The Girl in the Flammable Skirt_ Stories - Aimee Bender [34]
His breathing has changed, I barely noticed the way he came in a pleased grunt. He slides off me, hand lingering on my hip. I’ve been waiting for this break so that I could run into the bathroom.
I open my eyes. His face is right there, redder and sweaty, a sappy smile on his face and I politely fake a smile back and excuse myself and go into the antique gold faucets and the little plastic bottles of hotel shampoo and sit on the toilet. For a second, I think I might split down the middle and reveal a six-year-old mess, like a Russian doll except we don’t match. But I don’t, the moment is over, I feel a few tears dribble down but the rush of them that I was swallowing is gone now. I’m just me in my body on the toilet, looking at myself in the mirror with my new short hair that is all messed up.
He’s asleep when I leave, let myself out the door and down the elevator and through the streets to my own apartment. It’s dark and there are no messages on the answering machine, the red light is steady. No one has called me. Patrick has not called me, and we were supposed to have plans tonight.
I stand in front of the mirror and I look at my body in this little dress I’m wearing, and my socks folding over different lengths and I try and forget that I just fucked a sixty-five-year-old man who only bought me one drink. I think about that whole dick fantasy, and I try to get myself to want to fuck myself. Here you go, I say, look at that fine ass, look at that body, you want to take her don’t you, you want to fell this girl.
But I just see some girl in a blue dress with short hair and sad eyes and I really don’t want to fuck her at all. She looks so tired to me. I go to the window and look out at the lights of the city which are every color and I stick my head out. It’s pretty windy, so it throws my hair back and I feel like a dog riding in a car and the wind is cold and brings tears to my eyes and I try to pretend they’re sad tears and sniffle a little.
The night is mostly quiet and I can only hear the sounds of things far away. After a while a cab pulls up downstairs. It honks and three girls come out of my building in little skirts and shiny hair and they get in the cab and they’re already laughing. The wind keeps pulling tears from my eyes. I’m poised like a gargoyle above them and I think about letting myself fall out the window and landing on the top of the cab to go where they’re going. Bending the metal of the roof until it presses down hard on one of the girls’ heads and she panics and yells at the driver who doesn’t listen. Help, she says to her friends, something’s going on, the car is caving in! They think she’s kidding but it’s real: there is a mass that is me on top of her, watching the lights and the sky pass me by in a rush, pushing down on that metal until I’m crushing her skull. My ass and her brain. My weight and her burden. I will close my eyes and feel the speed. I will feel the wind fill up my dress and pass through me in tunnels until I am so numb with cold, I can’t tell when we stop.
PART THREE
The Healer
Loser
Legacy
Dreaming in Polish
The Ring
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
THE HEALER
There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice. Everyone else’s hands were normal. The girls first met in elementary school and were friends for about three weeks. Their parents were delighted; the mothers in particular spent hours on the phone describing over and over the shock of delivery day.
I remember one afternoon, on the playground, the fire girl grabbed hold of the ice girl’s hand and—Poof—just like that, each