1.

The world reclaimed Ray’s full and undivided attention with a drawn-out, high-pitched screech of tires that descended the scale and suddenly broke off. Ray glanced into the rear-vision mirror, at an angry face, and a middle finger jabbing upward sharply.

He made an apologetic gesture. The driver behind him shook his head. The mouth moved. Ray’s imagination supplied the uncomplimentary subtext. The car pulled into the lane next to him and accelerated away.

Damn!

Where’d that car come from? How could he possibly have missed it on such a straight piece of road?

He’d looked! He always did. Distracted or not. Checking for traffic when pulling out of the business park was an automatic action, requiring no conscious control or effort.

“Bullshit”. He could almost hear Debbie say it. “You just weren’t paying attention!” Something along those lines. Ray was pathetically grateful that she wasn’t with him right now. She was getting very impatient with his current state of mind—or what, according to her, was left of it.

Case in point: the reason why he was leaving work so early today.

Dinner at the Jackson’s. On a Friday, for goodness’ sake! They hadn’t gone out on a Friday for years!

He’d be damned if he could remember anything about it!

“I told you last week.”

She might have.

“Do you actually listen to anything I say?”

“Of course, I do!”

“Nothing ‘of course’ about it!” Followed by a list of recent and no-so-recent failures-to-pay-attention.

Ray sighed and changed lanes, threading the car into the stream of vehicles heading for the I-285. This time he looked twice before he made his move. Maybe Debbie was right. Maybe he was stressed out of his mind. But the next release of Wild Worlds was due out at the end of the month, and there was still a shitload of work. Ray, like most software developers, took his work with him wherever he went; if not always in a physical sense, then at least in spirit; constantly distracting thoughts bouncing forth and back somewhere in his mind; interfering with the smooth running of his social interactions—including those involving his wife of eleven years.

Again—and this thought had been on his mind a lot over the last few weeks and months—he was grateful that there weren’t any children in the marriage. It simply wouldn’t have worked. It was hard enough to make it function as it was. With kids to add to the demands, it probably would have self-nuked some time ago.

Tiredly he rubbed his free hand over his scalp; feeling the stubble left behind by his recent visit to the hairdresser. Premature hair loss disguised not-so-cunningly by clear-felling. Quite embarrassing, really, how he was losing it even faster than his father—who at the age of sixty-eight still had twice as much hair on his head than his son had at forty one.

Rays father had died in a car crash.

Remember that!

As he approached the on-ramp to the I-285, Ray slowed down; disoriented by something he couldn’t define, disrupting the familiar patterns of his life. Another anomaly in this day of subtly alienating snags.

Then he figured it out—and he almost lost control over the car.

Two lanes?

What?!

It jerked him into the present.

Easy, man!

Had he day-dreamed himself past his usual turn?

Couldn’t be. The landmarks told him that he was exactly where he thought he was. Halcyon Business Park to his left; just as it should be. Except that, at least as far as he remembered it—from using it for a mere four-odd years—this ramp only had one lane!

Unless they’d done the work of months in one night!

Yeah, right.

You could always tell a new piece of road from an old one. This one had become grimy and shiny with the passage and wear of uncounted vehicles. And the sign he’d just passed under: stained by exhaust gases and bird-shit and punctured by a dozen or so small-caliber bullet holes, especially around the ‘O’s. The boys doing target practice with .22 caliber rifles at night, when the cops were busy in the inner city.

Ray swallowed hard and took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself. He managed to keep enough of his attention on the traffic to file onto the ramp and merge, at its bottom, with the steel-plastic-and-rubber avalanche flowing along the I-285 at a treacly thirty-something miles per hour. There wasn’t that much traffic, but what there was progressed with tired viscosity.

Must be the heat.

Ray looked at his hands, clamped vise-like around the steering-wheel. He willed himself to relax them, took the right hand off the wheel and held it horizontally before his eyes.

It shook; jerking to the tune of uncontrollably firing nerves.

Debbie was right. Time to lay off the late nights, stale coffee and endless staring at computer screens and simulated critters. When he got to the stage that he was freaked out by his non-existent memory of double lanes, which had probably been there forever, and…

They had been, hadn’t they?

Of course.

Ray shook his head.

Of course!

Except that…

Don’t go there!

Except, he had to. Because it wasn’t just an isolated memory of a single-lane on-ramp, but a whole context of stuff supporting it. Cars piling up in long queues between the lights at the intersection and the ramp. More than once he’d wished there’d be another lane, of course…but there never was…

Or had he been dreaming that?

Which part?

It looked like something was telling him to get his act together. Crisis-situation time.

John wasn’t going to like it, of course: not now, just before an already-late beta-release. Still, it wasn’t going to do anybody any good if Ray blew a fuse. He’d talk to Debbie tonight; after the agony of meeting the Jacksons had abated.

The traffic again reclaimed Ray’s full attention. A bright-red convertible Japanese two-seater nudged into the two or three car-lengths he’d left between himself and the Pontiac in front of him. Ray shook his head. Lots of pain without much gain. In this treacle nobody was going anywhere in a hurry.

The driver of the sporty Jap was a woman. Her short, dark hair fluttered in the slipstream. Ray thought that she might have turned her head briefly to look into the mirror. Just checking that the guy whose space she’d just invaded wasn’t too pissed off about it. Or maybe hoping that he was. After all, the territorial instinct wasn’t a male preserve. And what was he to her but another competitor for freeway space? A pain in he ass. Surplus humanity.

Despite this Ray allowed himself a brief bout of daydreaming, where the world wasn’t like it was at all, and the woman ahead of him had actually seen him as more than just a face in another car.

He caught her looking in the mirror again. Or maybe it just appeared that way. Hard to tell with the wraparound shades she was wearing. Another bit of the daydream. Suppose she had looked… Not that she’d be interested; not that she should be. He was, after all, married, unavailable and certainly not in the market for flings, no matter how tempting. Besides, the likelihood that she’d even think of being interested was so vanishingly small as to turn even the daydream into his own private embarrassment.

Ray cringed inwardly and told himself to stop being such a pathetic loser and get a life. Of course, thoughts and daydreams were free, but this was the kind of juvenile crap one should’ve left behind with one’s teens. But the stress at work during the last few months, the general boredom everywhere else in his life: it all combined to put him into a curiously inside-out state of mind. Maybe that’s why he was forgetting things he should remember, and remembering things which, according to Debbie, simply hadn’t happened.

Ray tried to force his morbid reflections into other channels and eased up on the accelerator to widen the gap between him and the woman to a safe size. He wasn’t in the mood for freeway games.

A flicker of motion in his peripheral vision.

His foot slid off the accelerator and onto the brake.

