The Girl in the Flammable Skirt Read Online Free PDF Page A

and matte yellow, sliced into fancy ovals and diamonds to disguise the fact that they taste so bad. You pour lemon butter all over them but feel like a big cheat. After several broccolis, you leave the restaurant with your plate still half full and shiny with grease to go visit your brother. He works in the fire department and is handsome in his outfit. You tell him your boss is dead, and it freaks him out. He wonders if he could’ve saved him, had he been there, you know, he knows CPR. Your brother has your face, but a better version, you look better as a man. You think about the women who have loved him and looked into his face while he entered their bodies, and how that’s your face, almost, but also definitely not. You feel gypped.
    “Andy,” you ask him, “will you set me up with a fireman?”
    He laughs. “Sure.” You’ve never asked this before, you wonder if he thinks you’re kidding.
    You go home early because your boss is dead. The fruit bowl sits there, some strange reminder of something you can’t remember. You put the bananas back on the counter and fill the bowl with warm water. You let your hands soak in it, this feels really nice. You sing a little song to yourself, about fruit and bowls and warm water, a song you just made up. You wonder if you’ll go out with the fireman after all, and if you do, will he kiss you? Does a fireman kiss slow or urgent? Willhe lift your shirt or run off to water things down just when it’s all seeming better?
    You lie down flat on the orange carpet and close your eyes. You are feeling very lonely. There is a knock at the door, and at first, you wonder if you made it up because you are so lonely. But then there’s another knock, and this one is too emphatic to be part of a fantasy. This one is not a nice knock.
    You look into the peephole. There’s a man in a suit. You wonder if he’s here to investigate if you killed your boss or not. You open the door.
    “I’m here,” he says, “to retrieve a bowl.”
    “What?” His eyebrows stick out from his face, adding great depth. He is an older man, he looks as though his life is not making him happy.
    “I’m here to retrieve a fruit bowl. I think one of them was delivered to you this morning by accident. All wrapped up? A green fruit bowl?”
    You are stunned and confused, it was not for you after all? You empty out the water, and hand him the fruit bowl and he nods. He drips the remaining drops of water onto your welcome mat. The man seems very displeased, and you think it’s something you did, but then realize it has nothing to do with you which is depressing. He tilts his head down slightly in apology, and leaves with the bowl. You shut the door behind him. You want it back. You want the bowl back. You open the door to yell after him, sir, that’s my bowl, it came to my house with my name on the wrapping, that’s my bowl, sir,give me back my bowl. But he’s gone. You go to the sidewalk to look down the street, but he’s gone. All you can see are three kids on bicycles, circling their driveways, seven years old, turning tight circles in their driveways because they’re too scared to go where there might be cars.

MARZIPAN
    One week after his father died, my father woke up with a hole in his stomach. It wasn’t a small hole, some kind of mild break in the skin, it was a hole the size of a soccer ball and it went all the way through. You could now see behind him like he was an enlarged peephole.
    Sharon!
is what I remember first. He called for my mother, sharp, he called her into the bedroom and my sister Hannah and I stood outside, worried. Was it divorce? We twisted nervously and I had one awful inner jump of glee because there was something about divorce that seemed a tiny bit exciting.
    My mother came out, her face distant.
    Go to school, she said.
    What is it? I said. Hannah tried to peek through. What’s wrong? she asked.
    They told us at dinner and promised a demonstration after dessert. When all the