A Chemical Fire Read online

  “If everyone had that attitude, I wouldn’t have my hellcat,” he motions to the kitchen, alive with the sounds of boiling water. "She should have traded me in a thousand times over by now." He turns back to me.

  “I’ll meet you in the garage,” I say. He leaves and we walk into the kitchen, the room humid with the heavy smells of cooking.

  “Hello, little ones,” Mom says, her hair wild. She turns up the heat before kissing both of us. “You two look great."

  "And you look..." My eyes move to her hair.

  "Beautiful, I know. Did your father ask you about the car yet?”

  “That's funny, he didn’t mention it. Should I have asked him?”

  “It’s just his nature. Once he gets into something there’s no stopping him.”

  Gala turns and says, “Well, you’re officially not adopted.”

  I leave the two of them talking and limp for the garage, my father already dipping his shiny head under the hood. On the wall above him is a framed picture of our black Labrador, the dog I grew up playing with.

  “You still have that up?”

  He takes his head out, bending his neck to see it. “Of course. I love that picture. That was the day we made lobsters, remember how he stole one before we could even boil it? And we had to chase after him while this thing is thrashing in his mouth. Your mother took that picture when we finally cornered him."

  “I remember. He was a great dog. I thought it would kill you when he died.”

  “Well, I knew better. It was time for him to leave. Just time.”

  In the picture he’s holding the lobster in his teeth, his ink-black coat shining under the living room lamp.

  Dad turns back to the car. “Anyway you’re better at this than me, or you think you are. See what you can do.”

  I take off my jacket and get my arms into the grease and the metal. “How are you and mom doing these days?"

  “Well you know how it is, some days are better than others.”

  “And these other days, are they your fault?”

  He shrugs. “She has less and less patience for my shit. The car, everything else, you know how I am. But God bless her she holds on.”

  “You’re lucky the accident didn’t kill me or you’d have to take this to an actual mechanic,” I say into the radiator.

  “I guess there’s a bright side to it after all,” he smirks. I close the hood and get behind the wheel. He says, “You'll have to keep your head under that hood for about twenty more minutes before I can take you seriously."

  I turn the key and it starts. His eyes open wide. “I gave birth to a magician,” he says. I laugh. “Machines have always made sense to you. Too bad you threw your life away with this teaching thing.”

  “I’m just good with cars." I wipe my hands off as he pats my shoulder, then head back out.

  I stop at the bathroom to wash my hands and take one of my painkillers, swallowing it with water from the tap. The bottle is halfway into my pocket when I stop. I have to take them, yes, but they're not without their euphoric upside. I'm thinking if one feels good then two should feel better. So I take it back out and swallow a second, then return to the kitchen to find Mom and Gala cooking side-by-side.

  “Can I help?"

  “You can stir that.” Mom points to a small pot on one of the stovetop’s glowing coils. I grab a spoon and stir the sauce, bubbling lava with a layer of orange grease swirling around on top.

  Dad comes into the kitchen wiping his hands. “Did he tell you he got the car started?”

  “You know he’s not one to brag,” Mom says. Then she turns to me and says, “You could brag a little, you know.”

  “Don’t let him know that,” Gala laughs as I feel the painkillers kick in. It’s like a liquefying that starts in my eyelids and works its way down.

  “I’m serious, exceptional people can sing their own praises every so often.”

  “Mothers always think their kids are exceptional,” I say, stirring a little too hard. Some sauce spills over the top of the pot. It hits the hot stove and flares into a grease fire, shooting up at my hands as I pull away. I grab a towel and fan it, the flames roaring under the wind. The towel catches fire too and instinctively I drop it, right onto the pot.

  Gala runs over and grabs the handle, opens the window with the other hand and tosses the whole roaring mess out onto the grass.

  “My sauce,” mom shouts as it bounces and snarls, burning the lawn.

  Gala says, “You’re welcome, Mom.”

  One Every Four

  I figure if two feels good three must be better. And it is, rolling eyes good. That’s perfect for a while, until three isn’t having the same impact it used to, then it’s four and four is perfect. Four is like being reunited with a leg I never had.

  But then I’m running out because my prescription is only good once a month, so I start calling up friends I haven’t talked to in years, the ones I used to get sloppy with; drinking and smoking our way through the nights, summers of a thousand laughs, of falling asleep on weird floors and waking up with words on our faces. Getting to know each others refrigerators and toilets on an intimate level, cleaning out resin with paper clips while driving through neighborhoods to find places to park. Walking through school playgrounds after dark with cold feet while watching for cops. Making paranoid trips to convenience stores acting like we were fine, no pupils here just picking up some snacks. It was all so natural and fun and young.