Just in time. The metallic blue Ford was just…there. Bang! Out of nowhere. Like it had materialized out of thin air.

The vehicle careened into Ray’s lane ahead of him and impacted on the red convertible. The collision threw the woman’s car against the concrete center partition. The Ford bounced back from the impact, out of control. Its tires squealed as it spun around. It bounced off another car a couple of lanes to the right and came Ray’s way again. The convertible rebounded from its impact with the concrete wall. The two vehicles crunched into each other again. Around and behind Ray a cacophony of brakes being slammed on and tires squealing on the hot asphalt.

The Ford bounced back into the adjacent lane, and caused havoc on that side. The convertible crashed into the barrier again, spun around once more and came to rest. Ray, seeing that there was no way he was going to stop in time, instinctively swerved around the red car. Somehow, miraculously, he missed the car right next to him, felt the Toyota swerve, caught it, regained his lane just on the other side of the convertible. Ahead of him, the cars unaffected by the disaster were drawing away from the scene. His way was free. He just had to put his foot down, and it would be as if the whole thing had never happened. A brief shock, soon forgotten.

Talk about lucky escapes! And he would be home on time. Those poor bastards behind him were going to be there for a long time.

Ray hit the brakes: hard. The Toyota came to a screeching halt. Ray jerked the automatic’s control stick into ‘R’ and, with the gearbox howling under the strain, reversed all the way back along the now-empty lane to the scene of the crash. A few seconds later he slammed on the brakes again, jammed the stick into ‘P’, turned off the engine and got out of the car.

What am I doing?

He surveyed the scene of the collision. The red convertible blocked the lane, crunched up on all sides. Considering the battering it had taken it didn’t look too bad. A write-off, but not the wreck Ray had expected. The woman hung limply in her seat belt. The blue Ford, equally mangled, blocked the other two lanes; surrounded by the cars it had taken with it to an early retirement. Ray couldn’t see the driver.

The crash had propagated along the lines of now-stopped cars like a shockwave. There would be hundreds of insurance claims. A few of the other drivers, still dazed from the suddenness of it all, were also getting out of their cars. For some the shock was mingling with anger. Ray could hear their voices, complaining about the inconvenience of it all.

He looked back at the woman, suspended in her seat-belt. She’d been lucky: if her car had flipped over she would have been crushed.

His nostrils registered an acrid smell.

Gas!

He looked down, saw a wetness pooling underneath the convertible and seeping across the road surface, spreading quickly and with ominous inevitability. The stench became overpowering. Ray crossed the distance to the convertible and, seeing that the door was twisted and jammed, vaulted into it. He reached down and unbuckled her belt. With nothing to hold her up the woman slumped sideways. Ray placed his hands under her armpits and heaved. She moaned weakly.

The reek of gas was getting stronger. The fluid was rapidly spreading across the hot asphalt, vaporizing almost as quickly as it leaked out of the tank.

Ray heaved again. Then he realized that she was stuck. He bent down and saw one foot jammed under the brake pedal. Its angle told him that the ankle was either sprained or broken. He released the body and she slumped back. Ray bent forward to reach down along her legs to free her foot. When he touched it she moaned again; louder this time. Ray ignored it and manipulated the foot out from underneath the brake pedal. He straightened and pulled under her arms again.

A soft cry. He looked into her face and saw that her eyes were open; glazed over with pain, but apparently conscious.

“You’ve got to get out of here!” he said urgently. “Now!”

He pulled again. Her inert body was heavy and unwieldy.

“Help me!” he snapped.

She moaned again.

“Do you want to die? Help me!”

Somehow, through the haze of pain, she must have understood his urgency. Her arms ceased to hang limp. She reached up and wrapped them around his neck. Ray leaned back and gave another heave. She was a tall. It took a lot to get those legs out from under the dashboard.

Then she was free. He bent down, picked her up under her arms and legs and lifted her up, holding her across his chest. Her weight and the precarious footing on the car-seat almost made his lose his balance, but somehow he didn’t. He turned, stepped on the side of the car, felt it rock underneath him, and, with her holding onto him tightly, jumped onto the road surface—and straight into the spreading gas stain. Ray didn’t wait to contemplate the situation too closely. He just ran, as fast as he could with the additional weight in his arms bouncing up and down. Somewhere in the back of his mind he congratulated himself for his twice-weekly workouts in the gym.

Finally, at what seemed like a safe distance, he stopped and turned around. The Atlanta afternoon summer sun beat down mercilessly. The blood was singing in his ears. Perspiration was pouring down his forehead, his back and just plain everywhere. His breath came in gasps. The body in his arms weighed a ton. But he couldn’t put her down: not yet anyway.

He saw people standing around the scene—staring at him standing there, gaping with morbid fascination.

Idiots! Didn’t they realize that they were far too close? Even here the reek of gas was strong, the hot freeway air an explosive mix of fumes.

He backed off even further and opened his mouth to shout a warning.

Too late.

A dull hiss. A muffled THUD.

The air was fire.

Instinctively, Ray put his face down, close to her, to shield himself from the worst. He felt her arms tighten around him and her face bury itself against his neck. The heat wave washed over them and nearly made him lose his balance again. He could almost feel the hairs on his head, his face, the back of his hands and arms, being singed away in that one brief moment. Instinctively, he refrained from inhaling.

But mercifully the light breeze was blowing the highest concentrations of the gas away from them and into the faces of the gawkers on the other side. The screams from over there told him that they hadn’t been so lucky.

There was nothing he could do but to back off even further. He’d taken only a few steps when the red convertible’s gas tank blew up.

Another explosion: the blue Ford.

The screams and wails from behind the wall of flame redoubled, became a cacophony of agony and suffering. Ray tightened his grip on the woman and did his best to bring more distance between himself and the disaster scene. When he thought it was safe he stopped.

She lifted her face from his shoulder. For the first time they looked at each other closely. Her dark brown eyes were wild, desperate, questioning. Her eyelashes and eyebrows had been singed into withered curled-up stumps. The ends of the hair on her head had shriveled and curled into tiny spirals at the end; like the sprouts of ferns.

It stank!

But she was alive—as was he.

Behind him yet another explosion. He looked around. It was his own car, now enveloped in flames; adding to the pall of thick, black smoke rising high into the clear sky. Instinctively Ray backed off even further.

He saw her staring at the scene.

“Did I do that?” she whispered.

“No,” he said. “You had nothing to do with it.”

She looked at him, her eyes searching and troubled. “How do you know?”

“I was right behind you,” he told her.

“That was you?” She exhaled and relaxed minutely. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you for my life.”

Ray shrugged; suddenly embarrassed and acutely aware that he was holding a woman in his arms; in an awkward position, to be sure, and there were good reasons for doing what he was doing. But it was still a woman, and a beautiful one at that.

