Free Bone Fire by Mark Spragg

the phone book.” His mind kept drifting, and he stared down between his boots to focus. There were ants at work in the cracks between the stones. “I would’ve thought Larry could afford an underground system,” he said.
    “One of the zones sprung a leak. There’s supposed to be someone out later today.”
    “You look good.” He was still staring down.
    “I’m a vegan now,” she said.
    He looked up when he heard the dog tearing the cup to get at the last of the Blizzard. “Larry going without steak and eggs and milk and whatever else too?”
    “The man needs his red meat,” she said.
    When there were only a few shreds of paper left the dog started a low, threatening growl, and Helen slapped him on the head with the flat of her hand.
    “Hush, now,” is what she said when she slapped him a second time. “I’m guessing you already know Larry’s not home, or you would’ve brought him a milkshake too.”
    “I called his office.”
    “Did you really?”
    “I told his secretary I’d seen him naked. It seemed kind of funny at the time.”
    “Does it still seem funny?”
    He shrugged. “Not as much.”
    She stroked the dog’s head, and it settled its chin on its front paws. “Did you tell Kathy that the time you saw her boss naked he was on top of your wife?”
    “I didn’t realize it had been twelve years already.”
    “What’s wrong with your arm?”
    He brought it into his lap, holding it there, wondering if its uselessness was obvious to everyone. “It sort of buzzes.”
    “Like what? Like a bee?”
    “I haven’t been feeling very well.”
    “Not just your arm?”
    “Generally, I guess.”
    “So you thought after twelve years you’d check in to tell me you’re sick?”
    “I was just driving around.”
    “Did you think it would cheer me up?”
    “I wasn’t thinking about it one way or the other. I was driving around and then I called Larry, and then you changed your sprinkler.”
    “Are you dying?”
    The question surprised him. “We’re all dying.”
    “But are you over here to tell me you’re going faster than the rest of us?”
    She was wearing sunglasses, but it didn’t matter, he’d never been very good at reading her expressions. “That’s a pretty big leap,” he said.
    “Not really. You look like hell.”
    “I’ve ended up with what my granddad had.”
    She stared at him. Long enough that he looked away, and then back to see if she was still staring at him.
    “That’s absolutely fucked.” She pushed the glasses to the top of her head.
    “I guess I just needed to hear somebody say that out loud.”
    He stood up, and the dog growled and got slapped again.
    She gathered the pieces of the cup and scrunched them together. “If you want to know, I divorced you because I was afraid,” she said. “We’ve never talked about that.”
    He watched her squeeze the paper even tighter. “When we were married? You were afraid of me?”
    “Yes, I was.”
    “I never laid a hand on you.” He was massaging the bad arm, watching her place the scraps precisely on top of the boom box, still holding the towel across her breasts.
    “But it felt like you wanted to. Like you had to remind yourself not to.”
    They heard a truck pull to the curb in front of the house.
    “That must be your sprinkler guy,” he said.
    “Can you turn around?”
    “What?”
    “I need to get dressed.”
    He stared at the mountains. “Maybe what you felt was something I brought home with me? From being a cop?”
    “Maybe that’s all it was,” she said. “It was a long time ago. We were very, very young.”
    The sound of a truckdoor closing, the drop of a tailgate.
    “You never felt like that with Larry? I mean uneasy.”
    “I guess living with Larry’s kind of like a diet without meat.”
    She stepped to his side. She had her top on now and the towel wrapped around her waist. They could see the cab of a white truck over the fence.
    “I must’ve been feeling homesick or something,” he