Firestarter

phone inside it. Most of the booths were dark, Charlie saw as she drifted down past them. There was a fat lady in a pantsuit crammed into one of them, talking busily and smiling. And three booths from the end a young man in a service uniform was sitting on the little stool with the door open and his legs poking out. He was talking fast.

“Sally, look, I understand how you feel, but I can explain everything. Absolutely. I know… I know… but if you’ll just let me-“He looked up, saw the little girl looking at him, and yanked his legs in and pulled the circular door closed, all in one motion, like a turtle pulling into its shell. Having a fight with his girlfriend, Charlie thought. Probably stood her up. I’d never let a guy stand me up.

Echoing loudspeaker. Rat of fear in the back of her mind, gnawing. All the faces were strange faces.

She felt lonely and very small, grief-sick over her mother even now. This was stealing, but what did it matter? They had stolen her mother’s life.

She slipped into the phonebooth on the end, shopping bag crackling. She took the phone off the hook and pretended she was talking-hello, Grampa, yes, Daddy and I just got in, we’re fine-and looked out through the glass to see if anyone was being nosy. No one was. The only person nearby was a black woman getting flight insurance from a machine, and her back was to Charlie.

Charlie looked at the pay phone and suddenly shoved it.

A little grunt of effort escaped her, and she bit down on her lower lip, liking the way it squeezed under her teeth. No, there was no pain involved. It felt good to shove things, and that was another thing that scared her. Suppose she got to like this dangerous thing?

She shoved the pay phone again, very lightly, and suddenly a tide of silver poured out of the coin return. She tried to get her bag under it, but by the time she did, most of the quarters and nickels and dimes had spewed onto the floor. She bent over and swept as much as she could into the bag, glancing again and again out the window.

With the change picked up, she went on to the next booth. The serviceman was still talking on the next phone up the line. He had opened the door again and was smoking.

“Sal, honest to Christ I did!

Just ask your brother if you don’t believe me! He’ll-”

Charlie slipped the door shut, cutting off” the slightly whining sound of his voice. She was only seven, but she knew a snowjob when she heard one. She looked at the phone, and a moment later it gave up its change. This time she had the bag positioned perfectly and the coins cascaded to the bottom with a musical little jingling sound.

The serviceman was gone when she came out, and Charlie went into his booth. The seat was still warm and the air smelled nastily of cigarette smoke in spite of the fan.

The money rattled into her bag and she went on.

6

Eddie Delgardo sat in a hard plastic contour chair, looking “up at the ceiling and smoking. Bitch, he was thinking. She’ll think twice about keeping her goddam legs closed next time. Eddie this and Eddie that and Eddie I never want to see you again and Eddie how could you be so crew-ool. But he had changed her mind about the old I- never-want-to-see-you-again bit. He was on thirty-day leave and now he was going to New York City, the Big Apple, to see the sights and tour the singles bars. And when he came back, Sally would be like a big ripe apple herself, ripe and ready to fall. None of that don’t-you-have-any-respect-for-me stuff” went down with Eddie Delgardo of Marathon, Florida. Sally Bradford was going to put out, and if she really believed that crap about him having had a vasectomy, it served her right. And then let her go running to her hick schoolteacher brother if she wanted to. Eddie Delgardo would be driving an army supply truck in West Berlin. He would be-

Eddie’s half resentful, half pleasant chain of daydreams was broken by a strange feeling of warmth coming from his feet; it was as if the floor had suddenly heated up ten degrees. And accompanying this was a strange but not completely unfamiliar smell… not something burning but… something singeing, maybe?

He opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was that little girl who had been cruising around by the phonebooths, little girl seven or eight years old, looking really ragged out. Now she was carrying a big paper bag, carrying it by the bottom as if it were full of groceries or something.

But his feet, that was the thing.

They were no longer warm. They were hot.

Eddie Delgardo looked down and screamed,

“Godamighty Jeesus!”

His shoes were on fire.

Eddie leaped to his feet. Heads turned. Some woman saw what was happening and yelled in alarm. Two security guards who had been noodling with an Allegheny Airlines ticket clerk looked over to see what was going on.

None of what meant doodly-squat to Eddie Delgardo. Thoughts of Sally Bradford and his revenge of love upon her were the furthest things from his mind. His army- issue shoes were burning merrily. The cuffs of his dress greens were catching. He was sprinting across the concourse, trailing smoke, as if shot from a catapult. The women’s room was closer, and Eddie, whose sense of self preservation was exquisitely defined, hit the door straight-arm and ran inside without a moment’s hesitation.

