What is the difference between love and obsession? Didn’t both make you stay up all night, wandering the streets, a victim of your own imagination, your own heartbeat? Didn’t you fall into both, headfirst into quicksand? Wasn’t every man in love a fool and every woman a slave?
Love was like rain: it turned to ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn’t find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn’t go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, Dear you, good-bye from me . Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you’d known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you.
I tried to define what was happening to me. I had decided never again to drive out to the Jones orchard, and yet I could see the map that led there simply by closing my eyes. I often had lunch with Renny in the school cafeteria, but despite the salad in front of me, all I could taste was an orange, the sweet kind with the reddish rind, the sort that to me looked like ice. My mouth puckered. My heart raced. I thought of all those silly lovelorn girls I’d known in high school, and for once felt a bit of compassion. Foolish creatures. Foolish me. At night I dreamed of things that were dangerous: snakes, stepladders, horses’ heads nailed to the wall. When it rained I stood by the window, looking for lightning. There were music students who lived down the street and when they practiced in the evenings, the sound of the oboe made me weep, the piano forced me to cover my ears. I suppose I had begun to feel something, just an itch. Just a sting. That was the problem. I was such a novice I didn’t understand what it meant when I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, when my racing thoughts were too often of Lazarus Jones.
Since I didn’t believe in love, I soon enough defined my state as a delusionary preoccupation. Obsession. An emotion that should be tied up and taken out with the trash, replaced by more serious, less affecting thoughts. I turned to work, or what little there was of it at the library. But even there my obsessive nature took over. I pretended to be cheerfully busy, entering information into the computer, dusting and ordering the shelves, but in fact my new, rather prurient interest was looking up people’s reading habits. It was disgusting, really. An invasion of privacy, a petty crime of the soul. I’d begun by looking up my brother’s card; now I couldn’t seem to stop. That was my nature, to take something bad and make it worse.
I looked up which novels my physical therapist most enjoyed, thick nineteenth-century tomes in which problems weren’t easily solved with exercise and diet. I saw that Matt Acres, owner of the hardware store, preferred biographies of adventurers, men who left behind their safe and settled lives. Dr. Wyman’s teenaged daughter, who was home for the summer from private school in New England, had read all of D. H. Lawrence. People in the Orlon Home for the Aged most often requested travel books for places they would surely never see: Egypt, Paris, Venice, Mexico. My mailman was reading poetry; no wonder what little mail I received was crumpled and stained. The griddle cook at the diner, who made a terrible omelet and even worse blueberry pancakes, read Kafka, in German.
If Frances York had known what I was doing, I would have been fired on the spot. What people read revealed so much about them that she considered our card catalog a treasure house of privileged secrets; each card contained the map of an individual’s soul. I knew Frances’s philosophy. It was not our job to monitor the books our patrons withdrew any more than it was our duty to alter their reading habits. I liked Frances and respected her, but I wondered if she would have hired me in the first place had she known who I really was. I was poison long before I’d started snooping around. Would she have felt safe with a person who knew more about the effects of arsenic than she did about the Dewey decimal system? A death addict and a thief who didn’t know wrong from right, white from red? At least now I’d had Peggy come by to help color-code my clothes; I knew enough to wear white blouses and black skirts to work and to leave my red clothes at home. But I was still me, hidden by sensible shoes, by skirts past my knee and button-down blouses.
Thankfully, Frances had no reason to suspect any of this. I was a model employee: polite to our patrons, cheerfully running books out to those who were housebound or in the hospital. I even made a weekly trip to the home for the aged with a box of travel books. Could anyone have discerned I was not to be trusted? Not for a second. Well, maybe those mothers from the nursery group, they seemed to know, but I wasn’t counting them. I avoided the children’s section as a matter of fact. The bright illustrations, the rhymes, the high hopes, all made me nervous. Child patrons always wanted something: directions to the bathroom, a drink of water, a sequel to a book that doesn’t have one.
The children’s section was where the tall windows were, and the sunlight filtering through in pale streams revealed how filthy the shelves were. There were dust motes everywhere. I ventured into that section one morning with a mop and a sponge. At least it was a school day, and there were no children around. Only me.
By accident, I found the book my brother had taken out.
Or perhaps there were no accidents; perhaps I saw the book out of the corner of my eye, and my brain processed the discovery in some deep place I couldn’t reach. However it happened, I turned and there it was, not put back properly, askew on the shelf. It was an old edition of Grimm’s, black with silver lettering. The pages smelled watery; when I held the book up to my nose I sneezed. Tears in my eyes. So what? I just happened to pick it up. I just happened to sit on the floor cross-legged and thumb through the pages.
One story in particular had clearly been a favorite, perhaps of my brother, with dog-eared pages and a coffee stain or two. It was “Godfather Death,” one of the stories I’d hated and had always passed by. In this tale, whenever Death stands at the feet of an ill person, that person belongs to him. To trick Death, a good doctor, the kind hero, turns the ill person around so that Death is at the head and therefore cannot take him. Fairy-tale logic can be intractable or fluid, and the hero never knows which it is. Especially if the hero is a rational man. This one is. One more time and I’ll take you instead,
Death says, but the doctor is a scientist through to his soul, a believer in order and in the rightness of things; he cannot accept this is the way the game of life and death is played. There have to be rules, and he is convinced that all he needs is to reverse Death’s direction. But when the doctor saves the girl he loves by turning her around to avoid her fate, Death scoops him up instead. Then and there. No explanations, just a single final act. A life for a life.
Is this the way the story ends? Not in Andersen’s tales surely, where right and might win out, but this is Grimm.
There is a single, simple rule to the game played between the doctor and Death, one the doctor-hero has ignored: When it comes to death, heads or tails matters not. There is no escape in the end.
It’s a sad tale, one that defies logic and thumbs its nose at any reasonable man’s attempt to impose order on the natural world. That my brother, of all people, would choose this obscure, dark story to read and reread was in itself a puzzle. I thought about the way he’d called to me when I’d stood out on the porch, watching our mother drive away. Turn around, that’s what he’d wanted me to do. If I had, would Death have passed us by?
