Down on the floor, the flames wobbled in their chimneys.

Wyn didn't breathe again for a long moment, and when he did it was a very long and shallow breath. Long enough that Ari had time to start convincing himself he'd misidentified a gust from the air conditioning.

"Hello, boys." Wyn straightened up and spoke in a voice that was his only in that it was constrained within his body. It came from high up, more in the head and the sinuses, and it arranged his tongue differently in his mouth. It turned vowel sounds in different shapes. Ari wasn't prepared to call it a different voice altogether, but it was a potent reminder of just how different one human can sound when trained to command their vocal range.

"Hi, Shirl," the father offered. He seemed smaller, and Ari had to wonder at his relation to the Shirl character. "It's, you know, good to hear from you. We've been worried."

"Sure, sure." The cold around Wyn throbbed when he spoke for Shirl, like his pores were pushing it out. "It's not easy talking without a mouth. Or hands if that's all you got, but- Yeah, it's not easy. Everything's like a dream you're trying to wake up out of and you're throwing everything you got into trying to move one little toe."

"Right." The son was not as patient or as small when facing Shirl, for reasons Ari'd never know. "You got a mouth for now. What's hanging you up, what're you stuck on Dad for?"

Wyn adjusted his gaze so that it fell on the father. "Take Jove's offer."

The father opened his mouth, shut it, and leaned back. He crossed his big arms over his chest and considered this. Ari's own arms were prickling and numb. The cold reverberations were becoming intolerable.

"You didn't," the father finally said.

Shirl used Wyn's shoulders to shrug. "I needed a house and now I don't. You don't need that house either. Know what you need? A couple hundred thousand dollars. Nobody else is gonna give you that with all the work the place needs."

"All Jove's gonna do is bulldoze it."

"And all you're gonna do is let it rot 'cause you don't have the money to fix it or the sense to dump it. Let them bulldoze it. When's the last time you ever came out that way besides visiting me? You won't even have to drive by the development and get sad about it."

The father sighed to himself. "What if I said I'd consider it?"

"Dad," the son broke in. "I'm not paying out all this money just so you'll consider something."

The father was staring straight up, like he had found something interesting stuck to the ceiling. "Yeah, well, I didn't ask you to do it."

"He'll pay you back out of the proceeds, Marty," Shirl said with a note of finality. "Take Jove's offer. Those are my terms. Once that's final I'll wake up or go all the way to sleep or whatever happens."

"Right," the father said, before he caught himself. "Yeah. Yes. We'll do it. I'll do it."

"That's a weight off my shoulders to hear. It's been real good to talk to you two again, even if it could have been under, you know, better circumstances. You know what this means, though, right?"

Two voices replied, "What?"

"See ya later."

The thunderstorm atmosphere lifted all at once and Ari reeled back from the chair. His hands felt creaky, like he'd been shoveling snow in the wind. While Wyn was collecting himself and getting up from the chair, Ari started groping for the curtains over the balcony doors.

"I'll, um-" He cleared his throat. "I'll leave you to finalize things. Finish up. I'll leave. And I'll come back."

The door handles resisted him just long enough to make him feel embarrassed before they released him into the screaming brightness of afternoon sunlight reflected off Lake Champlain. Hot air rose up from the street to embrace him.

His hands were pale and the tips of his fingers were an angry red. He clapped them together vigorously, which Blake told him worked for getting warm blood in cold hands. He couldn't be sure if it worked, but it did draw some curious glances from people crossing the street below. They responded to his unprompted ovation with cautious waves.

'Hi, crazy man applauding the jaywalkers,' they seemed to say.

Jackson Place had nice balconies, a fact which could serve as a decent distraction for his body while his mind pinwheeled around. He warmed his hands on the black railings baked in the sun and tried to catch a smell of the flowers in the garden on the ground floor. Mostly he smelled burning garlic and frying potatoes carried on the wind from eateries on Church Street. He listened for music or conversation or vacuuming in the adjacent apartments. No luck. The walls at Jackson Place were thick. 

When his hands were warm enough to feel alive again he let himself flop into one of two little patio chairs and stare into the bright red flowers in the window box slung over the railing that faced the street. He sat there long enough that he started to nod, and in that instant realized he couldn’t risk staying put.

Ari sprang up and whisked the doors back open. The lights were on. The candles were politely extinguished. Wyn was stowing his much nicer cellphone, into which he'd plugged one of those chunky card-reading baubles Ari had started seeing at the farmer's market that month, in the pocket of his Cesare pants. The father and son were gone.

"Housecleaning, huh?" Ari tracked Wyn with his eyes and an outstretched finger as he stepped back into the living room and made for one of two doors on the wall perpendicular to the balcony.

"Usually houses, only occasionally people," Wyn said. He waved Ari off and opened the door to a bedroom that was normal enough from what little Ari saw of it. "There's food if you want it. I need to rest."

"I don't have time to just hang out while you nap."

"Yes, you do, and that's exactly what you'll do." Wyn was already prying his shoes off while seated on the edge of his bed. As if to illustrate his certainty in this, he flopped backward onto the bed and rolled himself into a chunky caterpillar of comforters and sheets. 

"Awfully trusting of you, considering I'm just a stranger who lives out of a hostel."

"You're a good guy."

Wyn was completely asleep before Ari could compose a retort to that.

See you on Tuesday for the regular twice-weekly schedule, and again on Thursday for the same! Thank you so much for following my launch week!