The Fires: A Novel - Softcover

Steinke, Rene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0688175848 ISBN 13: 9780688175849

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2000

Synopsis

Smoke has as many different scents as skin. Part of the pleasure is not knowing what it will be -- sulfurous or closer to incense or airier and sweeter as I imagine the smell of clouds.

Ella is a connoisseur of fire, a woman enthralled by it as other women are by love. She savors the seductive promise of a spark, the caress of a curling wisp of smoke, the all-consuming hunger of a spreading blaze. Ella's heart seethes with a rage that can be spoken only with tongues of flame.

In her remarkable first novel, Rene Steinke has created a narrator so lyrical and lucid in her madness as to raise the book to the level of romance. Trapped in a sleepy Indiana town, torn by inner demons that drive her to pyromania and promiscuity, Ella is at once entirely original and unforgettably real.

As she struggles to come to terms with her family's tormented past and her own uncertain future, she draws the mesmerized reader ever deeper into her scorched soul, revealing a sensuality that will spiral into final, fiery destruction -- unless it can be quenched by love.

About this title

About the Author

René Steinke is the author of The Fires. She is the editor in chief of The Literary Review and teaches creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Ella is a connoisseur of fire, a woman enthralled by it as other women are by love. She savors the seductive promise of a spark, the caress of a curling wisp of smoke, the all-consuming hunger of a spreading blaze. Ella's heart seethes with a rage that can be spoken only with tongues of flame.

In her remarkable first novel, Rene Steinke has created a narrator so lyrical and lucid in her madness as to raise the book to the level of romance. Trapped in a sleepy Indiana town, torn by inner demons that drive her to pyromania and promiscuity, Ella is at once entirely original and unforgettably real.

As she struggles to come to terms with her family's tormented past and her own uncertain future, she draws the mesmerized reader ever deeper into her scorched soul, revealing a sensuality that will spiral into final, fiery destruction -- unless it can be quenched by love.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Fires

By Rene Steinke

Quill

Copyright © 2000 Rene Steinke
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780688175849

Chapter One

Smoke has as many different scents as skin. Part of the pleasureis not knowing what it will be?sulfurous or closer to incense orairier and sweet as I imagine the smell of clouds. Nothing relievesme so much as burning something old, watching it flicker and disappearinto air. Dresses dance as they go, lifted as if by some music.A photograph flaps like a wing or a hand waving. Perfumes hiss,then shatter, papers curl, plaster jewels curdle. Once I tried to burnan old toy?a mechanical duck. When I'd found it at the bottom ofa drawer, it reminded me of the groggy sunrise Easter service andthe hunt for eggs in the graveyard. After I set the match to its tail,it started walking pitifully on its metal legs, and it knocked aroundthe room singeing the walls and linoleum until it burned down toits metal frame and folded with a crackle and small battery explosion.It is less dangerous to burn things than to save them.

* * *

I'd poured myself six thimble shots of bourbon and walked theedges of the bedroom touching the walls and windowsills, hopingto work the starry twitches from my legs so they'd lie still. IfI let go, I'd fall off the night that was galloping fast. Every time Igot into bed, I heard an intruder finagling the catch on thewindow or slowly climbing the basement stairs. My heart raced. Myeyelids fluttered. I jolted up, walked to the kitchen, ears stingingat the silence, and poured another shot.

    The train had gone by three times, rattling into the air. Porterwas the kind of Indiana town where the whistle sounded cheerful,not plaintive, but then the wheels chewed ravenously on thetracks.

    I listened for the man until he turned phantom again?thetrees, the wind. Ridiculous to be twenty-two, a year past adulthood,and still afraid of stray noises. I went into the kitchen and sat downat the table, turned on the clock radio, and fiddled with the ridgedknob until I heard the song about lightning and the crashing seaof love, just at the point when the guitar strummed in waves. Mybare feet pressed on the cool, grainy floor; my nightgown bunchedup around my knees.

