Heartbreaker by Maryse Meijer Page B

“Burning Down the House.” We sung in unison, as loud as we could, her voice and my voice in perfect harmony inside the cab of the old van.
    *   *   *
    She was, indeed, busy: at five weeks and 500,000 acres she was busier and busier. Hundreds were evacuated from threatened homes, and though she hadn’t yet taken a neighborhood, she longed for one, bidding me time and again to describe what was in store: glass, garages, tennis courts, palm trees, pools. She had already had a few stray cars. Tires , she enthused. Oh, John, the tires!
    I kept driving, drinking Gatorade and eating bags of peanuts, soaking up the news. We had a lot to be proud of: she was on the cover of several local and national magazines , appeared on countless television shows, broke wildfire records daily. She grinned into the eyes of a hundred cameras, a thousand cell phones; I had a folder full of photos downloaded from libraries, her flames captured from every angle. Everyone for a hundred miles knew the name the papers gave her, but only I knew her true name, which was not a word but both a sound and a sight, a tremendous lightning roar scrawling itself across the parched earth.
    *   *   *
    In the evenings I would park the van and walk along the hills, as close as I could get to her, just off the freeway, the wind whipping my reeking T-shirt as we talked. There had never been anything like this in my life, nothing to prepare me for the intensity of my love for her, my happiness, my admiration, though there had been, I confessed, others: a half-dozen attempts in dry fields when I was a boy, a few Dumpster fires. Later, in my twenties and thirties, there’d been more serious encounters: a saucy little house blaze in the suburbs, an all-night conflagration at an abandoned lumber mill, the short-lived but brilliant rager at a used-furniture shop in the suburbs.
    Did you love them?
    No, I assured her, never. They were brave girls, all of them, and beautiful, yes, but they could not compare. Loving her was like loving a queen, or a mountain; she dominated me, she made me a subject, and yet when I looked into the van’s mirrors I didn’t see a plain soot-stained face or matted hair or a body encased in filthy rags; I saw something purer, lighter. I was untethering myself from the world of flesh. I was slowly becoming free.
    *   *   *
    Of course, I was not the only one in her thrall. Other admirers flocked by the dozens to the scenic-view pullouts off the highway: middle-aged men with canvas hats flapping in the high hot wind, teenagers in muscle T-shirts and cutoffs, vagabonds driving dusty RVs; young foreign couples with slick lips and beautiful hair. They carried binoculars, bag lunches, digital cameras, lattes and iced teas and Slurpees, expensive phones, cigarettes. I sat on the hood of my van, and though they took turns staring, no one spoke to me, and I had no desire to speak to them.
    I don’t understand why they don’t have more men on the ground, a woman complained, flipping a gray braid over her shoulder. It’s only twenty miles from the housing complex.
    Who cares about some rich people’s houses, a young man replied, scowling, his matchstick arms sleeved from wrist to bicep in ink. It’s nature’s revenge, man. Humans are parasites.
    You include yourself in that statement? the woman scoffed.
    Hell yes, I do.
    State’s spending as much as they can. It’s a recession, someone added.
    You can’t just let people’s property burn! the woman insisted. Someone shushed her and she turned, catching my eye, and scowled at me, though I had said nothing. There was a huge boom from the fire; a balloon of fresh flame splattered the sky. Everyone flinched and the boy laughed, a high, hysterical sound.
    I heard it was man-made, a Japanese woman said, looking at her phone. They think it was started in the Valley by a homeless person.
    Other voices