The Girl in the Flaming Dress
by Michael J. Vaughn
An Explanation
While writing this novel, I had a date to the opera (Die Fliegende Hollander, Opera San Jose). Arriving early, I took a walk around my date's neighborhood, the Palm Haven section of San Jose. The '40s style architecture, along with a spooky evening wind, reminded me of a Raymond Chandler novel, and I began to narrate to myself in that lovely, rhythmic noir style. (He slid from the curb like a shadow, his troubles weighing him down like a backpack filled with rocks.) When I finally picked up my date, she was wearing the most astounding dress, and there was my central theme. I decided, just for fun, to write a Chandleresque short story, then, much to my surprise, found that it fit rather nicely into my novel. Then I decided to use the title for the whole book. (I worried about the word Girl, which has gotten into far too many titles lately, but my secret advisor, La Diva, said, "What do you care? It's not like they're gonna be disappointed at the contents." Bless her.) As for my date, I never saw her again, but I'm eternally grateful. Here's looking at you, kid.
The Girl in the Flaming Dress
I’m due to beat the skins at FDR’s,
but I’m running early. I’m always
early. Manny hands me a flight of brews, but it just puts me to sleep. I wake
at the glass, one eye on my Toyota. I lost a window to a smash-and-grabber and
right now it’s as open as a library.
The
gig is special – rowdy crowd, good drinkers, chair dancers – but afterward my
singer is putting me in a flummox. She up-and-downs me, leaving eyeprints all
over my clothing. The thing is, she’s comparing me to my former self, Fat
Johnny, and she’s dazzled by the results. No miracles, really, just joining a
gym and not being a pig. Granted, I don’t pump iron to be ignored, but it’s
still me inside and her ex-boyfriend
is my lead guitarist, ten feet away. And, she’s still out of my league. My
former flabby self can’t handle the attention.
Of
course, I’m an idiot. But Pamela is disrupting the natural balance of
evolution. I bullet out of San Francisco in my Toyota, the plastic blowing over
my window like the tarps at Candlestick Park. I try not to think about the way
Pamela kept taking off her leather jacket during the gig, revealing her
backless top. And then I open the other window.
My
antidote arrives at Frankie’s Lounge in the form of Cha-Cha Flores, my favorite
drink of mocha and unofficial alcoholic niece. She’s got her hair all curled up
around her teddy bear eyes and I swear I want to take her home and add her to
my plush toy collection. She’s nervous about getting married (who wouldn’t be?)
but I know her Jimmy and you can’t find better. I sing the Tender Trap
regardless and I’m gone.
I’m
up the next morning far too early on accounta some blind date at my golf
course. The actuality is a testimony to photographic weight-reduction
techniques, but I’m willing to take one for the team. I deliver a bouquet of
drugstore flowers and chew on a meatloaf as she talks about life in the big
cubicle. But my mind is already on the range, where I will use my new driver to
inscribe 300-yard parabolas against the green-blonde hills. The clouds chug by
like trolleys and all is good.
But
yeah, something’s bugging me so here’s what it is. Stevie. Stevie who walks
into Frankie’s on a Saturday night, strikes a pose and takes over the joint.
And freezes my heart. She sent a response to my latest begnote that bamboozles
me. You are so funny! Perhaps in another
life…
A
simple no would have been so much
better.
This, this is from the Sphinx. What
exactly is keeping us apart? Am I a Montague, she a Capulet? Am I under an
ancient curse? Have I lost an extremity? Amongst a hundred women with their
eyes on me, the one that bugs me the most is the one who’s not interested.
So
I report home to wash the regret from my skin, and I put on my best funeral
clothes for a night at the opera.
Yeah,
I know. I surprise myself sometimes. But this one is a professorial type,
mousy, brainy, irresistible, and you do what you gotta. She tells me not to arrive early, so naturally I
arrive early, and I run out of stalls at her curbside so I take a hike around
the block.
Palm
Haven looks like forties Los Angeles with the Craftsmans, bungalows and art
decos shadowed by high palms. It’s the kind of neighborhood that’s so pretty it
kinda scares you. I’m hoofing it around this triangular park, the shadows
making me feel like Sam Spade on a junket. A cloud of blackbirds traces me,
wearing little copper badges, peppering me with questions. Do you have business
in this neighborhood, sir? Is there an address you were looking for? Have you
been drinking this evening?
I
finish the loop, expecting cholos and junkies, but all I get are techies and
Pekingese. I’m still five minutes
early, but I’ve had it, so I step into the chamber of Donna’s porch and hit the
knocker. It’s an adobe wth fine lines, mission-style. I think St. Francis lives
here. I see polygons of sheetrock on the floor, a safe path for the mugs who
just tiled her kitchen.
She
appears at the corner of the door, straight dark hair, vanilla skin, green
eyes. Donna is no beauty queen, but her body has a personality all its own, a
50-year-old personal trainee from heaven.
She
opens the door and smiles. I’m not actually certain what I’m looking at. I wait
for her to talk so she’ll walk away, so I’ll stop hallucinating.
“You are early. But not too. Let me get
you some tequila.” She walks away. And yeah.
Her
dress rises in terraces. It starts out a smoky black, just over the knee, then
graduates to red, to orange, and then to tangerine at the bust. She is a human
flame. I’m finding it hard to breathe. She hands me a shot of Patrón, a slice
of lemon. I shoot and suck, and when I resurface I have words.
“This
dress is amazing.”
“Thanks!
I wore it to a party this summer and it was so bright today I…” and keeps on
talking like she has no idea that she has gone and turned herself into a
goddess.
I’m
a wreck. I drive her away in my pathetic car. I follow her up the stairs of the
parking garage, my eyes directly at her hips (I can’t say “ass” when referring
to a goddess).
In
the outside world, I am my fake charming smile. We enter an opera house whose
furnishings have been adjusted to complement her dress. A flaming golden sun
rises over the proscenium. The show is about a mariner who’s been condemned to
sail the seas for all eternity, unless he finds a true woman and I got news for
him this might take a while. But there I am in the seventh row, reduced to puberty,
afraid to take those white fingers in mine on accounta what it might imply. On the way to intermission, I
place a hand on the back of her dress, her muscles firm underneath, and I want
to touch her everywhere but she is on fire and I shouldn’t. It takes a
post-opera martini to force the truth out of me.
“I
am walking around with this elegant creature on my arm, and I am feeling
completely flummoxed.”
Donna
gives me a blank look, but I think she is giving me the polygraph. Apparently I
pass the test, because later she tells me, “It was nice to be complimented on my
dress. And more than once!”
I
hug her at the door and I leave. The stars are too bright, and I am afraid that
when she takes off that dress she will return to mortal form. It reminds me of
this other opera, where a warrior princess saves the whole operation by burning
herself alive. She could fly, this one.
In
the mariner opera, the woman is untruthful, so the captain goes back to his
cursed ship. But then the woman hurls herself into the bay, comes out an angel,
and she and the captain fly away together.
But
there’s your fix. You can’t worship a woman that much. She might catch fire,
and she might have to jump into the ocean to put herself out.
Tonight,
I’m calling Pamela. What the hell.
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