A. Homes - Music for Torching

"Somehow," the officer said, "I didn't give your husband his license back."

"Thanks," Elaine had said, taking the license from him, wondering if he knew she was naked inside the coat, wondering what he thought of that.

And now, again, she is standing before him, naked-this time really naked.

He's looking at her.

The water on her skin evaporates. Goose bumps rise up. Her nipples are shriveled, pulled into hard knots that might be mistaken for desire.

"I just stopped by to see how things were going," he says.

She nods. In the background there's the tumble of towels in the dryer.

"Kids at school?"

She nods again.

"Husband in the city?"

"And my mother just left," she says.

"Yeah, I saw her car."

Elaine puts her hand on her hip. "So," she says.

"It's all coming together," he says.

There is a noise-footsteps up the back steps.

"The kids," Elaine says, making a dash for the laundry room.

She comes out with a warm towel wrapped around her body and another wrapped around her hair. He's gone. He's been replaced by Mrs. Hansen, who stands in the front hall holding a plate of cookies.

"I baked," Mrs. Hansen says.

"Oh, good," Elaine says, looking around her, over her, through her, trying to find him-and wondering where the kids are; she's sure she heard them.

"Rum cookies," Mrs. Hansen says, pushing the plate at Elaine.

"Really lovely," Elaine says, confused. Again, there's the sound of someone on the kitchen stairs.

Sammy and Daniel bang at the door.

"Hello, hello," Elaine says, opening up. "How are you? My little kiddles, my chickadees." She struggles to be enthusiastic. "Welcome home." She kisses each of the boys on the forehead.

"Good afternoon," Mrs. Hansen says, eyeing the creatures who managed to hold her hostage yesterday afternoon, trapped inside the house while they sealed it off with cassette tape like a crime scene.

"Just give me one minute," Elaine says, excusing herself to get dressed. She hurries upstairs and throws on the first clean thing she can find-a pair of Paul's khakis, a big belt, and a T-shirt. She goes back downstairs. Everyone is gone.

They are out back. Mrs. Hansen has pulled together the pieces of the picnic table and arranged an ersatz tea party.

"Rum cookies and lemonade," Mrs. Hansen says, announcing the menu.

Sammy takes a bite of a cookie and spits it out. "Yech," he says. "It tastes like medicine."

"Give it to me," Elaine says, taking the cookie. The cookies

are strong and rich, drenched in alcohol-rum sponges. "Stunning," Elaine says.

Daniel eats four and starts weaving drunkenly around the yard. "More cookies, more cookies," he begs.

"I think you've had enough," Elaine says.

"There's nothing better in the afternoon than a taste of something good," Mrs. Hansen says. "I used to be such a cook. When my boys were young, I did everything. I did it all." She looks up into the sky and then takes another cookie for herself.

The back of the house is singed. Thick streaks of black rise up toward the roof, each one higher than the last-skid marks on the trajectory to tragedy, the results of a wicked rat race, none reaches the top-there is no winner.

The hole in the dining room wall is a puncture, a blasted-out circle with the same charred, chewed look you see in cartoons when a stick of dynamite goes off. Did the fire make the hole, eating its way into the house, crazy with consumption, or did the firemen punch through in their effort to extinguish the flames? Which came first, the chicken or the egg, the fire or the hole?

Her yard. Her petunias, impatiens, and geraniums have been trampled, their stems crushed. The flowers, not believing they are dead, hold their color, as though holding their breath.

Elaine goes to the wrecked flower bed. She gets down on her hands and knees and tries to resuscitate what's left. She props up the flowers. Leaning one against another, they all fall down. She starts pulling at them, violently yanking out what's been crushed. She can't stand the sight of so much gone wrong.

"Sordid," Mrs. Hansen says, getting down on the ground next to her.

Elaine thinks Mrs. Hansen has come to take her away. She imagines Mrs. Hansen saying, Come on, dear, that's enough, gently leading her off as though she were a mental patient, ripping out her hair and not just dead flowers.

"These flowers look exhausted," Mrs. Hansen says, taking a tool out of her pocket and unfolding a pair of scissors, "but I bet they'll perk right up in a glass of sugar water." She snips the stems, "My Handyman," she says, tapping the tool. "I don't go anywhere without it."

"'You can call me Flower,'" Sammy says, repeating his favorite line from Bambi -a movie Daniel calls Waiting to Be Road Kill.

The yard is like a tar pit, a muddy mix of charred wood and stone. The grill is still there, lying on its side, leftover chunks of burned briquette crumbling into the dirt, all of it starting to harden and set-the fossilizing of America.

Daniel pokes a stick into the muck, stirring things up. "Why was the cop here?"

"Just checking in."

"How come you were wearing a towel?"

"I took a shower. How was your day?" she asks, changing the subject. "How was school? Did you get off to a good start? Did Mrs. Meaders make you something good for breakfast?"

Daniel looks her in the eye, sizing her up. "You don't usually take a shower in the middle of the afternoon."

"I was dirty," she says.

He scratches through the dirt with his stick. "What's this?" he asks, uncovering a pack of burned matches, picking them up with his stick, instinctively not touching the evidence with his bare hands.

"Looks like matches," she says.

"Maybe it means something," he says.

"Are you doing some sort of an investigation?" Elaine asks, wondering whose side he's on.

"Don't know," he says, stirring the dirt miserably.

"Did I do something wrong?" Elaine asks.

"Did you?" he says.

Elaine sees in him the same disdain she's seen in Paul. Her stomach tightens. She tries to find her way past it. "You look so much like your father," she says, reaching for his cheek. He pulls away.

"Are you fucking the cop?"

The thought had not occurred to her.

"Are you?" he asks.

She hears Daniel say "fucking the cop," and she thinks yes. Yes, she will fuck the cop, if the cop wants to fuck her.

"Don't say 'fuck,'" she tells Daniel.

Elaine is wiped out. She feels fragile, as though she's been ill. She looks at Mrs. Hansen, hoping Mrs. Hansen will do something. She has summoned her children for a visit but can take only so much. Their needs overwhelm her. She has no idea how to connect with Daniel; nothing she does is right. She is hoping Paul will come home soon and collect her. Together they'll drop the children off, and he'll take her back to Pat and George's. The day has been impossibly long. She's playing house in a broken home.

There's a thundering, bright, metallic bang, the ground-shaking slam of metal, like the sound of a car accident. They feel it in their feet and up their legs, like an explosion, a burst followed by a fat puff of air, the breeze of something displaced.

"What was that?" Elaine shouts.

Mrs. Hansen goes around front to look. "The Dumpster has arrived," she announces.

Paul is on the train coming home. It has been a lost day. He read the report and gave his opinion, which seemed to go over well, but the bulk of the day was spent worrying.

"Wash your bowl." That's what the guy on the train, the palm kisser, told him that morning. "When you're stuck, when

you don't know what to do-just go on, do the next thing. If you ate cereal for breakfast, you wash your bowl."