On Smoke Signals.

I wrote this piece several years ago while living in the mountains. Despite the years that have passed, I still feel a flicker of this memory every time I cross the summit in the summer. The man who inspired it has long since lapsed from any importance, yet I’ll never forget how I felt, sitting alone in that valley, flames in the forecast and that irrational longing for someone who’d long since left.

Slight edits have been made from my original 2015 version.

Fire Drills

I showed up, apologetic, at fifteen past the hour. The man who’d hired me was standing right by the door and gave a curt nod, motioning for me to take a seat at one of the long wooden tables. I did, pulling on my cropped white shirt as I sat down. Looking around, the crowd was in line with what I expected: shaggy hair and scruffy faces, girls with loose tops and no makeup on. I felt a few curious stares, but that was also expected. I straightened my back and gave a slight toss of my hair.

He walked into the dining room quietly, slowly, aware he was late. I watched as he slid up against the bar, one hand leaning onto it, one knee bent. He was in a black Henley tee shirt and his glacier eyes sparked in the early morning sun; his hair was coarse and already trimming with grey. His shoulders were broad and his arms were strong, but lean. He stood easily at six foot four. He had a disinterested and far off look on his face, his square, bearded jaw going slightly to one side.

I knew that look. It was one I’d seen before, countless times, on nearly every man I’d been with in New York. I didn’t expect to see it here, across the country and lurking in the mountains, tucked away from the world I was hiding from.

I could already smell the cigarette smoke and the bourbon. When he chose the seat next to mine, his name flashed red with the heat from his handshake.

He would be trouble.

The first time it happened, he didn’t ask. I’d told him I needed more time, that I didn’t want to rush, but he didn’t ask as he slid the fabric over and pushed himself into me. I didn’t say anything, of course. We were under the stars and the world was so quiet and I let him do it, let him take control. Even as he was doing it and I knew I was letting him, I told myself, “This is the story. These are the mountains and this sky is endless and this is the story.” The bruises and scrapes from the coarse surface of the spa scarred me; the story existed in my skin. It lingered on me.

I didn’t think those same thoughts a month later, when the moon had blossomed full again and I’d see his bike parked by his house, on that lane near the entrance of the valley. I didn’t think it was endless and that it was a story; no, it was a nightmare, some horrible fucking thing that I couldn’t scrub off of my skin no matter how hard I tried. I’d think about him pushing into me and be disgusted, in part because of him and who he turned out to be, but mostly because I still missed how it felt.

I missed how it felt when I stood before him in my living room, the sun slanting through the blinds, when he reached into my denim cut-offs and untied the strings of my swimsuit. I missed how it felt when he threw me back onto my bed, a dark spot in my eye in the bright light of the day. I missed how it felt when he tugged on my hair, ever and always elsewhere, when he whispered into my ear about the reflection next to the bed: “Look how good you look.”

He’d tell me I was the prettiest little thing. I’d dig my nails into his tough skin and say, “Thanks, baby, it’s all for you.” He’d kiss me and then look away with that same disinterested look, that expression so unreadable I couldn’t stand it, the very thing that made me want him so goddamn much.

Right before it was over, we’d driven through the mountain pass and river canyon; it was just the two of us, propelling through the dark night. A song came on and quietly, I sang along. Suddenly shy, I kept my eyes on the passenger side mirror, away from him. I didn’t see his hand as it reached out to grab my own, just felt it, and I didn’t stop feeling it until we arrived at his place.

When I saw the girl’s message on the screen of his phone, looming up next to me while I lay in his bed a few afternoons later, my stomach turned violently and all I could think about was that drive, was his hand on mine. The way he didn’t let go.

The fires came two months later. We’d each left our jobs on the lake for work elsewhere; I was still trying to find some semblance of normalcy in that temporary state. I didn’t even know where to find him by the time the flames crept closer.

I could smell the smoke in the air; it was closing in on us, day by day. By the third afternoon, the sky in the valley was so riddled with smoke that the sun burned as a neon orb, slipping behind the granite faces and leaving me in a dark, unrelenting haze.

I didn’t know what I should do, so I walked down the road and into the village, where I sat alone in a bar with a deep glass of wine. I didn’t know what I should do, but what I wanted to do was call him. More than anything, I wanted to call him, and the flame of that thought was more terrifying than any thick smoke infiltrating my lungs.

I wanted to ask him, "Do you remember back in June, when the heat was still new and the summer was still real, when we sat by the river and you still would have come to save me?"

I was a tight red dress in a sky on fire, a damsel who thought she could conquer the terrain. He was everywhere and everything, both the last gasp of breath from the flame and the suffocation that smothered it.

I didn’t call him of course. That bridge had burned.