The Burning

'But ... aren't you worried?' she asked Chrissie. 'I mean, about not believing in God? What if you're wrong? After you're dead-'

'I'll be worm food. Listen,' Chrissie said, 'I really don't want to blow this up into a big deal here. If this is going to bother you ...'

'No,' Angela assured her. 'I was just ... curious.'

'Are you sure? This is Flagstaff, average snowfall one million feet. We're going to be spending a lot of time indoors together this winter.'

Angela smiled. 'I'd like that.'

Chrissie nodded, satisfied. 'Okay, then. I'm the one actually renting this apartment-I'll be subletting it to you-so what I need is first-month's rent and a security deposit of, oh, a hundred bucks. If you can swing it. If not ...' She smiled. 'Que sera, sera. I guess that part could be waived.'

'Thank you,' Angela said. 'I'll take it. And I can give you a security deposit. I'm just ...' She took a deep breath. 'You saved me. I was supposed to be in a dorm, and the computer screwed everything up, and I was going to be homeless. So I'm grateful.'

'Good,' Chrissie said. 'I'm glad. I think this is going to work out just fine.'

'Me, too.' Angela took one last look out the window before following Chrissie back into the sitting room.

Snowstorms and gay neighbors and a haunted apartment and an atheist roommate.

She smiled.

This was going to be an exciting semester.

Two

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

The sun was angry when it awoke. Henry Cote could feel it through the curtains, see it in the thin sliver of white-hot light that entered through the part in the drapes and reproduced itself on the opposite wall, obliterating his photo of Sarah by the beach. The sun was angry and it was going to take out that anger on him. He knew it, he resigned himself to the fact, and though it was his day off and he'd been planning to sleep in, Henry forced himself to get out of bed. He needed his morning coffee, and he wanted to make it and drink it before the temperature in the cabin rose above eighty-five, before it got so hot that the sweat the steaming Folgers would coax from his pores decided to linger all day.

Lack of air-conditioning could do strange things to a man.

The park service had been promising them new accommodations for the past decade, but the funding bills passed by Congress always provided just enough money for maintenance, none for upgrades. Both Democrats and Republicans were equally guilty of publicly expressing support for the parks-and privately voting to finance pet projects in their home districts at the expense of much-needed improvements to places like Zion and Arches and Canyonlands. Which was why the American people had to pay to go to national parks these days.

Even though they owned the parks. Fucking country was going to hell in a handbasket. As he walked over to the kitchenette, he looked at the photo of Sarah, wondering what she was doing now, where she lived, whom she was with. Whoever it was, he could be pretty damn sure it wasn't a ranger or other park-service employee. Not only had Sarah hated the low pay; she'd despised the lifestyle as well, complaining every single night about the heat or the cold, the rain or the snow, the lack of TV or radio reception or, most frequently, the distance from civilization. Complaining.

Every single night.

Sarah was not temperamentally suited to a life outdoors, was the type of person for whom the lack of a local Nordstrom was considered a severe hardship, while he felt uncomfortable and unhappy in any city with a population greater than four digits. Which was why their marriage had been so short. And so disastrous.

He plugged in the coffeemaker, and thought of the dream he'd had last night as he shook the old grounds in the filter and poured in water. It had been a long time since he'd shown any interest in sex. That wasn't a complaint, merely an observation. Hell, if he'd had more of a libido, perhaps he and Sarah could have weathered a few of those early storms and their relationship would still be standing today. But the problem was, and always had been, that he ended up thinking of the parts of a woman's body as ... well, parts of a woman's body. The vagina was a tube not unlike the intestine or trachea. The breasts were fatty (issue covered in skin. The ass, of course, was the hind end of the gastrointestinal tract and the location where waste elimination occurred.

Put simply, it was hard for him to become aroused when his view of sex was so clinical and detached.

But last night, he'd dreamed of two Oriental beauties who had come to his cabin from the desert, twins of indeterminate age who had strolled naked toward him across the sand, their forms gradually coalescing from the shimmering heat waves like the rider in Lawrence of Arabia. They were beautiful. He'd fought in Vietnam but, unlike most of his fellow soldiers, had not partaken of any of the local feminine pleasures. No reason, really. Oh, maybe he'd taken the training films about diseases a little more seriously than his buddies, but that wouldn't have deterred him had he

really been interested. He just ... hadn't been attracted. These two, though ... They'd walked all the way to his cabin, moving in a slinky, sexy manner that should have been impossible given their bare feet and the irregular drifts of sand. Their breasts were small, but the nipples were large, and only sparse thatches of pubic hair sprouted between their legs. The two women reached him much faster than expected, as though the desert between his cabin and the horizon had been foreshortened, and they stopped mere inches in front of him. The one on the right reached between her thighs, slid an index finger into her obviously wet opening and then pressed it to his lips. And he'd awakened completely erect. That should have been cause for celebration-he couldn't remember the last time he'd been aroused in a dream or anything else-but instead it left him feeling uneasy. There was something about those identical women that did not sit well with him, something disturbing he could not quite put his finger on.

Having set up the coffee, he turned on the freestanding oscillating fan he'd placed near the fireplace, and looked again at the angry light streaming through the curtain crack.

Angry light.

It was an Indian thing, Henry supposed, this personification of the natural world. He'd heard a lot of tribesmen say similar things about wind and rain and animals and land, and he wondered if the predisposition wasn't in his genes. According to his father, their family was part Papago on his grandfather's side, but Henry wasn't sure how much store he put by that. Everyone on the damn planet seemed to be part Indian these days, every suburban accountant who dragged his family out to the national park bragging that he was one-quarter Cherokee or Choctaw, or was Navajo on his father's grandmother's cousin's uncle's side. Hell, Henry had been born in Phoenix and, except for that stint in the army, had spent all of his life in the Four Corners states. He knew firsthand how Jim Crow this area of the country still was, how whites and Indians didn't mix, lived basically in two separate societies, and he had his doubts that a whole lot of -interbreeding had gone on in more enlightened days of yore. More likely, it was all a crock of shit

Which was why he kept his own suspected heritage a secret.

Still, he sometimes thought that perhaps he did have Indian blood in his veins, and that his hidden background had led him to this job, to this place, had made him who he was, caused him to think of things like angry suns and kind rocks and playful plants. Hell, maybe that same inborn sense was at work with his dream, creating that strange sense of dread he felt when he thought of those Asian twins.

By now, the cabin was filled with the smell of coffee, and he walked back over to the counter and poured himself a cup, drinking it while the breeze generated by the fan blew in his direction. The breeze was cool now, but that wouldn't last, and even if he kept all the drapes closed, by noon it would be circulating hot air.

Maybe he'd go into Moab today, give himself a treat, hang out at Arby's or McDonald's or some other air- conditioned fast-food joint. Or maybe he'd get in his Jeep and do a little backcountry exploring; if he was going to be hot, he might as well have fun at the same time.

No, Henry thought, he wasn't going into the back-country alone.

He might meet the twins.

That was ridiculous. It was damn near the stupidest idea he'd ever come up with-and he'd thought up some whoppers in his time.

But ...

But it wasn't really stupid, was it? He wanted to pretend that such a notion was absurd, wanted to act as