And she wasn’t his wife.

Which reminded him that he was going to be late after all!

“I don’t want to put you down,” he said to her. “Not with that ankle. But…”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Sure?”

She tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace. She winced. “No; but I’ll try.”

He let her down. She made a small sound of pain as her foot shifted. He leaned her against the concrete barrier, supporting her on one side; then unbuttoned his left shirt pocket and took out a slim cellphone, hoping that it hadn’t been damaged.

He looked up at the wall of flame. The screams grated on his senses. Someone would surely have dialed 911 by now. Ray hesitated for a moment, then pressed the speed-dial code for his home.

He got his own answering machine. Debbie was probably in the shower, getting ready to go out. He left a message detailing his plight and broke the connection.

“I’m Alyssa.”

“Ray.”

“Good to meet you, Ray.”

“Same here,” he said and held up the phone. “Need to call anybody?”

She nodded. “Thanks.” She took the phone and dialed. From what she said it sounded like a call to her office. A meeting would have to be missed. She finished the call and gave the phone back to him.

“Thanks.”

She winced softly. Her breath came in short, painful bursts. Ray kicked away a few bits of debris thrown against the barrier: Coke cans; a crumbled cigarette pack; bits of glass and concrete. He helped her to sit down and did the same himself. He leaned his back against the concrete. This side was turned away from the afternoon sun and had cooled down already. It felt good. Sitting down like this also got them out of the sun, which did wonders for his exposed skin, which felt like it was on fire. Gingerly he touched his face—and took them away immediately.

Alyssa leaned over and looked at him. “You all right?”

He nodded. “Singed.”

She touched a light finger to his cheeks, and surprisingly it didn’t feel half a bad as it had when he’d touched it himself. “I’m sorry you got hurt. I really don’t know how to thank you.”

He shook his head. “Don’t.”

She hesitated, searching for words. “Why?” she asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did you stop?”

He tried to grin, but found that it hurt; so he didn’t.

“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. He took a couple of deep breaths. “You ever have that feeling…like that everything kind-of just holds together, and that, no matter what you want or think or feel, there’s only one thing you actually can do?” He wasn’t too sure he understood it himself. “Well, it was a bit like that. I was going to just go on. If I had, I’d be most of the way home by now.” He shrugged. “But… Oh, I don’t know.”

Alyssa said nothing and they sat in silence for a few moments. From their right the hissing sounds of the fire and the shouts and screams beyond it. Ray thought guiltily that he should be doing something to help; but when he looked at the solid wall of fire and black smoke he realized that he couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to.

“Ray?”

“Yes?”

His cellphone beeped.

“Excuse me.” He held it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Are you all right?” Debbie, sounding anxious.

“I’m fine. A bit crisp around the edges. The car’s a write-off. Otherwise nothing to worry about.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m now completely bald, but so what?”

“What happened?”

He gave her a stripped-down summary. “I’ll call you from the hospital,” he finished. “Once I know where they’re taking me.”

An afterthought: “I guess you’d better tell the Jacksons.”

There was a minute pause at the other end. “Why?”

“Tell them I’m sorry. Higher force and all that.”

“What have the Jacksons got to do with it?”

“We’re going to be late.”

“What are you talking about?”

Suddenly Ray felt even worse than he had.

“We’re seeing them tonight. Right?”

“Not the Jacksons! We’re having dinner with Michelle and Bob!”

Shit!

Ray swallowed hard. “Sorry,” he said into the phone. “I’m just…confused, I guess.”

“You sure you’re all right?” she said dubiously.

“Yeah,” he said soothingly. “It’s been a long day—and now this shit. Anyway, tell them I’m sorry about the delay.”

“Do you feel like doing this at all?”

Of course not!

“Yeah, sure. I told you: I’m not hurt. Just had my hair singed off. I probably look like some terminal chemo-case right now.”

He glanced at Alyssa, who was tactfully pretending that she wasn’t listening to the conversation. She saw his look and understood the silent question in his eyes. Her inspection was wry, but sympathetic.

Yeah, chemo-case.

“Well,” came Debbie’s voice, “if you’re sure…”

“I’m sure. I’ll call you as soon as I know where they’ll be taking me.”

“Be careful.”

“Of course. Talk to you soon.”

He disconnected and put the phone down.

“Everything all right?” Alyssa asked him.

Again he tried to smile, but stopped himself when the sensitive skin on his face screamed in pain.

“I guess so. Unless you consider the possibility that I may be losing my mind, of course.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Lots of things. Today especially. Maybe it’s premature aging. Alzheimer’s at forty three. I suppose it happens.”

She studied him carefully. “You’re joking. Right?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He shook his head firmly to discourage her from saying anything that couldn’t have been any more meaningful than what anybody could possibly have said. Alyssa, to his relief, picked up on his mood. She nodded and leaned back against the concrete.

Ray closed his eyes and did the same. From somewhere off to his left, coming from the direction of the empty freeway, a far-off symphony of sirens; from somewhere else, the characteristic clatter of a helicopter or two.

2.

They were taken to Crawford Long Hospital. There was a shortage of ambulances, so they had to double up. Ray managed to catch a ride in the ambulance carrying Alyssa and another victim of the accident. Like most of the other victims, this one had been caught unawares when the gas-soaked air had ignited around him. The inferno had peeled the skin off his face and melted the synthetic fabric of his shirt into the skin of his torso. The reek of burned flesh and plastic in the ambulance was overpowering. The victim was hooked up to an IV. A thick layer of jelly covered his face and exposed body. On top of that a layer of a thin, transparent film, wrapping the poor bastard up like a giant Christmas ham, cooked and ready to eat. A ventilator mask perched on the blotchy face, covering nose and mouth. A bunch of wires attached to pads on the guy’s gooey chest led to a monitor above the stretcher. A paramedic watched patient and monitor with a skeptical expression. He clearly didn’t expect the victim to survive the trip to the hospital.

Ray averted his eyes from the pre-cooked lump of humanity and concentrated on holding Alyssa’s hand. He knew what she was thinking. They’d been the lucky ones. What he didn’t know was why he was holding her hand. Mutual reassurance maybe.

At the hospital he and Alyssa were separated. Ray squeezed her hand one last time as they wheeled her away.

“Take care,” he said.

“And you.”

A doctor examined him and told him that he’d been lucky. He could have lost his eyes. His skin, the doctor told him, would be raw for some time to come. But it was just short of a serious burn and there was no need to keep him here.

The doctor left. A nurse came and applied a layer of jelly to Ray’s face and head. “This’ll help your skin retains its moisture and speed up the healing process. It’ll also stop infections. You’ll be glistening for a while, but that’s all. Come in again in three or four days and we’ll check it out.”

