Free Charlie Johnson in the Flames by Michael Ignatieff Page A

car he felt that he had done well to restrain more effusive displays. Actually, he had been pretty effusive. What he said to her, very close, was that she had been good to a stranger, and she replied that he had never been a stranger. With that, she kissed him, a little peck right on his lips, and he got into the car feeling happy.
    The road was bare and dry between ploughed fields and Jacek said almost nothing till they were at the airport. ‘So we go out again or what?’ he asked when the car was at the ramp in front of departures.
    â€˜I want to go to Belgrade,’ Charlie said.
    â€˜And kill that son of a bitch?’ Jacek said with his usual wry lack of affect, opening the door of the Lada and giving Charlie a gentle push to help him up. It was one of Jacek’s better moves, Charlie thought later as the plane lifted off for London, giving words to a thought that had been in both of their minds, just beneath the level of awareness, from the second they had seen that lighter applied to the hem of that dress.
    Yes, kill that son of a bitch.

S IX
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    W hen he got to his front door, he opened it with his key and stood in the hall and put his bag down. He went into the sitting room on the left with the floor to ceiling bookshelves the length of the far wall. He could see the rows of Mika’s books, the ones with the Russian titles on the spines that he hadn’t the heart to throw away when he cleared out the house in Dedham and that he kept promising himself he’d learn how to read one day. There were Frank’s too, one row above, the stout-hearted memoirs of battle, and a couple of ones – Home Carpenters’ Almanac , for example – that Charlie had salvaged from the garage. By the television stood the rows of Charlie’s video tapes and next to the stereo system his blues and country and western: fifteen separate Johnny Cash. ‘I shot a man in Reno,’ Charlie said to himself, ‘just to watch him die.’
    In the middle of the room, placed so that it faced the bay window and had a good view of the street, was the music stand and Elizabeth’s flute. He could see she was still working on the Haydn, because the music was on the stand. He’d been away for a month.
    â€˜Charlie?’ She was on the top step of the landing looking down at him standing in the hall. He nodded and she came down slowly, drying her hands on her apron. She was wearing the black dress, and her hair was up. She had the long silver earrings on that brought out the fine shape of her neck.
    â€˜You going to a party?’ he asked.
    â€˜Rae and Barbara are coming over. I’m cooking. Life goes on Charlie,’ she said, reaching the bottom step.
    â€˜Where’s Annie?’
    â€˜At the Duggans. On a sleep-over.’
    He followed her through the living room into the kitchen at the back. The table, by the sliding door out into the garden, was set for three. He watched as she set a fourth place.
    â€˜Why the beard?’ she asked, and he said that he hadn’t been able to hold a razor, but now he could and later he would go upstairs and get rid of it.
    He went over to the cupboard, took out the single malt he knew was there and got a glass, then corrected himself, took out two and sat down at the table, still in his coat, and tried to get the cork out of the bottle. She watched him and came over and took it out of his hands and poured two inches for him.
    â€˜You too,’ he said and she did as he asked. She drank the whisky, with a grimace, straight down, but she didn’t sit with him. She went back to her cooking, and he sat there watching her back. She had good legs, like her mother, firm calves and a