The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

by Aimee Bender

  PRAISE FOR

  The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

  “Bender’s taut prose works its wise melodies throughout this first collection … Each short story packs a heavy punch, and each should be savored. From cleverly comic to starkly surreal, Bender’s audacious characters surprise and delight. Sometimes, they even make you weep.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Bender’s world is strange and fabulous, an ultravivid, matter-of-fact presentation of extraordinary circumstances and bizarre fulfillments … Declarative and telegraphic, Bender’s stories read like modern fables—with a healthy sense of twisted humor thrown in for good measure.”

  —Village Voice Literary Supplement

  “A wild imagination, full of bikini-bold sexiness and brute deformity, shaped into art by the sure hand of a fabulist.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer, Best Fiction of 1998

  “You don’t know weird until you’ve read this original, at times borderline-absurd short story collection.”

  —Mademoiselle

  “These stories plumb and expose deep tensions hidden in the mundane.”

  —Washington Post

  Aimee Bender

  The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

  Aimee Bender lives in Los Angeles. Her stories have appeared in Granta, GQ, Story, Harper’s, The Antioch Review, and several other publications. She is the author of An Invisible Sign of My Own.

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1999

  Copyright © 1998 by Aimee Bender

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1998.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The following stories appeared previously and are reprinted by permission of the author: “The Rememberer” in the Missouri Review (Fall 1997); “Call My Name” in the North American Review (Spring 1998); “What You Left in the Ditch” in The Antioch Review (Fall 1997); “Quiet Please” in GQ (May 1998); “Skinless” (under the title “Erasing”) in the Colorado Review (Spring 1996); “Fugue” in Absolute Disaster/Santa Monica Review (Spring 1997); “Fell This Girl” in Faultline (Fall 1997); “The Healer” in Story (Winter 1998); “Loser” in Granta (Winter 1998); “Legacy” in Cream City Review (Spring 1997); “Dreaming in Polish” in Threepenny Review (Spring 1995); “The Ring” in the Massachusetts Review (Fall 1997).

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

  Bender, Aimee.

  The girl in the flammable skirt: stories / by Aimee Bender.— 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3552.E538447G57 1998

  813′.54—dc21 97-44485

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80446-4

  Author photograph © Jerry Bauer

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v3.1

  FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  ONE

  The Rememberer

  Call My Name

  What You Left in the Ditch

  The Bowl

  Marzipan

  TWO

  Quiet Please

  Skinless

  Fugue

  Drunken Mimi

  Fell This Girl

  THREE

  The Healer

  Loser

  Legacy

  Dreaming in Polish

  The Ring

  The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PART ONE

  The Rememberer

  Call My Name

  What You Left in the Ditch

  The Bowl

  Marzipan

  THE REMEMBERER

  My lover is experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one. I don’t know how it happened, only that one day he was my lover and the next he was some kind of ape. It’s been a month and now he’s a sea turtle.

  I keep him on the counter, in a glass baking pan filled with salt water.

  “Ben,” I say to his small protruding head, “can you understand me?” and he stares with eyes like little droplets of tar and I drip tears into the pan, a sea of me.

  He is shedding a million years a day. I am no scientist, but this is roughly what I figured out. I went to the old biology teacher at the community college and asked him for an approximate time line of our evolution. He was irritated at first—he wanted money. I told him I’d be happy to pay and then he cheered up quite a bit. I can hardly read his time line—he should’ve typed it—and it turns out to be wrong. According to him, the whole process should take about a year, but from the way things are going, I think we have less than a month left.

  At first, people called on the phone and asked me where was Ben. Why wasn’t he at work? Why did he miss his lunch date with those clients? His out-of-print special-ordered book on civilization had arrived at the bookstore, would he please pick it up? I told them he was sick, a strange sickness, and to please stop calling. The stranger thing was, they did. They stopped calling. After a week, the phone was silent and Ben, the baboon, sat in a corner by the window, wrapped up in drapery, chattering to himself.

  Last day I saw him human, he was sad about the world.

  This was not unusual. He was always sad about the world. It was a large reason why I loved him. We’d sit together and be sad and think about being sad and sometimes discuss sadness.

  On his last human day, he said, “Annie, don’t you see? We’re all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there’s too much thought and not enough heart.”

  He looked at me pointedly, blue eyes unwavering. “Like us, Annie,” he said. “We think far too much.”

  I sat down. I remembered how the first time we had sex, I left the lights on, kept my eyes wide open, and concentrated really hard on letting go; then I noticed that his eyes were open too and in the middle of everything we sat down on the floor and had an hour-long conversation about poetry. It was all very peculiar. It was all very familiar.

