Out the window was the Queensboro bridge, endless drips of traffic shooting along that girdered steel vein. It would be good to use that somehow; the nurses said it helped to have a dynamic mental image.

       She hardly had a mental image left, however, she was so scared. Her brain cells were shot out even before the first stick. She couldn’t move anything around in her head, a sad state for anyone trying to empower herself. And besides, she might get it wrong. Instead of the chemo rushing along that bridge, clearing traffic like a red alarm, she might see the cancer causing a big old-fashioned traffic jam.

       "I’m not doing chemo," Rani said at the first meeting of the support group. First support group Betts had ever been to, she wasn’t a joiner, this wasn’t her kind of group. Rani flipped her out. Chemo was optional? "It’s the percentages," Rani insisted. "Sixty percent in my stage make it; 40 percent don’t. It’s just a question of which group you’re in, not what your numbers are."

       There were 10 women around the table. Their eyes traveled; they were calculating. Six out of 10. Stranger assessed stranger, eyes flashing, each one thinking, which group am I in? Any way you count it, 4 don’t make it. Oh those traveling eyes! As they scanned her, Betts wondered: are they counting me in or out?

       She bet they had all counted Rani out, which meant she was probably in. Life was perverse.

       Agnes laughed ruefully. "That chemo was the worst thing I’ve ever done. I’ve never been so sick." Agnes had just started radiation. She was the oldest and she talked quickly and expressively. The group was mixed: pre-chemo, post-chemo, anti-chemo. "My scars bled, did I tell you?"

       All around the table fingers twitched as women mentally stroked their breasts.

       Betts was waiting her turn in line: she was post-surgery and pre-chemo, with radiation and then tamoxifen seemingly light years ahead. Chemo reduced recurrences by some; radiation by some more, and tamoxifen, taken for five years, cut it even further. It was like that math puzzle where you’re always cutting the distance in half but you never actually arrive because nothing gave you 100 percent.

       "You have to make sure, whatever you do, that you don’t end up regretting it." Cheryl, the group leader, said to Rani. She was the advisor because she’d been through it years before; she was their Virgil, this was their hell.

       "That chemo is a shotgun, it kills the good cells with the bad. And it doesn’t get all the bad ones, if you even have any bad ones left. Six don’t, four do." Hard to believe, but it seemed like Rani said it with satisfaction.

       "It’s a crap shoot," Betts muttered. She was in love with that phrase; she had fallen for it even before surgery. The world was crap, it was doing her wrong. She wanted to be tough and sure, like Rani, only with better survival odds.

       "The statistics give you extra points," Jen argued, "if you do the chemo. Shoots you up to 65, 70 percent." Jen was young, less than 40; she wore a wig and makeup. She penciled in eyebrows; she dressed like she was healthy. Why was she wearing a wig? What did she think she was hiding? Betts planned on a scarf when her hair fell out; it was honest, a secret handshake, the fashionable prisoner’s garb.

       "That’s for the group, not the individual," Rani pointed out. "You, as an individual, don’t have 65 percent. You have 100 or zero."

       "That’s not completely true," Cheryl said quietly. "It does help. You can’t have group statistics without the individual. More make it; they do."

       "And what about the ones who don’t make it through chemo?"

       "People don’t make it through chemo?" Betts was astonished. She was starting it in two days. One more reason to dread it, then; her stomach twisted like a fish.

       One woman—Teresa?—was crying. "It’s killing me. I don’t think I can do this."

       "Think what it’s doing to the ‘c’ cells," Cheryl soothed.

       Teresa shook her head sadly. Her hair had just started to fall out; she kept her hands together to keep them from touching her scalp. "I never felt a thing. I felt so fine, up until they told me. I could be dying—you can’t think of anything but dying, can you?—but I swear, I don’t see how it could be." She rubbed her left breast. "I can’t help thinking sometimes that they put it in—you know, that I didn’t have cancer until they told me. Some weird government thing, some medical plot." She was sober again; she wept and then stopped, like a quick squall. They were all jittery, they all had sob stories. They waited their turn.

