They wake up to the neighborhood on fire. Their bedroom wall is a face of windows. The wife thought that all that glass would be cheery. This was back when cheery was an option, a word she could say without feeling ironic.
Later, it will come out that the fire started in Stone’s garage. Too many gasoline cans and so on.
Later, later, it will come out that the wife was in love with Stone, and that was the reason she ran in the direction of his house rather than out of town like everyone else.
But for now, the husband and wife are running around scooping up contact lenses, the go-to bag she prepared for events just like this, small cans of tuna. All the time, the smoke alarms screaming.
Just as they get to the front door, the wife stops. “I forgot something,” she says. Later, she will confess to the jury that the diary, this thing she forgot, the only thing that ironically survived the fire, was in fact filled with plans to explode her house with the gasoline Stone was holding.
“No time,” the husband says and scoops her over the threshold, outside and opposite to the marriage way.
Once outside, the wife wriggles free. She disappears into a narrow carve in the fire that closes up after her. The husband calls her name before himself going up in flame.
Later, later, later she will sit in her tiny jail cell. No one’s wife anymore and the wall a face of stone. Stone, stone, stone, she will say every morning when she wakes for the rest of her life. She will never even see the irony of this.