  Then it was Gala and marriage and that slowly left, just weekends at first, friends saying to stop by more and me agreeing. I left behind the wave-crash walking and veins in the eyes. I sold out to be with my wife. Some friends understood.

  I got old and boring and discovered being married was a drug itself, and then a speeding car brought me something far quicker. A perfect drug measured out in precise milligrams, swallowed in public without looks, no signs of use, no damage to the lungs only the liver and that regenerates like no other human organ. Dry mouth, that’s the only side effect and that just means drink more water. I can drink more water, that’s easy. We should all drink more water anyway.

  Paul is the one who hooked me up with Janet.

  Bottle of a Hundred

  “Can anyone tell me what a hormone is?”

  Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later for full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.

  Everyone avoiding my eyes, I say, “They’re chemicals, released by cells in your body to affect other cells.”

  Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later for full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.

  “They’re usually carried in the blood,” I say.

  Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later. Full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.

  “You can also say they’re messengers, carrying signals between cells. And believe me, it takes just the slightest bit to do what they do.”

  Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later for full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.

  “So tell me,” I ask my students, “How do you make a hormone?”

  They check their notes, flip pages, exchange blank faces.

  “Kick her in the
knee,” I say, and they laugh.

  Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later for full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.

  “Mr. Cotard,” Keith raises his hand halfway. “Aren’t hormones what make you, you know…horny?”

  “You’re thinking of Penthouse,” I say. He grins, looking at the others who are already snickering.

  Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later. Full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.

  “No, you’re right, and they do a lot more too, depending on the hormone. Everything from puberty, which you guys can blame for your sudden sexual interest and damn-the-man attitude, to the induction of apoptosis, or programmed cell death.”

  “I like the first one better,” Keith says and everyone erupts.

  Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later for full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.

  “Alright guys, I’ll be right back," and I head down the hallway to the teacher’s restroom, where I take four at noon.

  Withdrawn

  Gala says, “Are you alright?”

  “Perfect. Better than perfect. Why?”

  There’s nothing anywhere. No one has or no one’s answering. All I want is to overdo something. I want to ignore the directions, take too much, quadruple the dosage. I want to be unfit to operate vehicles and heavy machinery. I want marked drowsiness to occur.

  “You seem somewhere else.”

  Numb me, blur me, slur me, stop me.

  “I guess I’m tired.”

  “You’re always tired.”

  Running out is desperate stares. I take the last few and wait for the signs. Go through the day until it hits- a stomach cramp and a few beads of sweat. The next few days, it’s like the flu but worse, one that’s my own fault. It's three days of chaotic temperatures and phone calls and toilets, three nights of writhing and not sleeping.

  “I’ve been getting sick a lot.”

  “You never used to.”

  “I know, it’s weird.”

  The only defense is to fill myself with any substitute I can find. Alcohol, cold medicine, sleep aids, muscle-relaxers, herbs. I search methodically through medicine cabinets for stickers: Controlled Substance. Keep out of reach of children. Do not stop taking suddenly. Do not combine with alcohol and/or other sedatives. Giant dares every one of them. When it's bad enough, the warnings become the directions.

  “Jesus, John, you’ve been living in the bathroom tonight.”

  “It’s my stomach, I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that.”

  I want to sleep until the assault stops, skip the attack on my senses. Everything feels wrong, smells bad, tastes strange. Colors are off. It’s the world but worse. And the chills, they never, ever stop.

  “So what do you want to do tonight, love?”

  “I really don’t think I’m up for going out, I’m sorry.”

  And then, after a few days, it lifts. It’s all gone, fresh, finally clear and it seems all right and happy and over, that whole episode of mistakes and compromise. Out, proud, and done. Finally, finally done. I make plans and swear to get that thing done. Swear everything’s changed.

  “You’ve been saying that a lot lately. Maybe it would help if you were working again.”

  And then the call comes, and it all starts over.

  It’s been like this for almost a year now.

  “I’m sorry. I know.”

  The People, They Talk

  My old neighborhood was so much nicer.

  “Hey,” a kid yells from his bike.

