A. Homes - Music for Torching

"You're a treat," Pat says. "A delicacy. I never get to kiss. George doesn't like it."

Elaine is crawling around on all fours, rounding up her clothing, wondering, What do you do now? How do you bring yourself to standing? How do you get up, get dressed, and move along?

"How about a bath, a long, hot bath?" Pat asks.

Elaine pulls on her underwear and looks at the kitchen clock. "I can't," she says. "Look at the time; it's eleven-thirty. Aren't you worried about having gotten off schedule?"

Pat shrugs. She finds her ring on the floor and puts it in her mouth, sucking it to clean it.

Elaine is dressing as fast as she possibly can. She can't believe what she's done: Okay, so Pat kissed her-George doesn't like to kiss, and Pat needed a kiss, but what about the rest-did it really happen? Has Pat done this before? Does Pat think it was all Elaine's fault? And why is Elaine thinking fault? Why is she blaming herself? Pure panic.

"Are you all right?" Pat asks.

"It's fine," Elaine says, hurrying.

Elaine needs to be in her car going home, she needs to be someplace familiar and safe, she needs a few minutes alone. She is suffering the strange anxiety of having risen so far up and out of herself as to seem entirely untethered. She's scared herself-as though this has never been done before, as though she and Pat invented it right there on the kitchen floor. She wonders if she's suffered some odd injury-did she hurt herself? Did Pat scrape her? Will she get an infection? Will she have to tell someone-explain it? She fumbles frantically with the buttons on her blouse.

"You seem upset," Pat says, slipping back into her robe.

"I just feel…like I'm running late. I slept late, and then, well, this happened. And now I'm really late. I should go." Elaine practically runs for the door.

"Something special you want for dinner?" Pat calls after her. "What's your favorite food? Wednesday is grab bag. Everyone puts in their wishes, and each person ends up getting at least one thing they want."

Nothing, Elaine wants nothing.

"You can't leave without naming something," Pat says.

"Beets," Elaine says, racing.

"Oh, that's good, that's great. I never would have thought of that," Pat says.

Elaine throws the car into gear and pulls away-she hates beets. Why did she say beets? She drives around the block, pulls up in front of the house, and blows the horn. Pat opens the door, thrilled that Elaine has returned. She leans forward, as though expecting Elaine to make some declaration along the lines of I love you, or at least Thanks, that was fun. Elaine rolls down the window and shouts her confession across the lawn. "I hate beets. I don't know why I said that."

Pat's face takes a fall.

"Asparagus," Elaine says. "Asparagus is fine."

"Oh," Pat calls back, recovering. "Oh, good. Asparagus is a good thing."

She drives. She stinks like a skunk-the funky musk of sex. She rifles through her purse, looking for something she can spray herself with-an olfactory cover-up. She douses herself with a perfume sample. The car fills with a vigorous, bright fragrance, which works like smelling salts, bringing Elaine back to her senses.

She pulls into the shopping center, parks, and goes into the hardware store. She has no idea what she wants: hammers, files, the common nail, precision blades, wires, switches, paints, and polishes.

Pure panic.

She hasn't felt this strange in thirty years, not since the afternoon in the maid's room of Charlie Thornton's house, when she touched, then kissed Charlie's penis-she remembers it; hot, fat, and rubbery, like something in a house of horrors. His voice changed when she touched it. "Kiss it," he'd said, and she did. Kiss it.

"May I help you?"

"Just looking." Self-consciously she walks the aisles. The salesmen's heads turn-they smell the perfume. She dips her hands into huge bins filled with clevis pins, cotter pins, and thumbscrews. Her body is still flooded, confusedly dilating and contracting, her breasts rubbing against her shirt, sore.

Pat. Pat would never have occurred to her. The cop occurred to her-occurs to her now-but Pat? Not Pat.

Elaine buys something, just to buy something. Screwdrivers, pliers, and a retractable tape measure. There's a lot she has to do. She has to take responsibility, she has to learn how to fix things.

"Women love hardware stores," the cashier volunteers as he's ringing her up. "By nature they're solution-oriented-everything here solves a problem. That'll be fifty-two fifty." He flashes a gaptoothed smile.

She dashes into the supermarket and throws a few things into a basket-soda, cookies, Smokehouse Almonds-she has to be a better wife, a better mom. Daniel asked for Ziploc bags; she can't remember what for. She drops a box into the basket

and checks out. She dips into the liquor store, picking up a few bottles of wine. She is in and out of every store in the shopping center, and then she is ready to go home-she can't think of anything else to do.

The phone is ringing.

Elaine is standing outside, at the kitchen door, holding her grocery bags, her wine.

"Morning," Mrs. Hansen says, coming up the driveway behind her.

"Good morning," Elaine says.

The phone rings-its raucous rattle passes through the house, punctuating the air, splitting it, dividing it, defining it; comma, period, exclamation point.

"Your phone is ringing," Mrs. Hansen says.

"Yes," Elaine says, holding her bags, making no move to open the door.

"We sold your answering machine at the yard sale," Mrs. Hansen says.

"I remember," Elaine says. "I have to get a new one. I'm just wondering if I should run and do it now before I even go inside."

"It stopped," Mrs. Hansen says. "The phone stopped. You missed your call."

"It's fine," Elaine says, drawing a deep breath, feeling freed to find her key and step inside.

The house still stinks.

Mrs. Hansen follows her in. "Are you by chance wearing perfume?" Mrs. Hansen asks.

"It spilled," Elaine says. "It was a sample that spilled."

"It's intense," Mrs. Hansen says. "I couldn't tell right away if it was you or the house."

"The house stinks, and so do I," Elaine says, exasperated. "That's why I came home-I need to take a shower and change."

The phone starts to ring again.

Elaine stares at the wall. What looked all right yesterday is blistering, bubbling today.

"I'll get it," Mrs. Hansen says, taking the bags from Elaine and gesturing toward the stairs. "Go on. I'll get it."

Elaine can still feel the press of Pat on her body, her weight, her swampy sex. She showers, scrubbing herself with the loofah, imagining putting the long loofah up inside herself, like a bottle brush, to scratch the itch, the tingling lick of Pat's tongue, scraping herself clean. In her whorish fog, she lathers her breasts with soap, massaging them, and using the long neck of a shampoo bottle, makes herself come.

The phone keeps ringing.

Elaine dresses. Clean clothes are like fresh bandages, covering everything, making it smooth, easy, nice. She transfers the pile of Post-its into the clean pocket and goes back downstairs. Burnt toast. Today the house smells like wet burnt toast.

"Just two calls," Mrs. Hansen says. "A painter is coming to measure. And your mother-she wants you to call her back."

If anything can penetrate her fog and remind her of who she is, or more likely who she is not, it's her mother.

Elaine dials.

"Hello," her mother says, drawing the word out, dividing it in two, making it into a faux melody, like the NBC chimes or a doorbell.

"Hi, Mom."

"Your father is driving me crazy. I'm not the kind of woman who wants to walk out on a seventy-two-year-old man, but who does he think he's kidding? I open my mouth, and he says, 'I don't want to hear it.'"