Page 22 of Flames and Blood

“Long.”

“Everything’s long today.”

He shifts his boots. First time he’s moved his feet in hours.

“My instructions are to keep you comfortable, and conversation is part of that,” he says. “But it’s easier if you stop asking me things I’m not allowed to answer.”

Comfortable.

Nobody has cared whether I was comfortable in over a year. Wherever I’m going is going to be different from where I’ve been. That should be reassuring. It isn’t.

“You care that I’m comfortable?”

“I don’t care either way.”

“Geez. Charming. Does your wife know what you do?”

“She knows I drive.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s all she wants to know.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Long.”

“I’m putting that on your gravestone.”

“There are worse things to put there.”

“Do they let you go home between these?” I lean forward slightly and rest my elbows on my knees, my hands clasped together. I glance down. The crack I’ve been feeling is there. They won’t see it from where they’re sitting.

“Sometimes.”

“Is it far?”

“Far enough that I don’t go home for one night and come back.”

“So you sit somewhere in between and wait for the next one?”

“That’s the job.”

“Do you have kids?”

He doesn’t answer. That one isn’t from the list. He could tell me. He’d rather not. I leave it alone. He’ll stop answering anything if I push, and I want him talking again.

“Last one,” I say. “Then I’ll let you look out of your windows in peace.”

“Go on.”

“Do you know what I am?”

“I know what’s on the file.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No,” he says. “It isn’t.”