Just when I thought my brother was determined to avoid me — I’d hardly seen him since my strike — he and Nina invited me to their house for a party. I’d been so taken aback when Ned called that I’d said yes when in fact I’d meant no . I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a party outside of events at the library in New Jersey, and I’d arranged all of them. I’d come to realize that I was comfortable speaking only to people who’d experienced disaster, at least in a secondhand way, like my physical therapist, Peggy, whom I occasionally met for coffee. And of course Renny, not that he was a friend, not even close. Now I’d gone and committed myself to a party of mathematicians and scientists.
It turned out to be an annual event, filled with professors and graduate students from both Nina’s and Ned’s departments. Getting there was a trial for me; I took one wrong turn after another on those curlicue roads that cut through the campus and all looked alike. I realized then, I hadn’t once been invited over to my brother’s house since my arrival in Florida, and I thought this strange. I wondered if my sister-in-law held something against me. Or maybe it was Ned.
The house my brother and Nina owned was modern, glass and stucco, set on a cul-de-sac on the far side of the Orlon campus — faculty housing of the highest quality. No wonder some of the best minds chose to teach at Orlon; life here was pleasant, a fact that rubbed me the wrong way. I could feel the numbness in my fingertips, the clicking in my head when I pulled up to park. In times of stress, my symptoms intensified. I got out of my car and walked up the neat path. Nice lawn. Nice flowers. I was thinking about Lazarus Jones. I shouldn’t have been, but after a week I was still burning. I could see happy graduate students through the bay window of Nina and Ned’s house. I felt as though I had arrived from an alternate universe. Call it New Jersey, call it desperation, call it whatever you like.
I went immediately to the bar set up in the den. I poured a large glass of red wine for myself, probably the good stuff. It looked like mud to me. While I was getting myself a drink, and then another, I could tell how devoted my brother’s students were to him; I overheard one say that Ned would be the head of the department when Dr. Miller, the current chair, retired. Several voiced their disappointment that Ned would be taking the next semester off from teaching, something I didn’t know, in order to concentrate on his research.
Nina’s students were more reserved, until they started in on the wine; then they were wild. They had a slew of drinking games with mathematical rules I couldn’t understand. They also seemed devoted, only more quietly so; I could see into the kitchen, where they had gathered around Nina as she dished out bouillabaisse, homemade, I was told, which shocked me. I had assumed someone as theoretical and removed as Nina wouldn’t know how to cook. But, of course, cuisine was probably just another equation to her: clams to tomato sauce, basil to pepper, rum to lemonade. My previous apathy toward my sister-in-law had turned into hostility. Why hadn’t she invited me here before, made her bouillabaisse for me? Perhaps she saw me as another project of my brother’s, one of many that took up time and energy with little or no return for his efforts.
I stayed out of the kitchen and close to the bar. One graduate student in meteorology took a fancy to me. He introduced himself and followed me around for a while. I was wearing the red dress again, that must have been it. The graduate student, Paul, had heard about my lightning strike and wanted to talk about my effects. Was I dizzy? Weak in the knees? Did I have migraine headaches? Lasting psychological effects? Would I like a bowl of bouillabaisse, a glass of punch? How was sex affected, this was what he yearned to know. Hotter? Colder? There was the myth of hypersexuality, duly noted, half believed. Would the rearrangement of my electrical impulses take my partner’s breath away, bring him closer to the brink of the world we knew?
This was a little too personal. I thought we’d speak of the weather, the heat, perhaps the student’s classwork, not the edge of the known world. I spied my brother across the room. I almost didn’t recognize him. He looked older, unkempt, thinner. Had I not noticed that he’d lost most of his hair, that his shoulders slumped? Yet he seemed to be enjoying himself. He was talking with several other professors, laughing at someone’s joke. I wondered if he’d found happiness in logic, in this well-ordered world created from scratch in a land where there was no ice. Perhaps Death stood outside the windows in Orlon. Perhaps he couldn’t get through the glass.
I excused myself and left the graduate student to his own kind. The bar had only beer and wine, and I needed something stronger to get through the evening. I went into the kitchen, found the liquor cabinet, and poured myself a whiskey. My grandmother had liked whiskey now and then, and I had sometimes joined her in a drink. Tea and whiskey, our cocktail of choice. We liked to sit in the parlor and watch snow fall; we played “I spy with my little eye” long after her vision was failing and I was far too old for such games. Now I raised my glass and drank to my grand-mother’s memory. Someone who had loved me in spite of everything, no matter who and what I was.
It was because of the way I missed my grandmother that I drank the whiskey so fast, then turned to the window when I did. It was because I was a failure in each and every thing I undertook, including being a guest at a dinner party, that I happened to spy someone standing in the grass. Was that chaos theory, or simply chaos? If an ice age could be triggered by trivial shifts in the earth’s orbit, what might be wrought by a woman in tears? It was dark in the yard, and at first I thought I was seeing a statue. She was wearing a white dress, and she wasn’t moving. But it was Nina, my brother’s wife, the mathematician, weeping.
After a moment, Nina saw me through the glass. I think she opened her mouth. She was gulping down air, in a panic. I thought of Death, unable to take those who were turned from him. I did exactly that. I quickly turned my back to her. Perhaps I could pretend I hadn’t seen her. Perhaps she could pretend as well. Wasn’t that the way most people went about their lives? Put it in a box, tie it up tight, walk away. Please, oh please, let’s do.
In the living room the students were devouring the refreshments. Who would have expected them to be so hungry? French bread, cheeses, white snowy berries that were most likely strawberries, punch, champagne, plenty of beer. The guests were cheerful — not gloomy and serious, as I had expected. Weren’t they all researching the end of the known universe, the end of the numerical continuum, continually trying to make sense out of columns of figures that refused to cooperate? Shouldn’t these students be glum, desperate? Shouldn’t they realize what little sense there was to be made of this world?
“Your brother always gives the best parties,” someone said to me. I suppose that was a compliment. I found it surreal. I had never seen my brother speak at length to another person besides Nina and the funeral director in New Jersey when we were planning my grandmother’s funeral. Pine box, small gathering, white flowers that looked like a snowbank. I hadn’t known this part of him, just as I hadn’t know of his interest in fairy tales.
“You’re leaving?” Ned caught up to me as I headed for the front door.
Perhaps I’d never known him, and only thought I had. “Lovely party, but I don’t belong here. Look at them all.
I barely speak their language. Math and science. I do not fit in.”
“Library science,” my brother reminded me.
We both laughed. Had we ever done that before?
“Well, you seem much improved.” Ned sounded hopeful. I hated when he did that.
