the porch, in a wicker chair. Later, again, in his bedroom, atop his narrow bed under the whir of an electric fan, sweaty and indiscreet, the cry of climax like a death groan. By the time Thorpe fell asleep, it was almost midnight. We were twisted in a curiously restful contortion, Thorpe cradling me while his head rested against my belly. I remember feeling his hair in my hands, his beautiful hair, crisp with salt, and the last thing I saw was his milky skin, the bumps of his spine splitting his broad back, his scarred cheek relaxed in slumber.
I can’t say why I woke an hour later. I should have slept like the dead, so sapped as I was, but they do say the brain is subject to certain stimuli that the common senses can’t perceive. Whatever the reason. I startled awake, as I said, and experienced a moment of utter panic. I thought it was the wrong room, the wrong man, that the past two years had been a dream from which I had just emerged, and if it hadn’t been for the moonlight on Thorpe’s rufous hair, blazing with an unnatural saturation of color, he might have found himself as dead as Mr. Randolph. As it was, I slumped back against the pillow and glanced out the window, and that was when I noticed the peculiar orange tinge to the horizon, which had turned Thorpe’s hair such a vivid shade of ginger. I thought it couldn’t be dawn already. Then I realized I was facing south, not east, and I pushed Thorpe’s shoulder.
“Fire,” I gasped.
Thorpe bolted awake, just as I had, and stared at me in the same confusion I had felt, then the same recognition. I pointed to the window. He swore and leapt from the bed.
“Put on some clothes,” he said, running out the door at a terrible limp. “I’ll ring up Government House.”
By the time we reached Nassau, tearing across the harbor in Wenner-Gren’s motorboat, the fire had engulfed part of Bay Street and was crawling up George Street. The air flew with cinder, swirled with smoke. I tasted it on my tongue, inside my nose. I jumped from the boat and helped Thorpe secure it to a piling. He snatched up his cane and hurried with me from the docks across Bay Street, where he grabbed my hand.
“Go home!” he shouted.
I shook my head. “The Red Cross!”
He opened his mouth as if to yell back some objection, then thought better of it and kissed me instead, brief and hard. “If the fire gets close, get the hell out,” he said in my ear. “I’m going to find the fire brigade.”
He released me, and I pulled my shirt—Thorpe’s shirt—over my mouth and nose and plunged through these terrible gray-orange billows, up George Street in the direction of the Red Cross building, where all our hard work lay in stacks and piles at the back of the building, all our supplies, our inventory, our parcels waiting to be sent overseas. I saw the duke’s station wagon outside, parked at a rakish angle, the back door swung open. Out in the street, four men were running a fire hose. They were sopping wet and covered with soot. One of them raised his head, and in shock I recognized the Duke of Windsor himself. I ran up the front steps and through the doorway, smack into Mrs. Gudewill, white-faced, carrying a bundle of wool blankets.
“Mrs. Randolph! Quick, we’re loading the car! She’s in back.”
By she, Mrs. Gudewill meant Wallis, of course. I raced down the hall to the back room, our warehouse, and there she was, giving out crisp orders to Miss Drewes and a couple of other ladies, stacking things in boxes, stacking boxes on each other. You might not have recognized her. She wore no cosmetics, no coiffure. Her thin lips were invisible against her skin. Her hair was in a net. Her dressing gown was belted around her waist. Only her familiar brown-and-white spectator shoes gave her away.
She gave my rumpled appearance not the slightest notice. She spoke with primeval calm. “Mrs. Randolph, thank goodness. Could you be a dear and carry these to the car? How far has it spread?”
“Halfway up George Street.” I snatched one of the larger boxes and carried it back down the hall, out the door, down the steps to the station wagon outside. The crowd was growing, looking in dismay at the advance of the fire, which had