Free This Is the Night by Jonah C. Sirott Page A

enough money and called his Substance Q dealer—a greedy, well-connected vet who also dabbled in fruit—Lance bought what he was sure was the last cantaloupe in Western City North. Lorrie refused to even try a bite, claiming she wasn’t hungry. By the time Lance finally bit into it, the melon was creased and sour. Fruit having failed him, Lance tried to win Lorrie back in places where he had won her the first time.
    “We must go to the beach,” Lance said.
    “The beach? Must?”
    “And not just any beach. We’re going to the good beach. Our beach.” The cool air and scratchy sand, the hot wind uncoiled over twelve shades of blue: surely one of them could stop her free fall.
    The two of them headed south, through the mountains and to the beach they had come to on their very first day on the coast. Lance had tossed some of her books into his duffel bag, the old kind she used to read, all the Foreigns. They drove farther, and the mountains turned dry, their shriveled tops like wrinkled blackheads. On the radio, the prime minister was giving his weekly address, condemning the latest domestic terrorism and offering up yet another warning on the dangers of Ideology Five. Lorrie switched the station, but his speech was on all of them. Since they had last been this way, the roads had slid into further disrepair. Lance took each turn slowly, ready for the rips and gashes in the concrete. From behind the wheel, he looked up and saw what he thought was a migrating bald eagle. Lorrie scratched the whole ride down.
    “I read that the salt air will kill those things,” Lance said. “Not eagles, but lice.”
    “Where’s an eagle?”
    Lance pointed with his left hand, keeping his right on the wheel.
    “Hard to say. I’m not sure an eagle would be around here.”
    “Some wingspan, though. Check out that wingspan.”
    “Where did you read that about the salt air, Lance? A magazine? The newspaper?”
    “Just some research.”
    He hadn’t read a thing.
    They spread out on the sand. The sun was white and low, and the beach was crowded once again with people—mostly women, of course, the men old or damaged—everyone on blankets and lounge chairs. Lance peeled off his pants and shirt and slipped his trunks on. Lorrie stayed in her sundress and her flat, dark shoes, but Lance could still make out the fine hairs that began at the tops of her ankles, just above the scabs where she had scratched away the skin. As they sat, Lance could feel the murmurs of those around him, audible sounds of envy from young widows wishing that they too had a man who was intact and alive and would sit next to them at the beach.
    He watched the breakers; he felt the scrape of each grain of sand as the wind blew them against his skin. Lance had always found paintings of landscapes to be sentimental and ugly, but as he stared at her ratted flesh, a demented gusto swept through him, and he knew that he would one day paint some version of Lorrie’s scabs against the sea.
    Breathing deeply, he looked at Lorrie. She had on a new pair of sunglasses, huge platters that circled above her eyebrows and ended at the bottom of her cheekbones and gave Lance the feeling that she had stepped behind a large tinted window. She pulled out one of the underground newspapers that lay piled around their house (she currently subscribed to twelve different titles) and sighed loudly. Lance glanced at his bag and contemplated offering her one of the Foreign books that rested inside. Did she ever think about any of the big ideas she used to, or had the lice and her radical group’s sectarian split over Fareon pushed them all aside?
    “It says here,” Lorrie read, “that a lot of Homeland Indigenous join up to go fight.” She undulated the newspaper with both hands until it made a bubbling sound. “They don’t even wait for the Registry. They just volunteer.”
    “Huh.”
    “I wonder why they would do that.”
    “Maybe they just want to help out.”
    “I wish Terry was