“But I want them.”

“Why?”

“They’re beautiful … and … it’s hard to explain … it sounds so hokey.” She was thinking of Fire’s hair now, how much she wanted to loose her fingers in that palm grove reclaimed by wilderness.

“Go ahead, it’s okay—talk to me.”

“I have this attraction to fire that I can’t explain.”

“You’ve never mentioned this before.”

“I know. I didn’t know it myself until tonight.”

“I see.”

“I don’t know, Lewis. It was just spontaneous, I guess. It just happened like”—she snapped her fingers—“that.”

“Why would anyone be so attracted to something so dangerous?” he asked, suppressing his urge to laugh.

“The warmth. Sometimes a little warmth is worth a burn or two.”

He pretended to understand, and slowly pulled out of the conversation. They rode along in silence for a while, until at some point, without notice, she asked to be taken home. Without uttering a word he swung around and drove her to Brooklyn Heights.

“Are we still going to Diego’s barbecue tomorrow?” he asked. They were parked in front of her building now, a brownstone on a narrow street lined with trees.

“I think we need some space. I need to figure out some things.”

“I guess that means no then. I guess we’re headed for another one of those patented Sylvia withdrawals. That shit is just so tiring. So how long is this one gonna last? You know what? I ain’t even gonna sweat it. See you when I see you.”

“Goodbye, Lewis.”

He watched her till she shut the door. She didn’t look back. He put his seat back, fumed a bit, then drove home to Englewood.

Sylvia took a shower and lay on top of the sheets. It was the quiet time of morning, close to dawn. The windows were open and the breeze was as soft as powdered skin.

A cinnamon candle, thick and brown, squittered light across the room, dropped some on her belly, where it pooled in her navel and spread down to her pubis, coating the hairs, making them feel like starchy grains of rice when she touched them … as she was doing now. Whirling them between her fingers as she rubbed her belly, which the light had filmed with a glaze that made her skin not amber, but caramel, a murky, sticky dark like molasses. It gave her greater confidence in her sensuousness, made her want to know her body in a new way—the old way really, but with a new curiosity. What would he feel if he touched me?

She got up and turned on the fan, switched it to low, angled it to lick her thighs when she lay down again. She brushed herself with feathered strokes from her forehead to her knees, her fingers spread wide, her wrists held loose to accommodate the changing topography—the dunes of her breasts, the drifts of her ribs, the quicksand yield of her hips.

It was nice to have met you. She felt heavy, waterlogged. She squeezed her thighs. She was ready for release. Leisurely, then urgently, she stroked herself to sleep.