She shakes her head.

“Sinclair,” he says, blushing slighty, his heart racing.

“Sinclair,” she says, the two syllables dropping down like eggs in a nested palm. “How about that.” Her thumb traces his index finger, running the smooth brown skin like water over rock. “How about that. All of these years.”

36

Simon races the engine. He is used to the octane rush of Irene’s car, knows the sweet spot, when to let off and when to hammer it. He follows the highway north and then cuts off on a service road. The night hasn’t rolled over yet and the darkness peels off the highway in front of the car and breaks over the top of him, great pages of night sky.

He pulls off the road, dust racking the air. The turnaround is littered with beer cans and piles of charcoal from party fires, midnight gardens sprouting wire and soot-darkened cans. Spent .30-30 casings are stuck in the sand like buried treasure. He grinds the car to a stop and gets out, not shutting it off. Simon takes off his shirt and is surprised at how cold it is. He douses the seats with chain saw mix and unrolls the window three inches. He soaks the shirt in the gas and trails it down the outside of the car.

Without waiting, he lights a cigarette. He stands there and smokes, just a few feet and scant seconds away from an explosion, savoring the tension, the feeling of change that comes with intractable action, like death, like a first kiss. He rubs the cigarette out with his foot and lights another match. He holds it to the bottom of the shirt, and when the first finger of fire catches, he sprints across the railroad tracks.

It takes four, maybe five seconds for the fire to crawl inside the car. There is a whoosh as the fumes catch. The windows blow out. Glass falls to the ground like hail.

The fire is quick. The seats and carpeting catch and smoke billows out into the sky, lit not by moon or star, by satellite, or magic, or anything. Just soot into a greater, more wicked darkness.

He knows it will burn down, that the paint and hoses will burn, the gas tank will catch, that there will be nothing left. He turns from the car and faces the tracks. He breathes in deeply, like a sprinter. The landscape around him is dim, lit only by the growing fire. Sections of the track glow like eyes, the steel throwing off night shine. Simon pulls in more air. Once. Twice. He begins to run.

He stumbles on the crushed rock mounded between the sharp-smelling timbers. He catches his stride, timing each footfall with another piece of wood, ready to shift if he hits more rock. His chest hurts and his legs burn, but he is running.