Just after mid-morning, my phone vibrated in my purse, setting off all my internal alarms. For a moment, I was tempted to reject the call, since I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

“Jessica Koch?” a woman asked.

“Yeah?” My voice sounded unnaturally high.

Oh, God, Danny’s dead!

“Are you Danijel Taylor’s girlfriend?”

“Yes. What happened?” I’d been asking that question far too often these days.

“He was in a car accident. He was admitted here in Bietigheim Hospital half an hour ago.” The woman’s voice was calm and pleasant, but the world began turning faster, and the office was spinning dangerously.

“Where is he?”

She gave me the address for the hospital, and I stormed out of the office before I’d even hung up. I didn’t bother telling Bea where I was going. They’d probably heard my telephone conversation, because nobody called to ask why I’d just walked out.

The drive to the hospital seemed to stretch on for eternity. My head was buzzing. Just a car accident, I told myself, trying to keep calm. He must be okay, because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to tell the people at the hospital to call you. They had to have gotten your number from him.

It was amazing how well my rational mind was still working.

When I got there, I sprinted to the admissions desk. “I need to see Danijel Taylor,” I wheezed. “Which room?”

The blonde behind the desk clicked around on her computer with a tranquility that nearly made my head explode. “Just a moment, please,” she said, smiling. Then she reached for the phone and called one of the wards. It was several minutes before she addressed me again. “He’s in the emergency ward on the fifth floor. It could be a while before he’s moved to a room.”

I took the stairs, too impatient to wait for the elevator. I ran down the hallway like a maniac until I reached the emergency department front desk. “My boyfriend was brought here,” I panted. “Danijel Taylor. Can I see him?”

“He’s in radiology,” one of the nurses replied. “They’re doing an ultrasound of his abdominal area, and then they’ll need to take some X-rays. You can see him in an hour or two, as soon as he’s been brought to a room.”

“What? Two hours? He had them call me so I would come out here! Can’t I just talk to him for a second?”

“I’m afraid not.” She glanced through the paperwork, and her gaze fell upon a small note. “He said you’d be out,” she murmured, half to herself, as she read. “Oh, right, it was about the car. It’s out in a field, blocking a farmer’s way. It’s going to need to be moved. He said to tell you to have it scrapped.”

“Scrapped? Why? The car’s only four years old,” I told her, perfectly aware that she wouldn’t care.

She shrugged as if to confirm my suspicion. “That’s what he said. Anyway, they need it out of there. You should call a tow truck.” She told me where the car was. Danny must have been on the way to the gym.

And he wanted me to have his nearly new BMW scrapped?

Goddammit, Danny! This situation was absolutely too much for me. “How is he?” I asked the nurse.

“The doctors are still with him. He has a broken collarbone, a serial fracture of the ribs, and whiplash, along with a concussion. They’re still examining him to see if he has any other internal injuries. I’ll let you know as soon as you can go in to see him.” With that, she walked away, leaving me standing there.

Internal injuries? That didn’t sound like he was doing well at all.

Agitated, I walked up and down the hallways of the hospital until I found radiology. I briefly considered just walking in, but I didn’t even know if he was still in there, so I decided against it.

Instead, I called Jörg again. I had his number now—it was a good thing I’d called him from my own phone last time. “Jörg?” I said. “Danny was in a car accident. I’m in the emergency ward, and they won’t let me see him, but they want me to have his car towed.”

“Wait there, Jessica. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Thank God for Jörg.

A moment later, the doors to the radiology department swung open, and two nurses emerged, pushing a hospital bed in front of them.

“Danny!” I called, rushing over. The nurses were kind enough to stop. “What happened?”

He was awake, and apart from a bloody scrape across the left half of his face, he looked uninjured, if a bit dazed. “Jessica!” He grabbed my hand immediately. “I was in a car accident.”

Yeah, I knew that much already. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Couple broken ribs. They hurt. Okay besides that. Need to move the car.” He spoke in quick, choppy sentences, and his breathing was shallow. He wasn’t doing well at all—he couldn’t even take a proper breath. I saw they’d given him an IV, and the bag hung above his bed. Immediately, images of the AIDS hospice flashed through my mind, and I felt another panic attack coming on. Danny noticed and tried to sit up so that he could get a better look at me, but finally he gave up and fell back onto the bed with a cry of pain.

