# Dr. Almássy moved to America when he was three. His parents are Hungarian. He returns to his country of birth for weddings and Christenings of distant family members and has the odd sensation of an animal that’s escaped a zoo and should be returned immediately. His relief, at cloud height, when he peers down at Logan International Airport is palpable. He is an introvert, happiest in his lab peering through a microscope. He forces himself into a gregarious mood when social situations require it with a painful awareness of acting. He enjoys hiking. He makes a mean pavlova. He lives with his partner, Gregory. A bath is running. He’s listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Dr. Almássy answers the door in a crisp white towel. A glass of wine rests in his left hand, the first of the evening. His small frame is pushed with a brute force he’s unprepared for. The Malbec goes flying. It sprays the living room wall and police initially mistake these marks for blood. Glass shatters on the floor, the same parquet hardwood floor his head is slammed against repeatedly. He thinks vaguely of Gregory, upstate for his niece’s first piano recital. Right now Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.14 in C-sharp minor is being performed by the adorably inexpert, uneven fingers of a seven year old. As he loses consciousness he is injected with taurine and glucuronolactone, chemicals mentioned in a paper he graded last week. # Gregory visits. He says the same as others: I should return to college, I shouldn’t this ruin my career prospects. It is magnanimous of him to care. I explain I have carved out a new life. I cover human-interest stories for a local paper, a cat caught up a tree on a bad day, the opening of a hospital wing on a better one. I write menial things that bored housewives read, chirpy stories that little old ladies dressed in too much maroon discuss as they wait for their hyperactive
59