Natalie opened the bedroom door.
“Time to wake up, Professor.”
The room was musty and warm. Sunlight filtered through the dirty windows, illuminating a somber explosion of books on the desk, dresser, and floor. Dust rode the currents down in lazy circles, turning the heavy mahogany furniture gray. Things rarely move anymore in this room, she mused. Even the professor’s open books, the ones Natalie remembered him paging through furiously, were now covered with fine, thin grit.
The bedroom—like the professor—was slowing down.
Natalie frowned. This was the only room in the small house she wasn’t allowed to invade with her rags and buckets and brooms since all the scraps of paper lying about—filled with the professor’s cryptic notations—could contain possible answers to everything. Not wanting to be held accountable for throwing away any priceless solutions to universal questions, she cleaned only as far as the professor’s door, eyes open for any unusual junk her buzzing vacuum cleaner might eat.
She switched off the machine. “You have to get up now, Professor. Otherwise you won’t get much sleep tonight. Come on now, nap time is over.”
Natalie put the day’s mail on the cluttered dresser, on top of the rest of the week’s unopened mail. The tall stack wavered a moment then spilled to the floor. Natalie cursed under her breath as she scooped up the envelopes, some with exotic foreign stamps and postmarks, resisting the urge to open them to discover the secrets they contained. Only the fear that the professor might realize what she had done stopped her. And she was too shy to ask him to open them so she could read the letters when he left the room, as she had done for years when he still shared her curiosity for what the mail might contain.
Natalie saw the professor was still asleep, wrapped tight in his linen sheet. She clutched the mysterious envelopes for a few seconds more and then reluctantly put them back where they belonged.
She moved across the room and stared down at a dust-covered page of an open heavy volume on the professor’s desk, clucking her tongue over the incomprehensible symbols that spilled down the page like a waterfall.
Marlowe stirred. A long, low groan chased her away from the book.
“Really, Professor, it’s time to wake up.” She tentatively shook the great man’s shoulder; a shudder ran through his entire length. “Dinner will be ready in about an hour.”
“I don’t . . .”
“What it is? You don’t want to eat? But you must.”
“Don’t feel so good.” He rocked his head on his pillow. “Not so good. No choice now but to finally tell you.”
Natalie backed away in small, uncertain steps. “Should I call Dr. Dorning? Should I call the hospital instead? Please tell me what to do.”
Marlowe coughed violently, his stick frame shaking the bed.
A spot of blood appeared on his chin.
Natalie ran from the room.
****
He was not ready, not ready, not ready.
The windshield wipers beat in time to the refrain, much faster than they had to in the light mist. Dorning gripped the steering wheel tight.
“This can’t be happening,” he muttered again. “Not now. Not yet.”
The worn tires on the old Mercedes squealed as he took a sharp left turn through a yellow light in the center of town.
At least the housekeeper had the good sense to call him first, he thought. Perhaps the professor would make an adequate recovery, or better yet, perhaps it was a false alarm. But from Natalie’s description—the rolled-back eyes, the labored breathing—Dorning feared the worst, so he had no choice but to call for an ambulance.
He simply was not ready and could only hope the clinic could save the professor’s life.
Traffic slowed to a stroll. Dorning saw the street light at the next intersection had malfunctioned and was flashing red, banged a fist on the dash. “Come on, come on. Not today.”
He noticed the gang of young beggars that had accosted him yesterday, taking advantage of the snarled traffic once again.
Dorning glared at them as they worked their way towards him, car by car. “Go away, you unwanted scum.”
He rolled up the windows, staring straight ahead so as not to be bothered. The same lanky teen who knocked on his window before knocked again.
“Hey man, remember me?”
Dorning refused to look at the young man as traffic inched forward. The teen easily kept pace.
“Hey, don’t you want to help out Miguel again? Just look at this poor boy.”
The teen reached behind him, grabbed Miguel by the back of the collar, and pulled him up to the closed window. “How can you say no to a face like this?”
The other teens behind him laughed.
Dorning turned merely to glance at the boy but stared at him instead. The boy had a fresh-looking bruise on his face yet he seemed strangely calm.
He heard a horn behind him; Dorning looked ahead and saw the car in front was speeding through the intersection a quarter block away. He stepped firmly on the gas to close the distance. The Mercedes lurched forward.
There was the softest of knocks against the side of his car that under normal circumstances he would have ignored. But the sudden sharp cries of the youthful gang, and the fact he no longer saw Miguel beside or behind his car, made Dorning gasp and slam on the brakes. He threw the car into park and jumped out, looking down where the jolt seemed to have originated.
The lanky teen pointed to where the boy lay motionless. “Look what you did! What if you killed him?”
As if to prove that wasn’t true, Miguel struggled to sit up, clutching the top of his forehead with one hand.
Dorning started breathing again and relaxed a bit. Then he huffed. “I did nothing. He slipped and fell into the side of my car, and you know it. What is this, some kind of scam? I’ll have none of it.” He scowled at them all.
