dira | (no subject)

pearl_o gently encouraged,

brooklinegirl was somewhat more insistent, and two weeks later, here it is.

Due South, F/K. He reread the poem often.

He'd been stationed in Dawson in 1985. His commanding officer had taken him aside one morning and informed him of the outcome of one of his arrests: the woman had been sentenced to ten years in prison for driving the getaway car. He had nodded, as though it meant no more or less to him than any other arrest; when he went back to his lodgings that night, there was a package waiting for him. He'd unwrapped the slender volume of poetry, consulted the table of contents, and turned to page 18. He read the poem once, and then shelved the book among the few others which constituted his collection--necessarily a small group, as he had to carry them with him from one posting to another.

He reread the poem often, not to say daily or, sometimes, hourly. Always just once, and then the book was put away. By the time he saw her again, he'd read the poem thousands of times, knew it as well by the sight of it, laid out in crisp black type on a slowly yellowing page, as by the sound of her voice. The book, its spine permanently creased to fall open to page 18, was in its place among his few other volumes while she stayed in his apartment; for a time after she left him he couldn't bear to look at it, but eventually he resumed the practice of reading that poem, just once, and reshelving the book. It was a ritual, a kind of prayer, though he could not say whether it was a petition or an act of thanksgiving. It was the poem; he read it. That was all.

The fire that destroyed his apartment heralded so many changes in his life that it was several days before he noticed the absence of one possession among many. The book, the poem, the ritual were all removed from his life, and though he had not been conscious of it as a burden before, he was conscious of a certain liberation now. He still thought of it from time to time--still read the words from the backs of his eyelids, just as he still turned his head to watch dark-haired women on the street. But it was fading away; though she was out there somewhere, the book was gone forever.

But the book was before him now, unburned, untouched, couched innocuously betweeen collections of Heaney on one side and Housman on the other. Interchangeable, he thought numbly, like snowmobile parts--it was not his own volume that he saw before him, its spine turned toward his hand, but another of the same edition. Yet if he should pick it up, turn to page 18, the poem would be there, just the same, every serif and comma exactly as he recalled it. He would be just where he had always been before. It did not seem to be a matter of volition. His hand moved toward the book. It belonged there.

"Hey, there you are," Ray said, his voice deferentially hushed but still loud in the dim, dusty confines of the used bookshop. "I found it." The spell was broken, and Fraser looked up to see Ray grinning, triumphantly brandishing a 1973 Major League Baseball Almanac. "Dewey is gonna--" Ray's voice trailed off, and he frowned. "What's that?"

Fraser looked down and realized his hand was still resting on the edge of the shelf, one fingertip not quite touching the spine of the book. He'd come that close.

Ray closed the small distance between them, reaching past him, and Fraser caught his wrist before he could touch it. "No," he said sharply, unable to let Ray get even that close to her, to what had been.

Ray's frown deepened, but he didn't pull away from Fraser's grip. Instead he glanced over Fraser's shoulder, down the narrow aisle, and over his own shoulder, toward the front of the shop. Then he leaned in, pressing the baseball almanac against Fraser's hip, and kissed him lightly. Fraser followed the touch as Ray pulled away, and when Ray smiled at him--without knowing, or needing to know--Fraser smiled back. He loosened his grip, letting his fingers run down Ray's hand, lingering there for a moment before he let go entirely.

"Come on," Ray said, and now his voice was the barest whisper. "Day's wasting, wolf's eating my car."

"Yes," Fraser said, and followed Ray toward the promise of sunlight at the front of the shop.