The Rememberer Place the Pan on the Tip of Teh Baby Wave
PRAISE FOR
The Girl in the Combustible Skirt
"Bender's taut prose works its wise melodies throughout this beginning collection … Each short story packs a heavy punch, and each should be savored. From cleverly comic to starkly surreal, Bender'south audacious characters surprise and delight. Sometimes, they even make you weep."
—Boston Globe
"Bender's world is strange and fabulous, an ultravivid, matter-of-fact presentation of boggling circumstances and bizarre fulfillments … Declarative and telegraphic, Bender'due south stories read similar modern fables—with a salubrious sense of twisted sense of humor thrown in for good measure out."
—Village Vox Literary Supplement
"A wild imagination, full of bikini-bold sexiness and fauna deformity, shaped into fine art past the sure hand of a fabulist."
—Philadelphia Inquirer, Best Fiction of 1998
"You don't know weird until you've read this original, at times borderline-cool short story collection."
—Mademoiselle
"These stories plumb and expose deep tensions hidden in the mundane."
—Washington Mail service
Aimee Bender
The Girl in the Combustible Brim
Aimee Bender lives in Los Angeles. Her stories have appeared in Granta, GQ, Story, Harper'due south, The Antioch Review, and several other publications. She is the author of An Invisible Sign of My Own.
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1999
Copyright © 1998 by Aimee Bough
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random Firm, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Express, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a sectionalisation of Random House, Inc., in 1998.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The following stories appeared previously and are reprinted by permission of the writer: "The Rememberer" in the Missouri Review (Fall 1997); "Phone call My Proper name" in the Due north American Review (Jump 1998); "What You Left in the Ditch" in The Antioch Review (Fall 1997); "Repose Please" in GQ (May 1998); "Skinless" (under the championship "Erasing") in the Colorado Review (Spring 1996); "Fugue" in Accented Disaster/Santa Monica Review (Spring 1997); "Fell This Girl" in Faultline (Fall 1997); "The Healer" in Story (Winter 1998); "Loser" in Granta (Winter 1998); "Legacy" in Foam City Review (Spring 1997); "Dreaming in Polish" in Threepenny Review (Spring 1995); "The Ring" in the Massachusetts Review (Fall 1997).
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:
Bender, Aimee.
The girl in the flammable brim: stories / by Aimee Bender.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3552.E538447G57 1998
813′.54—dc21 97-44485
eISBN: 978-0-307-80446-4
Author photo © Jerry Bauer
www.anchorbooks.com
v3.ane
FOR MY MOTHER AND Male parent
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
ONE
The Rememberer
Call My Proper noun
What You lot Left in the Ditch
The Basin
Marzipan
Two
Repose Please
Skinless
Fugue
Drunken Mimi
Vicious This Girl
THREE
The Healer
Loser
Legacy
Dreaming in Polish
The Ring
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART ONE
The Rememberer
Call My Name
What You Left in the Ditch
The Basin
Marzipan
THE REMEMBERER
My lover is experiencing opposite development. I tell no 1. I don't know how it happened, only that one day he was my lover and the side by side he was some kind of ape. Information technology's been a month and now he's a sea turtle.
I keep him on the counter, in a glass baking pan filled with salt water.
"Ben," I say to his small protruding head, "can you sympathise me?" and he stares with eyes like picayune droplets of tar and I baste tears into the pan, a sea of me.
He is shedding a meg years a day. I am no scientist, simply this is roughly what I figured out. I went to the old biology teacher at the community college and asked him for an gauge time line of our evolution. He was irritated at get-go—he wanted money. I told him I'd be happy to pay and then he cheered upward quite a bit. I can hardly read his fourth dimension line—he should've typed information technology—and information technology turns out to exist wrong. According to him, the whole process should take almost a year, but from the way things are going, I retrieve we have less than a month left.
At get-go, people called on the phone and asked me where was Ben. Why wasn't he at piece of work? Why did he miss his lunch appointment with those clients? His out-of-print special-ordered book on civilization had arrived at the bookstore, would he please choice information technology up? I told them he was ill, a strange sickness, and to please stop calling. The stranger affair was, they did. They stopped calling. After a calendar week, the phone was silent and Ben, the baboon, sat in a corner past the window, wrapped upward in curtain, chattering to himself.
Last twenty-four hour period I saw him human, he was pitiful about the world.
This was not unusual. He was always sad most the world. It was a large reason why I loved him. We'd sit down together and be sorry and think about being sad and sometimes talk over sadness.
On his last human twenty-four hours, he said, "Annie, don't you lot meet? Nosotros're all getting too smart. Our brains are simply getting bigger and bigger, and the globe dries up and dies when there's likewise much thought and not plenty heart."
He looked at me pointedly, blue eyes unwavering. "Like us, Annie," he said. "Nosotros think far besides much."
I sat downwards. I remembered how the start time we had sex activity, I left the lights on, kept my eyes wide open, and concentrated really hard on letting go; then I noticed that his eyes were open too and in the center of everything nosotros sat down on the floor and had an hour-long conversation almost poetry. It was all very peculiar. It was all very familiar.