She gave him a tube of the stuff. “Here. Keep your skin moist. That’s really important, you understand?”

Ray thanked her, then finally got around to calling Debbie. She asked him again if he was sure about tonight. He told her he was. She sounded relieved. He guessed that his insistence on proceeding with their plans indicated to her that he was all right. Beside—as she had pointed out earlier in the day—she’d been planning this visit for a long time.

Ray was still mulling that one over. How could she have planning this visit for so long—if they’d seen Bob and Michelle only a couple of weeks ago?

Never mind.

“See you in half an hour,” Debbie said.

“All right.”

He broke the connection and called the police; explained who he was. They wanted to know if he had been involved in the crash. He told them ‘no’, but he’d been as close as could be.

Less than ten minutes later a couple of officers appeared in the waiting room to take his statement. He gave them a complete description of what he’d seen, which they recorded on a small hand-held tape-deck. One of them also scribbled brief notes on a small pad.

Did he know the name of the woman he’d pulled out of the car?

Ray shook his head. Actually, he didn’t. They’d never gotten past first names. But she was here somewhere having her ankle attended to.

The officers thanked him and told him that he might be needed for a more formal testimony. As they left, Debbie came in. She took one look at him and paled.

He smiled thinly. “That bad?”

She sat down beside him and hugged him gingerly, taking care not to touch his jellyfied surfaces. Debbie was always fastidious about things like that; especially when she wore clothes she cared about. She stood back and subjected his glistening face and head to the intense scrutiny usually reserved for icky creepy-crawlies. She was trying to hide it, but he knew her too well.

“Poor darling!” she said compassionately.

Feeling like some injured pet, Ray shrugged. “I’m fine. Honestly. You should have seen the others.”

She looked at the door. “What did the police want?”

“I was very close to the accident. Saw it all. Well—just about.”

“Will you have to go to court?” Debbie had a proclivity toward the practical. Courts would mean extra inconvenience that she could really do without, thank you very much.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Whatever…”

He got up, debating with himself whether to check on Alyssa. Something in him really wanted to, but wisdom dictated otherwise. He had an inkling that Debbie would not be amused.

“Let’s go,” he said

“You sure you’re OK to see Michelle and Bob like…this?”

“As long as they don’t mind.”

Debbie looked at him dubiously. “You look… strange.”

Ray shook his head. “Never mind. Let’s go home. I need a shower. After that… well, I don’t think I’ll have to put on this stuff quite a thick as the nurse did.” He chuckled. “Besides, it’ll give us something to talk about tonight. Fill in the gaps of the conversation.”

She hesitated. Her mouth worked, as if to say something. Then she shrugged and nodded.

An orderly came in and wheeled him out through the front entrance. Ray was glad when he was out of the place. He got out of the wheelchair, thanked the orderly, and followed Debbie across the road to the parking lot where she’d left her car. As he followed her in the hot late Atlanta afternoon, he again wondered how Alyssa was doing. He also knew that he would do nothing to find out and that it would be prudent to play down this particular aspect of today’s events.

When he saw Debbie’s car he suddenly remembered his own. It was probably burned to a revolting black mess of steel, paint, and plastic. He’d better report it to his insurance company, if he wanted them to cough up the thousands of dollars they owed him now.

There goes my no-claim bonus!

3.

Alyssa saw her savior’s figure stand motionlessly as they wheeled her out of his sight. She gave him a small wave which he returned. Then a pair of swinging doors closed on him and that was that. She stopped straining and relaxed; allowed her gaze to roam across the ceiling sliding past over her as they wheeled her into a small treatment room. A masked face leaned over her. Two blue eyes considered her carefully. Presently a hand, encased in a smooth surgical glove, reached out and carefully touched her right cheek. The touch was painful and she flinched. The head nodded. The mouth moved behind the mask, lending it the appearance of some surreal talking fish.

“It’ll be sore for a few days; but you should be fine. We’d better look at that ankle though.”

The face moved away. Somebody prodded at the bruised and swollen ankle.

Fish-face reappeared.

“We’re going to take some X-rays—and then we’ll see what needs to be done. I think you may have been lucky. No fracture—just a sprain. Still, we have to make sure.”

Three hours later, after several tests and procedures, sporting a removable ankle-brace and with good prospects for a speedy recovery, her friend, colleague, and apartment-sharer, Susan, helped Alyssa out of Crawford Long and into a sticky Atlanta evening.

“Lean on me. I’m a strong girl. You can practice with those crutches later.”

Alyssa grinned painfully. Despite the gel on her face, any contortion was pain.

“Home?” Susan asked her.

“Definitely,” Alyssa told her. “I want a long shower. And then I want to go out and have an expensive dinner. My treat.”

Susan, a petite brunette with an attractive dash of Latin ancestry, laughed. There was more than just a touch of relief in the sound.

“I agree,” she said. “We’ll celebrate until we drop. Want me to call the gang?” The ‘gang’ being their little clique of friends: the ones they hung out with when nothing more interesting was up. Which it usually wasn’t.

Alyssa shook her head. “You haven’t told them, have you?”

“You said not to.”

Alyssa craned her neck to look at her friend. “When did you start paying attention to what I say?”

Susan chuckled. “This time you sounded like you meant it.”

Alyssa nodded thoughtfully. She had. Strange that. But it was true: she didn’t want a lot of company tonight. Just Susan was fine. Just one person to talk to. Go and quietly celebrate of the fact that she was alive and comparatively healthy, when she should have been a fried corpse—or, even if she had survived the inferno, mutilated for life.

And the only thing that had stood between her and either of those possibilities—‘certainties’ was more like it!—had been Ray. A nobody. A faceless entity in a car. Someone whom, had she laid eyes on him anywhere in a crowd, she would have dismissed without a second glance. Hell, she wouldn’t even have noticed he was there. Like one didn’t notice the vast majority of people. Like nobody really noticed anybody but those who, for some reason or other, attracted one’s closer attention.

Well, Ray certainly had attracted hers. He’d emerged from the anonymity of the masses to become, for just a few short moments, the single most important person in her life. And then he had disappeared again; just like that; without leaving so much as his last name.

“What’s the matter, Lys?”

Alyssa looked at her friend. “I don’t know. Aftershocks?”

Susan nodded sympathetically. “It’s all right. You don’t have to come into work on Monday. I’ve already talked to Horrie.”

“It’s not that.”

“Close encounters with death?” Susan suggested.

They had stopped in front of her car. Susan unlocked the door.

“I suppose so.”

Alyssa lowered herself into the passenger seat. Susan tucked the crutches into the backseat.