       "Chemo, radiation, tamoxifen," Jen murmured. "The numbers, the numbers. You have to work the numbers."

       "You know what I hate," Rochelle said. "They keep sending me little cards from work. Thinking of you—that kind of thing. I went back to work two weeks ago, but I’m still getting them. Sure, it’s a big company and I’m keeping kind of quiet, but I really believe most of them have already imagined my funeral, most of them can see themselves saying, ‘Well, at least she’s not suffering anymore,’ and then turning away to discuss their children."

       "They don’t think that," Cheryl said.

       "They do think that."

       "I think they think that," Agnes agreed. "My husband prays for me every night. Out loud. I used to pray for dying people too."

       "No one’s dying today," Cheryl said carefully. "You have to get used to the ups and downs."

       Two days later, in her little chemo cubicle, with its comfy chair, its tiny TV, Betts looked out the window to the Queensboro bridge with its endless drips of traffic. The numbers pursued her as she dragged through each day. She started counting things, like how many bags of drips (four) hooked up to her arm, how many sets of pills for side effects (four); how many treatments (four); how many days after treatment before she thought she would be able to live through it (four). Well, what did that four mean?

       Here were the statistics for her stage of cancer: without chemo at 10 years, 65% were alive but only 51% were disease free. But add chemo and you get 70% disease-free survival, 75% no-frills survival. And here was the kicker: all the statistics were out of date, had to be out of date. They represented women diagnosed at least 12 years ago. The numbers for the woman diagnosed today wouldn’t exist for at least 10 more years. By then it could be 91%, Betts hoped, 99%. She felt a twinge in her ribs, felt a cough in her lungs. Her body was firing off again; she was waiting for it to spread. All the women had triggershot nerves and nightmare sensations. Stabbing pains, mystery rashes, gagging to beat the band. Nerves popped, muscles cracked, bones ached with deep metallic dread. What was that? Cancer snapping its claws?

       "How’d it go?" Cheryl asked the next meeting. "Anyone suffering?"

       "Ha ha", Teresa said, "piece of cake." Sadism, sarcasm: who could eat cake?

       "I had the first round," Betts said. "I’ve never felt so wrong, every inch of me felt wrong."

       "It wears off," Cheryl said.

       "I saw a shrink," Jen said. "I thought it would be good to talk it out. God. Another mistake. Freudian, I think, I didn’t really pay attention. I mean, why would it matter? I told her, you know: cancer, mastectomy, chemo, radiation. She wanted to know what about my personality did I think had brought it on?"

       They protested: No, not possible.

       "I even paid her," Jen said. "But I stopped the check."

       "Let’s wish it on her instead," Betts said.

       "Bow your head," Rani intoned. "Think her name."

       "This is not a punishment," Cheryl objected.

       "It better not be a reward," Agnes said.

       "This isn’t a joke," Mary said. "I have two babies." She started to cry. She had adopted Korean babies almost two year ago and gotten cancer a year later. "Twins, I have twins. I don’t want to die; how can I die? I want to see them grow up. It’s so unfair!" Her head dropped.

       Roughly, Rani said, "I don’t have twins and I don’t want to die either. What do kids have to do with it anyway?"

       Betts had to agree. Some people thought they had more rights. What were the numbers on survival of mothers with twins? Agnes patted Mary’s shoulder.

       "There’s a clinic in Germany," Rani said. "I’m looking into it. You get some shots and a special diet. Nothing like chemo, it’s all very healthy. It’s just expensive, and it’s not covered."

       "You’ve gone back to work?" Cheryl asked.

       "Me? I was diagnosed six months ago. I was only out for two weeks, for the surgery."

       "Six months and no recurrence," Betts said politely. "That’s good." She thought (she was sure they all thought): six months and you would have been through chemo.

       "I figure you get ten points for every year you make it," Agnes said cheerfully. "Ten points for ten years equals 100 percent. There are no charts for after ten years."

       "I don’t like that," Wendy said. "What happens after ten years?" Wendy’s divorce was a year old; her ex-husband was calling her; stopping by; confusing her.

