Putting Out Fires Read online

  Finally, the expanse of polished wood that was our dining room table was bare, and I began to contemplate the actual cooking process. I did as Zach had suggested and opened the wine first so it could breathe, whatever the hell that meant. I went out our sliding glass back door onto the patio where our grill sat. Unfortunately, it was covered in snow. We’d had a lot more snow than normal that year. The back of our house faced north, and while the Colorado sun had melted most of it, the area that was ever in the shade of our house was still frozen and possibly would be for another month. I cleared the grill off, shivering the entire time. I opened the lid, turned on the gas, and hit the “ignite” button.

  Nothing happened.

  I hit it again and again and again. Still nothing. The grill was only a year old, but those stupid buttons always quit working before too long. I went back inside and hunted for matches. I looked in every single cabinet in the kitchen. I looked in the drawers of the coffee table. In the end, I even hunted in our bedroom, even though I had no idea why they would have been there.

  No matches.

  I ran across the street to our neighbor’s house. Jim was a twenty-something college dropout who worked at the grocery store. I was pretty sure Jim was constantly stoned, and the fact that he seemed half afraid of me and wouldn’t ever let me through his front door pretty much confirmed it. Still, he was a nice enough guy. He left me shivering on his porch and finally came back out the front door. “No matches, but I have an extra lighter.”

  He handed me a Bic with an end that was obviously stained with resin. The guy was smart enough to keep me out of his house, but not so smart that he wouldn’t hand me a lighter that had been used to smother a smoldering bowl. I sighed. Sometimes I wished I could turn off my cop brain. “Thanks, Jim. You’re a life saver.”

  I ran back across the street, up our steps, pulled open the front door—

  Well, I attempted to pull it open. I failed. It was locked.

  “Fuck!” Jared always teased me that my habit of locking our front door on the way out reeked of paranoia. I thought it was basic security. I didn’t even realize I did it half the time. This time it proved to be rather inconvenient since my keys were still inside, hanging on the hook by the door. The gate to the back yard couldn’t be opened from the outside—that was also basic security, no matter what Jared said—so it meant I had to scramble over the stupid thing, tearing my shirt in the process. “Fuck!” I swore again. But at least the back door was unlocked, and I was able to get back in the house. Scooby greeted me with unabashed enthusiasm as I stood there trying to warm up.

  Of course, about two seconds later I realized I needed to be back outside. I went out to the grill and tried the ignition switch again. Still nothing. So I used Jim’s Bic, turning up the gas.

  Still nothing.

  I turned the gas up all the way, alternately hitting the button and trying to light the grill with the Bic. Nothing worked. It occurred to me that if there had actually been propane in the tank, I would probably have blown myself up by now. I should probably have been thankful for small favors. Somehow though, I wasn’t.

  I debated going to the store and getting a new tank, but five o’clock was approaching fast, and I didn’t want to lose the time. For the first time ever, I found myself wishing that we owned one of those stupid George Foreman grills. I went back inside into the kitchen and stood there waiting for inspiration to strike. Pan-cooking the steak seemed unbelievably lame. Was it possible to cook steaks in the oven? I looked at the controls on our oven, as if there might magically be a “grill steak” setting, and that was when I saw it: BROIL. That was like grilling, right? I turned the broiler on, then opened the door and bent over to watch with wideeyed amazement as the coils at the top of the oven turned a menacing red. Perfect! I’d never broiled anything before, but how hard could it be? Take raw meat, apply heat, and voila! A grilled steak that I didn’t have to freeze my ass off for.

  The vegetables would probably take longer, though. I’d been planning to bake the potatoes, but having to use the broiler seemed to negate that idea. The microwave was out because Jared swore that the inside of microwave-baked potatoes always tasted like rubber. I thought he was full of shit, but since I was making this dinner for him, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and mash them instead. I’d never done that either, but it didn’t look too complicated. I peeled them first. We didn’t have one of those fancy little peelers, so I used a paring knife as I’d seen my mom do a billion times growing up. She made it look so easy. My attempt was far less successful. I seemed to peel away half of each potato in the process, but eventually I prevailed. I chopped them up, put them in a pan in water, put the pan on the burner and turned the burner on high.