  Another time he woke me up in the middle of the night, lifted me off the pale blue sheets, led me outside to the stars and whispered: Look, Annie, look—there is no space for anything but dreaming. I listened, sleepily, wandered back to bed and found myself wide awake, staring at the ceiling, unable to dream at all. Ben fell asleep right away, but I crept back outside. I tried to dream up to the stars, but I didn’t know how to do that. I tried to find a star no one in all of history had ever wished on before, and wondered what would happen if I did.

  On his last human day, he put his head in his hands and sighed and I stood up and kissed the entire back of his neck, covered that flesh, made wishes there because I knew no woman had ever been so thorough, had ever kissed his every inch of skin. I coated him. What did I wish for? I wished for good. That’s all. Just good. My wishes became generalized long ago, in childhood; I learned quick the consequence of wishing specific.

  I took him in my arms and made love to him, my sad man. “See, we’re not thinking,” I whispered into his ear while he kissed my neck, “we’re not thinking at all” and he pressed his head into my shoulder and held me tighter. Afterward, we went outside again; there was no moon and the night was dark. He said he hated talking and
just wanted to look into my eyes and tell me things that way. I let him and it made my skin lift, the things in his look. Then he told me he wanted to sleep outside for some reason and in the morning when I woke up in bed, I looked out to the patio and there was an ape sprawled on the cement, great furry arms covering his head to block out the glare of the sun.

  Even before I saw the eyes, I knew it was him. And once we were face to face, he gave me his same sad look and I hugged those enormous shoulders. I didn’t even really care, then, not at first, I didn’t panic and call 911. I sat with him outside and smoothed the fur on the back of his hand. When he reached for me, I said No, loudly, and he seemed to understand and pulled back. I have limits here.

  We sat on the lawn together and ripped up the grass. I didn’t miss human Ben right away; I wanted to meet the ape too, to take care of my lover like a son, a pet; I wanted to know him every possible way but I didn’t realize he wasn’t coming back.

  Now I come home from work and look for his regular-size shape walking and worrying and realize, over and over, that he’s gone. I pace the halls. I chew whole packs of gum in mere minutes. I review my memories and make sure they’re still intact because if he’s not here, then it is my job to remember. I think of the way he wrapped his arms around my back and held me so tight it made me nervous and the way his breath felt in my ear: right.

  When I go to the kitchen, I peer in the glass and see he’s some kind of salamander now. He’s small.

  “Ben,” I whisper, “do you remember me? Do you remember?”

  His eyes roll up in his head and I dribble honey into the water. He used to love honey. He licks at it and then swims to the other end of the pan.

  This is the limit of my limits: here it is. You don’t ever know for sure where it is and then you bump against it and bam, you’re there. Because I cannot bear to look down into the water and not be able to find him at all, to search the tiny clear waves with a microscope lens and to locate my lover, the one-celled wonder, bloated and bordered, brainless, benign, heading clear and small like an eye-floater into nothingness.

  I put him in the passenger seat of the car, and drive him to the beach. Walking down the sand, I nod at people on towels, laying their bodies out to the sun and wishing. At the water’s edge, I stoop down and place the whole pan on the tip of a baby wave. It floats well, a cooking boat, for someone to find washed up on shore and to make cookies in, a lucky catch for a poor soul with all the ingredients but no container.

  Ben the salamander swims out. I wave to the water with both arms, big enough for him to see if he looks back.

  I turn around and walk back to the car.

  Sometimes I think he’ll wash up on shore. A naked man with a startled look. Who has been to history and back. I keep my eyes on the newspaper. I make sure my phone number is listed. I walk around the block at night in case he doesn’t quite remember which house it is. I feed the birds outside and sometimes before I put my one self to bed, I place my hands around my skull to see if it’s growing, and wonder what, of any use, would fill it if it did.

  CALL MY NAME

  I’m spending the afternoon auditioning men.

  They don’t know it. This is a secret audition, come as you are.

  “No really,” I say to the beanpole man on the Muni with eyes so tired you can see death lounging in them already, “do you prefer cats or dogs?”

  He smiles at me in this tolerant way. I can’t tell you exactly what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when it happens. I want to be breathless and weak, crumpled by the entrance of another person inside my soul. I want to be violated by insight.

  “Cats, no question,” he says, pill-rolling with his fingers. He’s drugged out, but I don’t care. What I care about is dogs, and I am disappointed.

  I thank him, run a hand through my hair and go back to sitting at my surveillance spot, front row, facing backward, right behind the driver who winked at me when I came on.

  I wear dresses on the subway. I have a lot of money from my dead father who invented the adhesive wall hook. He invented it when he was in his twenties and the world scrambled, doe-eyed, to his doorstep—no one cares for nails anymore. He died when I was three so I never really knew him enough to miss him and there are millions of dollars for me and my mom, and she isn’t a spender. So it’s just me! It’s all me! I don’t much like expensive cars or gourmet dinners; what I love are fancy dresses. Today I am wearing maroon satin, a floor-length dress with a V back and matching sandals with crisscross straps up my ankles. My ears are lit by simple diamond earrings. I look like I should know how to waltz, and I do.

