Black Flame

by Ruby Laska

  More silence. “Well,” Jimmy finally said.

  “And meanwhile, I don’t see a single football around here.”

  “No…” Jimmy said slowly. “There isn’t.”

  While he was thinking that over, Deneen wondered if she could go one step further, and point out that he could be just as effective with women, if he gave it a little thought. Except, apparently he didn’t really need her help there.

  He’d picked her up at the airport. He’d taken her to the Christmas morning brunch. He’d given her a Christmas gift.

  All of these were perfectly decent things to do, nice gestures made by a nice guy. And if he kept going like he was, applying himself to figuring out human interactions, he was probably going to end up being a prince among men. A true catch, in other words.

  Ask him, the little voice said. There wasn’t going to be a better time to find out the truth about the other woman.

  She took a breath and gathered up her courage. “So, about that note.”

  “Note?”

  “On the cookie plate. That Angel ate.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “The woman who sent it…”

  “I don’t actually know who sent it.”

  “You mean you still haven’t read the card?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “Well, it could have come from a number of different people.”

  Deneen’s eyes widened, and she felt her temper flare up out of nowhere.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. You ‘bring joy’ to more than one woman? You’ve ‘made the last year special’ for lonely ladies all over town?”

  Jimmy was getting that deer-in-headlights look again, but Deneen wasn’t about to go to his aid this time. Not after she’d nearly been taken in by his routine. Not after she’d carelessly let her defenses down enough for him to affect her all over again.

  “Well, there’s just one special one, that I go to see—so the note is probably from her—but yes, I’ve interacted with probably a dozen of them this year.”

  “A dozen! That’s one a month!”

  “Well, not really, because during my hitches I’m working around the clock, so—”

  “So that’s like one every two weeks!” Deneen stood up, clutching the awkward contraption that he’d given her and trying to decide if she ought to just hit him with it. “Jimmy Mason you know what you are? You’re a—a—”

  He was staring at her in horror and dismay, as if he hadn’t just admitted to being Conway’s biggest Casanova, the spreader of a very special kind of holiday spirit.

  Deneen raced from the room, fighting back tears. But in the arched passage she stopped and whirled around.

  “You’re a MENSA man-slut!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jimmy woke, as he did every day, at 5:45am. By rising at that precise hour, he was guaranteed to make it to the job site on time, if he was currently working a hitch. During his days off, it didn’t make sense to alter his schedule, given that numerous studies had showed that quality of sleep declines when people fail to adhere to consistent schedules.

  However, as he was unaccustomed to staying up late—Deneen had stomped off to bed at nearly midnight—he was tired as he went about his morning habits.

  He wasn’t stupid, he reflected as he brushed his teeth. He knew that Deneen had misinterpreted the card and cookies left on the porch, which had indeed turned out to be from Nan. Nan didn’t have time for a romantic entanglement, given her long hours and responsibility for caring for her son, and even if she did, he doubted that they would be a suitable match, and even if they were, it would be unwise to become involved with a client of the Family Circle Center. No, Nan was a friend, and nothing more, something he could have explained to Deneen—if she had calmed down long enough to listen.

  But there was a problem, Jimmy thought as he ground out a hundred crunches and seventy-five push-ups in the freezing Tar Barn. Even if he could prove that he wasn’t involved with any other women, there was still the issue of Deneen’s unsuitable nature.

  Yesterday, he had made an assessment of his behavior and physical state and entertained the possibility that, despite the inescapable intellectual chasm between them, he was falling in love with Deneen. Which seemed impossible, but then again, as Einstein had written, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” If he could imagine it, perhaps it might be true.

  From there, he had attempted several cautious responses to the stimuli presented by her presence. First, he tried to prevent her from injuring her wrist further, which had somehow caused her to take a walk outdoors, which was counter-indicated by an analysis of the weather conditions and the social imperative of not leaving a party.

  Later, he had given her a gift. Jimmy admitted to himself that he wasn’t sure how that had led her to question him about the nature and author of the note, but it too had ended badly.

  After much consideration, he had come up with only three possible explanations for this state of affairs:

  he was not actually falling in love with Deneen, and his symptoms were the result of some other, unrelated condition

  he was falling in love with her, and she was falling in love with him, but had a highly unusual response involving anger and frustration rather than the more typical reciprocation of engaging gestures and sexual overtures

  he was falling in love with her, but she was not falling in love in return

  While Jimmy was showering, he forced himself to accept that of the three possibilities, the third was the likeliest by a factor of several orders of probability. And if Deneen was not falling in love with him in return, continuing to attempt to engage her would be illogical and foolish. As Einstein had said, insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

  After his shower, Jimmy stood in front of his closet trying to focus on choosing clothing for the day. His lack of focus, an unfortunate side effect of poor sleep and anxiety, led to a greater than usual difficulty in selecting an option. Finally, he pulled on a favorite old sweater and reached for the jeans he’d worn yesterday. As he was pulling them on, something fell from his pocket: the shiny penny that was in the Christmas cracker Deneen had made.

  He held it in his hand, thinking about the fact that sometimes people flipped coins to make decisions. Statistical chance was a poor way to choose a course of action, of course, especially given the fact that the odds were equal, but the favorability of each choice rarely was.

