Amelia Gray

SAVIOR

ONCE THEY MOVED IN TOGETHER, she saw how he really was.

He kept choking on things, for starters. He claimed no allergy or impediment, but regularly over dinner would hold his hands to his throat, looking at her with wide and watering eyes. The first time he did it she panicked and, thinking back to a first aid class she had taken in high school, ran to his side of the table and hooked her arms under his ribcage, supporting one fist with the other as she jerked him backwards and up. After a few tries, half a meatball catapulted onto the table, bouncing off his plate and coming to rest in his salad bowl.

“You saved my life,” he gasped, wiping his eyes with his napkin.

“Of course,” she said. She went back to her food, rattled but grateful that she had been there, that it hadn’t happened while he was alone.

The next day, she returned from work to find him face down in a shallow pan of water. He must not have been in there for long, for he sputtered when she pulled him out by the hair. The water soaked her lap as he curled around her.

They had friends over for dinner and he told everyone how she saved his life every day. It was a lovely moment but after everyone went home, she found him jamming a fork into the outlet next to the garbage disposal. It gave her a real shock when she batted his hand away, and after that she lay awake for hours, unable to forget the feeling of her heart turning over pathetically in her chest.

Still, she told herself, their union was a good one. He was fun at parties, quick to tell the story of all the times he tried to self-immolate. His version always ended with her fetching the extinguisher, how she held him while he was still smoldering. He never mentioned how she burned.

AMELIA GRAY is the author of five books, most recently Isadora (FSG). Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, and Ploughshares. She lives in Los Angeles.