“You need to stay lying down,” one of the nurses admonished him sternly, pressing him down into the pillow. “He needs to have some X-rays done,” she explained to me. “We’re giving him the contrast medium intravenously. It may be a while. We’ll let you know.” She moved to push the bed again, and I began gasping for air.

Danny didn’t let go of my hand. “Everything’s okay,” he said, trying to calm me down. “It was just a car accident. You hear me? A regular old car accident, nothing more. Everything’s okay!” Speaking left him far too out of breath for “everything’s okay” to apply. The nurses peeled his hand from mine and rolled him away down a hallway marked “Staff Only.”

“I’ll go get the car and come back,” I called after him. I took several deep, slow breaths, the way Danny always did when he wanted to calm himself down. Car accidents could happen any time, there was no real reason to worry. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

Just then, Jörg came down the hallway toward me. “How is he?” he asked before he’d even reached me.

I shrugged. “I only saw him for a minute. Broken ribs, whiplash, nothing life-threatening.”

Jörg nodded. “Okay, let’s plan this out, then. We’ll call a tow truck, and then we’ll drive out to the scene of the accident and figure out where to bring the car. After that, we’ll go to your place and pick up a few things for him. He’ll probably have to stay here a few days.”

I agreed, and as we made our way to Jörg’s Passat, he called a towing company and relayed the address I’d given him. Then we drove out there ourselves. The street was stick-straight, without a single curve for miles. There were no trees in the area, the streets were dry and clean, and it was obvious no other cars had been involved in the accident. There was just nothing there, no skid marks indicating he’d swerved or hit the brakes, not even any shards of glass. Danny had driven into the ditch for no reason. His car was upside down in the middle of a field, at the foot of the embankment leading up to the street. He hadn’t even tried to stop.

“Good God,” I murmured. “How the hell did this happen?”

Jörg parked near the ditch, put his hazards on, and got out to survey the scene. “I don’t know, Jessica,” he said, putting his hands on his hips, “but it’s pretty goddamn strange. Danny knows how to drive. He should have at least tried to stay on the road.”

“What do you mean?” I shrieked, almost hysterical. “Are you saying he did this on purpose?”

“No.” Jörg gave me a stern look. “That’s not what I mean. Why would he deliberately drive into a ditch?”

“Because he wants to die,” I replied lamely.

Jörg shook his head decisively. “No,” he repeated. “That wouldn’t be like him. Do you really think he would do something like that without saying anything to you beforehand?”

Did I think that? No, I didn’t.

Danny wasn’t like that.

“You’re right.”

“And if you wanted to die, this isn’t the place you’d pick,” Jörg went on. “It looks more like he fell asleep at the wheel.”

Now it was me doing the decisive head-shaking. “No way. Danny’s the last person in the world to just fall asleep!”

“I hope he can tell us more later. Let’s go check out the car.”

Uncertainly, I followed Jörg down the embankment. “Oh my God,” I breathed. “Nobody could survive this!”

And it would probably have been better for him in the long term if he hadn’t survived it!

I pushed that ugly thought aside, along with the images of the AIDS hospice, completely disgusted with myself. We stepped up to the car. The roof was completely crushed, the windshield shattered. All the airbags had deployed. The tailpipe was sticking out at an angle from the back of the car, like an antenna. The driver’s side door had been pried open. I rubbed my eyes and face in complete disbelief.

“There’s no repairing that,” Jörg remarked dryly.

“Let’s take it to a mechanic. Please. Maybe there’s something they can do.”

Jörg looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “This car’s completely totaled, Jessica.”

“Mechanic,” I insisted.

The tow truck came, and we followed it the short distance to the authorized BMW repair shop, where they unloaded the car and set it upright. It looked even sadder than before.

I stared in complete bafflement at the car I’d claimed I’d never liked. I remembered the night we’d met at the festival, when Danny had driven after me in this car and blocked my path. How he’d driven backward down the road afterward. And the night he’d put me in the back and taken me to his place because I was so drunk. Tears burned my eyes as I recalled all the long conversations we’d had underneath those diffuse blue interior lights.

I tried to open the passenger door, but the whole car was so bent up that it wouldn’t budge. The loss of this car hurt my soul. Not just for my own sake, but because I knew how attached Danny had been to the BMW, even if he’d never have admitted it—after all, it was only a material possession.

The owner of the garage emerged from the office. “Mama mia!” he cried, throwing up his hands. “Five percent survival chance, maximum! Did the driver come out of there alive?”

I nodded.

