"You scared everyone. I'd rather be here anyway, I'm tired of hearing them talk about you."

"It's awful, isn't it?" I asked. "A man can't fall over in his own municipal cemetery without – "

"Christopher, please."

I closed my mouth, startled. We stared at each other for a while.

"Of course," I said. "That was tasteless."

"Are you feeling all right?" he asked. "Really, I mean, just between you and me."

"Yes, mostly," I answered, sitting up and wincing. "My chest hurts a little. I'm sorry about Halloween. You looked like you were having a good time."

"Oh, I was!" he said, suddenly enthusiastic. "It was a lot of fun. They don't have anything like that in the city, you know? I couldn't believe Charles let me do it, but I think I did all right. Although – " he seemed to recall that he was speaking to an invalid, which I had managed to forget for a moment too, enjoying his enthusiasm. "I mean, you don't have any reason to apologize, I don't think you planned to...pass out."

"No – I would have done it somewhere a little more forgiving," I said, rubbing the bruise where the back of my head had knocked against a grave plaque. My shoulders felt sore as well, like I had a sunburn under my skin. "But it's still a shame. I had no idea you were going to be the Fire Man."

"I asked Charles," he said. "It's actually one of the reasons I moved here."

"Is it?" I replied.

He looked indecisive. "I should call Dr. Kirchner and let him know you're awake."

"I thought you moved here to get away from city life for a while," I said, as he crossed the room to pick up the telephone.

"I thought the same of you," he replied, dialing from a number written on his hand.

"I asked first."

He smiled. "All right. I – Dr. Kirchner? Um, sorry, can I speak to him? Thanks." He touched the little table the phone rested on, waiting. "Hi. He's awake. Christopher, I mean. No, he seems okay. So, I'm going to – yeah. Okay. Okay, bye...bye." He hung up and looked at me sheepishly. "I don't like phones much."

"You were going to tell me why you came here?" I prompted.

He sat down again, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his thighs and bowing his head, lacing his fingers across the back of his neck.

"I liked the idea of it. I'd read about it in a book about – well, anthropology and stuff. I'm interested in things like the Straw Bear, even when they're sort of watered down like they are here. Transformation rituals, I guess you could call them, that sounds like a non-stupid way to say it. I thought it would be neat to see this one. And I did want to get away for a while."

"From...?"

"Everything," he said, eyes still on the floor. "I chose Low Ferry because of the Straw Bear, but also because you always get cut off for at least some portion of the winter. I liked that idea. Too many distractions in the city."

"Distractions from what? Your masks?"

"Sort of," he said.

"Living out at The Pines, being the village Fire Man in the Halloween festivities...none of that was accidental, then?"

"No," he said quietly. "I didn't really expect things to end up the way they did, though. With you, and with the boy and everything. And Charles has been really nice, I didn't expect that."

I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring grin, although between my bad color and the headache starting to make itself known in the back of my skull it probably looked more like a grimace.

"Your turn," he said.

"Lucas, you know why I came here," I said. "I wanted a break from city life too. I've never made any secret about that."

"You're not even thirty-five," he answered. "You have a heart condition."

"That isn't why," I insisted. Lucas fixed me with a look that I had never seen, nor ever expected to see, on his face: cynical disbelief tinged with indulgence, like a parent catching their child in a lie.

"Why else would you?" he asked.

"I was tired of the city, that's all."

"Nobody just leaves the city for no reason," he replied.

"Well, if it comes to that, what's yours? It's fine to say you like the way things are here, but you must have had one too, or you'd have just come to visit for Halloween."

"I'm working on a piece, an art piece, and I needed quiet and time to think. And you're avoiding the question."

"Because I don't have an answer for you. Sometimes people just do leave the city," I said tiredly. "Burnout, change of pace, call it whatever you want. I just thought about it for a while and then did it. My father'd died a few months before, I'd just had a bad breakup and – "

It really was no use. The cynicism was back, and I hated seeing it on his normally innocent, reserved face.

" – and a very negative and frightening electrocardiogram," I finished with a sigh.