“Seems that way.”
My brother looked at me carefully. “Meaning?”
I wanted to say, meaning Death is not standing at my feet, not at the moment at any rate, not right now. I was thinking about the volume of fairy tales on the shelf. I wanted to ask Ned what else there was I didn’t know about him. Instead, I said, “Meaning yes. Sure. I’m improved. But you look like crap.”
My brother ran a hand through what was left of his hair.
“Probably a gift from our father. Baldness.”
“I think you inherit that gene from your mother. You look skinny, too. Maybe you’re the one who should go to the doctor.”
“I have to say, I’m glad you came to the party.” My brother seemed genuinely happy I was there. “I know you don’t like these kinds of gatherings.”
“I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Really? That never stopped you before.”
I could see through the crowd into the kitchen. Nina was back. She had shaken off whatever had possessed her in the garden and was now serving punch to the students.
“Thank Nina for me, will you?”
“Will do.” My brother looked behind him. Nina waved to him across the room. “Lucky me,” he said, and waved back.
I drove home, if that’s what my rented cottage could be called. I let the cat out and drank a tall glass of whiskey and fell asleep on the couch. The quiet was overwhelming. I liked to be alone, or so I’d always thought. I fell asleep quickly; I was drunk, I suppose, exhausted in some deep way. I dreamed that my sister-in-law was a butterfly. I dreamed my grandmother was sweeping the floor. I dreamed I reached into a dark bucket of water and felt fish swim through my fingers; the coldness of that water turned to heat and rose up my arms, through my bloodstream, up to my chest.
There was a knock on my door, and in my dreams I turned from the bucket too quickly and tipped it over. Water spilled on the floor, one drop at a time. Clear and then white and then red. That’s the way truth always surfaces in fairy tales, written in glass, in snow, in blood. As I came to consciousness I had a feeling of dread, the way I had on the morning after my mother’s accident. You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you’re dreaming of butterflies.
I was still in the confines of my dreamworld as I went to the door. Rats, cats, bats, any of them might find their way up the path. I felt true panic. It was a feeling I remembered wholly. Go back to bed, it’s too dark, it’s too icy, it’s too late.
I was relieved to find that my caller was only a delivery-man, bringing me a cardboard box of flowers. I laughed and had him wait while I went to find my purse. I tipped him ten dollars, extravagant for me.
Giselle came running in, something in her mouth.
“You’ve got a little hunter,” the deliveryman declared.
“Oh, lovely.”
Two little paws hung out of the cat’s jaws.
A murderess. The perfect pet for me.
A trail of blood dripped onto the floor as the cat trotted by. I couldn’t see the color, but I remembered it. I had hoped to see the feathers of some nasty crow or the whiskers of a rat, but instead Giselle dropped one of the moles she was always waiting for beside the hedges. Blind, and soft as a glove, helpless. Caught at last.
Before I went over to deal with the mess, I lifted the cover of the box of flowers. Roses. Right away, I called to the deliveryman to ask what color they were.
He laughed, then saw I was serious.
“Color-blind,” I explained.
The deliveryman was young and apologetic. “Sorry, I thought you were kidding. They’re red.”
But they were white to me, as my admirer knew they would be. The duality of the gift amused me, but it also frightened me. One visit and Lazarus Jones thought he knew me. Fairy tales are riddles, and people are riddles, too. Figure one out and he’s yours forever, whether he likes it or not.
Giselle was hovering over her prey in a corner; I shooed her away with a newspaper.
“Go on! Leave it alone!”
The cat had played her part, but the game seemed all wrong. The mole was curled up like a leaf. I sat down and when the poor little thing didn’t move, I picked it up with a bit of newspaper. The mole was lifeless. All the same, I held it up to my ear, the way some people do with shells to hear a far-off sea.
After a while I got a shoebox from the closet, filled it with tissues, and lay the mole’s body inside. When I had time I would bury it next to the hedge, where it belonged. Now I was busy cleaning the blood off the floor, a trail that looked like snow to me.
Giselle had figured out the riddle of the mole: stay beside the hedge long enough, it will appear and be yours. Blind and gentle, plodding through the dark, unable to see stars or teeth, it assumes what is safe one day will be safe again the next. That was how you caught somebody, easy as pie, in one bite. That was how I’d been caught, too. I put the roses in the freezer overnight. Cold storage for a cold heart. I didn’t know if I wanted them or not. In the morning, when I took them out from between the ice cubes and the cans of frozen juice, the roses shimmered. That’s all someone in the grip of an obsession needs: the single possibility that desire might be real, a tiny shred of evidence to show you’re not all alone in the dark. I thought of poor Jack Lyons, offering me field flowers in the parking lot in New Jersey. I thought of Jack far too often as a matter of fact. All the same, he hadn’t a clue as to who I was. But these roses sent by Lazarus Jones were so sharp a person could cut herself and draw blood. That was the key to my riddle. For all I’d done, for all I’d wished, a rose made of ice was exactly what I deserved.
I drove out in the morning, when the sky was still dark and the rising heat pressed down on the earth. There was rain in the forecast, and I could feel the change in the atmosphere inside my body. In the night I’d dreamed I had long dark hair. There was ice all over my body. I was so cold in my dream that I woke up shivering. Now in the brutal temperature of the hazy morning I stopped at a service station, bought a diet Coke and gassed up my car. I crunched on ice. There was the smell of oil and oranges and heat. I’d been more careful about my clothes this time: A black T-shirt, jeans, sandals, nothing that would make anyone stare. It took me close to an hour to get to the orchard on this occasion, time enough to change my mind. I wasn’t thinking much. I wasn’t seriously hoping for anything. I had the radio on and before I knew it I was listening to Johnny Cash. I thought of the roofer who’d been struck while doing penance for the affair he’d been having; he should have known he was done for when he heard “Ring of Fire.” And here it was again, playing on the AM station I was tuned to. People played that song a lot around Orlon. They listened to the warning, then walked right into the burning ring, clearheaded and stupid at the same time.
I had all the windows open and the sky was getting light. If I were to have an accident now, the last thing I’d hear would be Johnny Cash’s voice. Would I hear it forever, the deep dark sound of it, all that pain bundled up inside? I was eight years older than my mother had been at the time when it happened, her age and mine combined. Now when I thought of her she seemed so young, almost as though she were the daughter, gone off to a celebration on a January night, her pale hair freshly washed, her hopeful blue scarf, ready for life. I was the little old lady left on the porch, the witch stomping her feet on the ice. 80
When I got to the orchard I parked and got out, then reached into the backseat. I’d brought the frozen bouquet of flowers with me, packed with ice in a plastic bag. It was a test, of course. I was anxious to see how he’d do. Did he really know me, or had the choice of red roses been pure chance?
