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nervous energy from them would have been appreciated, evidence that she hadn’t entirely lost her attractions.
    Then they were through and she was taking notes, pre-mission checklist style, preparing for a flight plan to a destination she didn’t want to reach. The cancer had advanced in a way they had not expected. Despite the last therapy, which they reminded her was experimental, there were only slight signs of retarded growth.
    Another jump. She was out of the clinic, in the car, rolling around the curves of the road home. Focus-focus-focus, no point in becoming a traffic statistic when you have a classier demise on the way . Hawaii’s damp smells worked into her concentration, pleasant sweet air curling into her lungs and reminding her that the world did have its innocent delights. Even though plants, too, were trying to fend off animals with poisons and carcinogens, one of which had wormed into her.
    Channing swerved a bit too fast into their driveway, spitting gravel, crunching to a stop just short of Copernicus, who was sunning himself. She got out and was suddenly immensely glad that he was there. She hugged him and babbled some as he tried to wag his tail off. With Copernicus she could make a fool of herself playing and he would respond by making an even bigger fool of himself. Still, his admiration was not conclusive evidence of one’s wonderfulness. For that, she needed Benjamin, and where was he?
    On cue, he rolled into the driveway, barely squeezing his sports car into the space. She had kidded him about mid-forties testosterone when he bought it, but he did indeed look great in the eggshell-blue convertible, top down, his concerned frown as he got out breaking over her like butterscotch sunlight, and then she was in his arms and the waterworks came on and she was past being embarrassed about it. She clung to him. He clung back. Chimpanzee nuzzling, maybe, but it worked.
    She was unsteady going into the house with him and let its comfy feel envelop her. He asked about her medical and she told him and it all came in a rush then, all the sloppy emotions spilling out over the astronaut’s shiny exterior. She finished up with some quiet sobs in his arms, feeling much better and also now slightly embarrassed, her usual combo.
    “Sounds like you need some mahi-mahi therapy,” Benjamin murmured into her left ear.
    “I’d prefer some bed right away, thanks sir, but yep, my stomach’s rumbling.”
    “Oh, I thought that was a plane going over.”
    “Maybe my knees knocking.”
    “You’re braver than anyone I have ever known,” in the soft tone he always used to creep up on the worst of it.
    “What happens if you get scared half to death twice?”
    “The blood analysis—”
    “Yeah, worse.” Cryptic, astronaut-casual. “Some physio, too.”
    “You have the printout? I’d—”
    Breaking away, she made the timeout signal. “Lemme slap a flapjack of makeup on my face.”
    She got through the repair work without looking in the mirror much, a trick she had developed since the hair loss. The medical printouts went into her valise, along with the harvest of the fax machine. Brisk and efficient she was, carefully not thinking while she did all these neat little compartmented jobs. She’s steppin’ out , she sang to herself from an old Electric Light Orchestra number, letting the bouncy sound do its work. Steppin’ out . Fake gaiety was better than none.
    He drove them to the Reefman in rather gingerly fashion, not his born-to-the-road style. Hot white clouds hung stranded in a windless sky of shredded silver. The swanky driveway led them to a rambling building that appeared to be made of cinder from the island’s volcano, an effect slightly too studied. Music boomed out from a spacious deck bar, heat shimmered over car hoods, the perpetual hovering presence of eternal summer thickening the air.
    They ambled around the side garden approach to the beach tables. Her floppy hat would look appropriate there.