How to Start a Fire

by Lisa Lutz

  “You got a raincoat or something?” George asked.

  She borrowed a tan trench coat that her arms flooded out of by three inches. She could barely belt it enough to cover the dress.

  Anna didn’t bother with looking nice, only respectful. She was still adjusting to the crutches. She put her arm around George and leaned on her as she hopped down the stairs one step at a time.

  Thirty minutes later, George had parked the car and helped Anna traverse a pebbly walkway with a steep incline to the door of the funeral parlor. A somber man in a black suit that he wore like a uniform handed her a pamphlet. She folded it over the hand rest on the crutch and went inside.

  Anna could feel eyes boring into her as she entered the chapel. An open coffin sat ten yards away. She was already spent from the journey from the car. Mourners lined up to pay their respects or gawk. Women clutched tissues in their hands; men patted each other on the shoulder. In her peripheral vision, Anna caught a glimpse of her mother staring at her, but she refused to return her gaze. Her brother was standing by the casket, his face ruddy and wet with tears. His wife, at his side, glared at Anna.

  “Take a breath,” George said, putting her hand on Anna’s shoulder.

  “I’m okay,” Anna said, swallowing hard. The sedatives helped.

  Anna tramped down the alley between the warrens of folding chairs. People parted like a backward wake. A woman Anna didn’t recognize was leaning over the coffin and whispering her goodbye to Malcolm. She cleared off when Anna arrived. The woman seemed to know exactly who Anna was. It was possible Anna was misreading her expression, but it didn’t seem sympathetic at all.

  Anna had been to funerals before. Mourners often commented on the handiwork of the mortician: He looks so alive. They did a good job. You’d never know he fell off a building. Maybe people had even said it here. They had hidden all evidence of the fact that Malcolm had died in a violent car crash. But Malcolm didn’t look anything like Malcolm. Malcolm looked dead. Anna realized that she had come unprepared for that simple fact. She thought she had understood in the hospital when Colin told her. But it wasn’t until she was there, looking at him, that she realized she would never have him to herself again.

  People were still staring. She turned around in a three-part motion and plodded on her crutches, head down, a few steps toward the door; George followed after her. Max Blackman, Malcolm’s stepfather, blocked Anna’s path.

  “You weren’t going to say hello?” he asked.

  Anna had met Max Blackman on a few occasions. All weddings. She’d even danced with him once. Max knew how Malcolm had felt about her, even if Malcolm himself hadn’t.

  “I thought I should leave,” she whispered, taking a deep breath to calm herself. She had discovered just a day ago that the combination of crying and walking on crutches was impossible. “I’m sorry.”

  “We’re all sorry, Anna.”

  “He wouldn’t have been out if it weren’t for me.”

  “So logic follows that he should never have gone anywhere,” Blackman said, a lawyer to the core.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t say it like that,” Max admonished her.

  “I can’t help it.”

  Max looked over Anna’s shoulder and saw Lena wending a determined path toward them.

  “Your mother’s at twelve o’clock, closing in. What do you want me to do?”

  “Stall her while I make a run for it.”

  Anna kissed Mr. Blackman on the cheek and lurched her way out of the funeral home. George ran ahead, started the car, and pulled it up right at the bottom of the walkway. Colin chased after his sister and helped her into the car.

  Before he shut the door, Anna said, “I’m sorry.”

  Colin didn’t say It’s not your fault or Don’t blame yourself.

  He said, “I know.”

  1996

  Santa Cruz, California

  “I blame the whiskey,” Anna said.

  Kate had been dry heaving since midnight. Now the amber shades of dawn were creeping through the window. There was nothing left to expel from her digestive tract, but her body remained committed. In between bouts of convulsions, Kate curled up in a fetal position on the bathroom floor, where she was attended by a committee of hangover experts.

  “I blame the punch,” said Arthur, who’d made the punch. “You should never mix your drinks.”

  “I blame you,” George said, pointing at Anna.

  “How is it my fault?”

  “You practically poured the drinks down her throat.”

  “There was no pouring.”

  “You told her it was a rite of passage.”

  “Well, it is,” Anna said. “You turn twenty-one and you get drunk. Everybody knows that.”

  “This drunk?”

  “Everybody’s different. If you think about it, she didn’t even drink that much.”

  “Compared to you, nobody drinks that much,” George said.

  “Shhhh,” Kate said from the floor. “Shhh.”

  They obliged.

  A few hours later, when Kate could swallow clear fluids and quiet her pounding head if everyone remained completely still, she returned to bed. She had her own room now, in a rented single-family home on High Street. There were better, cheaper apartments in Santa Cruz, but when Anna realized she could live on a street called High Street, there was no turning back. The deal was done in Anna’s mind before the three women had even looked at the place. No one really cared. It was such a massive step up from sharing a dorm room that the first few months were sheer bliss. Just walking up the stairs or down the stairs, going into the basement or crawling into the attic, felt like minor adventures. Anna had called dibs on the attic bedroom before anyone had started calling dibs.

