کتاب 07-15

15

He grimaced, holding his right wrist in his left hand. “How’s your pain?” she asked.

“It’s not as hard to talk about as I thought. It feels good to remember her, even the bad stuff at the end. Sometimes I think I’ve spent the last nine months lighting fires because it feels so good to burn things down. Like: if Sarah burned, then so can the rest of the world. Arson is almost as good as Prozac.” He went silent, thinking. “Shit. You weren’t asking about psychological pain, were you?”

“Yeah, I was asking about your wrist.”

“Oh. Uh. Quite hurty actually. Is that normal?”

“After popping the bones of the wrist out of place for a second time? Yes.” He twined the fingers of his good hand through hers. He stared across the room at the furnace, the hatch open on a square of yellow leaping flame.

“I hate a little that this feels good,” he said.

“We’re just holding each other. We’re not even undressed.”

“I shouldn’t have kissed you outside.”

“We were drunk. We were having fun.”

“I’m still in love with her, Harper.”

“That’s okay, John. This isn’t anything.”

“It is, though. It’s something to me.”

“Okay. It’s something to me, too. But we aren’t going to do anything you have to feel bad about. You haven’t been held since she died, and people need that. People need closeness.”

Firewood whistled and snapped.

“But she isn’t dead. She isn’t alive, but she isn’t dead, either. She’s . . . stuck.”

“I know.”

The Fireman turned his head to look back at her, his gaunt features drawn in alarm and surprise.

“I’ve known for a while,” Harper said. “I saw her once. In the fire. I know there’s something there, anyway, something in the furnace that you’re keeping alive. But whatever that is, it can’t be a person. It can’t be aware. Flame can’t have a consciousness.”

“The spore can. That’s how the Phoenix seems alive. It is. It’s a part of me. Like a hand. Sarah’s body burned, but the girl in the fire remains. As long as I keep the fire going, some incombustible part of her survives.”

“You should sleep.”

“I don’t think I can. Not with my wrist throbbing like it is. Besides. Maybe I don’t just need to tell. Maybe you need to hear. Before you go any further down the road you’re on and wind up killing yourself like she did.”