“Mid-life crisis coming a decade early?” Susan plonked herself into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

Alyssa gave her a nudge with her elbow. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way!”

Susan shrugged. “That’s what it is, my friend. Some people have to wait into middle age until fate delivers its shakabuku. You had the privilege of getting it at thirty two.”

Alyssa shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s not the death thing, really. Actually, it may be just the opposite.”

She fell silent, and all of her friend’s attempts to coax a conversation out of her remained futile. In their apartment she stood herself under the shower, making sure the water didn’t hit her face; for when it did it was like someone was dragging sharp pins across her skin. Still, some of it was unavoidable, and she braved it until the pain faded to a dull background and she had washed every single tangle and bit of the sick smell of fire out of her hair. She dried herself very gingerly and, when she was dressed, applied the gel the hospital had given her: just enough so that it covered her, but not so much that she looked like a sideshow freak. The way her skin had reddened from its usual, delicately pale, tone was bad enough. No need to go out there with a mass of jelly plastered across her. She applied a sedately colored lipstick, but wisely refrained from applying makeup.

Susan was suitably impressed with Alyssa’s effort and made the appropriate noises.

Alyssa chuckled dryly. “Let’s find somewhere murky. I don’t fancy dining out in the glare of fluorescents.”

4.

To his surprise, Ray found that he was much better at telling the story the ‘right’ way than he had expected. Not even Debbie seemed to see through his doctored version, in which his lunatic feat of brinkmanship was transformed into an act one might have expected from any ordinary, sensible guy. Still, Ray knew that it wasn’t so, and that his escape had been the result of dumb luck. He still didn’t quite understand that.

He wondered why he didn’t feel like a hero. After all, he had saved a human life. That was probably the greatest deed of his existence so far. Maybe the greatest thing he was ever likely to do.

It had also been the most stupid.

Maybe heroes have to be stupid. If they thought about what they did they probably wouldn’t.

If that was the case, then being a hero was vastly overrated and probably should not be bragged about.

He looked around El Gitano, a Latin-themed restaurant in Decatur, where the two couples—apparently!—had arranged to meet for dinner. Around him a sane kind of normality, which he might have accepted even yesterday, but which he now knew to be a delusion. Too much had happened today to still make him believe in this pleasant fantasy.

His memory lapses. The accident. This inane conversation he was having right now. An air of unreality adhered to it all; as is if it could just slip out of his grasp at any time and become something else. Something unexpected—possibly unpleasant.

What am I doing here? Wasting his precious life in the company of a couple of people he didn’t even like; talking about things that held no meaning for him; laughing at jokes that weren’t funny; nodding at statements he disagreed with; being a good boy for the sake of…what?

Michelle interrupted his ruminations and asked him about the fate of the woman he’d pulled out of her car. He shrugged. “She had a broken ankle. I suppose she’s still in the hospital. The cops wanted to talk to her.”

“Why?”

Ray was about to tell them, when he remembered that the truth wouldn’t fit his story without adjustments.

“Same reason they wanted to talk to me, I suppose. Several people died at that accident. They’ll want to interview every witness they can get hold of.”

“You probably saved her life,” Michelle said. Ray thought that she could benefit from the application of less makeup. Without the heavy shading her eyes might have been fascinating. As it was, they lent her face a skull-like appearance. Mentally, he compared her to Debbie; who also spent far too much time compensating for the imaginary blemishes in her face, but who at least didn’t end up looking like a primitive tribesman on the warpath.

Ray shrugged carelessly. “Maybe. Maybe not. If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have.”

Yeah, sure.…

“You did get hurt in the process,” Michelle insisted.

He wished she’d stop going on about it. If she pushed the point too far there would be hell to pay later on. Debbie might just realize what had really happened, and she wouldn’t be pleased. The very notion that he might have risked his life for somebody who meant nothing to her would upset her, to say the least. She’d go straight past the hero-stuff and to the heart of the matter: stupidity.

“I got hurt because I stopped running too soon. Too close to the scene. Gas is fiendish stuff. Diffuses like…”

He saw Debbie’s look and stopped.

Once a physics geek, always a physics geek.

It drove Debbie nuts. (“Why do you always have to be so precise? Just let things be sometimes!”)

He chuckled. “Sorry!”

Why was he always apologizing for things like that?

“Anyway,” he concluded, “my mistake. Luckily I just got singed. I wished others had been so fortunate.”

Bob, a dark-haired, taciturn individual whose lack of volubility sometimes verged on the offensive, and whose passions—golf and baseball—meant that he and Ray had literally nothing interesting to say to each other, finally chose to make a pronouncement.

“I think you’re selling yourself short,” he said.

Screw you, Bob!

What was this? A conspiracy or something?

“What do you mean?” Michelle asked her husband.

“Ray’s being modest. Before we left home I heard it on the news. Some guy telling a reporter how a man dragged that woman out of her car. Picked her up and ran away—just before everything blew sky-high.” He looked at Ray. “Sounded like a pretty close call.”

Why can’t you just die?

Ray could have strangled the asshole. Was he out to get him, or something? But, when he looked at Bob he saw nothing but…what? Respect? Maybe even admiration?

Not now, you prick!

“Vastly exaggerated,” Ray said, but he sounded unconvincing, even to himself. He didn’t look at Debbie, but he knew that her full attention was now upon him.

He gave a false laugh. “Hey guys—I’d love to be a hero, but fact is I’m not. OK? You know the media. They need their sensations. Seems like they found one here.”

His attention was distracted. Above Michelle’s head, near the entrance to El Gitano, he saw two new customers enter the restaurant.

Ray stared.

Oh, shit!

5.

Alyssa spotted Ray a few moments after entering El Gitano. He was sitting with a group of three others around a table in the far corner of the restaurant. She saw that he’d noticed her, too—but, after a brief mutual meeting of the eyes, he lowered them again and then, very deliberately, moved his head from side to side.

She felt her momentary elation at the unexpected encounter give way to an irrational feeling of rejection and hurt. He glanced up again and, even across the distance, she could see a plea in his face. Then he looked away again and addressed the man to his right.

“What’s the matter?” Susan’s voice came from beside her. “Don’t you like it?” She chuckled. “Too bright?”

Alyssa shook her head. “No, it’s fine. Great actually.”

She snuck another peek at Ray’s table; remembered what he had said to her in the ambulance. “I hope Debbie never finds out what really happened back there. There’d be hell to pay.”

Debbie must be one of the two women at the table. Probably the one with her hand on Ray’s arm and saying something to the others. Hard to see from this distance what she was like; but to Alyssa’s, admittedly biased, perception, there was a air of control-freak about her. She decided there and then that she didn’t like Debbie; and immediately admitted to herself that she had no reason whatever to do so—but ignored that and decided to dislike Debbie anyway.

