David Sedaris - When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Copyright 2008 by David Sedaris

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

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First eBook Edition: June 2008

Authors note: The events described in these stories are realish. Certain characters have fictitious names and identifying characteristics.

Acknowledgment is made to the following, in which the stories in this collection first appeared, some differently titled or in slightly different form: Esquire: Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie? and Thats Amore; GQ: Town and Country; The New Yorker: Its Catching, Keeping Up, The Understudy, This Old House, Road Trips, What I Learned, In the Waiting Room, Solution to Saturdays Puzzle, Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool, Memento Mori, All the Beauty You Will Ever Need, Aerial, The Man in the Hut, April in Paris, Crybaby, and Old Faithful. The Monster Mash was originally broadcast on This American Life. Solution to Saturdays Puzzle also appeared in The Best American Travel Writing 2006. Old Faithful also appeared in The Best American Essays 2005.

ISBN: 978-0-316-03251-3

ALSO BY David Sedaris

Barrel Fever

Naked

Holidays on Ice

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

For Ronnie Ruedrich

My friend Patsy was telling me a story. So Im at the movie theater, she said, and Ive got my coat all neatly laid out against the back of my seat, when this guy comes along And here I stopped her, because Ive always wondered about this coat business. When Im in a theater, I either fold mine in my lap or throw it over my armrest, but Patsy always spreads hers out, acting as if the seat back were cold, and she couldnt possibly enjoy herself while it was suffering.

Why do you do that? I asked, and she looked at me, saying, Germs, silly. Think of all the people who have rested their heads there. Doesnt it just give you the creeps? I admitted that it had never occurred to me.

Well, youd never lie on a hotel bedspread, would you? she asked, and again: Why not? I might not put it in my mouth, but to lie back and make a few phone calls I do it all the time.

But you wash the phone first, right?

Umm. No.

Well, that is just... dangerous, she said.

In a similar vein, I was at the grocery store with my sister Lisa and I noticed her pushing the cart with her forearms.

Whats up? I asked.

Oh, she said, you dont ever want to touch the handle of a grocery cart with your bare hands. These things are crawling with germs.

Is it just Americans, or does everyone think this way? In Paris once, I went to my neighborhood supermarket and saw a man shopping with his cockatiel, which was the size of a teenage eagle and stood perched on the handle of his cart.

I told this to Lisa, and she said, See! Theres no telling what foot diseases that bird might have. She had a point, but its not like everyone takes a cockatiel to the grocery store. A lifetime of shopping, and this was the first exotic bird Id ever seen browsing the meat counter.

The only preventive thing I do is wash clothes after buying them in a thrift shop this after catching crabs from a pair of used pants. I was in my midtwenties at the time and probably would have itched myself all the way to the bone had a friend not taken me to a drugstore, where I got a bottle of something called Quell. After applying it, I raked through my pubic hair with a special nit comb, and what I came away with was a real eye-opener: these little monsters whod been feasting for weeks on my flesh. I guess theyre what Patsy imagines when she looks at a theater seat, what Lisa sees lurking on the handle of a grocery cart.

Theyre minor, though, compared with what Hugh had. He was eight years old and living in the Congo when he noticed a red spot on his leg. Nothing huge a mosquito bite, he figured. The following day, the spot became more painful, and the day after that he looked down and saw a worm poking out.

A few weeks later, the same thing happened to Maw Hamrick, which is what I call Hughs mother, Joan. Her worm was a bit shorter than her sons, not that the size really matters. If I was a child and saw something creeping out of a hole in my mothers leg, I would march to the nearest orphanage and put myself up for adoption. I would burn all pictures of her, destroy anything she had ever given me, and start all over because that is simply disgusting. A dad can be crawling with parasites and somehow its OK, but on a mom, or any woman, really, its unforgivable.

Well, thats sort of chauvinistic of you, dont you think? Maw Hamrick said. Shed come to Paris for Christmas, as had Lisa and her husband, Bob. The gifts had been opened, and she was collecting the used wrapping paper and ironing it flat with her hands. It was just a guinea worm. People got them all the time. She looked toward the kitchen, where Hugh was doing something to a goose. Honey, where do you want me to put this paper?

Burn it, Hugh said.

Oh, but its so pretty. Are you sure you wont want to use it again?

Burn it, Hugh repeated.

Whats this about a worm? Lisa asked. She was lying on the sofa with a blanket over her, still groggy from her nap.

Joan here had a worm living inside her leg, I said, and Maw Hamrick threw a sheet of wrapping paper into the fire, saying, Oh, I wouldnt call that living.

But it was inside of you? Lisa said, and I could see her wheels turning: Have I ever used the toilet after this woman? Have I ever touched her coffee cup, or eaten off her plate? How soon can I get tested? Are the hospitals open on Christmas Day, or will I have to wait until tomorrow?

It was a long time ago, Joan said.

Like, how long? Lisa asked.

I dont know 1968, maybe.

My sister nodded, the way someone does when shes doing math in her head. Right, she said, and I regretted having brought it up. She was no longer looking at Maw Hamrick but through her, seeing what an X-ray machine might: the stark puzzle of bones and, teeming within it, the thousands of worms who did not leave home in 1968. I used to see the same thing, but after fifteen years or so, I got over it, and now I just see Maw Hamrick. Maw Hamrick ironing, Maw Hamrick doing the dishes, Maw Hamrick taking out the trash. She wants to be a good houseguest and is always looking for something to do.

Can I maybe... ? she asks, and before shes finished I answer yes, by all means.

Did you tell my mother to crawl on her hands and knees across the living room floor? Hugh asks, and I say, Well, no, not exactly. I just suggested that if she was going to dust the baseboards, that would be the best way to do it.

When Maw Hamricks around, I dont lift a finger. All my chores go automatically to her, and I just sit in a rocker, raising my feet every now and then so she can pass the vacuum. Its incredibly relaxing, but it doesnt make me look very good, especially if shes doing something strenuous, carrying furniture to the basement, for instance, which again, was completely her idea. I just mentioned in passing that we rarely used the dresser, and that one of these days someone should take it downstairs. I didnt mean her, exactly, though at age seventy-six shes a lot stronger than Hugh gives her credit for. Coming from Kentucky, shes used to a hard days work. Choppin, totin, all those activities with a dropped