He’ll never know if I read it, Ian thought as he glanced outside. Guilty but vengeful, he squatted next to the desk, aware that this was more than Fire’s room. This was his most private place, his refuge, his sanctuary. His desk was the altar where he summoned his muse by drumming on the keys of his Underwood manual, a 1930 No. 5 that had once belonged to Claude McKay. Eyes darting furtively, Ian unfolded the letter and began to read.

December—, 19—

Dearest Sylvia,

You are writing this letter. Every word is yours. For as I sit here miles away from you, you occupy my soul. The spirit that used to live in me is a wanderer now, a thin dull shadow that haunts the places where we met and loved and laughed like careless children. Do you remember our kisses, our tongues full and strong like Spanish wine? The warmth that would invade our bones? The weakness in our legs? Then, I did not think a letter to you would be this way—a plea for forgiveness. Writing should be a sweet indulgence, the letters arriving damp with musk and longing. This is not right, Sylvia. This letter should be amusing, a reminder of how often we forget the things we say … because we talk so much. Perhaps you don’t remember, but we met and fell in love by chance. When did you first love me, Sylvia? And do you love me still? If you do then you should be here, writing poems in the shade and drinking tea with condensed milk. Come and spend some time with me, bathe with me in a secret river, and wine me in the shallows where the mullets lay their eggs, the current moving slowly, the deep mud sucking us down. Come feed me your sweet fig nipples, wet my lips with red wine kisses, dip my head in the healing stream that flows between your legs. This is the end of this letter, my love, this letter that you have written. But I won’t say goodbye, because I’m afraid of what that means, so I will say I’m sorry. I am sorry, Sylvia Lucas, for walking away from you, causing you pain. Now, I’m going to think of you, your crooked smile, your slender waist, and touch myself, dreaming you will be here when I wake.

After reading the letter, Ian began to feel another self rise within him, an old self really, one that was deaf to reason and blindly male, that drew its power and sense of worth from the weakness of others. Fire’s vulnerability produced a perverted sense of safety in him—the kind of cunning self-pity that breeds unchecked in prisons and hospitals, infecting healthy brains and causing people to say to themselves, “I’m all right because he’s worse off than me.” Ian read the letter again, warmed for the moment by the knowledge that he was not the only one confounded by love and its often contrary demands. As he sifted the words for clues—the whens, the wheres, the whys, and the hows—he felt a chill. He’d been left out of this love affair, which he was sure now must have begun in June.