by Naomi West
“Odd,” I repeat.
I stand with Mr. Corby watching as the firefighters bring the blaze under control. I see some of my other neighbors talking to the police now, undoubtedly giving them Mr. Corby’s story. So a man wants to burn down a building—he is criminal enough to want to do something that severe—but he takes precautions to make sure he doesn’t harm anybody, waiting until they’re gathered in the street before setting the fire.
All of us have to give statements to the police. As I lie, telling them I have no inkling about what happened, the matchstick burns into my pocket. Part of me is afraid it will spontaneously catch on fire as I’m shaking my head and explaining that I just got back from the bar. Was I drinking alone? Yes, I’d had a stressful day at work and I was drinking alone. I think about how busy the place was, and how dingy, how a place like that most likely won’t have CCTV.
An hour and a half later, I’m using my meager savings to book into a cheap motel room. I sit on the thin mattress, listening to TV blaring through the adjacent walls, trying to sober up. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. A conversation, a kiss … it can’t be worth this much, can it? It can’t make me lie to the police. But I can’t get over how he went about it—and I’m almost certain it was him—how he warned everybody, how he cared about their safety. A moral arsonist. It sounds like a contradiction.
I take out the matchstick and lie back on the bed, sober now, the rooms around me silent. Turning it over in my hand, I will myself to pick up my cell and call 911. I can explain that I was drunk and not thinking straight. They’ll understand. I’ll give them Diesel’s name and description. That would be the right thing to do.
The absolute wrong thing to do, the sick thing to do, would be to grip the matchstick in one hand and slide my other hand down between my legs, pressing down on my clit as I remember the kiss over and over.
Chapter Four
Willa
Walking into the station is usually exactly what walking into school was like. I wasn’t bullied or outcast. I was just unremarkable to my peers. I would walk through the halls getting nods here and there. College was worse. In college, I felt like a ghost. And usually, as I walk into the station clutching my handbag, the same emotions wash over me. I feel like an intruder. I want to scream out for everybody to hear, “I’m here! I exist!” And at the same time, I want to sink into the floor so that nobody can see me.
Today, it’s like my hair has been dyed green.
Even the security guard who I’ve never spoken to the whole time I’ve worked here openly stares at me. I walk down the hallway and feel people’s eyes on my back. When I turn, several heads dart away, hiding behind the corner. I stand in the elevator and can feel people watching me, even if it’s out of the corner of their eye. None of them are from my floor so they don’t speak to me, but their eyes burn into me. When I finally walk onto my floor, the place goes dead quiet and dozens of heads turn to me, staring.
I go to my desk and get started on my copy, pretending like I don’t know that this place has turned into a zoo and I’m the only animal. In the morning light, with my head groggy from all the alcohol, I was able to tell myself that last night was all a crazy delusion. There are facts. My place burned down. I was on the phone with the insurance people on the bus. But meeting Diesel and the matchstick and the arson … all of that was a lie. But we have a TV in the office and right now it’s playing a news story with my apartment building in the background and the word “arson” in the foreground.
I don’t want to talk to anybody about it. I don’t know what to say. I tell myself I don’t know for sure that Diesel had anything to do with it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my suspicions, suspicions I haven’t even attempted to tell the police about. I think about masturbating over Diesel last night, how wrong and yet right it felt. He made sure nobody was hurt, I tell myself. But then, isn’t that simply justifying?
I’m in the breakroom making myself a much-needed coffee when Brittany enters. From the way she enters, trying to be way too casual, curling strands of hair around her forefinger and pretending not to look at me as she makes her own coffee, I know why she’s in here. She’s been sent to gather intel. She’s the scout.
“So,” she says, stirring her coffee, “anything interesting happen with you last night?”
“Come on,” I say. “Really? You’re really going to pretend like this whole place hasn’t got me on neighborhood watch right now.”
She feigns a shocked look. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“So.” She darts to me, abandoning her coffee and almost spilling mine. I only save it by quickly placing it on the counter. “What happened? You must’ve freaked out when you saw it, right? Were you in your apartment? What happened?”
I take a step back, but then I’m boxed in, Brittany on one side and the wall on the other. I remember last night, when I was boxed in with Diesel. I much preferred that.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“What do you mean? How can’t you know if you were in your apartment?” She gives me a condescending look. It seems everybody in this place is destined to give me condescending looks. “You can’t stand there and tell me you can’t remember if you were in your apartment or not!” Her voice rises, her cheeks flush, and all in all she looks far more frustrated than she has any right to be. Not for the first time, I reflect that Brittany has some emotional problems. “Can you?”
“I guess not,” I mutter. Emotional problems or not, she’s my only work friend.