It was still early but Lazarus Jones was awake. He’d heard the car, peered out the window, opened the door, and now stood looking out. The door was half open, half shut. The paint was peeling off the porch railings. Out in the field there were half a dozen men working. A few looked over in our direction, but I doubted they could see anything. The sunlight, after all, was blinding. It made sunspots appear in front of your eyes.
Lazarus was wearing old jeans and a button-down blue shirt; his hair was wet from a shower. It was broiling hot already. I thought I had never seen such a beautiful man in all my life. Everything seemed unreal — the white oranges, the sound of trucks in the fields, the way he was looking at me.
“I guess I have a visitor,” he said.
“You must have wanted one. I figured this was an invitation.” I held out the flowers, ice covering the petals, stems black with cold. “I never got roses from anyone.”
He opened the screen door wider. “I guess I passed the test,” he said. “I knew what you wanted.”
He wasn’t the kind of man I would ever end up with. He was the sort some gorgeous woman snagged for her own; perhaps they’d been high school sweethearts, they’d been true to each other since the day they’d met. Two beautiful people, meant for each other. My left side was crooked, my hair patchy, my skin blotchy; I was ten years too old for him. But I was here at the door. I was the one he’d sent roses to.
We went into the house and stood in the front hall. There was an umbrella stand and a rack laden with jackets and hats. There was a wooden bench where a person could sit and pull on his boots. The hallway was dark, dusty. Everything was. The windows hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. Once you were in the house you couldn’t tell what the weather was outside. It had its own atmosphere, apart from the rest of the world. There was a dull thrumming, an evenness, almost a deadness to the air, which I guessed might have been caused by Lazarus. The survivors in my group swore he could affect almost anything.
Why did I stay? Because for once there was something louder than the continuous clicking in my head. Because he’d opened the door. I was startled by how consumed with desire I was. I was thinking the kind of thoughts I hadn’t had before. So this was it. The thing that made people do stupid, ridiculous things; this was everything, here in the dark hall.
We went on into the kitchen. His breakfast was on the table: a glass of ice water, a bowl of cold cereal, a napkin, a spoon. I realized the flowers were melting, so I put them in the sink.
“The worst of my effects is my inability to see red. I miss it and I never even liked it. Just my luck.”
“You have bad luck? I’ll bet there’s more wrong with me than there is with you.” Lazarus held his hand over the spoon on the table. It lurched forward. Spun in a circle. When it stopped there was a clanging noise.
“That’s a trick,” I said.
“Electromagnetic something or other. Let’s just say it’s a disorder.” “What else can you do?” My stomach was lurching around. I was falling into something. Hard. If I stayed, my bones would shatter; I’d break into pieces at his feet. Stupid girl. Stupid me. I hadn’t turned to ice for nothing, for this, a stranger who wasn’t right for me in any way. It would take minutes to run down the hall and get into my car; driving over the speed limit, I could be back in Orlon in under an hour. But I already knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
“You think I’m a magician?” He said it with contempt. As though he was used to having people look down on him, ready and waiting for that.
I tilted my chin up. Faced him straight on. “Maybe.”
“You have some children you want me to entertain at a birthday party — is that it? Me and a pony and some rabbits. You’d have to pay and I’m not cheap.”
“I don’t like children,” I said.
He laughed, surprised.
“And I don’t have anyone.”
He understood. There was no one in my life.
“Then I’ll just entertain you.”
He went to the table and picked up a napkin. For an in
stant I thought he was about to show me a party trick. Just to get back at me. Out of pride. A rabbit made out of paper; a toy bird that would spin and flutter in the air. Instead, he held the paper to his mouth and breathed out.
The faucet in the sink dripped; the sound overpowered the clicking in my head. I watched as the paper ignited. The flame was so hot it was blue. When it rose too high and his fingers were being singed, Lazarus let the burning paper fall into the bowl of cereal, where it burned to ash. I’d never known fire had a sound, like a gasp, a sigh, something alive.
“Do you have anything that can beat that?” he said.
I could make a wish and turn it into blood and bones. What was that worth? I had ice in my veins; I was colder and more distant than a dark, sunless planet. If that’s what he wanted, then I might just be the perfect woman for him. I went to the table and took the glass of ice water. I filled my mouth with ice. A woman who stood in one place, who forever looked at the sky, motionless, frozen solid. If that’s what he wanted, that’s what he’d get. I kissed him, mouth open. I could feel the heat from inside him melting through, but I kept at it. It was why I was here, I knew that now. I couldn’t stop kissing him. I heard myself, my desire, and I couldn’t believe it was me. I was moaning. I sounded like the fire had, a gasp, a sigh. The riddle inside me: How do you melt ice? How can you move when you’re frozen inside?
When the ice cubes inside my mouth had turned to water, and the water was nearly boiling, I pulled away. I went to the sink to spit out before I burned myself. Quite suddenly I knew what the myth of people struck by lightning becoming more sexual was made of. It was simply this: We knew we could be gone at any time. Standing by the window, up on the roof, playing golf, on the phone. The possibility of being blown out like a match made us burn.
“Well.” Lazarus looked surprised at what he’d wound up with. “You do have some tricks.”
I was drawn to him, a sparrow to a hawk, a hawk to a sparrow. There was no logic when I followed him down the hall to the bathroom. There was no reason for me to do the things I did. Except that I felt something. I didn’t think that was possible for me anymore. Not now, not ever. That I did seemed enough to excuse almost anything.
He filled the tub with water. All I could hear was the sound of the tap. I understood that it was the only way we could be together — the elements most drawn to each other are the ones that destroy each other. I leaned down and put one hand in the tub, splashed back and forth. The water felt like ice. I could feel it down my spine. Lazarus said it was nothing compared with the bath of ice they’d put him in at the hospital, when he was burning up alive and they needed to lower his temperature, keep his heart going. It had probably kept him alive. Pure ice. Now he craved it. A cold woman like me. I think he’d been dreaming of me and then I was there, in my red dress.
