How to Start a Fire

by Lisa Lutz

  “That’s my box!” Kate would shout. But Anna had had the foresight to label every single box with her own name.

  “Poor thing,” Chuck said as he gingerly ducked out of the way when Kate lunged for the box he was holding.

  Anna noted that he was remarkably light on his feet for a man his size and reminded herself to tip him extra well, since Kate was likely to become even more erratic as the truck started to leave.

  “You won’t get away with this,” Kate said.

  As with so many things, Anna did.

  2002

  Boston, Massachusetts

  “Wake up, Anna. Wake up.”

  A woman’s voice and a firm hand shook Anna awake. She’d meant to put her head down for just a minute, but she’d been up for twenty-four hours without a moment of rest, and she’d fallen asleep. She couldn’t place where she was at first, didn’t even recognize the woman roughly jarring her out of unconsciousness. But then she sat up and looked at the nurse. Her name was Betty, Anna reminded herself. Betty. Anna said it in her head again. She was having trouble remembering names lately, and she knew better than to refer to any of the nurses as just Nurse.

  There was a problem. Anna could see it in Betty’s eyes once she was able to focus on them.

  It was a Tuesday night. Not a holiday, no full moon, and yet the emergency room was overflowing with patients. Only a gunshot wound, heart attack, head injury, or compromised breathing would get you within spitting distance of a doctor. One patient with a superficial knife wound had caught a cab and gone to another hospital.

  “Did you write this order for Louise Walters?” Betty asked.

  Anna didn’t respond. She was trying to remember which patient Louise Walters was. The heart attack? Head injury? Pneumonia?

  Anna got to her feet and followed Betty to the patient’s bed. When she saw her, Anna was able to connect the face with the disease, even though the face was partially concealed by an oxygen mask. Louise Walters, fifty-eight, had presented to the emergency room four hours ago with a high fever, vomiting, and severe neck pain. Anna suspected bacterial meningitis and had performed a lumbar puncture to confirm. She wrote out an order for antibiotics and was whisked away for another patient’s emergency. The nurses needed an order for a 5250 shot (5 milligrams of Haldol, 2 milligrams of Ativan, 50 milligrams of Benadryl), a monster sedative cocktail, for a monstrously belligerent homeless man suffering from gangrene.

  Betty, a nurse with twenty years on the job, had seen the antibiotic order and intercepted Deana, who had just two years of experience, before she gave it.

  “What does this say?” Betty asked.

  “‘Twenty grams of ampicillin,’” Anna said, reading her order. “Shit. That’s supposed to be two grams of ampicillin.”

  “That’s not what the order said,” Deana, who’d almost delivered the toxic dose, told her.

  “I’m sorry,” Anna said to Betty. “That was a good catch.”

  Anna had only a few hours left on her shift. She went to the hospital’s outpatient pharmacy with a script she’d written for pain meds for Bernard Kent, who had kidney stones: eight 40-milligram OxyContins. Bernard was being discharged, Anna explained to the pharmacist, and she’d volunteered to pick up his prescription for him. On her way back to Kent’s bed, she pocketed four of the pills. She wrote in Kent’s chart that he’d been discharged with a script for four 40-milligram OxyContins. She waited until an hour before her shift was over before she took the first pill.

  “I have to work late tonight,” Anna said.

  “But you’ve already been there over twenty-four hours,” Nick said. “I even made you dinner.”

  “I’m sorry. I got behind on some paperwork.”

  “It can’t wait?”

  “No. I won’t be too late,” Anna said.

  She hung up before any more questions could be asked.

  Anna had never believed that whispers could be about anyone other than her. She was aware that this line of thinking was utterly narcissistic. Still, whispers always shamed her, even in a crowded movie theater.

  It was 2:00 a.m. on a Wednesday, not that the day of the week made any difference anymore. The fluorescent lights flickered on in the previously blacked-out call room. She saw green scrubs in her peripheral vision as her pupils adjusted to the light.

