The Heat of the Sun

out of touch. On the run, you know.’
    ‘Damn you, Trouble! What have you done?’
    He had gone to the window and stood there, looking out, smoke curling above his head in an airy blue river. ‘I never meant what happened to happen,’ he said, his voice thick.
‘You can’t believe I meant it, can you?’
    I perched uncomfortably on the grey metal chair.
    ‘I suppose Yamadori put you up to it,’ I said. ‘Or Isamu. Everything was all a front. Senator Pinkerton’s right-hand man! All just a distraction from what Trouble was
really doing. But why run now?’
    ‘Remember the sniper? Things were getting tough in Los Alamos.’ He stood against the sunlight from the window. Darkness gathered in his eyes, and it came to me that he was a ghost
already: flickering, vanishing.
    ‘Kate said I’d let you down. She was right. I could have saved you.’
    ‘You, save me? You can’t even save yourself.’
    I pushed back the chair. ‘All I’ve ever wanted is to bring you back from the brink.’
    He laughed. ‘Is that what you honestly believe?’
    ‘You’re American, whether you like it or not: your father’s son. And for the sake of some fantasy you abandon everything that matters and everyone who loves you. How can you
betray your country, your father, your friends? This is wartime – life and death! Did you succeed? Come on, tell me all about it. Did you sell our secrets to the enemy?’
    ‘Sell?’ He shrugged. ‘I gave them for free.’
    ‘Traitor!’ What happened next happened so fast I barely believed it was real. How, when, had I raised my arm? How, when, had my ashplant battered down? One moment I stood close to
Trouble, close enough to have kissed him; another, and my ashplant cracked against his head.
    He lay on the floor, face down.
    Time stopped. A sob escaped my throat.
    As he fell, he had struck the side of the sink. Blood pooled in his hair, while the captain rattled at the door (‘Sir, sir!’) and would have burst in, had I not shouted savagely that
it was all right, everything was all right. I lowered myself to the floor. There was no way to sit that was easy for me, so I stretched beside Trouble as if he were my lover.
    I touched his hair. I felt the blood and winced. Carefully, I turned his face towards mine.
    His eyelids flickered. ‘They’ll be waiting for me, you know.’
    ‘Waiting?’ I said.
    ‘I was almost there. The message had come and I was on my way. But you don’t think they’d leave without me, do you? Isamu would kill them if they left without me.’
    I thought I understood. ‘A plane? A boat?’
    ‘I’ve stayed too long here. I miss Nagasaki.’
    ‘And they’re over the border, these friends of yours?’
    He smiled dreamily. ‘Now you’re just trying to get information out of me.’ From the window, thick rectangles of light fell over us, honeyed and warm, patterned like the bars.
‘Got your number, don’t I? Kiss and tell.’
    ‘Me, tell?’ I kissed him, and his lips returned the pressure of mine. The moment seemed at once unreal and more real than any other I had experienced before. I felt myself sinking
into a warm darkness, and all I wanted to do was sink and sink, never rising again.
    What did I care if he was a traitor?
    ‘But am I really a traitor?’ he said, as if he had read my thoughts. ‘What does that mean, anyway? I’ve been two things all my life. Be this, be that – always these
voices in my head, pushing me this way, pulling me that. Believe me, if I could make everything all right, I would. But I never will, will I? I never will.’
    ‘I love you,’ I said.
    ‘And I love you. Don’t think I don’t.’
    ‘But there was always something else. Or someone. Isamu. Do you think you can stand?’ I added after a moment. ‘Senator’s orders – I have a van outside and two
guards, ready to take you.’
    ‘They’re going to kill me, I suppose. Oh, I don’t mean right away. This is America. There’ll be a trial, and witnesses, even a few caring liberal types – maybe you,
Sharpless – who’ll do all they can. But it’ll be no good. I’m a dead man. You know what they say about golden lads.’
    ‘Oh, Trouble!’ There were tears in my eyes: ‘ Golden lads and girls all must ...’
    He finished it for me: ‘... As chimney-sweepers, come to dust .’
    We helped each other stand. I crossed to the door, thumped on it, and we heard the captain clatter with his keys. Trouble leaned towards the mirror over the sink. He