  Still…

  “Heads, I keep trying,” he whispered to the silence. “Tails, I leave her alone.”

  He took a deep breath, and flipped the coin up into the air, watching its spinning, winking arc.

  The door to the bedroom burst open, hitting the penny and knocking it to the floor, where it rolled under the bed. Deneen stood in his doorway, wearing an expression of dismay.

  “Jimmy, you have to help me! There’s been an accident—Jayne’s in the hospital!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Deneen clutched the puffy old coat tightly around herself, even after the cab of the pickup had warmed. Jimmy drove carefully, not speaking and keeping his eyes to the road, which was probably a good thing because it was slick with the same layer of black ice that had caused Jayne and Matthew’s truck to fishtail and end up in the other lane, sideswiping a car going in the other direction.

  The driver of the other vehicle was unhurt. Matthew was fine. It was only Jayne whose injuries had required an ambulance trip to the hospital. Thankfully she’d been well enough to call Deneen while she was waiting for them to examine her further.

  “I’ll be fine,” Jayne had said.

  Then Matthew had taken the phone and repeated the claim. “She’s going to be fine,” he said unconvincingly. “Only she, uh, could really use you here, if you can find a way.”

  Fine. They kept saying she was fine, until some doctor came and made them get off the phone. So why was her sister sobbing? Why did she sound so afraid?

  One s
imple answer: she was lying.

  “I had a goldfish once,” Deneen burst out.

  “A…goldfish,” Jimmy repeated carefully, daring a quick, confused glance in her direction. They were twenty miles out of town, with another hundred to go before they got to the hospital closest to where the accident had taken place.

  “Yes. I won it at the fair.” Deneen had promised herself last night that she would never speak to Jimmy again if she could avoid it. And when he’d agreed to drive her to the hospital, she’d decided that she would speak to him only when necessary. But now, trapped in the truck with only Jimmy and her fears for company, she needed to talk. She wasn’t talking to him specifically, anyway; she was just saying words out loud, processing, and he could respond or not, it didn’t really matter. That wasn’t the point.

  “I was seven and Jayne was nine. It was just a little county fair that we’d been begging to go to ever since we saw them put up the Ferris wheel. Mom didn’t approve of the carnival games because she said they were rigged and nobody ever wins.”

  “Sensible,” Jimmy commented. “Shell games are actually used to perpetuate fraud.”

  “Yeah. Well, I won a fish, so, so much for your stupid theory,” Deneen snapped. Honestly, Jimmy could be so irritating; she probably should have asked Zane to drive her. Or Cal—maybe he could have even used his siren or lights to get her there faster. “I took it home and put it in a vase, and Mom said we could get a tank and fish food the next morning. She said to just leave Goldy alone—”

  “You named the fish Goldy?”

  “Yeah, so?” Deneen said defensively. “I was seven, I wasn’t exactly full of clever ideas for fish names.”

  “Please continue.”

  “Well, when we went to bed, I was worried that Goldy hadn’t had any dinner. I thought he must be really hungry. I was keeping Jayne awake with my flashlight, talking to him—I’m not sure if he really was a male fish, but he seemed like a boy to me—and finally I decided I should feed him. Jayne tried to talk me out of it, but, well, I ended up sneaking down to the kitchen and getting some saltines. He was such a little fish, I broke a cracker in half and only crumbled a little bit into the water. And he went right up to it, too, with his little mouth opening and closing, and I was so relieved that he wouldn't be hungry that I went right to sleep.”

  “I believe I can guess how this story ends,” Jimmy said.

  “Well, just sit tight a minute because I need to say it anyway,” Deneen said. “In the morning, Goldy was gone. The bowl, the cracker I left on the nightstand, everything. And Jayne was sitting on the bed looking at me. She told me that the fair had called, and Goldy’s mom missed him so much that they asked if he could come back. And she said she knew I would understand because I wouldn’t want him to feel homesick.”

  “That was a creative story. I assume she lied to protect your feelings, possibly with your mother’s collusion?”

  “Well, yeah, Dr. Obvious. She’s only two years older than me, but she’s always been like that—always protecting my feelings. That’s the whole point of the story.”

  There was a long pause, while Jimmy frowned and stared straight ahead at the road. No cars had passed them in a long while, which was probably a good thing. Those who had the day after Christmas off from work were staying home and avoiding accidents.

  “I’m sorry,” Jimmy finally said. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this story now.”

  “Because Jayne is lying again!” Deneen exclaimed, exasperated.

  “So you said, but—”

  “She’s trying to protect my feelings. She’s lying in the hospital with a severed leg or a disfiguring gash on her face or something, and she doesn’t want me to worry. She’s probably sitting there in surgery right now trying to figure out how to break it to me, and—”

  “If she’s in surgery, she is probably sedated,” Jimmy pointed out. “Also, most surgeries are conducted with the patient in a prone position, so the odds of her sitting are—”

  “Jimmy!”

