Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

René Steinke is the author of The Fires. She is the editor in chief of The Literary Review and teaches creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Smoke has as many different scents as skin. Part of the pleasure is not knowing what it will be -- sulfurous or closer to incense or airier and sweeter as I imagine the smell of clouds.

Ella is a connoisseur of fire, a woman enthralled by it as other women are by love. She savors the seductive promise of a spark, the caress of a curling wisp of smoke, the all-consuming hunger of a spreading blaze. Ella's heart seethes with a rage that can be spoken only with tongues of flame.

In her remarkable first novel, Rene Steinke has created a narrator so lyrical and lucid in her madness as to raise the book to the level of romance. Trapped in a sleepy Indiana town, torn by inner demons that drive her to pyromania and promiscuity, Ella is at once entirely original and unforgettably real.

As she struggles to come to terms with her family's tormented past and her own uncertain future, she draws the mesmerized reader ever deeper into her scorched soul, revealing a sensuality that will spiral into final, fiery destruction -- unless it can be quenched by love.

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The Fires

Quill

Chapter One

Smoke has as many different scents as skin. Part of the pleasureis not knowing what it will be?sulfurous or closer to incense orairier and sweet as I imagine the smell of clouds. Nothing relievesme so much as burning something old, watching it flicker and disappearinto air. Dresses dance as they go, lifted as if by some music.A photograph flaps like a wing or a hand waving. Perfumes hiss,then shatter, papers curl, plaster jewels curdle. Once I tried to burnan old toy?a mechanical duck. When I'd found it at the bottom ofa drawer, it reminded me of the groggy sunrise Easter service andthe hunt for eggs in the graveyard. After I set the match to its tail,it started walking pitifully on its metal legs, and it knocked aroundthe room singeing the walls and linoleum until it burned down toits metal frame and folded with a crackle and small battery explosion.It is less dangerous to burn things than to save them.

* * *

I'd poured myself six thimble shots of bourbon and walked theedges of the bedroom touching the walls and windowsills, hopingto work the starry twitches from my legs so they'd lie still. IfI let go, I'd fall off the night that was galloping fast. Every time Igot into bed, I heard an intruder finagling the catch on thewindow or slowly climbing the basement stairs. My heart raced. Myeyelids fluttered. I jolted up, walked to the kitchen, ears stingingat the silence, and poured another shot.

    The train had gone by three times, rattling into the air. Porterwas the kind of Indiana town where the whistle sounded cheerful,not plaintive, but then the wheels chewed ravenously on thetracks.

    I listened for the man until he turned phantom again?thetrees, the wind. Ridiculous to be twenty-two, a year past adulthood,and still afraid of stray noises. I went into the kitchen and sat downat the table, turned on the clock radio, and fiddled with the ridgedknob until I heard the song about lightning and the crashing seaof love, just at the point when the guitar strummed in waves. Mybare feet pressed on the cool, grainy floor; my nightgown bunchedup around my knees.

    I traced a panicky finger over the constellation of glitter in theFormica?two nights of not sleeping, with nothing to do for long,bare hours except worry over the crucial thing it seemed I neededto remember and couldn't: that blankness revolved in my headlike a siren.

    Twirling the salt shaker in my fingertips, I groggily felt that ifI acted asleep, sleep might come. Sprinkling a little salt in mypalm, I dabbed a few grains into the corners of my eyes before Iclosed them and put my head down on the table. But when I triedto breathe slowly and think of nothing, I began to crave potatopancakes and apples.

    Over the stove hung the cast-iron skillet my father had used tomake them, crisp and salty in a way my mother and I had nevermastered. After he died, the drinking started?secretly at first,from sticky bottles next to the flour in the pantry cabinet, and forthe same reason I often couldn't sleep now: an old sensation thatI was falling, or about to fall, from some roof or ledge or stairs.Bourbon gave me the courage to loosen my grip. It wasn't that Iwouldn't fall anymore, but the fall would be pleasant, and itwouldn't matter so much when I did.

    I was about to drift off when I heard a scratch, a mouse orsomething, in the pantry. I got up to open the door and turn onthe light. The colored boxes and gleaming cans glared back at me.I knew I was hanging on too tightly, but this time couldn't makemyself let go.

    The landlord had asked me to leave my apartment on BirchStreet, and I was staying at my mother's until I could move intoone of the rooms at the Linden Hotel, where I worked. There theinsomniacs made anxious trips to the ice machine after midnight,and by morning they were already showered and dressed as ifthere were some purpose to their being awake so early. When theycame down to the lobby to check out, their faces swollen and pale,a lostness about them, I'd keep my voice quiet and slow as I gavethem directions or simply thanked them and said good-bye. Iknew they'd sleepwalk through the day, just as I often did, wincingat light and hoping not to stumble, all along hearing that murmur:If you couldn't sleep last night, you might not get to sleep later, orever.

    I went back to the metal chair and sat staring out the windowat the grass, my stomach hollow from all the bourbon. I got upand opened the refrigerator, peered into the cold light. In thelingering smell of leftover cherry pie lay a quart of milk, a hunkof molded bread, a dozen eggs. I grabbed the egg carton and shutthe door.

    I was going to scramble them, but immediately lost my appetiteand just lay them on the table in front of me. I thought of all thepeople I knew sleeping then, their heads nestled in dreams likethose eggs in their cups. I visited each bed, examined the sleepingface, the mouth pressed closed or slightly open, the deep slowbreaths or snores, the sprawl or curl of limbs. I wanted to knowhow they let go so easily, how they managed to spiral so bravelyinto sleep, unafraid of all they had forgotten.

    The dark sky was bluing. Taking the first egg from its bed, Ipalmed it in my hand, shook it just slightly, and felt the weightof the yolk wiggling in its sack. In the gentle press of my fingers,the shell felt brittle and fragile. I tossed it at the window, and itsmacked against the blue-black surface, a toy sun. I threw anotherone at the glass. It cracked and splashed yellow, then drippedsleepily.

* * *

It happened later that same August. I was cold at the funeral,and I kept touching the book of matches in my skirt pocket,the plain black cover and the twenty red heads, lined up and full-cheekedlike a choir. Flicking my thumbnail at the thin cardboard,I looked up over the casket at the empty cross of pale wood.

    When my grandmother had called that Monday night, sobbingso I barely understood her murmur over the phone that mygrandfather had died in his sleep, I pretended she was telling thetruth. But when my mother and I got there, what really happenedwas clear from the empty glass vial, the tipped-over china cup onthe nightstand, the pinch of white powder blurring the delicateflowers on the saucer's rim. His small head was turned to theblack window, his mouth blue and slack, his eyes serene but plastic,the folds in his cheeks frowning. He had been formal andguarded in a way that made him inscrutable, but now his facelacked wariness, his eyes and mouth vulnerable in a way I hadn'tseen before.

    His left arm was flung across the pillow, a scrap of envelopecrumpled in his fist. I was afraid to touch his skin, but coaxed thepaper out from the tension in his fingers and saw that he'dscrawled a few lines in pencil, then tried to erase them. Kneelingdown to hold the paper in the lamplight, I stared through thatfog of smudged marks, but could only make out three wordswhere the pencil had indented the paper: "NOT YOUR" and nearthe ripped corner, "LOVE."

    I looked up on the nightstand and watched the round clock'shands tick past frilled numbers. I counted. Behind me, I heardsomething small fall on the bureau and my mother...