Page 8 of Playing With Fire

Chrissie had sketched him, of course. Her talent had been precocious, curious, mercurial. She had drawn anyone, anywhere, who had “interesting bones”. The sharp angles of the under-fed, the flat features which hinted at Central Europe, the dark sculpted lines of Africa and the broad brow and rounded jaw of somewhere in Asia.

Ricky the eagle, she had called him once, frowning with concentration as she worked. They’d still been together then, Ricky head down in intensive training and Chrissie still talking about signing up at the School of Visual Arts.

Only three years ago, perhaps less, but it felt like a lifetime now.

Her pencil strokes had been lightning quick, as though the moment must be seized before it vanished.

He’d laughed when she had shown him the sketch, charmed at how she had captured the intensity of his narrow face, straight bony nose, blunt jaw, and dark, fierce eyes.

“I don’t look very friendly,” he’d objected.

“That’s because you’re not. You are the eagle, the predator ready to pounce. Cold and heartless.”

She’d laughed like it was a joke and grabbed his hand to haul him off to another noisy party where her friends argued about the pointlessness of art colleges.

Ricky stared at his cloudy image, mentally tracing the tiny scars on his forearm from the rain of scorching metal which had penetrated his protective jacket at a warehouse fire. And that jagged line of stitching on his shoulder—that had happened at a car wreck, crawling through the tangled steel to cut away a jammed seat belt.

All the rends in his flesh had healed in time, itching and aching as the tissue mended.

The pungent smell of firefighting chemicals was suddenly back, burning his nostrils. Followed, without warning, by the sour stench of unwashed linen and the cloying stink of smoke. His stomach clenched.

Chrissie.

His heartbeat raced. He tried to moisten the painful dryness in his throat. His heart banged against his chest like it was trying to escape.

Run, said his brain. Run.

Ricky took a deep, shuddering breath. Deep, slow, in and out, like the docs had recommended as they had peered into his eyes, tapped his chest, listened to his lungs. Nothing wrong that a spot of extended rest and recuperation wouldn’t fix.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to let go of the anger and the deep, lacerating regrets.

To concentrate on the single good thing, the unlooked-for miracle revealed in those blackened ruins. The most precious drawing that Chrissie had ever done.

His blood thrummed in his ears like cicadas on a Fourth of July picnic. The almost delirious joy which he had kept tamped down threatened to burst through, although Ricky knew that hope was a dangerous master.

Would he recognize his own flesh and blood? See the familiar narrow, high nose that his mom swore came from her bootlegging South American granddaddy, that double cow lick at the nape of his neck, or the wide coat-hanger shoulders that some blacksmith from the English counties had bequeathed his descendants?

Would he recognize his own child?

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