Life Blood

New York, New York. A blissful spring morning beckoned, cloudless and blue and pure. I was driving my high-mileage Toyota down Seventh Avenue, headed for the location shoot that...

I'm on a bed, in a dreamscape room enveloped in pastel fog, watching a Melania butterfly the size of a man pump his massive orange and black wings above me. His voice is mellifl...

I was feeling a bit off center that evening, but I explained it away as mental overload, the rain, and the implied threats. That diagnosis got revised the next morning when I aw...

When we reached the parking lot, several more Army thugs were waiting, grown-ups now, khaki shirts and dense mustaches, the regulation G-2 sunglasses even though it was still da...

I began by feeling along the fake-stone walls to find where the crevices were, the doors that enclosed the medical instruments. Somewhere, I was sure, there was a cabinet that h...

"I have to tell you, I'm not overly impressed thus far with your 'program,' " I said. "First I passed out in your clinic, and then my doctor in New York told me those drugs Rama...

It took only a few minutes for Hannah Klein's assistant, Lori, to run the pregnancy test that confirmed my suspicions and settled my future. Steve's and my final attempt, anothe...

Lou took the next few days off to spend by Sarah's side, but nothing more happened. I repeatedly called him at the hospital to check on her, though it was becoming clear her bru...

Moving on, my next stress-point was to meet with my young boss, the afore-noted David Roth, who was CEO and First Operating Kvetcher of Applecore Productions, a kinda-sexy guy w...

After giving me a small bag with two bottles, Ramala led me out, and I discovered I really _had _been in a different building, the one situated across the long-term parking lot...

For once in my life, I took my time getting off an airplane. But the instant I felt that first burst of humid tropical air against my face, like a gush from a sauna, I found mys...

"Cut the crap." I pulled away, still in shock from seeing Sarah so addled. I wanted more than anything else in the world just to slug him. "Why did you bring her here? Think abo...

Alan Dupre's helicopter reminded me of the disintegrating taxis on Guatemala City's potholed streets. The vibration in the passenger compartment was so violent it made my teeth...

"Quetzal Manor could have the makings of a great documentary," I was explaining to David Roth. "I just need some more information-gathering first, to get a better feeling for wh...

I awoke as a sliver of sun flashed through the stone doorway of the room and forest birds erupted around me in celebration. As I pulled myself up and moved over to the opening,...

After I dropped off Lou at his space in Soho, where he was house sitting for an estate now in the courts, I decided to head on home. The more I thought about Alex Goddard, the m...

Heading home, finally, I told myself to try to calm down. I was determined to help Sarah get over her trauma, though truthfully I was too tired to really think straight at that...

Alan Dupre didn't ring till almost ten-thirty the next morning, and I had the feeling even that was a stretch. He then offered to meet us in the Parque Concordia, right downtown...

I arranged with Patrick Mooney to have his sister in Queens, a full-figured woman named Rosalyn, come in and finish the job of reconstructing my wrecked home. She arrived an hou...

I headed on back downtown, planning to take a bath, change clothes, and then recalibrate my game plan. Maybe, I thought, I ought to just go up to the editing room at Applecore,...

The space looked flawlessly sterile, obviously an operating theater, but it was certainly like none other on earth. The walls were not white or pale blue; they had the shade of...

Before I could ask him what the hell he was talking about, the medics were ringing the doorbell. They strode in with a gurney, also rolling a portable plasma IV, young guys who...

As I watched him depart, hallucinations swirling through my brain like furious fireworks, I had a bizarre thought. In an ancient rainforest all things are still possible. The ol...

When I got back to the Camino Real, the time was early afternoon and the bed was freshly made, with all signs and scents of my and Steve's torrid reunion long gone. I tried to p...

In moments I was heading down the snowy drive, south toward my home (which had been hopefully put back together). I pushed the pace, mesmerized by the snow, and tried to decide...

Sarah was hovering around me, a sylphlike presence, as I watched myself drift up the steps of the pyramid there in the square, my senses waxing and waning like the waves on a di...

Whoosh. There he was. He strode through the door, tan safari shirt, smelling like a man who'd just driven hundreds of miles through Central America in an open Jeep. I wanted to...

Sometime thereafter, in a reverie, I felt myself in a magical forest whose lush vines reminded me of Kerala in India. It was a verdant, hazy paradise, another Eden. A child was...

We got picked up by a ragged crew of Mexican fishermen just before dark. Aside from being sunburned to medium rare, we were physically okay. The fresh air and sunshine did a lot...