Pyro

Jodie embraced the machine experimentally, her fingers searching for a hold. They found none. The entire contraption was cruelly sharp, with all its metal edges and awkwardly placed knobs. Jodie imagined the vents slicing her fingers open. She tried to rock the machine in its window seat, but it wouldn't budge. She saw then that she would have to lift the window to free the air conditioner. Jodie's consideration of this problem was rather slow, her mind more suited to abstractions than mechanics.

Jodie leaned all her weight against the air conditioner and pressed the heel of her hand against the window jamb. The wooden frame creaked. The window had not been opened in the two years she had been living here, at least, and for all she knew not for years before that. The wood was swollen, the gap painted over. Jodie didn't expect it to move, but then it did, yielding with surprising ease. The heavy air conditioner shifted too, alarming her. She grabbed the machine with both hands to steady it.

Jodie's head throbbed from the stifling heat. Sweat poured down her face. She licked her lips and admired the salty taste, her own smell. Jodie liked to sweat, but the heat had finally grown unbearable. Triple digits outside and then last night the air conditioner began to make a horrible grinding noise. The air it emitted was only vaguely cool. Jodie was surprised to learn after several phone calls that not only did air conditioner repairmen not make house calls, but also that there seemed to be no new units available in the entire city. Everyone was sold out and no one expected new machines in until the end of the week.

Jodie tried again, reaching her hand into the small gap she had lifted the window, cautious of pinching her fingers. She grabbed the air conditioner by the catch which had secured it. Her muscles strained against the weight. With her other hand, Jodie threw the window up further. The air conditioner rocked menacingly outward. She grabbed it with both hands, and vividly imagined it slipping from her grasp, falling four stories to the sidewalk below and crushing a passer-by. This scenario was considered and rejected. There was no story there, not a good one anyway.

Jodie pulled with all her strength. She staggered backwards and finally extracted the machine. It slipped and she panicked, dropping it to the floor with a metallic clatter and missing her bare left foot by about an inch.

"Shit!"

If the machine hadn't been broken before, it surely was now. It had gouged the hard wood floor, too. Good-bye security deposit, or whatever was left of it after the broken tiles in the bathroom and the piss stains in every corner of the carpeting. But at least the damn thing was out of the window. Jodie had accomplished what she had set out to do.

Jodie stuck her head out the window and inhaled the dry, baked city air. It smelled carbonous and yellow-brown from the flatulence of a million automobiles. There was no breeze to speak of. The air outside was only slightly less stifling than the air inside the apartment. After all that effort, the open window would hardly make any difference.

She looked down at the street, forty or fifty feet below, and had a brief morbid fantasy about jumping. It was no good. The dramatic possibilities of suicide were limited.

Jodie looked over at the high-rise building across the street from hers. Dozens of windows, dozens of stories. Probably none of them worthwhile, but Jodie had always been intrigued by open windows. Most of the windows either contained air conditioners like the one she had just removed, or were shaded. Most of the others revealed only the flickering blue light of a television, or dazed people stretched out on couches to watch. Too damn hot to do anything else on a day like this. Jodie scanned the rows and columns until she found, in a window on the third floor, a woman reclining on a couch wearing only a black bra and panties.

Jodie strained to see, at this distance it was unclear, but the woman seemed to be very young. Maybe as young as eighteen. A thin girl with short dark hair, sitting in her underwear before an open window because it was beastly hot and she had no air conditioning. The girl lifted her hand to her mouth. Smoking? Yes, Jodie saw her exhale a white cloud of smoke.

The girl sat up suddenly. The hand with the cigarette made a violent gesture, pointing towards another room. Angry. Her mouth moved and Jodie fancied that she could hear the girl's voice even above the traffic noise coming from the street between them.

Another figure stepped in front of the window. A man. Also barely clothed, wearing only white boxer shorts. The man was tall and muscular. He seemed to dwarf the girl. His back was to Jodie, and she saw that he had long, sandy-colored hair. His bearing spoke anger, like the girl's. They were arguing. The man raised his arm, as if to strike, but then gestured furiously in the same direction the girl had. He was smoking, too.

