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she
has slowed her heart rate and gotten past the worst of the panic.
She opens her eyes.
    The dark room remains quiet, and she casts a
blurred glance around, trying to ground herself in the familiar—the
dusty electronics of the far wall where Tony would play his music;
the concert posters plastered across the walls with thumb tacks;
the dresser drawers like his mom’s, spilling clothing. Even the
weirdly bright-blue carpet, worn and old, but so comforting
somehow.
    The noise from the street has quieted. The
city alarm has stopped, at least for the moment. Still, there’s
that odd buzzing, and she hears a shouted exchange, perhaps south
on Magnolia. But no explosions or screams.
    She takes a few more moments to collect
herself, then pushes up to her knees to examine Tony. She dissolves
again, briefly, into sobs, then composes herself. She pushes at his
side to roll him over on his back. It takes her a few minutes of
effort, keeping her hands away from the red glow, but she finally
shifts his deadweight to the right position, and he’s facing the
ceiling. Tony doesn’t appear to be breathing. His eyes are closed,
and his mouth hangs slightly open, the glow lighting his cheeks
like a crimson lantern. She places her ear against his bare chest
to listen for his heartbeat. His flesh is warm, but the heartbeat
and breath are gone. She wraps her arms around his midsection, not
wanting to let go of him.
    Wait…warm?
    Her head snaps up and back. If Tony is still
warm, he’s still alive somehow, right? But no pulse, no breath ...?
She peers at his face again, trying to make some modicum of sense
out of the luminescence there, trying to figure how she can
possibly help him. Whatever she did with Susanna was the wrong
thing to do—and at the too-recent memory, she nearly chokes with
the emotion that threatens to throttle her—so what’s the right
thing?
    “Wake up! Wake up!” she screams at him,
punching at his chest. “I don’t know what to do!”
    She’s flailing away at his chest, and she
notices something odd. Her fists loosen, and her arms quit their
assault. Rachel pauses, staring at Tony’s body. She doesn’t think
it was her imagination that his flesh felt ... softer ... under her
blows. There was more give in the flesh. She pushes at his chest
again, and the bone and musculature do seem more pliable than usual
beneath her fingers. Repulsed, she pulls back her hand. She quickly
angles herself closer and studies his face, the source of the red
glow. Without moving into the organic heat of the glow, she watches
Tony’s expression, looks for signs of movement or simply the heft
of life. Unlike with Susanna, there’s definite evidence that Tony
is still there. Susanna slipped into death only after the light
fled from her.
    Like a soul , Rachel thinks.
    She remembers seeing an old photograph once,
depicting a man in repose on his apparent deathbed, and his soul, a
ghostly half-image of the man, with closed eyes and solemn
expression, was departing his body, lifting upward, away from life.
She was perhaps nine years old when her dad showed her that
photograph, and it haunted her beyond words. She still remembers
the nightmares that followed in her little bedroom across the
street. Only years later, when she learned how double-exposure
photography works, did she come to understand that the notion of an
actual manifestation of a soul was fantasy. However, the mythology
is potent, and to think of this strange, otherworldly light as a
soul, with the potential of leaving—or remaining inside—the body,
is breathtaking to her.
    She studies Tony’s features for what seems a
long time. She sits beside him, regarding him from different angles
or touching his hands or shoulders, willing him back to
consciousness. Then she hears another more distant, booming
explosion, and she also hears the rapid footfalls of someone
sprinting across Tony’s front yard, yelling, “It’s a plane! It’s a
fucking airplane!” The voice