How to Start a Fire (11 page)

Chatting with Kate on the phone, George said, “He just owns me in bed. You know what I mean?”

“No,” Kate flatly said. Kate wasn’t as experienced with men as Anna and George, but she’d had a boyfriend in high school and a few in college and not once had she felt owned by them.

George often felt that Kate and Anna were judging her, even during conversations about sex that the other two women thought were hypothetical. In college, George had had a boyfriend who could come only when he was being blown, and so she asked Kate and Anna how many blowjobs a week was normal.

“I have no idea,” said Kate. “When I was nine and I first learned that people did that, I promised myself I’d never give a blowjob ever.”

“How’d that work out for you?” George asked.

“My nine-year-old self would be very disappointed in my adult self,” said Kate.

Anna, the scientist, gave George a range of numbers. “Zero to three. Unless you’re talking about a sex worker. Then we’re talking double digits, at least. What’s your average?”

“I haven’t counted. Just curious,” said George.

Oh, she had counted. Ten in one week. Sex-worker terrain. But that was the last time she consulted with Kate or Anna about normal sexual behavior. Although she did break up with the ten-blowjob-a-week guy after she started to hear a clicking sound in her jaw.

George felt ashamed of her suffocating desire for Mitch. She told Anna during one drunken phone call that when she had sex with Mitch, she stopped thinking. Anna said, “Huh,” which George interpreted as criticism, although in fact Anna was thinking that that sounded nice. Anna couldn’t recall ever having sex without a nonstop sportscaster-like commentary running in her head.

There was no sex talk the night of the girls’ New York camping trip, even though it was often on George’s mind. Eventually George got lost in the sky and stopped thinking about Mitch’s penis. It was Anna who tired of nature first. She thought of another beer and the sleeping bag. Anna uncapped the bottle and retired for the evening.

In the morning, Kate gathered wood for the fire while George started the kindling. Anna woke to a blazing fire. She had promised herself that she would go camping alone someday so that she could have all the jobs to herself, but she never did. Truth was, nature didn’t do it for her anymore. She missed the convenience of the city, the neon lights, the bed and the sheets and the blackout window shades that let you believe it was night all day long.

Anna got the first cup of coffee even though she had had no part in the chore of making it. It was just how it had always been. She needed it most. George warmed her hands by the fire as she sipped the brew. Anna and Kate admired her expression of repose. She looked so at home. You’d never know that they were in Anna’s domain. George had found the spot yesterday and insisted they carry their supplies half a mile through untracked land.

A few hours into sunlight, the earth began to hold the heat. Anna led Kate and George on a short trail to a private swimming hole beneath a thirty-foot waterfall. George tilted her head back and let the sun beat down on her face. She bent down to feel the water.

“It’s warm enough,” George said, stripping down to nothing. “You guys coming in?”

“What happened to your pubic hair?” Kate asked.

“Some woman named Olga took it,” George said.

“You look like a ten-year-old girl,” Kate said.

“With a twelve-year-old’s tits,” Anna added.

“It’s called grooming,” George said, padding along the rocks, looking for a place to dive.

“You have no hair. Anywhere. Other than your head. And eyebrows,” Kate said.

“Might be the best case of alopecia I’ve ever seen,” Anna said.

“I don’t get it,” Kate said, baffled. “All of it is gone.”

“My body, Kate. I get to do with it what I want.” George dove into the frigid water, blotting out the conversation.

“Twenty bucks that it wasn’t her idea,” Kate said to Anna.

“That’s a sucker bet,” Anna said. She stripped down, revealing a triangle of semigroomed hair that Kate found reassuring.

Anna took in a deep breath, knowing that the cold water would knock it out of her. She followed George with a more tentative dive.

“How is it?” Kate asked from the shore.

“Just keep moving. You won’t notice a thing,” Anna said in short, gasping breaths.

“That’s your answer for everything,” Kate said.

George flicked on the light switch in the entryway, then glanced around, hunting for the remote—the control panel for the entire apartment. She found it, pressed a button, and the blinds were drawn, revealing a blue sky and an expansive view of skyscrapers with the Hudson River as a backdrop.