The man turned and faced out the window. Jodie shrank back instinctively, but he was looking down at the street. He leaned his elbows on the open windowsill and smoked. His mouth was drawn into either a grin or a grimace, Jodie couldn't tell at this distance. He flicked his cigarette out the window, then turned and said something final to the girl before stalking away out of view.

The girl leaned back and continued to smoke. Jodie watched her for a long while, until the girl also disappeared to wherever the man had gone.

The sheets were damp with sweat. Two in the morning and the heat hadn't let up. It didn't seem to be any cooler now than it had been during the day. Jodie had read once that asphalt retained heat and now imagined invisible waves radiating from the street and penetrating her walls.

She wondered why in God's name she had to live in Phoenix. But she knew the answer. Because she had grown up in Wisconsin and had despised it.

Jodie had always enjoyed the heat, but that had been when she could escape it with the push of a button. Now it was unremitting. Roscoe, curled contentedly beside her, only added to her misery. She pushed at his bulk, tried to at least contain him to half the mattress, but he wouldn't budge.

"OK," she said. "That's enough. Off!"

The beast did not stir. Roscoe was Carrie's dog, a rottweiler the size of a small pony. He seemed to be made of muscle, and had planted himself squarely on the mattress.

"Goddamn it, Roscoe," Jodie said through clenched teeth. "Off!"

A low growl emanated from Roscoe's throat, a warning, and Jodie surrendered. She was angry at herself for being intimidated by the dog, but she knew the animal could easily kill her if he so chose. She had imagined this many times.

Jodie snarled a curse and flopped out of bed. She slammed the bedroom door and stomped out to the kitchen damning the dog, the heat, Carrie, herself. Hurling the freezer open, she pulled out a tray of ice cubes. Jodie filled the sink and dumped the tray into the water. Before she could brace herself, she plunged her face into the ice water. Jodie stood up, gasping at the shock of the icy water coursing over her naked body.

An old fan droned in the window where the air conditioner had been. Jodie had draped a wet hand towel over the fan in an attempt to cool the air a little, but the towel had dried out. As Jodie peeled it from the fan to re-wet it, she glanced across the street.

The window she had spied on that afternoon was dark, but the one beside it- which Jodie had already determined to be the bedroom of the same apartment- glowed with a flickering orange. Candle light. The girl Jodie had seen earlier was now stretched out upon a bare mattress laid on the floor. She was naked. One of her arms was crooked behind her head as she stared up at the ceiling, a cigarette jutting from her lips. Jodie could make out the dark 'v' of her pubic hair and the flickering shadows cast by her small breasts. The candles were everywhere, a dozen or more points of unsteady light.

Jodie moved the fan to the floor and crouched in front of the window to watch.

A door opened. The man emerged from another room. He was also naked. Jodie strained to see, but at this distance, his genitals were only a dark blur. As he crossed the room towards the girl, she sat up and stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray on the nightstand. The man rolled his neck, the cigarette clenched in his lips, as the girl leaned into him. Her head slowly bobbed at his waist.

Watching this, Jodie analyzed her own reactions, as if for later description. Shame and arousal, in about equal measures. But writers observe, she reasoned. Observation is just a polite word for voyeurism.

The man stepped back. The girl turned around and thrust her rear end towards the man, offering herself. The man drove into her, not bothering to extinguish his smoke as he took her from behind.

Jodie watched until they finished and blew out the candles and there was nothing more to see.

Jodie sat at her writing desk, in relative terms the coolest spot in the apartment. She was positioned in front of the window, in front of the fan, and in front of the dead black screen of the computer monitor. An unopened pack of cigarettes rested on the keyboard. Camel Ultra-Lights.

She hadn't smoked since a brief rebellious stage in high school, and wasn't fully sure why she had an urge to now. The immigrant clerk at the convenience store had been impatient with her as she tried to choose from the bewildering selection of brands. He expected cigarette purchases to be brief transactions, only momentary distractions from the "Jerry Springer Show" playing on the tiny black-and-white television behind the counter. The clerk had made no effort to hide his annoyance at Jodie's indecision, and this had amused her. He was a character, all right. Jodie wondered if his lilting accent had been Indian or Pakistani, and if she could capture it on the page without turning it into an insulting caricature.

When she walked out of the store a few minutes later, the pack stuffed into her pocket, she felt like she'd gotten away with something. He hadn't even asked to see her driver's license.