She also told herself that she owed Ray; and that the very least she could do was not to intrude upon his life when he obviously didn’t want her to.

A waitress took them to their table. Alyssa’s heart sank when she realized that it was the one next to Ray’s party.

Hey, fate! What’re you up to?

But fate was being deliberately inscrutable today.

Or maybe…

Why was it making her end up sitting in such a way that Ray was right in her line of sight? She wondered how to get out of this gracefully, but soon decided that there was just no way; not without making a fuss that would surely get noticed by Debbie’s watchful eyes, and which might cause her and everybody else even more embarrassment.

She saw that the significance of the configuration hadn’t escaped Ray either. Boy, this was going to be an interesting dinner! The situation had all the ingredients and plot-twists of a bad soap opera. Somewhat guiltily she caught herself secretly enjoying it. Poor Ray definitely wasn’t though! Maybe they should…

She was about to turn to Susan and suggest a change of venue, when a waitress placed a carafe of water on their table, recited her spiel about the specials of the day, and handed them a menu each.

Alyssa sighed and surrendered to the inevitable.

The waitress departed. Susan studied the menu, but Alyssa saw that she was really scanning the other patrons. Susan always did that; and at some length. “You wouldn’t believe what I could tell you about these people,” she was fond of asserting. Followed, often enough, by character analyses of people Susan had never met and most likely never would—all based on no more evidence than a few moments of furtive study.

Susan leaned over to Alyssa. “See that guy at the table next to us?” she whispered.

She meant Ray, of course. Had to. This close up, his sadly depilated head and face, together with the glistening shine of the same gel she wore herself, provided a definite focus of attention for anybody like Susan. Again, Alyssa caught herself thinking that under normal circumstances she herself wouldn’t have paid Ray anything but the most cursory attention. Maybe a passing, probably dismissive, thought; tinged, possibly, with a hint of pity; maybe even compassion. He did look like someone on chemo. A hint of freakishness, especially when contrasted with the other people at the table.

Now that she was close enough she had a better opportunity to study Debbie. Quite pretty, with big eyes that might have been soft, but Alyssa thought them just a trifle too alert and harsh. A shock of carefully-unruly dark-brown hair. Under a pert nose a lively mouth that never seemed to rest, but even in silence constantly twitched and moved.

The other couple were subtly mismatched with Ray and his wife. It was hard to define why, but it was there anyway. Maybe it was just the body language: the couples on opposite sides of the table; Debbie with a distinctly artificial air about her; Ray definitely ill at ease.

Shit! I’m turning into Susan!

“Do you see him?” Susan repeated.

“What about him?”

“He looks just like…you know, like you described the guy who pulled you from the car,” Susan whispered conspiratorially.

Ah, what the heck!

“That’s probably because it is him,” she told her friend.

“What?” Susan’s voice rose just a tad as she stared at Alyssa. Enough to attract the attention of Ray’s wife, who cast a quick, hooded glance at the two women; only to avert it just as quickly.

Alyssa gave Susan a look that should have struck her dead on the spot.

“Could you be a little less discreet?” she hissed.

Susan’s eyes caught hers above the menu. “Are you serious?” she breathed, just loud enough for Alyssa to hear. “Why don’t you say hello?”

Alyssa leaned over to her friend. “Because he doesn’t want me to.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve known since we came in here.”

“You telepathic now?”

Alyssa’s look shut Susan up. She returned her attention to the menu; but, just as Alyssa knew she would, leaned closer a moment later. “What kind of a freak is he anyway? Why wouldn’t he want to talk to you?”

The derogatory term got Alyssa’s hackles up. “Nothing ‘freak’ about it,” she hissed softly. “He told me his wife wouldn’t appreciate the full details of the situation. I respect that, all right? I certainly wouldn’t do anything to make his life more difficult than it already is.”

Susan considered her for a heartbeat or two, then nodded. “I guess,” she said slowly. She gave the neighboring table another furtive scan. “You’re right. He looks uncomfortable enough.” She leaned back again and proceeded to study her menu.

Alyssa put hers down and got up. “Red wine for me.”

“Where are you going?”

“Where do you think?”

Susan rolled up her eyes. Alyssa got up and left.

The bathrooms were in the back of the restaurant. A swinging door led into a small hallway, at the end of which were two doors. Alyssa headed for the one marked with a cutesy lady-in-skirt symbol and the label Señoras. She was relieved to realize that she was alone. She didn’t really have to go to the toilet. She wanted to be alone. Alone, so she could think.

Alyssa Weaver stared back at her from the wide mirror above the basins. Alyssa Weaver with the pink face, the now-somewhat-messed-up hair. She stepped closer to inspect herself and gently touched her face with a probing finger. It was tender and the spot where she’d touched herself retained the sensation long after she’d removed the finger. Despite the doctor’s assurances she had a vision of her face in blisters for weeks. Showing up at the office that way and facing her clients—some of which were corporate bigwigs with the minds of roaches and the lecherous dispositions of rutting stags—wasn’t a prospect to enchant her.

What do you think? she asked her silent reflection—but, like fate, it wasn’t exactly forthcoming with answers.

Alyssa shook her head and took out her lipstick. She didn’t really need it, but there was something comforting about running it over her tender lips. She took a tissue out of the dispenser, daubed off the excess, and dropped the lipstick back into her purse. Again she looked at her reflection. How did this face compare with Debbie’s?

What does it matter? What’s in a face anyway?

And yet, as she stared at herself, she knew that everything was in a face. And she wondered what was in hers.

In the small hallway someone was waiting for her.

“Hi,” he said softly.

How had she known that he would be there?

“Hi.”

“Look,” he began awkwardly, “I’m sorry about…you know…”

“That’s all right,” she said.

“I mean, it’s weird, isn’t it?” he continued. “Running into each other again. Consider the number of restaurants in Atlanta. What’s the probability of this happening? Like one in a thousand? Maybe less?”

She stepped closer to him and he pushed himself off the wall. She noted—for the first time consciously—that he was maybe and inch or two shorter than herself. Which was no wonder: at five foot eleven she was a tall girl.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said. “Sorry about the table; but I had no control over that, you know.”

He chuckled, but kept a straight face.

“Hurts to smile?”

He looked at her shrewdly. “I guess you know.”

“Yep.”

“Don’t worry about the table,” he said. “I got a bit…flustered. But now I think I’m going to enjoy this.” He paused. “Maybe we both should: enjoy our private little joke.”

“Looks like the joke’s on us,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, well. Let’s make the best of it. Our personal little sitcom.” The lights along the walls reflected as pinpoints in his eyes.

She nodded. She could see the humor. So, it seemed, did he.

