Cold Fire

Cold Fire

AUGUST 12

Even before the events in the supermarket, Jim Ironheart should have known trouble was coming. During the night he dreamed of being pursued across a field by a flock of large blackbirds that shrieked around him in a turbulent flapping of wings and tore at him with hooked beaks as precisely honed as surgical scalpels. When he woke and was unable to breathe, he shuffled onto the balcony in his pajama bottoms to get some fresh air.

At nine-thirty in the morning, the temperature, already ninety degrees, only contributed to the sense of suffocation with which he had awakened.

A long shower and a shave refreshed him.

The refrigerator contained only part of a moldering Sara Lee cake.

It bled a laboratory culture of some new, exquisitely virulent strain of botulism. He could either starve or go out into the furnace heat.

The August day was so torrid that birds, beyond the boundaries of bad trams, preferred the bowers of the trees to the sun-scorched open spaces of the southern California sky; they sat silently in their leafy shelters, chirping rarely and without enthusiasm. Dogs padded cat-quick along sidewalks as hot as griddles. No man, woman or child paused to see if an egg would fry on the concrete, taking it as a matter of faith.

After eating a light breakfast at an umbrella-shaded table on the patio of a seaside cafe in Laguna Niguel, he was enervated again and sheathed in a dew of perspiration. It was one of those rare occasions when the Pacific did not produce even a dependable mild breeze.

From there he went to the supermarket, which at first seemed to be a sanctuary. He was wearing only white cotton slacks and a blue T-shirt, so the air-conditioning and the chill currents rising off the refrigerated display cases were refreshing.

He was in the cookie department, comparing the ingredients in fudge macaroons to those in pineapple-coconut-almond bars, trying to decide which was the lesser dietary sin, when the fit hit him. On the scale of such things, it was not much of a fit-no convulsions, no violent muscle contractions, no sudden rivers of sweat, no speaking in strange tongues.

He just abruptly turned to a woman shopper next to him and said, "Life line.”

She was about thirty, wearing shorts and a halter top, good-looking enough to have experienced a wearying array of come-ons from men, perhaps she thought he was making a pass at her. She gave him a guarded look. "Excuse me?" Flow with it, he told himself Don't be afraid.

He began to shudder, not because of the air-conditioning but because a series of inner chills swam through him, like a wriggling school of eels. the strength went out of his hands, and he dropped the packages of cookies.

Embarrassed but unable to control himself, he repeated: "Life line.”

"I don't understand," the woman said.

Although this had happened to him nine times before, he said, "Neither do I.”

She clutched a box of vanilla wafers as though she might throw it in his face and run if she decided he was a walking headline (BERSERK MAN SHOOTS SIX IN SUPERMARKET! Nevertheless, She was enough Of a good samaritan to hang in for another exchange: "Are you all right?" No doubt, he was pale. He felt as if all the blood had drained out of his face. He tried to put on a reassuring smile, knew it was a ghastly grimace and said, "Gotta go.”

Turning away from his shopping cart, Jim walked out of the market into the searing August heat. The forty-degree temperature change momentarily locked the breath in his lungs. The blacktop in the parking lot was tacky in places. Sun silvered the windshields of the cars and seemed to shatter into dazzling splinters against chrome bumpers and grilles.

He went to his Ford. It had air-conditioning, but even after he had driven across the lot and turned onto Crown Valley Parkway, the air from the dashboard vents was refreshing only by comparison with the baking-oven atmosphere in the car. He put down his window.

Initially he did not know where he was going. Then he had a vague feeling that he should return home. Rapidly the feeling became a strong hunch, the hunch became a conviction, and the conviction became a compulsion. He absolutely had to get home.

He drove too fast, weaving in and out of traffic, taking chances, which was uncharacteristic of him. If a cop had stopped him, he would not have been able to explain his desperate urgency, for he did not understand himself It was as if his every move was orchestrated by someone unseen, controlling him much the way that he controlled the car.

Again he told himself to flow with it, which was easy since he had no choice.