“Mama mia,” he repeated. “Must be a lucky kid. Fate really smiles on some people!”

My throat burned as though I’d swallowed fire, and tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn’t take that much irony. Should I give him a quick run-down of Danny’s life?

“Scrap it,” I told him, turning away so he wouldn’t see me crying.

Jörg climbed into the twisted metal through the pried-open door to get Danny’s things from inside, and then took photos for the insurance claim. Hopefully Danny wouldn’t ever have to see them.

 

The police report indicated that Danny had been going much too fast when he drove off the road—they estimated he’d been pushing a hundred miles an hour. He hadn’t tried to brake or change direction. The BMW had rolled at least three times before coming to rest upside down. Nobody else had been involved, and there’d been no witnesses. Danny must have been completely alone on the road, which only made the whole thing even stranger.

A couple of people had called emergency services after driving past the scene. Nobody had stopped to check on Danny.

The paramedics hadn’t arrived until forty-five minutes after the accident, which would have been enough time for Danny to bleed to death if he’d been more seriously injured.

In my head, I cursed everyone who had driven by without stopping, wishing scabies on all of them. Never in a million years would Danny have driven past an accident scene without checking to see whether he could help. It wouldn’t have mattered to him where he was going or how much of a hurry he was in. But I’d already learned that life wasn’t fair.

Danny’s seatbelt had saved his life, but it could just as easily have turned out differently. As bad as the accident was, he’d come away with relatively minor injuries, which was probably a matter of pure luck.

He’d been conscious the whole time, until the ambulance arrived, but he’d been unable to free himself. His cell phone had been out of reach—he’d put it on top of the middle console, and the phone had flown through the car when it rolled. Jörg found it underneath the back seat.

They tested Danny for drugs and alcohol, but as always, he’d been completely sober.

 

***

 

When Jörg and I entered his hospital room, the head physician was already in there, talking to Danny. An IV was still hanging over Danny’s bed, running painkillers into his veins, but he smiled when he saw us and made another unsuccessful attempt to sit up. This could get interesting. Broken ribs required at least six weeks of bed rest, and Danny couldn’t even keep still for a few hours.

I sat down on his bed, so relieved to see him alive that I hugged him much too hard. “Please don’t touch,” he whimpered, raising his arms defensively. “Broken ribs really are hell.”

“How is he?” Jörg asked the doctor, who gave him a skeptical once-over before apparently deciding Jörg must be the patient’s father.

“He’s stable thus far,” the doctor replied. “We’re going to keep him here for a couple of days to observe him and rule out any complications.” He was somewhere in his mid-fifties, with white hair and a receding hairline, and he looked like the type of guy who never cracked a joke. “I’ll come down to see you again this afternoon,” he said to Danny before turning to go.

“Doctor?” Jörg stepped forward to stop him.

“Yes?”

I saw Danny give Jörg a scathing look.

“Did he tell you he’s HIV positive?”

The doctor started. “No, but we would have found out. I’m sure it’s in his file.” He gave us a friendly smile, but I sensed that he felt caught out. He obviously didn’t like it when friends and family meddled in his work.

“I just thought…” Jörg hesitated. “I thought you might want to check him thoroughly. His blood and all that. Maybe there’s some kind of connection.”

The doctor nodded. “No problem, we were going to draw blood anyway. I’ll go ahead and order a complete workup. Nothing will get past us, don’t you worry.” Smiling, he left the room.

Danny gaped at Jörg in outrage. “What was that about?” He waved toward the door.

“You need to tell them things like that!” Jörg insisted.

“You heard him. They would have found out anyway.”

“Well, then, there’s no need for you to get insulted, is there?” Jörg wasn’t about to let Danny upset him.

“What the hell happened this morning, anyway?” I put in. That was the real question here.

“A connection between HIV and a car accident.” Danny snorted contemptuously, ignoring my question. “What a load of bullshit!” Immediately dismissing other people’s ideas as bullshit wasn’t like Danny at all. But since Christina had died, Danny had said and done a lot of things I never would have suspected him capable of.

“What happened this morning?” Jörg asked, repeating my question.

“There was a deer in the road.”

“A deer?” I gave Danny a questioning look.

“Yeah. You know, those brown animals that live in the woods. The males have antlers, and the babies are called fawns, and they have little white spots—”

“Danny, we know what deer are,” Jörg broke in.

“Oh, well, good.” He made a move to roll over onto his side but discovered he couldn’t do that, either.

