City of kindling
Three flickers of urban precarity
1.
It’s hard to say no to free fire. Bring your own receptacle, they said.
That’s how I ended up in a dingy twelfth-floor office with two buckets in my hands. Oh, that won’t do, they said. Luckily, they had a spare box - velvet-covered, with a gilded clasp. We always keep a few extra on hand, they said. But it seemed so small. You’d be surprised, they said.
I asked where they kept the fire, and they said the other room. Can I see it? Nope. So I sat down to wait and picked up a magazine. Scourge. Each article was about something the writer hated, matched with a photographer who hated it too. There were some obvious subjects - racism, papercuts - but there were also essays about babies and Monet.
I was reading one piece about the writer’s wife - accompanied by the wife’s self-portrait - when they came back with the box. If you’re careful, they said, this could last eight years. But how do I get it out? Look, we can’t really help you with that. Then why should I take it? We don’t want it anymore.
I’ll cop to raising my voice, and they left the room again. I waited a few minutes to apologize, and eventually peeped through the crack to see what was happening. I’m not sure how to describe it, but there wasn’t a room back there - just a space. It was hard to see how someone could get in or out.
I left my buckets behind and started back down the stairs. When I got to the sidewalk, I saw flames coming out of the windows. Not all of them. A few on the seventh floor, one on the third, two on the eleventh, and so on. The twelfth floor didn’t have any windows, which didn’t seem right.
I stroked the box’s bristly flocking and wondered where I should take it. What’s the opposite of a locksmith? Someone who can extract things rather than getting in. Just a little bit at a time.
Thinking about that space in the building, I realized what I needed: a bigger box to put my box in. Then the velvet box could be opened safely inside, with the larger box rigged to dispense the desired amount.
I knew who could help me find such a thing. But her number wasn’t in my phone anymore. Had we had a spat? I had some memory of her mentioning a boat. So I walked to the harbor, where I became completely preoccupied with the vessels floating in and out. I ended up living there for, well, the next eight years.
2.
An elevator is no place for horseplay. But this group of teens - there must have been 20 - kept throwing firecrackers at each other’s feet. They took turns seeing how long they could go before leaping away from the pain.
I cast them an indulgent nod at first - it may not look it, but I was young once myself! - until somebody lit one of the ones that shrieks and spins. It flew across and singed the side of a baby’s face. The mother yanked the stroller out at the next floor, though the smoky smell and clink of metal marked it as strictly industrial. The teens hadn’t even noticed - their private drama encased their entire world. It would have been the same on a flooded beach or the vacuum of near space.
I thought to intervene when they started burning each other with sparklers, but I didn’t want to be that kind of goat. Instead, I stared at one woman’s remarkable dress. It was studded with elaborate crocheted lion heads - bulbous enough to be pom-poms if they weren’t so exquisitely defined, each with its own antic expression, as if good-naturedly embarrassed to be captured in such a form. The lions shuddered a bit with each jerk of the lift, as if nodding to say, sure, it’s pretty awkward, but what can you do?
Yet the human head sprouting from the neck of the dress appeared as grim as ashes. Like the teens - who had moved onto shooting bottle rockets out of their mouths - she carried her own weather. But she held this atmosphere beneath her garment - the dress lived a vibrant life of its own, independent of the body it concealed.
I grew increasingly tense, waiting for one of the lions to be ignited by a stray spark - a suspense the woman clearly didn’t share. After some time it became unbearable, and, like the nonplussed mother before me, I elbowed my way through the doors the next time they opened.
They slid shut to leave me in a black-walled room, lit only by a tight beam trained on a chest-high plinth. Atop it stood a big, chunky jewel, like the kind robbers make off with in comics. It couldn’t possibly have been real, but someone had gone to great lengths to give it a striking display. Its colors dazzled - saffron, magenta, a hint of ultramarine - but I forced myself not to get lost in their depths. I could detect movement deep within, and I couldn’t afford to get carried away. I turned my back to wait for the elevator to return. There were too many floors to walk up.
3.
It feels surprisingly peaceful, living suspended in air. No neighbors above and below, in front or behind. But I have two entrances and exits - one to the left and one to the right.
I never knew buildings could speak to each other, until I learned these two don’t. Adjacent structures tend to forge an understanding. Those that actually touch require each other’s support. Others share an era or architect or were built for a common purpose. Others hung bonds in the sky: airborne shafts to pass goods and messages without exterior interruption.
People stare up at these aerial marvels and project their own dreams of suspension. They celebrate these skyways from without, unaware that they can also be conduits for mutual rancor. A building needs a special confidence to be content with such interdependence. Two buildings, excessively proud, might grow to loathe the passage between them. But the channels remain intact, because sentimental fools who have never walked through them insist on honoring severed bonds.
This is how I came to live in between. In exchange for an airborne tunnel in which to lay my head, I must ensure that no one passes through to carry ill will from one to the other.
I maintain impeccably cordial relationships with both sides, entering and exiting on a scrupulous schedule, lest one end believe I favor the other. I speak to no one in either, and I am allowed no guests. The sun provides my warmth and heat, the sky my water. Everything else I must arrange myself.
The room is lined with windows on both sides, through which I watch the city at work. The bronze casings are works of art, visible to none but me and the birds. I sometimes get a shock from an errant plastic bag slapped against glass by the wind. I have sun from the east all morning and sun from the west all afternoon, with noontime briefly balanced in shadow. There’s little else I need.
But at night - especially when I’m favored by the moon - I’m rarely able to sleep. It would take only the smallest ember to set the interior ablaze. To save my life, I would be forced to choose a way out. Whichever debt I incurred would be intolerable to the other side. There are locks on the outsides of both of my doors, which will automatically bolt at the first sign of smoke. The balance must be maintained at all costs. I will die as I lived: floating, alone.