Zol Szabo peered across the sea of silvery heads bobbing in the buffet line at Camelot Lodge. Usually, he looked forward to these monthly Sunday brunches with Art Greenwood, his ex–wife’s granddad. Art, the only member of Francine’s family who hadn’t smoked himself into an early grave, sparkled with wisdom and wit in defiance of his age and physical restrictions. Best of all, Art and his tablemates never let political correctness get in the way of a candid opinion or a good story.

But today, Zol saw only clinical diagnoses smouldering through the retirement residence: the wobbly knees of rheumatoid arthritis, the stooped backs of osteoporosis, the trembling hands of Parkinson’s, the vacant eyes of macular degeneration.

Zol forced another smile at Art, who was taking his place at the piano in the sitting room on the other side of the archway. Zol hoped Art was well enough to play. He’d looked pale and drawn when he’d greeted Zol a few minutes ago and confessed he’d been hit by another bout of fever and the runs earlier in the week. That made it his third bout in the past couple of months. And he wasn’t the only one. Dozens of others had been hit with the same bug. Art denied any headache, thank goodness. When headache compounded the fever and diarrhea, the result was lethal. In the past month alone, two of the converted mansion’s thirty–eight residents had died within hours of a blinding headache compounding their explosive stools.

Art warmed up with a few bars of "Bicycle Built For Two." His chording was tentative, not as sharp as usual. He switched to an improvised version of Beethoven’s "Moonlight Sonata." Art played everything by ear. He couldn’t read a note, but if he heard something once, he could play it forever. Despite the advancing muscle disease that had forced him into an electric scooter, he still glimmered with the genius that had made him an engineering whiz–kid in the telephone industry fifty years ago.

The understated elegance of the dining room’s caramel walls and burgundy accents reminded Zol of a café in one of Hamilton’s nicer hotels, except the bucolic vista through Camelot’s windows was considerably more handsome than any view of the city’s down–at–the–heels central core. Here on an elegant cul–de–sac a few blocks from downtown, stately homes abutted the woodlands at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment. Known locally as the Mountain, the imposing ribbon of limestone and old–growth forest snaked through the city like a giant’s doorstep, its flora and fauna protected by the United Nations as a World Biosphere Reserve. Zol thought of his own renovated house a couple of kilometres above as the seagulls flew, perched on a generous treed lot on the Escarpment’s edge. He was thankful once again for the two million in lottery winnings that had sent him to medical school and bought him such a gorgeous piece of real estate with its jetliner view. He could cope with Hamilton’s overgenerous share of shysters and gangsters if, at the end of the day, he could tuck Max safely in bed, then sip a Glenfarclas while watching Lake Ontario shimmer in the ever–changing light.

Camelot’s dining tables boasted smooth white linens, shiny cutlery, and imitation crystal that sparkled as brightly as the stuff his mother reserved for special occasions. Today’s spread of poached salmon, eggs, bacon, French toast, salads, and gooey desserts looked a treat. As a former professional chef himself, Zol respected the care and effort that went into every dish. But as a public–health doctor, the table seemed to him less a chef ’s delight than a minefield.

Something nasty and undetectable — a microbe or a toxin — was poisoning the food. But intermittently. Not every dish and not every meal. As the Associate Medical Officer of Health for Hamilton–Lakeshore, second–in–command at the region’s health unit, Zol’s job was to quash epidemics, not wallow in them during Sunday brunch. Twice he’d sent his inspectors into Camelot. They’d examined every centimetre of the place with a magnifying glass. They’d collected scores of samples from the kitchen and dozens of specimens from afflicted residents. But they’d come up empty. The kitchen met all the health codes, and the laboratory detected no disease–causing pathogens.

Zol’s friend and medical–school classmate, Dr. Hamish Wakefield, a savant in the field of infectious diseases, had raised the possibility of epidemic Norovirus. But even Hamish, an assistant professor at the city’s Caledonian University Medical Centre, was stumped; he conceded there was no indication that anything as simple as the cruise–ship virus was the culprit here.

Zol helped the wait staff — invariably hesitant, awkward, and struggling with their English — park the walkers in a double row against the far wall of the dining room. He escorted the frailest of the gauzy–white residents to their seats, then joined the slow–moving buffet queue. He knew he’d soon be hunting down unsalted butter for one person and cholesterol–free scrambled eggs for another. He shrugged off the risk to his intestines and half–filled his plate with breakfast fare he hoped would be sterile: a rubbery fried egg, three crispy rashers of bacon, and a piece of charred toast. Bypassing the devilled eggs, sliced tomatoes, and potato salad, he took his place at Art’s table where Phyllis and Betty were already seated.