Fire Down Below (4 page)

***

Ben picked me up on Saturday. I
wound up having to work that day, but I left a little early. He came in and sat
on a stool waiting for me, taking in our messy kitchen with an expression on
his face as if he’d just swallowed a slug.

“You guys should clean up in here
more often. It’s gross.”

I was standing in front of the
mirror in our dining room, pulling the sides of my freshly colored jet black hair
up with two daisy styled hair clips. “I know. We take turns cleaning, but none
of us are any good at it.”  I picked up my requisite tube of red lipstick and
put some on. When I was done I turned to face Ben. “How do I look?”

“Great....” I saw his eyes flicker
over my nose ring. He seemed to have an issue with the small silver ring I wore,
but was too polite to come right out and ask me to stop wearing it.

“Did you get the cake?”

“Oh, that’s right,” I say, heading
over to the fridge. The coffee shop I worked at also sold cakes and so I picked
one up to bring to the party tonight. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out
a large white box marked “K-K-Kate – C- C-Caramel!!” A little joke from one of
the bakers. I heard Ben gasp in horror behind me when he saw the mess in our
fridge and quickly shut the door.

“Would you mind carrying it?” I
asked, handing him the box. “I need to grab my purse.” I ran upstairs to find
my bag, taking one last look at myself in the full length mirror on my closet
door. I thought I looked pretty good. Ben had told me how much he liked it when
I wore skirts, so I wore a tight stretchy black skirt that came right above my
knees with a fitted burgundy corset style top. On my feet I had on a pair of
pointy toed stilettos that had small square silver buckles on the toes. It was
September, but still warm outside, so I didn’t bother with pantyhose or tights.

I squirted myself with a bottle of
Opium
perfume that a friend had given me recently. I headed back
downstairs to find Ben studying his watch with a frown.

“I hope you’re ready. I don’t want
to be late.” He leaned towards me in surprise. “Wow, you smell good.”

“Thanks.”

On the way over, driving in Ben’s jeep,
he started running his hand down my leg. “I see you wore a skirt. I like it.”

I smiled teasingly. “I wore it
just for you.”

“It looks very nice, and more
importantly, it feels nice.” His hand began to wander up my thigh.

“Where do your friends live
again?” I shifted in my seat, balancing the cake box on my lap as I tried to
push back any feelings of arousal from Ben’s hand on my leg.

“That perfume’s really turning me
on.”

I reached over and put my hand in
his lap. He wasn’t joking. I could feel the definite beginnings of an erection.
When our eyes met I started to laugh. “This is crazy! Don’t you want to go to
this dinner?”

“Sure I do. Maybe we could just
stop someplace first.”

I was tempted in a tantalizing
sort of way, but when I thought about having to reapply my make-up, fix my hair,
not to mention certain other things, I didn’t want to deal with it.

“Let’s be totally radical,” I said,
moving my hand away from him. “Let’s go directly to their house and have a nice
time. You just said you didn’t want to be late.”

Ben sighed. “You’re right. It
would be rude.” He took his hand off my leg. “Whew! That was a close one,
wasn’t it?”

I nodded, and we both grinned.

His friends lived in a sedate craftsmen
style bungalow near Green Lake with gray and white trim and an old fashioned
country porch. There was already a group of people standing out on the porch, drinking
wine and chatting as we drove up. They waved to us and watched as Ben parked
alongside the house. Even sitting in the front seat, viewing them through the
window, I could tell that this was going to be a long evening.

“Ben!” A man in his late thirties
with a booming voice, graying beard, and an exceptionally taut physique, cried
out as we walked up the front steps. “I’m glad you could make it!” He turned to
me, “And this must be Kate! Hi, I’m Bernard!”

“Hello.” I gave a little wave.

He introduced me to the other
people on the porch, though their names barely made a dent in my synapses. All
I kept thinking about was how out of place I looked. None of the women wore a
stitch of make-up and all of them must have been at least fifteen years older
than me. Everyone was tanned a rugged brown with deep crow’s feet lines, the
kind you get from climbing mountains so high that when you reached the top
there’s nothing but a Kleenex tissue of atmosphere between your face and the blazing
sun.

