I

i

“Is he dreaming?” Adrianna asked Dr. Koppelman one day in early spring, when her visit to sit at Will’s bedside coincided with the physician’s rounds.

It was almost four months since the events in Balthazar and, in its own almost miraculous way, Will’s mauled and fractured body was mending itself. But the coma was as profound as ever. No sign of motion disturbed the glacial surface of his state.

The nurses moved him regularly so as to prevent his developing bedsores; his bodily needs were taken care of with drips and catheters. But he did not, would not, wake. And often, when Adrianna had come to visit him through that dreary Winnipeg winter, and looked down at his placid face, she found herself wondering: What are you doing?

Hence her question. She normally had an allergic response to doctors, but Koppelman, who insisted on being called Bernie, was an exception. He was in his early fifties, overweight, and to judge by the stains on his fingers (and his minted breath) a heavy smoker. He was also honest when it came to his ignorance, which she liked, even though it meant he didn’t really have any answers for her.

“We’re as much in the dark as Will is right now,” he went on. “He may be in a completely closed down state as far as his consciousness is concerned. On the other hand he may be accessing memories at such a deep level that we can’t monitor the brain activity. I just don’t know.”

“But he could still come out of it,” Adrianna said, looking down at Will.

“Oh certainly,” Koppelman said. “At any time. But I can’t offer you any guarantees. There are processes at work in his skull right now that, frankly, we don’t understand.”

“Do you think it makes any difference if I’m here with him?”

“Were you and he very close?”

“You mean lovers? No. We worked together.” Koppelman nibbled at his thumbnail. “I’ve seen cases where the presence of somebody the patient knew at the bedside did seem to help things. But—”

“You don’t think this is one of those.” Koppelman looked concerned. “You want my honest opinion?” he said, lowering his voice.

“Yes.”

“People have to get on with their lives. You’ve done more than a lot of people would, coming here, day in, day out. You don’t live in the city, do you?”

“No. I live in San Francisco.”

“That’s right. There was talk about moving Will back, wasn’t there?”

“There are a lot of people dying in San Francisco.” Koppelman looked grim. “What can I tell you?” he said.

“You could be sitting here for another six months, another year, and he’d still be in a coma. That’s a waste of your life. I know you want to do your best for him but . . . you see what I’m saying?”

“Of course.”

“It’s painful to hear, I know.”

“It makes sense,” she replied. “It’s just . . . I can’t quite face the idea of leaving him here.”

“He doesn’t know, Adrianna.”

“Then why are you whispering?”

Caught in the act, Koppelman grinned sheepishly. “I’m only saying the chances are, that wherever he is he doesn’t care about the world out here.” He glanced back toward the bed. “And you know what? Maybe he’s happy.”

ii

Maybe he’s happy. The words haunted Adrianna, reminding her of how often she and Will had talked—deeply, passionately—about the subject of happiness, and how much she now missed his conversation.

He was not, he had often said, designed for happiness. It was too much like contentment, and contentment was too much like sleep. He liked discomfort—sought it out, in fact (how often had she been stuck in some grim little hide, too hot or too cold, and looked over at him to see him grinning from ear to ear?

Physical adversity had reminded him he was alive, and life, he’d told her oh so many times, was his obsession).

Not everybody had found evidence of that affirmation in his work. The critical response to both the books and exhibitions had often been antagonistic. Few reviewers had questioned Will’s skills—he had the temperament, the vision, and the technical grasp to be a great photographer. But why, they complained, did he have to be so relentlessly grim? Why did he have to seek out images that evoked despair and death when there was so much beauty in the natural world?

While we may admire Will Rabjohns’s consistency of vision, the Time critic had written of “Feeding the Fire,” his accounts of the way humanity brutalizes and destroys natural phenomena become in turn brutal and destructive to those very sensibilities it wishes to arouse to pity or action. The viewer gives up hope in the face of his reports. We watch the extinction with despairing hearts. Well, Mr. Rabjohns, we have dutifully despaired. What now?

It was the same question Adrianna asked herself when Dr. Koppelman went about his rounds. What now? She’d wept, she’d cursed, she’d even found enough of her much-despised Catholic training intact to pray, but none of it was going to open Will’s eyes. And meanwhile, her life was ticking on.

This was not the only issue in play. She’d found a lover here in Winnipeg (an ambulance driver, of all things); a fellow called Neil, who was far from her ideal of manhood, but who was plainly attracted to her. She owed him answers to the questions he asked her nightly: Why couldn’t they move in together, just try it out for a couple of months, see if it worked?

She sat down on the bed beside Will, took his hand in hers, and told him what was going through her head.

“I know I’ll be pulled into this half-assed relationship with Neil if I hang around here, and he’s probably more your type than he is mine. He’s a bear, you know. He hasn’t got a hairy back—” she added hurriedly, “I know you hate hairy backs, but he’s big—and a bit of a hunk in a sexy kind of way, but I can’t live with him, Will. I can’t. And I can’t live here. I mean, I was staying for him and for you, and right now you’re not taking any notice of me and he’s taking too much notice, so it’s a bad deal all around. Life’s not a rehearsal, right? Isn’t that one of Cornelius’s pearls of wisdom? He’s gone back to Baltimore, by the way. I don’t hear from him, which is probably for the best because he always annoyed the fuck out of me. Anyhow, he had that line about life not being a rehearsal and he’s right. If I hang around here I’m going to end up moving in with Neil and we’re just going to get cozy when you’re going to open your eyes—and Will, you are going to open your eyes—and you’re going to say we gotta go to Antarctica. And Neil’s going to say, No you’re not. And I’m going to say, Yes I am. And there’ll be tears, and they won’t be mine. I can’t do that to him. He deserves better.

“So . . . what am I saying? I’m saying I have to take Neil out for a beer and tell him it’s not going to work, then I have to haul my ass back to San Francisco, and get my shit together, because, baby, thanks to you I have never been so untogether in my whole damn life.”

She dropped her voice to a whisper. “You know why. It’s not something we’ve talked about and if you had your eyes open right now I wouldn’t be saying it because what’s the use? But Will: I love you. I love you so much and most of the time it’s okay, because we get to work together and I figure you love me back, in your way. Okay, it’s not the way I’d really like it, if I had the choice, but I don’t, so I’ll take whatever I can. And that’s all you’re getting. And if you can hear this, you should know, buddy, when you wake up I will deny every fucking word, okay? Every fucking word.” She got up from beside the bed, feeling tears close. “Damn you, Will,” she said. “All you have to do is open your eyes. It’s not that difficult There’s so much to see, Will. It’s icy fucking cold, but there’s this great clean light on everything: You’d like it. Just. Open. Your. Eyes.” She watched and waited, as if by force of thought she could stir him. But there was no motion, except the mechanical rising and falling of his chest.

“Okay. I can take a hint. I’d better get going. I’ll come visit you again before I go.” She leaned over him and lightly kissed him on the forehead. “I tell you Will, wherever the hell you are, it’s not as good as it is out here. Come back and see me, see the world, okay? We’re missing you.”