The Incendiaries Read online

  The truck driver broke his leg, Phoebe said. I wasn’t hurt. My mother absorbed all the impact. She bled to death before she could be taken to the hospital. I was still in high school, underage, so I had to go live in my father’s house.

  I hadn’t spent much time with him, growing up. My mother’s plan, once she left Seoul, was to raise me alone. But then, he followed us to the States, pleading to live with us again. She didn’t let him, at first. When she did relent, it was because she thought I’d benefit from having both parents around. Often, they fought; he turned violent, at times. I sat at the top of the stairs, one night, while they shouted. He punched her, and she fell. She didn’t get up, so I ran down. I thought she’d died. She wasn’t moving. I wanted to call for help, but he took a glass of water from the dinner table. He splashed it on her face until she woke up. Still, she kept trying. I was five before she asked me if I’d be all right if she left him again. If we left, she said. You and I. I said yes, let’s go. I picked sides at once.

  He stayed civil, though, when I had to move in with him. Polite, like a distant relative. He didn’t even ask if I wanted to come to his church. He might have believed I’d refuse. I noticed him crying, in the kitchen: I pretended I hadn’t. If he was grieving, I didn’t think he had the right.

  I finished the last month of high school. Then, as soon as possible, I left. I came to Noxhurst. In Littell, during the college president’s opening talk, I walked out. I crossed the silent campus while everyone else sat in chapel pews, listening to the president tell them how glad they should feel. This school, he’d said. He called it one of the nation’s pinnacles of learning. Such luck. Privilege. The obligation to give back. In front of Latham gate, a fellow truant held a bluish flame up to the key-card light. The gate didn’t open; the flame went out. He flicked his flame on again. I asked what he was doing.

  It’s broken, he said. This gate. It’s busted. Won’t open.

  I could give it a try, I said.

  He paused, but then he stepped back. His broad face was pink, sullen. The tall bulk of him listed toward the stone arch. I swiped my card, and the gate rang open. I tried not to laugh. He said I was his hero. You’ll have to let me give you a drink, he insisted, until I followed him to his suite. He told me his name, Julian. Julian Noh. I gave him mine. He asked if I was also Korean, lifting his hand for a high five. I could tell, he said. Tilting into his futon, he slid on his back, sighed, then closed his eyes. I tiptoed as I left. In the morning, I had a waist-high bouquet, white gladioli, propped against the doorsill. It included a long note from Julian, apologizing. He requested that I come to his suite to join him in, as he put it, a wine-tasting shindig. I did, and then I went with him to more parties, not getting back to my place until dawn. We split a late lunch that afternoon.

  Phoebe, he said. Last night, you met a Mitch. Blond, kind of thin, this high. Tell me if you liked him. I do, I think.

  I asked Julian questions. He tried to reciprocate, asking about life before Edwards. No, I said. First, I have to know everything about you. I want all your secrets, Julian. Let’s start at the beginning. Big or small, what’s the first lie you told? I watched him smile, each wide tooth showing. It was like a picket fence swinging open: his smile invited me inside.

  Since I had Julian as a guide, I started meeting the Edwards students admitted into this pinnacle of learning with the single purpose, from what I could see, of having fun. To flaunt the privilege. In thrift-store ballgowns, they splashed through off-limits fountains. Champagne foamed like gold dissolving. Open up, like a good girl, Julian said, a white pill glinting in his palm. I tipped back my head. The pills split time. I flopped on the wet lawn to cool down. Light spilled from open doors. Drunks lurched, spun. Silhouettes flared into detail, then fizzled out again. I woke late, head muddled. Lunch lasted hours. I piled up invitations. I switched roles with Julian, taking him places. He followed along, gleeful. Don’t forget, though, he said. I’ve called dibs on you. Hands off, I tell them. She’s all mine.

  * * *

  –

  Oh, but I wasn’t. Before Will, I had, for instance, the squash recruit who liked sucking toes. The poet who kept a ball pit in his suite’s living room. Girl bait, he said. The jazz flautist. Phil, who pissed in the hall closet because, late at night, he believed it to be a bathroom stall, and Tim, who lined his room with emptied wine bottles, like trophies. But no, I don’t mean to be glib. I got in the habit, with friends, Julian, of turning one-night flings into stories. The truth is, I wince if I think of that first month at Edwards. I recall it in pieces: ill-lit body parts, spit-glossed penises. Pinched nipples. Elbows and bad aim. They’d wheeze, then mild pain. Is that all right? they’d ask. I lied, to be kind.