“Holy shit,” Anna said, stealing the remote from George.

Kate methodically scrutinized the conspicuous consumption, silently noting the glare of chrome and glass amid the tar-colored wood floors and the leather everything else. It was the most masculine home Kate had ever seen, other than in a movie about a rich banker/serial killer she had accidentally watched on cable. Kate gave the stereo console a white-glove test with the bottom edge of her white T-shirt. Came up clean. At least, she was pretty sure that the smudge on her shirt had been there before.

While Kate tried to acquire some evidence that her friend lived in this three-bedroom Manhattan apartment, Anna pretended she was in an interactive museum and went crazy with the remote control, brightening and dimming the track lighting, raising and lowering the blinds, igniting the fireplace, and, with the press of a button and a magician’s hand flourish, making the fire disappear. When she tired of the fireplace, Anna plopped down on the bed-size sectional sofa, turned on the fifty-seven-inch TV, and channel-surfed with the rhythm of a metronome, erasing all complicated thoughts from her mind.

“Can I live here?” Anna asked.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Kate asked.

While infomercials, cop dramas, telenovelas, game shows, and sitcoms blared in the background at varying decibels, Kate searched through the bathroom looking for George. That was where she found her, in moisturizers, fragrant salon shampoos, and a brush with her DNA all over it. She took a peek in the closet and saw the meager quarters for George’s clothes. She was about to take a closer look at a small row of cocktail dresses, a few still with price tags dangling, when she heard the television noise mute and a man’s voice in its place.

“Anna, finally we meet,” Mitch said, giving her a kiss on the right and then left cheek. “I’ve heard some stories about you.” He winked expertly.

“All lies,” Anna said.

“George said you’d deny everything. This must be Kate,” he said, turning around and offering a warm smile in her direction.

Kate held out her hand as she approached. Mitch understood the signal and shook it.

“Welcome to my home. Our home. Sorry, old habits. Did you have a nice trip?”

“It was wonderful,” George said. “Perfect time of year.”

“Good,” Mitch said, putting his arm around her waist. “Glad you got it out of your system.”

George explained, “Mitch hates camping.”

“Maybe you’ll grow to like it,” Kate said.

“Not gonna happen,” Mitch said with a nervous edge in his voice.

George looked at her shoes. A puzzled expression took up residence on Kate’s face, and Anna returned her energy to the remote. A silence that begged for breaking set in.

“Just tell them,” Mitch said to George, who responded with an impish grin.

“Mitch has some phobias,” George said, “that pretty much exempt him from any kind of outdoorsy activities.”

“I play basketball,” Mitch said, correcting her.

“Indoors. At the Y,” George noted.

“What kind of phobias?” Kate asked.

“Nature,” George said.

“Huh?” said Kate.

“Mitch has a pathological fear of most things one would find in the wild. Insects, squirrels, legless creatures,” George said.

“Snakes mostly,” Mitch said.

“And worms,” George added. “He can’t even look at those things on television.”

“I usually just watch sports,” Mitch said.

“To a lesser extent, he’s afraid of rodents, wolves, bears, hyenas, mountain lions, and giraffes, which I really don’t get.”

“The long neck,” Mitch said, as if it were obvious.

To the casual observer, it might have appeared that Anna had tuned out the conversation, but then she briefly lifted her eyes from the mesmerizing remote. “Where do you stand on trees?”

“I like trees,” Mitch said. “And I don’t mind birds. The nice ones. Not pigeons or vultures. But nobody likes pigeons or vultures.”

“I love vultures,” Anna said.

“It’s kind of funny how a forest ranger and a guy who hates nature end up together,” Kate said, not in a finding-it-funny way.

“Opposites attract,” Mitch said. That was his cue to them that the nature conversation was over. It was a friendly transition but one that made it obvious to everyone that the subject was not to be mentioned again. “So, can I get anyone a drink?”

Anna raised her hand as if she were in the third grade.

“What’ll it be?” Mitch asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Kate said. “She’ll drink anything.”

“Let me make you my specialty.”

