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really, Harry? Get to know me a little better?” Debby said, putting Harry on.
    But Harry was beyond irony. “Yeah,” he said, “I would. I think you and I could maybe …”
    “Make some beautiful music?” Debby said, overstating her sarcasm as much as possible so that he might possibly get injured and leave.
    “Hey,” Harry said, “give me a break.”
    “Sorry, stud,” Debby said, “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive.”
    “Hey,” said Harry, “I’m not … I mean …”
    “Yes?” Debby said. “What do you mean? Hmm?”
    Harry stuttered and looked as though he were mortally wounded.
    Debby heard a chuckle and looked over in the direction of Peter Cross, who had been left alone on the bench nearest the river. She hoped he might respond. In fact, she realized now that she had purposely delivered the last lines to Harry a little loudly so that Peter might hear her. There was something remote, distant, and brilliant about him. The mere fact that a goof like Harry called him Spaceman (such an unoriginal, fraternity-boy putdown) had made her interested in Peter right from the start. But he had never shown the slightest interest in her. Or, if she could believe the gossip in the nurses’ station, any other woman in the hospital. He was a real loner, which to Debby made him all the more attractive. But even now, she couldn’t be certain he had laughed at her rebuff of Harry, because he was not facing her, but the river, and he seemed to be engrossed in a book.
    “Look,” Harry said. “You don’t have to be so damned bitchy about it. Christ! I was just trying to get to know you.”
    “Harry,” she said, “I am sorry. I just don’t feel like it. All right?”
    Harry recouped quickly. “It’s all right, doll,” he said. “Some other time. Well, I’ll leave you now. Gotta go see some friends. You can stay out here with Dr. I. Q.” He delivered the last line with some vengeance, then smiled and winked at her conspiratorially to let her know that she was a very small fish in his giant pond of guppies. She watched him as he bounded through the door back into the hospital.
    Debby knew she should go in herself. She had her rounds to make, but the longer she looked at Peter Cross’s back, the more interested she became. There was something about him that reminded her of a picture she had seen of an artist. No, not an artist, a poet of some kind. But she knew nothing of poetry. She had only thought of poetry because he was reading The
Collected Stories of Edgar
Allan Poe.
    “Hello,” she said softly, feeling terribly self-conscious, afraid that he would treat her as she had treated Harry.
    For a second Cross did not look up. It was as if she were invisible. Then he acknowledged her with a nod of his head.
    “That was pretty rough in there yesterday,” she said. “I hope they didn’t get on you at the meeting.”
    He smiled a bit and shook his head.
    “Not too bad,” he said.
    Now she smiled and sat down next to him.
    “You’re just saying that,” she said, “but I can guess pretty well what happened. Dios and Black probably stuck up for one another. The surgeons always do.”
    He put his book down on his lap and nodded.
    “Okay. You’ve got me there. But that’s okay. Still it bothers me. I hate to see an old person suffer because some doctors want to test out their technique….
    “Do you think that’s what happened?” Debby said, alarmed.
    “Well, no, not this time,” Cross said. “But the other times maybe. Do you know how many operations that woman had had in the past eighteen months? Five. And you know, four of them were probably the result of the first one.”
    Debby smiled, and shook her head.
    “Dr. Cross,” she said, “you are quite an outspoken person … I mean once you start talking.”
    “Really?” he said. “I always thought I was the Space Cadet.”
    Debby blushed a little. “You’ve heard those dumb jokes?”
    “I’ve heard them.”
    “They make me