember when she told you all her secrets, even the one about her 61

    uncle, or the time you both laughed at once over something you seemed to think of at the same time, as if you had so much in common, Nurse Conner, that this might just be the girl for you, this might just be Miss Right and you just might be the luckiest man in the world? And then you told her that awful secret, the dark secret, the one you thought you could trust her with, the one about your father’s madness, about how it pushed you to the edge and how one night you--”

    Later, when two psych techs pulled him off Nix, Layton could not remember raising his fists, let alone bringing them down near forty times over Nix’s head, nor could he remember