  “Five minutes. In my office,” a male voice said, and then the splash of green disappeared.

  Still flicking away nagging messages from her subconscious, Anna sat up on the cot and tried to identify the voice so that she could arrive at the appropriate office.

  Dr. Gregory North made eye contact just once during their ten-minute meeting. When he spoke, he gazed through his venetian blinds. The view through the slats was all neon and traffic lights, but he focused on something nonetheless. Like most people, Anna supposed, he didn’t want to look at her anymore. When the nurse who would remain anonymous informed North of her suspicions, he had finally taken a careful inventory of Anna’s physical being and wondered how he could have missed it. But his job was to observe his patients, not his residents. Anna also stared through the blinds, not sure where else to look.

  “It has been brought to my attention that you have often doubled the orders for some of your patients’ meds—pain meds and sedatives mostly. However, not all of these meds have been administered to the patient. I have a partial list of the discrepancies. If necessary, I can do a more thorough investigation. Will that be necessary?”

  “Excuse me?” Anna said.

  Anna wasn’t sure what Dr. North was saying to her. She knew she was caught, but what she couldn’t comprehend was the consequence. Were police stationed outside the door? Was her career over? All those years of work. Was it all for nothing?

  “If you deny this,” North continued, “I’ll commence a complete investigation. If you admit you have a problem, we can get you help. Once you complete rehab, you can return to work under probation. I’ve seen people recover from this. It doesn’t have to ruin your life.”

  Then he looked at her.

  “Do you have something to say to me, Anna?”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “You need to tell me that you have a problem.”

  Even then, caught, like a thief holding the goods, Anna didn’t believe it. She felt like a liar when she spoke next.

  “I think I have a problem,” Anna said.

  “Good. Then let’s take care of it. Go home now and get some sleep.”

  Anna sat down at the bar and ordered a vodka and soda. If you’d asked her why she was there, she would have said she didn’t know, and it might have been true. Anna could keep secrets from anyone, including herself. The exact moment she passed through the hospital doors, she knew where she was going; she just didn’t know why. She had showered and changed into respectable clothing, still not admitting her plan. She put on makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes and applied lipstick the color of blood.

  Her eyes searched the cavernous bar. She knew what to look for; she had figured that out long ago. She knew what to say and what not to say; mostly, she didn’t say anything. That always worked best. She tried not to remember their names, the men she met. If she couldn’t identify a man, she could pretend it hadn’t happened.

  His name was Miles, he said. (You couldn’t stop someone from introducing himself.) He was a musician and a bartender. How original, Anna thought, but she bit her lip to make the comment go away. Miles wasn’t working that night, had just come into the bar out of habit. He’d seen her there before, he thought, or maybe she just had that kind of face. Anna didn’t confirm or deny. He bought her another drink, even though she hadn’t finished the one in front of her.

  “Do you have a name?” he asked.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” she said.

  “I’m not asking for your phone number or even a last name. Just give me something to call you,” he said.

  “I’m Kate,” Anna said.

  She smiled at h
er little joke. Miles thought the smile was for him. She had done this before, given Kate’s name. She did it because she was doing something Kate would never do.

  “A pleasure meeting you, Kate.”

  “Is it?”

  An hour later, she was in Miles’s studio apartment. It was exactly what she expected. Furnished with a high-end stereo system and a thrift-store couch. Clothes were strewn about the four hundred square feet, and dishes were piled in the sink, but his records and CDs were all filed in alphabetical order.

  Miles unbuttoned her shirt as she was studying his particular brand of housekeeping. He unsnapped her bra with one hand. She had a moment to be amused and impressed, and then she was distracted by hands working on the buttons of her jeans. He pushed his hand down her pants, and his fingers were inside her. She gasped and fell back on the bed. It was all moving too quickly. Anna’s internal narrator couldn’t keep up. It wasn’t that she wanted conversation or foreplay. It just seemed that a few minutes ago, she was in a bar having a drink, and now every stitch of her clothing was on the floor. And this complete stranger was standing in front of her, taking off his belt and unzipping his fly.