“So this accident was because of a deer?” Jörg pressed him.

“Yeah. It was just standing there, in the middle of the road.”

“And why didn’t you brake?”

“I did. It wasn’t enough.” He shrugged and looked at me apologetically. “The deer is okay, Ducky, don’t worry!”

“Danny.” Jörg gave him an admonishing look. “We saw the road. You didn’t brake.”

“I didn’t? Oh… Then I just swerved. Maybe that was it.” Danny had never been a good liar.

“You drove into a field at a hundred miles an hour without braking? Because of a deer?” Jörg raised his eyebrows skeptically.

“Why not? I like deer.” He would have crossed his arms by now if the needle in the crook of his elbow hadn’t been preventing it. We sat there for a moment, looking at him expectantly, and suddenly he grew furious. “Jesus Christ Almighty, so there wasn’t a deer! Can’t I get in an accident without everyone making a big thing out of it?” He tried to take a deep breath to grouch at us some more, but a pained grimace cut across his face. “If nothing else about the rest of my fucking life is normal,” he went on in a quieter voice, “then let me at least get in one car wreck like a million other guys my age do.”

Danny sank back onto his pillows, trying desperately to get enough air. Whatever he was keeping from us, now wasn’t the time to press him for answers. Jörg seemed to realize that as well, because he changed the subject. “I took a couple pictures. There was really no salvaging the car.”

“I know,” Danny said. “I saw.” Seeing our mournful expressions, he added, “Guys, it was just a car. It was fully insured. There’s nothing to mope about.”

“I liked that car,” I admitted sadly. “And I know you liked it, too.”

“As soon as I get out of here, we’ll buy a new one,” Danny assured me.

“Let us know when you hear your blood test results,” Jörg said. Danny was long overdue for a checkup—it had been five months since his last one—because he hadn’t managed to make himself go since Christina’s death. But the last one had been so good that he’d had no reason to worry.

“You don’t have to remind me of that,” Danny told Jörg. “I would have done that anyway.” Danny was unusually irritable, but it was probably just because he was in so much pain.

“You should get some sleep,” Jörg decided. “Your Ducky and I are going to go get something to eat, and we’ll be back later.”

 

The doctor didn’t return until that evening. He checked Danny’s vitals and blood pressure, and seemed entirely satisfied with what he saw. A nurse had taken several blood samples that afternoon as planned, but the results hadn’t come back yet.

We could see from the X-rays that three of Danny’s ribs had snapped clean through, and a fourth was cracked as well. “They should heal without any problems,” the doctor told us. “Fortunately, they’re all clean breaks. The most important thing is rest. No physical activity at all for six weeks, and then start slow after that. After ten weeks, you should be right as rain.”

Danny stared at him in horror, but the doctor ignored him.

“And it’s important that you breathe with the pain, never against it. Don’t hold back—take nice, deep breaths, even if it hurts. You need to keep filling your lungs with air—otherwise you may develop a lung infection, and we want to avoid that. The nurses will show you a couple of breathing exercises in the morning.”

Danny closed his eyes, still trying to process the idea of six weeks without martial arts or running.

“Is there anything we can do to aid the healing process?” I asked.

“Well, it’s better if he sleeps on the broken ribs at night.”

Danny squinted up at the doctor doubtfully. “How is that supposed to work?”

“It will be very painful, but it compresses the broken ribs and helps them heal faster. Keep trying it, at least.”

“Poor Angelo,” Danny murmured to himself. “One other question: we were going to fly to America in five weeks…”

“Do you have trip cancellation insurance?”

“We haven’t booked the tickets yet,” Danny explained lamely.

“Then book them for a month later. Better safe than sorry.” The doctor snapped his file folder shut.

Danny gave me a questioning look, suddenly seeming extraordinarily tired, almost resigned to his fate.

“Four weeks one way or another doesn’t matter,” I told him. “So we’ll go a little later, who cares?”

“Okay,” Danny murmured.

Now I really suspected something was off. Danny knew more than he was letting on. Normally, he’d never have just agreed to put off his vacation. Once he’d gotten something into his head, he generally made it happen, and it wasn’t like him to let a couple of broken bones stop him.

Broken ribs are the most painful breaks of all, my inner voice said, trying to placate my fears. He’s got other things on his mind besides vacation right now.