  After yelling his name, Deneen burst into tears. She was shaking, despite the warmth from the heater and the ridiculous coat. So much for her plan not to talk to him. So much for staying aloof, as silent as a stone, impervious and implacable. If only there were someone else—anyone else, in the entire world, would be better than this—sitting beside her. At the rate Jimmy was driving, it would be another couple of hours before she got to see for herself how badly injured Jayne was. If she was even out of surgery. Or, for that matter, if she survived surgery. Who was that famous actress who ran into a tree while skiing, and was talking all the way to the hospital, telling everyone she felt fit as a fiddle, and then died an hour later?

  Deneen whimpered. Then she felt a hand on her knee. A very tentative hand.

  Also, the car was slowing. It was slowing, and drifting over to the side of the road.

  “What are you doing?” Deneen asked shrilly. “Keep driving. Please. No, don’t stop, you have to go faster. We need to get there. I have to see Jayne.”

  But Jimmy didn’t stop. He continued to pat her leg, very gently, and coasted to a stop in the soft snow drift piled up beside the road. He turned off the ignition, and turned in his seat to face Deneen.

  Only the car kept moving. Very slowly, sliding along the fluffy snow, with the treacherous ice underneath. Deneen opened her mouth and tried to say something, but all that came out was a little yelp as the truck gained speed and went nose first into the ditch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “The ditches are intended to allow for water flow while minimizing erosion,” Jimmy said, as he tried rocking the truck back and forth. He’d gotten out and packed the snow behind the rear tires, and put strips of cardboard under them, torn from the box containing the cables that he kept behind the driver’s seat. The truck gripped at the cardboard, but at the steep incline at which it had come to rest, it wasn’t enough.

  He wasn’t sure why he was explaining the hazard to Deneen, because she clearly wasn’t interested. After discovering that there was no cell service on this stretch of road, she’d pretty much been ignoring him. But much as talking had seemed to help her cope with her fears about her sister’s condition, talking—to his surprise—was helping him combat his own feelings of frustration.

  At least she had stopped crying. She was looking at him with an expression that seemed to contain equal measures of contempt and impatience. Clearly, she blamed him for getting stuck, and since he had made the choice to pull over, rightly so.

  Since she wasn’t interested in road conditions, Jimmy changed the subject. “I’m a surprisingly poor driver. The dent in the roof of the truck is the result of a miscalculation I made when driving under a structure with low clearance. I believe it is a result of below-average large motor skills, which cause me to estimate differences, and hence risk, inaccurately.”

  “Well, call the New York Times—Professor Jimmy Mason is actually not perfect after all.”

  “You’re being sarcastic, I assume. The media would have no interest in—”

  “Yes, I’m being sarcastic. Jeez, Jimmy, for a genius, you’re the dumbest guy I’ve ever met.”

  Jimmy gave up rocking and took his hands off the wheel. He was out of ideas. Deneen was right: he had failed in this situation, much as he had failed in every encounter he had had with her. And that indicated a profound deficiency, probably relating to his difficulty expressing his emotions.

  He cleared his throat. If ever there was a time to follow his mother’s advice, it was now. Think with your heart, she had told him when he was thirteen. For the next sixteen years, that advice hadn’t made much sense to him.

  But now, he thought he got it. The things he’d tried so far—fixing the error, explaining the circumstances surrounding it—hadn’t helped at all. Deneen was worried, anxious, and afraid. Those emotions were most effectively combatted with reassurance and comfort.

  Jimmy could provide that.

  He took a
deep breath and reached for Deneen. When he put his hands on her shoulders, he felt her stiffen under his touch, and nearly gave up. But then he caught a whiff of her perfume—that flowers and spices and lemons scent—and his intentions became muddled. Comfort and reassurance gave way to something else. Not just arousal but longing—a sensation Jimmy rarely experienced. Need, even—to touch her and hold her and stay with her until he was able to make her feel better.

  “Deneen,” he breathed. Then he pulled her closer.

  The console between the seats made it awkward, but every other sensation—her hair against his face, her hands on his shoulders, her scent on every inhale—felt exactly right. She melted against him, circling his neck with her arms, and tucked her head under his chin. He could feel her heart beating against his skin.

  “I’m just so worried,” she said in a small voice, after neither of them moved for a very long time. Then she added, even more quietly, “I’m sorry I was so awful to you.”

  “It’s quite all right. Also, you are not awful.”

  She laughed.

  It wasn’t much of a laugh, more of a weak giggle, but as she pulled away from him, her mouth quirked up in a faint smile. “I know you didn’t mean to get stuck in the snow. I know you were just trying to make me feel better. And I even know that Jayne is probably fine, and it’s just my imagination making everything worse. It’s just—I’m not very good at just sitting still. You know what I mean? I like to be doing something, not just—I don’t know, waiting for whatever to happen.”

  “Like with the packages.”

  “The packages?”

  “The ones I had gift-wrapped for the brunch. The wrapping was perfectly adequate, so at first I didn’t understand why you wanted to modify it. But I see now that your nature is to embellish and augment practical objects and arrangements. You’re—you’re like strontium aluminate.”

  “Like what?”

  Jimmy blushed. The notion had just popped into his head, and it didn’t really stand up to scrutiny, but now that he’d said it, he saw no choice other than to explain.