Aria hugged him back, letting her top hand slide up and down the muscles of his back to indicate her regard for him. He whistled and called for Palin. Aria grabbed the scruff under Palin’s cheeks and lifted the velvet of her muzzle to kiss both sides of it. Palin snuffed and trotted off to lead the way. Luke took a few steps before turning around and saying, “Hey, if you ever change your mind with whatever-his-name-is, you know where to find me.” Aria smiled and waved to him, touching the fingers of her right hand to her lips to indicate a blown kiss. Soon she could no longer see either of them beyond the web of the woods.

Standing in front of Robert, she could smell the hint of ammonia from his breath. His kidneys were not working in his old age with quite the same vigor that they had in his youth. “So are you gonna just stay here then?” she asked him.

“Prob’ly, you know me, I ain’t got no place else to be,” he said. “What abou’chu?”

“I’m staying over in East LA,” she said. “Look, would you mind if I came and saw you sometimes?”

“Hell no, I wouldn’t mind, though I can’t work out why you’d want to hang out with an old geezer exactly,” he said.

“I just do,” Aria responded, not able to bring herself to explain her actual need for him or the amount she had grown to care about him.

“OK then, suit yourself. I can’t promise I’m gonna be any fun, but you know where to find me.” Robert grinned up at her, squinting against the sun. She knelt down in front of him and hugged him. The smell of his clothes was sour with neglect and city grime. He patted her back. Her embrace muffled the words he spoke to end their meeting.

“You go and take care of yourself,” he said. Robert was not a man to make his sentiments known. His mutual affection for Aria was not something that he made known openly to her that day. Instead, he kept it for himself. He let his own being kindle it, like powder swallowed by flame.

Aria waited for Omkar for hours on the berm to the side of the road he would eventually drive down to find her. The tides of life that had brought her there had never warned her about the way she would care for the people she would meet. They did not warn her that a person could grow fond of a place which most would consider rock bottom. The fire that had cremated her time there had not burned the memories away. The flames could not reach them. The sovereign fingers of those that remained refashioned their existence on top of the ash because they could do nothing else with themselves.