 

***

 

When I came into the room two days later, Danny was already sitting up in bed. His roommate had been discharged the day before, much to Danny’s relief. Danny hated having strangers sleeping anywhere near him, and knowing that he was trapped in bed, practically immobile, with a man lying just a few feet away, had made the whole thing almost intolerable.

“Hey,” he said when he saw me. “Wanna go downstairs with me?”

“Can you walk?” I asked uncertainly.

A crooked smile spread over his face. “I broke my ribs, not my legs. Of course I can walk.” Very slowly, he stood up. His IV had been taken out the day before, so we were free to trot down the hallway hand in hand. But I still watched him out of the corner of my eye. “Ducky, can you quit with the looks already?” he asked when we reached the bottom of the stairs. Even in this condition, he’d still refused to take the elevator. “I’m fine, really.”

It wasn’t true, but complaining wasn’t part of his repertoire. If he’d been fine, he wouldn’t been walking so slowly. At my normal pace. “Ducky walking,” he normally called it. For the next couple of weeks, Ducky walking was going to be our usual speed.

We got ice cream from the hospital cafeteria and went outside to sit on the back of a park bench, our feet on the seat, our faces turned toward the sun. “You’re breathing wrong again,” I scolded him. “You need to take deep breaths.”

“I would if I could,” he grumbled. “I swear, I’ve broken every bone in my body, including a couple of ribs…but four at once, plus a collarbone? Really sucks. How am I going to do this for six weeks? I hate sitting still.”

“You’ll be okay. We’ll survive.”

“I need to be in shape again by next weekend. I’ve got a three-day photoshoot in Karlsruhe. If it goes well, I’ll get the contract, and then we’ll both be financially set forever.”

I poked at my chocolate-chip ice cream with my spoon. We’d never had to worry about money before. Ever since we’d gotten together, I hadn’t had to spend a dime of what I made. He put gas in my car, paid my bills, bought me clothes, and paid for everything when we went out. I would’ve been happy to trade our problems for silly little money woes. I’d happily have given away everything I owned, worn burlap sacks and straw shoes, and lived on noodles and ketchup if it meant Danny could be healthy and Christina would come back to us.

“Set forever?” I repeated. “You didn’t tell me anything about that.”

“I only found out about it myself the morning of the accident.” He crumpled his paper ice cream dish and tossed it across the bench, dunking it neatly in the nearby trash can. I didn’t even try to follow suit—I hopped up and threw my dish from three feet away. It bounced off the rim and landed in the dirt. Annoyed, I picked it up and shoved it in the can.

Danny didn’t manage to stifle his laughter.

“Were you on the phone while you were driving?” I asked.

“No. And even if I had been, I always talk on the phone while I drive. It’s never made me drive into a ditch before.”

Danny was right. Someone was always calling him—his modeling agency, one of his students—and he’d take the call while still expertly doing whatever he was doing.

“Okay, okay,” I said in resignation.

Danny sighed. “I have to make another call in a minute, too. Dogan and the other teachers will have to divide up my students. Who knows if I’ll ever be able to take them again?”

“Of course you will. They’re just broken bones. They’ll heal. That’s all it is, isn’t it, Danny?”

He was silent.

“Danny?”

He took my hands and pulled me closer. In the sunlight, his eyes glowed that dark blue that still fascinated me as much as ever. “Ducky!” He held me fast with his gaze—he was starting to remember how to do that. “Why are you questioning this? Have I ever lied to you? It was a car accident, that’s all.”

It was a fair point. Why was I doubting him? Our whole relationship was based on absolute honesty. Apart from that little white lie about his parents at the start of our relationship, he’d never been anything but truthful to me. Suddenly I felt guilty, and I made up my mind to trust him the way I always had. There was no reason not to.

“I do believe you,” I assured him. I probably really was worrying about it too much. Car accidents happened every day, all over the world.

“Good.” He looked satisfied. “Let’s go upstairs. Ricky said he was going to come by later.” He held out a hand so that I could help him to his feet. Then he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me as tightly as his destroyed bones would allow. “Don’t worry about me,” he whispered. “I’ll be okay. You just focus on your exams.”

Something about his whole demeanor should have set off my alarm bells, but it didn’t. I stuck to my resolution and trusted him the way I always had.

 

I stayed until visiting hours ended, but instead of leaving then, I snuck around the halls for another two hours, and then hid for another hour in the family shower room. Now that he’d been moved off of the emergency floor, the nurses would only be checking on him every few hours—unless he called. Once the night shift started, and the day nurse had made her last rounds on Danny’s floor, I crept down the dim hallway and slipped into his room. He was awake, listening to music, and when he saw me, he stared at me like he’d seen a ghost. His eyes were red, making me wonder if he’d been crying.

