He emerges from a side window as though shot from a cannon: exploding free and trailing smoke.
To anyone passing by, he may appear to be following a daily routine as he bounds around to the front of the house and moves down Hayvenhurst Avenue; yet he is dazed, burning, a dim torch that flares and sputters against the flat glare of a summer afternoon.
A call has gone out. Sirens begin to sound in the distance. There are few pedestrians on the sidewalk, but several cars stalled in the crawling traffic begin to take notice:
A man is stumbling alone down the street, disoriented, arms raised, heading west.
There is smoke rising from his hair and body.
He looks familiar.
People cry out when he joins them at a corner, smoldering, waiting to cross. As he moves on between halting cars they call after him, using his first name, as if he were a neighbor or relative.
Hey, wha—? Richard!
But he keeps moving.
Finally, a police cruiser rolls up next to him, keeping pace. When the officers’ shouts get no response, the one in the passenger’s seat vaults from the moving car into the street and begins jogging alongside him, calmly pleading with the burning man to stop.
“If I stop, I’ll die,” he answers, making odd sense of a moment that refuses any other kind.