    I traced a panicky finger over the constellation of glitter in theFormica?two nights of not sleeping, with nothing to do for long,bare hours except worry over the crucial thing it seemed I neededto remember and couldn't: that blankness revolved in my headlike a siren.

    Twirling the salt shaker in my fingertips, I groggily felt that ifI acted asleep, sleep might come. Sprinkling a little salt in mypalm, I dabbed a few grains into the corners of my eyes before Iclosed them and put my head down on the table. But when I triedto breathe slowly and think of nothing, I began to crave potatopancakes and apples.

    Over the stove hung the cast-iron skillet my father had used tomake them, crisp and salty in a way my mother and I had nevermastered. After he died, the drinking started?secretly at first,from sticky bottles next to the flour in the pantry cabinet, and forthe same reason I often couldn't sleep now: an old sensation thatI was falling, or about to fall, from some roof or ledge or stairs.Bourbon gave me the courage to loosen my grip. It wasn't that Iwouldn't fall anymore, but the fall would be pleasant, and itwouldn't matter so much when I did.

    I was about to drift off when I heard a scratch, a mouse orsomething, in the pantry. I got up to open the door and turn onthe light. The colored boxes and gleaming cans glared back at me.I knew I was hanging on too tightly, but this time couldn't makemyself let go.

    The landlord had asked me to leave my apartment on BirchStreet, and I was staying at my mother's until I could move intoone of the rooms at the Linden Hotel, where I worked. There theinsomniacs made anxious trips to the ice machine after midnight,and by morning they were already showered and dressed as ifthere were some purpose to their being awake so early. When theycame down to the lobby to check out, their faces swollen and pale,a lostness about them, I'd keep my voice quiet and slow as I gavethem directions or simply thanked them and said good-bye. Iknew they'd sleepwalk through the day, just as I often did, wincingat light and hoping not to stumble, all along hearing that murmur:If you couldn't sleep last night, you might not get to sleep later, orever.

    I went back to the metal chair and sat staring out the windowat the grass, my stomach hollow from all the bourbon. I got upand opened the refrigerator, peered into the cold light. In thelingering smell of leftover cherry pie lay a quart of milk, a hunkof molded bread, a dozen eggs. I grabbed the egg carton and shutthe door.

    I was going to scramble them, but immediately lost my appetiteand just lay them on the table in front of me. I thought of all thepeople I knew sleeping then, their heads nestled in dreams likethose eggs in their cups. I visited each bed, examined the sleepingface, the mouth pressed closed or slightly open, the deep slowbreaths or snores, the sprawl or curl of limbs. I wanted to knowhow they let go so easily, how they managed to spiral so bravelyinto sleep, unafraid of all they had forgotten.

    The dark sky was bluing. Taking the first egg from its bed, Ipalmed it in my hand, shook it just slightly, and felt the weightof the yolk wiggling in its sack. In the gentle press of my fingers,the shell felt brittle and fragile. I tossed it at the window, and itsmacked against the blue-black surface, a toy sun. I threw anotherone at the glass. It cracked and splashed yellow, then drippedsleepily.

* * *

It happened later that same August. I was cold at the funeral,and I kept touching the book of matches in my skirt pocket,the plain black cover and the twenty red heads, lined up and full-cheekedlike a choir. Flicking my thumbnail at the thin cardboard,I looked up over the casket at the empty cross of pale wood.

    When my grandmother had called that Monday night, sobbingso I barely understood her murmur over the phone that mygrandfather had died in his sleep, I pretended she was telling thetruth. But when my mother and I got there, what really happenedwas clear from the empty glass vial, the tipped-over china cup onthe nightstand, the pinch of white powder blurring the delicateflowers on the saucer's rim. His small head was turned to theblack window, his mouth blue and slack, his eyes serene but plastic,the folds in his cheeks frowning. He had been formal andguarded in a way that made him inscrutable, but now his facelacked wariness, his eyes and mouth vulnerable in a way I hadn'tseen before.