“No, sir. I just fell,” Miguel said. “But my head hurts, and I’m bleeding.” He tried not to cry, but his tears betrayed him. “I think I might need stitches or something.”
Dorning peered down at the boy’s wound, seeing to his dismay that it was true. Then he looked up and noticed several people in the cars behind him were watching him intently, as if waiting to see if he would stay and help, or turn and run.
Dorning huffed again. “All right. I’m in a hurry to get to the medical clinic outside of town to see someone who’s gravely ill. I can take you with me. Do you know if your parents have you covered under their medical insurance?”
The older teens looked at him and laughed loudly.
Dorning scowled at them again. They fell silent.
“So. Perhaps not. Who’s coming with us?”
No one stepped forward.
Dorning nodded. “Fine.” He opened the back door of the Mercedes. “Let’s go. I’ve wasted enough time here. Come on, you’re well enough to get in by yourself. I’ll drop you off at the emergency room. What they do with you after that is up to them.”
Miguel hesitated, then meekly slipped into the back seat.
Dorning got back behind the wheel. “Last chance to come with us if you’re concerned about your young friend, gentlemen.” The youthful gang warily backed away.
Dorning stared at them, incredulous. “You mean your young friend is being driven away by a grown man you don’t know, and none of you care?”
The lanky teen shrugged. “Not really.” He looked at Miguel, who sat clutching his bleeding forehead in the back seat “Sorry. It’s got nothing to do with you, or anything. We just can’t go with, what with maybe the cops and all that. See ya.”
“Suit yourself,” Dorning said. It was his turn to shrug. “See ya,” he mocked the teen, and then sped away from the curb.
Dorning hunched over the wheel, his youthful passenger in the back nearly forgotten already.
“Hang on, Percival,” he said firmly. Then it was his turn through the intersection.
Puzzled, the boy finally lowered his hand, glad to see there wasn’t too much blood. “Did you just call me Percival?” He fell back in the seat as the Mercedes rapidly accelerated.
Dorning glanced at the boy in the rearview mirror, laughing at how ridiculous that sounded.
“No, I wasn’t talking to—”
He fell silent as he alternated between staring at the road ahead and then the homeless boy in the mirror, his mouth hanging open in astonishment.
He slowed down a bit. “How old are you?” he asked.
The boy lowered his head as if ashamed. “I think I’m eleven but I might still be ten.”
“I see. And what’s your name again if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Miguel. Sanchez.”
“And where are your parents right now, Miguel?”
He dropped his head further still. “I don’t know.”
“Could you find them if you had to?”
The boy hesitated. “Just my mother. She’s . . . in rehab again.” The answer was faint. “But she’s getting better. She really is.”
“That welt on your face. Who gave it to you? Your father?”
Miguel hesitated then nodded.
“That’s what I thought. So it’s probably better you not find your parents if that’s what happens when you do.”
The boy didn’t answer.
Dorning tapped his lips, his thoughts racing. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “Do you know why I’m going to the clinic, who it is I’m going to see?”
“No, sir.”
“Does the name Percival Marlowe mean anything to you?”
“No, sir.”
Dorning nodded. “That’s all right. It doesn’t matter. He’s only the greatest scientific mind of the century if you ask my opinion. He’s brilliant, a genius.”
“Oh.”
Dorning shot another glance at the boy in the mirror as he turned off the main road. “Would you like to meet him?”
Miguel was confused. “Sure. I don’t know. Why?”
“Because it would be an honor for you to meet such a great man.”
The boy felt a fresh trickle of blood and pressed his hand back over his wound.
“Oh. Okay. But can I see the doctor first?”
“Of course, of course.”
The clinic finally came into sight; Dorning felt his optimism continue to rise. If the professor pulled through, and just one more hurdle was overcome with his experiment, he might finally be ready.
It was amazing to him how everything seemed to coalesce, to fall right into place just when it needed to happen, as if preordained.
Dorning laughed lightly as he pulled into the clinic parking lot, and then glanced back with a grin at the boy. “And to think I almost ran you right over! Instead, I think we’ll be taking very good care of you, Miguel. Very good care of you indeed.”
If he weren’t bleeding, Miguel might have jumped out and run after hearing such suspicious words. But he was bleeding, and he knew he had to see a doctor. Though he knew some of the other boys had joked about selling themselves for a night when they needed something like he did now, he stayed with the man whose name he didn’t know because things would be worse without the man’s help. Even if he had to betray the man later and run to avoid something unpleasant expected from him in return.
Dorning felt positively cheerful now. “Professor,” he said, “our biggest problem might have just been solved. Your salvation’s on the way. Actually,” he corrected himself with another glance back at Miguel after parking the car, “you’re the one who will gain the most if everything goes according to plan.”
“What will I gain?” Miguel was still suspicious and put his hand back on his forehead to staunch another trickle of blood.
Dorning got out, opened the car door for the boy and held it like a proper chauffeur. “The gift of a truly superior intelligence.” He beamed.
The boy didn’t know what to make of that answer as he tentatively followed Dorning into the bright lights of the emergency room to get the stitches he desperately needed.