  I checked the clock and was alarmed at how late it was. I had apparently spent a ridiculous amount of time butchering the potatoes.

  I chopped the broccoli as quickly as I could. This I knew how to do—just a bit of water in the bottom of the pan so that they’d steam more than boil—then tossed them on the burner and turned that burner on high too. There was something else, though, if you wanted to steam vegetables: a lid. I had to dig for a while, but I finally found one in the drawer under the stove. It was glass and didn’t quite fit the pan, but I figured it was close enough.

  All that was left was the steak. I still had the broiler on. I took the steaks out of the marinade and put them on the top oven rack and closed the oven door. I checked the clock again. Not bad. I was starting to think I could pull this off.

  I took plates and silverware and set the table. I looked for wine glasses. I finally found them on the top shelf, way in the back. I had to pull out a strange assortment of shot glasses and vases and tiny juice glasses—all the stuff we never used—to get to them, but I finally pulled them from the wreckage. I shoved the rest of the crap to the back of the countertop to be dealt with later. The wine glasses had been stored upside down, and their bases were coated with a layer of dust and grime. God knew when they’d last been used. I washed them and put them on the table. I’d need a vase for the flowers. At least I knew we had one of those since I’d just pulled some out while looking for the glasses. I went back into the kitchen to get one and stopped short at what I saw.

  The kitchen was filled with smoke. It was billowing out of one of the saucepans. I pulled it off the burner and looked into it. It was full of little smoking pieces of green charcoal. Confused, I looked at the other pan on the stove.

  I’m such an idiot sometimes.

  In my hurry to get things done, I’d put the lid on the wrong pot. The potatoes, in their full pan of water, were just starting to boil, with the glass lid sitting on top. The broccoli, which had been in less than a half-inch of water so it could steam, had no lid at all. The water had boiled away, and the broccoli was now nothing but carbon. Nice.

  I tossed the pan of smoking broccoli into the sink and took the glass lid off the potatoes. But something was still smoking.

  I put the lid down and opened the oven, and was almost blown over by the wave of black smoke that came pouring out. The steaks were sizzling, burned on top, curling in on themselves, the bottoms still pink. The bottom of the oven was an absolute mess and seemed to be the source of at least half of the smoke. Apparently, you weren’t supposed to put the steaks right on the rack. Maybe I was supposed to use a cookie sheet? Not that we owned one of those anyway.

  I looked around for a potholder and of course didn’t find one. I did, however, find a dishtowel. I folded it up and pulled the rack out enough that I could pull the steaks out with a fork. I put them on a plate on the counter behind me. If I could just find a pan to put them in, I could cook the other side, and they’d still be edible. Plus, we had the potatoes. Dinner wasn’t a total loss.

  I left the oven open so the rest of the grease could burn off and turned the fan over the stove on to clear some of the smoke. I opened the cabinet to look for some type of pan that could go under the broiler. Out of the corner of my ey
e, I caught something glowing red. I turned to see what it was and groaned.

  When I’d taken the broccoli off the stove, I hadn’t turned off the burner. It was still on high, bright red and probably hot enough to light a cigarette off. And sitting right on top of it was the glass lid I’d taken off the potatoes.

  I was smart enough to not grab it with my bare hands. I picked up the dishtowel I’d used as a potholder and reached to take the lid off the burner. As soon as the towel touched the glass nob on top of the lid, the entire thing shattered. More than shattered, actually. It exploded. It scared the shit out of me, and I dropped the towel, jumping back away from the flying pieces of glass. A couple landed on the floor, and I could see the linoleum melting underneath them. I stomped on them, as if they were actually on fire, but all I really succeeded in doing was grinding the hot glass deeper into the floor.

  “Shit!” I yelled.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  Something next to me burst into flames. I turned to the stovetop in horror. I stillhadn’t turned off that fucking burner, and I’d dropped my dishtowel when the lid exploded—right onto the bright red coil. The towel was on fire, flames licking merrily up to the blowing fan above the stove.