    His left arm was flung across the pillow, a scrap of envelopecrumpled in his fist. I was afraid to touch his skin, but coaxed thepaper out from the tension in his fingers and saw that he'dscrawled a few lines in pencil, then tried to erase them. Kneelingdown to hold the paper in the lamplight, I stared through thatfog of smudged marks, but could only make out three wordswhere the pencil had indented the paper: "NOT YOUR" and nearthe ripped corner, "LOVE."

    I looked up on the nightstand and watched the round clock'shands tick past frilled numbers. I counted. Behind me, I heardsomething small fall on the bureau and my mother softly weeping.I wanted to console her, to weep myself, but instead counted theseconds, my heart that clock, impatient and achingly brass. WhenI turned around to my mother and grandmother, I felt the tickingdryness in my eyes, a metallic bitterness in my throat.

    I quickly turned back to him. Even not blinking from my stare,the tears wouldn't come. I was a clock trapped behind a flat, ovalface, ticking and ticking?what was wrong with me?

    My mother, my grandmother Marietta, and I rode in the hearseat the front of the procession, a dozen cars with twittering yellowflags that said FUNERAL. My limbs were shaky, as if my leg mightkick the seat, my arm fling out at the driver's head, but I heldstill, afraid of what might happen if I moved. "It was a goodservice, wasn't it?" my mother said, her voice phlegmy. I'd learnedto read her by the angle of her face, her gestures, and the changingshape of her eyes, rather than by what she said. When I watchedher this way, she held me at a distance, but she still held me.

    She kept smoothing the dress in her lap as if this motionsoothed her, her thin mouth strained into a smile. She was worriedI might see how much his death terrified her.

    My grandmother's shoulders curled in around her body. Asusual, she looked more vivid than my mother, wearing her bestdress, nude stockings, and precise red lips so that no one couldsay she'd let herself go?but there was something mournful inthe way she'd made herself up so brightly.

    We passed the old community theater, an elaborate, stonebuilding with a lion at the greened copper crest near the roof,which, as a girl, I'd used to ask questions: How many puppies willthe neighbor's dog have? When will my mother be happy? What didyou see on the street last night? "Are you okay, Ella?" Mariettaasked me. A handkerchief edged with embroidered roses wasgathered in the manicured, freckled hand she placed on my knee.

    "Sure," I said, rubbing my eyes, knowing how afraid she andmy mother were that I'd start to cry. My forced-back tears madea sparkly, prismed shield.

    My mother's hands were clenched. The fingernails bitten downto the quick and the torn red cuticles resembled my grandfather'shands, which were huge, out of proportion, even, to his six-footframe. But my mother's hands were small?rough white knucklesand fragile fingers with swollen joints?the hands of a womanwho worried too much. I knew she just wanted to get this overwith, to go back to our routines. That was how she managed,structuring each day like a house she couldn't leave.

    "It's warm in here," I said, folding my palms together in mylap. There was a marbled amulet of skin around my left wrist, andthough I'd grown used to hiding it, I didn't now. Its ugliness evenpleased me. I stared at the rivulets of pink and white, the strangecurvy lunge the scar took toward my thumb.

    The driver stopped short at a red light, and the coffin rattled inits straps. It was easier to fathom his death now that they'd closedthe coffin and put away the portrait of him in middle age that hadbeen propped on the lid. It had been the undertaker's idea to dothat, "an old Midwestern tradition," he'd said, but it hadn't beencomforting to see his young face battle with the dead one. I'd noticedmy mother looked only at the coffin, but had kept her eyeson the collar of his shirt, the pointed tips and the knot of the tie.

    We drove past the Paradise Lounge, its neon palm tree signflashing pink and green. It was a place where I could dodge myreflection in the bottles against the bar's mirror, or disappear inthe shadowy tables pushed up against the wall, but people whoknew me wouldn't have believed I ever went there.

    "I didn't see Mrs. Schone, did you?" My mother didn't reallycare whether or not this friend of my grandmother's had come?shewas only afraid of what else one of us might say.

