Playing With Fire

Some days I’m superstitious. Today’s one of them. I get the feeling that something exhilarating will happen. It does.

I’m sitting in my real estate office on the second floor of the airplane hangar. It’s a metal building with rip-away siding to make it easy on hurricanes. It’s not built to last. What is? Outside summer swelters, temperature over 200, humidity the same. Shimmering heat monkeys dance like swooning spirits on acres of asphalt tarmac. Nothing else moves. Like my business. I crank the AC down to 35.

I’m putting the final touches on an algorithm that disputes the Biblical notion of the ‘Deceitfulness of Riches’ and that will assure vast, easy money from Wall Street. Johnny Cash is singing on Country 98.9, “Love is a burning thing, and it makes a fiery ring.” I twirl a long-neck Bic lighter, contemplating some burning of my own, and wishing I were holding a frosty, long-neck Miller.

It’s a typical day in this business…sit, wait, pray. Sometimes the phone rings, mostly it doesn’t. The news is disgusting…who cares about Putin’s Botox injections? Who’ll strike the spark that combusts another world conflagration? Syria, Greece? Silence is the answer from prayers. So, I turn up Johnny, “I fell into a burning ring of fire, I went down, down, down and the flames went higher.” I twirl the lighter, thinking.

I decide to torch my old files, repositories of the ‘old days’ I keep around for amusement. It’s good to remember the ‘old days,’ when our exploits were savage and reckless, and how the wild-fires of youth burned uncontrollably across our landscape. O, such memories, now only lifeless chronicles, yellowed scraps of paper, embellished stories that attest to the fact we once lived. I look at the jets parked in the hangar and wonder what one spark of the Bic would do to the strong scent of Jet-A fuel. I decide to risk it.

Memories, boxes of crap…all that’s left. Their fangs dig deep. I’m ruthless…slash and burn. No mercy. Fire is the only solution. Ah, a financial statement from 1973. I read it and laugh. What a joke. Was I a comedian? No wonder the SunTrust thugs tossed me into the street. All smoke, no fire…now cold as the ashes of lovers past. Whoosh, up in flames. Johnny sings on, “And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire…”

Whatta you know…old letters. What? I put that in print? Jails and cemeteries are crammed full of writers of such smut and heresy. Some pictures surface. What was I thinking? There’s enough incriminating evidence here to get one divorced, murdered or partially dismembered. Whoosh. Reduced to smoke. Johnny’s words echo, “Bound by wild desire, I fell into a ring of fire.”

What’s this? Thousands of business cards, stuffed into a used manila envelope covered with Kilroy-Was-Here doodles. I flip through them. Who are these people? Some have pictures. Mostly women. They disguise reality by pasting college sorority photos on the cards. Facebook is full of frauds.

Later, I stagger in from lunch, bloated on burritos. Humidity clings like a wet wool shroud. My superstition nags. Nothing yet. I collapse on the sofa for a nap.

The downstairs door opens. A female voice, silky and assured, calls my name. “Are you here?” I stumble from the sofa and wring the sweat from my shirt. “Yes, come up.” Her perfume precedes her. Johnny sings, “The taste of love is sweet when hearts like ours meet.”

Eighteen steps separate us. Her spiked heels click, closer, closer. She mocks the paper Mache tiger and Hindu evil eye that keep guard on my Inner Sanctum. My heart flutters. Then she emerges. My heart soars, my jaw drops.

“Hi, I’m Sophia. You don’t know me…yet. I came by to offer you an intriguing business opportunity.” Even my checkbook can feel her smile. She has plenty of legs. Her gilded toenails wink at me. She offers her hand. I tremble. My weak voice offers her a chair.

She sits down. Her white linen dress is in stark contrast with her beach-tanned legs. I fiddle with the Bic. “What’s with the lighter?” she asks. I reply, “Oh, deleting memories, just burning some old bridges I should have burned years ago.”

“How about building some new bridges?” she says. My heart races. “I’m listening. What’s your plan?” She explains. In the back of my mind I hear Tom T. Hall singing, “It’s faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, more money.”

The Bic twirls faster while Johnny sings louder, “I fell for you like a child, Oh, but the fire went wild. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher.”

Suddenly flames spurt from the Bic. The fuse is lit. The flares erupt.

Bud Hearn
June 21, 2012