She tore the pack open now, smelling the sharp scent of the tobacco. Jodie tried to shake a cigarette out, as she had seen people do, but they were packed too tightly and she had to pick one out with her fingers. She caught her reflection in the blackened computer monitor and experimented with several ways of holding the cigarette between her lips until she found one that looked natural. Only then did she realize that she didn't have a lighter. There probably weren't even any matches in the apartment.

The cigarette held between her lips, filter growing moist with saliva, Jodie went into the kitchen. She bent over the stove and lit her smoke off the blue flame. Roscoe padded into the room as she took her first tentative baby puffs. He cocked his head at her curiously and let out a small bark.

"Fuck you, Roscoe," Jodie coughed.

She went back to her desk, tapped out her ash into an empty soda can and glanced out the window. Not much happening. The girl was having a nap in the bedroom, laying on her stomach, wearing only black panties. Jodie wondered if they were the same pair she had on the day before. The girl's smooth naked back glistened with sweat. The man wasn't around. Jodie hadn't seen him all morning.

On her way back from the convenience store, she had walked past their apartment building and examined the names on the buzzers. Apartment 3-G; Marcus and Brenda Ash. She wasn't positive that was them, there were a few other couples living on the same floor, but Jodie liked Ash. It was very appropriate, considering their constant smoking. Jodie would have been disappointed to learn that wasn't really their name.

She watched the girl sleep. Watched Brenda Ash sleep. Brenda hadn't moved in a long time, could have been dead for all Jodie knew. Jodie imagined her dead, murdered by her husband Marcus. But that was a cliche. That was Rear Window.

Jodie inhaled too deeply, took in too much poisonous smoke. The coughing turned to retching as she stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. She gagged into the toilet, noticing with distaste that it badly needed to be cleaned, and barely managed not to vomit. Jodie spat gray saliva into the sink and rinsed her mouth, but the foul taste remained. Disgusted, she brushed her teeth.

Jodie sat in front of the computer, not writing. She had been not writing all morning, taking occasional breaks to smoke or to cast glances at the Ash window. The cursor blinked in place. Sometimes it moved, dropping letters behind it like a trail of excrement. Then Jodie would clean up the line of shit with the "Backspace" key. It had been like this for a while.

She was smoking, staring into that little window, when the apartment door opened. Jodie guiltily extinguished her cigarette. She put a smile on her face and looked up as Carrie walked into the room.

"It's fucking hot in here," Carrie said, by way of greeting.

She looked frazzled, as she usually did after so many days on. Her long blonde hair had already been let down, the jacket and tie already removed. All that remained of Carrie's professional demeanor was the white blouse and blue knee-length skirt. She unbuttoned the blouse as she stepped into the hot room.

"Air conditioner's broken," Jodie said.

"Jesus," irritated already.

"I didn't think you'd get home until tomorrow."

"The Portland flight got canceled." Carrie came over and kissed Jodie lightly on the cheek, then sniffed suspiciously. Jodie braced herself.

"Are you smoking?" Carrie emphasized the word absurdly.

"Uh, yeah." Jodie shrugged, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

"Why?"

"I don't know," Jodie faltered. "It was just . . ."

"You know I can't stand cigarettes."

"I know."

"Jesus, Jodie. It reeks in here."

"I'm sorry. I'll just . . ."

"That is so inconsiderate. Not to mention unhealthy. What the hell were you . . ."

Roscoe, hearing his mistress's voice, began to bark. Jodie winced.

"Where's Roscoe?"

Carrie followed the muffled barking to the bathroom. She opened the door and Roscoe sprang out, greeting her with licks and nuzzles so enthusiastic they nearly knocked Carrie off her feet.

"There's my baby," Carrie scratched Roscoe's massive head, gurgling baby talk. "Did you miss Mommy? Yes . . . Mommy missed you!"

Carrie turned to Jodie and the smile fell from her face. "Why did you lock my dog in the bathroom?"

"He was driving me crazy, making messes," Jodie said, aware of how pathetically defensive she sounded. But just that morning she had found a mountainous pile of steaming Rottweiler shit in the center of the living room. She had seemed justified in locking the dog up then. "I couldn't keep him off the bed, and . . ."

"How long has he been in there?"

"A couple hours."

