Kiss The Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella (1001 Dark Nights)

by Christopher Rice

  “Hi,” Laney says quietly. Then to Bastian, whose gaze is still fixated on their visitor, she says, “Thank you, Mister Drake.”

  “Bastian,” he answers, his reflexive politeness still in effect even as he refuses to take his eyes off the beautiful black woman a few feet away.

  “Thank you, Bastian.”

  At the last possible second, the woman steps aside and allows Laney to leave the shop. But a few paces from the entrance, Laney feels eyes on the back of her neck. She turns, sees the woman is staring after her with that same haunting, unreadable expression on her face.

  8

  LILLIANE

  “What’s her name?” Lilliane asks, as she watches the young woman hurry off into the night.

  “Lilliane, don’t—”

  “What’s her name, Bastian?”

  When she started searching, Lilliane assumed there was very little chance she’d actually find the shop. It rarely materializes in the same place twice and she’s fairly sure it vanishes as soon as Bastian delivers his special gift to his latest victim. So the shock of seeing it all again—the round black marble-topped table, the vase of strange yellow flowers, the ribbon wheels above the tiny, makeshift desk, all of it looking exactly as it did on that long-ago afternoon— has left her stunned.

  Nothing, however, could have prepared her for the act of witnessing an exchange just like the one that changed the very fabric of her being decades before. It was one thing to know they’d been happening every so often over the past fifty-six years, but seeing one unfold right before her eyes has filled her with a strange blend of sadness and anger for which she has no name. Part of her is terrified the woman will meet a fate similar to her own, the other is filled with bitter jealousy over the prospect that she will not.

  “Laney,” Bastian says. “Laney Foley.”

  “Do you know their names before you appear to them? Is that how it works?”

  He doesn’t answer. He just stands there in the middle of his rapidly assembled stage-set of a shop like a perfectly put-together street performer. “Did you know my name, Bastian?”

  “No.”

  “I see. Well, I’m going to keep an eye on her.” Lilliane descends several steps until she can spot the girl’s shrinking silhouette blending with the bright smear of lights of Bourbon Street. “I’ll make sure she makes the right decision.”

  “It’s possible your intervention will be of no use.”

  “Well, if you’ve taught me anything, Bastian, it’s that anything’s possible.”

  “Lilliane, don’t let your anger guide you.”

  “Don’t speak to me of my anger!”

  She whirls to face him, finds herself staring at the grimy front door to an abandoned store. Just a few inches from her nose, a dusty FOR LEASE signs tilts to one side against the filthy glass.

  Bastian is gone. The candles are gone. It’s no use arguing with a being who can stop time.

  Fair enough. She’s got work to do.

  9

  LANEY

  Laney isn’t surprised to wake up in her dorm room alone. Her roommate, Perfect Skinny Kelley, as Cat calls her, is carrying on two love affairs at the same time: one with her boyfriend, the other with her boyfriend’s off-campus apartment.

  Thanks to both of her roommate’s lovers, Laney didn’t have to endure any complaints about the overpowering scent of Bastian Drake’s candle when she got home the night before, and this morning there’s no one around to tease her for printing out Michael’s late night e-mail and reading it over and over and again until her eyelids grew heavy and she fell asleep on the paper like a child cuddling a stuffed animal.

  Berry Hall is one of the older dorms on campus, a blocky ten-story high-rise with crappy AC made bearable by huge, easily opened windows that allow her to fill the room with a nice cool breeze. Did she leave one of them open last night? Her alarm clock isn’t set to go off for another forty minutes, but she is jerked awake with such force it’s like the damn thing is already squealing right next to her head. Maybe a sound from outside is to blame. But when she reaches behind the Pottery Barn curtains and feels for the window handles, she finds them both shut tight.

