He found himself tracing patterns in the sand with his toes, and began to think of the sketch pad again. He had to talk to Ian.

Returning home to the Lighthouse, burdened by the weight of love and disappointment, the two men went their separate ways without explanation—Ian upstairs to read and look at old photo albums, and Fire to the kitchen to season the fish, which he left to soak in a marinade of onions, garlic, scallions, and thyme.

Later, in the living room, Fire took off his shoes and lay on the couch and thought about his letter to Sylvia. Had he said too much? Had he said too little? Had he said the right thing in the right kind of way? Should he mail it?

There was a part of him that thought the letter was self-indulgent, less a way to speak to her than a means of addressing his deepest self. As he lay there considering this, a breeze blew some blossoms from the poui tree through an open window. A few fell on his chest and he imagined that the light red pedals were kisses from her … his darling girl, his lover and his love, whose absence he was feeling as a presence in his belly, an incandescent burning. Tired from not sleeping the night before, he didn’t resist the entreaties of the soft chenille beneath him.

He awoke an hour later to the sound of Ian’s snoring and went to the kitchen, where he fried the fish in coconut oil, then stewed them with tomatoes and allspice while boiling rice and making a salad of avocados, cucumbers, carrots, and watercress. He placed the food on the table beneath the poui tree.

They ate quietly with the polite but restrained conversation of strangers on a plane. Ian, chewing slowly as he continued to go through albums, would look up from time to time and smile a bit and nod his head. It was strange, Fire reflected as he guessed at Ian’s thoughts, how fragile our moods are, how quickly they change or die.

It was in this mood that they finished the meal and went to sleep, Ian upstairs and Fire outside in a hammock that was strung between two almond trees; so it was with great surprise that Fire woke up at sundown to see Ian standing over him, his head held low, his shoulders hunched, his hands concealed in his pockets.

“Y’awright?” Fire asked, searching his eyes.

“Yes,” he said, scuffing his feet in the grass. “I just need to talk to you.”

The sketch pad, Fire concluded. “Where do you want to talk?” he asked, extending his arms to communicate his expansive desire to make the conversation easy. “Inside? Out here? In the kitchen?”

Ian bit his lip, then spat as if he’d drawn blood by accident.

“Somewhere where we can sit … but not inside though …”

“So whappen?” Fire asked as they returned to the poui tree. In the distance the sea was turning orange as it slowly ate the sun.