“The Prescribed Burn” (Story 12, Excerpt 2)

The following excerpt is the second part of “The Prescribed Burn”. You can read the first part here.

“That’s gross,” I said. “Did he start to drool?”

“Basically,” said Madsy. “And I could see into the mesh pocket of his backpack. Full of condoms.”

I started to laugh, and I felt my greasy forearms slide over the armrests of my chair. While I laughed, my butt sank into the fabric. I broke the tight weave of plastic fibers, and I fell almost completely through the chair, just above the wooden floor of the deck.

Maybe I had gained so much weight that the chair could no longer hold me. I worried about how mad my parents would be about the broken lounge chair.

Now Madsy was laughing.

“Oh, are you okay?” Madsy asked.

“Wow, how did that happen? Did I really get that fat?”

“It’s probably just because these chairs haven’t been used in a while,” said Madsy. “All the temperature and weather changes really fuck with the material, you know?”

“My parents are not going to be happy,” I said.

I stood up to avoid any further damage and sat down on the end of Madsy’s lounge chair, by her feet.

“Calm down,” said Madsy. “Just say an animal chewed through it or something. You basically live in the wilderness. They’ll believe it.”

I hoped that the two of us on one chair wouldn’t break it. My arm brushed Madsy’s leg, and my limb slipped over hers, greasy from the tanning oil. Madsy’s skin, from the brief encounter I had with it, was so unlike Theo’s, which pulled closely around his bones and muscles. Madsy’s skin was so soft and new to the touch that it actually made me want Theo, simply because the feeling of him was more familiar.

I squinted my eyes and saw clouds, even though the sky had previously been cloudless. The masses were dark and definitely looked like smoke, which would explain why I had smelled it. I became very afraid and wondered why the forest behind my house was burning.

“Okay, do you see that?” I asked. “I told you something was burning.”

“Oh, it’s probably nothing though. Wouldn’t we be hearing firetrucks by now?”

“True,” I said. “Okay, keep telling me the story so that I can stop thinking about everything else. I want to know what he did with all those condoms.”

“Well, basically we were partners all day. He touched me a few times, to adjust my posture, and I was completely charged. He really turned me on,” said Madsy.

I sort of remembered what it was like to feel completely charged by someone, by Theo, but that feeling was so far behind me that I didn’t understand how it could have been possible in the first place. Had I imagined it? How could anyone in the world make me feel that way?

“I could tell he wasn’t really boyfriend material, just based on the condoms, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted to try some of those poses with him in private.”

“You did not just say that,” I said.

“After the workshop, he invited me to the juice bar with him so that we could get smoothies.”

“What the hell is burning?” I asked. “What is that?”

“It’s okay,” said Madsy.

She turned over on her back to face me. Madsy started breathing the way that she wanted me to breathe when I became nervous, and I got the hint. I inhaled through my nose, pushing my stomach out and opening my diaphragm. Pushing out my stomach made me look fat. I exhaled through my mouth, releasing all the tension.

Madsy was reminding me to calm down. After eight years as my best friend, she knew what to say and do when I was feeling anxious.

I wondered if I was somehow being punished for the bad thoughts I had about my home and its ability to inspire gnawing nostalgia. I wondered if the fire would burn down my parents’ house, destroying everything that bothered me.

“So anyway, after the juice bar, Ramón invited me back to his hotel room. He was just staying temporarily for the workshop. Did I tell you that part?” Asked Madsy. “He actually travels a lot, doing private workshops with his high-profile clients. Athletes, celebrities, rich yoga fanatics, you know.”

“Weren’t you afraid to go back to a hotel room with someone you didn’t know?” I asked.

I wondered what it might be like to be alone with Theo again. I didn’t think I could do it. I would need someone else there with me, or I would need to meet him in a crowded place, in a busy restaurant. I was sure that if I called Theo and asked him to have sex with me, for old times sake, he would agree to fuck me. Afterward, he would make a comment about making sure I didn’t get under his skin.

I liked the idea of attracting Theo’s attention, but the consequences would not be worth the experience.

“I felt pretty comfortable with him,” said Madsy. “We were touching all day, and I knew what I was getting into, emotionally. I just thought it would be fun. Also, the ginseng in my smoothie made me hyper.”

I could understand that. Exercising with someone generally made me feel closer to them. Theo and I used to go for long runs together sometimes and then afterward collapse into a sweaty mess. The one thing that always annoyed me, though, was how much faster he was and how he taunted me. At least, without Theo, I could run at my own pace.

I suddenly had trouble breathing, and I couldn’t tell if my breathlessness was a result of my inability to do Madsy’s breathing exercises, from the smoke, which was still billowing from the trees, or from the tightness in my chest that occurred when I tried to make sense of Theo.

“So I don’t want to get too graphic, because I know you won’t approve, but basically Ramón started kissing me the moment we entered his room. It was so immediate,” said Madsy. “And then things moved to one of the two queen-sized beds, the one he wasn’t sleeping in, of course. He didn’t want to mess up his bed.”

