Ian's thoughts of failure carried him to his car, and carried him home. Twice his preoccupation almost led him to blow a red light. Once he ran a stop sign. He parked five blocks from his building and trudged home. In the lobby he opened and emptied his mailbox, but as he reached the fifth floor -- his floor -- he remembered what he had forgotten: orange juice. He had forgotten orange juice the day before, too, and there was none in the apartment.
He dropped the mail off at the apartment, letting it fall with a sullen 'thump' onto the coffee table.
At the Korean grocery, he bought a loaf of bread along with the juice. He watched the sky turn threatening as he walked the block and a half back to building. Thunder rumbled. By the time he mounted his stoop, he walked through not quite rain, but through a general gathering wetness.
He returned to the fifth floor, tripped over Sara’s cat, Mynx, put the orange juice in the fridge and the bread on the counter, and in the bathroom he toweled his face dry. His clothes were no more than damp. They would dry quickly, he decided. His hair he ignored.
His second bottle was almost empty, and his clothes and hair were quite dry, when he heard a key in the front door lock. He walked to the door and swung it open to reveal a half-drowned Sara standing in a small but growing pool. Water trailed back down the hall to the stairway.
Ian stepped aside and Sara stepped in. "I guess it's raining," Ian said as he closed the door and helped Sara remove her coat. Sara nodded -- she shivered as she stood, and together peeled off layer after layer of wet clothes. Ian toweled her try, and wrapped her in a terrycloth robe. Over on the couch he wrapped her in his arms, and soon she was warm.
As she warmed, she took more notice of her surroundings, and soon her eyes fell on the still unsorted pile of mail. "Did anything come?" she asked.
"I don't know," Ian said. "I had to go back down for orange juice and I forgot."
Sara picked up the pile and began to leaf through it. Ian collected her wet clothes from the entry and hung them in the bathroom. He found an old towel in the hall closet and used it with his feet to mop up the water at the door. Then he hung the towel over the bathroom door and returned to the living room. Sara leaned forward as she sorted the mail, causing the front of aher robe to fall open and reveal the curve of one of her breasts. Every time Ian saw that curve, he marveled at its perfection.
He crossed back to the couch, warmth rising within him, and sat down, placing one leg to either side of her. He wrapped one arm around her. With his other hand he began to trace her perfect curve, and she leaned into him. "A letter came," she said. "From the fire department."
Both of her legs now curled around his thigh. She held up the envelope -- the thin envelope, Ian noted ruefully -- and he plainly saw the fire scramble beside the return address: New Gotham Fire Department, 9 Metrotech Center. Happiness, certainty and pride radiated from Sara's face; she watched the life fall out of his. Suddenly, he felt very cold.
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