  The first item on her morning agenda is three cups of coffee from the Kelley’s Keurig—Kelley has charitably allowed her four a day—and a good hour-and-a-half of work on her Geology paper before hauling it across campus to her lecture for History of the Americas II. That was the plan she made at the beginning of the week anyway, before she had a date with her teacher, before she suffered her first full-on panic attack.

  Maybe it was the intensity of her dreams that awakened her, dreams of Michael’s lips, fingers, eyes, and tongue, or maybe she’d finally had enough of the puddle of drool in between her cheek and the paper on which she printed out Michael’s e-mail.

  Or maybe it’s frickin’ Maybelline for all she cares.

  The only thing she feels like doing now is reading his e-mail for the seven-hundredth time.

  So I realized after I lost track of you that I don’t actually have your phone number, which meant I couldn’t call. There’s a fine line between chasing and stalking and I don’t want to cross it, which means I wasn’t going to track you down at your dorm. I know that’s what the guy in a movie would have done. But honestly, that’s a reason to call campus security, right? (Also, I think I had too much to eat because it was clear after I chased you for half a block I was never going to be able to catch up with you without barfing. I thought the only thing worse than catching up with you if you didn’t want to be caught would be catching up with you covered in barf. Agree?) I will say, aside from being an excellent student, you’re an incredible runner, Miss Foley. So here’s my phone number. (It’s right here. See? 555-7639.) If you’re done with me, you can throw it away and everything will go back to normal. Promise. If heartbroken is your idea of normal. : ( Don’t worry. I’m a big boy, I’ll get over it. But if this is my last chance to say this, here goes. You are an amazing woman who isn’t giving herself enough credit for how remarkable she is. It would be amazing if you gave me the opportunity to tell you that every day (or every other day, or maybe every other three days until we hit the six month mark. Whatever Cat decides is “healthy.”) But if you’re not able to give me the chance, please print out that sentence and keep it on a card in your wallet and read it when things are getting you down. In fact, I’ll type it over with a space and a fun font so it looks better when you take it out and read it on a crappy day. Like this:

  Yours In Comic Sans,

  Michael

  P.S. I was tempted to put my phone number right next to the quote above so you’d never forget it. I think professional artists call that branding.

  If only he could have been a jerk about the whole thing.

  If only he could have been defensive and angry and hurt, all things some childish part of her probably wanted from him as soon as she took off the night before.

  But, no. Even in the face of her crazy, he’s humble and self-effacing and attuned to appropriate boundaries and intelligent and charming as ever.

  Her laptop—Cat’s old laptop computer that Cat gave to her at the beginning of the year when she upgraded her own—chimes at the arrival of a new e-mail.

  When she sees the message isn’t from Michael, her heart drops a little. Then she sees it’s from the office manager for the undergraduate art history program and her heart drops more than a little.

  Please call the office immediately regarding your discussion section for Foundations of Western Art II.

  As she listens to the phone ring, her breaths are short and shallow. And by the time the woman on the other end answers, Laney is stammering a greeting and clearing her throat at the same time.

  “This is Laney Foley,” she finally manages. “I have, uhm, an e-mail from you guys about my discussion section.”

  “Right, right, right,” the woman says quickly while tapping keys on her computer. Whoever she is, her caffeine levels are at peak,
while Laney is still struggling to open both eyes. “Let me get this up here on my screen. Give me a second.”

  “Sure,” Laney says.

  He lost it. I didn’t write him back last night and he lost it and now he’s going to punish me. The e-mail was bullshit and now the axe is going to—-

  “Yeah, here we go,” the woman says. “He says you two talked about some sort of scheduling problem that’s started to come up for you on Wednesdays. Does that sound familiar?”

  “Uh-huh,” she grunts.

  No. Oh, my God. What’s happening?

  “And so he thought it would be best if the department moved you to a different discussion section. So I went ahead and checked your schedule and it looks like you’ve got an opening on Friday, and it just so happens we’ve got another discussion section we could move you into then. But it’s with a different T.A. Kimberly Stockton.”

