Cold Fire

Nevertheless, after she dried off on the clean-smelling, fluffy bath towel, she took another long swallow of her Corona. She decided that a full night of deep and dreamless sleep was worth the risk of being butchered in her She put on his pajamas, rolled up the cuffs of the pants and the sleeves.

Carrying her bottle of Corona, which still contained a swallow or two, she quietly opened the bathroom door and stepped into the second-floor hallway. The house was eerily silent.

Heading toward the stairs, she passed the open door of the master bedroom and glanced inside. Extension-arm brass reading lamps were mounted on the wall on both sides of the bed, and one of them cast a narrow wedge of amber light on the rumpled sheets. Jim was lying on his back in bed, his arms folded on the two pillows under his head, and he seemed to be awake.

She hesitated, then stepped into the open doorway. "Thanks," she said, speaking softly in case he was asleep, "I feel a lot better.”

"Good for you.”

Holly entered the room and moved close enough to the bed to see his blue eyes shining in the backsplash of the lamp. The covers were pulled up past his navel, but he was not wearing pajama tops. His chest and arms were lean but well-muscled.

She said, "Thought you'd be asleep by now.”

"Want to be, need to be, but I can't shut my mind off" Looking down at him, she said, "Viola Moreno says there's a deep sadness in you.”

"Been busy, haven't you?" She took a small swallow of Corona. One left. She sat down on the edge of the bed. "Do your grandparents still have the farm with the windmill?" "They're dead.”

"I'm sorry.”

"Grandma died five years ago, Grandpa eight months later-as if he really didn't want to go on without her. They had good, full lives. But I miss them.”

"You have anybody?" "Two cousins in Akron," he said.

"You stay in touch?" "Haven't seen them in twenty years.”

She drank the last of the Corona. She put the empty bottle on the nightstand.

For a few minutes neither of them spoke. The silence was not awkward.

Indeed, it was comfortable.

She got up and went around to the other side of the bed. She pulled back the covers, stretched out beside him, and put her head on the other two pillows.

Apparently, he was not surprised. Neither was she.

After a while, they held hands, lying side by side, staring at the ceiling.

She said, "Must've been hard, losing your parents when you were just ten.”

"Real bad.”

"What happened to them?" He hesitated. "A traffic accident.”

"And you went to live with your grandparents?" "Yeah. The first year was the hardest. I was. in bad shape. I spent a lot of time in the windmill. It was my special place, where I went to play. to be alone.”

"I wish we'd been kids together," she said.

"Why?" She thought of Norby, the boy she had pulled from the sarcophagus under the DC-10's overturned seats. "So I could've known you before your parents died, what you were like then, untouched.”

Another stretch of time passed in silence.

When he spoke, his voice was so low that Holly could barely hear it above the thumping of her own heart: "Viola has a sadness in her, too.

She looks like the happiest lady in the world, but she lost her husband in Vietnam, never got over it. Father Geary, the priest I told you about, he looks like every devout parish rector from every old sentimental Catholic movie ever made in the thirties and forties, but when I met him he was weary and unsure of his calling. And you.

well, you're pretty and amusing, and you have an air of efficiency about you, but I'd never have guessed that you could be as relentless as you are. You give the impression of a woman who moves easy through life, interested in life and in her work, but never moving against a current, always with it, easy. Yet you're really like a bulldog when you get your teeth in something.”

Staring at the dapple of light and shadow on the ceiling, holding his strong hand, Holly considered his statement for a while. Finally she said, "What's your point?" "People are always more. complex than you figure.”

"Is that just an observation. or a warning?" He seemed surprised by her question. "Warning?" "Maybe you're warning me that you're not what you seem to be.”

After another long pause, he said, "Maybe.”

She matched his silence. Then she said, "I guess I don't care.”

He turned toward her. She moved against him with a shyness that she had not felt in many years. His first kiss was gentle, and more intoxicating than three bottles or three cases of Corona.

Holly realized she'd been deceiving herself She had needed the beer not to soothe her nerves, not to insure an uninterrupted night of sleep, but to give her the courage to seduce him-or to be seduced. She had sensed that he was abysmally lonely, and she had told him so. Now she understood that her loneliness had exceeded his, and that only the smallest part of her desolation of spirit had resulted from her disenchantment with journalism; most of it was simply the result of being alone, for the most part, all of her adult life.