The Flamethrowers

by Rachel Kushner

You have time. Meaning don’t use it, but pass through time in patience, waiting for something to come. Prepare for its arrival. Don’t rush to meet it. Be a conduit. I believed him. I felt this to be true. Some people might consider that passivity but I did not. I considered it living.

I saw glowing yellow spheres. They were moving in an elaborate formation, garlanding their way down a mountain face. It was almost dusk, and alpenglow was tinting the snow-filled glades to blush pink. Stands of evergreens marched up the deep folds between each glade in steep triangular formations. The lights swung over a high peak and down the mountain in zigzag, from one side of an open ski run to the other. As the run split into two runs divided by a rock face, the pills of light became two streams and then three, some going around a clump of trees in one direction, and others in the other direction, streams splitting and spilling in a slow waterfall, the slowness giving the sense that these lights were performers in some kind of show.

The woman senses that time is more purely hers if she squanders it and keeps it empty, holds it, feels it pass by, and resists filling it with anything that might put some too-useful dent in its open, airy emptiness.

She looked like a nude astronaut floating in space, too sensual for anything like a breathing tube. A stark, look-at-me expression, solemn possibility. I used to be a nice girl. That was required, the just recently having been one.

It was always that way with women I found threatening, that there was some unfulfilled longing to be friends. I didn’t know quite why she threatened me. She was full of life and verve and a refreshing bluntness, and yet I wanted her contained instead of celebrated for these qualities I secretly admired.

After Burdmoore and Fah-Q had withdrawn themselves from battle, retreated to the mountains of northern Mexico, Fah-Q had a vision, Burdmoore had told us that night at Gloria and Stanley’s. After the vision came to him, Fah-Q broke from their grim, secret encampment and traveled all the way back to New York City. He needed to speak with Allen Ginsberg. Fah-Q was certain that Ginsberg had an important message for them, Burdmoore had recounted to us. A message about their clandestinity, about the revolution. “So what was it?” Didier had asked, a lightness in his voice, the joke being that whatever the message was, perhaps it might still be of use. Fah-Q found Ginsberg, Burdmoore told us, and indeed, Ginsberg had a message for the Motherfuckers. The message was that they should all quit smoking. They should give up cigarettes. Didier, seated across from Burdmoore at the Kastles’ dinner table, had narrowed his eyes and sucked wetly on his Gauloise and nodded, understanding that Allen Ginsberg was truly the idiot Burdmoore had claimed he was.