Some other time he woke me up in the middle of the night, lifted me off the pale blue sheets, led me exterior to the stars and whispered: Look, Annie, await—there is no infinite for anything but dreaming. I listened, sleepily, wandered back to bed and found myself wide awake, staring at the ceiling, unable to dream at all. Ben savage asleep correct away, but I crept dorsum outside. I tried to dream upwards to the stars, but I didn't know how to do that. I tried to discover a star no one in all of history had ever wished on before, and wondered what would happen if I did.
On his last human twenty-four hours, he put his caput in his hands and sighed and I stood upward and kissed the entire back of his neck, covered that mankind, fabricated wishes there because I knew no adult female had always been so thorough, had e'er kissed his every inch of skin. I coated him. What did I wish for? I wished for good. That's all. Just good. My wishes became generalized long ago, in childhood; I learned quick the consequence of wishing specific.
I took him in my arms and made love to him, my deplorable man. "Encounter, we're not thinking," I whispered into his ear while he kissed my cervix, "we're not thinking at all" and he pressed his head into my shoulder and held me tighter. Afterward, we went exterior again; there was no moon and the night was dark. He said he hated talking and only wa
nted to await into my eyes and tell me things that way. I allow him and information technology made my skin lift, the things in his look. So he told me he wanted to sleep outside for some reason and in the morning when I woke up in bed, I looked out to the patio and there was an ape sprawled on the cement, slap-up furry artillery roofing his head to cake out the glare of the sunday.
Fifty-fifty earlier I saw the optics, I knew it was him. And once we were face to face, he gave me his same pitiful await and I hugged those enormous shoulders. I didn't fifty-fifty actually care, then, not at beginning, I didn't panic and call 911. I sat with him outside and smoothed the fur on the dorsum of his mitt. When he reached for me, I said No, loudly, and he seemed to understand and pulled back. I have limits here.
We sat on the lawn together and ripped up the grass. I didn't miss human being Ben right abroad; I wanted to meet the ape too, to take care of my lover like a son, a pet; I wanted to know him every possible way but I didn't realize he wasn't coming back.
At present I come home from work and look for his regular-size shape walking and worrying and realize, over and over, that he's gone. I pace the halls. I chew whole packs of glue in mere minutes. I review my memories and make sure they're still intact because if he'south not here, then it is my job to remember. I think of the fashion he wrapped his artillery around my back and held me then tight information technology made me nervous and the way his breath felt in my ear: correct.
When I become to the kitchen, I peer in the glass and run across he's some kind of salamander now. He's minor.
"Ben," I whisper, "exercise yous remember me? Do you remember?"
His eyes curl upwardly in his caput and I dribble beloved into the water. He used to honey honey. He licks at it and then swims to the other stop of the pan.
This is the limit of my limits: here information technology is. You don't always know for sure where information technology is and then you lot bump against it and bam, yous're there. Because I cannot bear to wait down into the water and not be able to find him at all, to search the tiny clear waves with a microscope lens and to locate my lover, the one-celled wonder, bloated and bordered, dotterel, benign, heading clear and small like an heart-floater into nothingness.
I put him in the rider seat of the car, and bulldoze him to the beach. Walking downwards the sand, I nod at people on towels, laying their bodies out to the sun and wishing. At the water's border, I stoop down and identify the whole pan on the tip of a infant wave. It floats well, a cooking boat, for someone to discover washed up on shore and to make cookies in, a lucky catch for a poor soul with all the ingredients but no container.
Ben the salamander swims out. I wave to the water with both arms, big enough for him to encounter if he looks back.
I plow around and walk dorsum to the car.
Sometimes I think he'll wash upwardly on shore. A naked man with a startled look. Who has been to history and back. I keep my eyes on the newspaper. I make sure my phone number is listed. I walk around the block at night in case he doesn't quite remember which house it is. I feed the birds outside and sometimes before I put my i self to bed, I place my easily around my skull to see if it's growing, and wonder what, of any use, would fill it if information technology did.
Phone call MY NAME
I'm spending the afternoon auditioning men.
They don't know it. This is a secret audition, come equally you are.
"No really," I say to the beanpole man on the Muni with eyes so tired you lot can see death lounging in them already, "do you prefer cats or dogs?"
He smiles at me in this tolerant way. I tin can't tell yous exactly what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when it happens. I want to exist breathless and weak, crumpled by the archway of another person within my soul. I desire to be violated by insight.
"Cats, no question," he says, pill-rolling with his fingers. He's drugged out, but I don't care. What I care about is dogs, and I am disappointed.
I give thanks him, run a hand through my hair and become back to sitting at my surveillance spot, front row, facing backward, correct behind the driver who winked at me when I came on.
