The box Sharon had taken delivery of on Tuesday night and which Helen opened Wednesday morning showed itself to contain two long sticks wrapped in banana-yellow paper that gave off the sound of loose sand when shaken. A fuse, wrapped with a blue tape, protruded from the top of each stick, and when contacted by lit matches (paper, Sharon’s, from a book decorated with a line drawing of a martini glass and a tiny woman swimming inside it) those fuses sent up wisps of smoke that were succeeded by a white column of the stuff, followed by a ring of fire the same color as the tape but brighter, then an orange sheet as the fire spread to the paper around the stick. The sticks themselves, which Helen held at the bottom, pinching each between the meat of the thumb and the sidewall of the lower joint of the index finger, seemed protected from the fire during the burning of the fuse and the paper, but when both of them were consumed in full, the stick was revealed as a glowing line that crackled as flames bristled all along its length. Finally the tip, turned to ash, opened like a black flower and pollinated the air around it, bits and pieces of what was released in air drifting down to settle on Helen’s hand. “That was something,” she said, and Sharon agreed that yes, it was, though she didn’t turn in Helen’s direction. That would have given her a satisfaction that Sharon didn’t think she deserved.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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