Burn Read Free Page A

electrical remmersing prod.
    The first time Lona visited him, she wanted to see him miserable. She wanted to hate him. But then Rowena led her to his room, rapping brusquely on the door and shoving Lona inside. He was still in his crank-up bed then – he hadn’t yet learned how to walk – stroking a plush pony.
    â€œYou have a visitor, Warren,” Rowena had said, pushing Lona down into one of the chairs next to the bed. “First one. I’ll stop back in twenty minutes to see how you’re doing.”
    The Architect looked at her and his blue eyes were wide and benign. “Hi-hi!” he said. “Hi!”
    She wanted to hate him. But when she opened her mouth, what came out was, “Hi, Warren. My name is Lona. It’s nice to meet you.”
    â€œStory?” he asked hopefully when the cake was gone.
    â€œThere’s a movie outside. I think it’s
Bambi
. Do you want to watch it? The beginning is scary but you’d like when the baby deer and the skunk become friends.”
    He shrunk back against the armchair. “No. No out. Story.”
    â€œFine. A story. Not Dilbert, though. I can’t read that again.”
    He held out the duck story hopefully.
    â€œNo,
not
Dilbert. Something else.” She picked through the selection on the shelf. “How about this one?” She pulled out an unfamiliar hardback that had a pig and a porcupine on the cover. One of the nurses must have brought it from the library. She settled on the arm of Warren’s chair, making sure to hold the book so he could see the illustrations.
    â€œ
One day, Oink decided to conduct a science experiment
,” she began. “
He asked his friend Spike to help set up his laboratory
.”
    â€œNehhh,” he interrupted. “Nehhh!”
    â€œRight, Warren. It’s an exciting story.”
    â€œNehhh!”
    She’d thought, once, that the exclamation was his daughter’s name – that he was trying to say “Neve”, the nickname Genevieve preferred. Doctors told her this wasn’t possible – his brain scans on memory tests were flat. He didn’t remember Neve. “Nehhh” was just an exclamation.
    The book was funny, a
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
-like tale that involved Oink and Spike surfing waves of expanding soap bubbles as they tried to stop their Magical Multiplying Solution. When Lona reached the end, she turned back to the beginning, without prompt, to read it again. Warren always liked to hear stories twice in a row, sometimes three or four times. When she finished the second time, she made a big show of closing the cover and putting it back on the shelf so he would know he wasn’t going to get a third reading.
    â€œOkay, Warren. It’s time for me to go now.”
    He shook his head furiously and squirmed; he’d tucked something behind his back. She looked down to the floor. Her bag was missing. “Warren. We’ve been over this before. I’m still going to leave, even if you hide my things. It just makes me waste time looking for them, which makes me late, which makes me not want to come back.” Warren tucked his head in shame, slowly pulling the bag from behind him.
    â€œThank you. I’ll come back soon. Maybe next week.”
    â€œSoon.”
    â€œSoon.”
    He didn’t have any concept of time. Lona could leave to get a soda from the vending machine down the hall, and when she returned he was just as happy to see her as if she’d been away for months. He didn’t have any concept of anything. Warren had gotten what he always wanted for the children of the Julian Path. A clean slate.
    Clean slate didn’t mean purified slate, though. His had been wiped down, but it was impossible to remove the grime that had already burrowed below the surface. He was still responsible for his daughter’s death. He just didn’t have to spend every day remembering it.
    Rowena appeared at the door,