Alyssa took a deep breath. “There’s just one thing,” she said.

“What?”

“Unfinished business.”

“Like what?”

“Something I’ve wanted to do since…you know. But I couldn’t. Someone was always looking.”

One of his now-hairless brows went up. His lips crinkled into the merest of smiles. But his eyes weren’t laughing.

“You know Murphy’s law, right?” he said. “When it’s most inconvenient, someone’s going to come in that door.”

She was unsurprised that he knew.

“But you’re going to let me do it anyway, aren’t you?”

He made a wry face. “Do Vulcans have pointy ears? I know shouldn’t, of course—but, to tell you the truth, right now I don’t care.”

Do it now, girl! Before you change your mind. Before he changes his!

She bridged the final step between them.

“Thanks for saving my life,” she whispered—and kissed him.

It was supposed to be just a friendly thank-you-for-everything. A kind of closure to the whole thing. Telling the guy who saved her life that she really, really appreciated what he’d done for her.

That’s what it was meant to be.

Really.

Really?

Yeah, right…

Then why was it more like opening Pandora’s Box, braving the whirlwind of pheromones that came out of it like a shockwave?

She knew that she was making small sounds, but she couldn’t help it…

… felt his brief resistance…

… his yielding…

… as her hands slipped around his neck and pulled him closer.

Her lips hurt like hell, but who gave a shit? Not if it also felt so good.

Footsteps: discordant and heavy.

They jerked apart, looking at each other with a mix of surprise and guilt.

Damn!

His eyes pleaded with her. She let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding, turned away from him, and started toward the door. It opened inward as the unwelcome intruder pushed his way in.

A man. Just as well. He wouldn’t notice. Men were so dense.

Without daring to look back at Ray, Alyssa returned to her table, ignoring Susan’s curious look as she sat down. Behind her she felt, rather than heard, Ray make his own way back to his table.

When Alyssa was seated Susan leaned across to her. “Tell me more,” she whispered.

Alyssa attempted to fake a look of puzzled indifference. “More of what?”

Susan’s lips twitched. “What happened back there?” she asked, clearly amused at Alyssa’s discomfiture. “Tell me that something happened!”

Alyssa shrugged.

Susan prodded her under the table. “Come on, damn you!”

“We…talked.”

Susan grinned. “I bet!” she chuckled. “He got up as soon as you were out of sight. Trying to be casual about it; but, boy, was he wound up!”

“We said goodbye,” Alyssa told her.

Susan considered her friend for a few moments.

“Right.”

6.

Ray sat down at the table and took a sip of his wine to cover his confusion. Michelle was telling a story: something lurid, about her office; a veritable breeding grounds for scandals, if she could be believed. Ray wasn’t listening. He took another sip of the tart red wine. That was about all he was capable of at this point. The rest was a muddle: total and complete chaos.

All he’d wanted was to apologize to Alyssa for his churlish behavior; his dismissal of her; the total lack of backbone he’d exhibited throughout this whole affair; which he had exacerbated to the point where he had become the prisoner of his own deception. Amazing how easily something like that could happen. How simple caution, and what he thought was tact, could give rise to such a confused mess.

And then…

You should have known, you prick!

Like how?

Liar!

Of course he should have known! The whole damn thing had been leading to this from the moment he’d followed one of the most irrational impulses of his life and stopped at that accident scene.

On the other hand, things would never have gone this far if she hadn’t shown up here…

Do the words ‘marital fidelity’ mean anything to you?

“What do you think?”

“What? Sorry…”

Bob was talking to him. He had probably heard enough of Michelle’s office-scandal stories to last him for a lifetime, and was now vectoring in on his favorite subject: golf. The only thing that could make him talk with animation and an unflagging enthusiasm which Ray found strangely unnerving—especially if one considered that he had not a shred of interest in golf—or most other sports for that matter—and couldn’t give a shit how Bob was working himself toward par for his course—or, for that matter, which course they were talking about!

If he focused his gaze just past Bob’s head, Ray looked straight into Alyssa’s face. Which he did now, though Bob couldn’t know that, of course. But Alyssa would. No doubt about it. She looked just as bewildered as he felt, and the secret of that dizzy moment in the hallway was like a string that linked them together and wouldn’t be broken.

Alyssa’s friend, a petite brunette whose eyes seemed to be all over the restaurant, was in on the secret. Her quick, knowing glances, gave her away. Maybe she didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she knew who he was—and she’d obviously done the numbers and come to a pretty accurate result.

Man!

The rest of the evening passed in an odd trance-like state. It was like he was halfway here and halfway somewhere else. The social interaction with Bob and the two women ran along on autopilot. The rest of him was trying to figure out what the hell was going on—and watching Alyssa and catching her glance every few seconds.

Somehow he knew that her thoughts were running along similar lines and that she was a puzzled as he. Maybe more so, because she seemed like a woman who normally had herself under fairly strict control; and this situation must surely have her quite worked up.

Somehow he managed to hold in there. The strange evening drew to a close. His party left when Alyssa and her friend were still picking at their dessert. As they departed he managed to look around casually to catch a last glimpse of her—only to find her staring after him with an intensity that was almost a physical touch, reaching right across the tables. He smiled, though it hurt his face, and turned away to follow the others out the door. And as it closed behind him and they walked to the car he became aware that, for the second time, he had parted from Alyssa without ever finding out her last name, or where she worked, or who she was.

Which, he told himself, was probably the best way. Because any other way led to scenarios that were too troublesome to contemplate—thought he also found himself wondering…

7.

“So—what was that all about?” Debbie asked him almost the moment they had departed the Bob and Michelle’s house, after a brief sojourn for a coffee and another bit of ineffable boredom.

“What was what about?”

The question was valid. He really didn’t know what particularly had attracted Debbie’s attention and been singled out for post-mortem analysis on this particular occasion. There was always a post-mortem. It was a ritual with Debbie, after every evening with just about anybody. Therefore her question wasn’t exactly unexpected, even though Ray dreaded what exactly she might have come up with this time. After all, there was something that he’d really rather not discuss.

Instead of answering him, Debbie performed a sudden conversational U-turn. “I’m worried about you.”

Ray took his eye off the road for a second to glance at his wife’s profile, outlined and brought into occasional relief by street-lights and the beams from passing cars.

“I’ll be all right. It’s just a singe.”

She sighed. “That’s not what I mean.” A pause. “Or maybe it is. Oh, I don’t know…”

From his peripheral vision he saw her face turn in his direction. “Why did you get involved this afternoon?”

He shrugged, feigning puzzlement. “Involved? In what?”

“You know!” she said accusingly. “You risked your life! I know you did! What you told me—that wasn’t true. You pulled that woman out of that car and you knew you were risking your life.”

