Small Fires

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.