       "You get a new disease," Rochelle laughed. "Your choice." Rochelle’s husband had the flu and she was feeling better than he was.

       "I want dry skin," Betts said. "Or bad eyesight." Then she could complain about glasses; she would be happy to complain about glasses.

       "Those are conditions, not diseases," Cheryl objected.

       Rochelle encouraged them. "Do they do charts on dry skin? Five year survival; disease-free survival?"

       "Recurrences, local and distant," Rani offered.

       "Dandruff and athlete’s foot as metastases," Agnes smiled.

       They all loved the absurd and Betts felt the fantastic entice her. "Clinical trials involving handcream and white gloves," she suggested. "You know, you put on the cream and wear cotton gloves overnight for intensive, high-dose treatment. They tell you to do it Friday after work so you can be sick all weekend but well enough to go back to work on Monday."

       It was hard not to be sick while the damn things dripped into your vein. At such times, it wasn’t the cancer Betts feared or hated, it was the chemo. Her nurse caught on to it by the second round. She poked Betts’s veins and gave her hard candies to suck when the taste of cytoxan rose to the back of her throat and she said, "Don’t hate the chemo. The chemo is your friend, the man of your dreams, your knight in shining armor."

       Not that any of them believed anymore in being rescued. Or was that really true? Did their absolute fatalism, their dread, assume that the prince existed for others, that there just wasn’t enough prince to go around? Was there more of a chance of finding another lump than of finding a way out of the tower? The lump, as they knew, felt like a pea sitting under a blanket, a twist on the old fairy tale.

       Rani scoffed. "Prince, one in a million; cancer, one in three." They were a real group after a few weeks; they knew each other’s names and main complaints.

       Everyone shifted slightly. "I didn’t realize it was so high," Mary, mother of twins, said.

       Rani shrugged. "Chance of heart disease, two out of three. I’m rounding out the numbers. I’m discounting nuclear holocaust." Betts didn’t know if she liked Rani, but she listened to her; all the women did. Rani was oracular, and everyone wanted an oracle.

       Teresa, who was one treatment ahead of Betts, said she found herself guarding her veins like someone might steal them. "The odd thing is," she said, blinking, "I keep touching my arm and checking it to make sure there’s no inflammation; but I’ve stopped checking my breasts."

       "I’m compulsive," Rochelle confessed. "They say that’s just as bad as never checking because you don’t notice changes."

       Cheryl nodded. "I hate to say it but they know what works." She looked around the room. "And how are you doing this week, Wendy?"

       Wendy sighed. "I went to Macy’s yesterday; they were having a sale on sheets. It was crowded; it’s always crowded at those sales. One minute I was fine and the next minute I was standing absolutely stopped, just looking around me and thinking, ‘I’m the one here with cancer.’ I just watched them all moving and buying things, not even paying attention to what they were doing. When I wake up in the morning, sometimes there’s a moment before I remember, oh yes, I have cancer, and it was like that, one minute I was one of them and the next minute, I wasn’t. I was stopped and they were all moving."

       Jen nodded. "They’re in a different world, you know. It’s like looking through a window."

       "We’re in the different world."

       Mary agreed. "I think back to two years ago. That was the real me. This isn’t me at all. I look at them like I’m looking for myself."

       "After a few years," Cheryl said sadly, "this becomes the real you. You don’t trust the old you at all. It’s the old you that let you down."

       "We’re in this world together," Rochelle said impulsively. "We’re soldiers or something. We’re a group."

       "I’d never choose to be in this group," Betts objected. She looked around the table, though, and found she liked them. It had happened insidiously. She had gone because she was desperate and frightened. She had gone to hide, for a while, among them. She had really only meant to visit, but things had changed. Were these people now her people?

       "I stare at them," Wendy admitted. "Especially their hair. No; I’m looking at hairstyles. Short hairstyles. I hate the ones with long hair; so arrogant. I think I might bleach my hair, when it grows back. Bleach it when it reaches crew-cut length. And maybe I’ll dress in big black things. I think I’ll make it my style."

       "Everyone in New York wears black already," Jen said.