    "In the back," I said.

    She nodded, her face gray as cement. I wanted to take her hand,but she'd clenched them tightly in her lap on the opposite sideand leaned away from me, against the door.

    We drove through the graveyard entrance past a white set ofpraying hands, taller than a man. I thought about pulling the flaskof schnapps from my pocket and drinking from it?a small motion,really, just the lift of the fingers, a firm twist?but even amotion this small seemed impossible.

    We wound along the narrow gravel road, past stone angels andsmall, bent trees, and a little farther on we stopped in front of thefenced family plot. We got out of the hearse, and slowly walkedto the grave site.

    Car doors slammed. A man said, "You never know, do you?In his sleep? Was it a stroke?"

    "Something like that."

    My blouse pinched under the arms, and from the strain ofholding tears back, my nose was running. There was a rustle ofdress clothes behind me as people whispered about how kind mygrandfather had been, how he'd lived a full life, how much he'dloved his roses, how they'd seen him, healthy, only the day beforehe died. I knew then that his death didn't belong to him, that ourlie had covered his final escape. We didn't even discuss it, we'dlearned so well to keep the surface of life unwrinkled and clean,like a well-made bed.

    "Dear friends, we are gathered here to remember a man whofought the good fight." Pastor Beck was standing in front of us,next to the perfect rectangular grave, his white robe blowing dramaticallyin the breeze. I stood behind Marietta and my motherand looked down at their narrow ankles, their heels sunk into thesoil. Pastor Beck bent to gather some dirt, and when he stood upagain, dropped it from his fingers over the grave. "Ashes to ashes,dust to dust." They'd told themselves he hadn't meant to vanish,but someday we would have to admit he meant to leave us. Mymother's shoulders began to shake, her fingers grasping at air.

    I couldn't listen to most of the homily, but stood separate fromit all, as if I were looking on through a screen door?just a thinwire mesh, but I didn't have anything sharp enough to breakthrough it.

    Marietta leaned forward, her eyes watery. My mother gloweredat one of the poles holding up the tarp above us, as Pastor Beckwent on, "For all of us, but especially for Marietta, for Catherine,Hanna, Ella." Cars shushed from the highway. No one had seenHanna, my mother's older sister, for several years, and her namehad been set apart from all the others for so long it had a holysound that hurt my chest.

    As the men lowered the coffin on ropes into the ground andone by one we tossed carnations into the grave, I thought, Shedoesn't even know this is happening. I wiped the sweat from myforehead and stared at a tin vase of silk flowers that had tippedover in the grass.

    Afterward we went to the graveyard pavilion for coffee and apotluck supper. The smell of tomato sauce and cream of mushroomsoup was so thick in the air, something swiveled in mystomach. My best friend Jo was in the corner talking to her fiancé,but no matter how much I wanted to go over to her and sayThank God you're here. I can't stand it. Let's go, the space betweenus seemed too loud and crowded to cross. I leaned toward mymother, whispered in her ear that I didn't feel well, and took astep back. She turned to me, stumbling over her shoe. I knew howbadly she wanted to keep her composure for these people, but hergrief made her clumsy.

    Marietta was distracted, accepting compliments from a groupof elderly women on her new black dress. "I didn't have one,"she said in a high, prim voice. "I like colors." She doesn't wantanyone to blame her, I thought.

    I slipped out the screen door, hoping not to see anyone. It wasdusk by then, and the graveyard looked magnetic and still as Iwandered the spindled paths, fingering the torn envelope in mypocket, not exactly telling myself where I was going, but I knew.My mother would worry when she noticed I'd left the pavilion,and though it pained me to think of her searching the room,asking people if they'd seen me, I was used to her worry, andthere usually wasn't any way to avoid it.

    I turned onto the highway and walked on the gravel shoulder.Seven years before, at my father's funeral, I'd also watched myselfwalk among people and my mouth form words, all the whilefloating above like a torn-up cloud. They hadn't been able to findan organist to replace him, and the service had been silent. Somany tepid voices and gingerly handshakes?as if death madepeople move in slow motion, disturbingly out of tempo in a waythat would have annoyed him.

