The heat that morning suffocated them while they lay in Taylor's bed. It had descended on the morning before the dew had had a chance to settle and brought with it the promise of stillness and malaise. The heat settled on the rooftops and in the windows and the doorframes and pressed down upon them with an unnatural exhaustion.

It was mid June and the weather had turned rapidly from the pleasant warmth of the late spring and early summer to a blistering heat that only sapped life and desire from the body. In the outside world a soft murmur of the birds could only be heard; they too seemed sapped of any will to survive the oncoming torrent of heat. Newport and the campus on Brown seemed to stand still, hopeful that this languidness would be presently shook off and the splendid, sensual summer would soon return.

"Can you sleep?" Taylor spoke softly; a whisper seemed appropriate for this hot morning—it was almost like she feared to disturb the heat of the day anymore by speaking loudly. "I can't."

"No—not really." Ryan rose from the bed and pushed the light covers from his body. "It's supposed to get to a hundred today."

"If it's not already." They both knew what it was like to life through hot summer days—but neither had experienced such a dull summer heat before. Already they were sweaty and beads of their moisture crept silently along their naked flesh.

"I feel like taking a shower but I don't want to get out of bed." She fell back onto the mattress and pulled Ryan down next to her. "Thank you again for last night." She kissed him lightly but pulled back; his lips were dry and dead and there was no sweetness to be found from his lips.

"You're welcome for last night." He had taken her to one of the nicest restaurants in the city and then afterwards, he had made long and passionate love to her and when it had been over, her body had been left limp and exhausted.

"I need to get some water." Walking to the kitchen naked, Taylor felt the warm air around her pressed into her ever pore. There was a dreadful silence hanging over the room and as she turned on the water of the faucet, Taylor watched a lone fly buzz through the kitchen. It settled on a lone apple and the young woman watched as it settled and the fruit and then stop, as if it too were too exhausted to move anymore.

The glass of water was full and Taylor, as she turned off the faucet, tried to decide if she wanted to expend the energy to walk over to the apple and chase away the fly. Sanding there, watching the fly sit on the apple, Taylor could not but helped be mesmerized by the insect and the absolute stillness of the scene.

Standing there, she was suddenly completely aware of her existence in the world and that she was presently standing in her kitchen, naked, watching a fly. Her life—all their lives—were so consumed by day to day worries and concerns; some were petty, some seemed important but were in truth petty. Not Taylor, or Anna or Ryan and Cordelia, Taylor was sure, ever really slowed down enough to come face to face with their own existence, their connection to this time and place. She clearly now saw through her life and preoccupations and memories and now stood face to face to the barren emptiness of time and space and the world around her.

The acute self-awareness that she felt was nauseating to her; she had come face to face with the realization that she was a living and breathing organism, that she existed in a world that she hardly knew and that one day would cease to exist for her.

"Taylor!" Ryan called for her from the bedroom. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." She had been snapped back into her world of preoccupations where the stark reality of her existence and her binds to time and space no longer existed. Walking back to the bedroom, she forced a smile for Ryan and handed him the water. "I zoned out for a minute."

"Well today is a good day for that—I feel so tired already." Taylor sat down at the edge of her bed; her body ached for him but it was too hot for them to lie in each other's arms.

"That might have something to do with the performance you put on last night."

"It was good wasn't it?" Taylor grinned and blushed slightly; the two lovers settled into a comfortable silence as they passed the glass of water back and forth. They had been dating since that late April day and Taylor couldn't be happier. Ryan was visiting her in Rhode Island for the week because he had nothing to do in Berkeley expect work and she was starting summer school in early July.

"What do you want to do today?"

"I just figured we could stay in bed all day." It was truly too hot for sex but the idea of idling the day away was not without its attractions. "You could read me some of that French poetry of yours."

"In English or in French?"

"In French." Taylor giggled; Ryan would get so worked up when she read him the erotic poetry in its native tongue. There were one or two memories of such occasions that made her weak in the knees still because of the heat the poetry had generated in Ryan. He had taken her in ways she had not been taken before and Taylor could not help but blush a little at the memory of it all; her orgasms had been so intense that she was sure that a small part of herself had died, had floated away into the firmament, because of them.

"I suppose we could do that—maybe when it cools down some?"

"Open up a bottle of wine."

"Cold white wine." Her taste buds were alive at the idea of it; yes, she realized, one must fight off this languidness with decadent pleasure. Cold, crisp wine, Ryan's hard, beautiful body, her own screaming, dying, pleasure. Those were the ways to triumph over this sickening heat, that sickening stillness. Taylor did not want to feel that dreadful connection to the empty stillness around her. She wanted, like so many others, to escape into a world of preoccupation and idle, petty, pleasures.

"To cool us off after hot, sweaty sex." Ryan leaned forward and took Taylor by the waist; pulling her on top of him, he began kissing her neck and ran his hands along her firm, hard body. As he kissed her, Taylor ignored the heat that was burying her alive and sought only the screaming, deafening pleasure that his hands and mouth and lips and tongue were giving to her. On top of him, she could feel his arousal and desire and felt her body surrender to his.

Taylor whimpered in pleasure as he wordlessly entered her and as she softly murmured into his ear the words "I love you," that magical, humid paradise that they had been creating was shattered by the ring of Taylor's cell phone.

"Ignore it." Taylor didn't have to be told twice. She allowed herself to fall back into her pleasure as Ryan worked his magic on her; already she felt her orgasm coming upon her but again the phone rang, shattering her pleasured cries. This time it was Ryan who seemed to have fallen out of the realm of pleasure. "Who is it?"

"Summer." Taylor had missed the second call as well; rolling off of Ryan she opened the phone and noticed that Summer had left a voice message. "I hope that everything is okay." Summer was still in Seattle with her father who was still not well. Taylor began listening to the message and then let out a stifled cry. Summer's father was dead.