  “Condom,” Anna said.

  He pulled a string of them from his nightstand. Anna was thinking, You’ll only need one. He put his mouth on her breast and bit hard. The pain didn’t bother her, but he couldn’t leave a mark. She had the presence of mind to think of that, at least.

  “Stop,” she said.

  He turned her over, slid the condom on, and fucked her. She wanted to be somewhere else. Though she couldn’t say where. Not home. Not the hospital. But definitely not pinned down on Miles’s sandpaper bedspread getting a rug burn on her left cheek. She couldn’t feel anything inside of her. Maybe it was the drugs, she thought. Or the stranger. She wanted it to stop, but it seemed impolite to do anything at that moment. Later she would wonder why her manners had kicked in just then. Maybe it was just easier; maybe she liked being punished, or the rush of fear she had in the stranger’s presence. Or maybe this was what she deserved. He was fucking her harder and it hurt. She moaned in pain but knew he interpreted it differently. When he was about to come, he shouted the name she’d given him.

  “Oh. God. Kate.”

  1995

  Santa Cruz, California

  “Vat is de rush, Kate?” Ivan said. “Slow down and digest yur food. Anna and George, you too. You eat like starving dogs.”

  The women had convened at Smirnoff’s Diner after George’s basketball game. She had scored thirteen points, including a three-point winning shot at the end of the final quarter. Kate and Anna watched from the bleachers, both experiencing awe and envy. Kate marveled at George’s mastery of her own body; she often felt like she was stuck inside a glove that didn’t fit properly. Anna’s experience was more directly jealous. She found George’s legs so goddamn perfect, it hurt her to look at them.

  Anna had always believed that envy of another woman was one of the basest emotions a woman could possess. Kate’s envy was more cerebral, a sense of bafflement at the imbalance in the universe. She didn’t feel any self-pity, since all her limbs worked just fine, and her brain had served her well. But she wished that, just once, she could know what it was like to score a three-point shot.

  Three now-empty dinner plates—once the home of meatloaf, chicken-fried steak, and Ivan’s special buffalo burger, respectively—were scattered about the table. Ivan checked that his food had been consumed to his satisfaction and nodded in approval as he and Kate cleared the table.

  “Miláèku, come to office. I vant to chat for a minute.”

  Kate followed her grandfather into his cluttered back office, no bigger than some walk-in closets, and sat down on the edge of the desk.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I’m old,” Ivan said.

  “I didn’t know. Thanks for telling me,” Kate said. “Good talk.”

  “American sarcasm. It’s not so funny as you tink.”

  “I don’t think you’re that old.”

  “Vell, I’m old enough to start to tink about the tings I haven’t done. Since I came to dis country, I have not traveled. Or taken a vacation. Elena can handle the business for two weeks over Christmas. I vould like to take a cruise to the Caribbean with my lady friend. I like you to come too.”

  Ivan had been spending time with a very nice bookkeeper who had also come to this country too late to lose her accent. She was from Portugal. Seventy-one years old, recently widowed. Their relationship, as far as Kate could tell, involved handholding and watching television together. Kate liked Marina just fine but had no desire to take a vacation with the two of them. Perhaps in Kate’s absence, they could feel free to do more than hold hands. Not that she wanted to think about that all that much.

  “I don’t want to cramp your style,” Kate said.

  “I haf no style,” Ivan said.

  “I think I’ll pass. But don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t vant to go to Caribbean?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Dis would be first Christmas you’d spend without me, miláèku.”

  “It was bound to happen sometime,” said Kate.

