THE FIRES

1.

The worst news always comes at the worst possible moment. In Gina's case, this happened to be while she was squatting over the commode in the upstairs bathroom, attempting to catch a urine sample for Dr. Betsy Cohen. She felt so ridiculous, the weeks of hot and cold flashes, the upswings and downturns of mood, the deep and nearly debilitating sense of longing for Paul, and then long stretches of absolute indifference, even — oh, this may just have been the worst of it all before the telephone rang — even wishing, yes, that he might stay away a while longer.

This was, in fact, Gina's third try at catching a sample.

Steady, steady, she was saying to herself. I can fix a perfect Bloody Mary on demand, I know exactly when I begin to ovulate — or used to — and I can flip a pancake in a thirty-mile-an-hour wind — remembering that lovely camping trip they had taken in the Sierra just after a visit to Paul's mother in Sacramento — but I can't seem to collect pee in a vial.

Actually, on her first attempt, she had done it perfectly, scarcely splashing anything on her fingers and hand. But then it turned out that she had forgotten whether or not the collection had been of her first urination of the day or her second. She was supposed to save a sample of her second. And she was almost sure this had been it. Except that she had a vague recollection of waking in the early dawn light and staggering into the bathroom. Or could that have been the morning before? Or might it have been a dream? Paul had come to her in the night, pulling a red wagon, the kind that small boys use to deliver sand to their neighbors while pretending that it is gold. Nothing portentous in that, yes? Then the dream changed, a wall of darkness became a scrim of rain, and there was her father — years since she had dreamed of him — in deep conversation with her first husband, and try as she might, Gina could not make out anything they said. Funny, how she had strained to listen, immediately forgetting the sight of Paul.

The second try? She had gotten the timing right, she had peed in a jiffy into the container, and then, as she was putting the thing away in the freezer to store while she waited the appropriate time according to the instructions for collection of her saliva samples, she dropped the little collection vial, spilling some of her urine onto the kitchen counter.

And now wait, here she was, just about to finish this third time, her pants down around her ankles, her skirt rucked up into her lap, tangy liquid gushing out of her, her knuckles damp but her mind focused — when the telephone rang.

Damn!

A few moments of comedy as she stood up, spraying her underwear, her skirt, the bathroom mat, the tile floor, and struggled to adjust her clothes even as she dropped the vial onto the mat and staggered out of the bathroom and sent herself stumbling toward the telephone on the bedside table. She was thinking this wouldn't happen to Paul, he takes the portable telephone into the bathroom with him. Which made her laugh out loud.

And then — more comedy — the doorbell rang — she would never know who it was at the door, because after a while they stopped ringing — just as she picked up the telephone.

"Hello?" she said, hoping, of course, that it was Paul. She would tell him immediately about her immediate circumstances, squatting, aiming herself at the vial. He would —

"Missus Morgan?"

Thick accent, something out of Russia? Did she know a Russian? Did she know someone in Russia?

"Yes?"

Satellite delay, the connection fading in and out. This feeling of telephone limbo, an awful by-product of modern life. Sometimes Gina told herself that she might have been better off born into an earlier age. Just when that might have been, she couldn't figure. Sometime when —?

"Missus Morgan, This is Mohammed Kirov. Your husband's —"

It wasn't that she cut him off, it was just the satellite delay made her overspeak his voice.

"I know who you are, yes," Gina said. "Paul has often —"

And then the same thing happened to her as happened to him.

"— assistant," Kirov said. "Here in Uzbekistan, the roads —"

"— spoken about you. But why —?"

"— [words faded out] traveling, you understand —?"

"Why are you calling? Where's —"

Silence at the other end, nothing there at all except the slight echoing in and out of the reflection of the silence in the space between here and some point above the Earth, or along the line where her voice bounced back down on his side of the globe.

"Missus Morgan?" Suddenly his voice returned, stronger than before, emphatic, almost as though he had something to sell her or a message of great importance and he stood just outside the door to the room demanding to be let in.

And then of course it came to her, and as if this Kirov, or some other man, an intruder bent on wounding her, pounding away at her, raping her, killing her, had smashed in the door and pushed her down beneath it, she felt all the air leave her lungs and she staggered back onto the bed, feeling the dampness between her legs, the legacy of comedy, but the comedy had ended.

On the flight east, she had plenty of time — many times the time — to reenact the incident in her mind. The medication that Dr. Betsy had prescribed for her a few weeks ago, just after Paul had left on the first leg of this trip, hadn't kicked in, or it wasn't strong enough a dose. Her departure from home was just too hurried for her to worry about such things. But when she settled back in the leather seat after takeoff — luckily, she had gotten a place in first class, a combination of her frenzied state when she appeared at the airport and a sympathetic clerk behind the ticket counter — and God help you that you need such things to happen to you in order to travel in this manner — she knew that the trip was going to be the most difficult of her life.

Turbulence over the Atlantic didn't bother her. Dishes rattled, other passengers spoke in harried whispers, unable to sleep through the frightening bounces and jamming in air. She was awake, alert, and in her mind going over and over again the incident as Kirov had described it to her.

First of all, Paul wouldn't have been drunk. It had been two years since he had stopped drinking and there was no reason in the world — none, at least, that she could at first imagine, and her imagination was certainly racing along at least as fast as the jet she was flying in — that would lead him to start again.

But then she tried to picture it, and suddenly, on the wings of this awful euphoria — the only way that she could describe it — of delusion in which you would think anything in the world no matter how illogical if it would bring him back to you — it didn't seem all that preposterous that he could have perhaps taken one, maybe two, drinks. He was alone, tired, why...