Free Orfe by Cynthia Voigt

which she couldn’t have given him unless he understood her perfectly, as she, he hoped, would understand him. Wanting so badly for her to understand, he repeated himself. “I hear you loud. I hear you clear.”
    Orfe lowered her legs, until her feet touched the floor, and stood up. She saw that he was tall, tall and skinny. Tall andskinny and strung out. It made her sad and sick. He saw all of that, although all he really saw, he said, was someone like a flame, and not just her hair, a flame like fire to burn you clean. He’d seen women like that before, he said, he’d seen women of all kinds in plenty, but never one that scorched him. Orfe scorched him.
    He lived in the house where Smiley lived, so he could ask Smiley what her name was, where she lived.
    If she had a guy. Or anything.
    Smiley was pretty fried, but he remembered the street where Orfe played. Yuri got out of the house then, because he knew what would happen if he stayed, got out and walked away what was left of the night, walked the sun up into the sky, walked away the morning, until around lunchtime he was waiting for her on the street.
    He was pretty sure she didn’t see him.
    He was wrong. Orfe saw him right away, standing in the doorway behind a moving throng of bodies, looking—if it was possible—worse than he had the night before. There was more gray in his pale skin or maybe green; his jeans and shirt looked like he hadn’t taken them off to go to bed; his hair curled lank down hisneck. She didn’t much notice him or think about him, however; she had work to do.
    He was still there when she had finished, pocketed the money, and put the guitar away. He stepped out of the doorway and came toward her. She wasn’t surprised. “You look like shit,” Orfe said.
    â€œI feel about the same,” he said. “Are you hungry? I think I want some herbal tea—ginseng or something like that—but a place that has teas probably has food if you’re hungry, if you know any place. D’you know a place?” He knew he was having trouble making sense. He couldn’t braid his ideas right, as if he held all these different colors and thicknesses in clumsy fingers and he couldn’t get his fingers working right. He couldn’t get his mind and mouth working right. He didn’t want to scare her off.
    Orfe wasn’t scared, although it crossed her mind. She knew a place and they walked the blocks over to it, not saying much. What’s your name? they said, and Where did you grow up? and What are you doing here in the city, now?
    Yuri ordered a pot of tea. He gulped down the first cup blistering hot, and that perked him up. “I don’t want you to think I’m crazy,” he said.
    Orfe shook her head, she didn’t. “Drugged out,” she said.
    â€œYeah. I know. I’m—” He didn’t want to make any promises to her, because they might turn out to be false. Not trustworthy, that was what drugs made you into. So no promises. “Listen,” he said, “when you—”
    He saw how she swung her face away at the words, as if she knew what he was going to name and was ashamed. He reached across to hold her chin and turn her face back to him—
    The softness of her skin, and the line of bone along her jaw, under the skin . . . He thought she must feel his hand shaking.
    â€œListen. It’s as if—you do it for me. Get the poison out of me when you—I can’t do it for myself, I can only want to and wish I could, I can only feel like it and that’s the only feeling I have unless I can keep all that shit locked out. You know how I lock it out?”
    Orfe nodded her head. He took his hand away.
    â€œI’m going into detox,” he said, promising. “I haven’t—Since last night, the last time was before I saw you. Everything’s changed. You’ve changed everything.”
    â€œHow could