How to Start a Fire Read online

  The champagne went down easy, and then exhaustion set in. George could sleep anywhere. Within moments of takeoff she was drifting into slumber, her head lolling to the side and eventually resting on the shoulder of the rather attractive stranger in 2D.

  This was not the first time a fellow passenger had fallen asleep on Mitch Misenti. He traveled often for work (he was an investment consultant, always on the prowl for businesses that were underperforming) and had sat next to an incongruous variety of humanity. Some slept upright; some dozed on and off; some worked straight through; some chatted politely; some prattled on, baring their souls without invitation; just a few fell into a sound sleep and slouched over onto Mitch, and only one was allowed to stay asleep. Passenger 2C.

  George woke with a start as the dinner service began.

  “I’m so sorry. How long was I out?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Was I sleeping on you the whole time?”

  “Most of it,” Mitch said pleasantly.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “You looked like you needed the rest.”

  “I’d buy you a drink for your trouble, but they’re free here,” George said.

  “Since you slept on me and all, it seems like I should know your name.”

  “George. George Leoni.”

  “Nice to meet you, George. I’m Mitch Misenti.”

  During that first encounter, it seemed that Mitch asked all the questions. Later, when the flight was over, George knew very little about the man. Mitch, however, never missed an opportunity to arm himself with information.

  “What do you do?” he asked.

  “I’m a forest ranger.”

  “Are you really?” Mitch said, amused. Most attractive women he met were in sales; a disproportionate number were pharmaceutical reps. There was the occasional model or actress or model/actress. And once he’d met a woman who was an aspiring television host, a mutation of the model/actress that was new to him. But most of the women he encountered on the road and sometimes passed a layover with were under that vague umbrella of the corporate work force with job titles no one had ever thought of in kindergarten when dreaming of what they would be when they grew up. No five-year-old ever said she wanted to become a search strategist for a global technology conglomerate.

  George Leoni, forest ranger. It was so preposterous he had to choke back a laugh when she said it. It suited her, though. Something about her seemed meant for the wild. It might have just been the untamed eyebrows. He wasn’t used to the natural look. Most women he knew had been plucked and waxed and sprayed the color of something vaguely resembling a suntan. George had a natural tan that was a mix of geometric shapes and shades layered across her body like papier-mâché.

  “What would possess you to become a forest ranger?” There was a slight hint of horror in Mitch’s voice.

  “Humans weren’t meant to live their lives indoors in windowless cubicles under fluorescent lights breathing recycled air.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “Anyway, when I discovered there was a job where you could spend all day at a campsite, I knew it was for me.”

  “So what does a forest ranger do?”

  “There’s a broad spectrum,” George said. “I work for the state forestry service. I haven’t been out of school that long, so I man a campsite in the Russian River Valley. I keep the peace. I’m occasionally charged with pulling soil samples for research, surveying, determining fire risks.”

  “Have you ever had a run-in with a bear?”

  “I have.”

  “What do you do?”

  “First, I try to reason with it. If that doesn’t work, I shoot it.”

  “Shoot to kill?”

  “No, with a tranquilizer gun.”

  George would at times attempt to maneuver the conversation back to Mitch, but his replies were abrupt and final, as if he were hiding something. She learned that he lived in New York and was on an extended business trip. San Francisco, then Chicago. He owned a company that invested in Internet startups. When George asked for further details, Mitch asked George yet another question about her life. He wasn’t actually hiding anything, at least not at that point. It was all part of his game plan, finessed over years of careful scrutiny of the opposite sex. Mitch had a particular way with women—a formula of giving and withholding that almost always managed to hook them. Getting them to talk about themselves was the first step; remaining enigmatic was the second. There were other steps, but he used only the first two during that encounter.

  Mitch got George on the subject of forest fires, and their conversation didn’t end until the plane landed. That summer in California, fires had raged for months; just when one was quenched, another blazed. The newscasters called it a phenomenon of the drought, but every summer was the same. George took those fires personally, as if they were set by someone seeking revenge against her. She could pontificate for hours on the subject but had abbreviated her speech over the years.

