Maryse Meijer - Heartbreaker - Stories

I’m so glad, I said, inhaling the faint tang of scorched flesh and fur among the perfume of hot rock and charred wood. Such richness! She should have all of it and more, I thought; I wanted to drape her in meat and wood as a man might drape a woman in diamonds.

I lay there for as long as I dared, recklessly abandoning the mask for minutes at a time, gulping great lungfuls of smoke; when I coughed my saliva was black.

You’re inside me already, I marveled.

Yes, John, she sighed. Isn’t it nice?

* * *

I packed my van with my maps and a radio, a blanket, and a few cans of beans; she was on the move. For days I drove, my radio going nonstop with news of her direction, speed, appetite; I matched it mile for mile, working my way as close to her borders as was allowed. The relentless heat sucked the sweat from my skin; the driver’s seat was constantly damp, as were the blankets I slept on in the rear. I tied a bandanna around my head, and no matter what I ate I tasted only ash and salt.

Though the emergency security cordons kept me at a distance she felt closer than ever, striking the landscape wherever I looked: she was 20,000 acres strong, then 50,000, then 100,000. She was the biggest, the most devastating news, raging behind every bewildered bleached-blond reporter, flaming the front pages of all the newspapers. There were a thousand firefighters struggling helplessly against her, eating up millions of tax dollars, unable to halt her astonishing progress. Buckets of flame retardant were flown overhead and tipped along her back; I could hear her laughter as they struck her, harmless.

Look at you, I said, fanning the newspaper clippings across the floor of the van. The satellites can see you from space!

What’s space? she asked.

It’s everything around us that’s not a thing.

She sighed. I want that, she said. I want all of it.

You’ll have it, sweetheart, I assured her. It’s already yours.

Yay, she said.

Yay, I echoed. I could feel her smiling, and I could see it, too, in the trees, at the very top, all mouth when she wanted to be, at other times all hands, or legs, dancing in the wind.

* * *

But as well as I knew her, as constantly as I tried to anticipate her needs and satisfy them, I did make the occasional mistake.

How’s the woods this evening? I asked one night, early on in our relationship; we were in the habit of eating dinner together after I’d parked for the night, me in the front seat, her blazing off in the distance.

Delicious, she said. What are you having?

Egg salad, I told her. The gas-station sandwich was maybe a little spoiled from sitting on the dash all day, but I ate it anyway, then washed it down with the first thing at hand: old water from a half-gallon jug I’d found beneath the front seat.

What’s that? she asked.

I paused, the water glugging in the jug. What’s what?

That sound , she hissed.

I was just — drinking something.

Water?

Well—

Don’t! she shrieked.

Sorry, sorry, I said, capping the jug and tossing it out the window, wincing when it hit a boulder.

Gosh, John, I mean, really!

I’m sorry. I’m stopping, I stopped. Okay? Honey?

There was only the sound of the tires on the road, the whip of passing cars. I glanced in my rearview mirror, but saw only smoke, no flame.

Hey, I said. Talk to me.

I’m busy.

Busy what?

Burning!

Of course, I said. I’m sorry.

Another silence, and then: Turn on the radio, she gusted gently. We gasped with pleasure when we heard the chorus of our favorite song, “Burning Down the House.” We sung in unison, as loud as we could, her voice and my voice in perfect harmony inside the cab of the old van.

* * *

She was, indeed, busy: at five weeks and 500,000 acres she was busier and busier. Hundreds were evacuated from threatened homes, and though she hadn’t yet taken a neighborhood, she longed for one, bidding me time and again to describe what was in store: glass, garages, tennis courts, palm trees, pools. She had already had a few stray cars. Tires , she enthused. Oh, John, the tires!

I kept driving, drinking Gatorade and eating bags of peanuts, soaking up the news. We had a lot to be proud of: she was on the cover of several local and national magazines, appeared on countless television shows, broke wildfire records daily. She grinned into the eyes of a hundred cameras, a thousand cell phones; I had a folder full of photos downloaded from libraries, her flames captured from every angle. Everyone for a hundred miles knew the name the papers gave her, but only I knew her true name, which was not a word but both a sound and a sight, a tremendous lightning roar scrawling itself across the parched earth.

* * *

In the evenings I would park the van and walk along the hills, as close as I could get to her, just off the freeway, the wind whipping my reeking T-shirt as we talked. There had never been anything like this in my life, nothing to prepare me for the intensity of my love for her, my happiness, my admiration, though there had been, I confessed, others: a half-dozen attempts in dry fields when I was a boy, a few Dumpster fires. Later, in my twenties and thirties, there’d been more serious encounters: a saucy little house blaze in the suburbs, an all-night conflagration at an abandoned lumber mill, the short-lived but brilliant rager at a used-furniture shop in the suburbs.

Did you love them?

No, I assured her, never. They were brave girls, all of them, and beautiful, yes, but they could not compare. Loving her was like loving a queen, or a mountain; she dominated me, she made me a subject, and yet when I looked into the van’s mirrors I didn’t see a plain soot-stained face or matted hair or a body encased in filthy rags; I saw something purer, lighter. I was untethering myself from the world of flesh. I was slowly becoming free.

* * *

Of course, I was not the only one in her thrall. Other admirers flocked by the dozens to the scenic-view pullouts off the highway: middle-aged men with canvas hats flapping in the high hot wind, teenagers in muscle T-shirts and cutoffs, vagabonds driving dusty RVs; young foreign couples with slick lips and beautiful hair. They carried binoculars, bag lunches, digital cameras, lattes and iced teas and Slurpees, expensive phones, cigarettes. I sat on the hood of my van, and though they took turns staring, no one spoke to me, and I had no desire to speak to them.

I don’t understand why they don’t have more men on the ground, a woman complained, flipping a gray braid over her shoulder. It’s only twenty miles from the housing complex.

Who cares about some rich people’s houses, a young man replied, scowling, his matchstick arms sleeved from wrist to bicep in ink. It’s nature’s revenge, man. Humans are parasites.

You include yourself in that statement? the woman scoffed.

Hell yes, I do.

State’s spending as much as they can. It’s a recession, someone added.

You can’t just let people’s property burn! the woman insisted. Someone shushed her and she turned, catching my eye, and scowled at me, though I had said nothing. There was a huge boom from the fire; a balloon of fresh flame splattered the sky. Everyone flinched and the boy laughed, a high, hysterical sound.

I heard it was man-made, a Japanese woman said, looking at her phone. They think it was started in the Valley by a homeless person.

Other voices chimed in: Probably some idiot burning trash.

Nah, they would have found something at the origin site. It’s arson.

I heard some guy already turned himself in but they’re keeping his name a secret.

If I knew that bastard’s name I’d hang him myself. Me and my kids are sleeping on my mother’s living-room floor because of this goddamn evacuation.