The Incendiaries_A Novel

by R. O. Kwon

  You should have something, she said.

  I don’t want tea.

  I’ll bet you haven’t eaten.

  I hadn’t, I realized. In a panic, I’d failed to eat since morning. She could tell, by looking at me, if I needed to eat. I took Phoebe the cup. She leaned into my side. With an arm swathed in cashmere, the soft fibers prickling, she pulled me close. My breathing slowed. Once, not long ago, she’d pointed to a picture on Julian’s wall, a child with his arms flung out. Posed like a kite, she’d said. A kite, I repeated, the word unrolling a tableau of blanched sand. Heat. Light. Surfboards gliding, iridescent; swimmers beaded with sea foam. Harlequin kites spooled high, lolloping toward the sun. In that childhood photo, I couldn’t avoid noticing a crucifixion pose, while she saw—a kite. I’d loved Phoebe’s pagan mind, unpolluted with His blood. Phoebe, forgive me, I should have said, help me, but then she shifted to drink the puerh. Let go, I moved to sit at the table, a tall vase of white phlox dividing us. She inhaled steam. Wire hangers, I said.

  What?

  Bleach, I said. For millennia, women have tried to induce home abortions. They’ve drunk bleach, hot lye—even the Bible gives tips about this. Quinine. Hippocrates advises a prostitute to jump up and down. I told Phoebe about a high-school friend, Stu, who’d punched his knocked-up girlfriend in the stomach until she fainted. She asked to be kicked down the stairs. He’d done it, blinded with tears. The abortion she wanted was too expensive, and she had Baptist parents she couldn’t tell. Once, a local wit, calling in to a radio show, was asked to explain what people did for fun in Carmenita, California. Get pregnant, he said. The kind of people she, Phoebe, knew would always be able to obtain abortions, while fifteen-year-old children in towns like mine spewed—what?

  Phoebe shook, laughing. No, it’s just, Will, you researched this. The quinine. You looked it up, getting all these points in line.

  Tell me why you picked Christians, I said.

  Excuse me?

  You chose the one set of beliefs I wasn’t going to be able to stand. I’m asking if it was on purpose, if it’s something I did.

  I can’t fight tonight, she said. She pushed away the tea. It sloshed in the cup, without spilling. I’m so tired. I don’t know what’s happened, why you’ve turned against Jejah, but, please, let’s go to bed. We’ll argue in the morning, if you like.

  I looked in the news, I said. From the spring before last, in Yanji, China. I searched headlines. John Leal’s a U.S. citizen. If he’d been abducted by North Korean agents, his organization would have reported it. It would be a big fucking deal. “Edwards student missing, presumed kidnapped.” But there’s nothing, Phoebe. I couldn’t find a single mention of him.

  Will—

  I think he’s lying.

  Well, I don’t.

  If you were taking up, oh, Buddhism, I wouldn’t mind. If you’d decided to collect old coins—

  Oh, she said, leaning back. Old coins. Will, if that’s what you want, I’ll be less of a hobbyist. I have to stop living in sin. No, let me finish. I’ve waited for God to hand me a revelation, but I don’t think that’s how He loves us. Hold on. This isn’t about you, Will. I’ve given it a lot of thought. If I did what people here do—if I chased high-paid jobs, and I wrote fifteen-page papers on Milton, I have no idea who that would help. But if I could find out what I am. If I have a soul. I’ve thought about what St. Augustine said, that we have to beg the Lord to know Him. It wasn’t until the 18th century that the church established belief as a precondition of Christian faith—if I act as though I believe, maybe I’ll also experience the divine. If I don’t, I’ll have tried. Isn’t that what you did?

  She reached across the table, waiting for me to admit that yes, I had. But I was also picturing the two of them in the car’s claustral space: a private, long drive, the partial curtain of Phoebe’s hair swinging. She laughed, ignoring phone calls. He’d have instructed Phoebe about what to tell me, tonight. It was central to his appeal that he liked giving orders. Is this his idea? I asked.

  No.

  Did he stay with you last night?

  It wasn’t, she said. He did, but it’s not—

  So, let’s be honest. This isn’t about being a born-again virgin for Christ. It’s about you, the wide-eyed acolyte, fucking the guru.

  Will, you don’t mean this.

