Their little party in my den

I was driving. We had been at my mother's house for a barbeque. I pulled onto our street and the first house we saw was on fire. It was a dim night and the fire lit up the street, shadows crouching and jumping on the road.

"Oh honey, look at that," Deb said. I nodded.

A few feet down, we passed the Johnsons'. If we have any friends in the neighborhood (we don't), the Johnsons are them (or they). They were out on their front lawn, staring dumbly up at their house, which was on fire.

"My goodness!" exclaimed Deb. "Those poor Johnsons!"

By the third or fourth burning house, that's when I started to get worried. One burning house on your street, that's too bad. Two burning houses and that's a queer coincidence. Six, then seven, then eight--that's when you start to fear for your own house.

Every house was on fire. From an airplane, they would have looked like big rectangular torches--some large religious ceremony.

We pass twelve houses before arriving at ours. They all burned; ours stood undisturbed, dark, sleeping. We were relieved.

"Our poor neighbors!" said Deb.

We got inside and I checked the basement, just to be sure. No fire, no smoke. It smelled like it always does--dust and sediment and ground-up, compacted shavings of wood.

I went up to the den and sat down and turned on the TV. The Red Sox bullpen had blown the game while I was in the basement. I grumbled.

"I just can't stop thinking about our neighbors," Deb said, arms folded, standing in the door between the kitchen and the den. I changed the channel. "All those houses..." The Yankees were losing, so the standings would hold, at least.

The doorbell rang. It was the Davises. Two boring people and their two annoying kids who are always climbing our trees. The black sky behind them was streaked with flickering orange, like a bad painting that's a bit too heavy on the symbolism.

"Can we stay here?" they asked. "Our house burned down."

"Oh, of course," Deb said. "Come right in."

"Too bad about those Yanks, eh?" said Eric Davis, sitting down on my couch, opening a bag of chips he had taken off Deb's kitchen table. "Oh well, we'll get 'em tomorrow! Go Yanks!" I regarded him silently out of the corner of my eye.

The doorbell rang. Our old friends the Johnsons. They needed a place to stay, since their house had burnt to the ground and all. "Of course," said Deb, "don't say another word." I resolved to answer the doorbell the next time.

Within 20 minutes, the house was packed, full of Davises and Johnsons and Smiths and Clarks and Cartwrights and so on. Every family in the neighborhood. No one seemed too broken up about all the fires, except for me. Deb was practically glowing with charity.

POP! A champagne cork flew across the room. No one was sitting now, except for me in my chair. Glasses were passed around; the lights were dimmed; upbeat-downbeat saxophone music started coming from someplace; someone snatched the remote right out of my hands and turned off the TV. The room was filled with the inane, indistinguishable chatter of boring people pretending they're interesting. I was handed a faux-silver platter of cocktail weenies and little bricks of cheese impaled with toothpicks.

A party! I shoved my way past a Haverford and two Danielses to the light switch. I tried to raise the lights but the dimmer wouldn't respond; I tried to flick them on and off and received the same discouraging result. A Hammond grabbed me from behind and tried to get me to dance, grinding up against me, and I shoved her away. She crashed into and over the coffee table and got up laughing uncontrollably, and the small crowd around the table--Rileys and Cains and at least one Pauley--helped her up and all started laughing too.

I ran into the dining room and grabbed the hatchet hanging over the fireplace. I tore into the drywall separating the dining room and the den. I kept going until I had cleared a hole in the wall and was looking in at them, at their little party in my den. That got their attention.

"Excuse me!" I called. "I think you are taking advantage of my hospitality!" A Chadbourne chuckled. A Jamison joined in. The laughter built. Soon the whole room was roaring, and kept roaring until Deb tapped delicately on the side of her champagne glass with the little fancy butter knife she was holding.

"Now that I have everyone's attention," she said, "I'd like to make an announcement. I'm the one who started those fires! I'm the one who burnt your houses to the ground!" The party erupted in boisterous applause and appreciative hurrahs. Deb blushed.

It wasn't true. She had been with me the whole time--on the drive home, and at the barbeque, and at church before that, and on the drive to church, when all the houses had been standing, distinctly unburnt. Why had she lied? I tried to ask her across the room, "why did you lie?" but she couldn't hear me for the noise--"I can't hear you," her lips went. "Why did you lie?" I asked, but she just cupped her hand to her ear, and then she was pulled away by the revelers.

I tried to get back into the den through the hole I had made in the wall, but I had a tough time of it, trying to maneuver past stray boards and jutting pipes and papery insulation. "Why did you lie?" But she had been swallowed up by the Fosters and Wilsons and O'Malleys and Taylors, and I couldn't find her.