  The men are pleased when I come on the subway because I am the type who usually drives her own car. I am not your average subway girl, wearing black pants and reading a novel the whole time so you can’t even get eye contact. Me, I look at them and smile at them and they love it. I bet they talk about me at the dinner table—I give boring people something to discuss over corn.

  The beanpole man stands up to exit and nods to me. I wiggle my fingers, bye. His death eyes crinkle up in a wise way and I almost want to chase after him, have him look down on me with that look and tell me something brilliant about myself, unveil my whole me with one shining sentence, but there’s really no point. He couldn’t do it. His eyes crinkle up because he’s been in the sun too much—he doesn’t even know my name.

  I think I’m done, that I’ve checked out the whole car, when I see that behind the older woman in the dull beige suit who keeps trying to sleep, there is someone I didn’t notice before. The shy man. He is leaning against the window, wanting a cigarette and not looking at me. I go sit down right next to him.

  “If you smoke out the window,” I tell him in a low voice, “no one will notice.”

  “What?” He’s about ten years older than I am, and his eyes are bright, watery even.

  “I won’t tell if you smoke.”

  He gets it and blinks. “Thanks,” he says, but he doesn’t move.

  My dress is slithering all over the orange plastic seat, sounding like a holiday.

  “So, what’s your name?” I ask.

  He has his head looking out the window, watching the dark cement flash by. The back of his hair is matted down, like he’s just woken up from a nap.

  “Or where are you going?” I say louder.

  He turns to me, eyebrows up.

  I lean in a little. My hair falls forward and I can smell my shampoo which smells like almonds. “I’m just curious,” I say. “What stop?”

  “Powell,” he says. “Your hair smells like almonds.”

  I’m so pleased he noticed.

  “Do you prefer dogs or cats?” I ask him, even though I don’t really, at this exact second, need to know.

  “You ask a lot of questions,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “Well.”

  “What?” My dress isn’t holding to the seat, I could slide right down to the floor.

  “I prefer,” he says, “whichever turns around when you call its name.”

  He may be shy but he looks me in the eye the whole time.

  The train strains to a stop and he stands up to slide past me. But I’m up with him. The bottom of my dress is dusty from the floor of the subway and I’m thinking it looks sort of vintage that way. He presses on the handle and he’s out the door really fast, and I just barely have a moment to look at the car I’ve been surveying and watch the people watch me exit. A man with a briefcase smiles back but the women all ignore me.

  I float behind the shy man for a few blocks; he’s up the escalator and onto Market Street and doesn’t notice my burgundy shadow behind him until he ducks into a retail shoe store and then I’m hard to miss. The salesgirls are on me in one second, I have Purchase written all over me. So they think. This is a lame shoe store.

  “Hey,” says the man, “you following me?”

  “May-be.” I saunter over to a pair of shoes and pick them up even though they’re so ugly and poorly ma
de.

  “Those are one of our best sellers,” says salesgirl number one who has lipstick on her front tooth.

  “That is not a good selling point for me,” I tell her, “and you have lipstick on your tooth.”

  Her head ducks down and she rubs her forefinger on it. “Thanks,” she says in a quiet whisper, like it’s a secret, “I hate that.”

  The man has left the store—one second of conversation with a stupid salesgirl on my stupid part, and he’s gone. The store owner is behind the counter watching me glance around at the racks of shoes and he tilts his head, indicating the staircase behind him.

  “You his girlfriend?” he says.

  “Maybe,” I say again. Really: if the shy man didn’t care at all, if he hadn’t looked at me with a certain sly hunger then I wouldn’t be here. But he was half there with me, I saw him thinking about the heavy sound the satin would make piled on his floor, I saw him wondering. He may have wondered very quietly, but that still counts.

  I thank the store manager by placing one solid hand on his shoulder and squeezing it. Maybe someday I’ll come in here and buy fourteen pairs of shoes from him. Not like I’d wear them, but I could go give them to homeless people who must like a change every now and then. I’ll buy practical shoes, cushioned soles, no heels or anything. You probably walk a lot when you’re homeless so heels would not be a good choice.

  The staircase is fairly dark but you can still sense the glare of the daylight outside so it doesn’t feel scary, just cool and slightly musty. Luckily, there’s only one apartment at the top of the staircase. I try the door and it’s open. For me, it’s more nerve-wracking to knock than to just go on in. He’s sitting in his living room with a beer and no shirt, watching TV. He looks at me, sort of amused, not really surprised.