The Girl in the Flaming Dress

An excerpt from the novel
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.