Open Water by Maria Flook Page B

shell. She was making a collection of dirtied sea litter—gluey skate eggs, tar-encrusted moon snails, tainted weed—for a display at the prep school. Her job as a prep cook at Saint George’s School included several peripheral duties, one of which was attending to the glass cabinet in the front hall; Holly thought the polluted shellfish and dirty kelp would be a good educational exhibit.
    When Holly was finished at First Beach she returned to the duplex to continue unpacking. The refrigerator smelled stale and she washed out the bins, then she unpacked some dishes so she could eat dinner. She had a package of Chinese noodle soup and she tore open the cellophane with her teeth. She broke the noodles over the churning saucepan and stirred the stiff clump. She looked around the kitchen. The cupboards showed circles of fingertip grime around the ceramic knobs. That would be easy to spruce up with alittle Spic ’n’ Span. The linoleum was pocked where the heavy kitchen table legs had sunk in; around every chrome foot there were several interlocking circles, like the Olympic logo. She blinked in another direction and saw flames rising on her front porch. Tongues of mottled orange and spirals of smoke drifted waist level.
    Fire lifted and swerved in the wind. She dropped her mixing spoon and ran over to the screen door. Her porch was burning. She couldn’t identify its source. Just then, another swatch of fire floated toward her cottage. Big sheets of fire drifted in the wind and caught on her railing. She went outside and stamped on the burning litter. It was still coming, sheet after sheet. Holly looked across the drive. The woman next door was setting fires. Large square pages floated to Holly’s side, flames curling and twisting the edges. Holly recognized the woman from the week before. The woman stood with her hands on her hips, although she didn’t have any figure, any hips. A man was standing beside her. The man was a good ten years older than Holly and dressed in a full-length jogging suit like a NASCAR driver. He was folding a big map but the woman jerked it from his hands and tried to light it on fire. He grabbed her wrist and peeled her fingers open. He took a plastic butane from her hand.
    He walked over to Holly to make sure the fires were out and he helped her collect the sooty leaves. They were architectural drawings. Floor plans. Holly recognized the demarcations showing the living room, kitchen, dining areas, the tiny crescents drawn with dotted lines to show which way the doors opened. Bathroom fixtures were inked in, square sinks, and the toilets like tiny Bartlett pears.
    “I’m sorry,” he told her.
    “What is this?”
    “It’s a villa at Château-sur-Mer, but my mother’s not ready to go.”
    “No, I should say she’s not,” she told him. She could smell his sweat tingeing his synthetic jogging sweater as he stooped over the curls of ash.
    He said, “My mother’s got cancer. Maybe that explains this kind of behavior, I don’t know.”
    “Your mother doesn’t look sick,” Holly said.
    “Today she’s wired. Another day, she’s doubled up.”
    “That’s terrible,” Holly said, “but aren’t there two people over there? A sick fellow and his nurse?”
    “That other one, he’s a stray. Wait here, I’ll clean this up,” he told Holly. He walked across the clamshells and into Rennie’s house to get some cleaning solvent. He didn’t look at his mother, who waited at the top of the stairs. Her hair was in two taut braids the blue-white color of cement block; everything about her looked strong and tricky. She came down the stairs and walked over to Holly, but Holly wasn’t sure how to greet her.
    “I’m not an arsonist at heart,” the woman said. “Some people start fires for less reason than this.”
    Holly didn’t know what to say.
    “You moved over here from town?” the woman said.
    Holly looked at her and nodded.
    “I saw you consorting with the enemy. I’ll forgive