  I drank a lot. In bars, I left full drinks unattended. Then, I gulped them down. If I failed to be careful, she might notice. She’d have to come back. One night, I put on the shortest dress I owned, and then I sat on a low wall on the edge of campus, legs dangling. Red lights spotted the intersection. I watched the crowd pass, thinking, Pick me up, until someone did. He didn’t have protection. It’s fine, I said. Go ahead.

  Downtown, in a split-level dive called Levi’s, I fell into conversation with Greg, a local, a high-school dropout in his thirties. I’d first met him because he sold Julian drugs. I went home with Greg, then I let him tie me to his bed. He fucked me through a hole he razored open in my tights. I shared a bottle of gin with him; I felt light-headed, ill, until I woke in a hospital bed.

  I was brought in throwing up, a nurse explained. No, I’d come in an ambulance. I had a little too much alcohol, but I’d be all right. The hospital had given me fluids. Hush, doll, she said. You’ll be fine.

  It was late, almost morning. I left the bed when a man behind the partition began yelling. I was still in the previous night’s clothes, though with ankle-length hospital socks covering my feet. Torn tights chafed my crotch. I walked the half-mile home, the sidewalk cold through thin fabric. Mica specks, like felled stars, prickled the stone. But most of it was filth. I avoided broken glass, ripped foil bags. Slicks of fresh dog shit. I picked each step through trash. The sun was rising. I hadn’t been allowed outside, when I was a child, without putting on sun lotion. My mother’s light, cool hands patted protective liquid on my face. She fastened a wide-brim hat beneath my chin, tying the ribbons in a firm knot, loops aligned. Such pains she’d taken, for the little I’d since become.

  10.

  WILL

  I stayed the night with Phoebe. In the morning, I watched as she slept, netted in white sheets. Nostrils flared with each long inhale. Pearl studs glinted at slim earlobes. Minute, fish-scale veins patterned Phoebe’s eyelids in faint blue. The birthmark speckling a left clavicle, slight indents at both temples—from the start, I wanted Phoebe memorized. In the old-gold light of morning, I had the idea she might have been a wild sea-creature who’d washed onshore, luck’s gift, legs tucked like a mermaid’s tail. I learned to swim before I could walk, she’d said. But I was so involved with the piano, I went three years without using my own pool. It was still early, not quite six. I waited as long as I could; at last, I tried shaking Phoebe awake, but she rolled toward the wall.

  * * *

  –

  I left Platt Hall as a drunk slouched past, the label on his bottle dissolving. I wished he’d solicit cash; in the mood I was in, spilling with goodwill, I’d have relished giving him something. If I’d been riding the bus, I’d have looked around to find a person who could use my seat. Instead, I thought to check my phone, and I saw I’d missed a call. I listened to the message my mother had left: the station-wagon engine had died. In the shop, she’d learned that fixing it would cost hundreds of dollars. While she could enlist a church friend to provide rides to and from work, they lived on opposite sides of town. She needed the engine fixed as soon as possible.

  When I knew she’d be up, I called. I don’t have the money, not yet, but I’l
l figure it out, I promised.

  What I’d do without you, I don’t know, honey, she said. She laughed a little, rueful. The exhale rustled the line, and she almost sounded like her old self again. The mother I’d had used to bring kitchen-table bouquets from the garden: buttercups, dahlia. Goldenrod in armfuls, the paint-daub petals trailing, flickering, like tattered flags. Nose dusted with pollen, she sang Donizetti arias in phonetic Italian. When I was an infant, she waltzed me to bel canto until I slept. She’d been ill a long time; still, it wasn’t until last March, in my father’s absence, that she first had to be hospitalized. I returned home from a spring-break mission to Beijing, a trip I’d had planned for months, to find she’d moved into the living room, stationed on an airbed to avoid what she’d shared with him. He’d fled to Florida to live with a girlfriend we hadn’t known existed. I learned this from the note he left; my mother had stopped talking. The cut flowers had wilted. I changed the vases. When she did, at last, get up, she sat gazing into a compact. Once, as I watched, she brushed lipstick on the reflection.