“So, were you?”
“No, I was at a bar.”
“A bar?” She squints at me through her glasses. “With who?”
“Alone.” I answer quickly, feeling like I’m on the witness stand.
“You were at a bar, drinking alone,” she says, tutting. “That’s not any way to keep your looks, is it, dear?”
I barge past her. “You’re thirty, Brittany,” I snap. “Stop talking to me like you’re my concerned grandmother.”
She blocks the door with her arm. “Excuse me, miss! But you won’t speak to me like that! I can tell you that right now!”
“Let me past,” I say. “If I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to talk about it.”
She leans close to me, her face warping into what I guess is supposed to be a concerned expression. It doesn’t really fit with her features. “I’m your best work friend,” she says. “You know that.”
There’s that distinction again. She’s too eager to make that clear. It’s just like college, when I walked the halls alone only to have pals in class. “I know,” I say, more so she’ll move than anything else.
“So why won’t you talk to me?”
“Because I don’t feel like talking.” A thought hits me, a monetary thought. I can afford two nights in the motel, then I’m in serious trouble. “It’d be different if you were going to offer me a place to stay.” Her face drops. Her lips tremble. She opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a stutter. I fake a laugh. “I’m joking.”
“Oh!” She wipes her forehead. “You had me going there!”
When she lifts her hand to touch her forehead, I make my move, darting through the door and retreating to my desk. I lose myself in boring copy until lunchtime, glad for how mundane it is, how I can switch off my brain and let my fingers do all the work. I don’t have to think about Diesel or his kiss or the flickering flames or the eyes of my coworkers. I don’t have to wonder what the hell I’m doing.
When lunchtime arrives and the place empties, everybody spilling to the diner across the street or into town, I stay in the office for a while, just sitting in the emptiness and trying to figure out what I’m going to do. It should be simple. There’s only one right thing to do. Pick up the phone, dial 911, tell them what I know. A phantom image of Diesel in cuffs appears on my computer screen. No, I can’t do that. I can’t do that to him … for a man I don’t know! Maybe I shouldn’t be
so quick to label Brittany as the one with emotional problems.
“Oh, I didn’t think anyone was in here.” Peter stands at the door to his big main office, staring across at me with his hands in his pocket.
“Oh,” I mutter in response.
I want to make some excuse and leave before he can get me tangled up in another conversation where I have to lie, but he’s already pacing over to me, taking wide steps as if to trap me. When he reaches my desk, he says, “So I guess you know the whole place is abuzz with the news.”
“I guess I do.”
I switch off my computer screen and swivel in my chair, hoping to indicate that I’m going to get up and leave soon. But Peter just stands there, watching me.
“It’s horrible,” he says after a long pause. “Really, really horrible.”
“I agree.” I laugh awkwardly. “It’s pretty horrible.”
Another silence stretches. Outside, a car backfires. Peter’s gray eyes roam over me. I’m just wearing a T-shirt and some jeans I got at the supermarket down the road from the motel, but he’s looking at me like I’m dressed in some sexy outfit.
“Where are you going to stay?” he asks.
“I’m at a motel.”
“A motel? I thought you were broke.” He doesn’t intend for it to be cruel. I can tell that from the way he laughs afterwards. He isn’t a cruel man. But it annoys me nonetheless.
“What made you think that?”
I stand up, but all that accomplishes is that now we’re standing opposite each other. I really wish people would stop boxing me in.
“Remember a couple of weeks when I asked you for a drink?” He quickly adds, “As a friend.”
“Oh, right. I remember.”
I told him I didn’t have the money and when he said he’d pay, I told him I didn’t like guys paying for my drinks. So that was a lie, I reflect, since I had no problem with Diesel paying for my drinks.
“I guess I save money for situations like this, and don’t waste them on drinks.”
“Waste? I’d be a waste?” He laughs again. “I’m a nice guy, Willa. I’m always nice to ladies.”
I cringe, hard, my insides twisting at how pathetic and desperate he looks. Nice Guys are the bane of so many women’s lives. In college I often heard stories about the fabled Nice Guy, who’d show up at your apartment uninvited with a bunch of red roses and call himself Casanova for the trouble.
“I never said that. Excuse me, Peter, but you’re in my way.”
He doesn’t move at once. It’s like he wants to show me he doesn’t have to. But when he does move, I wonder if I imagined that hint of malice in his eyes. After all, just because Peter’s a Nice Guy that doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy.
I don’t really have a plan as I head toward the elevator. I just want to find a safe space where I can think through all of this. I’m in the hallway, heading for the entrance, when the security guard intercepts me. He’s a short man with a bald head and wrinkles marked on his forehead. Tufts of hair jut up from behind his ears and out of his nose.