"Bullshit. That's bullshit, Jodie. The floor's covered with piss."

"I'll clean it up. It's not like I haven't been cleaning up his messes all week."

Jodie stood up and stormed off towards the bathroom. Carrie grabbed her by the arm, stopping her.

"That's not the point, Jodie."

"Yeah?" Jodie said. "What is the point, exactly?"

"The point is, I asked you to do one thing. One thing. Take care of the dog. Then I get back from work, and not only have you not taken care of the dog, you've stunk the place up with cigarettes. What's the matter with you?"

Jodie wrested herself from Carrie's grip and stomped into the bathroom. She slammed the door and was immediately overwhelmed by the ammonia stench of the dog's pee. Disgusted, Jodie started peeling up the drenched yellow newspaper pages.

"Bitch!" she heard through the door.

"Bitch?" Jodie muttered. She couldn't remember Carrie ever calling her that before. She gritted her teeth, wadding pissy newspaper, cringing as her hands touched the loathsome wetness. "Bitch, bitch, bitch."

Jodie caught her reflection in the mirror. Haggard, grimacing, her dark greasy hair plastered sweatily to her head. Maybe she was the bitch. She certainly looked like one. Jodie was reminded of her adolescence; of the skinny, gawking boyish girl who had hated her own reflection. Back then, confident and beautiful people like Carrie had been the objects of doomed crushes. Now Carrie was her lover. At that moment Jodie could not fathom why.

She stuffed the handful of fouled paper into the little plastic trash can by the toilet. Then she peeled off her sweaty tank top and shorts. She started the shower and stepped into the stream of cool water. Jodie hadn't bathed or changed her clothes in days, a privilege of solitude. She missed it already. Even though Carrie had just come home, Jodie couldn't wait for her to leave again.

She listened hopefully, though, for the sound of the bathroom door opening. She had deliberately left it unlocked. After several minutes, though, she was still alone. Jodie turned her face towards the cool spray to wash away her hot, shameful tears.

Alone again. Carrie had been called in to cover for another flight attendant who was ill. She and Jodie were both secretly grateful. They had been at each other's throats the whole time Carrie had been home. Both had got their periods the same day. The heat and the hormones had conspired to amplify every annoyance and resentment to cataclysmic proportions.

They did make love the first night. Sex was a necessary closure for Carrie after a fight, but Jodie had still been angry and had felt nothing. Then, after the blood had begun to flow and Jodie had really wanted it, Carrie of course had not. She had always been squeamish about menstruation. Didn't want to be touched when she was in her cycle, refused to touch Jodie when she was in hers. The blood had the opposite effect on Jodie. It made her ravenous. Her fingers were tinged pink.

She felt the restless urge now, but was self-conscious with Roscoe laying on the bed beside her. Jodie hated the dog. His weight, his hair, his stink on the mattress. "Just tell him to get off," Carrie had said, demonstrating with a firm command which Roscoe, of course, had obeyed. The dog always obeyed Carrie. He never made messes when she was around.

The heat would not let Jodie sleep and exhaustion would not let her come fully awake. Her eyes drifted open and closed. Jodie had stayed up very late waiting for the Ashes to come home. They had left early in the evening, and Jodie had kept a watchful eye on the apartment until, frustrated, she had gone to bed. That had been hours ago.

Now her ears rang with tinnitus, a constant tone which had been with her for as long as she could remember. Usually, she didn't even notice it, but now it was almost deafening. Laying there, Jodie began to wonder if the sound was really inside her head, or if it came from an external source. She could almost convince herself that it was coming from the other room. After a while, she stood and followed the noise.

There was a hole in the living room wall; the plaster was puffy and swollen around the edges. The hole pulsed with a steady silent rhythm, organically, like a heartbeat. This was where the whining static tone was coming from, from this orifice which had appeared in the wall. The whine was separate from the beating, a sound which the hole broadcast and which Jodie could detect with a sense that was somewhere between hearing and feeling.

There had once been something stopping the hole, but Jodie had removed it. She couldn't remember why.

Jodie approached the hole. The sound grew louder and louder with each step, until there was nothing else. No chance for any other sound to survive with the persistent ringing tone. But by then Jodie was crawling into the hole, which squeezed tightly about her as she forced herself through. Then there was silence as the wind bore her across the chasm.