    I walked past the popcorn warehouse and a field of munchingcows. By this time the sun had blurred behind the trees, and myhead was spinning. I'd gone as far as the paint-tester site and inmy pocket felt the flask, the envelope, and the fold of the matchbook.

    It was a field of shingles, propped up on legs, as if paint samplesgrew and could be harvested. The company must have figured ifa housepaint lasted two winters in Indiana, then it would be durableenough to last two years anywhere in the country. In thedusk, the gray and green boards looked muted, the whites andyellows more intense.

    Drinking from the flask, I walked down a row of white shingles,each a slight variation with a different name: Granite, Shell, Bone.I stopped in front of one near the end. Where the paint had wornaway, the plank showed strands of dull gray wood. Not durableenough. I stood there and looked out at the dozens of shingles onwooden legs like chairbacks in an empty theater, whites, yellows,greens, browns. I straightened up, took a deep breath, and in asteady, clear voice, said, "He poisoned himself."

    Pulling the flask from my pocket, I unscrewed the cap and tooka mouthful of schnapps. A sharp sensation cut along my teeth. Ididn't particularly like it, but that was part of its appeal, alongwith the numbness I first felt along the bridge of my nose.

    I was getting pleasantly drunk and didn't look at my hand pullthe matchbook from my pocket, feel along the cover to pluck oneout, hold the two sides together as I pulled the head against thesandpaper strip until it snapped and flared. At the funeral I'd feltall those eyes expecting me to come apart, the truth about whathappened pulled from my skin like straw out of a stuffed animal.But I'd kept our secret crinkled next to the flask in my skirtpocket.

    With the heat pulsing in my fingertips, I carefully set the matchon the flat rotten edge of the gray-white shingle and stood closeenough to protect the little paw burning at my waist. It was thinat first. I was afraid it would go out. I cupped my hands aroundit, and my palms lit up, pale and wrinkled, as the flame swelledtoward them. When I pulled away, it leaped along the top of theboard.

    The yellow flames muscled and flinched. The wood blackened.I wished I could have asked him what it felt like to drink arsenic,if it was tasteless or somehow sweet, if it numbed you slowly likealcohol, finger by finger, or if it suddenly stopped your heart likea bullet. I felt a press behind my eyes then, not because I couldn'task but because?despite the habitual affection between us?ifhe'd lived, I wouldn't have had the courage. I could count on onehand the things he and I could talk about.

    When the first Buddhist set himself on fire in Cambodia, mygrandfather, rustling his newspaper, had said, "It's a sad thing,isn't it, how they believe burning themselves alive is a good religion."I tossed the envelope with his scrawled marks into theflame, watched it crumple and wither in the blue center. I didn'tthink we'd ever know what he'd meant to write, and the thoughtof how much we'd misunderstood him, how little he'd let us see,put a soreness in my throat I couldn't swallow.

    The fire hurried higher in the air. He'd usually kept his handsfisted, whether leaning back in a chair or walking into the nextroom, and he'd often stood at the kitchen sink, ferociously scrubbingthem ten or twenty times a day, sometimes until they bled.One hand viciously grabbed the other, slid away, and the other,released, did the same, the water coming out so hard from thefaucet that it splattered up in the sink and we all had to raise ourvoices to cover up the clamor.

    The yellow light circled around me in the gathering darkness.The flames jabbed at the air and chewed through the board, felloff the legs and rolled in the dirt. I stepped back, crossed my armson my chest, and rubbed the lumps of my shoulder bones, myface prickling in the heat.

    It was usually the only relief, this hot, upside-down waterfalland its salty light. It ebbed first beneath my eyelids and then undermy tongue, soaked through my muscles and veins and gently woreat them until I lost strength in my legs and could barely stand.

