He sighed deeply. “Yes.”

“Don’t go alone,” she said, stepping away. “Take someone with you.”

“Like who?”

She stopped and looked at her shoes. She tried to hint him: “Someone who you could talk to for days and days without getting bored if a wild wind blows you off course to a desert island.”

“Those kind of people are so hard to come by,” he said, leaning forward to pull her toward him by the flouncy hem of her dress. “This is why these things are so difficult.”

She kissed him on the lips, suddenly, before he had a chance to stop and think about his neighbors. Desperate now, they searched and found in this mundane inconvenience the wisdom of prophecy, and he said to her, “I’ll go with you to the cab.”

They walked arm in arm to the common without speaking, zigzagging to draw out the time, their feet falling lightly, their bodies limp, as committed to their journey as sheets of windblown newspaper. The air was wet with the scent of roses, tangy with the smell of the sea, and heavy with whispered words. “Is de girl dat?” “She look nice though.” “Is she make de man-dem fight?” “Me nevah think she woulda mawga so.” “Is a farriner?” “Them look like bredda and sister.”

At the edge of the common she stopped and pointed to a tan Corolla with rust around the wheel wells. By lamplight a group of men were playing Ludo on a homemade board on the hood.

“Okay,” Fire said, waving to the driver. “That’s Pan Head. I know him. He’s a good driver.”

She pressed her ear against his chest. His heart was pumping fiercely and his breathing was very shallow—like a drowning man. And once again, as she had when her plane was coming in to land on the island, she began to think, what if this was her last chance? “You were wearing those shoes when you came to see me from London,” she said, hoping they could draw from the power of memory the energy to struggle for this love that belonged to them by right, but which they seemed so close to losing. “You brought me flowers,” she continued. “That was so nice of you.”

“Your cab is waiting,” he replied.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?” Sylvia asked.

“Like what?” he asked, clenching his jaw as he looked at her, trying to fight the hunger.

“Do you love me?”

“I don’t want to tell you that.”

“Do you?” she insisted.

“I have to go.”

“So go then,” she said weakly. “Go.”

He kissed her palm and stroked her face and walked away.

“Fire!”

She was twenty yards away from him, standing on the edge of the grass, with her arms at her sides, her palms facing forward. She watched him turn back, and saw that he was smiling.

“Was that your smile or the reflection of mine?” she said, pulling him in with the very first question he’d ever asked her. She could see in his face the recollection of that night on Spring Street, when he turned around in his muddy boots and dungarees and saw that she was admiring him.