  It surprised all of them that their friendship had survived sophomore year, when they had tripled up in a dorm room by choice. Three women, none of whom had ever shared a bedroom before college, in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot space. While neither Kate nor George had siblings, it was Kate who found the constant proximity the most unnerving. George avoided solitude and never quite got the hang of the comfortable silences Kate liked since her head was always in a book. Anna saw dorm rooms as places to sleep and throw parties that spilled into the hall. Otherwise, the tiny room made her feel like a caged animal; she was constantly leaving for someplace else. George always asked where she was going, and Anna, prone to the vague excuses she’d honed in her childhood, remained enigmatic.

  “You know. Out,” Anna would say, mostly because she never decided where she was going until she was out the door. On school nights, if she wasn’t at the library, she’d go to a movie, but she always kept the title of the film a secret, as if her viewing habits exposed something dark and twisted in her soul. More often than not, Anna watched big-budget American action films or mediocre comedies. George couldn’t understand why anyone would go to a movie alone, and Anna had never quite grasped why movies were communal activities. She liked silence even before the film started, and when it was over, she wasn’t much interested in what anyone else thought. It was about escaping, that’s all. If the film occupied her mind for two hours, it had done its job.

  Kate’s absences were equally common, but she always left a note saying where she was going, as her deda had taught her, in case she didn’t return. Sometimes Kate went to the library or the student lounge. Sometimes she stayed late after her shift at the diner and studied at a booth, drinking a shake or eating French fries. Although she did that less often, since her deda frequently distracted her from her studies.

  Ivan found his customers’ refusal to take leftovers home offensive to his frugal Eastern Bloc upbringing. Kate would cringe with embarrassment as she heard him arguing with patrons about the wasted food.

  “Are you sure you don’ vant to take home? Dat is at least breakvast. Maybe breakvast and lunch. You have a neighbor might vant? Dog? Do you haf dog? That vould be a lucky dog. No? Okay.”

  He’d then
drop by Kate’s table and show her the wasted food.

  “Americans tink hamburgers grow on trees.”

  Kate didn’t mention to her grandfather that many people don’t like soggy hamburgers the next morning. Instead, she offered to take the food.

  “I can give it to a homeless person, if you like,” Kate said.

  Her deda nodded his approval and wrapped up the leftovers. As he left them on Kate’s table he said, “Give to real homeless person. Not vun of those hippie kids, okay?”

  Kate often found trails and hiked, sometimes well into the night, with a flashlight in hand and flares and water in her backpack. It was the most reckless thing she was known to do, but at least she was prepared.

  That was how she’d met Arthur. He’d started his hike in the afternoon and was unprepared for the sudden sunset, which left him deep in the pitch-black forest and unable to find his way out.

  When he saw the flashlight, he shouted for help. The noise pierced the peaceful hum of nature and gave Kate an adrenaline rush. She spun around and started running. The woods were supposed to be empty at night. Anyone hiding there was someone to be feared. As she ran, she heard the voice behind her pleading for help.

  “Wait up. I’m lost,” he shouted.

  Those were harmless words, Kate thought in midrun. Probably not the words of a serial killer haunting the woods, but who, besides a serial killer, knew what words would be used? As she slowed down to rethink her escape, her foot caught under a fallen branch, and she twisted her ankle on the way to the ground. The flashlight slipped from her hand and landed a few feet away. She freed her foot and crawled toward the flashlight, feeling a heavy ache in the ankle dragging behind her. She could hear leaves crunching in the distance and then someone closing in. She turned off the flashlight to remain hidden.

  “I need help,” the voice said.

  “I have a gun,” Kate said. She had pepper spray. Neither would be much use in a pitch-black forest.

  “Don’t shoot,” the voice said. “I’m just lost. I’m a student here.”

  “What college?”

  “Oakes. I have my school ID on me. I can show it to you if you turn on the flashlight.”

  “Name three of your professors,” Kate said.

  “Wallace. Fernandez. Billings.”

  “What’s Wallace’s first name?” Kate asked.

  “Sherman.”

  “Don’t you love him?” Kate asked.

  “He’s a prick. Everybody knows that.”

  Kate turned on the flashlight. The voice and the crunching leaves moved closer. She flashed the light into the young, harmless-looking man’s eyes. His voice was deeper than you’d expect it to be from looking at him. He was lean in the way that young men who will eventually become less lean are. He was clearly a student; it was obvious, from his battered sneakers to his threadbare and faded school shirt.

  “What happened to you?” he said, kneeling down.

  “I believe I’m injured.”

  Kate continued to shine the light in his eyes.

  “Can you please stop that? I feel like the cops just caught me urinating in public.”

  “Strange analogy,” Kate said. “Do you do that often?”

  “It happened once and I was in an alley.”

  “Gross.”

  “I had to pee.”

  “Hold it. That’s what I do,” Kate said.

  “Can you stand?” the voice asked.

  “Not when I’m peeing,” Kate snapped.

  “I meant, can you stand on your leg.”

  “I don’t know.”

  The young man cautiously offered his hand. Kate took it, planted her good foot on the ground, and stood upright. She tested the injured leg. Pain radiated from her ankle, causing her to stumble. The stranger steadied her.

