Page 185 of The Fire Line

“It was restrained.”

“It was afraid of its own premise!”

They had made it halfway down the block before Jay realized he and Romy had been arguing since they left the theater.

It was not his premiere, or even a documentary. Romy knew the director, Jay knew several people from the distributor, and for one evening he had been required to do nothing more professionally demanding than wear a jacket and form opinions.

He had excelled at both, naturally.

“The entire film was about a woman refusing to admit what she wanted,” Jay said as they waited at the corner. “Then, at the exact moment she might have done something emotionally inconvenient, it cut to a fucking train.”

“The train was symbolic.”

“Yeah. Symbolic of public transportation.”

Romy gave him the look she reserved for occasions when he had become both insufferable and predictable. “You’re projecting.”

“Onto the train?”

“Onto the ending.”

The light changed, and Jay stepped into the crosswalk before she could elaborate.

New York had reclaimed him without difficulty.

His apartment had been almost exactly as he left it, except for a shelf Romy claimed she had not rearranged and a stack of mail tall enough to suggest several government agencies had become concerned about him.

The shelf was obviously her work. Three months earlier, Romy had declared it “structurally incoherent” while measuring Jay’s living room for a client project she was finishing nearby. Now the books had been reordered by height, two objects had migrated from the bedroom, and a ceramic bowl Jay did not remember owning sat where his camera batteries used to be.

“It was like that when I got here,” she told him.

“You have a key.”

“Circumstantial.”

His calendar had filled within three days: screenings, meetings, editing sessions, dinners postponed during the shoot, and friends who required several months of gossip to be absorbed in a single evening.

His first Sunday back, his mother summoned him to Astoria, where two of her sisters talked over one another in Greek while his father argued with his brother in Spain over speakerphone. Jay’s mother continued adding food to his plate while demanding an accurate account of the fire, then interrupted every time the account became more accurate than she wanted.

His father asked practical questions about road access, livestock evacuation, and emergency water before declaring Shaw Ranch’s entire fire plan inadequate, as though he had personally inspected the property and been disappointed by its management.

One of Jay’s aunts wanted to know whether the horses survived. The other wanted to know whether the handsome rancher in the photographs was married.

Jay answered one of those questions.

He left carrying three containers of food, a bottle of wine his father claimed nobody in Brooklyn could appreciate properly, and instructions from both sides of the family to call more often.

Jay loved it.

He loved ordering food after midnight. He loved the noise from the street and the woman across the courtyard whose windowsill garden had begun colonizing the fire escape. He loved the coffee shop near the corner, even though the new barista insisted on calling him Jake.

The city continued in every direction at once, dense enough that solitude required effort and silence had to be actively sought. His life had not waited in suspended animation. It had continued without him, then closed around him again almost immediately, familiar and complete.

Jay had always understood belonging as being welcomed back.

His family complained about his absences while preparing for his return. His friends accumulated stories for him. Work continued without him and made space when he came home.

Harris’s belonging looked different.