Fires

My microwave shorted out and caught on fire, and I stood at a distance and watched it burn, like a wiser moth attracted to but wary of the flame. By the time the fire company showed up the kitchen was all but destroyed, along with a good part of the dining area, and the whole apartment smelled like dead goldfish and wet cardboard. The insurance company guy said later they "don't cover negligence," though I thought I heard the brown-suited man say "stupidity" to my landlord. I got a huge fine.

I called my sister, who was spending the fall in Cincinnati. It was almost Thanksgiving; I thought she'd be off work. I'd never been to Cincinnati, or Ohio, but I pictured her in a place with a lot of colors and leaves. She said she lived downtown, though, where it wasn't very green except in the park. But she lived near the park, so I was almost right.

"For the love of Moses, Alan," she said when she called me back. I had to leave the whole story on an answering machine, which turned out to be her boyfriend's, and it took three messages, and her boyfriend apparently started laughing hysterically halfway through message two, before she picked up the phone to call me. "You're lucky you didn't burn the whole place down. Where are you staying?"

I told her I was staying at a hotel. Really, though, I was at a girl friend's house; no a girlfriend, but the other kind. Her name was Merv, short for Minerva, I think, though I never asked. I couldn't tell my sister this because she didn't like Merv, because Merv taught a yoga class. I took her class once. In a position where my head wound up down by my knees looking up past my own buttocks I noticed Merv's toenails. They were painted nine different colors-ROY G BIV, then black and white. Only by noticing this did I notice she only had nine toes. Her fourth toe on her left foot was missing, leaving an intriguing gap between the third and pinky toes.

My sister gave me a lecture about fire safety while I watched Merv paint her nine toenails shades of autumn. As she switched on the T.V. to wait for them to dry I wanted to ask my sister if she remembered autumns in New York, particularly when dad took us to Central Park and showed us changing leaves. But I was preoccupied with ignoring her speech and watching the quick flashes of snowy static between channels as Merv surfed, and happened to catch a lingering glimpse of a forest fire somewhere out West.

A week later all I can think is that I had a dysfunctional microwave and troubles of my own to deal with: What was the forest's excuse?