“Ducky. Where’d you come from?”

“Outside,” I whispered, nodding toward the hall.

“Oh. You don’t say. How did you manage to keep from getting thrown out?”

“Trade secret.”

Without another word, Danny scooted to the edge of the bed to make room for me. That was one of the things I loved most about him. He would never have scolded me for doing something unusual or crazy. Quite the opposite, actually—he was usually eager to go along with wild ideas, and he thought of plenty himself. Even after we lost Christina.

I crawled into bed with him.

“You’re completely nuts,” he whispered against my lips.

“I got it from you.”

He laughed softly. “Nice of you to imitate my best quality.”

Despite the cramped hospital bed and his broken ribs, we managed to make love. He simply lay motionless on his back—the days of him getting panic attacks in that position were long gone. I could do whatever I liked with him now, even prop myself up on his wrists. Right now, I just had to make sure not to touch his left side. Afterward, I laid down on his right, and we fell asleep cuddled close together.

When the night nurse finally came around a few hours later, she was astonished to find two of us in Danny’s bed. She threw me out, of course, and I spent another couple of hours slinking through the halls before returning for breakfast.

Danny shared his food with me, and afterward, I snuck into the kitchen and stole a second helping. Tiny as the portions were, Danny would have been starving even if he’d had a whole one to himself. Eventually, I drove to work and spent the day trying not to fall asleep at my desk before returning in the evening.

 

“Blood tests were okay,” Danny said by way of greeting when I walked in. “My T-cell count has gone down, but it’s still all right.”

“How far down?”

“Still okay,” he replied curtly. “Not bad enough that I have to start treatment. The doctor said I should let my ribs heal first and then have my own doctor do another test. Until then, I shouldn’t worry.”

“Well, that sounds sensible. How are you doing?”

“Bored to death. I want to go home. Maybe you should sleep here again tonight. If we’re lucky, they’ll catch us again and throw me out.”

 

***

 

Danny was discharged from the hospital six days later, and I stayed over at his place for a while, accepting my longer work commute and my parents’ annoyance as the price I had to pay. I left Leika with him during the day to keep him company. He took her for long walks and taught her all kinds of tricks, like “play dead,” “give me five,” and “roll over.” The walks weren’t really enough physical activity for him, but they passed the time. In the evenings, he helped me study for my exams.

After barely a week at home, he developed cabin fever.

I was standing in the kitchen making myself a sandwich when he called from the living room, “Well, if I didn’t know what I was going to die of already, I’d certainly know now.”

“Oh?” I called back. “Do tell.”

“Boredom,” he groaned. “Definitely boredom!”

“Nobody’s ever died of boredom,” I chided him, biting into my sandwich.

“They’re definitely going to put ‘boredom’ on my death certificate as the cause of death,” he insisted.

Of course he was bored. Normally, he would have spent the entire day at the gym—plus, he’d have gone running every morning and probably ridden his bike in the evening, and then he’d have had photoshoots on the side. And he’d had Christina around before, so he’d practically never been alone. He’d never spent much time at the computer or watching TV—he’d had far too much energy for that.

Now, he spent hours alone in the backyard every day, sitting on the grass because the patio furniture hurt his ribs, reading one book after another. He was looking forward to the weekend, when he’d get to go to Karlsruhe. He was planning on taking a cab there, and I knew he wouldn’t let anything stop him from going, even if he had to crawl there yowling on all fours.

I walked into the living room holding my sandwich. Danny was lying with his stomach on the couch and his head and forearms resting on the floor. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, chewing.

“Yoga, obviously.”

“That’s not yoga. That’s ridiculous.”

“Okay, then I’m doing ridiculous. Ridiculous is still better than nothing.”

“Do you think that’s good for your ribs?”

“Who knows?” he muttered. “What can it hurt? They’re already broken. And I’m bored, bored, bored to death.”

“Get dressed,” I ordered him. “We’re going out.”

He wriggled down from the couch. “Yippee! We’re going out! Where are we going?”

“Hm… The zoo?”

“Give me three minutes.”

“Then I can deliver you to the bats, and you can go hang upside down with them.”

“Bats sound good,” he agreed. “Anything sounds better than bored to death.”