  But when I was hired at Michelangelo’s, Paul, who owned the place, had indicated I might attain a future promotion. He could use a college kid like me to help snap the whip, like an assistant-managing type, he said. Since then, he hadn’t brought it up. I thought of what I’d spent these past couple of months on clothes. Oxford shirts, marlin-printed shorts. The white-soled boat shoes, out of season until spring. Ribbon belts. In thrift stores, online, in the attempt to look like what I claimed to be, I scavenged polo shirts in pink, azure, and apple-green, the bizarrely colorful regalia of the ruling class. I wore the polos layered; I ridged collars upright, like gills. Meanwhile, my mother bagged groceries in Carmenita. I deposited much of what I made in tips into my mother’s account, helping with basic necessities: rent, medical bills, but each week I still had a little extra, which, if I’d saved, I could have given at once, instead of asking that she wait.

  * * *

  –

  Fifteen minutes before the gates opened at Michelangelo’s, I found Paul. I asked if he’d thought about the promotion he’d said was possible. He stood at the reservations pulpit, writing in his tight script on the back of a menu. Sure, I’ve thought about it, he said, not looking up. His gold pen scratched out a line.

  Is anything decided? I asked.

  The pen scraped. His belt-halved gut bulged out, grazing the zinc edge, like an animal about to lunge. It fit his look of menace: if provoked, his flesh might achieve its escape. I glanced past him, trying not to stare. In a torn baseball cap, a man slumped against the other side of the glass. It had started raining.

  Paul?

  What’s that? he said.

  Do I qualify for the job?

  Kid, what’s the rush?

  I don’t mean to push you—

  Sure, you do, he said.

  —but I need the cash. Since you said that I, I’ve waited tables two months, so I was hoping . . .

  He dropped his pen on the pulpit top. Tell me something, he said. Do I look like I give a fuck what you need?

  No.

  He nodded. On the third upswing, he raised his head. Do I care what you need, or what I need?

  What you need, Paul.

  I’ll ask you something, he said. Why do people sit down at a restaurant like this, make a night of it? It’s not the food. If all they want is to eat, they can drive half a mile to the closest shop, buy a big, filling roast fucking chicken for six bucks. It’s not this crowd. Who spends to line up at the trough with a pile of strangers to get fed in unison like pigs? No. They’re wild about a first-rate place like this because it’s selling an illusion.

  He paused, expecting a response. It’s an illusion, I recited.

  That’s it, he said. Illusions, kiddo—but of what?

  The illusion of love, I said. I’d overheard him giving this catechism to waiters before. He clapped my back.

  Bingo. To be fed well is also to feel loved. But like with all illusions, you’ve got to be consistent. This cousin of mine, he worked in Disneyland, and he dressed up like one of those animals, Mickey, Ducky, I forget. His one job, it’s to strut around, let the little kids take pictures with him. They’d shout like he was this big hero. Not so hard, right? But then one day he felt sick, so he took off his head to throw up, and this one kid who noticed, he lost his shit. See, the kid believed my cousin was the cartoon. From the kid’s angle, Mickey had ripped off his own head. Like that, my cousin lost his job. Why? Because he busted the illusion. His boss told him, Idiot, you should have thrown up in your costume. Will, at times, I look at you, I can tell you’re not faking it right. I want you to act like this place is a magic kingdom. Do you get what I’m saying?

  I said I did. He picked up his gold pen again. The first diners traipsed in, a trio of women collapsing rain-slick umbrellas. The host assigned them to my section. Writing down drink orders, I considered Paul’s speech. He wasn’t criticizing my table-waiting abilities. Otherwise, I wouldn’t still have this job, let alone the night shift. But I should try acting more like him, I thought. Slap backs as he did, dispersing jokes, high spirits. It’s often all people want, urging a change: be like me, shaped in this image.