“Willa?” he says.
“Um, yes?”
He shifts from foot to foot. “You’re not a rat, right?”
“A rat?” I look at his name tag. “Joseph, what are you talking about?”
When I use his name, he calms down a little. “It’s just I got a grandkid, you know, and I don’t wanna be in any trouble or anything like that.”
“Why would you be in trouble? You’re not making very much sense.”
He reaches into his pocket and hands me a note. “You didn’t get this from me, okay? Okay?” He withdraws it, waiting for my answer.
“Okay. What is it?”
“What’s what, miss? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He thrusts the note in my hand and strides away.
I read it: Willa, it’s me. Turn left at the parking lot and walk for two minutes.
I feel like I’m in a spy movie when I leave the station. The sun is bright, far too bright for a scene like this. It should be dark. It should be raining. I don’t have to guess who “me” is. I wonder if I should turn back to the station, dial the police … but in truth, I’m getting tired of wondering that. I know I’m not going to. I just don’t know why.
Liar, liar, a voice whispers. You know exactly why.
The reason why is leaning against his bike, watching me with his arms folded and a matchstick in his mouth.
Chapter Five
Willa
Before the conversation starts, I tell myself I’m here for work. If I’m not going to tell anybody about Diesel, the least I can do is remember our interaction so that one day, when I decide to do the right thing, I’ll be able to document it. I’ll be Truman Capote, who claimed his memory retention was over ninety percent.
“You came,” he says.
I think of last night, hand between my legs.
“I did,” I reply.
“I’m surprised, I’ve gotta say. I reckoned you’d want to stay clear of a man like me so near to your office.”
“How do you even know where I work?”
He smiles at me, and then pats the sleeve of his leather. “I’ve been thinking about yesterday,” he says. “Our kiss ended too soon.”
“I didn’t end the kiss,” I say. “But don’t try and kiss me again. It won’t work if you haven’t forced vodka down my throat.”
“Forced?” He laughs. “Forced is a weird work to pick, Willa. And I thought your business was all about words.”
I look around the alleyway. In the corner, a trash bag overflows onto the concrete. In another corner, a condom clings like a raindrop to a metal bracket. Graffiti is our wallpaper and old, ignored trash our scented candles. “Is this where you bring all your dates?”
“Is this a date?” he shoots back.
I spread my hands. “You brought me here. You tell me. I was happy at work until your lackey came to disturb me.”
“You seem annoyed,” he says. “I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not great when it comes to reading women’s emotions. But you seem annoyed. That’s obvious.”
“Annoyed?” I growl, letting out the frustration I’ve felt all morning. I feel like spitting. “That word doesn’t really cover how I’m feeling, to be completely honest with you. I’m homeless. Soon to be homeless, anyway. I’m staying in some shithole motel where I can hear people screwing in the next room. In two days, I might take that as my bed.” I gesture to the trash bag. “So yeah, maybe I am annoyed.”
“But you seem annoyed at me.” I know he knows, just by looking into his dark green eyes. He knows why I’d be annoyed with him. Does he want me to play some kind of game?
I take a step forward and look up into his face. “You’re kidding, right?” I snap. “You’re really, really kidding.”
“What am I kidding about, Willa?”
“You know why I’m annoyed with you!” I slap the front of his leather. He doesn’t even flinch, just stares down at me calmly. He doesn’t even move. He’s carved from rock. I slap him again, harder. There’s no difference. “You can’t stand there and tell me you really, really don’t know what’s going on here. You’d have to be an idiot, Diesel. Diesel. I feel so stupid calling you that.”
“You have something you want to say.” It’s not a question.
“Yes, I do. You burned down my apartment building. It’s so obvious I can’t believe you’re actually making me come out and say it like this. You burned down my apartment building; that’s it. It’s so obvious! I don’t know why you did it. Maybe you have some weird biker reason for wanting that building gone. But you did it.”
I think he’s going to admit to it, but then he pushes away from his bike and walks to the other end of the alleyway, his back to me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not wearing a wire, Diesel.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he repeats, turning back to me. “What you’re saying makes no goddamn s
ense. Me, burn down a building?”
“Whoever did it,” I say, ignoring him, “made the effort to make sure he wouldn’t be hurting anybody. Physically hurting anybody, at least. He seemingly didn’t care about making them homeless.” I watch him, trying to get a rise out of him. His face twitches but he stays silent. “Maybe he thought he could justify it by saying he’d reimburse anyone without insurance. Fine, that’s a nice gesture, I suppose. But it doesn’t change the fact that he burned down the building they live in, making them homeless.”