  There were random wild thoughts in my head of what you were supposed to do—spray it with water or pour baking soda on it. Or was it baking powder? Did we even have any of those things? Maybe flour would work. If we had that. Maybe sugar? Or would that just burn? It felt like forever that I stood there trying to decide what to do, but couldn’t really have been more than a second. In the end, I did what I’d like to think any rational person in my situation would have done. I picked up the closest thing, which happened to be a bouquet of flowers, still neatly wrapped in their nice cellophane cone, and began to beat the flaming towel.

  Plastic melted, petals flew, and flowers burned, but I got the flames knocked down enough that I could turn off the burner. I tossed the smoldering remains of the towel into the sink with the pan of broccoli, and then jumped out of my skin as an ear-piercing screech filled the house. It was the smoke alarm. A bit late, I thought, considering half the house was filled with black smoke. I went into the hallway and waved my hands at it in a futile attempt to get it to turn off. When that didn’t work, I resorted to more drastic measures. I ripped it off the ceiling and threw it across the room. The goddamn thing still didn’t quit beeping.

  There was a scrambling at my feet, and I turned around to see Scooby heading past me to the living room. “Scooby?” I called, wondering if he’d somehow been burned or hurt in the chaos of the kitchen. He turned to look at me—

  With a nice juicy steak in his mouth.

  “Scooby, no!” I yelled, running toward him. He cowered a bit at my yelling, but he didn’t drop the steak. He was in the corner and had nowhere to go. “Bad dog!” I yelled as I grabbed the steak. “Bad, bad dog! Let go. Let go, you evil bastard!” But his jaws were locked tight. He wasn’t about to give up his treat.

  It occurred to me how ridiculous the entire situation was. The house was filled with smoke, the smoke detector was still issuing its shrieking warning from the floor in the corner of the room, and my dog and I were literally having a tug-of-war with a charred piece of meat.

  That, of course, was when Jared walked in.

  Our house had an open floor plan, so he could see everything from the door: the wreckage in the kitchen, the oven still issuing smoke, the beeping smoke detector on the floor in the corner, and Scooby and I both frozen, waiting for his reaction.

  I love Jared, but if he had one major flaw it was that he often reacted before he thought things through. Unfortunately for me, this time was no exception.

  “What the hell is going on?” he yelled. He grabbed the smoke detector from the floor and tossed it out onto the front lawn, then slammed the front door shut. Whether it turned off in the fresh air or not I didn’t know, but at least I couldn’t hear the damn thing anymore. “Are you trying to burn the house down? I could smell the smoke from the curb!” He went into the kitchen and slammed the oven shut. He turned off the broiler, and the last burner which was finally cooking the potatoes that were still ages away from being mashable. “What the fuck, Matt?”

  I gave up on the tug-of-war and Scooby ran off in triumph with his prize. Even if I could get the damn steak back, it wasn’t like either of us would want to eat it now anyway. I followed Jared into the kitchen, where he was standing with his hands on his hips and murder in his eyes. My first instinct was to snap out a smart answer, but I bit it back, knowing it would be counterproductive. I didn’t want to fight with him. Not today of all days.

  I sighed heavily and leaned against the counter, feeling completely defeated. I’d wanted to do something nice for him, and now he was pissed, and I was defensive, and I’d be lucky if we went to bed still talking. “I was trying to make you dinner,” I said.

  I was surprised at how quickly his anger fell away. He looked around the kitchen at the one remaining steak, charred on one side, curled in on itself, revealing the raw meat underneath; the burned dishtowel and burned broccoli in the sink; the pieces of broken glass all over the floor and countertop; the potatoes on the stove, no longer boiling; the melted mess that had once been a cellophane cone, remnants of it still clinging to a bouquet of singed and wilted roses.

  He turned to me with obvious surprise. “You bought me flowers?”

  I felt like an idiot. I could feel myself blushing, and it was all I could do to meet his eyes. “Yes.”

