herself. What kept him on her mind? What kept him.
Vivian had fallen asleep, and when she woke the room was pitch black and colder. She was disoriented and it took her a minute to understand the power had gone out. The streetlights were dark, the houses across the street were dark; lights out down the block. She could see inside the room enough to make her way across it, but from the hallway, she had to feel her way to the kitchen.
Silverware, Tupperware, plastic cups—she opened every drawer looking for a flashlight. She skipped the pantry, which was enormous and impossible to sort through in the dark. She was kneeling, searching inside a cupboard when she heard a knock at the door. She waited, maybe it was nothing, maybe it would go away—but there it was again, louder. Shit. She groped her way down the hall to the stairs and then down the stairs and the knocking got more insistent. She tripped down the last step and stumbled to the front door. She lifted a corner of the panel that covered the window, saw Ronny standing there, and remembered she was hardly dressed. Of course, she thought. Of course.
She pulled the door open partway, propping it with her elbow.
“Hey, sorry, Vivian—Viv—everything okay over here?”
He looked down at her, squinted to see past the doorway.
“The storm’s getting worse. No one’s got power; I know it’s a weird time to stop by, but I knew you were alone here. Well I figured at least, and thought I’d check, you know,” he said.
The sleet had mostly stopped but the wind was harsh, howling across the power lines like a miserable animal.
“Yeah, I’m fine, just looking for candles, a flashlight, I don’t . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she willed herself not to shiver.
“Want some help?” He pulled the cords tighter on his jacket hood. It was too cold to make him stand there. She stepped back from the door to make room and they stood in the cold foyer.
“I’ve been looking in the kitchen,” Vivian said, realizing she could see her breath, “But no luck.”
She folded her arms across her chest, self-conscious and freezing.
“It’s upstairs,” she said, and followed him up.
In the kitchen Ronny kept his jacket on. At first they didn’t talk and the only sound in the room was cupboards closing and drawers rolled back on dull casters. Outside the tree branches cracked in the wind, and the sharpness of the ice snapping as branches split in half was an exaggerated sound. It didn’t make sense that Ronny was in the kitchen, whammo, just like that. Why had he bothered, after she’d pissed him off. What did he want, she thought. But she was glad for the company.
“Hey, I think I found it,” Ronny said, as he brought something out from the drawer under the stove.
A flashlight. He shook it to see if it had batteries and switched it on. A weak light pulled across the kitchen floor. “Well, this might be it,” he said. “All you’ve got.”
“Well,” she said, “thanks.” She was sitting on the kitchen floor; she’d been looking in all the bottom drawers. Ronny stood the flashlight in the middle of the room so it threw a spotlight on the ceiling and barely lit up the part of the kitchen where Vivian sat.
“It’s going to get so cold in here,” she said. It was already cold.
“Yeah,” Ronny said.
“Yeah,” she said again, agreeing with herself, with him, not really knowing what to do. She could imagine how you waited it out: touch and go.
He sat down across from her, leaned against the island.
“Last night,” she started but Ronny interrupted.
“I’m sorry, is it weird I’m here?”
“It’s—fine,” she said. “It’s surprising. But it’s nice, to have a visitor, I haven’t met anyone here.”
“I didn’t want you to think—I just had to go, last night. I was just—late for this thing—”
“No, it was stupid,” Viv said.
“It was nothing, anyway,” he said. “Should I go? If you’re fine and I’m . . . interrupting.”
Nothing about Ronny was too precise—his hair was wild enough to require that he sometimes shake it out of his face, and in another day or so he’d have a beard—so he seemed soft, despite looking rugged, and weary, as if he’d been hiking for weeks. He waited for Vivian to ask him to stay. He didn’t want to give the wrong impression, but it was a test to remain completely oblivious of her there; especially since it seemed—it was hard to see—that she was dressed in basically a long flimsy shirt—like she was getting ready to take a shower or go to bed. He didn’t want to stare. But he could confirm, as he’d suspected last night, that she was lovely in a way. She was somewhat Victorian seeming—he could imagine her wearing button-down blouses and wool skirts in the swelter of August—but she was also disheveled and oblivious to her valentine mouth and her large eyes, which were dark stare factories. Her hair was pulled back, messy, in a ponytail.
“I wouldn’t mind company,” she said, “and—have you eaten? I haven’t had dinner.”
She opened the refrigerator. A block of cheese, several imported beers. All the rest was leftovers from Helen, ugly-sad rubber containers of what looked like party food from a wake. Casserole fractions. Pulled meat.
“Help yourself,” Vivian said. “There’s food like someone died.”
She brought out the cheese on a plate and found some crackers. Opened a bottle of beer. Ronny fumbled at the counter with a bottle of whiskey, pouring into a mug. A symphony mug, because Helen and Paul probably donated.
“I have quilts in my room,” Viv said, and they took the flashlight down the hall to the guest room. At the window, she pressed her forehead to the glass and cupped her hands to look outside. The street, the trees, the telephone wires and power lines: everything was lacquered in ice. The wind had slowed, was pushing the trees around less violently from the sound of things.
Vivian moved across the room, set her beer down on the floor next to the bed.
“It’s warmer here,” she said, getting in and gathering up the blankets, “Come on.”
She made room for him, patting the mattress beside her. He sat down so that his back was against the wall and his legs stretched out over the edge in front of him.
“So,” Ronny said, holding up his symphony mug like cheersing. She couldn’t see from there but bars of music were stamped around the lip.
“Tell me something,” Vivian suggested.
Ronny didn’t know what to say.
“Anything, tell me something about this place.”
She tugged at the hem of his sweatshirt, the scrap she could reach without moving.
He drank again, it was warm, and thought about what he could tell her. What good thing he could tell her. The quarry came to mind. It was remarkable, a deep gorge in the earth, so huge it was unbelievable unless you saw it for yourself, and even then you felt so dwarfed it was hard to look down when you were standing at the edge of it. But it was manmade. And thinking about the quarry meant thinking about the fire, and there you had it: this town, he wanted to burn it. Last night when he’d left her and started back out, he’d gone to assess the damage, and when he’d gotten there he’d regretted it because his boss was there too, the office all lit up blazing like afternoon, and he knew he might’ve seriously fucked up. Was his boss sleeping there now? Pulling surveillance? It could’ve been seriously fucking bad. He’d stayed back in the woods, back of the shop, and from there all he could tell was the shop seemed normal, still standing. That’s what he wanted: