A fire starts burning in a young heart and is extinguished prematurely |
I was dealing with fires at age sixteen. They would start early in the morning, soon after I had filled up the rusty old tanks with gasoline. Elias had shown me several times how to properly fill up the tanks - "only three quarters full," he would admonish me. He had also shown me how to wipe spills before starting up the burners, but I was young and inclined to cutting corners despite the obvious and often materialized risks so after topping off each tank, I would skip the safety-related steps and start pumping air into it while holding a lit match to the burner until a steady blue flame appeared. I would then tuck the burner directly under a metal plate on which a milky mix of water, flour, and sugar was transformed by the heat into beautifully crisp sugar cones. Elias' sugar cone operation consisted of a waist high, makeshift slab of cement with two circular holes in it, one for each burner and its corresponding metal plate, all of this built in a corner of his house's backyard under an equally improvised clay roof that covered just enough of the area to keep the burners from the wind and the rain. Ah, the rain. When it came, my back and buttocks dampened and tensed at the cold droplets that splattered off the edge of the roof, while my face and my chest melted into an incessant trickle of sweat under the implacable heat of the burners. All the while, my mind was quiet and serene as the job was entirely mindless: apply oil to one hot plate to prevent sticking, scoop spoonful of mix onto plate, slowly lower plate cover onto plate and snap together, repeat process on second plate, come back to first plate, peel still malleable flour shell, roll into the shape of a cone, place cone in basket, repeat process as many times as possible before dehydration sets in or before consumption of available gasoline. For the hours I was there, I was an automaton, my mind sparked only by the occasional feeling of dread, and by the fires. As if violently awakened from a deep sleep, in an instant, my otherwise dark corner would light up and I would feel the tug of a million pores on my face, stretched from the sudden hot flare. And in the same automated fashion that I rolled hundreds of cones each day, I would reach for the damp rag I used for tidying up my workspace and take swings at the flame that engulfed the already blackened burner. Some times I would have to run the rag up and down the long burner neck, dabbing it until the flame was completely extinguished. Then, a lovely calm would follow. With the hissing of the burners and the crackling of flour mix on the hot plates interrupted, I could hear my own breathing and I would bask in the quiet and in the manliness and heroism that allowed me to ably avert disaster. That was, unless Elias was in the house at that moment. The old man had developed an uncanny sense for any danger around his facilities and no matter how swiftly and gracefully I handled these crises, he was certain to dash into the yard, arms stretched in front of him, ready to embrace those blazing burners against his bare chest if that meant the rest of the operation would be spared from the flames. He didn't know, or didn't seem to know, of my disregard for the safety steps he had so adamantly taught me. "Are you OK, boy?" he would ask, and his earnest handling of the fires and his genuine concern for my safety, rather than make me feel guilty for my covert sloppiness, made him seem pathetic in my young eyes. Everything about Elias was old and weathered, strained, except for his hair, which was still jet black and which, held together by a permanent buildup of grease, went from a tightly combed, solid crest in the morning to a long and droopy bang that fanned his bulgy, cloudy brown eyes in the afternoon. During my short apprenticeship, as I stood behind his irreversibly hunched figure, watching as those crooked and heavily knotted digits rolled thin disks of dough into cones, I felt profound gratitude toward him but I also became convinced that he needed me more than I needed him. I was young and vigorous and felt that my options were limitless; Elias was frail and tired and couldn't keep his business going without someone doing the heavy lifting for him. For a year and a half, I would live by Elias' and my mother's expectation that I would work for him during every school break. My mom, too, wanted me to do a good deed by helping Elias out and she appreciated the relative financial independence that the job afforded me, as the cash Elias paid me covered the miscellaneous expenses I had as a typical teenager. There wasn't a formal time to report to work in the morning but I was usually knocking on Elias' door some time around six in the morning. His house was a little more than a block away from mine and that morning walk was at once invigorating and dreadful. I was uplifted by the cold morning air and the sight of a dark pink sky that at dawn was background to blue and black hills to the East of the city, but my trance was abruptly broken when Elias would open the door wearing his yellow robe, his black crest ruffled and his face covered in random patches of black and silver stubble. The first time he welcomed me in this fashion I was sure that his shriveled neck wasn't much thicker than my wrist. Together, we would head toward the backyard, passing through the kitchen, where I learned to look for clues of whether he had coffee or hot cocoa ready for me, which was frequently the case. The old man's tenderness and consideration toward me made the eight or nine-hour scorching shift easier to tolerate. It wasn't entirely clear to me why Elias was no longer making the cones himself, though the signs of his frailty (his shaky hands, his lack of strength, his slouched posture) were apparent enough to allay my curiosity. Every day, after brining me a cup of coffee or chocolate, he would retreat into what I could only guess was another part of the house where I couldn't hear him or see him, unless the occasional burner caught on fire and his acute instincts summoned him to the rescue. I would spend the rest of my work day making the cones, filling the gas tanks, and searching for some form of refreshment among expired milk bottles and various plastic and paper bags stuffed with mysterious contents in the refrigerator. Then came Paloma. She was the younger of Elias' two daughters. The older daughter, Marcela, had come by the house a handful of times while I was there. "The doctor is coming to check on me", he said to me once, referring to Marcela's upcoming visit, and I knew this was a loaded statement as he had earlier told me that Marcela worked as a secretary of some sort, not as a doctor. Marcela was an icicle of a woman. Her stern gaze and unadorned straight hair watered down her vague handsomeness and gave her an air of inappropriate strictness, like the incarnate caricature of a catholic school librarian. During one of her visits, she asked me with apparent concern for details about Elias' daily routine, which I was able to offer only to a limited degree. "He's usually awake by the time I come in and then I think he goes into another part of the house," I said cautiously, as I didn't want to say anything that might cause unnecessary concern; "and some times he comes to check on me throughout the day, but not every day necessarily," I concluded. It was two weeks or so after that mysterious interrogatory that Paloma moved in. The post-Paloma days started in much the same way they did before and Elias continued to greet me at the door in all his dawn splendor, but by ten or so, after he had retreated into nowhere, Paloma would call me into the dining room for an invariable breakfast of two fried eggs over easy, served in the tiny pan they were fried in and still floating in a shallow pool of warm oil, a white corn pancake on the side, and a large cup of hot chocolate. I used what manners I knew to eat the much welcomed treat, though manners only mattered when Paloma walked by the room on her way to one chore or another because for the rest of the meal, I was always the only person at the immense table. The first time she offered to make me breakfast I felt my cheeks flush, however hot they already were from standing near the burners. She had been pulling weeds from around the base of a small and naked fossil of a bush that stood in the corner across from the cone-making area. I was mortified by the urge to make small talk, which seemed appropriate and necessary given that the width of the yard - or the distance between us - was no more than fifteen feet, but I was plagued with insecurity and didn't think it physiologically possible for my pubescent intellect to construct a thought compelling enough to engage a mature woman in her late twenties. I was also intimidated by her intense beauty. Unlike Marcela, Paloma's handsomeness was magnified by inebriating grace and charm. Her round face was framed by a square jaw and by a mane of layered, chestnut colored hair that she let hang unfettered and flow in and out of her face as she went about her chores. Her gaze was locked into a permanent expression of wonderment by her gracefully arched brow. And her eyes dazed me. They were slightly slanted, sleepy, and their dark brown irises were set off by her milky white skin. Paloma seemed almost too stately and delicate to be the daughter of a sugar cone maker and to be on her hands and knees on the dirt, behind me, pulling weeds from the ground. My hands felt cold, and judging from the spoon I used for pouring flour mix, they were also shaking. I considered asking her how long she was staying for or where she had been living before, but the answer to either question would require an endless string of follow-up questions and reactions that I was in no way equipped to handle. Then she tapped my shoulder. My sweaty and stinky shoulder. As I turned to look, my heart beating in my throat, she was already moving toward my right side, and stopped not two feet away from my crumbling body. "How about some breakfast?" she asked as she wiped off her hands, the dirt nearly missing the freshly made bowl of mix I had sitting on the counter, and all I could think about was the fortunate fact that we were the same height, as by then it had become apparent to me that I was destined to be a short man. "You need some fuel, just like those damn burners!" I took her face in, quickly scanning her thin and smirking lips and up toward her expecting eyes, and I was barely able to mutter a shaky "that would be nice, thank you". I sat at the table, back and neck straight and hands crossed in front of my chest, giddy and dizzy with excitement, but also embarrassed and self-conscious. I didn't know if we would be eating breakfast together, so I was running through as many possible small talk scenarios as I could while I waited. "Here you go, sir," and she pushed the hot cup of chocolate towards me with her thumbs, like an offering, and then she went back to the kitchen to fetch the eggs and the corn pancake, which she carefully arranged on a place mat in front of me while I looked her in the eye and flashed her the smile of a man happily drunk or mildly sedated. "Enjoy," she said as she left the room for a part of the house unknown to me. The hot chocolate was a spicy elixir that cleansed me and filled my chest with fiery strength and the eggs and corn pancake overwhelmed my taste buds with culinary glory. When I finished the meal, I brought the dishes to the kitchen and resumed what turned out to be a day of particularly high sugar cone output. For days after that, I only saw her at breakfast time, though there was evidence of activity around the house throughout the day. At times, I would hear a vacuum cleaner upstairs or the radio coming on in the living room, but no Paloma or Elias. Breakfast became the highlight of my days, initially, because of the novelty of it and the beauty of its maker, and later, simply because of the genuine thoughtfulness of the gesture. It all became part of the new routine. Knowing that there was someone else in the house in case Elias lay cold and blue, inert in some secret room in the house was a bit of a relief. There were rare times when Paloma would come into the yard to install a new water hose or to shake a rug and she would say thank you for helping her dad out or ask me what else I did besides working there, and each of those fleeting moments was a treasure. They would replay in my head like short movies and removed from my body, I would evaluate my own dialog and acting like a bitter critic. I'm such a dork, I would think, or I should have said this or that instead, or she thinks I'm cute, smart, interesting, I would derive from an innocent remark. The heat baked my thoughts into a hard crust of obsession. I wished there were a television I could watch to occupy my mind while working. Then came the big fire - big by my standards because it spread beyond the burners to my foot. It was early, a bit after eight, and I had been working for less than two hours when a loud puff took me out of my morning trance and sent my hand reaching for my rag. I felt flames shooting up from the bottom of my right foot. The compromised extremity had never been a part of the equation so out of habit, I began to swing the rag at the burners while I fruitlessly swung my foot in the air without even looking at it. "Ay!" screamed Paloma from the backyard door and while I dabbed the last of the stubborn flames, she painfully whacked my foot with a doormat she must have been preparing to dust off in the yard. With the fires subdued, there was silence, and then Paloma's wild laughter. I laughed too, for two or ten seconds, when Elias ran in, shirtless. "What the hell is going on?" he asked, dumbfounded, like a lost puppy. Paloma put her arms around him, still laughing. "A stupid fire, dad. You need to throw those damn burners out and close shop, or buy new ones." I must have blushed if that was possible. The burners were fine, they just had to be wiped before operating them, like Elias had said. "Are you OK, kid?" "Yes, I'm OK, thank you." I was an awful kid not to mention a liability, and neither Elias nor Paloma knew that. In a secret act of contrition, I wiped the tanks religiously from there on. The next day, even before breakfast, Paloma came into the yard to greet me. "How's the foot?" she asked and when she looked down at my foot, her permanently surprised look turned into one of panic. "Tell me you're not wearing the same shoes as yesterday," she commanded as she bent over to grab my leg by the calf and inspect the right shoe herself. I hoped my leg was smooth after the fire burned off much of the hair on it. This was the first time we touched and I nearly lost my balance. "The shoe is fine, just a bit toasty. And the foot is fine too" I said coyly. "You're crazy. I love it - I'm glad you're fine", she said, and went back into the house. I was glad too, elated. She had saved me, touched me. That afternoon, after I finished my shift and went home to shower, my mind and my heart soared. I lay in bed, clean and relaxed, and fueled by a surge of bubbling hormones, I daydreamed about the passionate rendezvous that awaited me with Paloma. She would know how to evade Elias in the house and find us a safe place to do all the things that I had never done with a woman before. I was going to be ushered into manhood by a gorgeous archetype of flesh and blood. I would blossom into a man quickly and our secret would make me proud. I would impart amatory lesson to my naïve peers, while respecting the anonymity and dignity of the lady that made me a man at sixteen. I began to love my job. Elias was clean-shaven and dressed in a dark grey suit, no tie, when I came to work the next day. "What's the occasion?" I asked and he said he had to go to court, and he didn't seem to welcome follow-up questions. I didn't see Paloma all day though Elias had left breakfast for me on the table. "Heat it up if you need to" he said before he left. I was tempted to explore the secret caverns and passages of the house, find where Paloma's bedroom was and where Elias retreated to when he left me to my own devices at the mini-factory, but I felt compelled to honor their