  “For Valentine’s Day?”

  Jesus, this was embarrassing. “Yes.”

  He closed his eyes for just a second, and I could practically see the wheels in his head reversing direction. When he opened them again, he was smiling at me, his eyes bright and blue and so gorgeous it hurt to look at him. “Thank you.”

  At least he wasn’t mad anymore. At least we didn’t have to fight. Still, looking around at the mess I’d made, I couldn’t help but think it was a shallow victory. “I’m sorry I screwed it up.”

  Jared shook his head, still smiling. He looked around the room again, his eyes landing on the open bottle of wine. It was the only part of dinner that wasn’t ruined. “You bought wine?”

  I sighed, feeling like the world’s biggest fool. My words came out all in a rush. “Zach said it was good, and I wanted to do something nice for you. I had no idea what, so I went by A to Z, and—”

  But he didn’t seem to care about the rest of my answer. He closed the distance between us with one step and kissed me, cutting my words off midstream. The kiss was shy and hesitant in a way that he hadn’t been with me in a very long time. It was sweet, and any anger or disappointment I had melted away. I pulled him tight against me and kissed him back, my urgency quickly overriding his unexpected hesitancy. When he finally broke the kiss, his cheeks were red, but he was smiling up at me. “Thank you,” he said again.

  “I’ll clean up the mess,” I told him.

  His smile got bigger. “Later.” He turned away from me and went over to the counter where the open bottle of wine stood. “Come on,” he said as he pulled the cork off the corkscrew and shoved it back in the bottle. “Let’s go out.”

  “Out where?”

  He didn’t answer. He grabbed the wine and two of the juice glasses I’d left on the countertop while searching for wine glasses. “Get your coat,” he said, and I didn’t argue.

  Jared led me out to the Jeep. He got in the driver’s seat and handed me the wine and empty glasses. He drove us down the street, past A to Z, and turned left. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  He smiled at me. “You’ll see.”

  There didn’t seem to be any point in pushing him, so I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I thought about dinner and the fact that Scooby was probably dining on the second steak right about now. I realized I should have at least swept up the broken glass before we left, for his sake. “I burned holes in the linoleum.”

  I was
relieved when Jared laughed. “I don’t care. I’m sorry I flipped out when I came in. That was really shitty of me.”

  It had been kind of shitty, but I knew Jared. I knew he hadn’t meant it. “It’s no big deal,” I said.

  “I wasn’t expecting it,” he said. “We’ve never done anything for Valentine’s Day.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t get you anything.”

  “I didn’t expect you to,” I told him. “I just….” It sounded so ridiculous, and I couldn’t look at him when I said it. “I wanted to do something for you.”

  “Since when does Valentine’s Day mean anything to you?” he asked. It wasn’t an accusation. It was simply a question, and a valid one, since two other Valentine’s Days had passed for us without so much as a mention on either side.

  “You said you didn’t feel appreciated.”

  He shook his head. “I was talking about at school. I was talking about my students.”

  “Your students love you.”

  He shook his head again. “They used to, but it’s different now. When I first took that job, I had kids who’d come to my house to be tutored. They’d all been struggling for so long with teachers who didn’t know what they were doing, and when I took over their classes, they were excited. They looked up to me.”

  “They don’t anymore?”

  “Those kids who knew me are gone. They’ve all graduated. Now I’m just another one of the mean teachers who give too much homework.” He sighed and waved his hand like he could push the thought away. “It’s no big deal. I’m just feeling sorry for myself.” He glanced over at me before looking back at the road. “Why would you think I meant you?”

  He’d been honest with me. Now it was my turn. I took a deep breath and told him everything—my irrational jealousy over the Valentine, and Grant’s wife leaving him because she didn’t feel appreciated, and how afraid I was that he felt the same, and how I wanted to do something special. I felt ridiculous at first, but as I went on, I began to see the humor in it, especially when I told him about the aisle at the grocery store and stopping at A to Z, and my discussion with Angelo and Zach.