He shrugged again. “Maybe. And what if I did?”

“If you don’t know that…”

“No, I don’t. Maybe you could tell me. What should I have done? Leave her stuck there, with gas leaking all over the road—to become human toast, just like those others? Is that what you wanted me to have done?”

“No, but…”

“But what, Debbie? It was this or that—with nothing in between. No time to think. Just enough time to do.” He took a deep breath. “And I did tell you the truth—because I wouldn’t have been singed like this if I’d just kept running for a few more seconds. It was my stupid fault that I underestimated the range of the fire-ball. The problem wasn’t that I pulled out that woman, but that I didn’t think properly afterwards!”

“You should have told me.”

“And what? Have the same discussion we’re having right now? That’s exactly what I wanted to avoid—and if that asshole hadn’t opened his big mouth we would have avoided it.”

“That what got you so upset in the restaurant?”

“I wasn’t upset.”

“Yes, you were. You’re usually rude when you get upset. That’s how I can tell.”

“Rude? Who? Me? When? To whom?”

“You mean you don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“That you told Michelle you thought certain things shouldn’t be spread around.”

“When did I say that?” He didn’t remember, but he wasn’t surprised that he might have. Michelle was prone to spreading lurid gossip.

“When she told us that Marty suffered from incontinence.”

“When did she tell us that? And who’s Marty?”

“Stop this! You know what I’m talking about!”

“I wish I did!”

“Stop it—damn you!”

The whole damn thing was rapidly getting out of hand. Ray took a couple of deep breaths of the rapidly congealing air inside the car. This was even worse than what he had been dreading. He had thought that maybe Debbie had picked up on Alyssa and the strange goings on surrounding whatever happened back there. But it didn’t look like it. Instead there was another issue which was much, much closer to the bone—because he really didn’t remember anything even remotely connected to what Debbie was talking about.

Mentally, he went back through his own memories of whatever had happened at the table. What been said and done. But there was nothing—nothing! that corresponded to what Debbie had just referred to.

“Look,” he began, but she cut him short.

“Stop it!” she snapped. “Just stop it! Why do you always do this to me?”

“Well, I don’t remember!” he shouted at her. “Get it? I—do—not—remember. Period. There is nothing in my memory about Michelle talking about her incontinent friend Marty. Believe me, if I’d been told something like that—something as bizarre as that!—I would remember. Or at least I think I would! That’s quite a piece of work; even coming from Michelle!”

“How could you not?” she shouted back.

“I don’t know,” he said, quieter. He took a deep breath. Maybe that was a lie. Maybe he did know. But he couldn’t tell her that. Not this.

“I’m going to see a doctor.”

Her head snapped around. He glanced at her and saw that her expression had softened just a tad.

“I think you should,” she said.

“I know.”

“It’s just stress.” She laid a hand on his arm and squeezed it. The touch felt soothing; and yet odd, coming so close as it did after one of their post-mortem flare-ups. One of the reasons why he’d recently begun to hate socializing.

“I hope so,” he said darkly.

“Of course it is,” she insisted. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You do all the right things. You have a physical once a year. You don’t take drugs, you hardly drink, you don’t smoke, you exercise. You’re just working too hard.”

“You spend more time at work than I do,” he pointed out. “You certainly have in the last few months.”

“My work isn’t quite as intense as yours,” she retorted, oddly defensive.

“That’s not what you told me a couple of days ago.”

“And you keep telling me how much ‘mind-space’ your work occupies. That’s what’s doing it, you know. I think you forget the real world with being immersed in all these imaginary ones.”

There was a grain of truth in that.

He hoped that’s all it was: a grain.

8.

“All right, he’s gone. Calming down? Gonna tell me now?”

“Tell you what?”

“What really happened back there. What did you say to him? What did he say?”

“I told you: we said goodbye. Closure. You know…”

Susan snorted. “Yeah. I can see that.” She shook her head in an exasperated kind of way. “Hello there! Remember me? Your friend for more years than I care to admit to?”

Alyssa let out a pent-up breath. The caramel flan had ceased to appeal to her. She put the spoon down and looked at her friend.

“That’s what we did,” she said. “We said goodbye.”

That was the intention.

Susan’s eyes didn’t leave her face, and finally Alyssa felt compelled to elaborate. “I kissed him.”

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere!” Susan grinned. Alyssa saw the predatory glint in her eyes and knew that she’d said too much.

“You kissed him!”

Alyssa sighed. “Yes!”

“And…” Susan prompted.

“And nothing. I kissed him—and that was that. You know—showing my appreciation for what he did for me. Somehow ‘thanks’ just didn’t seem to cut it.”

“No,” Susan agreed wryly. “I guess not.” She eyed Alyssa intently, as if waiting for something.

When nothing came… “And?”

“And nothing. I told you!”

“Why not?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean!”

Alyssa shrugged. “Somebody came in.”

“I see.”

“Yeah.”

But Susan wasn’t finished yet. “And?”

Alyssa shrugged. “He…responded.” She made a small gesture. “Of course he did. Men do, on the whole, react favorably to that kind of thing.”

Susan smile wryly. “Even married ones.”

“Especially married ones.”

Now, why had she said that? What did she know about it? She’d never had a fling with a married man.

Susan chuckled. “That’s if they’re not scared shitless of us.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re trying to veer off the subject.”

Alyssa made a wry face. “Would I dare? With you?”

“Yeah. Like now.” Susan pursed her lips and gave her friend a knowing look. “And his tongue didn’t exactly stay in his mouth, eh?”

Alyssa grimaced.

“And neither did yours.”

“No,” Alyssa admitted.

“I see.” Susan leaned back. “What’re you going to do?”

“Do?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Hey, kiddo, you’ve just impulse-french-kissed a guy who obviously pushed all the right buttons without so much as trying very hard—and you’re gonna tell me you’re going to do nothing?”

“That’s right. As you’ve noticed he’s married.”

“Since when does that have anything to do with it?” Susan looked genuinely surprised. “Anyway,” she declared, “that marriage is on the rocks. It doesn’t need a shrink to figure that one out.”

“That’s hardly for me to judge,” Alyssa pointed out. “Or to take advantage of. Damn it, Susan, this guy saved my life! What am I going to do? Wreck his marriage in turn, thereby demonstrating my undying gratitude?”

“It was you who kissed him!”

“That was an impulse. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Oh, yes, you were! You know what? Sleep on it. In the morning you might see this much more clearly.”

Alyssa shook her head. “No.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“But I am. You see, I don’t know the first thing about him. Just that he’s Ray. I don’t even know his last name—and he doesn’t know mine either. Unless we run into each other again like tonight we’re never likely to set eyes on each other again.”

Which was how it was going to be.