“Let me take that from you!” Bernard
motioned at my cake box, which I promptly handed over to him. “Come on inside! I
know Megan really wants to meet you. Ben has told us a lot about you!”

We followed Bernard inside the
house which was decorated in muted earth tones with an Eastern touch here and
there. They had a large Buddha head on a bookshelf and some Asian prints on
their walls. The house smelled like a variety of foods cooking—bread, garlic, and
chicken—along with the scent of eucalyptus from a ceramic vase they kept filled
with leaves by the front door. There were people on couches in the living room
and a few more mulling around the kitchen which is where Bernard led us. Soft music
played on the stereo, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

“Megan,” Bernard said to a short
brunette, chopping some kind of herb on a cutting board. “Ben is here and he’s
brought Kate with him!”

She looked up and immediately I
could tell she wasn’t prepared for what she saw. “Hi,” she said, staring at my
hair, my clothes, and then finally my nose ring.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said
cheerfully. “Ben’s told me a lot about you guys.” Which wasn’t really true, but
it sounded like the right thing to say.

“Oh?” She smiled over at Ben. “And
what did he tell you?”

“That you’re good friends and go
climbing together occasionally.”

She nodded, smiling. “Yes, Ben has
become quite the technical climber. If he plays his cards right we may even
take him with us to Annapurna next year. ” I watched her as she finished
chopping the herbs, adding them to a dish of homemade salsa. Something about
her comment struck me as sort of condescending.

I looked over at Ben to ask him if
he was really considering climbing in the Himalayas when we were interrupted by
a tall blonde girl holding a bowl of salad. “Where shall I put this Megan? Do
you still want it in the fridge?”

“No, out on the table would be
fine, thanks. I think we’ll be ready to eat in a few minutes. Oh, Wendy,” she
stopped her, “have you met Kate yet?”

The blonde girl looked at me and
then at Ben.

“Hey, Wendy.” Ben smiled politely.
“How have you been? This is my friend Kate.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said,
still using my cheerful voice.

She nodded.

We stared at each other and, as
much as I hated to admit it, she was very pretty. She had long wavy blonde hair
pulled back loosely with a few tendrils falling around her face and, like every
other woman there, didn’t wear a molecule of make-up. She was young, probably
the same age as I was, so her face didn’t have any of the sun damage lines the
others had. Instead she had this fresh outdoorsy sort of look, which confirmed
what I had suspected all along, that Ben dating me was something of an aberration
for him.

“What have you been up to?” Ben
asked her. “Are you still headed to Montana in the fall?”

“Hmm?” She blinked slowly as she
pondered his question. She had these large sky blue eyes that bulged out
slightly and the more I studied her, the more her features began to take on a bovine
quality. She even had something in her mouth and was slowly chewing it, just like
a cow chewing her cud. “No, that’s all changed...I’m headed down to California
as soon as the paperwork goes through.”

We heard Megan calling out to
everyone in the other room. “Time to eat!”

People began to move into the
dining room where some were already gathered around the buffet-style table. The
food smelled delicious and there was quite a variety. I filled my plate with
herbed rice, Indian samosas, some sort of chicken casserole and a large chunk
of bread. I hadn’t eaten since lunch, so I was really hungry. Ben loaded
himself up and I followed him into the living room to sit down. The couches
were already taken, so we wound up sitting on the floor, which was a bit
awkward for me since I was wearing a skirt.

“Do you want something to drink?”
Ben asked.

“Yes, please. A beer would be
great.”

When he left I began eating and
putting out friendly vibes, smiling at people and trying desperately to ignore
how out of place I felt. All the conversations around me involved people I
didn’t know, doing things I didn’t care about, at places I’d never been.
So-and-so
just got back from Denali and is already planning a trip to Peru. Yes, another
so-and-so is going to France this summer to climb Mount Blanc. Oh really?
So-and-so told me their funding fell through and they’re going to wait until
next year.
 