       "Then I’ll go for burnt umber. Sienna; something. I’ll look like someone else’s old photograph."

       "Not your own old photograph?"

       She shook her head. "I’ll never be that woman again."

       Betts heard a hint of pride in that voice. Her own chin rose higher.

       "Does it seem to any of you," Agnes asked tentatively the next week, "that there are all these books and movies and plays out now where people are dying of cancer?"

       "It’s an easy kill," Betts said. She’d been thinking about it lately, all the deaths. She’d been counting them in her family, a grim task. And her cousins, now, were getting genetic counseling; afraid they would end up like her. But she had good numbers—or was it just that some others had worse? "They’re lazy, that’s all. The minute they have to kill off a character they go for cancer. Because it’s all shorthand: cancer, chemo, death. They don’t have to do any research." She put a little hard spin into her voice; the objective woman, the cold realist.

       "But we don’t have to die," Mary said in a quick voice. "The odds have changed. More people live with it than die from it." Heads all looked vibrating and alert. There had been a rustle of anger at Betts’s remark, they were flocking around Mary. As if I made it true, Betts thought; as if I meant it meanly.

       "You’re forgetting the numbers," Rani objected. "You’re imagining it’s gone after chemo. Statistically speaking . . ."

       "You say these things because you didn’t have chemo," Betts snapped. Sometimes she couldn’t stand the things Rani said, true or not. And who knew if they were true? "You’re afraid, and you’re trying to spread it around." Betts felt irritated; Rani always made her irritated.

       "That’s unfair, Betts," Cheryl said. But she looked like she agreed.

       "Look, I’m afraid, too," Betts said defensively. "I’m afraid to think forward. The chemo will be over soon, and I always add, ‘this time.’ I expect it to come back. And I keep reminding myself what they say about attitude and positive thinking, how it can make a difference, so I think I’m doomed, but really, Rani, I’ve never met anyone with an attitude worse than yours. You keep bringing us all down. You don’t want to die, do you? So why don’t you do something to let yourself live?" She felt triumphant; it was a little adrenaline bonus point. If she could argue with Rani, maybe she was stronger than Rani.

       Rani’s face got hard and wound up. Everyone started making noises, little spurts of verbal gestures protesting the harshness of Betts’s remarks, or little encouraging sounds to Rani herself. For a group that was used to waves of tears, they were all, universally, afraid that Rani would cry. Rani couldn’t break down; Rani was their fist, their hard knuckle.

       But Rani’s face got red, then shifted back to pale. Her mouth had been clamped shut but then it opened. The murmuring died down and Betts breathed out in relief. For a brief moment she had been afraid too. "All right," Rani said in a cold, cold voice. "None of us will die. There. Positive enough for you, Betts? You will live forever, and you will, and you will and you will," she said, pointing to various women.

       Mary was stunned. "You didn’t point at me! That’s bad luck! What are you doing?"

       "You don’t believe her, do you?" Cheryl protested. "Rani, that was very upsetting. You can’t single people out like that."

       "I didn’t single anyone out," Rani grumbled. "I was just giving examples."

       "We haven’t heard from you this week, Jen," Cheryl said desperately.

       "Oh, I had a bad week," Jen said, aware that it was her job to change the subject. Her perfectly manicured fingers waved in the air and she sighed apologetically. "I was at work, in an open area, and I bent down for a pen I dropped. I don’t know how it happened—I must have brushed against something—but my wig fell off." Jen’s voice cracked. "The whole place got silent. They stopped talking on the phone and picking up the phone. No one said a word and I scrambled to get that wig on in utter silence and when I looked up I could see all those eyes turning away, just the tail of their eyes showing. They wouldn’t admit to looking. They were horrified and they turned away."

       "You don’t know that," Cheryl argued, but a few women had already nodded in agreement and support for Jen, and Betts asked, "What did you do?" She could picture Jen’s shame, it was easy to do. Those little people behind their desks—they had failed Jen, she thought, over an easy thing.