  Sure, I do. It’s what people do in cults like Jejah. You do realize, of course, that it’s a cult. That’s what’s changed, if you’re wondering. I wasn’t sure, at first, but it’s the truth. He’s a low-rent Jesus freak with Franciscan affectations. So, how does it work: do you take turns, fucking him, or is it one big orgy, just a giant Christ-loving pile? I wish you’d told me, though. I’d have joined you—

  She pushed the cup off the table. A wet stain swelled across the floorboards, broken glass glittering. I’ll get it, I said.

  Don’t, she said, crying. I went to find the broom. When I returned, she was still at the table. I brushed glass into the dustpan, but the bristles proved too coarse. I wetted paper towels. I daubed up what I could. With each pass, I folded the towels in half until the square was too small to use. A glint caught my eye: a piece had fallen on Phoebe’s foot, between the fine-boned toes. I picked it off; she shied.

  It was glass, I said.

  I don’t care.

  She went into the bedroom. The slam rattled the toaster oven; its lid fell open. I thought of the short-lived ruckus, years ago, when a Carmenita high-school kid, Jim, had sighted Christ’s face in a slice of burned toast. Local papers published photos of the miracle bread, His face almost visible. While, at the time, I credited the apparition, I’d also felt the insult. I believed, of course, that household theophanies took place, visions of the Son of Man spotted in pieces of foil, paint blotches. Spitz dogs’ assholes. Crocks of jam. Burned-toast Jesus, though, had shown up less than a mile from where I lived. So, what had moved the Lord to neglect me? Instead, He’d picked this kid, a once-a-month Christian: Jim Struth, who didn’t love Him, not as I did. A twinge alerted me to a piece of glass in my thumb. I finished wiping the spill, then I went to the sink to pinch it out.

  26.

  JOHN LEAL

  It wasn’t that Christianity fetishized pain, or exalted it. What point could there be in glorifying something so available? It would be like exalting oxygen. But the faith did recognize the potential effect of pain: how it can, with most of us, open what’s closed. Like cut flesh, we become available to excluded possibilities. Light enters in the injured place, he said. That the bones which He hath broken might rejoice.

  27.

  PHOEBE

  In the next Jejah confession, Phoebe might have said to them, One night, I walked past a woman talking with a small boy in a white sailing suit. They’re waiting, she told him, in Korean. We should rush. The child trotted, obedient, his soles flaring. The woman bent down to kiss the top of his head. I’d stopped in place. I watched them, feral with longing. When a taxi slid past, I wished: Hit them. In pain, I wanted the world to feel as I did. So, Will. Poor Will. Paradise still burns his eyes, but he can’t get back in. It would be hard to witness others’ faith; he tried so long for his own. Though he’s lived in a state of lack, people often take what he’s lost to be nothing, a joke. Even his mother still thinks it’s a phase. His childish rebellion. He grieves, the absence more vivid to him than what’s present, while being forced to pretend he’s fine. It’s possible that, with time, the mask has sealed itself upon his face.

  John Leal says I should stop living with Will. But if I moved, I’d join the list of all those Will loves who failed him. One parent in Florida; the other ill, preoccupied with Christ. The God-shaped hole, Will calls it. He hears the church bells sing, but not to him.

  28.

  WILL

  I exiled myself to the living room. The mattress on the thrift-store futon was so thin that its metal ribs jutted thr
ough. I slept on the floor instead, bundled in a plaid blanket. Late the fifth night, finding me like this, Phoebe insisted I come back to bed.

  No, I’m all right, I said.

  But you’re shivering.

  She pulled off the blanket; holding it like a cape, she took it to the bedroom. I waited as long as I could before giving in. She’d left my half of the bed unoccupied. Lulled by the shared warmth, I fell asleep. The following night, she started wearing more to bed than her usual cotton panties, adding a shirt, striped pajama pants, the clothed skin radiating heat, but still taboo. I couldn’t help imagining Phoebe with him. Paired, they flashed from the ceiling, shining billboard projections of his black-nailed toes fumbling up and down Phoebe’s muscled legs. He strained with effort. Thighs lifted to meet him, and he looped my girlfriend’s ponytail in his hand. With a hard tug, the way she liked it, he tightened the leash, Phoebe’s face shown smooth, fast, as if surging from the pool.