  “In nature, lightning strikes occasionally cause small, localized fires that burn away the underbrush. The policy has been to put out those fires. So now there’s plenty of underbrush, which is the perfect fuel for massive destruction. Hundreds and thousands of acres have been destroyed, lives lost, because we didn’t trust nature to do its job.”

  Actually, the policy began with nature lover Teddy Roosevelt. George used to single him out in her impromptu lectures on the subject, but she’d quit when it seemed that Anna had extrapolated only that one bit of information: “All these forest fires. You know whose fault it is?” Anna once asked some drunk student she had cornered at a party. “Fucking Teddy Roosevelt’s fault.”

  As George and Mitch deplaned, the intimacy of their in-flight exchange faded into the polite surface conversation of virtual strangers.

  “It was nice meeting you, George,” Mitch said.

  “Yes, really nice talking to you too,” George said after a brief pause. She was expecting their parting to be accompanied by an invitation.

  They walked down the terminal together in silence. Almost as an afterthought, Mitch handed George his business card.

  “I come to San Francisco at least once a month. If you’d like to have dinner sometime, give me a call.”

  George phoned Mitch a week later, after she’d returned to San Francisco. Mitch called her back two weeks after that, just as he was about to board the aircraft on his way to San Francisco. He invited her to dinner that night. George said yes and scrambled to finish her paperwork, find an appropriate dress, and drive to the city. She was half an hour late. Mitch waited impatiently at the restaurant. By the time George got there, he had already put away half a bottle of wine.

  George was, once again, winded and apologetic when she arrived. Mitch slowly put his napkin on the table, got to his feet, and kissed her on the cheek. He leaned in and whispered in her ear.

  “I think I’m going to buy you a watch.”

  They began a long-distance relationship that was long distance mostly for George, who had to endure the brief weekend trips to New York City, red-eye flights in coach that left her spent and jet-lagged at least half the month but were, generously, bankrolled by Mitch. By then, George’s lack of timeliness had landed several rungs down on their ladder of arguments. Sex and housekeeping were at the top, although only the housekeeping arguments were voiced. Mitch would find a glass of water on the nightstand in the bedroom, an old coffee cup on the kitchen counter—a flagrant disregard for the use of coasters. He’d take George by the shoulders and march her over to the spot, as if she were a child being taught a lesson. At first, the message was patiently delivered.

  “Have you finished drinking that?” Mitch would ask, and George would sweep up the mug and promptly stow it away in the dishwasher. Later, when she’d hear the key in the door, she’d scramble through the house looking for anything amiss. And a few times, she’d drink stale tea or coffee as if it had just been brewed. Every ma
n had his quirks, and this was Mitch’s. She told herself that this was certainly superior to living with a slob. Although there were moments when she questioned that. When Mitch ceased voicing his reprimands, he would pick up her beverage and angrily clank around the kitchen, tidying up the invisible mess. She caught him once in the bathroom collecting her bleached-blond hairs off the floor. George tried to explain that you could lose up to a hundred hairs a day. How was she supposed to keep track of them all? Mitch kissed her on the forehead and suggested she brush her hair more often.

  The sex arguments were silent. If Mitch returned home to a mess (a few crumbs on the counter), he’d refuse to touch George that night. Her only recourse for affection would be a blowjob, an unspoken apology. Otherwise, sex was always according to Mitch’s desires; if George initiated, Mitch would roll her onto her side, kiss her on the cheek, and say a firm good night. There was never a reciprocal refusal from her. Anytime Mitch wanted her, he could have her. There was something sick about her desire, George knew. Once, just thinking about him being inside of her, she felt nauseated and saw spots in the air. No one had ever had that effect on her.

  Chatting with Kate on the phone, George said, “He just owns me in bed. You know what I mean?”

