The Curiosities (Carolrhoda Ya) (38 page)

The fire slowly ate down the stalk of the match. He resented that she had been the one to strike it. It shouldn’t have been struck at all, but if it had been, he wanted it to have been him. The memory of the sound tormented him.

“Let me up.”

The flame pulled itself down the match toward Anna-Sophia’s fingers. In the old days, instinct would’ve taken over: feel the heat of the nearing flame, shake the match, toss it in the sink. Watch it blacken and dim.

Unhurriedly, Anna-Sophia stood, dropping the match onto the concrete. The flame finished the cardboard and then, small and starving, it searched the surface of the concrete for sustenance. Dutch was surprised at how hard he had to struggle with the muscle memory of stamping it out. He couldn’t stop staring at that new flame, irrelevant in a world of flames, and when he didn’t move, Anna-Sophia grabbed his jaw and kissed him.

“Why would you do that?” Dutch asked. “There’s enough in the world already.”

Anna-Sophia pulled a book of matches from her pocket. They were stamped with the name of a hotel. All but one had been torn out.

“This one’s for you,” she said, pressing the matchbook into his palm. Her mouth was curved into something not quite like a smile. It was a face that saw into his soul, how badly he missed wanting.

Dutch ran his thumb along the match. If he was like Anna-Sophia, he could strike it and love the new fire for the hydra that it was. There was still release to be had.

Anna-Sophia smiled down at the tiny flame at her feet, captivated even by a fire the size of her thumb.

Dutch tore the match from the book. He’d torn too slowly; the tail end was ragged and spear-shaped. Now very much space between skin and match head.

Anna-Sophia looked up into his face.

He tugged the match between the striking surface and the cover, and there it was, the sound: the almost inaudible breath of the match head igniting. Then the rushing hiss of the pioneer flame bursting into the air.

Anna-Sophia’s face was a cathedral lit by the sputtering match. Every want, every desire that Dutch had ever possessed—everything he had thought he’d lost—was in her expression. He’d never realized how what he’d taken to be adoration was really fear.

He could feel his heartbeat again, crashing chaotically in his ears. “Tell me you love it,” she said.

Dutch lit her hair on fire.

(He didn’t say that he didn’t.)

When the match fell to the concrete by his feet, it went out.