  Kate held the flashlight in one hand and put her other arm around Arthur’s shoulder. They limped along for a few yards, traveling at the speed of a lethargic turtle. It would take hours to return to the dorm. Kate climbed on Arthur’s back, and he gave her a piggyback ride while she navigated him through the familiar terrain with her flashlight.

  “This is your fault,” Kate said.

  “Most things are.”

  Arthur dropped by the next day to check on Kate’s ankle. He brought a bag of ice and a soda and a slice from Upper Crust Pizza. He asked her if she wanted to do something sometime.

  “Maybe,” Kate said. “We’ll see.”

  George thought Arthur was cute. Maybe not cute enough for her, but definitely in the attractive category, and he wasn’t peculiar in any way. Even as Kate hastened his departure, she appeared interested.

  “What are you doing?” George asked. “Don’t you like him?”

  “I’m undecided.”

  “What would help you decide?” said George.

  Kate had gone on a few dates with her lab partner six months ago, but after that, nothing. George thought an intervention was necessary.

  “Do you want me to check him out, get a little history on him?”

  Kate thought about it for a moment and then said, “Yeah. But it might not be the kind of history you think.”

  When Kate explained, it made perfect sense, but it wasn’t something George would ever have considered on her own.

  “If a guy likes you,” Kate said to George, “maybe you figure you’re his type. The type is tall, skinny, and gorgeous, and you can’t really fault a man for liking that type. It’s pretty standard. But if a guy is attracted to me because I’m his type, you have to wonder. I look sixteen with makeup on, and I’ve seen eleven-year-old girls with bigger chests. You see what I’m getting at?”

  “You’re worried he likes little girls?” George said.

  “Remember Mike from freshman year?”

  “The astronomy TA you went out with for a week?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about him?”

  “His previous girlfriend was a sophomore in high school. And he had some questionable pictures around his house. Nothing incriminating. But I knew.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  “Just because Arthur likes you doesn’t mean he’s a pervert. It means I need to do a little digging,” said George.

  A week later George had amassed a small dossier on Arthur’s brief dating history. She assembled this information by making the acquaintance of one of his roommates, Lukas, who was immediately smitten with George, and then by going through Arthur’s personal effects when Lukas left her alone in their dorm room.

  “Good news,” George said when she delivered her evidence. “His last girlfriend was on the softball team in high school. From the picture I saw, she was maybe five seven and a hundred and forty pounds. The one before that was short, but she had a rack on her.”

  “How big?”

  “C, maybe D cup.”

  The next time Arthur asked Kate to do something sometime, she said yes.

  “I think we should see other people,” Jason said to George.

  “You mean you want to break up,” George said.

  “No. I want to see other people.”

  “You want to have sex with me and have the option of having sex with other women as well,” George asked, clarifying for him what seemed clear to her.

  “It sounds seedy when you say it.”

  “It sounds indirect and cowardly when you say it.”

  “We’re young.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not sure I believe in monogamy.”

  “That’s what people say when they find someone new they want to fuck. Who is she?”

  “I could give you a name, but it might change in a week.”

  George admired women who seemed to store their emotions inside a box, pulling out only the ones required at the moment. Anna seemed an expert at this. She would meet men at parties, go home with them, and then not care if they never crossed paths again except by accident. It seemed to George that Anna was master o
f her emotions. That was, of course, bullshit. These men had no effect on Anna because Anna had been pining for one man for almost ten years. Anyone else was merely a diversion.

  George might have felt some envy toward Kate’s practical approach to men if it weren’t for the men she attracted. They were always too soft for George. There was no edge to them, nothing to fear.

  George returned to the High Street house and drank Anna’s whiskey. She blasted the radio to extinguish the suffocating quiet. She wanted the kind of overt distraction that only Anna could offer. She wanted a game, the threat of excitement, the idea that something good or uncomfortable could happen at any moment. She had never needed Anna so badly. And Anna was out.

  George had always assumed that when they all moved into a home with room to breathe, her roommates would stick around more. But Kate still preferred studying in the library, and Anna continued to vanish without speaking of where she was going. She left brief Post-it notes on their refrigerator. I’ll be back was all she’d write. The statement seemed so obvious that it made Kate and George wonder if one day, they wouldn’t find the note, and Anna wouldn’t return. Still, her unexplained absences always upset the balance in the home. While George and Kate could resent Anna on various grounds, they needed her there to resent.

  On this night, George waited patiently for Kate to come home, ignoring her loneliness in anticipation of its end. At midnight Kate was still gone; her note said she was going to the library and then to Arthur’s. George called Arthur’s house. No answer. She drank more whiskey and cycled through the five channels on their twenty-two-inch rabbit-eared television. She phoned her mother, who chatted aimlessly for an hour about her solo holiday in Greece. She had returned just a week ago.

  “I have to say this,” said Vivien. “It’s so much easier traveling without your father. Not only does he expect me to plan the entire vacation, but I’m supposed to pack his suitcase because he’s incapable of that simple task—although he certainly manages for a business trip. Plus, it’s nice to keep my own hours. I can get an early start on the day. It is ridiculous being in Europe and wasting most of the morning in a hotel room.”