_ 2 AM or Thereabout
When I wake up, the sheets are clinging to my thighs like tourniquets, the pillow is melted into the back of my neck. Lights flicker on the wall, orange and gray. Sammi, my cat, paces up and down the bed, nervous and mewing. I’m a little peeved by this. You’d think she’d know by now that we’re in no real danger. Feet slap down the hall, people yell “Get out! Get out!”. I rub my eyes, they’re dry from the smoke. Yawn. Sigh and swing my feet over the side of the bed and into my waiting loafers. Your picture stares back at me from the nightstand. I lay it on its face. Without even consulting the clock, I know it’s 2 AM, or somewhere thereabout.
Our first night was like this. Which is, of course, why you do it. We were so deep into one another, neither noticed the aurora borealis that bled in through the windows, or the bone melting heat plumping the already saturated summer night air. Only after the stranger kicked in the front door of our apartment and ran into the living room shouting “FIRE! FIRE!” did it occur to us that the unusual pomp and circumstance had nothing to do with our glowing, sweaty bodies. Seriously, there is nothing more conceited than love.
There’s another knock on my door now, this one hard enough to shake the frame. A fireman yells for me to gather my “valuables” and “evacuate.” Yells some threat about thirty seconds and knocking down the door. I tell him I just have to catch my cat, to hold his horses. His noise has Sammi cowering under the couch and it’ll definitely take longer than thirty seconds to coax her out. Why do they always have to dramatize everything? It’s not even this building on fire. You never set my actual building on fire.
But you do always start the fires around 2 AM, because that’s what time it was that first night. That night we just missed burning alive. We shuffled outside, dazed, wearing only our underwear and t-shirts, mine one of yours, barely long enough to cover my ass. The dank summer breeze seemed cool compared to the heat coming from the blaze, even though it was so dewy it barely lifted the hair on our heads. We did not speak, just stood, holding hands, watching the house we had just been naked in burn to the ground. We smeared ash from its timbers into our skins, rubbed the smoke into our eyes. Maybe that’s how you caught the burning sickness, by rubbing the madness of that evening into your soft tissues where it spread like Ebola. We joked later that the sex had caused the fire, that ours was a bond forged by flame.
Outside this apartment complex, it is primitive, like Carnivale, or a cannibal cookout, the roar of the fire a backbeat to the adrenaline pumping through everybody’s veins. Sammi cries, rustles in her carrier, frightened by the charry smell. My eyes and throat sting and water. I lick my lips raw. Everyone’s senses are heightened, reptilian, only their stupid human wills keep them planted in front of the inferno, where they huddle, twitching, ready to run, but instead only stare. The fires are often beautiful, transforming ordinary nights into spectacles, the ruby and tangerine and azure and topaz lights painting the trees, the streets, turning the fingernails and teeth of the people in the crowds into sparkling opals.
They always ask the same questions—why, was there anyone inside, who did it? Who did it? You did, of course, and you’ll keep doing it, for as long as I run. You of the five a.m. phone calls, the ignored restraining orders, the dark glares from across smoky bars that bring abrupt ends to first dates with guys who will never love me like you do. You always find me, despite the unlisted phone numbers, the P.O. boxes, the near constant changes in jobs. Instead of love letters, or a simple bouquet of flowers, you give me fire.
I don’t think I’ll ever tell.
When I wake up, the sheets are clinging to my thighs like tourniquets, the pillow is melted into the back of my neck. Lights flicker on the wall, orange and gray. Sammi, my cat, paces up and down the bed, nervous and mewing. I’m a little peeved by this. You’d think she’d know by now that we’re in no real danger. Feet slap down the hall, people yell “Get out! Get out!”. I rub my eyes, they’re dry from the smoke. Yawn. Sigh and swing my feet over the side of the bed and into my waiting loafers. Your picture stares back at me from the nightstand. I lay it on its face. Without even consulting the clock, I know it’s 2 AM, or somewhere thereabout.
Our first night was like this. Which is, of course, why you do it. We were so deep into one another, neither noticed the aurora borealis that bled in through the windows, or the bone melting heat plumping the already saturated summer night air. Only after the stranger kicked in the front door of our apartment and ran into the living room shouting “FIRE! FIRE!” did it occur to us that the unusual pomp and circumstance had nothing to do with our glowing, sweaty bodies. Seriously, there is nothing more conceited than love.
There’s another knock on my door now, this one hard enough to shake the frame. A fireman yells for me to gather my “valuables” and “evacuate.” Yells some threat about thirty seconds and knocking down the door. I tell him I just have to catch my cat, to hold his horses. His noise has Sammi cowering under the couch and it’ll definitely take longer than thirty seconds to coax her out. Why do they always have to dramatize everything? It’s not even this building on fire. You never set my actual building on fire.
But you do always start the fires around 2 AM, because that’s what time it was that first night. That night we just missed burning alive. We shuffled outside, dazed, wearing only our underwear and t-shirts, mine one of yours, barely long enough to cover my ass. The dank summer breeze seemed cool compared to the heat coming from the blaze, even though it was so dewy it barely lifted the hair on our heads. We did not speak, just stood, holding hands, watching the house we had just been naked in burn to the ground. We smeared ash from its timbers into our skins, rubbed the smoke into our eyes. Maybe that’s how you caught the burning sickness, by rubbing the madness of that evening into your soft tissues where it spread like Ebola. We joked later that the sex had caused the fire, that ours was a bond forged by flame.
Outside this apartment complex, it is primitive, like Carnivale, or a cannibal cookout, the roar of the fire a backbeat to the adrenaline pumping through everybody’s veins. Sammi cries, rustles in her carrier, frightened by the charry smell. My eyes and throat sting and water. I lick my lips raw. Everyone’s senses are heightened, reptilian, only their stupid human wills keep them planted in front of the inferno, where they huddle, twitching, ready to run, but instead only stare. The fires are often beautiful, transforming ordinary nights into spectacles, the ruby and tangerine and azure and topaz lights painting the trees, the streets, turning the fingernails and teeth of the people in the crowds into sparkling opals.
They always ask the same questions—why, was there anyone inside, who did it? Who did it? You did, of course, and you’ll keep doing it, for as long as I run. You of the five a.m. phone calls, the ignored restraining orders, the dark glares from across smoky bars that bring abrupt ends to first dates with guys who will never love me like you do. You always find me, despite the unlisted phone numbers, the P.O. boxes, the near constant changes in jobs. Instead of love letters, or a simple bouquet of flowers, you give me fire.
I don’t think I’ll ever tell.