  * * *

  –

  One evening, while she was at the Litton Street house, Julian came to the apartment. Will, how do you like Phoebe’s new friends? he asked, setting down a cellophane-wrapped ballotin.

  I don’t, I said. I thought she should see a therapist, but—

  It’s not something she’d do.

  No.

  She’s being ridiculous. It’s not as though she pushed Liesl from that railing. I think it’s selfish, all this bogus guilt. It isn’t Phoebe’s fault that Liesl died. Of course, it’s not. She didn’t kill Liesl, and her mother died in an L.A. traffic crash. It was an accident. People die. It happens. I blame the sackcloth bigots. Such a bad influence. This isn’t an exact parallel, but I’m reminded of the video artist I used to date, Elvis Floril. No one liked him. Elvis, the moral zero. But he was so talented. Is. I was infatuated. I couldn’t listen to what my friends had been telling me, until, like that, I did. The thing is, though, they kept trying.

  He was still talking when Phoebe returned home. I hadn’t said much; I didn’t tell Julian I had no idea she felt implicated in Liesl’s death. I couldn’t have admitted that she’d withheld what she’d confided in him, just as she trusted John Leal, taking his side, not mine, all the while picking a fictional God, a parent who died, Liesl—every single person, that is, but me, the Phoebe-loving fool who kept putting her first. But the more I thought about it, well, Julian could be wrong. He’d been Liesl’s oldest friend at Edwards. It was possible he ascribed to Phoebe the guilt that he, Julian, felt. If he were right, I’d have noticed.

  * * *

  –

  The next night, I found I’d paused in front of Exhibit, a dive nightclub on Whiting Street that I’d heard Phi Epsilons extol. Like fishing in a kiddie pool, a pledge had said. Inside, spotlit girls pivoted on round tables. I had to push through a pit to get to the bar; when I slipped, the humid bodies, writhing, held me upright. I didn’t stay long, but I kept going back until the night I walked a girl, Leigh, from Exhibit to her place. She told me about the spin classes she taught for a living. I was invited in. She pulled off her shirt. Small, tanned packs of abdominal muscle shifted as she fidgeted with a satin bra.

  I forgot I—I have to—

  I couldn’t think of an excuse. The bra, tissue-pink, dangled from one strap. I left, apologizing: I went home, where Phoebe slept, sick with the flu. I’d helped her to bed before going out. In the trashcan, I caught sight of the torn plastic of a tampon sheath, and when I crept beneath the blanket, she turned toward me, still unconscious, wrapping me in limbs and warmth, this bleeding, feverish creature I didn’t know how to stop wanting.

  * * *

  –

  I quit the Exhibit visits. I received an email from Leigh asking if I’d like to get a bite to eat sometime, but I didn’t know what to write. One day sped past, then several, until I thought it would be more insulting if I wrote, at this late point, than if I didn’t respond at all. The note might have been lost in transit, or she’d written to the wrong Will Kendall.

  * * *

  –

  While I still had Phoebe with me, hot in my arms, singing Ella Fitzgerald back to life as I washed the dishes, I knew what I was losing, and it ached as if she’d already gone. The expected rift came in late March. I was home; she planned to have gimlets with Julian at the Colonial. I’d heard his reproaches tolling from Phoebe’s earpiece when he called. I miss you, angel, he’d said. Bix misses you. He says no one’s asked for his house special in ages, and how could you be unkind to Bix?

  I was in the kitchen, fixing a salad. I sliced a red onion lengthwise, then into minute squares. I swept the last diced bits off the knife: piled amethysts, I thought, a geode. I had the idea I’d show it to Phoebe. I’d finished most of a bottle of wine. She was in the bedroom, door open, trying to zip up a dress. It was a black shift I liked, and I laughed as I said, I’m coming, I’ll help.

  She flinched at the sound, but she’d left the door open. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that I’d noticed she was changing. She backed up to the wall, bent elbows slanting above her head. No, I can do it, she said. Let me help, I insisted. I’ll zip the dress. I spun Phoebe to face the wall, lighthearted, but then I saw that, in the space where the knit dress gaped open, she had a back crisscrossed with welts, bruises. In spots, the skin had broken. Some of the marks had partially healed. Others looked fresh, a dull red. Phoebe, I said. What is this?

  She pulled away from me, flushing.

  Phoebe, please—

  It’s nothing.

  Who did this to you?