And on it went.

I smiled and nodded, trying to appear
enthused, but not too enthused in case someone decided to ask me what climbs
I’d done. I had to admit they were a well-traveled bunch, though I wondered how
well-traveled you really were if all you did was go from one big mountain to
the next big mountain.

“Here you are,” Ben said handing
me a bottle of beer.

“Thanks.”

He sat down, and as I watched him
dig into his food, I got a rush looking at him. Those strong cheekbones and
that squared jaw. I must have been an idiot in college not to have noticed him.
It’s a thought that’s occurred to me more and more lately, although I do remember
that he was kind of a dork too.

I also noticed with some amusement
that Wendy, who had taken a seat in the chair opposite us, was trying hard not
to stare at me. I smiled at her the next time her eyes wandered my way, though
she didn’t smile back. I wondered what things had been like between her and Ben
and why they broke up. She seemed like my complete opposite in every way. I found
it astonishing that Ben found us both attractive, since we not only looked nothing
alike, but we had a completely different sort of energy. Wendy did everything
slowly. There was a languid quality about her that I imagined a lot of guys found
sexy, though to me she seemed sleepy. On the other hand I make espresso all day
and drink way too much of the stuff.  

Megan came over near us and sat
down in a vacated spot on the couch with a plate of food on her lap. “So, tell
me how you two met again?”

Ben put down his bottle of root
beer. “We met at the café where Kate works, though we originally met during our
freshmen year of college.”

“Ah, that’s right.” She nodded. Even
though it was Ben who spoke, for some reason Megan kept staring at me. She had these
relentless blue eyes fringed with dark lashes, and as far as I could tell she
never blinked. “And so you guys hit it off, huh?”

I noticed the room had grown quiet
around us as everyone followed our conversation.

“Yeah,” Ben grinned. “We hit it
off.”

I met his eyes for an instant and
I knew we were thinking the same thing—we
really
hit it off.

“And so are you a student Kate, or
do you just work at the coffee shop?” she asked, emphasizing the word “just.”

 “Nope, I’m not a student. I
just
work at the café.”

“Hmm.” She frowned.

“Kate is also a painter,” Ben
said. “She’s incredibly talented.”

I looked at him in surprise. He’d
never said a word about my paintings. When I showed him my art he nodded, but
didn’t say whether he liked them or not, and I assumed that meant he didn’t.
This was something I had begun to notice about Ben. He tended to be stingy with
compliments.

“Oh? What do you paint?” Megan
asked me.

I explained to her that I was into
a style of painting called photorealism where you paint the subject matter in
such realistic detail that it looks like a photograph.

She looked confused. “Why not just
take a photograph?”

“Well, I paint portraits. And I
like to think when I paint someone I’m capturing something in their face that
is missed by a camera lens. Often photos of faces seem flat to me. I guess you
could say that what I’m really interested in painting is hyperrealism.”

She stared at me. I sensed that
she was searching for some derogatory comment to make, but failing that she
turned away. “Is anyone ready for more food?”

How rude. Clearly, she’d taken a
dislike to me, although I couldn’t imagine why.

“You should paint Ben!” Bernard
yelled at me.

I smiled at Ben. “Maybe I will
sometime.” I had considered painting Ben, though in truth his face wasn’t the only
part of his anatomy that I’d considered painting. I figured something that had
given me that much pleasure
deserved
its own painting.

The rest of the evening consisted
of Megan and, mostly bombastic Bernard, regaling us with stories of their various
climbing adventures, not that I felt regaled in the least bit, though I did try
to appear interested and amused. People didn’t just talk about mountain
climbing either. They talked about hiking, biking, snowboarding, and I think scuba
diving was even mentioned. Everyone was polite to me in the way that people are
when someone is so out of place that it is literally painful. I smiled and
tried to act like part of the group, but I felt like the bimbo someone had
accidentally invited to the neighborhood barbeque.

It was a relief when we were
finally able to leave. It took all my will power not to run out of the front
door screaming,
“Lord Almighty free at last!”