    Under my blouse, I touched the silky part of my stomach, thenmoved my hand under my damp breast to the braided scar, a coreof old pain to hang on to. The wind quickened and shrieked. Thefire bent over and flicked sparks into the dry weeds.

* * *

When I walked back to town, I went to Jo's apartment, thinkingI would tell her, but when I got there, and we weresitting among her girlhood pink-and-gold bedroom set, the canopybed shifting above us, I couldn't. She had been exercising,and a calm, pious female voice on the tape recorder kept givinginstructions and counting. Jo tried to comfort me, but I couldn'thear her. It kept pricking at my skull: He killed himself. He killedhimself.

    I left Jo's and went back to the hotel and changed. The dresswas red and fit so tightly you could see the tilt of my hipbones inthe sheen of the silk. Glass beads cuffed the sleeves and ringed thehem in black circles, and a rhinestone hung on the catch to thezipper in back. I'd found it that summer at a yard sale, crumpledunder a set of chipped dishes.

    At eleven that night I went to the Paradise Lounge to get drunkso that maybe I could sleep. It was so late I hadn't planned onmeeting anyone, but this Billy sat down on the stool next to me.He was from Appleton, Wisconsin, and said he worked for aninsurance company, though with his wide purple mouth andhoney-colored skin, he looked awkward and too young in a suit.When he ordered his drink, he turned to me and asked if I knewany good places to eat. He stared at my breasts and then at myeyes. He took out a little notebook and wrote down what I said,pushing out his puffy bottom lip and squinting at his pen. Somehow,the diner on Willow Street led to our talking about basketball.He told me about his high-school team and then about hissister, who was fat and a good card player?but pensively, as ifhe were eighty years old and these things were already lost to him.In his hunched shoulders, I recognized a choked sadness thatreminded me of my grandfather.

    To change the subject I said I wanted to go to Paris and askedif he knew any French. "La Porte?that's a French name, isn'tit?" He pushed his glass to the edge of the bar. Even as it shunnedstrangers, Indiana hoarded exotic names?La Porte, Valparaiso,Vincennes?as if it could contain all the world and obliterate theneed to travel.

    "Doorway to the Midwest," said the bartender, pouring.

    "No. You? Polly whatever?" He turned back with a new drinkand a little bounce. His lips were shiny with booze, and I couldtell he was nervous. It made it easier.

    "A little," I said, laughing. I glanced down at his fingerswrapped around the glass and saw his thumb cock back.

    "Say something." Gulping his drink, he leaned toward me. Hehad nice hazel eyes.

    "Est-ce que la douche est chaude?" I said.

    He stirred the ice in his glass with his finger. "Say somethingelse."

    "I could say anything, and you wouldn't know the difference."

    "I know." He nodded. "Say anything. It sounds nice."

    "Voulez-vous aller à la plage?" I said. "Comment allez-vous?"I could only remember the questions from the phrase book. Tearinghis napkin contemplatively into little squares, he said, with thefalse sincerity of a drunk, "I have a feeling you'll go there sometime."He leaned in close to me and spoke softly, "A pretty girllike you probably has a boyfriend, right?" Sometimes I thought itwas funny how little they knew about what they thought they saw.They noticed long brown hair and a heart-shaped face, or wide-seteyes and breasts and hips. Even as they were appraising me, theycouldn't see the horsehead scar or the one like a prickly boat, orthe red cup with teeth hidden inside that dress.

    "Not at the moment," I said, smiling. I had only these ones Imet at the Paradise, but my mother never asked about boyfriends,partly, I thought, because she considered dating frivolous, andpartly because she didn't want me to get my hopes up for nothing.

    A few stools down, a lit match hung in the dimness betweensome man's fingertips?this radiant, trembling tear. The fragmentof what I suddenly wanted: to walk over and take it from him,set it to the bar's old wood, and watch it go.

    Billy glanced over his shoulder. "What's wrong?"

    Cupping his hand, the man lowered the tip of his cigarette,sucked, and then, as if it were filthy, swabbed the match at theair. "Nothing."

