Fire (23 page)

He took the towel from the pile on the edge of the sink and dried himself; dressed himself in the blue denim slacks and flannel shirt that Barbara Harrison had loaned him. Rolled the cuffs of the shirt sleeves and the pants legs, both of which were too long for him. Brushed his hair with the hair pick beside the sink. Opened the bathroom door and stepped back out into the apartment.

There was a man at the kitchen table, now, too, along with Barbara and Andy Harrison. The man was clearly Andy’s father; the resemblance between them was too striking not to notice. He was tall — tall enough that his height was obvious even when he sat — and darker-skinned than his son or wife, and there were bits of grey in his short velvety black hair. When he saw Luke the surprise showed on his face — surprise, and a little bit of fear, Luke thought. He didn’t scream the way Andy and Barbara Harrison both had when they’d first set eyes on him; he didn’t make any sound, in fact, not even so much as a grunt. Luke decided that the man’s wife had warned him about Luke. Either that or he had a very quiet nature.

He stood as Luke walked into the room, and reached out to shake his hand. “I’m Robert Harrison,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

His voice was quiet, and so reverent that it made Luke more self-conscious than he already was. He took the man’s hand, and shook it, because there wasn’t an awful lot else he could do under the circumstances. “I . . . well, thank you, I guess. I’m — pleased to meet you, too.”

And suddenly the whole situation was too much for Luke to cope with. He had to get out of that room, had to get away from the Harrisons, no matter how kind they were, no matter how well meaning. If he stayed in that room five more minutes he might start believing the things that were so visible in their eyes. And he didn’t think he could abide his own company if he began to think such things about himself.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee,” Barbara Harrison asked, “or maybe a soda? I’ll bet you’re awfully hungry, in fact — I don’t imagine you’ve had a chance to eat yet today.”

“No — no, I’m all right. Not hungry at all, in fact.” It was an honest answer; he hadn’t eaten yet that day — hadn’t, in fact, eaten since dinner Thursday night, though he couldn’t have named a time if he’d had to. He didn’t feel any need for food. “But I could use a little fresh air. Would it hurt you if I stepped away for just a few moments, took a short walk around the block?”

Robert Harrison frowned, almost guiltily; his wife’s lower lip pursed with disappointment. “Why, of course it wouldn’t,” she said. “Sometimes a body needs to be alone. Certainly we can understand that.”

Which pushed Luke’s need to get away almost out into the open, and made him feel still more like a heel. He made himself smile and thank her for her hospitality, and he promised that he’d be back in just a few minutes, even though he knew he wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t be back, he knew, because he was afraid. And because he didn’t think he was strong enough to hold onto himself against the tide of the family’s conviction. Not now, anyway — maybe later he’d be able to resist it, when he’d had more time to relearn himself.

“You be careful, Mr. Luke Munsen Jesus,” Andy Harrison said. “Don’t you go getting yourself killed again.”

“Andy — !”

“I will, Andy. You be careful, too.”

And Luke left.

Outside, the air was still clean and cool and summer-rich. If Luke had remembered the things he’d known about New York, remembered the powerful, dank filthiness of the New York in summer, he’d have understood why the freshness of the air seemed so strange and wonderful to him. He didn’t have the things he knew about New York, though. Didn’t have them or a hundred thousand other things any more. And all he could do with the air was enjoy it.

And enjoy the mild early afternoon sun, and enjoy the clear, sheer blueness of the sky, and the greenness of the cemetery that stretched out in front of him as far as he could see. He let himself wander out toward the cemetery, and was half-way across the street when he realized that he wasn’t wearing shoes, and that he needed them, because the sun-cooked pavement was burning his feet.

The only place to get shoes, of course, was from the Harrisons. Which meant heading back into the tenement, back into their apartment, and taking more from them that he had no way to repay.

No, Luke thought, to heck with that. I owe more than I want to already. I can get by barefoot.

