“Hi,” I countered. Dad was still standing there. Why was he still standing there? Why wouldn’t he move?

“Well, here he is,” he said.

“Come on in,” I said, and by her hesitant eyes remembered I was wearing only a towel.

“Are you going to put clothes on?” the Inferno asked.

“I think I can dig up some socks.”

“There’s a bushfire up in the mountains,” Dad said.

“We’ll stay away from there. Thanks for the tip,” I said dismissively, turning my back on him. As we walked into my hut, I whipped my head around to make sure Dad wasn’t going to follow us in. He wasn’t, but he winked at me conspiratorially. It annoyed me, that wink. He had given me no choice. You can’t not accept a wink. Then I saw Dad look at her legs. He glanced up and saw me see him looking at her legs. It was a weird moment that could’ve gone either way. Despite myself, I couldn’t help but smile. He smiled too. Then the Inferno looked up and caught us smiling at each other. We both glanced at her and caught her looking at us smiling at each other. Another weird moment.

“Come in,” I said.

As she stepped into the hut, the swoosh, drag, lift of her footsteps advancing on the wooden floorboards would have driven me to drink had there been a bar in my bedroom, and had it been open. I went into the bathroom and threw on jeans and a T-shirt, and when I came out she was still standing at the doorway. She asked me if I really lived in this place.

“Why not? I built it.”

“You did?”

I showed her where I’d cut myself helping my builder put in a window. It felt good showing her my scars. They were man scars.

“Your father seems nice.”

“He’s not really.”

“So what are you doing with yourself?”

“I got a job.”

“You’re not going back to school?”

“Why should I?”

“A high school certificate is a pretty handy thing.”

“If you like paper cuts.”

She gave me a half smile. It was the other half I was worried about.

She said, “So then, how does it feel to be a working man?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You might as well come up to me in a seven-story parking station and ask how it feels to be on the fourth level when before I was on the third.”

“I got your note.”

“We drove a man to suicide.”

“You don’t know that.”

She was only inches away. I couldn’t breathe. I was experiencing one of those horriblebeautifulterrifyingdisgustingwondrousinsaneunprecedentedeuphoricsensationaldisturbingthrillinghideoussublimenauseatingexceptional feelings that’s quite hard to describe unless you happen to chance upon the right word.

“Do you want to take a walk in my labyrinth?” I asked.

“I really don’t have much time.”

“I’ll give you the no-frills tour.”

Outside, everything shone brightly in the sun and there were no clouds spoiling the blue except one shaped like a goat’s head, a solitary cloud as if God had wiped down the sky and missed a spot. We walked to the creek and trailed along it and looked at the faces of half-submerged rocks. I told her they were called stepping-stones because man likes to think that all of nature was set up especially for his feet.

We followed the creek to where it poured tirelessly into the river. The sun was hammering away so you couldn’t look at the water without squinting. The Inferno knelt down beside the river and put her hand in it.

“It’s warm,” she said.

I picked up a flat stone and threw it away from the river. I would’ve skipped it across the water, but that scene was too cute for me. I was past all that. I was at the age where boys would put a body in the river, not a stone.

We walked on. She asked me how I found my way around the maze. I told her I had got lost for a long time, but now it was like navigating through the digestive system of an old friend. I told her I knew every wrinkle in every living rock. I was bursting to tell her the names of the plants and the flowers and the trees, but I wasn’t on a first-name basis with flora. I pointed out my favorites anyway. I said, There’s the silvery gray shrub with large clusters of vivid yellow ball flowers like bright furry microphones, and the small bushy bronze tree with white globular fruit I wouldn’t eat even for a dare, and this one has leaves glossy like they’ve been covered in contact paper, and a crouching shrub that’s wild and tangled and smells like a bottle of turpentine you drink at two in the morning when all the bottle shops are closed.

She looked at me strangely, standing there like my favorite tree: straight and tall, slim-stemmed and graceful.

“I’d better get going. Just point me in the right direction,” she said, putting a cigarette in her mouth.

“So I see you’re still smoking like an inmate on death row.”

Her eyes fixed on mine as she lit her cigarette. She had just taken the first puff when something black and nasty floated down to her face and landed on her cheek. She wiped it off. We both looked up at the sky. Ash was falling softly, dark ash falling and whirling crazily in the hot bright air.

“Looks like a bad one,” she said, looking at the orange glow over the horizon.

“I suppose.”

“Do you think it’s close?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I think it’s close,” she said.

All right, so what if we live in a flammable land? There’s always a fire, always houses lost, lives misplaced. But nobody packs up and moves to safer pastures. They just wipe their tears and bury their dead and make more children and dig in their heels. Why? We have our reasons. What are they? Don’t ask me. Ask the ash that sits on your nose.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’ve got some ash on your nose.”

She wiped it off. It left a black smear.

“Is it gone?”

I nodded. I wouldn’t tell her about the black smear. A raw, hungry silence descended, swallowing whole minutes.

“Well, I really have to go.”

“Why don’t you take your pants off and stay awhile?” I wanted to say but didn’t. There’s little doubt that when the defining moments arise in which character is molded, you’d better make the right decision. The mold dries and sets quickly.

We walked through a small clearing where the grass was so short it looked like green sand, and I led her to a cave. I walked in and she followed me. It was dark and cool inside.

“What are we doing in here?” she asked suspiciously.

“I want to show you something. Look. These are cave paintings.”

“Really?”

“Sure. I did them myself just last week.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you sound so disappointed? I don’t see why you have to be fifty thousand years old to paint on a cave wall.”

That’s when she leaned forward and kissed me. And that was that.

V

A few weeks later the Towering Inferno and I were lying in bed and I was feeling as secure as if we were both stored in a large vault. She was on her side, propped up on one elbow that was tireless, like a steel pole. She had her pen poised on a notebook, but she wasn’t writing anything.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“I’m thinking about what you’re thinking about.”

“That’s no answer.”

“Well, what are you thinking about?”

“What you’re thinking about.”

She snorted. I didn’t press it. She was secretive, like me- not wanting anyone to know her every thought in case he used it against her. I imagined she’d discovered, as I had, that what people want from you is confirmation that you’re toeing the line, living by the same rules they are, and that you’re not going off on your own or awarding yourself any special privileges.

“I’m trying to write a birthday card,” she said. “It’s Lola’s birthday. You remember Lola, from school?”

“Oh yeah, Lola,” I said, not knowing who Lola was.

“Do you want to write something to her?” she asked.

“Sure,” I lied.