  Last year I got home and kissed Gala. I probably kissed her a couple more times and graded some papers. My father would have called asking my help buying a snow blower or a printer or whatever he had his mind on as my mother told him questions to ask me, then took the phone from him anyway like she always did. And it annoyed me, like it always did.

  And I was eating pills in secret.

  “Hey, you.”

  This year, same day, I have half a wife. She says it’s a temporary separation but I feel like it might not stay that way. That’s what makes me sleep in thirty-minute spurts, my chest and back slimy-cold and still I do nothing. I do what I do: I swallow it. So my car is gone and my job is gone and I’m living on my own, temporarily.

  The kid on the bike shouts, “You were on TV!”

  I just want people to stop whispering, the people who say I'm guilty and curse my name even though it’s not true and I have no way of proving it.

  “You were on the news, right?”

  No one believes me all the way through, not even Gala. My half-wife’s voice wavers on the phone just enough so I can hear it. I know her voice like no one else, and it destroys me. It takes me apart, piece-by-piece.

  “You’re that guy from the high school. My dad say’s you’re a real piece-a-shit,” and he pedals off.

  No one believes me, but I didn’t set it.

  Tile and Bile

  He says, “Yeah, I fucked her. They found her dad in a hotel.”

  Janet checks the TV for the exchange, wants to see how high his baby went. He says, “I’m telling you, babies are the new pork bellies. When the rest of the world catches up you’ll see baby rates in shop windows, like foreign currencies.”

  “Like lobsters,” I point, and the newspeople say it's supposed to snow tomorrow.

  My feet fill with glass as I make my way to the bathroom, head soaking in gasoline. I can smell my future leaking out my pores. The cold-tile strobing in my eyes. I reach the toilet and puke out a pound of Oreo’s and two fish sticks, the mixture swirling around and swimming lazy like post-coital. The Oreos look stuck back together and my bucket-echo laugh confirms it.

  “They found him with his dick out,” Janet says. “Her dad hung himself with his own tie, believe that? My new hero.”

  I tidal wave into another go, vomit-spraying poisons in every color, muscles tensed for action. Blood pools in my head and I stare at what I’ve made: pills floating in vodka. The toilet is filled the way I just was; my very own stunt-stomach. I reach in and fish out the pills, waste not want not.

  Janet says, "I'm getting more tomorrow you sick fuck."

  Head hanging in the toilet, my hair floating in the dirty water, I confess: Eyelufherjahnit. Jahniteyelufher.

  This is what he hears, spit-dripped and ceramic-swallowed.

  “The fuck you say?”

  I love her, Janet. Janet, I love her.

  He says, "Find my car tomorrow, you'll have everything you need."

  The Great Fire

  I’m asleep on Jordan Street when it comes for me, dreaming of an earlier year and putting spit into my pillow. The apartment door goes angry and its shout sends the silverfish scattering to hide under laundry and plastic cups and wrappers.

  “Open up,” the door says.

  I push up onto my elbow and my face weighs one hundred pounds. "What do you want?"

  “Open up or I’ll use force.”

  “You can’t. You’re a door.”

  “Quit fucking around, you missed your date."

  I think for a second, then I say, “We had a date?”

  “Court date. Don't make me kick it down.”

  I try explaining how I'm innocent but it doesn’t care, so I do the next best thing and grab the H for the ride. After all that sitting in Janet’s car earlier today, trying not to buy it, I just came home and fell as
leep from my last six pills. I paid for the H, I might as well try the stuff.

  Officers are waiting for me in the hallway when the door opens. My hands raise. One of them asks if they need to use handcuffs and I tell them I’m not dangerous.

  The shorter one says, “Put your hands down. You’re lucky no one called the media, we’d have to put on a show.”

  Down the mildew-steps and out the front we stand at the patrol car, two cops and a criminal watching neighbors go by and opinions under. The night is cold with the wind coming over the snow banks. They tell me to move so I get into the back on my own, behaving, keeping my hands free to work.

  "So this is the guy," the taller one says from the driver's seat.

  "You were really a teacher? You?"

  Is that hard to believe," I ask.

  “You look like death.”

  Yeah, well.

  “So did you do it?”

  The junk digs into the crease of my crotch, a bag and a promise. “According to the news I did. Channel six reported I was having an affair with one of them. Personally, I believe it. I believe everything I see on TV.”

  The taller one turns. “My neighbor’s kid was in that class. The attitude drops or you do.” Out the window, my wrinkled landlord is zipping up her coat and not renewing my lease.