  “No,” Kate flatly said. Kate wasn’t as experienced with men as Anna and George, but she’d had a boyfriend in high school and a few in college and not once had she felt owned by them.

  George often felt that Kate and Anna were judging her, even during conversations about sex that the other two women thought were hypothetical. In college, George had had a boyfriend who could come only when he was being blown, and so she asked Kate and Anna how many blowjobs a week was normal.

  “I have no idea,” said Kate. “When I was nine and I first learned that people did that, I promised myself I’d never give a blowjob ever.”

  “How’d that work out for you?” George asked.

  “My nine-year-old self would be very disappointed in my adult self,” said Kate.

  Anna, the scientist, gave George a range of numbers. “Zero to three. Unless you’re talking about a sex worker. Then we’re talking double digits, at least. What’s your average?”

  “I haven’t counted. Just curious,” said George.

  Oh, she had counted. Ten in one week. Sex-worker terrain. But that was the last time she consulted with Kate or Anna about normal sexual behavior. Although she did break up with the ten-blowjob-a-week guy after she started to hear a clicking sound in her jaw.

  George felt ashamed of her suffocating desire for Mitch. She told Anna during one drunken phone call that when she had sex with Mitch, she stopped thinking. Anna said, “Huh,” which George interpreted as criticism, although in fact Anna was thinking that that sounded nice. Anna couldn’t recall ever having sex without a nonstop sportscaster-like commentary running in her head.

  There was no sex talk the night of the girls’ New York camping trip, even though it was often on George’s mind. Eventually George got lost in the sky and stopped thinking about Mitch’s penis. It was Anna who tired of nature first. She thought of another beer and the sleeping bag. Anna uncapped the bottle and retired for the evening.

  In the morning, Kate gathered wood for the fire while George started the kindling. Anna woke to a blazing fire. She had promised herself that she would go camping alone someday so that she could have all the jobs to herself, but she never did. Truth was, nature didn’t do it for her anymore. She missed the convenience of the city, the neon lights, the bed and the sheets and the blackout window shades that let you believe it was night all day long.

  Anna got the first cup of coffee even though she had had no part in the chore of making it. It was just how it had always been. She needed it most. George warmed her hands by the fire as she sipped the brew. Anna and Kate admired her expression of repose. She looked so at home. You’d never know that they were in Anna’s domain. George had found the spot yesterday and insisted they carry their supplies half a mile through untracked land.

  A few hours into sunlight, the earth began to hold the heat. Anna led Kate and George on a short trail to a private swimming hole beneath a thirty-foot waterfall. George tilted her head back and let the sun beat down on her face. She bent down to feel the water.

  “It’s warm enough,” George said, stripping down to nothing. “You guys coming in?”

  “What happened to your pubic hair?” Kate asked.

  “Some woman named Olga took it,” George said.

  “You look like a ten-year-old girl,” Kate said.

  “With a twelve-year-old’s tits,” Anna added.

  “It’s called grooming,” George said, padding along the rocks, looking for a place to dive.

  “You have no hair. Anywhere. Other than your head. And eyebrows,” Kate said.

  “Might be the best case of alopecia I’ve ever seen,” Anna said.

  “I don’t get it,” Kate said, baffled. “All of it is gone.”

  “My body, Kate. I get to do with it what I want.” George dove into the frigid water, blotting out the conversation.

  “Twenty bucks that it wasn’t her idea,” Kate said to Anna.

  “That’s a sucker bet,” Anna said. She stripped down, revealing a triangle of semigroomed hair that Kate found reassuring.

  Anna took in a deep breath, knowing that the cold water would knock it out of her. She followed George with a more tentative dive.

  “How is it?” Kate asked from the shore.

  “Just keep moving. You won’t notice a thing,” Anna said in short, gasping breaths.

  “That’s your answer for everything,” Kate said.