  “Is that allowed? Moving me into a class with a different teacher?”

  “Yes. It’s just a discussion section. They follow the same syllabus.”

  “Sure. Right. Yeah.”

  What the hell are you doing, Michael?

  “Your final grade will be an average of the grades Michael gave you in his Wednesday class, and what you receive from Kimberly in the Friday class.”

  “So Michael won’t give me my final grade. Kimberly will.”

  “Kimberly will be grading your final three assignments and at the end of the semester, those will be averaged with the grades you’ve already received from Michael. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah. Yeah it does.”

  What he said to her the night before? He couldn’t take away her fears if she didn’t give him the chance. Well, that was bunk. He’d just removed one of her biggest fears with a single e-mail to his department.

  Then why am I still so goddamn afraid?

  Laney pretends to listen as the woman explains how it will take a few days for the system to reflect the schedule change, but that next Friday she should report to Kimberly’s class and here’s the name of the classroom where Kimberly Stockton’s discussion section meets and—blah blah blah.

  Instead, she hears her pulse pounding in her ears, bringing with it the terrible realization that it’s just like Bastian Drake said to her the night before. The fear is still there. The fear comes from within her, not from Michael, not from the art history department, not from the Rose Scholarship.

  I’m not good enough.

  There it is. A voice clear as a bell, a voice that sounds like her mother, her father, and all of her cousins rolled into one, a voice that speaks to her so clearly and with words that sound so carefully chosen, how could she not listen to it? How could she not heed its angry, hurtful advice?

  You can go to as nice a school as you want, little girl, but it won’t change the fact that you are poor white trash putting on airs and he’s gonna smell this on you every day while you smell vanilla and campfires, and then he’s gonna drop you like a cold, hard stone.

  Is she still on the campus health plan? What are the names of the antidepressants she’s heard other students talk about, the ones that actually work? Phrases like “anxiety disorder” and “panic syndrome” are dancing together in her brain now, as she tries to come up with any possible solution to this relentless, mental assault. If she didn’t have a class in a few hours and a paper due next week, she’d probably head for the nearest bar. But instead she claws her hands through her hair and tilts her head forward and draws a deep breath through her nose.

  And without meaning to, she inhales the scent of the candle at the foot of her bed.

  The sunlight bounces off the chrome sculpture nearby, fills his eyes briefly before he blinks and smiles and continues with his passionate lecture. And she’s so hypnotized by his beauty, she’s stopped nervously picking at the grass next to her. And when he sees her looking up at him, he locks eyes with her and smiles, smiles longer than any teacher should at a student.

  “What the fuck are you candle?” she hears herself saying.

  Laney unties the bow so she can part the bag’s handles, then she removes enough of the tissue paper to pull the candle free. She sets it on her bed and stares at it as if it’s a kitten about to take its first steps. Wide veins of purple and brown are threaded through the wax. Twelve hours later and the scent has the same effect of delivering her straight to the sculpture garden outside the New Orleans Museum of Art, to the moment when her heart first opened to Michael.

  She figured the notecard taped to the side was just for display and expected Bastian to remove it before packaging up the candle. But he left it right where it was when she wandered into his shop.

  Light this flame at the scene of your greatest passion and your heart’s desire will be yours.

  She doesn’t believe in magic or spells or voodoo. She does believe in following advice, and a lot of the advice Bastian gave her last night sounded good. No, wise. Experienced. So why not follow the flowery, romantic instruction printed on this card?

  Sure, it sounds like the making of some silly little spell, something her crazy aunts might do for a sick relative or a friend who’d been cheated on. But sometimes stuff like that could have a placebo effect. And right now, she would try anything to silence these viciously critical voices running riot in her head.

  Anything.

  It takes all that self-control she’s got, but she waits until after her lecture to text him. She’s moved into the shady overhang of one of the older buildings fringing the Quad, far from the other students lounging on the grass during an unseasonably warm afternoon.