The day was humid and now it started to rain. We could hear the rain hitting against the roof. There was thunder. I could be anywhere. I couldn’t leave.
“I need it to be dark,” Lazarus told me.
I didn’t care. I wanted whatever he did. He drew the blinds over the window, shut off the light above the sink. We could barely see each other. Then the last light. That one out, too. We were in the dark, groping, following our hands, hearts, skin. In truth, I was grateful for the dark. I wasn’t beautiful. I couldn’t forget that I was ten years older than he. I slipped off my clothes, stepped into the tub, shuddered in the cold water. He got in right after me, desperate, I think, wanting me; it must have been that. I could feel the edges of heat in the water. I held on to the smooth sides of the bathtub. I thought of fish in a bucket. Death standing at the foot of a bed. When he pulled himself on top of me, I imagined I might drown. Maybe I was supposed to. For all I knew, this was the other half of my death wish — half fire, half water. He drew me under and kissed me, deep, underwater, unending. By the time we came up for air, I was burning. I turned on the cold tap and let it run. Over my shoulders, over my chest, in the dark that I was grateful for. I could have been anywhere, but I was there. I could have driven west or east, but I had driven here to him. I closed my eyes. Burn me. Drown me. Do anything. When he moved inside, I pulled him deeper.
When I got out of the bathtub my legs were shaking. Water had spilled onto the floor. Every step was slippery, dangerous, cold. “I have to do something,” I said.
I wrapped a towel around me, then went to the kitchen to open the freezer. My hands were shaking. This was really crazy. I got a piece of ice and pushed it up inside me, where I was burning. I didn’t care. It was worth it. I wasn’t sure I had ever felt anything before.
“I hurt you,” Lazarus said.
He had pulled on his clothes and come up behind me. Nothing had hurt me since that night on the porch; nothing had even come close. I was shaking, still wet, so he put his arms around me. I could feel the heat through his clothes. I could hear his heart beating, the strong heart that had defied death, that had stopped and come back to life. Nothing could have made me want him more.
I wasn’t much different than that greedy, selfish girl I’d been years ago. Only now I didn’t want the universe, not the whole wide world. Just this and nothing more: Make me feel something, anything, in cold water, on a bed of ice, on a night so dark it’s impossible to tell the difference between the earth and the sky. Let it happen again and again, time after time. Hurt me so I know I’m still alive.
A re people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside? At the library I couldn’t help but notice which patrons checked out the same books. They appeared to have nothing in common, but who could tell what a person was truly made of? The unknown, the riddle, the deepest truth. I noticed them all: the ones who’d lost their way, the ones who’d lived their lives in ashes, the ones who had to prove themselves, the ones who, like me, had lost the ability to feel.
I kept going out to the orange grove. It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t have to. It was as though I had one map inside my head and it led to the man who was waiting for me. Someone who was as alone — maybe even more alone — than I was; someone whose story dovetailed with mine — burned alive, trapped in ice. I thought about Jack Lyons — I might have learned how to be human with him, but what good would that have done? There was so much more to learn from Lazarus. After the first few times we were together, I had gotten up the courage to ask what it had been like to be dead. I’d pleaded to know, but he wouldn’t tell me. All the same, I wouldn’t let it go. I nagged and begged. Did it hurt, was it heavenly, was there white light or the darkest agony? Lazarus refused to say. He had a beautiful smile, one that made me want him even more. Want, I had discovered, was a country of its own. Everything else drops off the map: oceans, continents, friends, family, the before, the after — all of it gone.
Throughout the summer the only thing I could think about was the road to Lazarus’s. I’d dream about it: the stop signs, the white line, the turnoff, the front porch, the door. My brother phoned and left a few messages, but I didn’t bother calling back.
“Are you alive?” Ned’s familiar voice asked one day when I played my phone-message tape.
Actually, yes, I wanted to tell him. Amazingly, incredibly enough, I seemed to be. But he wouldn’t understand. How could I explain that on rainy nights Lazarus and I sat out on his porch in the dark, drawn there by whatever was inside us, some external weather trapped and mirrored inside our blood and bones. I felt addicted, to the danger, the rush of being alive, taking chances. We had sex outside, in the dark, with the rain coming down. We went down to the pond, turned away from each other, took off our clothes. We didn’t have to see each other to know what we wanted. It was a story that no one else knew.
Now when I went to the survivor group I felt nothing, no kinship. I wanted to run away from their sorrowful tales of lives gone wrong. I came late, left early, avoided the girl with the mismatched socks when I saw her on the street. We were nearing hurricane season, a time when lightning-strike survivors feel more stress than usual. Anything can happen at any time. In group, we were told safety tips. Stay away from windows; have a hurricane cellar. And there I was on the porch on nights when the wind nearly carried us away. I wasn’t thinking of safety at all.
“Where’ve you been?” Renny asked me at the snack table after one survivor meeting. There were oatmeal cookies and cream cheese brownies and some gray thing I supposed was red velvet cake, allegedly a specialty around here.
Lately, I’d been more selfish than ever. I had a secret dark world and it suited me. In my greed, I had forgotten about Renny. I was that sort of friend, I suppose, the bad sort, and I was embarrassed by my own self-involvement. Renny looked nervous and underfed. Not that he was my responsibility.
“Here and there,” I said.
“You’re fucking him?” Renny said. Just like that. As though he could read my mind. Did it show? Surely, I had no expression on my face. I never did.
“Good Lord, you are suspicious.” I took a cookie, though I hated oatmeal. “And nasty.”
Renny wasn’t so easily fooled. “You mean smart.”
“I actually did mean that.”
We both laughed.
“You, on the other hand,” he said. “Very stupid.”
“And your romantic life is something to boast about?”
Iris McGinnis. The girl who didn’t know he was alive.
“Good one,” Renny said. “You got me.”
The basis for my friendship with Renny was our shared chapter on pain. It was an inclusive chapter, the guiding principle of all that was to follow: Careful what you feel. Better yet, feel nothing at all. With his gloves, Renny could not feel enough and had difficulty picking up a straw or a stone. Barehanded, there was too much sensation, dizzying, all-encompassing. Because I’d seen him less once I began to go out to the orchard, I didn’t understand how bad his pain had become until that night at group. He looked more anxious than usual; the summer semester was ending and Renny had very little faith in himself.