  George flicked on the light switch in the entryway, then glanced around, hunting for the remote—the control panel for the entire apartment. She found it, pressed a button, and the blinds were drawn, revealing a blue sky and an expansive view of skyscrapers with the Hudson River as a backdrop.

  “Holy shit,” Anna said, stealing the remote from George.

  Kate methodically scrutinized the conspicuous consumption, silently noting the glare of chrome and glass amid the tar-colored wood floors and the leather everything else. It was the most masculine home Kate had ever seen, other than in a movie about a rich banker/serial killer she had accidentally watched on cable. Kate gave the stereo console a white-glove test with the bottom edge of her white T-shirt. Came up clean. At least, she was pretty sure that the smudge on her shirt had been there before.

  While Kate tried to acquire some evidence that her friend lived in this three-bedroom Manhattan apartment, Anna pretended she was in an interactive museum and went crazy with the remote control, brightening and dimming the track lighting, raising and lowering the blinds, igniting the fireplace, and, with the press of a button and a magician’s hand flourish, making the fire disappear. When she tired of the fireplace, Anna plopped down on the bed-size sectional sofa, turned on the fifty-seven-inch TV, and channel-surfed with the rhythm of a metronome, erasing all complicated thoughts from her mind.

  “Can I live here?” Anna asked.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” Kate asked.

  While infomercials, cop dramas, telenovelas, game shows, and sitcoms blared in the background at varying decibels, Kate searched through the bathroom looking for George. That was where she found her, in moisturizers, fragrant salon shampoos, and a brush with her DNA all over it. She took a peek in the closet and saw the meager quarters for George’s clothes. She was about to take a closer look at a small row of cocktail dresses, a few still with price tags dangling, when she heard the television noise mute and a man’s voice in its place.

  “Anna, finally we meet,” Mitch said, giving her a kiss on the right and then left cheek. “I’ve heard some stories about you.” He winked expertly.

  “All lies,” Anna said.

  “George said you’d deny everything. This must be Kate,” he said, turning around and offering a warm smile in her direction.

  Kate held out her hand as she approached. Mi
tch understood the signal and shook it.

  “Welcome to my home. Our home. Sorry, old habits. Did you have a nice trip?”

  “It was wonderful,” George said. “Perfect time of year.”

  “Good,” Mitch said, putting his arm around her waist. “Glad you got it out of your system.”

  George explained, “Mitch hates camping.”

  “Maybe you’ll grow to like it,” Kate said.

  “Not gonna happen,” Mitch said with a nervous edge in his voice.

  George looked at her shoes. A puzzled expression took up residence on Kate’s face, and Anna returned her energy to the remote. A silence that begged for breaking set in.

  “Just tell them,” Mitch said to George, who responded with an impish grin.

  “Mitch has some phobias,” George said, “that pretty much exempt him from any kind of outdoorsy activities.”

  “I play basketball,” Mitch said, correcting her.

  “Indoors. At the Y,” George noted.

  “What kind of phobias?” Kate asked.

  “Nature,” George said.

  “Huh?” said Kate.

  “Mitch has a pathological fear of most things one would find in the wild. Insects, squirrels, legless creatures,” George said.

  “Snakes mostly,” Mitch said.

  “And worms,” George added. “He can’t even look at those things on television.”

  “I usually just watch sports,” Mitch said.

  “To a lesser extent, he’s afraid of rodents, wolves, bears, hyenas, mountain lions, and giraffes, which I really don’t get.”

  “The long neck,” Mitch said, as if it were obvious.

  To the casual observer, it might have appeared that Anna had tuned out the conversation, but then she briefly lifted her eyes from the mesmerizing remote. “Where do you stand on trees?”

  “I like trees,” Mitch said. “And I don’t mind birds. The nice ones. Not pigeons or vultures. But nobody likes pigeons or vultures.”

  “I love vultures,” Anna said.

  “It’s kind of funny how a forest ranger and a guy who hates nature end up together,” Kate said, not in a finding-it-funny way.