trust in me by leaving me in the house by myself and I also thought it possible that there was someone else in the house that I didn't know of and who could discover me snooping around. On Friday, we kissed. Paloma greeted me at the door and offered me coffee. I was thrilled to see her become more a part of the routine and less Elias. "Dad is sleeping," she explained. Instead of calling me to the kitchen to grab my cup of coffee like Elias always did, Paloma brought it out to me. "You're not planning on any fires today, are you?" she asked and I was taken aback by the question, feeling exposed and defensive. "What do you mean?" I asked with an intentional hint of indignation. "Chill out, I'm kidding" and she grabbed both my cheeks between her thumb and index fingers and squeezed. I was weightless and covered in goose bumps. Happy. At ten, breakfast. When I sat down at my usual place, there were two steaming cups of chocolate on the table. I felt faint. She had touched me again and now we were going to share a meal. My stomach balled itself into a fist. Then she appeared carrying a tray with hers and my eggs and corn pancake. She set the tray down, took the pan with her eggs and the plate with her corn pancake out of the tray and put them on top of her place mat. She took a bite of her pancake. "I thought I'd keep you company for a change". This was richer and more endearing than any of the wild fantasies I had interweaved two days before. We ate and talked. Or mostly I talked. She asked me many questions about school, home, and girlfriends - some of whom I made up on the fly - and we had a lovely meal. And the fires came up again. "I was very impressed at how you handled that fire," she remarked. I took the compliment humbly but felt a stab of remorse for being the very cause of the crisis. "Honestly Paloma, I feel partly responsible," I confessed, "Elias has shown me many times how to clean the burners but maybe I'm not doing it as well as I could," and as I uttered that last word, I felt liberated. "Don't be silly," she said, "dad shouldn't be running those ancient things in the first place and I'll bet you they'd catch on fire just from sitting there by themselves." I was most definitely in love. "You are as brave as you're cute". She squeezed my cheeks again. Something grew in my crotch and I had to remain seated well after she had picked up the table for us. I felt like whistling and bobbing my head like one of the seven dwarfs, happy at work. My prospects were bright and lovely. At five, after cleaning up my workspace, I washed my hands with hot water and scrubbed the caked-on flour off my hands and fingers. Then I dried them with an old towel and as I descended the five or six steps to the living room to reach the front door, I noticed that Paloma was sitting on the couch, leaning into the radio as if intently trying to tune into an evasive radio station. When she saw me, she gave me her biggest smile and I froze. "I'll walk you out," she said getting up and walking in my direction. Together, we walked to the door, which she opened for me. "Have a good weekend", we said at the same time, and she put her left hand between my shoulders and motioned to kiss me in the cheek. I leaned forward and planted a dry and awkward peck on her right cheek. Then she moved the hand she had on my back toward my face and brought my face back toward hers, and kissed me in the lips. My knees buckled. "I'm sorry," I said as if I had just crossed some sacred boundary. In my fantasies, I had been the dominant initiator, so it was a reflex that made me react like I would if I made an advance that was unwelcome. "What are you sorry for?" she comforted me, "have a good weekend, silly!" I did nothing all weekend besides thinking about Paloma and compulsively relieving my pent up desire for her. I counted the hours until Monday rolled in and we could resume our love dance, which I hadn't realized she was leading. I was filled with excitement and dread for the culmination of our mating ritual when I wouldn't know what to do or how to act, but I was prepared to run away after the act and never see her again if I could hold on to the honor of being in her naked presence. On Monday, I had showered and gotten dressed well before the alarm went off. I walked to Elias' house, shaking from the morning cold and from pure sexual madness. I inhaled a deep cold breath and knocked on the door. Marcela - not Paloma or Elias - opened it. She was dressed in the same drab white lady suit she was wearing the last time I saw her. I was confused, disoriented, and I exhaled all my sexual rage in one big puff and was left deflated. "Hi, Ruben" Marcela said with uncharacteristic warmth, perhaps noticing my confusion. "I'm sorry my dad didn't get a chance to tell you this, but we're closing shop". "Where is Paloma?" was all I seemed to care to ask. "She and her husband went back home on Saturday, so I'm moving in with my dad. This is from my dad and again, he's very sorry" and she presented me with an envelope containing the equivalent of four week's pay, four weeks being what was left of my school break. After I left, I circled the block for a few minutes, perhaps expecting to wake up and find things back where I left them on Friday. Then, I sat on the curb in the corner down the street from Elias and looked up at the sky to the East, and saw the sun, starting to burn the clouds from pink into bright orange. |