He finished crossing the street, began to wander in among the grave sites. The grass was cool and soothing to his feet, especially so after the burning heat of the pavement. The lacing of shade and sun through the leaves fascinated the skin of Luke’s face. A cool breeze drifted across his neck, and it smelled of grass and pine and oak, and for a moment Luke almost began to believe again that he was in heaven. He stopped himself, because just then tying himself back into reality seemed more important than the possibility of paradise.

This place was drawing him back into that confusion.

Wonderful as the cemetery was, it wasn’t good for him to be here. If he was going to be alive, he had to press himself back into coping with life and with the world. This was too beautiful and too distracting — a part of the world so wonderful and unreal that it drew him into fantasy. The best thing he could do was get himself away from it.

He turned and began to head away, back out toward the street . . .

And then he saw the girl.

No, she wasn’t a girl, she was a woman. Her skin was clear and smooth, like a young girl’s, and her eyes were bright and round as though time hadn’t had the chance to wear them. The set of her neck and the line of her bust was full the way a woman’s get as she reaches the complete maturity of middle age. Luke couldn’t have explained that distinction and the line of reasoning that led to it any more than he could have explained the others, but he saw it all the same.

The woman was nude, but she didn’t seem self-conscious of her nakedness. Not even when she looked up and saw Luke watching her.

Something passed on her face. Recognition, maybe — yes, recognition. And for half an instant all Luke could think was Oh no, not another one, not another one who saw me while I was dead and now I’m alive, and now she’s going to scream, oh God please don’t let her scream.

She didn’t scream, and Luke realized that it wasn’t that she recognized him but that she recognized something in him.

And —

And —

And she walked toward him across the moist soft grass, and came to him and took his hand. And led him off deeper into the cemetery.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t let her do this to him. What he needed was to be alone, to be alone where he could sort himself out of the confusion. He needed to stop now

now

and pull his hand away from her. If he didn’t he might lose himself forever. There was something in his blood, pushing him, pressing him. Desire. Need that called him more demandingly than pastoral beauty of the graveyard. Need more siren than the quiet faith of the Harrisons.

And when Luke tried to stop, he couldn’t.

Already he could feel the rhythm of her body too close to his seeping into his self, muting it — changing it —

Luke’s heart lurched, and the alien press of the woman’s presence turned to fear and rejection, and the rhythm that held him broke just long enough to let him pull free. And he stopped dead in his tracks, sudden and jolting stopped, and he pulled his hand away even though her grip didn’t want to let him go.

“I can’t,” he said, “please.”

She reached for him, her hand extending quiet and insistent out toward his.

“No,” he said. “Stop that.” He pulled away, stepped backward. “I’m confused half out of my mind right now — I need to be alone. Need to get used to myself. Wherever you’re going to take me right now, it’s got to be the worst possible thing in the world. I can’t go with you — if I did I might never find my way back.”

She smiled at him knowingly and stepped toward him, still reaching for his hand. Luke tried to step farther away, but when he did his left shoulder pressed into the trunk of a tree, and he lost his balance but the tree was there and there was no way for him to fall, and she just kept moving toward him, her naked body pressing against him as she took his hand and pulled it toward her, and the soft warmth of her fingers was so . . . so . . .

And her breasts shaping themselves against his ribs, through the flannel of Robert Harrison’s shirt . . .

And the light faint smell of her, the gentle scent of her skin so close to him . . .

And his body was responding — God it was responding.

no, please God no

Luke almost lost himself, then. Almost but not quite.

He put his free hand on her shoulder, and gently, firmly eased her away from him. And because he’d already said no as many ways as he knew how, he asked her a question, any question, just the first question that wandered through his mind.

“Who are you?” he asked. And because that seemed to give her pause, he said, “Why do you . . . What do you need from me?”

And Luke saw something big and powerful as all of creation rise up to the surface of the woman’s soul.

And burst.

