He interprets her simple, desperate words as a lie, something she repeats to convince herself of. It is impossible that Alex could feel the same about him as she once did. If he has been turned into a monster, won’t their love have been similarly deformed?
More and more, Miles fears that if he stays with her, something as bad as what happened to the burned boy will happen to Alex. There is also the newfound worry that he might hurt her himself.
They make love only once after the fire. From the morning Miles was released from the hospital, over and over Alex had invited him to her. She had worn only the clothes he had most liked to remove, suggested massage oil backrubs, whispered dirty in his ear. Every time, Miles had declined. Finally, after she grazed her tongue across the back of his neck as he stood before a crackling frying pan in the kitchen, he had turned to her and said, ‘Don’t you get it? I’m not interested in a mercy fuck,’ before returning to flip his eggs. She had not tried again after that.
What hurt her more than his rejection was the extent to which he was wrong about what she was asking of him. Mercy had nothing to do with it. It’s true that she wanted to bring them together, if only for a time, as the open talk that they used to find so natural had deserted them. But her desire was real.
On this night, though, it is Miles who reaches for Alex. Aware of the sound of their own breathing, each clinging to the cold edge of their opposite bedsides, he had rolled over to bring his lips to her shoulder. Both of them are amazed at how even this tentative kiss revives something in them. Miles stays next to her, folding himself over her side. He wants to say a sweet word. Anything plucked from the standard vocabulary will do. But the mere thought of uttering any of them hurts his throat, like a bone caught halfway down.
They surprise themselves with the energy they find, a ruthless yearning. Everything they do is lingered over, repeated, another moment won against the long night. Despite this, they can sense an absence in each other’s touch. The room’s wintry drafts find ways between them, licking around the borders of warmth their bodies create.
Afterwards, they watch the flashing blue light of a streetcleaner tumble across the ceiling. This time it is Alex’s turn to search for words and for everything she might say to strike her as laughably belated. It’s not the fire that has come between them, she thinks, but an awareness of themselves. They never used to be self-conscious around each other, and this nakedness brought them an easy honesty, the gift of speaking without gain or penalty. Now they censor their thoughts as though someone is in the room with them, judging their appropriateness, their timing, whether they actually believe what they say or not. The streetcleaner’s blue light retreats through the curtains.
Although she cannot tell Miles why she cries now, her back to him again, she knows it’s because of this. Not the loss of words. Alex weeps for what they have found, the terrible discovery of what love prevents us from seeing as obvious. They have never been one, always two.
By the end of October, Miles stops attending classes altogether, spending his days in the laundry-strewn darkness of the apartment. Although Alex stocks the fridge with T-bones and leaves Mason jars of homemade spaghetti sauce for him in the freezer, he lives on delivery pizza and Chinese, the smelly boxes growing into a cardboard tower outside the bedroom door.
One day that is otherwise the same as the fifty that came before, Miles hears Alex unlock the front door and knows that something is about to change. She drops her keys on the kitchen table and the sound rips through the apartment like a crack of thunder. The storm is breaking and Miles welcomes it. He wants to stand tall enough for the lightning to find him.
‘What’s your plan?’ Alex asks him, standing over the shadowy hump of his back under the sheets.
‘I’m a man with no plan.’
‘Really? You look like you’ve got your crashand-burn all figured out.’
‘No pun intended.’
‘I wanted to tell you something. If it makes any difference.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘I’ll never leave you.’
‘Hey! History’s most broken promise.’
‘It’s not history’s promise. It’s mine.’
‘You’re a good girl, Alex. But not that good.’
Alex crumples onto the end of the futon. She finds his cold foot sticking out and strokes the top of it, but it wriggles away at her touch.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she says.
‘You’re not the judge of that.’
Alex leans forward and switches on the bedside lamp, which casts a tight circle of light out from under the shade. She can see Miles now. The covers pulled up to his chin, his hair a nest of greasy tosses and turns. His eyes blink against the forty-watt bulb as though he had just stepped into the midday sun.
‘I’m right here,’ she says.
‘You don’t have to be.’
‘I’m telling you I know you.’
‘You have my apologies.’
‘Just listen, Miles. Listen. Even if you don’t want to hear.’
‘Hear what, Herr Doctor?’
‘You’ve always blamed yourself for what your father did, and now you’re mixing that up with what happened in the fire.’
‘There’s a nice logic to that, I admit,’ he says, tapping his chin. ‘It even seems to make sense. The trouble is, it doesn’t. You keep looking for sense where there isn’t any.’
‘So tell me, then. Tell me the senseless truth of it.’
‘The kid died.’
‘And?’
‘The kid died.’
‘His name was Tim.’
‘I know his name.’
There is no gesture Alex can think of that Miles wouldn’t take as an insult. She disgusts him, although he assumes it is the other way around. If he said something first, something of his own, no matter how it might hurt her, it might be a way in. But he won’t. He will reply, but not confess, not accuse. Her frustration knots its way through her shoulders, seizing her into a sculpture of pain.
‘You’re so angry and you don’t even know it.’
‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Not at me. You’re angry at yourself.’ Alex pauses to take a new breath that will manage her next words at a lower register. ‘At your father.’
‘You can’t be mad at someone you don’t remember.’
‘But you can hate them. You can hate them easier for not remembering.’
‘Words of wisdom from Princess Nicey-Nice. What do you know about hating anything? You’re too pure for that.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘I stand corrected.’
‘Everybody’s capable of hate. That part’s simple. The hard part is finding the strength to be capable of forgiving yourself, too.’
‘That’s really wonderful. What section of the Hallmarks did you find that one in? Sympathy for Burn Victims? That would be it, wouldn’t it? Right there between the Sorry for Your Amputation and God Loves You…Please Don’t Overdose on the Sleeping Pills.’
‘Nothing is going to change unless you lose this whole sarcastic—’
‘For Christ’s sake, Alex! Love doesn’t want to spend any time in a shithole like this,’ he says, pulling the sheet down and sitting up all at once. He frames his face with his palms and squeezes the skin into blotchy folds. ‘Love likes it pretty. It always has. Look at me.’
‘It’s