ANNA WAS STILL DRUNK. She couldn’t sleep. Bruno never had this problem. He was an easy sleeper. In sleep, he died to the world. That’s what lovemaking did to him. But sex often made Anna restless and insecure. The consequence of sex is always doubt, she thought. With greater intimacy came greater doubt. When Bruno fell asleep Anna was alone. The white noise of worry kept her awake.
Anna rose and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater and her boots. She didn’t bother with underwear or socks. She found her coat in the hallway where she’d stripped it off an hour earlier and pulled it on as she left the house. Where can I go? Anna felt trapped no matter where she was. Even at the end of such an evening as this.
In the darkness she traipsed the familiar path behind the house. She passed a rotting barn and the back units of an apartment complex. A motion-detecting light flashed on. The sudden spark of brightness startled her, as it always did. She looked across the sunflower field to the newer houses south of Loorenstrasse. Most were fully dark, but a window here and there was softly lit. Where am I going? Anna had nowhere to go and no reason for the going. Everywhere I go is nowhere. This was true. But her own ennui annoyed her and so she dismissed it.
The sky was so clear it shone. Anna crested the hill and sat on the bench at a curve in the path. Her bench. One of the most familiar things to her in all of Switzerland. She gazed at the autumn constellations and wished she knew their names. Above her hung the moon. I have nothing to say about the moon, she said to herself and in saying that she had nothing to say, somehow said something. She watched the red blinking lights of three airplanes at varying altitudes blip across the dark star-spotted field. Anna was accustomed to airplanes. They lived only a few kilometers from the Zürich airport. She always watched for movement in the skies. In the seventies and ten kilometers away in Bülach, a man named Billy Meier told everyone that spacemen in honest-to-god flying saucers came to visit him. He had hundreds of pictures of so-called proof. Anna had seen the photographs on the Internet. The image was familiar—an empty, pastoral scene, a metal dish poised in a way that toyed with perception and pending from wires that while invisible surely must exist. Anna, having spent nine years considering the words “alien” and “alienated,” took to Billy Meier’s story. And almost six years earlier in Bassersdorf, the town immediately north of Dietlikon, a Crossair flight crashed four kilometers short of its runway. Pilot error. Anna remembered that night. She’d heard a terrible noise and ran outside. She could see nothing in the dark. Bruno read about it in the next day’s paper. There were pop stars aboard the plane, though neither Bruno nor Anna recognized their names. And so Anna scanned the vault of sky above her, searching for signs. She found none.
The air made everything seem lonelier than it already was. Anna reached for her Handy, which she’d put in her pocket before leaving the house. She opened the phone on its hinge and pressed a single button twice.
ONCE, FOLLOWING AN ALMOST painfully tender morning of lovemaking and as the sun passed through the shutter slats and fell upon their bodies, Anna turned to Stephen. “Tell me about spontaneous human combustion.”
Stephen laughed, kissed her on the forehead, and rose. “It doesn’t happen. People don’t just catch fire.”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
Stephen shook his head. “Nothing spontaneous about it. There’s always a catalyst. Smoking in bed, faulty wiring, stray sparks, lightning. Something. It’s not magic, Anna. It’s chemistry. Nothing ever just explodes.”
Anna knew this wasn’t entirely true. Her heart had exploded in her chest when they met. Or it felt like it. She would do anything for him. She’d set herself on fire if he asked her to. Or told herself she would at least.
Anna got dressed and went home.
EARLIER IN THE MONTH, Anna received a card in the mail. It was from Mary. On the outside of the card, a close shot of a ladybug. Inside, Mary had written a short note: I’m sending this card for no reason except to tell you that you are loveable and dear and I delight in our friendship. Have a great day, Anna!!!
THE PHONE RANG ONCE, twice, a third time. On the fourth ring Archie picked up. “Yeah?”
The “yeah” blew her back. “It’s me.” Anna paused, then added with sheepish specificity, “It’s Anna.”