Jesse Ball - How to Set a Fire and Why

For fifteen minutes, silhouettes flashed on the screen: thirties male unthreatening. Sixties male threatening. Infant female threatening. Et cetera.

Actually, I did try to do a good job. I like trying at things like that.

A loud beep sounded when the final image was done. The door behind me opened, and Mary came and gave me a hundred bucks cash in five-dollar bills. I love getting a thick pile of bills. Even though I hate money. Of course I do, I hate it. But I also like to have lots of it. Once, I had three hundred dollars at the same time, when I pawned my dad’s watch. They gave me three hundred singles. I said to the pawnshop guy, I’m not on my way to a strip club. He thought that was funny, so we had a good laugh for about three seconds. I mean, I was fourteen so he shouldn’t have laughed at all.

By the way, I wouldn’t have sold it if I thought my dad cared about the watch, but he told me once that he only wore it because his grandfather had given it to him. That might be a reason for him to wear it, but for me—not so much.

Mary opened the door for me to go, and I asked her if she would tell me what the study was about.

I don’t see why not. Don’t go telling people if you think they might come in, though. That would ruin the study.

Obviously it would ruin the study. I wouldn’t do that.

Good. So, identifying the silhouettes is meaningless. The actual experiment is: we change the temperature of the room to see how it affects your threat level. That’s it.

But how do you know which ones are threatening or not to begin with?

We run the study without the temperature shift until we have five hundred samples, average them, and then run it again, this time changing the temperature.

Why just women?

We do it with men and women, both. We did men already, now women.

What do you think you’ll find?

James, the PI, thinks men will be more threatened by heat, and women by cold.

What do you think?

He is usually wrong about things. But, we get interesting results, so that’s enough.

I laughed at that. She didn’t.

One more question. Sorry to take up your time.

Shoot.

Which of the silhouettes is supposed to be the most threatening one?

There’s one, do you remember, an old woman carrying groceries? It’s totally terrifying. Men especially fear it. Women are pretty afraid of the baby. They don’t actually tap their leg, but they start to and then stop.

I was waiting at the bus stop when I realized that my zippo was gone. What a pain—I had to backtrack, first to my aunt’s room, then to the study. When I got to the study, I could see Mary wasn’t happy to see me. I had to bang on the door to get her to answer it.

When the door opened, I could see there were three girls in the room who looked like triplets. I was a bit shocked, and I think Mary was trying to figure out if it would fuck up the study to have triplets in it, what with them being essentially the same person. They were wearing the same tricolor tube top with some sorority name on it.

Which reminds me: I don’t buy this thing about twins both getting to vote. To me, each group of DNA should get one vote. Also, twins shouldn’t both be able to hold political office. Otherwise, things could get weird—not in the short run, but in the long run, watch out! I mean, imagine if someone had identical septuplets and then all seven of them were appointed to the Supreme Court. I guess there are nine justices, so let’s say nonuplets then. You have nine identical twins, raised on some creepy farm and then carted out to be Supreme Court justices. What would that mean? It would mean essentially you have one person being the whole Supreme Court, for life! I ask you, would that be fair?

I’m just joking, I have a whole bunch of friends who are identical twins. They’re really nice if you get to know them.

Mary reached in her pocket, handed me my shitty lighter, and shut the door.

My aunt thought it was a good idea for me to go with Beekman and take the test. She is a straight shooter, you know, so what she said was:

I don’t think I will live out the year and then what will you do.

To which I said, aunt, don’t be a fool. And she said, who is the fool. I will be a bunch of soil and you’ll be living where?

So, I told Beekman I would go. On Saturday morning, he came and picked me up. His wife actually packed me a goddamned lunch with a pluot in it. She is a big fan of yours, he said.

The test center was at the admissions department of a local university, which I guess did this as some sort of helping gesture for Hausmann. Apparently a lot of schools countrywide have agreements like this. Hausmann was started because there are a large number of talented kids who go on to do nothing at all—they turn into misanthropes and huddle in shitty rooms. The idea was—reach these kids earlier, challenge them, some nonsense like that. My feeling about that is—doing nothing doesn’t necessarily prove your incapacity. It could be quite the opposite. For instance—I walk around and I am always identifying places, under overpasses, beneath pine trees in industrial parks, at the verge of people’s yards, or where a park building meets a factory and there is a dry spot, these are examples: I see these places, and I think, I could just stay in a spot like that and be perfectly happy. If I did that, it would look to other people like I had failed, but it sounds wonderful to me.

Beekman brought me into the building and introduced me to the admissions officer. Then he wished me luck and left.

Is he coming back? the woman asked me.

I hope so, I said. It is a long fucking walk.

She gave me a look and showed me into a conference room. You can take the test in here, she said.

A different woman, a psychologist of some sort, came in. She introduced herself. Her name was Tracy. I was a little nervous.

Is that your real name, I asked.

Yes, of course.

I just thought, maybe the test had started already. I figured maybe your name isn’t Tracy and I’m supposed to notice that. You look about thirty-four, thirty-five. That means you were born in a period when, uh, when Tracy was a pretty popular name. So, it is likely to be your real name. Although, it seems like maybe—since the likelihood of you having a likely name is unlikely, since there are all told more unlikely names than likely names, if you have a likely name, it seems like maybe you chose it to seem like it is your real name. Isn’t that so? Is this part of the test?

My name is Tracy, she said. Let’s get started.

Okay. So it’s not part of the test? How do I know when the test starts?

It hasn’t started yet. Calm down. Do you need a drink of water?

No.

The first part we’re going to do is the IQ test. Have you taken some practice IQ tests to get ready?

I told her I had not. I said why would I take a practice IQ test. It wouldn’t increase my IQ.

She said that it doesn’t increase your IQ, no, just your demonstrable IQ as tested.

I said that means the test is bad. There should be no way to increase your result on a good IQ test. It should be tricky enough to avoid that.

She said it is not tricky enough to avoid that.

You will probably be smarter than your result, then, she said. That’s too bad.

Which is a weird way of saying I’m going to mess it up.

When we got done with the IQ test, I got a break. They brought me an orange juice and a buttered roll and let me sit on a bench outside for twenty minutes. The university grounds are really beautiful. Universities always try that bullshit. They want you to think wonderful things are going on inside of them because the grounds are beautiful. In general, it is good to be suspicious of monetary displays. Large swaths of bright green well-watered grass—a thing like that is a huge lie.