I was at the library the next day when Renny called on me. I had to show up for work occasionally, but I took my time, slowly, lazily replacing books on their proper shelves, in the dream state I entered whenever I thought about Lazarus. I was the Ice Queen who wanted to be burned alive. I wanted to take the path full of stones that led through the forest of ashes. At the end of that path I would find what every fairy-tale creature yearned for. Not pearls, not kingdoms, not gold. I was looking for something better than that. Real treasure. Real truth.
“You’ve got to help me,” Renny pleaded.
“Is this about Iris again?” Iris McGinnis, nymph of sorrow, so far away she might as well have been living on the moon. Renny loved to talk about her. I usually just tuned him out and let him drone on, but my patience was wearing thin.
“Not Iris. Not this time.”
He was failing his architecture course; his end-of-the-summer term project was due and he couldn’t work on it himself because of the pain in his hands. He was taking Demerol, along with Tegretol for the tremors. I could feel guilt rise up inside me like a living being. I wanted to tell him no. After work I planned to get in my car and drive to the secret country where oranges were white. I wanted to walk into the cold pond where Lazarus and I went swimming on clear nights, after all the workers had left, after the trucks had been loaded up and driven away, after it was dark. The mud between my toes under a black and starless sky. I’d been thinking about it all day as I shelved books. I wanted to be dragged under, forget there was anything else in the universe.
But how could I deny Renny, my friend, Renny the sorrowful? How could I tell him what I really wanted? Go away, go away. I’m in a different country now, one where no one can find me, one where there’s no difference between fire and water.
I should have advised him to pick a new major. But no. Always the volunteer, I offered to do the work if he would instruct me. Renny came over that night. I could tell he was desperate. We were that much alike. His tremor was worse. His hair was long, knotted. He hadn’t bathed. All the signs of despair. It was my clicking that kicked in when I felt that way. Sometimes I couldn’t hear the TV over the sounds in my own head.
“You’re sure you’re up for this?” I asked.
Had he been drinking, smoking weed? His eyes were red. And then I thought, Oh, no. He’d been crying.
Renny gazed at his gloves; from his expression he might have been looking down at cloven hooves or a lion’s paws. “Maybe it’s time for me to give up architecture.”
Like drawn to like, story to story. I should have said, Yes, give it up; study literature or art history — any discipline he might have a chance at rather than a field of study that would surely lead to failure. But that wasn’t the way it was going to happen. Jump down the well, sleep for a hundred years, tie yourself to a tree at the base of the mountain, the one where snow falls every day and the ice is ten feet thick.
“Don’t be silly.” Here I went, pushing him down the well. “Architects don’t actually do the building. They inspire and create. Carpenters do all the work.”
“I should give it all up. Architecture and Iris. Ridiculous dreams.”
“Give up and it will never happen.”
I sounded like a character out of an Andersen story, on the side of reason and goodness. I was his cheerleader, his friend, his familiar, his liar. Step up and make the leap. Don’t bother with a helmet or a life preserver. You can do it if you really try! Walk on glass, pull the sliver of ice from your heart, face up to it. Overcome.
I sounded so false to myself, but Renny grinned, won over. I suppose people needed stories like Andersen’s sometimes. The should-be story, the could-be tale. Renny ran a gloved hand through his messy hair. “I don’t have a chance,” he said, but I could hear it in his voice — he was being coerced into believing.
“Let’s do it.” I always got in too deep. I didn’t even want to be here, now I was committing to a major project. “First the temple, then Iris. Inspire me. Boss me around. Treat me like a carpenter.”
Renny had brought over glue, sticks, balsa wood, bamboo, Plexiglas, paper. He unfurled the blueprints on the countertop. Truthfully, now that it was before me, the task terrified me. I had never built anything. Destruction was my game. Renny took note of my expression.
“Fuck it all,” he said. “Maybe I’m supposed to fail.”
I cleared off my kitchen table and set out a large sheet of clear plastic Renny had brought along for the base of the project. We were to construct a Doric temple, if we could ever get the cat out of the room, something we finally managed by setting an opened can of tuna on the porch. I was directed to begin with thin sticks of bamboo. Renny instructed me, but the anxiety of ruining the project made me sweat. I never did anything right, why had I assumed I could help him?
“Terrific,” Renny kept telling me whenever I was able to connect the bamboo with thin wire. “Excellent.”
All the same, it looked like a temple of bones when I’d finished what was supposed to be the framework. “Are you sure this is right?” I peered at the blueprints. Sixty percent of Renny’s grade would be based on this project.
“It’s just the skeleton,” he assured me. “We’ll do the rest next time.”
We ordered a pizza delivered, then locked the kitchen to keep Giselle from knocking over the temple. I had the fan on, but with it or without it, the clicking inside my head had grown quieter.
“When it’s done, I’m giving the temple to Iris,” Renny told me. “I planned it out at the beginning of the summer.”
“Really,” I said. I had the shivers; this could lead someplace dark. Did Iris even know he existed?
Renny opened his wallet and shook out a small gold charm imprinted with the shape of Iris’s namesake. It was sad and beautiful and tiny in his huge gloved hand.
“I had this made up by the jeweler at the Smithfield Mall. We’ll hang it over the doorway. I’ll bet no one ever made something like this for her.”
“Renny.” Obsession or love, or both? He could read my pity and my doubt.
“You think I’m an idiot. You think I have no chance at all.”
“I’m not sure I think anyone has a chance,” I admitted.
When the pizza was delivered, Renny paid, treating me to dinner as a thank-you for all my handiwork. When he handed over the cash, the delivery guy stared at Renny’s gloves — wary, I suppose, that Renny had some communicable disease.
“He’s an idiot,” I said of the deliveryman when he had gone. “Pay no attention.”
Renny put the gold charm back into his wallet; it took him a long time to do so, he was clumsy and careful both. Usually, I didn’t notice Renny’s gloves any more than I noticed Giselle’s paws. I noticed now. I thought of Iris McGinnis, without a care, leading the life of a college student, not thinking of dark love, gold tokens, Doric temples.
I could feel a change in the air pressure; I leaned out the door and called for the cat. Giselle raced inside and trotted to a corner. She ignored our dinner on the coffee table. Not typical. She had caught something again. Little feet. Gray shadow.
“Is that thing alive?” Renny asked.
“She kills whatever she can get her fangs into.” I apologized for Giselle. “It’s her nature.”