       "I went to the ladies’ room and locked the door. And then I took the wig off. I do have a little hair now; it’s been almost two months since chemo. It looks awful, I think. But it looks worse when you look by accident. So I decided I wouldn’t wear that wig anymore. I walked from the bathroom to my desk without a wig. Screw them," she said defiantly.

       "Good for you." Cheryl smiled gently. "But why are you wearing it now?"

       "It’s cold in here. My head get so cold."

       "Does it feel like the back of your head is wet? I get that," Teresa said.

       "I get that too."

       A few days later, Betts noticed that she had lost an eyebrow. She looked on the pillow; it wasn’t there. At the next meeting she checked eyebrows all around the room. Her hand went up automatically and stroked the good brow; she looked at her fingers and there were two hairs. Jen’s eyebrows weren’t penciled in, but Betts could tell they weren’t hair, either. Jen was using one of those brush-ons mentioned in the literature (wigs, deodorants, skin creams, eyebrows). Betts’s arms were now hairless, her legs too. She was slick as cellophane. Her ears stood naked in the naked scalp beneath her scarf. She felt cleaner than she ever had, maybe chemically clean, like a glass, a test tube, the vial of stuff shot into her arm. She wondered if her blood might technically be poison.

       "Are you having sex?" Wendy said in a low voice., looking awkward. "Is anyone having sex?" There was a stirring around the table, and Betts assumed everyone was thinking the same thing she was. Ah, the ex-husband. No one said a word. The bastard, Betts thought; giving her hope, mixing her up. Didn’t he know that she had to keep her emotions in line? Make her depressed and she’ll lose her immune system.

       "Sometimes I wonder if I’m still a woman," Teresa said. "I had a hysterectomy five years ago. Now mastectomy. Technically, am I still a woman? No, I don’t mean technically; I mean, philosophically, realistically?"

       "Do you think you’ve changed sex," Betts asked, "or that you’re no sex?"

       "I think I’ve dropped out somehow; I just don’t know."

       "You’re still anatomically correct," Cheryl said, "but I know what you mean. That’s grief; you’ve lost the idea of yourself you used to have. You’re no longer the perfect you."

       "The perfect me," Teresa said sourly. "I always thought I really wasn’t good enough; I never thought I’d envy what I was."

       "You’ll feel better when the treatment’s over and you realize you’re still alive," Cheryl promised. "At some point you’ll look in the mirror and you’ll think your weight is the problem, not cancer."

       Mary looked at her. "Why should my weight be a problem?"

       Cheryl shrugged. "Most women gain weight. Maybe it’s the aftereffects of chemo, or maybe the tamoxifen does something. Or maybe it’s because we think of people wasting away with cancer, so we panic if we lose a pound. Just remember that women who gain too much have worse numbers."

       It wasn’t Betts’s problem yet, she was having trouble eating. That bad taste at the back of her mouth lasted a week each time. Her sense of smell got out of control. She didn’t know how dogs stood it; but perhaps it wasn’t so painfully bad for dogs. As for her, she was slapped by smells, especially sweet perfumey smells and food smells; she could fall over from them.

       That was the thing about chemo, Betts thought: it filled your life; it became your life. You lived through it thousands of times in your head, gagging and spewing, you saw yourself dying, and dying was just like chemo. It was unreasonable for them to want you to do it. Even though everyone moaned about how sick it made them, to Betts it seemed that the doctors didn’t realize what the chemo was doing; they couldn’t know or they wouldn’t smile at her in that calm way, and tell her to do it again.

       She had always thought that people who complained were wimps, but now her body did things it never did before. She was occupied, she was fragile. She heard herself whine, and she thought, I don’t want to be the sickest one, the one who obviously isn’t doing well.

       Whenever she complained, though, the women in the room looked at her fondly, they nodded their heads; they found common symptoms that their doctors shrugged away. It was a relief to find so many of them had the same weakness and pain she had, the same kinds of infections, the same specific fears.

       "Is anyone else having nightmares?" Jen asked. "I keep being abducted by aliens, or having them drill into me with needles."

       Teresa was deadpan. "Are you having trouble with the interpretation?"

