Hells Kitchen

cooperating!
    The incident at the gas station had scared him and fear was a feeling he wasn’t used to. Arson is the safest crime there is for the perp. It’s anonymous, it’s secretive, and most of the evidence is disposed of by God’s own accomplice—the laws of physics. But now people knew what he looked like. And on top of that, he’d heard that that little chicken fag from the building—Alex—had seen him and had tried to deal him to the cops.
    And there were still three more fires to go until the big one. He removed the map, now tattered, from his back pocket. He stared at it absently.
    Yeah, the gas station was bad. But the most troublingwas the fire at the hospital. Because it had given him no pleasure. Fire had always calmed him down. But that one hadn’t. Not a bit. As he’d listened to the screams, cocked his head and heard them mix with the rustling roar of the flames, his hands had kept trembling, his high forehead continued to sweat. Why? he wondered. Why? Maybe because it was a small fire. Maybe because there was only one fire he truly cared about, the one that would star him and the faggot Joe Pellam Buck. Maybe because everybody was after him.
    But he had a feeling there was more to the sweat and agitation than that.
    His heart stuttered a bit more when he thought that he now had to spend even more time stopping his pursuers—when he could be planning the big fire. Rockin’ and rollin’ with the Antichrist.
    Knock, ping. Knock, ping. Like sonar in a submarine movie.
    Sonny’s head of half-braided hair leaned against the big drum. He thumped it again with a knuckle. Knock, ping.
    A bit calmer now? He thought so. Maybe. Yes.
    Sonny finished braiding his hair and spent a half-hour mixing soap and gas and oil. The fumes were very strong—as dangerous as the fire the juice produced—and he could only work in small batches or else he’d pass out. When he was finished he took several incandescent light bulbs and put them on the table. With a diamond-bladed saw he carefully cut through the metal collar where the glass bulb met the screw base. He heard the hiss of air filling the vacuum. He sawed a wedge out—just big enough to let him pour in his magic juice. Not too full. That was the mistake a lot ofamateur arsonists made. You had to leave a little air in the bulb. Fire is oxidation; like an animal it needs oxygen to live. He sealed the V-shaped hole with superglue. He made three of these special bulbs.
    Caressing the smooth glass, smooth as the skin on a young man’s ass . . .
    His hands began to tremble again and the sweat poured from his face like water from a shower nozzle.
    Sonny stood and paced frantically.
    Why can’t I calm down? Why why whywhy? His thoughts swirled. They were all after him. They wanted to kill him, stop him, tie him down, take his fire away from him! Alex, the fire marshal, that old faggot lawyer that Pellam kept hanging around. Pellam himself, the Antichrist.
    Why wasn’t life ever simple?
    Sonny had to lie down on the cot and force himself to imagine what the last fire would be like. The big fire. That seemed to be the only thing now that relaxed him, gave him any pleasure.
    He pictured it: A huge space, filled with ten, twenty thousand people. It would be the worst fire in the history of this fiery city. Worse than Triangle Shirtwaist on Washington Square, the worker girls trapped inside the sweatshop because the owners didn’t want them to use the johns during working hours. Worse than the Crystal Palace. Worse than The General Slocum burning in the East River, killing over a thousand immigrant women and children on excursion; in its aftermath the entire German population of the city, too sorrowful to remain in their old neighborhood, relocated en masse to Yorkville on the Upper East Side.
    His would outdo them all.
    Sonny pictured the flames rolling past him like glowing surf, surrounding the masses, caressing their toes.
    Flames rising to their heels. Then their ankles.
    Oh, can you see the exquisite flames? Can you feel them?
    With these questions in his thoughts he realized he hadn’t calmed. He realized that he’d never be calm again.
    The end was closer than he’d thought.
    He crawled into the living room, pressed his head against one of the drums.
    Knock, ping. Knock, ping.
    *   *   *
    He’d stayed the night.
    Pellam had been operating under well-established protocol, which meant that after they’d wakened at ten last night, starving,