Renny went to the corner and battled the cat for this second mole. She sank her teeth into his glove. “God, she’s vicious. Drop it!” he commanded.
The cat wasn’t about to take orders, so Renny grabbed her by the neck and gave her a little shake. I suppose Giselle was mortified — I treated her like an equal — she growled and let go, then stalked away, hissing. “Murderess,” I called after her. My pet, my dear. I was getting attached to her. I worried when she wouldn’t come in at night; I waited anxiously in the yard until she sauntered up in her own good time. She’d stare me down. Then rub herself against my legs. I’d begun to buy cream for her. Bad sign. No attachments, that was my motto. None at all.
“He’s got teeth marks in him.” Renny had picked up the mole.
“Is he dead?”
Our pizza was getting cold, but I came to examine the mole. It wasn’t moving.
“I’ve got another one out on the porch.”
“Seriously? Another mole?”
I brought Renny out to where I’d left the shoebox. I lifted the cover. “This one’s definitely dead.”
“Are you collecting them?”
We laughed, but it wasn’t funny. There in the shoebox was the little fallen-leaf mole, curled up, not much more than skin and bones. Could it be that I’d even become attached to this poor little thing? It smelled like dust and earth, a sad, bitter scent.
“Well, this one’s alive,” Renny said of today’s mole. He put it in his jacket pocket. “I’ll bet that one was alive, too. Just playing dead. It’s difficult to tell, you know.”
I was still the death-wish girl. Touch you once and you turn to ice. Twice and you might disappear.
“Did you check to make sure before you threw him away?” Renny asked.
After all I’d done for him tonight Renny seemed to be accusing me of murder, or, if not that, thoughtlessness. Same difference. I had glue on my hands and my numb fingertips were raw from attaching those damned bamboo sticks. It was never going to work, not my life or his. I was annoyed and I couldn’t hide it.
“Maybe we’d better call it quits on the project,” I said. “If I do everything wrong, how am I going to construct a temple?”
“So, you’re done with me now? Is that it? Why not? Everyone else wants to get rid of me.”
He was so sensitive a single drop of poison could affect him, a word, a look, one sliver of ice. He had his head down. He was checking on the mole. I saw what I didn’t want to see: Renny was brokenhearted. Like and like. I knew how he felt.
“I don’t mean it that way, Renny.” I came up beside him, close. My only friend. I could see that the mole was breathing softly. Now I noticed that one of its ears had been torn in half.
I told Renny about Lazarus, not everything, of course, not the way I felt inside, just how I arose from bed at odd hours, compelled to drive out there; I revealed the corners of what was happening. Yet I said too much. Be careful whom you tell your story to. As we sat on my porch, both of us feeling the change in the weather, knees touching knees, I made the mistake of mentioning that Lazarus and I were always together in the dark. I suppose it was something that nagged at me. As soon as I’d said it I knew that I should have kept my mouth shut.
“And that doesn’t worry you? You’re suspicious about everything else, but not that? Clearly, there’s something this Lazarus doesn’t want you to see. Hell, I wish I could do the same with Iris. But even in the dark, I wouldn’t be able to trick her. What’s wrong with me would be even more obvious. The dark makes it worse for me.”
Renny decided he would show me this final effect of his strike. The one he kept from everyone. I had the feeling this might be the deep secret, the riddle of who he was. I wasn’t certain I wanted to know. But there was no stopping him.
The whole thing was much too personal. I wanted out. I wanted solitude. I wanted to tell him not to show me. I wanted to say I only appeared to be someone who was interested and concerned. But I just sat there next to him. Frozen.
Renny took off his gloves. I could hear him doing it; he grunted with the pain, the rub of the leather against his ruined skin. And then I saw. Amazing. Bits of yellow and green glowed on his skin. It was so strange, and in some way quite beautiful. You could see it only in the dark, the gold in his skin had been woven into him, as though he were a tapestry. The gold went beyond the area where his watch and ring had branded him, as though the metal had been splattered over his hands. But I understood why he feared love as much as he wanted it: he didn’t look quite human.
“They did a biopsy to see if it could be extracted, but the gold is mixed in with the fat and tissue under the skin. I’ll never get rid of it.”
I gently took his hands in mine. I felt like crying. I wondered if damaged people ever got over what had damaged them.
“So you’re made out of gold. It’s better than plain flesh.”
“Yeah, right. I’m a freak.” Renny went to put the porch light on. He kept his back to me and pulled his gloves on. “And so is he, I’ll bet. Your friend Lazarus.”
Like understands like. I believed that. Renny turned back to me.
“He’s hiding something,” my friend said.
I never should have told him. Never talked to him. Never gotten involved. “Well, then, I hope it’s something as beautiful as your hands.”
Renny looked at me as though I were a total fool. “Don’t you get it? You don’t hide what you think is beautiful. You hide what’s broken. You hide when you’re a monster.”
We dropped the subject, but it was too late. Certain ideas, once they’re planted, grow in spite of you. I had begun to think about broken things.
“What do you think moles eat?” Renny asked when I drove him back to the university.
Of course he was going to keep the mole, turn this blind, wounded creature into a pet. What then? Would the mole speak to him? Would he grant Renny three wishes? Take the gold from my skin, the ring from my fingers, the watch from my wrist?
“Grubs?” I guessed. “My brother would know, but he’s too busy to talk to me.”
“Grub stew.” Renny grinned. “Grub cakes.”
“They probably sell mole food in the pet store. Or try Acres’ Hardware. They seem to have everything.”
I was thinking of how Ned used to leave out food for the bats that nested in our roof. He’d set a mixture of suet and honey and fruit in the rain gutters. I’d hide my head under my pillow, but he’d watch from the window. They can find it without seeing where they’re going,
my brother told me. That’s how defined their senses are. They fly blind through the dark.
At night the quad at Orlon University was quiet. I felt as though I were delivering Renny to the wrong place, though. It was his brokenness. The campus was so groomed, so perfect, and he was falling apart. A true friend would have been able to weave gloves out of reeds and moleskin for Renny; when he wore gloves such as those for three days in a row, he’d be cured. The first girl who passed by him in the cafeteria would fall in love with him, and it would be Iris. Iris McGinnis would truly look at him, she’d look inside him, and when she saw the way he loved her, she’d be so moved she’d begin to weep.
