Chris Adrian - The New World

“It’s time now to light the fire,” Alice said next to him. She had come onstage while he was talking. He blushed. “You can’t stop now,” she said urgently. “In the middle of things.” She lowered her voice. “It’s dangerous. People have exploded that way.”

“I will,” Jim said. “In a minute. Just give me a second to say goodbye. This is what I do. ” He stepped forward and began confidently. “My dear friends,” he said. “We are here together to celebrate a life. This man…” Alice was gripping his wrist so hard she was hurting him, but he pointed with his free hand at the book. “I mean, this woman .” But of course that was wrong too. So he said, “Always together. Never apart.”

“Listen to me!” Alice said. “I’m your social worker !” She lit a match and stepped toward the brazier.

“You listen to me,” he said. “She was my wife !” He tried to step in front of Alice, but she bumped him, and the brazier and book tumbled to the floor. Alice dropped her match into the puddle of lighter fluid, and the stage caught fire like it had been waiting forever to burn.

Through the flames, Jim could see the pages of the book unfurling and glowing, the covers spread wide. The ashes rose with the smoke, the plumes twisting into the words and stories and faces. There was something so attractive about the smell. He couldn’t help himself; he took a big heaving lungful of the smoke, and it was like sucking all the memories into his lungs. Or maybe they were just unfolding in him, never having been forgotten, only made incredibly small. In any case, he felt very full. And he felt, deep in his burning chest, that he had somehow found a way for both of them to live forever, a way for him to carry her forward with him and forget her at the same time. He opened his mouth to try to explain this good news to Alice as she ushered him away from the flames, but a hideous belch came out of his mouth instead.

“Oh, Jim,” she said. “You are definitely going to explode.” She was weeping now, and didn’t seem angry with him anymore.

“Would you stop saying that?” he shouted. “I am not going to explode!”

But then he did.

Jim came to visit and stood right here , Jane thought, and paused to marvel, despite herself, at the size of the room. A moment later it occurred to her that Jim was there right now. She wanted to turn to Sally and grab her by the strange, harness-like piece of macramé and turquoise jewelry she was wearing, and shake her, and cry, “It’s a tomb !” But of course it’s a tomb , she thought. All pyramids are tombs. The gigantic room, as big as a warehouse, was sprayed with blue and green light that gathered in long pools separated by columns of deep shadow. The dewars were arranged in neat glinting aisles. It was cool but not cold. Jane had thought she’d be able to see her breath in the air.

“May I give the dewars my blessing?” Sally asked. She’d brought out a set of crystals on a string and was twirling them gently.

“Of course you may,” Poppy said. “Though it’s probably not strictly necessary .” She smiled at Jane. “They’re down here on the bottom for a reason, behind nine layers of fail-safes that anticipate every kind of disaster that’s ever happened on the earth and several that haven’t happened yet but just might one day.”

“Now I’m asking for their blessing,” Sally intoned. She had her eyes closed, and her crystal was whizzing. Bill was standing with his arms outstretched to the dewars, smiling and humming. “They’re alive!” he whispered, loud as a shout. “I can feel them!”

“ Of course they’re alive, silly,” said Poppy. “We are all alive.” She closed her eyes, and seemed to have a little moment of her own.

“May I touch one?” Jane asked, trying to approximate a look of wonder like everyone else was wearing. She found it wasn’t hard — dewar-haunted looked a lot like dewar-reverent.

“ ’Fraid not!” said Poppy. “But you can get close enough to touch one.” Her smile was bright blue in the funny submarine light. “Go on. I trust you!”

Jane took a breath, and a step toward the dewars, then took off running, as fast as she could, into the stubby chrome forest. “Hey!” Poppy said. “Hey! That’s not okay! ”

You need to get in deep, Hecuba had written. The Kiss needs to circulate, and the closest air intake is at least thirty yards from the door. Did you memorize the schematic?

Yes, Jane had typed. She had pored over it. She had studied it so hard she had dreamed every night since of walking through an endless field of frozen heads, looking for her husband. So there was something familiar about her flight into this forest of silver tree trunks, a feeling that she had already been doing this forever, or that she would be doing this forever.

I just want to see his face, Jane had written. But of course there weren’t any windows on the dewars. And though she had followed the path she marked out on the plans (stolen, Hecuba said when she emailed them, by a lady from Newark, whose husband had died on their honeymoon), she couldn’t know for sure that she was even in Jim’s neighborhood of the graveyard, and it was too dark to be certain of the serial numbers on the dewars. But she stopped in front of the one she thought was right, and put her hand on it.

Poppy’s shouting already sounded very near, but Jane didn’t hurry. She rested her head against the dewar, thinking to herself, Jim would know what to say . All she could think of was “Oh, Jim, what did you do?” That came out in a not-very-elegant croak, and then she had nothing else to say, like any other time in their marriage when it was her turn to chase, and his to withdraw like a pouting child, after a fight. And really that’s all this was, she told herself. If she could just calm down for a moment and establish the right perspective, then she would see that this was just another awful fight, and it had fallen to her, as it did sometimes, to take the risk of reconciling them.

She brought out the Kiss, asking herself if blowing it all over his dewar, a total discharge of her rage in one furious, shrieking breath, would be exactly the first step of that reconciliation. She opened the envelope and took a great preparatory inhalation.

She held the breath, and held it, even while her eyes filled with tears, the dewars shimmering in front of her. She carefully resealed the envelope and put it back in her pocket, and only then did she exhale, the breath long and quiet, with her head resting on Jim’s dewar, and with the very last of it she whispered, “Always together.” When Poppy found her at last, she was slumped quietly against the cool metal surface.

“Holy Future!” Poppy shrieked. “What are you doing !” She pulled Jane back roughly by her arm, then fluttered around the dewar, checking lights and gauges.

“I don’t know what came over me,” Jane said.

“Something horrible ,” Poppy said. “That’s for sure. I’m taking you to see Brian right now .”

“Yes,” Jane said. “I’m ready to see him now.” Poppy marched her back to the door, where Sally and Bill were standing nervously. Jane wanted to bleat at them, but suddenly felt too tired for it. It was a tense, silent ride back up to the ground floor. Poppy put Jane in the front seat, where she could keep an eye on her . Sally leaned forward, at one point, to whisper that if Jane had fucked this up for them all she was going to make her very sorry, but Jane was too tired, or just not angry enough anymore, to turn around and tell her to fuck off.