I missed the immediacy that Madsy described. Theo and I had that on good nights, sometimes after a bottle of wine. Even during our worst arguments, when we felt most estranged from and strange to one another, like Madsy and Ramón must have felt that day, we would still be slaves to the spark.

“I’m going to call my mom and ask her if she knows what’s going on with the smoke,” I said.

“Wait, don’t you want to hear the rest of my story?” Asked Madsy. “Anyway, if your mom finds out that you and I have been tanning then she’ll know that you broke the chair.”

“True. Okay, finish your story,” I said. “Did he use one of the condoms?”

“Yeah, I asked him why he had so many, and he gave me some generic answer about being prepared for anything.

So we started doing it on his bed, and it was pretty hot but mostly theatrical, you know? He just didn’t seem genuine and was only interested in impressing himself. I don’t think hand-waving and hip-shaking are for me. I got the impression that he spends a lot of time in front of his mirror, naked, practicing his sex moves. Also, his forehead was really greasy, and I kept staring at the way the gel from his hair seemed to be melting onto his face.”

“That’s disgusting. Is that the whole story? We really need to go inside. I hear crackling now. It sounds like trees are crackling and falling, actually. Yes, falling,” I said.

I sat up straight and used the towel to wipe the grease from my body. My skin was stinging, and I wondered if I was burning too. Usually the sunburn didn’t appear for a few hours, after it was too late.

“Do you hear that?”

“Yeah, but I don’t hear any sirens,” said Madsy. “And anyway, that’s not the end of my story. It gets better.”

“What could possibly be better than fucking Ramón?” I asked, impatiently.

“Okay, so you’re not going to believe this part,” said Madsy. “So then he started to get really into it. And he moved his lips close to my ear and kept saying these two words over and over again.”

“What the fuck was that?” I asked.

I noticed a figure move between the tree trunks. The figure appeared to be wearing something orange and reflective. I thought, for just a moment, that it might be Theo. Maybe he was coming back. He seemed to be walking closer to us. The figure was wearing a yellow hard hat, a thick vest, and heavy work pants.

“Over and over, Ramón kept whispering in my ear que rico, que rico, with the rolled ‘r’ and everything, and I just didn’t know what to do. I thought I was just going to burst out laughing so I told him that I speak English and that I had no idea what he was saying,” said Madsy. “Que rrrrrrico. Que rrrrrrico.”

Madsy’s loud moans attracted the attention of the man in the woods, and I stood up, ready to run inside.

“Don’t come too close to the trees,” said the man in the forest. “We’re conducting a small prescribed burn.”

“Come on, Madsy,” I said.

I was relieved that I finally knew the cause of the smoke. Madsy grabbed her towel and finally followed me inside.

“See? It was nothing,” said Madsy. “Anyway, so he kept saying that, over and over, louder and louder, until he finished. And then I asked him to go down on me, but he said he was too tired to continue.

“That’s ridiculous!” I said.

Now that we were inside the house, I was better able to focus on Madsy.

“What a jerk. He could have at least tried to make you come. I wish I could punch him.”

“Yeah, in the end I didn’t really get anything out of it.”

“Don’t ever say that. You got a good story, right?”

I pressed my face against the glass of the deck window, watching the man stomp through the woods, making sure the fire wasn’t burning out of control.

“Listen, I don’t mean to scold you, but you really should have known better,” I said.

“I know,” said Madsy, slumping down into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “I know. I didn’t spend the night, and then I felt shitty afterward. And I had to see him every day for the rest of the week.”

Madsy started to cry, and I was surprised because I didn’t realize how upset Ramón had made her. I was under the impression that Madsy’s encounter with the yoga instructor was simply a playful fling that hadn’t worked out like she had hoped. Madsy had told the whole story in such a joking way that I assumed she wasn’t much bothered by it, but now Madsy was crying at my parents’ kitchen table, soaking the fabric placemats.

In the midst of my own preoccupation with Theo, I had neglected to truly notice Madsy’s pain.

“Don’t cry, Mads. He’s a jerk, and you couldn’t have known that he would treat you that way,” I said. “Look, you said you were hungry. Can I make you some lunch?”

I went to the refrigerator and actually found some meat and vegetables. I motioned for Madsy to wait for me while I ran up to my bedroom and knocked my art theory books on the floor. When I stooped to pick up the books, I saw the portfolio from the art project that Theo and I had done together. I had almost completely forgotten about it.

When I returned to the kitchen, I asked Madsy to grab the food and follow me out to the deck. I was holding the portfolio under my greasy arm, and the tanning oil left smudges on the cover.

“Let’s go outside. The man said it was okay, as long as we don’t go too close to the trees. I will grill you some lunch, like you wanted. It will be alright,” I said.

“Okay, I’m really hungry,” said Madsy.

We stood there, watching the trees burn. Madsy lit the grill.

“Hey, could you do me a favor?” I shouted.

The man in the reflective vest approached the deck, and Madsy pulled the towel more tightly around her body. I held out the art portfolio and motioned for him to take it.

I needed to let go of at least one thing.

(Photo by Wayne National Forest)