Afterburn

always there, pulls at you like a stone. It didn't matter that he'd done it for his country. It didn't matter that the war was unnecessary. If he had only known then what he knew now. But that was true of everybody. He had gone to war because he'd loved to fly, and although he had been very good at understanding technical procedures and air combat strategy and the argument that he was protecting democracy and all the other monkey-brain complexity the Air Force filled you with, he had not understood time. Not understood that his actions weren't discrete and perishable but that they would become part of him, forever. He would carry them. You carry your own water around here, his father always said, and he was right. There was nothing he could do now about what he had done then.

For a few years, however, he'd hoped that he might understand his experience as a POW as some form of punishment, but now that idea was laughable, nothing more than a lie; after all, he had lived, and lived well, whereas all those people had died. The only thing that came close was Ben's death. But even that was not enough to balance the accounts. It was not enough to remember the way, in his last week in the hospital, that Ben had curled up on his left side, his hands in loose fists near his face, hunched in against the opponent. At times his crusty eyelids opened, but whatever he saw was not before him in the room. He could no longer talk then, but he seemed to be alert within himself, and his staying in the clenched position seemed his insistence on a bit of privacy while he went about the hard work of dying. His thin beard had become long, and a day or two before the end, Charlie brought his electric razor to the hospital to shave him. Ben's neck was like a baby's, too weak to support his head, so Charlie slipped his hand beneath his son's ear and carefully shaved both cheeks and his chin one last time, so that Ellie would be able to see the face of her son, see the face of the boy in the young man who was now almost ancient. Ben's eyes opened at the touch of Charlie's hand and a curl appeared at the corner of his mouth, the curl of amusement and pleasure that always signified how he felt about things. But this tremor of sweetness on Ben's face was no consolation, for its softness only signified that all things died, even a nineteen-year-old prince. Dying more quickly, in fact, because of his youth. Yes, all earthly things returned to earth, some at their appointed time, others not.

There were no last words from Ben, no moments of redemption and grace; he simply disappeared into a soft fit of coughing, his chest rising and falling against the liquid filling his lungs-it was Ben's last race, Charlie had always thought, and it could not be won. He stood next to the hospital bed until the very end, until the nurse took her hand away from Ben's wrist and looked up at Charlie, until they straightened Ben's body while they could, pulled his legs from his chest, pushing down the knobby knees, and set his arms at his sides into the coffin position- society's last formality. As the hospital gown fell back, Charlie had glimpsed Ben's penis, gray and loose in the nest of pubic hair, the catheter tube shoved deep into the pisshole-yet another violation of Ben's youth, as if sucking the life out of him from there, too. Ben's chin was still lifted upward, his eyelids not quite closed, and for a moment his expression appeared brazen, even hostile, daring all comers, which would have been like him. The attendants unfolded the long gray plastic bag and lifted Ben into it with practiced ease, and Charlie stopped them then and asked if they would leave the room for a moment, and that was when he leaned close to Ben, shrouded by the bag, and pressed his own warm forehead against Ben's cool one and said, Goodbye, son, I will love you forever.

He looked at the news for a while, then checked his corporate E-mail while Ellie drifted around the apartment in her nightgown. Her feet looked bumpy. She set a book down by her bed table. She was going to sleep earlier and earlier, it seemed. A sign of depression? He remembered the cloisonne bowl in the front closet and wondered if he could cheer her up.

He retrieved the bowl and set it on the bed.

'Hey, wifey-girl,' he called.

'What is-Oh, that is lovely, Charlie.' She picked up the bowl, traced her finger around a dragon's nostrils. 'This is quite nice.'

'I think it's old enough to count.'

'I do, too. Where did you get it?'

'There's an antiques place in Shanghai, in the old city. I had them send it.'

She ran her fingers along the dragon's wings. 'You know, I haven't heard from Miriam upstairs for almost two weeks. She had something terrible happen. Her son killed himself playing racquetball.'

'What?'

'Yes. He ran into the wall, headfirst.'

'Broke his neck?'

'He died right there on the court, Miriam said. He and his wife had three children. The wife is just devastated. Now Miriam has to help out. He didn't leave enough life insurance, I guess.' She pushed her fingers along the dragon's scaled tail. 'Anyway, the problem is, Miriam doesn't like the daughter-in-law. They never really-Where did you get it, anyway?'

'An antiques market in the old city.' He smiled at her. That didn't mean anything, not necessarily. 'I just told you.'

'You did? Of course. It's very nice. Thank you, sweetie. I was just trying to-' Ellie stood there. 'Charlie, I'm- I'm having some problems.'

He nodded silently.

'I'm not remembering things. Little things, mostly. I was trying to remember my mother's birthday today and I couldn't. Then I thought I could look it up in the phone book. I actually put my hand on the phone book before I remembered that made no sense. It's things like that.'

'We're all doing things like that.'

'No, no, Charlie, don't pretend.' Her eyes begged him. 'I need you to see this now.'

'Come here.' He held her. 'What else?'

'Oh, I feel like putting notes on everything, just to remember. Call Julia. Get the cleaning. Yesterday I drove the car with the emergency brake on for half an hour.'

'That's not good.'

He massaged her neck. She sighed, and with the exhalation, the tension seemed to pass out of her. She looked at him expectantly, eyes bright. Smiled, even. My Lord, Charlie thought, she's forgotten what she was anxious about.

'I like this a lot.' She picked up the bowl and immediately touched her finger to the dragon's nostril. 'Where did you get it?'

'Oh, don't, please.'

'What?'

'You're joking.'

She looked at him. 'About what?'

'Nothing.'

'What's the joke?'

'There's no joke.'

She smiled hopefully. 'You're teasing me about something?'

'No, no, Ellie, I'm not. I thought you were asking about the bowl.'

'I was asking about the bowl.'

He stared.

'You're making me feel self-conscious. You seem to be suggesting I asked about the bowl before just right now.'

'Yes.'

'I didn't, though.'

'I thought you had, sweetie.'

She wanted to be reasonable about the disagreement, he could see. 'No, no, I know I didn't, Charlie.'

He nodded. 'You're right, Ellie. Not to worry.'

He helped her to bed, where she took three of her favorite little sleeping pills-the flesh-colored ones, which seemed ominous somehow. 'Everything is going to be okay, isn't it?' she asked.

He looked at her, thinking about the question.

'Just humor me, Charlie, just tell me it's all okay.'

'Yes.'