Carlos produced a harmonica from his pocket and urged her to play along with "Here Comes the Sun," a song by Beatle George Harrison that she had often performed during the siege at Casa Piadosa. The old woman demurred, insisting that the damage done to her mouth and lips by El Presidente's henchmen had robbed her of the necessary strength and skill. She laid the instrument on an end table and stared out the window with a faraway frown so devoid of condemnation that Carlos, condemning himself, felt caddishly opportunistic. How could he make amends?
"At this stage in your life, Mrs. Galvez, what would make you most happy?"
"Ah. You ask because I'm dying."
"I ask because you're recovering," Carlos said, parroting Dr. Petitt's own cheerful prognosis. "You have a future in store--twenty more years at the least. It's not your dying wish I want to know."
She looked through him. "What would make me most happy?"
"Yes, seņora."
"Do you want a hypothetical response, something grandiose and far-fetched like World Peace or An End to Poverty? Or would you prefer something within the pale of possibility, something that would really increase my small stores of happiness?"
"The latter, of course." But Carlos found these finicky qualifications baffling and wondered if he had answered correctly.
"Are you going to try to grant my wish if I reveal it?"
"Well, Video Verdadero might. If it's grantable."
"Queen for a Day," said Eleanor Riggins-Galvez abstractedly. "World Peace, Carlos. An End to Poverty. Those are the things that would make me most happy. I wish Video Verdadero great success in bringing them about."
Caressing his video gun, Carlos sat down on the window seat near the old woman's wheelchair. She had withdrawn into herself, and he felt a great need to reestablish contact. "In Atlanta last night, I did some checking on the internet. Three of the members of this group--the Beatles, yes?--are still alive. One lives in England, one divides his time between Scotland and the West Coast of the United States, and one has a domed villa in the Sea of Rains on Luna. The low gravity eases a peculiar medical condition that has been troubling him for the past few years."
Mrs. Galvez laughed, a birdlike titter. Then, less than enchantingly, she sang three or four lines of "Fly Me to the Moon."
"What would you say if these former members of the Beatles got back together to commemorate your recovery?" Carlos said.
"They must be in their seventies. They're older than I am."
"Would it make you happy--such a stellar reunion?"
"Not if it discomfited them. Let the rich old farts live out the remainder of their days in peace. Me, too, for that matter."
"Video Verdadero may be able to arrange it."
"Why bother? There've been partial reunions before, Carlos, and John Lennon's dead. Besides, nobody cares anymore."
"It wouldn't gladden your heart to see these three men singing together again?"
"I don't know. Maybe. If it didn't convulse me with laughter."
"Ah," said Carlos. He played the Abbey Road CD again. This time Ramon Covarrubias, still in his gym shorts, returned to the room with a party of more conventionally clad torture victims from the same wing. Eleven well-mannered auditors, ranging in age from a pale young woman in her early twenties to a balding Oriental-looking gentleman not much younger than Mrs. Galvez, crowded in. This last patient, Carlos was surprised to note, had tears in his eyes.
)