       Jen waved her hand over her sparse hair; she was now defiantly unwigged. "I think I can figure it out. But how do you stop it?"

       "Get a dog," Agnes said. "A problem puppy. One that cries at night. It’ll change your focus."

       Mary straightened up. "How else do you change your focus? I don’t want to be down around my kids. I have to be brave for them." She blinked. "Do you know, I never say the word ‘cancer’ except in this room?"

       "It’s a bad taboo word," Cheryl said.

       "Well, it is. Everyone thinks I’m dying. No one knows what to say to me. They drop their voices or pat my arm when they ask me how I am. The ones that ask. Mostly they don’t ask."

       "They don’t know," Rochelle said earnestly. "Really, I think they just don’t know what to do. They think we’re not part of life anymore, that we can’t relate to anything they say or think."

       "Us and them," Teresa said triumphantly. "It’s always us and them."

       "We have to be kind to them. We have to help them. A lot of them want to say something, but they’re afraid." Agnes was being matter of fact.

       "Oh, this is so silly," Rochelle protested. "Help the poor dears to get used to us?"

       Betts agreed that there were definitely some adjustments in order. "I want to start with the doctors," she said. "You know how, when you ask if the next treatment will hit you harder, or if you’ll be able to eat in three days, or if you’ll get mouth sores, they always say, ‘Everybody’s different’? I want to forbid them to say that."

       Jen nodded. "When they tell you how many people worked throughout chemo, I want them to actually produce those people."

       "Doctors are not one of us," Agnes said firmly. "Surgeons, radiologists, oncologists, nurse coordinators and technicians. They’re missionaries; we’re savages."

       "The last, best race, the undiscovered tribe."

       "Oh, we’ve been discovered all right. And we keep on being discovered." Mary was bitter.

       "You know, this is fun," Cheryl said brightly. "Everyone gets a little sharp at some point, a little angry, but they don’t always find a way to make it funny."

       "You said ‘they,’ " Betts pointed out.

       "I’m speaking from the ‘us’ of group leader to the ‘them’ of the group," Cheryl said placatingly. "It’s the last meeting, you know. Officially the last meeting, anyway; sometimes groups continue on their own."

       Betts had a sinking feeling, a sudden flush. These women mattered to her; what happened to them happened to her. She looked quickly around the room and saw wan faces. "I don’t want this to end," she blurted out. "I want us to go on."

       "Of course we’ll go on," Rani said. "Separately."

       They were quiet then, lowering their heads. Betts thought of things stopping: some day the chemo would stop, and she would find out if the breathlessness, the startling weakness she now had would disappear, or if her heart had been affected. One percent developed heart failure; a smaller percentage, leukemia. The doctors wrinkled their mouths at her: too small a number to worry about; you’re young, you’ll make it. But the odds that she would develop cancer had also been a small number. Like Rani said, the numbers didn’t matter; what mattered was what group you were in, winner or loser. "I think we need a ritual," Betts said. "Maybe even a bunch of them. Something we could do periodically to keep us together." She wanted to hold on to them, to stand with them.

       Jen shook her head. "I don’t want any ritual. I just want to melt right back in with the others. I want to blend; I want to be invisible. When that finger points again, I want it to be unable to find me."

       Rochelle nodded. "I will be so good," she swore. "I’ll drink soy milk, eat vitamins, I’ll exercise every day. I’ll give money to anyone who asks me. I’ll rescue every stray I see, and wear only natural fibers. I won’t let a chemical near me, you’ll see. I’ll be so pure I won’t even tweeze the hairs on my chin. You have no idea how pure I’ll be!" She put her arms on the table top, her palms reaching out. "I’m going to beat this, you’ll see. I’m a winner." Her eyes were bright with conviction.

       Betts lowered her head unhappily. What good were intentions when no one knew what to do? They found a new tumor-fighting agent every day, and still there was cancer.

       "I plan on slathering everything with butter," Rani said. "And drinking margaritas. Butter and margaritas. I may even start smoking again. Why the hell not? I’ve been worried about lung cancer all my life and—hey look—I don’t have lung cancer."

