Stuart Dybek - Paper Lantern - Love Stories

“Fires get me horny,” he says.

The roof around the skylight implodes, sending a funnel of sparks into the whirl of snow, and the crowd ahs collectively as the beakers in the laboratory pop and flare.

Gapers have continued to arrive down side streets, appearing out of the snowfall as if drawn by a great bonfire signaling some secret rite: gangbangers in their jackets engraved with symbols, gorgeous transvestites from Wharf Street, stevedores, and young sailors, their fresh tattoos contracting in the cold. The homeless, layered in overcoats, burlap tied around their feet, have abandoned their burning ash cans in order to gather here, just as the shivering, scantily clad hookers have abandoned their neon corners; as the Guatemalan dishwashers have abandoned their scalding suds; as a baker, his face and hair the ghostly white of flour, has abandoned his oven.

Open hydrants gush into the gutters; the street is seamed with deflated hoses, but the firemen stand as if paired off with the hookers—as if for a moment they’ve become voyeurs like everyone else, transfixed as the brick walls of our lab blaze suddenly lucent, suspended on a cushion of smoke, and the red-hot skeleton of the time machine begins to radiate from the inside out. A rosy light plays off the upturned faces of the crowd like the glow of an enormous red lantern—a paper lantern that once seemed fragile, almost delicate, but now obliterates the very time and space it once illuminated. A paper lantern raging out of control with nothing but itself left to consume.

“ Brrrr. ” The Professor shivers, wiping his fogged glasses as if to clear away the opaque gleam reflecting off their lenses.

“Goddamn cold, all right,” Tinker mutters, stamping his feet.

For once they agree.

The wind gusts, fanning the bitter chill of night even as it fans the flames, and instinctively we all edge closer to the fire.

My thanks to the editors of the magazines that first accepted these stories.

And a thank-you that spans years to Elisabeth Sifton and Amanda Urban.

Also, I wish to express my gratitude to the MacArthur Foundation for a fellowship that provided the time to write this book.