I clothing dresses on the subway. I have a lot of money from my dead father who invented the adhesive wall hook. He invented it when he was in his twenties and the world scrambled, doe-eyed, to his doorstep—no one cares for nails anymore. He died when I was iii so I never really knew him enough to miss him and there are millions of dollars for me and my mom, and she isn't a spender. So it's but me! It'southward all me! I don't much like expensive cars or gourmet dinners; what I love are fancy dresses. Today I am wearing maroon satin, a floor-length dress with a 5 back and matching sandals with crisscross straps upwards my ankles. My ears are lit by simple diamond earrings. I look like I should know how to waltz, and I exercise.
The men are pleased when I come on the subway because I am the type who unremarkably drives her own car. I am not your average subway girl, wearing black pants and reading a novel the whole time so you tin can't even get eye contact. Me, I look at them and smile at them and they dear information technology. I bet they talk near me at the dinner table—I give ho-hum people something to discuss over corn.
The beanpole man stands upward to leave and nods to me. I wiggle my fingers, farewell. His death eyes crinkle up in a wise way and I about desire to chase afterwards him, have him look down on me with that look and tell me something brilliant almost myself, unveil my whole me with 1 shining sentence, only at that place'south really no signal. He couldn't do information technology. His optics cockle up because he'south been in the sun besides much—he doesn't fifty-fifty know my proper name.
I recollect I'yard done, that I've checked out the whole motorcar, when I run into that behind the older woman in the dull biscuit suit who keeps trying to slumber, there is someone I didn't detect before. The shy human being. He is leaning against the window, wanting a cigarette and not looking at me. I go sit down right next to him.
"If you smoke out the window," I tell him in a low voice, "no one will notice."
"What?" He's almost ten years older than I am, and his eyes are bright, watery even.
"I won't tell if y'all smoke."
He gets it and blinks. "Thanks," he says, but he doesn't motility.
My wearing apparel is slithering all over the orangish plastic seat, sounding similar a vacation.
"So, what'south your name?" I ask.
He has his head looking out the window, watching the night cement wink past. The back of his pilus is matted downwardly, like he'south just woken up from a nap.
"Or where are y'all going?" I say louder.
He turns to me, eyebrows upwardly.
I lean in a little. My pilus falls forwards and I can aroma my shampoo which smells similar almonds. "I'yard just curious," I say. "What stop?"
"Powell," he says. "Your hair smells like almonds."
I'k so pleased he noticed.
"Exercise you lot prefer dogs or cats?" I ask him, fifty-fifty though I don't really, at this exact second, need to know.
"Yous ask a lot of questions," he says.
"Yes."
"Well."
"What?" My dress isn't holding to the seat, I could slide right downwards to the floor.
"I prefer," he says, "whichever turns around when you lot call its name."
He may be shy merely he looks me in the eye the whole time.
The train strains to a stop and he stands upward to slide by me. But I'one thousand up with him. The bottom of my dress is dusty from the floor of the subway and I'thousand thinking it looks sort of vintage that way. He presses on the handle and he's out the door actually fast, and I just barely have a moment to look at the car I've been surveying and watch the people watch me exit. A man with a briefcase smiles dorsum but the women all ignore me.
I float backside the shy human being for a few blocks; he's up the escalator and onto Market Street and doesn't notice my burgundy shadow backside him until he ducks into a retail shoe store and so I'grand hard to miss. The salesgirls are on me in i 2nd, I have Purchase written all over me. And then they think. This is a lame shoe store.
"Hey," says the man, "you following me?"
"May-be." I saunter over to a pair of shoes and selection them upward even though they're so ugly and poorly made.
>
"Those are one of our best sellers," says salesgirl number ane who has lipstick on her front tooth.
"That is not a good selling bespeak for me," I tell her, "and you take lipstick on your tooth."
Her head ducks downwards and she rubs her forefinger on it. "Thanks," she says in a quiet whisper, similar it's a secret, "I hate that."
The man has left the shop—1 second of conversation with a stupid salesgirl on my stupid part, and he'due south gone. The store owner is behind the counter watching me glance around at the racks of shoes and he tilts his head, indicating the staircase behind him.
"You his girlfriend?" he says.
"Perchance," I say again. Really: if the shy man didn't care at all, if he hadn't looked at me with a sure sly hunger and so I wouldn't be here. Simply he was half at that place with me, I saw him thinking most the heavy sound the satin would make piled on his floor, I saw him wondering. He may have wondered very quietly, only that still counts.
I give thanks the shop managing director by placing one solid hand on his shoulder and squeezing it. Maybe someday I'll come up in here and buy fourteen pairs of shoes from him. Non like I'd habiliment them, but I could go give them to homeless people who must like a change every now and then. I'll buy practical shoes, cushioned soles, no heels or annihilation. You probably walk a lot when you're homeless so heels would not exist a skilful choice.
The staircase is adequately dark simply you can still sense the glare of the daylight outside so it doesn't feel scary, merely cool and slightly musty. Luckily, there's just one apartment at the acme of the staircase. I try the door and it's open. For me, it's more nerve-wracking to knock than to just get on in. He's sitting in his living room with a beer and no shirt, watching TV. He looks at me, sort of amused, non really surprised.
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