       "We can band together. I agree with Betts, I think it’s better if we stay together," Mary said, and a few other women nodded their agreement. Mary clutched her hands together.

       I know what’s happening, Betts thought as she looked at Mary’s fists. She’s afraid this is it, this moment is over, the beginning is over, and it’s on to the end. I heard that when you’re finished with the treatment, everyone gets depressed. Because there’s nothing left to fight with. I’m afraid of that too; I’m afraid of being afraid. I’ve been sick with it, sick with fear, sick with chemo.

       "When I see you guys, I know I’m doing okay," Teresa said. "When I’m here, I think it’s a mistake because, look at us, we’re fine, we’re healthy, we even laugh, just like the rest of them."

       "At some point you have to move on," Cheryl pointed out. "You have to empower yourselves. You can’t stay angry forever."

       Wendy laughed. "Only fifty percent are angry; the rest are merely pissed."

       "Let’s start a new study," Rani said suddenly. "We’ll do the exact opposite of what they say we should do."

       "Isn’t that what you’re doing already?" Teresa asked. "It would be just like you to cook the records."

       Rani shrugged. "Well, sure. If we don’t get the right results, we’ll just lie."

       "That’s the problem with the statistics," Rochelle shouted. "They’re lying! Or they’re wrong, they’re just wrong. People move and don’t leave forwarding addresses! And they think they’re dead! Ha! See! Six out of 10 are cancer-free and the other four move!" She slapped her thigh.

       "I feel like I’m being followed by those stats," Agnes said. "I read all the reports to see if they’ve changed."

       "That’s no way to live," Rani said. "You’ve got to have a cold eye."

       "Cold eye? What the hell does that mean?" Wendy said.

       "Let’s play a game," Rani said. She dug in her bag and brought out a pen and some paper. She began tearing out strips. "What are the numbers? Four in this group won’t make it? Okay, I’ve got four slips of paper with Xs on them." She marked them quickly and held them up.

       "Rani," Cheryl said, "this is a terrible thing to do."

       "We’re going to draw slips of paper," Rani said.

       Agnes crossed her arms. "I’m not doing it."

       "You’re crazy," Betts said. "This is weird." But she felt herself leaning forward, watching Rani and the slips of paper.

       "Cancer isn’t weird?" Rani answered. She dumped everything out of her bag and put the slips of paper in, then shook them briefly, up and down. "I’ll be first," she said. She took the paper and held it in her first without looking. "Let’s go," she said. "Who’s next?"

       Jen, Mary, Rochelle, and Teresa stood up one by one, walked over, bent down. Like Rani, they kept the paper clasped in their fists. Betts found her heart beating quickly, her hands moist. "As if it meant anything," she told herself. But her eyes were hypnotically attracted to Rani’s bag. She thought: "I should go take a paper before it’s only the bad ones left." It didn’t matter that it didn’t make any sense: why should the bad ones bunch up, after all?

       Wendy was moistening her lips; even Agnes seemed to be poised. Betts stood up quickly. "My turn," she said. She felt her hips sway as she moved across the floor. She bent over, and the muscles on her arm pulled tight as she leaned forward. Her breast pulled faintly at the T-shirt she wore under her blouse. She took a deep breath, feeling her lungs fill, her chest blow up like a balloon.

       The paper was crisp and familiar between her fingers. Betts felt that the room had grown expectant, that everyone was waiting. All traffic has ceased, she thought, and it seemed indeed she was on a bridge now, all alone and walking amid the stalled cars and the sirens and the far-off screams.

       Wendy took hers, and Agnes. Even Cheryl was standing now, looking like she knew she really shouldn’t.

       When they each had theirs, Rani said "Okay now," and they looked down at their hands.

       Betts unfolded her paper and drew in her breath. It was white and clean and entirely pure. She heard Agnes sob, and Mary, and someone else, but hers was clean, was clean, was clean!

       She looked up and saw Rani frowning, her head lowered, but Betts told herself it didn’t matter, it meant nothing, but her blood ran cheering though her veins like a marathoner hitting finish.

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