While Mitch peacocked his mixology skills, Kate noted without having any feelings of attraction that she might never have seen a more attractive man in real life. His home, his hair, even what passed as his casualwear, seemed magazine-worthy. And his small talk was impressive. He managed to put a pleasant spin on Kate’s career inertia.

“So, Kate, George tells me you’re a student of the world.”

“I’m a barista,” Kate said.

“Oh my God!” Anna shouted, pressing a button on the remote.
“This thing makes rain.”

A shower of water cascaded over the terrace outside. Anna approached the window and put her hand on the glass, as if she were visiting rain in prison. She watched the window waterfalls with rapt attention.

“It waters plants,” Kate said, taking possession of the remote and pressing the Off switch. She turned on the stereo. The first phrase of
Kind of Blue
encased the room.
So predictable
, Kate thought, even though she liked it too. Charles Mingus would have surprised her. If Sun Ra’s
Space Is the Place
had suddenly blasted from the speaker system, she would have changed her mind about Mitch completely. But now her opinion was as immovable as the Sierras.

“What do you think?” Kate whispered to Anna.

“I try not to think,” Anna said, taking back the remote and turning on the rain again.

Boston, Massachusetts

“Who are you?” Anna’s father asked as she stood over his bed.

Anna used to think of her father as the boss of everyone. Now Donald Fury was just a shrunken old man in too-large pajamas. She wondered why her mother hadn’t bought him a new pair.

“It’s me, Anna. Your daughter.”

“I know,” Don said impatiently. “When did you get here?” His voice hadn’t lost as much weight as his body.

“I flew in yesterday,” Anna said. “Do you want me to fix the pillows?”

Don slept propped up. An invalid angle, as he called it, to ease his sleep apnea. The pillows had shifted during his slumber and left him bowed precariously on the side of the bed.

“No, I want to get up.”

“Should I get Alvita?” Anna asked.

Alvita Bailey was the full-time nurse Anna’s mother had hired the moment Donald took ill. Her father had fallen the week before, and Anna had been cautioned not to let him move on his own. A painter’s palette of a bruise had overtaken his forearm and splattered onto his cheek.

“I don’t need Alvita’s permission to sit on my own couch,” Donald Fury said with the air of authority that he once owned.

“Of course not,” Anna said.

As Don stirred in bed, Anna opted against annoying her father further by calling for help. She assisted him to the couch, surprised by his lightness, the hard edge of bones barely contained in his paper-thin skin. It would have been simpler to pick him up and carry him, but Don would always cling to dignity, no matter how much was taken from him. Once he was safely seated, she adjusted the pillows on the couch until her father slapped her hands away.

“Just sit down and talk to me,” he said.

Anna complied. He didn’t used to have time to talk to her. Now that he did, most of their conversations were built around a lie.

“How’s work?” Don asked.

“Can’t complain.”

“How are the patients treating you?”

“They have good days and bad days. Just like anyone else.”

“Have you made chief resident yet?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

“Somebody else was better.”

“Then you should work harder.”

“Okay.”

The industrial-size clock flipped to 6:00.

“Anna, dear, would you get me a bourbon and soda.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to drink today,” Anna said.

Alcohol interfered with his medication, so he was never supposed to drink, but Anna thought making the comment temporary would lessen the effect.

“Then you have one for me.”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ve never known you to turn down a drink.”

“I’m just tired after traveling,” Anna said.

“Suit yourself.”

Don then reached out and gently held Anna’s hand, something he never would have done before. When she was young, he would pat her on the head, especially when she amused him. Sometimes he’d give her a quick hug, but the release was so immediate, Anna never felt much comfort in it. Now Anna internally recoiled at the feel of her father’s skin. It had a reptilian dryness, which made the oddness of their physical contact even more pronounced. She patted his hand once, stood abruptly, and fetched him a glass of water.

“I’m not thirsty,” he said.

“Drink it anyway,” she said.

“How’s your husband? What’s his name again?”

“Dad, I’m not married.”

“I just went to your wedding.”

“No. Maybe you’re thinking of Colin’s wedding.”