  She walked out of the room, and I followed. We sat at the kitchen table. I asked if I should call the police, if she was in pain.

  No.

  Phoebe, what happened?

  She’d tell me, she said. But first, I had to listen. They’d been holding group penances. In turn, they detailed how they’d failed God, then asked the others to help them with physical notes of what they’d resolved. One night, they sang to God while they knelt on uncooked rice grains, hands up until their arms collapsed. They fasted. The flesh is strong; the mind, frail. We believe with our bodies, she said.

  She was still in the half-zipped dress, but she’d also thrown a coat on her shoulders, with fawn cashmere so thick and soft that, at parties, I used to be able to reach into a pile of coats and find hers by touch. Its lush cloth wings dangled down. I wish I could explain how helpful he’s been, she said. I feel light again. Will, I’m jubilant. I’m glad to be alive. If I could just have you with me, as well—

  You haven’t enjoyed living, I said.

  But you know what I mean. It’s the peace that passeth understanding.

  Phoebe’s smile flared, the old outsize grin. It belonged to someone I’d known. Last fall, caught in a flash storm, we were rushing through Noxhurst when Phoebe’s shoe strap broke. I picked her up, but the hold slipped. She laughed, or I did. Legs flailed, fish-bright. The beige raincoat bunched, slid; wet hairs, like blown seaweed, filled my mouth. She writhed, but I held on. I’d carried Phoebe home. She’d left the bedroom door open. It had to be on purpose: she wished me to learn what he’d done.

  She joined her hands on the table. I pulled one loose, and I kissed the inside of Phoebe’s wrist. The pulse flitted, urgent with life. When I licked the trapped blue of a vein, she shivered. I kissed an eyelid. She lifted open lips, at first, to meet mine. We slid down, the planks cold, but then she stopped responding, mouth rigid. Beneath the kitchen lights, Phoebe’s face was a mask of gold. It hid the living girl. If I could crack it apart—she pushed herself up, sitting cross-legged, and I saw the logical solution, so simple I wanted to laugh. I told Phoebe we should get married.

  You’re joking, she said.

  No.

  I watched as she realized I was serious. I think, she said, Will, I—

  Phoebe—

  I’m late for Julian, and you’ve had a few drinks—we�
�ll talk about this in the morning, when you’ll—

  Since I didn’t want to let Phoebe refuse, I pushed my mouth on hers again. The shift dress had come loose. Bra-strap nicks, like the lines dividing a doll’s joints, indented Phoebe’s skin. It’s possible she struggled awhile before I noticed she wasn’t, as I thought, excited, but I’d waited a long time. If I pretended I didn’t understand, I could postpone letting go. The fitted bottom half of Phoebe’s dress had twisted at waist-level. With my body pressing hers down, I could easily move the panties aside, unzip my jeans. Stop, she said; I slipped inside. She went still. I finished, then I went to the bathroom. I locked myself in.

  * * *

  –

  I woke the next morning on the bathroom mat. She’d left the apartment. I went outside, too. I walked until it was night; I called her, leaving messages, apologies I couldn’t finish. What you crying about, pal, a man said, panhandling. Take this soda bottle, drink it all up like Lou Reed, baby. He rattled his plastic cup, and laughed. I knew where she’d be. In three nights, she called back to tell me she’d return home Sunday, at noon, but just to finish moving out. Jejah had a room available.

  It shouldn’t take long, she said. I’m asking you to stay out of the apartment until I’m done. I don’t want to see you.

  She hung up. I went out for a walk again. Rain fell, melting winter’s ice. Sidewalks broke, heaved, oozing months-old grit. In this newly liquid world, other natural laws might also prove flexible. Time, I’d learned, was believed to be less sequential than it felt. It could spiral; it frilled. It might well halt. Then, it was the next morning. Night followed, but I still had time. Rivulets sluiced into the gutters, sailing trash, and then it was the Sabbath, almost noon. I waited until past midnight, sitting at the bar at Exhibit, before I returned to the apartment. When I stepped inside, I could tell she’d gone. She’d left the furniture, but bookshelf spaces gaped open. In the closet, stripped hangers clattered. She hadn’t taken the peacock silk wrap I liked, a gift from Julian. It could be a sign: a daedal thread, the implied promise of return. I’d had too much to drink. Stumbling, I went to bed.