All at once the woman’s body went slack, as though she’d somehow been made from rope that now had come untied. Her hand fell away from his; Luke had to reach out and catch her to keep her from falling too hard into the grass.

desire — God she was beautiful. beautiful. so perfect that even now her presence made a warm fog swirl all around luke. he wanted her, and knew he didn’t dare to have her

He eased her down to the ground, where she sat staring vacantly at the bark of the tree behind Luke. He stepped away and watched her, almost afraid that she’d somehow fall over onto her side and hurt herself. She didn’t, though — she just kept sitting there staring at the tree, or maybe something beyond it.

After a while Luke stooped down to look her in the eye, and he said, “Are you okay?” and there was something strange there in her eye, something familiar . . . or not familiar; something alien but recognizable. “Who are you?” he asked her again, even though he knew he shouldn’t, knew that it was cruel — and it was mean, because as soon as he’d asked it she began to cry, and that made him feel like a real louse.

Everything that was sensuous seemed to go out of her when she cried; instead of being sultry and desirable her nakedness became . . . vulnerable. Vulnerable and sexless as an infant’s naked body. He looked at her breasts — guiltily; his eyes had avoided them since he’d first noticed her — and saw them as round lobes of soft flesh not much different from the flesh of her upper arms.

And something inside Luke relaxed, and went easy, and suddenly she was just another confused person, confused as he was, and Luke felt a bond to her.

confused as he was

He leaned back against the tree and let himself slide down toward the ground, sat in among the tree’s thick roots staring into the cemetery facing half away from her.

Not even the cemetery seemed threatening to him, now; Luke couldn’t have said why, but for the moment, at least, he didn’t think it had the power to draw his self away.

The woman cried for five minutes, and then she was quiet, but just as sad.

“Can I help?” Luke asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

She looked . . . not at him, not exactly, but toward him and down, at the grass near Luke’s waist.

“No,” she said. It was the first he’d heard her speak, and her voice surprised him — partly because he’d begun to wonder whether she could speak at all, partly because even in the single word Luke could hear something rich and melodious in y her voice. Something beautiful. Luke kept waiting, expecting her to say something else, but she didn’t.

“Are you okay?” He asked her, even though he knew she was as okay as she was going to be. Asked because he felt a growing tension that he didn’t understand, and words were the only way he knew to break it.

The woman nodded, absently — more absorbed than distracted. Then she seemed to come into focus; she looked around deliberately, as though trying to make sense of where she was. And when she looked Luke in the eye he almost thought for a moment that she was someone else completely. As though something — a demon, or maybe some less sinister spirit — had possessed her. It wasn’t so, of course. Even as confused as Luke was, he could parse that much of reality from fantasy. And when he looked at her more closely he knew that it wasn’t any essential change he saw, only . . . an awakening. Or something like one.

“Where is this place?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem familiar.”

“It’s a cemetery in Brooklyn,” Luke said. “Northeast Brooklyn — Bedford-Stuyvesant, I think. I’m a little vague on the specifics.”

The woman raised an eyebrow, looked at Luke uncertainly. “Are you certain? It’s changed a lot since the last time I was here. If this is the place I think it is.”

Luke shrugged. “I think — I think this place has been this way a long time. At least as long as I’ve been alive.” He sighed. “I don’t know that that’s saying much.”

She nodded, understandingly; Luke wasn’t sure what it was she understood. He looked away from her, off at the sea of graves in front of him. Her nakedness was beginning to distract him again.

“Are you cold?” he asked, even though the temperature of the day around them was too perfect for anyone to be cool, or warm, or anything but comfortable. “You can have my shirt if you need it.” Big as the shirt was on Luke, it’d cover the woman almost as well as a dress. He had it half unbuttoned before she even had a chance to respond.

She looked down at her breasts for a moment, almost puzzled, as though the concept of nakedness was almost an alien thing. Then all at once her face was full of stress and recognition, and she reddened with embarrassment. So ashamed that she looked away from him as she reached out to take the shirt from him.

Luke handed it to her, and she stood up to put it on. Buttoned it, all the way up to the very top button at the collar. When she was done she reached out to take his hand. And she said, “Come with me. Please.”