Threnody (027).

(This is a 500-word-a-day novel project.)

Sometime later, when they had stopped and gathered wood and Jesse sat back watching Ryan expertly start a fire with friction, and as they were playing a dollar per question she was in debt to him for almost two hundred dollars versus the sixty he owed her, and they’d learned quite a lot about each other (though it was all surface and safe): he had gone to college for one year; she had driven a motorcycle before; he did know a foreign language other than Spanish, rattling off a string of French whose accuracy she could only guess at; she had been to a live boxing match; he had flown a plane before – but she had not water-skied; he had not been to Hawaii; she had not ever had her body pierced; he had not ever been on live television.

I think that’s all I got, he said, stretching, leaned back against a dead log until his chin touched his chest. But you are a very worthy opponent, ma’am.

The trees overhead exhaled, a breeze threading through their circular, shimmering leaves. The canopy was so thick that she could only see the sky in small patches, and despite the different atmosphere inside the forest dome, it remained the same cruel grey it had been. Then it came again, a series of gentle gusts that rustled the veiny leaves in a calming way that had her nearly dozing; she stood up, tapping her cheeks lightly.

I’ll bet you never got a tattoo, Ryan murmured dreamily.

Wrong again, Jesse said softly, looking up at the dark grey sky overhead. I’ve got a moon on my ankle. It’s very pretty.

He rolled up the sleeve of his black T-shirt, the one with the flaming skull on the front of it and the old-world scripted letters that proclaimed loudly – Ride to Live! Live to Die!, and showed her his left deltoid where there was Maddy’s name in scripted loops and swirls. We only been together a couple of years, he said. I know how dumb it is to get a girl’s name on you, I mean my buddy Johnny has four on his arm and every time he gets a new one he just has the old one crossed off like it’s a grocery list or something. But I knew Maddy was the one, so I didn’t care.

He cleared his throat. I met her up at Sturgis. The bike rally they got every year? It’s a real good time. She come riding her own Harley and every guy there wanted her – I never would have had the guts to talk to her myself, but she came right up to me when I was at a keg and asked me whose butt she had to kick to get a drink around there.

Ryan laughed. She was like that, always saying something to get people to look at her or trying to shock the hell out of somebody. But she didn’t mean any of it.