    I rubbed the taut seam at my hip. I had a system. When I'dcounted seven bourbons he'd drunk and heard him slur the wordhappier, and when, after an effort to touch my arm he stumbledfrom the barstool, I asked him if he wanted to go somewhere.

    We went to his room in the Dunes Hills motel off the highway,and he rushed in before me as if there was something he didn'twant me to see. The air didn't smell anonymous as it did at theLinden Hotel, but particular, like someone's old hat. There was atelevision with tin foil wadded around the ends of the antenna, athick beige curtain for a bathroom door.

    After I heard him flush, I sat on the lumpy bed, watching thelight spill out of the lamp. I felt all over its grimy base, but couldn'tfind the switch, my hand stiffened from nervousness.

    He slid back the curtain and stood smiling lopsidedly. He'dunknotted his tie and unbuttoned the top of his shirt so you couldsee the T-shirt beneath it. "I like that dress," he said, and I feltmy breath catch.

    It was the dream of the dresses that lured them. I'd strip in thedark and wait to see if they'd notice the scars?the marbled ruddyskin next to my navel or the pink chains swirled over my shoulders?ifthey'd pull back, murmuring penitently about a girlfriendor a wife, or if they'd draw in closer, curious.

    He sat down next to me, rubbed his finger over a gather offabric at my elbow. He circled my wrist with his fingers. "You'reso small. How old are you?"

    "Twenty-two." I shrugged, wondering if he'd seen them. "Notcorn-fed. Were you?"

    "Me? I hate corn." He put his hand on my shoulder and easedme back, the mattress yielding like warm mud. Stretching out hisbody next to me, he leaned up on his elbow, pulling one eyeaslant. He was tall, his shoulders wide.

    He put his hands on my face, murmured "All right," and kissedme. My mouth and eyes were hot. "I don't usually do this," hesaid, pulling back. "But you're so sweet." He ran his hand overthe curve of my waist, the sink of my belly. One stocking slippedlow on my thigh.

    I glanced at the shoehorn scooping up air on the nightstand,the black toiletries bag half unzipped, a lonely black comb in theopening. His hand wriggled under my bra strap to my breast, andI felt his breath, noxious with bourbon, on my cheek. His otherhand pushed at the stocking at the top of my leg, and our teethclacked together as he groped at the nape of my neck, grabbedthe rhinestone, and slowly dragged down the zipper. In my kneesand fingertips a current sputtered, almost an itch. He couldn'thave known how I was turning to porcelain, perfect and hard,just as his finger poked roughly inside of me.

    When I opened my eyes and pulled away, black stubble creptacross his upper lip. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open."What's wrong?"

    I reached back for my zipper. "Nothing." Staring into the panelingon the wall, I guiltily tried to decide how I'd come to thisspot again on the very night of my grandfather's funeral, and thefilm of dust I saw made me ashamed. "Stupid," I murmured.When Billy sat up straight and moved closer, his elbow bumpedthe lampshade, and the light spit over us. He ran his finger upand down my spine.

    I stood up, pulled my dress down from where it had gatheredhigh on my thighs. Walking backward slowly, I said, "I've got togo." I unlatched the screen door, leaned my shoulder into it.When it screeched shut and I looked back, he was standing behindit, a grimy shadow. Already I'd forgotten his face. "You don'treally want to leave," he pleaded.

    I walked onto the shoulder of the highway, the dark sky jeeringdown. I'd fooled him but hadn't been able to fool myself?sometimesI could slip out of my body as if it had never belonged tome in the first place and fly through the top of my head, lose thescars to air.

    As soon as I got inside my room at the Linden, I took off thedress and, in my stockings and bra, lit up the hot plate, the electricburner singing. The orange heat spiraled around and fitfullypulsed. I held up the shoulders of the dress so it mimicked theshape of a woman, let the hem dangle above the coiled light.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Firesby Rene Steinke Copyright © 2000 by Rene Steinke. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688175848
• ISBN 13: 9780688175849
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256