You had to do the thing you were most afraid of, didn’t you? In every fairy tale the right way was the difficult path, the one that led over boulders, through brambles, across a field of fire. I took a step forward and looped my arms around Lazarus Jones’s neck so I could be near him. Every person had a secret, this was mine: I couldn’t begin anything that remotely resembled a life until I understood death.
Lazarus Jones smelled like sulfur. People with sense run away from fire, but not me.
“Now that you’ve done it once, are you afraid to do it again?”
In response, he pulled me closer, just for an instant. For that time I didn’t hear the clicking in my head, not one snap. I didn’t smell oranges or feel the gritty dust.
“That’s for me to know. I’m not sure you want to find out.”
He let go and started walking away. Then he stopped and turned around. I was still there. He hadn’t imagined me or gotten rid of me. Yet.
“You want to know what I’m afraid of?”
He cast a shadow along the yardspace between us. A dark shade. The sun was no longer blinding me. I could see right into his face. Maybe I nodded. I must have, because he spoke.
“It’s the living that scares me most of all,” Lazarus Jones said.
He went on then, inside his house. After he’d closed the door, I heard the lock click into place. I felt lost, standing there. Sweltering in the sun. It was so hot out no birds were in the sky. They were all perched in the shadows.
A group of men were sitting in the shade as well, taking a break from picking oranges. One of them approached me as I walked back to my car. He was young, high-school age, tall and rangy. He had a curious, friendly expression and his hair was buzzed off. He reminded me of Renny, but he was healthy and strong; his hands were rough, covered with blisters. I wondered if the blisters caused him great pain. If he rubbed them with Vaseline. If some girl who loved him put his fingers in her mouth, healed him with a kiss.
“Was that Jones you were talking to?” the boy asked me.
“For a minute,” I said.
“He never talks to any of us. He leaves what we’re owed out on the porch. Then the fruit distributor sends trucks out, and those guys have nothing to do with him, either. I never even saw him before today. You were up close. Was he all deformed, or something?”
Deformed, no. Merely beautiful. But I didn’t think it was my place to comment if Jones wanted to keep himself locked away.
“I couldn’t really tell.”
“That’s what we all figure. He got hit by lightning and he’s all scarred up.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Let us know if you find out. Maybe we’re all working for a fucking monster.” The boy laughed at that notion. “Maybe he’s a bloodsucking creature from beyond the grave.”
“He wasn’t,” I said. Just beautiful, filled with ashes, shutting the door in my face. Only that.
“But you couldn’t really tell,” the boy challenged me. “Could you?” The other guys were whistling for him, calling his name, so he headed back to them. “See ya,” he called as he ambled back into the shade.
I got into my car and took off, but I was rattled. I pulled onto the Interstate going the wrong way and didn’t realize my mistake until I’d driven north for three exits. Orlon was to the south. Finally, I turned around and pulled off at a rest stop. I used the toilet and bought a bottle of water. The cashier complimented me on my red dress and then I realized why Lazarus Jones had laughed at my color blindness. I understood why the men in the gas station where I’d stopped before had whistled. They thought they knew who I was because of my red dress. I felt hot and confused; where he’d grabbed my arm heat blisters had risen. Where he’d whispered to me, my ear was burning.
I went home, took off my dress, and hung it in the back of the closet. The next morning, when I went out to my car, I noticed that the odometer had stopped. I wondered if the malfunction had been brought on by proximity to Lazarus Jones. There was something wrong with me as well. Definitely caused by Lazarus. Wherever he had touched me I had little raised burn marks. I went to the Orlon University Health Center, to see the nurse who’d examined me for the lightning-strike study. He name was June Malone and she was a year or two younger than I.
“You’ve missed a couple of meetings,” she said.
“Have I?” Like I was ever going again. “These things actually hurt.” I showed her my arm.
June gave me an ointment for my skin, but she seemed suspicious. Maybe it looked as though I’d mutilated myself, held a hot match to my flesh.