Renny reached into his pocket for the mole. He was right about me. I probably would have assumed it was beyond help and tossed it into the shoebox with its predecessor to become skin and bones, another curled-up leaf. I wouldn’t have even checked for a heartbeat.
“Still alive,” Renny said.
“Can’t ask for more than that. Can we?”
“Forget what I said about Lazarus. Maybe I was jealous that you’ve found someone.”
As if I could forget. If there was a negative point, I clung to it. A life raft of doubt and fear.
“Sure. Don’t worry about it.” I was trying for cheerful ease. “And it’s not like we’re running off to the chapel anytime soon. It’s not love, Renny. It’s nothing like that.”
“I’m happy for you. Whatever it is. I mean it.”
He was. He could be brokenhearted and still be happy for someone else.
“I’m going to forget about Iris. It was a stupid idea to give her the temple. Or to ever think she would want me. What would she want with a monster?”
“You’re not a monster.”
I could feel something hot behind my eyes. It was compassion. Something I didn’t want to feel.
“Look, Renny, even if it’s not Iris, someone will think you’re perfect the way you are.” He looked at me and I could tell, no matter what he might say, he still had hope. He wanted to believe. “Trust me,” I said.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said.
“You know it.”
I had almost convinced myself. Renny got out of the car and walked backward so he could wave to me.
“Monsters of the world, unite.” He raised his gloved fist in the air.
“Go study, or something,” I called to him.
He walked into his dorm. He was gone, but not completely. For there it was, still with me: Renny’s idea, replaying itself, getting bigger. What if Lazarus was hiding something? What if he was indeed a monster? The man I thought I knew could easily be a figment of my imagination, a bear, a snake, a spiny toad. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered. Was it possible to know anyone, truly? Could knowledge hurt, pierce your heart, break your bones?
Instead of going home, I drove to the library. To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood. I let myself in the back entranceway with my key, then locked the door behind me. It was hot and damp in the library; no wonder the pages of the older editions were turning brown. I switched on the desk lamp. A small circle of yellow light. Frances left the desk tidy and well organized, so I was careful not to displace anything. There was a peculiar heaviness in the room; during the day we kept the old air conditioner on, now the dust had settled. I coughed and the sound echoed.
Frances had photographs of nieces and nephews displayed, of a black dog called Harry, of the canals of Venice, where she’d vacationed last year. Beside my desk, nothing. Nothing obvious, at least. Just the invisible picture I always brought with me, the one of myself, the girl who stomped her feet on the porch, breath billowing out like smoke, little beast, long dark hair falling down her back, the stars in the black sky forever set in place, the ice forever shining, brighter than the stars.
I could hear beetles hitting against the screens in the windows. I heard a sigh, as though the books were breathing. I felt that this was where I belonged. This was where I lived. Everything else that had happened or would happen was a dream of some sort. Then I heard a thud. I took in my breath. A real live noise. That woke me up. Maybe I wanted to be alive, after all. Maybe I wanted to be in the world. I was afraid that a thief was trying to enter the library. Everything was free here; there was nothing to steal. Whoever was crazy enough to break in might also be crazy enough to do more.
I shrank back into the dark. There was a clanging then, and I breathed easier. Not a break-in, a return. I realized that someone had slipped a book through the night drop. Nothing more. I pinched myself for being an idiot and went to the door. Nothing to be afraid of. I could see someone dressed in white walking down the path. She was barefoot on the concrete. Her hair was pale and she was in a hurry. There was a car parked in the street, left running. The night was dark, black as beetles. I couldn’t make out any features until the car door opened and there was a flash of light. The woman was my sister-in-law.
I stood watching until the car disappeared. My heart was pounding. Too fast. Too hard. I had spent my life feeling as though I were an accomplice to a crime. It was nothing new to me. Death-wisher, betrayer, liar, secret-keeper. I was death’s assistant, with no great skill of my own. A lackey, a fool, the helpmate whose every move had resulted in tragedy. One step, one wish, one mistake, one icy night. And now I had seen my sister-in-law, Nina, rushing to her car, driving off into the dark. I realized the white thing she was wearing was her nightgown.
The book she’d left was in the night-drop bin; when I picked it up it was still warm from her touch. I took the book with me, out the back door, where my car was parked in the shadows. I drove back through the campus, and it was probably no accident that I wound up on my brother’s street. Maybe I wanted to be reassured that it hadn’t been Nina at the library, only someone who looked like her. I could see into some of the houses, filled with yellow light, with life. My brother’s house, however, was dark. Everyone asleep. Everyone safe inside. The car I’d seen at the library was parked in the driveway. Maybe she hadn’t driven it tonight; all the same, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I didn’t dare get out and touch the hood of the car to see if it was still warm.
There was a streetlight above me; when I flipped over the book that had been returned I saw the title: A Hundred Ways to Die. It was the instruction manual for suicide I’d often referred to in New Jersey when Jack Lyons phoned me for information. I felt something close up in my throat. I’d thought that like always recognized like, but it seemed I’d been completely mistaken about Nina.
I watched the beetles fly through the dark above their lawn. I wondered if Nina had reached home and had crawled into bed beside my brother, if he hadn’t even noticed she’d been gone, noticed her pale feet were cold. Now I remembered that the day before my mother died, my brother had spent all day making her a present. It was a book made of construction paper, bound with shoelaces. When I’d asked him what it was, he’d said it was the story of his life. That’s stupid, I’d said. I didn’t look at his face to see if I’d hurt him. Who cares about that? I was jealous. I knew a book could make something real. In this case, it was his love right there on that paper, tied with laces, given over freely to our mother. That’s why I’d been so mean to Ned. I had nothing. I hadn’t even thought to give her a present. I hadn’t thought at all.
The house we’d lived in in New Jersey could have easily fit into the living room of the house where my brother lived now. It was a beautiful structure, even in the dark. Before tonight I had imagined that Ned and Nina slept well at night, logical sleep, dreamless and sweet. Now I looked through the shadows to see there was a woman on the lawn. My brother’s wife. In her nightgown she was almost invisible. But she was there. It was Nina. She didn’t move at all. I tried to get away quickly, before she could see me. I began to drive away, headlights switched off. Maybe this had never happened, maybe I’d been all wrong, but when I turned to look out the rear window I saw that she had spied me, not that she seemed to care. She looked right through me, as if this world no longer concerned her, as if everything that mattered could no longer be seen with the naked eye.