  Looks like you’re not my teacher anymore.

  Just seven words, but they took fifteen minutes to write.

  Cat’s got one of those thought bubble logos that tells you if the other person has started typing in response to your text. Laney’s old school cell phone has no such feature, and people often marvel at how fast she can fire off text messages using a regular telephone keypad.

  So Laney waits. And waits. And waits. And then feels stupid for waiting because she sure as hell took her sweet time texting him back and maybe he’s teaching or—

  I hope you’re not upset.

  Three minutes. Not a bad response time for a guy who was walked out on—make that run out on—the night before. And then another one follows right on its digital heels.

  Kimberly’s a good egg. Just don’t say anything negative about cubism. She’s kind of obsessed.

  Noted, Laney responds.

  So the next time we go out to dinner it won’t be as teacher and student. It’ll just be a date with a guy who’s crazy about you.

  The breath leaves her. She rests her head against the stone column next to her.

  If there’s going to be a next time…

  Then, just as she lifts her fingers to type, he responds again.

  Maybe there’s another barrier you need me to remove. Just say the word.

  Before she can think twice, she starts tapping keys.

  I’m not the biggest fan of my history teacher. Can you rub him out for me?

  Too jokey, too soon?

  Sorry. Assassinations are a third date thing.

  Laney explodes with tension-releasing laughter, so high and barking it draws the attention of a guitar player strumming for adoring freshman a few yards away.

  Why are you so perfect? she types.

  I’m not, he responds. I just try to be when I meet someone worth trying for.

  She’s about to respond when she feels a strange prickling on the side of her face. Her index finger hovers over the keypad. She looks up, tries to find the source of this strange feeling.

  The guitar player’s gone back to performing for his adoring fans. But further away, across the Quad…

  It can’t be.

  It’s the woman from last night, the one Bastian Drake was startled to find standing in the entrance to his tiny shop. The one who wouldn’t smile or introduce herself, who studied Laney with a cold, unread
able look. She’s too far away for Laney to read her facial expression now, but she stands just as proudly. Her outfit is more casual, a cream-colored sleeveless peasant dress that billows around her generous frame. Some sort of jeweled headband sits on her dark hair like a glittering tiara.

  Right now, she is more afraid of leaving Michael in the lurch then some jealous stalker girlfriend.

  I would very much like to have dinner again.

  An instant response. He must have been waiting on pins and needle for her text.

  Is tonight too soon?

  There goes her breath, and here comes her pulse.

  She remembers the panic that threatened her just that morning, an attack that promised to be as powerful as the one she’d suffered the night before in Michael’s arms. Then she remembers what ended it.

  Light this flame at the scene of your greatest passion and your heart’s desire will be yours.

  It’s not too soon, she types.

  But first I need to do a magic spell a strange man in the French Quarter gave me because I think it might prevent me from having another panic attack when you kiss me.

  K. Teaching right now so I’ll get back to you about a plan ; )

  The knowledge that he took time out from an actual class to send her all those texts makes her giddy. And this reminds her that he’s no longer her teacher, no longer responsible for her grade, which makes her even giddier. Then she remembers her audience across the Quad. But when she looks up, the woman is gone. Maybe she imagined her. Given her mental state over the past twelve hours, she wouldn’t be all that surprised.

  All right, Mister Drake. Let’s see if your candle’s all it’s cracked up to be.

  She actually considered carrying the candle around in her backpack for the rest of the day. That way she could head straight to the sculpture garden after class and be done with this nonsense. But the overpowering scent would have earned her far too many angry looks as it washed over the library and then the lecture hall, that’s for sure. So she’s got no choice but to head back to her dorm room, praying under her breath that Kelley didn’t come home earlier than expected and throw the thing out because she hated the smell. God knows, Cat bitched to high heaven when Laney had stepped into her car with it the night before. And it hadn’t been the scent of vanilla and campfires that had earned Cat’s ire either.