Two women in the laundry room sitting on opposite sides of the space. Scrolling through their phones, waiting for the spin cycles to finish. They look like mirrors of each other. Like two kittens from the same litter, one with a slightly darker coat than the other, both of them slumped in the same way, both of them half smiling as they scroll. Alison likes the companionable silence, but she likes it even more when the other woman starts playing music on her phone, uses the empty cup she was sipping water from to amplify the sound.
The woman runs her hands through her dirty-blond hair; the blue pools of her eyes sparkle in the slice of sun she’s sitting in. She’s wearing a pair of denim shorts pulled over a red Lycra one-piece. She smiles at Alison, moves in time with the sound; as the chorus kicks in she thrashes around with the drums. “Celebrity Skin.” Alison hasn’t heard it for years. She remembers every word. The other woman is singing, so she starts singing too. You want a part of me / Well, I’m not selling cheap.
When it ends, they laugh together in the space before the next song. Alison thinks about the time she saw Hole in concert. She was a teenager. They were touring for the Big Day Out. She lied to her parents and she caught the bus into Melbourne with Pat. Wearing cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts, little thin-strapped singlets and Docs. It was too cold for that. Alison remembered how it was chilly, not hot. One of those Melbourne summer days that isn’t. How the freedom of the excursion made her skin sizzle anyway, and the cold didn’t matter in the crush of the crowd and the thrill of the music, the jostle of the bodies, so many goddamn bodies. Courtney Love in velvet and leather, grunge queen dethroned, no need for her crown. Alison remembered wanting to not give a shit as much as Courtney Love didn’t give a shit.
She raised her voice over the music. “Saw them live once.” The other woman smiled at her. The machine full of her clothes was bleeping. Cycle over. She jumped down from her perch and pulled them out, piled them back in the basket, picked up her phone and stopped the music, smiled at Alison again, and nodded a good-bye. Alison watched her walk away. Never thought about it again. Never noticed Gil watching them from the balcony, snapping a photograph of them together in that moment of laughter, seeing how they smiled in the same way, sloped their shoulders the same way, were interesting in the same way. Alison only remembered the encounter in the car on the way back to Sal’s after running some errands. She’d put on the playlist Meg had made on Spotify, the one she’d called Teenage Bullshit and filled with nineties relics. Hole among them. You want a part of me / Well, I’m not selling cheap. The final piece in the puzzle.
She thinks again about that day. About the way they’d sat there, opposite each other, comfortable strangers, enjoyed that little moment of nostalgia. The luck of the draw. What if they’d talked? Become friends? What if Alison had been able to stop her from getting involved with Gil? What if when she left him, she’d crashed on Simone’s couch? The possibilities unfolded in front of her like ribbons streaming down a maypole. There’s no point thinking about it now. She sucked the spit through the gap in her front teeth, gulped it down, turned the car into the drive, and pulled up in front of Sal’s. No way to change things now.
Alison went into the makeshift studio, took another look at the canvases, examined the curves of Simone’s cheeks and the directions of her own brushstrokes. Rummaged around in the pile of unsalvageable pieces and found a good-size square. She painted a thick cover of white over the grays and reds and blacks, and began again. Thought of the fire and the towns razed and the people lost and the way the smoke felt in her throat and the way the heat burned without the flames touching you. The way it pulsed toward you in waves and reddened your skin and tightened your chest and made you beg for cool, for cover, for the shade of death, of dark, of night. For the numb respite of nothing.
The paint on the brush was heavy and cool and smelled faintly of accelerants, the kind that wet the rags troublemakers stuff into bottles or fuel the lighters that spark events far bigger than themselves. The brush, oily with kerosene, was slick and sweet in Alison’s hand, but she didn’t want to paint now; the spirit-soaked bristles sparked a deep yearning. Alison set the brush down and went into the bathroom. Turned the taps. Got the water just right and let it collect in the tub. She peeled off her clothes and slipped into the bath. Let the silk of it wrap her from ankle to neck. Waited until it was almost at the lip of the tub before shutting off the taps. Looked out the window. Saw the branches of the trees swaying in the wind and suppressed a shiver. Was it the night air that rustled them? She would never be certain again.
A fire sucks up all the oxygen in a room. Takes it out of your lungs and your bronchi, your trachea, your mouth, your nose, your sinuses, your brain; eventually it sucks the good stuff from your blood too, or your body does as it desperately tries to keep up. Keep up with what? If the heat doesn’t kill you, the smoke will. If the smoke doesn’t kill you, the flames will. Throw yourself, then, on the mercy of the wind. You’ve no other choice to survive.