  * * *

  –

  Guests blew in from the street, wind-spun, gasping for alcohol. They ate, paid, and left, fast, letting the tables go. It worked to my benefit, but I didn’t understand people who finished, then rushed out. If I’d paid to eat at a restaurant like Michelangelo’s, I’d dawdle. I’d sip a tall limoncello, let waiters refill the glass. I was about to drop a five-top’s check when the pinstriped man in my section’s last open table stopped me. His wife had questions about the veal chop. Of course, I said. The kitchen had run low on the dish, a point I emphasized. If he wished to have it, I should put in the order as soon as possible.

  Instead, he elicited details about the preparation while his wife flipped through the wine list, silk dress pleats glinting. I’d have liked to watch how light played on the gas-blue of the dress. The left dress strap pulled taut across the dip of the woman’s collarbone like a bridge traversing a ravine, and one could imagine following its arched, liquid line, sliding a hand back, down until the first swell of buttocks—but I had a job to do. I kept my attention on the man as I answered his questions.

  If I say I want it rare, is that something your chef will give me? he asked.

  Yes, sir, he—

  I can’t eat veal that isn’t rare.

  You’ll hear it bleat.

  With that, he smiled. I took down his orders, but once I made a trip to the kitchen, I had to return to apologize. Someone else had claimed the last available chop.

  Is that right? he said. Extending a lightly muscled arm across the table, in a gesture more languid than alarmed, his wife moved a painted fingertip along the top of his hand, from the wrist to his third knuckle joint. He inhaled. I want to talk to Paul, he said, lowering his voice. He’s a friend of mine. Go tell Paul that Miles Harris says hello. He’ll recognize the name.

  I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Conti isn’t here.

  I thought I saw him. Is he gone for the night? You should tell him that putting an item on his menu, then not having it—it’s false advertising, which isn’t legal.

  I nodded. I let him talk. Paul was downstairs, in his office. If this man had been his friend, I’d have known it by now. When I could, I apologized again. I offered cocktails, gratis; I mentioned the suckling-pig ravioli, the Michelin critic who’d extolled Michelangelo’s poached quail. I convinced him to substitute the quail for veal, but when I brought him the martinis he sent them back. I fetched a second round; he told me to wait. His round lips parted for the rill of clear liquid. He took more sips. The drink’s fine, he said, but I’ll switch waiters.

  I misheard him, I thought. But there was no mistaking his satisfied face, the gin-wetted lips widening with a grin.
I’ll find someone else, I said. I turned away, but not before he muttered to his wife. She chortled. It was the first time she’d emitted a sound. I found Isabel, one of the other waiters, frothing hot milk into a tin. I asked if she could take the table. I’m falling behind, I explained.

  She looked up from the machine, surprised. I have a full section, too, she said.

  Please, Isabel, I said. She’d trained me during my first week here, and still passed along helpful hints. Push the branzino. That three-top tips badly. Watch out for Paul tonight. I tried to keep a light tone, but I hoped she knew I wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t urgent. I took the foamed milk; I poured it into the waiting cups. I’ll owe you, I said.

  She shook her head. Earrings swiveled, thin feathers. Sure, all right, she said. I returned to the other tables, but what had been an even, yielding night lost its swing and give. I fell behind. I dropped wine-bloodied napkins. Though I listed specials or balanced plates, I kept hearing the wife’s laugh. Then, standing up, a man pushed back into my shins. Careful, he said, as if I’d shoved into him.

  I apologized. I went to the bathroom, leaned on the sink. The basin burned white in the glass. No loss occurs in isolation, and a side profit of the faith that I missed at times like this was how easily, while Christ shone in each face, I loved. If hatred cuts both ways, to forgive can be a balm, and I often missed, as I would a friend, the more tranquil person I now had no reason to be.

  I opened the spigot. I washed my hands, then face; eyes closed, I saw my mother wringing out long, baptized hair, twisting it into a rope. Released, the strands flew loose, flicking wet silt. She picked me up, my legs swinging. I thought I felt His elation in her hold, glimpsed it in the silt-sparked light. I used to love imagining His hand upon me, its heft and size: I’d known His impress in the laddering of my ribs, His fingerprint in the whorl crowning my head. The God I followed had been as real to me as a living person—more real, since I’d put so much into inventing Him.