  In truth, their intimate Christmases under the four-foot plastic tree that Ivan collected from the basement and decorated with her mother’s old ornaments always made Kate miss her parents more. She never quite got used to seeing just two stockings hung on the mantel. It would take ten minutes to open her presents, and then they’d eat leftover fish soup and gingerbread and go back to their usual activities. Kate would read a book and Ivan would clean the kitchen. It was a holiday that lasted no more than two hours. Kate was happy to skip it this year.

  Ivan marched out of his office and over to the table where Anna and George were sucking out the last drops of their chocolate and strawberry shakes.

  “I’m going on cruise for Christmas. Von of you must take Katia for the holiday. Vich one?”

  “Dibs!” Anna shouted first. George was about to protest, but she figured that Anna needed the backup more.

  “Very good. It’s decided,” Ivan said.

  “Mr. Fury, Mrs. Fury, thank you so much for your hospitality,” Kate said before any hospitality had been delivered. She shook Donald’s hand first, a strong businessman’s grip that he didn’t lighten up for anyone. Then she shook Lena’s hand. The corpse handshake, as Anna called it. The hand barely moved in Kate’s grip, fingers cold. It sent a tiny shiver through Kate.

  Lena looked Kate up and down, inspecting the young woman’s secondhand sweater, scuffed sneakers, and baggy blue jeans with a look of distaste that made Anna want to stand in front of Kate like a human blockade.

  “We have to go,” Anna said, grasping Kate’s arm, dragging her upstairs.

  Anna gave Kate a brief tour of the house, ending in Colin’s bedroom. Anna entered without invitation.

  “What is it about knocking that you find so offensive?” Colin asked.

  “The door was open.”

  “The door was ajar. There is a difference.”

  “I assume if you were whacking off you would lock it,” Anna said.

  “Hello, Anna,” Colin said, kissing his sister on the forehead and then punching her in the arm before turning to her friend. “You must be Kate.”

  “Hi,” Kate said, stretching out her hand.

  She was pleased to discover that Colin had a normal handshake, not bone-crushing, not dead. Anna flopped down on Colin’s bed. Kate stood awkwardly by the door. Colin pulled out his desk chair for her and then sat next to Anna. The siblings fell into their usual debriefing session as Kate played silent observer.

  “Where’s Malcolm?”

  “You’re so transparent,” said Colin.

  “No, I’m just trying to be hospitable. I want to make sure he’s offered more to eat than tuna and melba toast.”

  “That’s just what the women get. He’s having Scotch and mixed nuts with Dad.”


  “Why?”

  “Dad wants to share his wisdom or his Scotch. I don’t know. Can we talk about Mom for a minute?”

  “If you insist.”

  “What is wrong with her face? It looks almost like she had a stroke, but it’s affected the wrong part of her.”

  “Have you heard of botulinum?” Anna said.

  “The food-borne toxin?”

  “She’s having it injected into her forehead,” said Anna.

  “Why is Mom having a food-borne toxin injected into her face?”

  “So she won’t frown and get more wrinkles.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Look it up. It’s the latest nonsurgical cosmetic treatment. It’s relatively safe, as far as I can tell.”

  “I don’t understand women,” said Colin.

  “Your last girlfriend had fake boobs and you had no problem wrapping your head around that, so to speak.”

  Colin shoved Anna off his bed with his feet. She landed with a thud on the ground.

  “Okay, time for you to go,” he said.

  “What’s on the agenda tonight?” Anna asked.

  “Malcolm and I are going to a poker game,” Colin said. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Take us with you,” Anna said as Colin twisted her arm behind her back and police-walked her out of his room.

  Anna wriggled out of Colin’s grasp, faked to her left, and launched herself back onto his bed.

  “Please,” Anna said, hands meeting in prayer.

  “No. This game is important. We’re playing with these Harvard pricks. Bradford Marsh always wins. I just want to see him wiped out for once. I don’t care who does it.”

  “If you want someone to beat him, take us.”

  “I’ve played poker with you, Anna. You’re good. But not that good.”