A young woman was coming out of one of the stalls, her skirt rucked up to her waist, adjusting her Underalls. She saw Eddie, the human torch, and let out a scream that the bathroom’s tiled walls magnified enormously. There was a babble of “What was that?” and “What’s going on?” from the few other occupied stalls. Eddie caught the paytoilet door before it could swing back all the way and latch. He grabbed both sides of the stall at the top and hoisted himself feet first into the toilet. There was a hissing sound and a remarkable billow of steam.

The two security guards burst in. “Hold it, you in there!” one of them cried. He had drawn his gun. “Come out of there with your hands laced on top of your head!” “You mind waiting until I put my feet out?” Eddie Delgardo snarled.

7

Charlie was back. And she was crying again. “What happened, babe?” “I got the money but… it got away from me again, Daddy… there was a man… a soldier… I couldn’t help it…” Andy felt the fear creep up on him. It was muted by the pain in his head and down the back of his neck, but it was there. “Was… was there a fire, Charlie?”

She couldn’t speak, but nodded. Tears coursed down her cheeks.

“Oh my God,” Andy whispered, and made himself get to his feet.

That broke Charlie completely. She put her face in her hands and sobbed helplessly, rocking back and forth.

A knot of people had gathered around the door of the women’s room. It had been propped open, but Andy couldn’t see… and then he could. The two security guards who had gone running down there were leading a tough-looking young man in an army uniform out of the bathroom and toward the security office. The young man was jawing at them loudly, and most of what he had to say was inventively profane. His uniform was mostly gone below the knees, and he was carrying two dripping, blackened things that might once have been shoes. Then they were gone into the office, the door slamming behind them. An excited babble of conversation swept the terminal.

Andy sat down again and put his arm around Charlie. It was very hard to think now; his thoughts were tiny silver fish swimming around in a great black sea of throbbing pain. But he had to do the best he could. He needed Charlie if they were going to get out of this.

“He’s all right, Charlie. He’s okay. They just took him down to the security office. Now, what happened?”

Through diminishing tears, Charlie told him. Overhearing the soldier on the phone. Having a few random thoughts about him, a feeling that he was trying to trick the girl he was talking to. “And then, when I was coming back to you, I saw him… and before I could stop it… it happened. It just got away. I could have hurt him, Daddy. I could have hurt him bad. I set him on fire!”

“Keep your voice down,” he said. “I want you to listen to me, Charlie. I think this is the most encouraging thing that’s happened in some time.” “Y-you do?” She looked at him in frank surprise.

“You say it got away from you,” Andy said, forcing the words. “And it did. But not like before. It only got away a little bit. What happened was dangerous, honey, but… you might have set his hair on fire. Or his face.”

She winced away from that thought, horrified. Andy turned her face gently back to his.

“It’s a subconscious thing, and it always goes out at someone you don’t like,” he said. “But… you didn’t really hurt that guy, Charlie. You…” But the rest of it was gone and only the pain was left. Was he still talking? For a moment he didn’t even know.

Charlie could still feel that thing, that Bad Thing, racing around in her head, wanting to get away again, to do something else. It was like a small, vicious, and rather stupid animal. You had to let it out of its cage to do something like getting money from the phones… but it could do something else, something really bad.

(like mommy in the kitchen oh mom I’m sorry)

before you could get it back in again. But now it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t think about it now, she wouldn’t think about

(the bandages my mommy has to wear bandages because i hurt her)

any of it now. Her father was what mattered now. He was slumped over in his TV chair, his face stamped with pain. He was paper white. His eyes were bloodshot.

Oh, Daddy, she thought, I’d trade even-Steven with you if I could. You’ve got something that hurts you but it never gets out of its cage. I’ve got something that doesn’t hurt me at all but oh sometimes I get so scared-

“I’ve got the money,” she said. “I didn’t go to all the telephones, because the bag was getting heavy and I was afraid it would break.” She looked at him anxiously. “Where can you go, Daddy? You have to lie down.”.

Andy reached into the bag and slowly began to transfer the change in handfuls to the pockets of his corduroy coat. He wondered if this night would ever end. He wanted to do nothing more than grab another cab and go into town and check them into the first hotel or motel in sight… but he was afraid. Cabs could be traced. And he had a strong feeling that the people from the green car were still close behind.

He tried to put together what he knew about the Albany airport. First of all, it was the Albany County Airport; it really wasn’t in Albany at all but in the town of Colonie. Shaker country-hadn’t his grandfather told him once that this was Shaker country? Or had all of them died out now? What about highways? Turnpikes? The answer came slowly. There was a road… some sort of Way. Northway or Southway, he thought.

He opened his eyes and looked at Charlie. “Can you walk aways, kiddo? Couple of miles, maybe?” “Sure.” She had slept and felt relatively fresh. “Can you?” That was