The Darkest Evening of the Year

kill him, the attempt will be made between the motion and the act, at the ascending moment of her fulfillment.
    Now, after sex, he does not seek sleep. Most of the time, Moongirl sleeps by day and thrives in the night; and Harrow has reset himself to live by her clock.
    For one so ripe, she lies stick-stiff in the darkness, like a hungry presence poised on a branch, disguised as bark, waiting for an unwary passerby.
    In time she says, “Let’s burn.”
    “Burn what?”
    “Whatever needs burning.”
    “All right.”
    “Not her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    “I’m not thinking.”
    “She’s for later.”
    “All right,” he says.
    “I mean a place.”
    “Where?”
    “We’ll know it.”
    “How?”
    “When we see it.”
    She sits up, and her fingers go to the lamp switch with the unerring elegance of a blind woman following a line of Braille to the end punctuation.
    When he sees her in the soft light, he wants her again, but she is never his for the taking. His satisfaction always depends on her need, and at the moment the only thing she needs is to burn.
    Throughout his life, Harrow has been a loner and a user, even when others have counted him as friend or family. Outsider to the world, he has acted strictly in his self-interest—until Moongirl.
    What he has with her is neither friendship nor family, but something more primal. If just two individuals can constitute a pack, then he and Moongirl are wolves, though more terrible than wolves, because wolves kill only to eat.
    He pulls on his clothes without taking his eyes from her, for she makes getting dressed an act no less erotic than a striptease. Even coarse fabrics seem to slide like silk along her limbs, and the fastening of every button is a promise of a future unveiling.
    Their coats hang on wall pegs: ski jacket for him, black leather lined with fleece for her.
    Outside, her blond hair looks platinum under the moon, and her eyes—bottle-green in the lamplight—seem to be a luminous gray in the colorless night.
    “You drive,” she says, leading him toward the detached garage.
    “All right.”
    As they pass through the man door, he switches on the light.
    She says, “We’ll need gasoline.”
    From under the workbench, Harrow retrieves a red two-gallon utility can in which he keeps gasoline for the lawn mower. Judging by the heft of the can and the hollow sloshing of the contents, it holds less than half a gallon.
    The fuel tanks of both the Lexus SUV and the two-seater Mercedes sports car have recently been filled. Harrow inserts a siphon hose into the Lexus.
    Moongirl stands over him, watching as he sucks on the rubber tube. She keeps her hands in the pockets of her jacket.
    Harrow wonders: If he misjudges the amount of priming needed, if he draws gasoline into his mouth, will she produce a butane lighter and ignite the flammable mist that wheezes from him, setting fire to his lips and tongue?
    He tastes the first acrid fumes and does not misjudge, but introduces the hose into the open can on the floor just as the gasoline gushes.
    When he looks up at her, she meets his eyes. She says nothing, and neither does he.
    He is safe from her and she from him as long as they need each other for the hunt. She has her quarry, the object of her hatred, and Harrow has his, not merely whatever they might burn tonight, but other and specific targets. Together they can more easily achieve their goals, with more pleasure than they would have if they acted separately and alone.
    He places the full utility can in the sports car, in the luggage space behind the two bucket seats.
    The single-lane blacktop road, with here and there a lay-by, rises and falls and curves for a mile before it brings them to the gate, which swings open when Moongirl presses the button on the same remote with which moments ago she raised the garage door.
    In another half-mile, they come to the two-lane county road.
    “Left,” she says, and he turns left, which is north.
    The night is half over but full of promise.
    To the east, hills rise. To the west, they descend.
    In lunar light, the wild dry grass is as platinum as Moongirl’s hair, as if the hills are pillows on which uncountable thousands of women rest their blond heads.
    They are in sparsely populated territory. At the moment, not a single building stands in view.
    “How much nicer the world would be,” she says, “if everyone in it were dead.”

 
    Chapter
6
    A my Redwing owned a modest bungalow, but