Free Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie Jr. Page A

sighing, such an impotent and ultimately dishonest thing to do, the refuge of those lacking the courage to articulate their displeasure. I glanced at Charlotte though I had no real interest in her; she was merely an object in front of me, something to fix my gaze on. She busied herself feigning interest in an open-air salsa place across the street, and I fought the urge to scoop a few cubes of ice out of my drink and toss them at her.
    So listen, I said to Emma, gathering myself, what’s going on up there? Anything you want to talk about?
    She didn’t respond right away, and then she said, with almost no inflection at all, The police have shelved the investigation.
    I wasn’t expecting this. Shelved? What does that mean?
    Apparently it means it’s not closed, but they’re not wasting any time or resources on it, either. I guess because no one’s tried to burn me alive for a while they’ve decided that no one tried to burn me alive in the first place. The detective says he’s convinced whoever it was has moved on. Or that it was totally random in the first place and had nothing to do with me. Not that one of his hunches has ever been correct.
    For the first time in days I felt something: concern, just the slightest needle point piercing my apathy. I didn’t like this, didn’t like how vulnerable it left Emma, especially in my absence. Because she was right—not one of the detective’s hunches or suppositions had been correct. And further, he didn’t understand what I knew intuitively, which was that it had obviously been a man who’d set fire to Emma’s house, and men did not just move on from her.
    I think he just doesn’t want to deal with me anymore, Emma said of the detective. I think he wants to forget that I exist. Because as long as he’s forced to acknowledge my existence, he has to remember how wrong he was to drag me in there over and over, to treat me like I’d burned my own house down. He’s tired of feeling ashamed, is what’s going on.
    Maybe, I said. Could be.
    When I hung up I asked Charlotte, Don’t you want to know who that was?
    She was reading again. Who who was? she asked, still not looking up from the book.

T he next morning I awoke to my phone ringing. I reached across Charlotte, taking no care to avoid jostling her (not out of meanness, but because the fact of her presence registered so faintly with me that there seemed little need to take any care with it) and lifted the phone from the nightstand. I didn’t recognize the number but answered anyway, and was surprised to hear the detective with the curly hair and predatory manner on the other end, the detective Emma had shamed into shelving her case.
    We’d like you to come in for a few questions, he said.
    I’m out of the country right now, I told him.
    I know. This is no big deal, he said.
    I was not inclined to believe him, and I’m not sure he intended for me to.
    Don’t go changing your travel plans or anything, he said. Really we should have brought you in at the beginning, since you were with Ms. Zielinski the night of the fire. Just whenever you get back, give me a call. You have my number on your phone, I presume.
    I do now.
    That’s a direct line. Be in touch, please. And enjoy the sunshine.

T he night that the detective wanted to question me about had taken place almost a year before, when Emma and I were still blinking hard at finding ourselves sharing a bed again. We managed to keep our clothes on long enough to go out and eat high-end pizza at a busy place on the waterfront. According to the menu the pizza dough was made from organic wheat. The mozzarella was organic, too, and the sausage nitrate-free.
    I cracked wise about the eco-earnestness. Emma smiled politely.
    Later we went to a pub where an acoustic two-piece alternated between traditional Irish folk songs and John Denver tunes. ‘Whiskey in the Jar,’ followed by