Fire Burns

- Spy Noir

"Fire," said a Berlin lady to a Berlin gentleman. "Fire burns."

The Berlin gentleman peered at her through the candle flame that flickered between them, making her face dance momentarily. Three hours of punishing the schnapps had lent her a flushed appearance that had nothing to do with the rouge she'd so liberally applied before leaving the apartment. She giggled.

"Fire burns." she repeated, slurring slightly. Her brow was damp, her skin sallow. Her eyes glistened. She might have been in the grip of a fever.

"Indeed it does," replied the Berlin gentleman, removing her finger from where it hovered on the yellow rim of the flame.

"Don't touch, you bastard!" she hissed, slapping at his hand. She giggled again, kissing the tip of her finger and running it the length of his bottom lip, before throwing back her head and beginning to howl.

"You're sweet."

The Berlin gentleman pulled on his bourbon, which was not bourbon at all, but wood alcohol produced in back of a warehouse close to the river and flavored with God knew what. The Berlin lady accounted for a measure of schnapps in one swallow and filled her glass to the rim from the bottle at her elbow. She blew him a kiss. He watched dispassionately as her finger wobbled nearer to the flame.

She held her finger in the center of the flame until the Berlin gentleman could identify the smell of burning flesh. He puckered his nostrils and lit a cigarette. Tears welled in her eyes and her bottom lip began to tremble, then she withdrew her finger, placed her head on her folded arms and set to weeping.

“And this proves…?” asked the Berlin Gentleman.

She raised her head slightly. “That fire burns. Are you an idiot?” She was slurring badly now. Her carefully waved hair fell over her forehead and into her eyes. “Didn’t you know?”

“I knew.”

She shifted in her seat and her finger began to stumble back towards the flame. The Berlin gentleman raised a hand, but let it fall again. He lifted his glass, but it was empty. He gestured to the bar, but the unholy throng that represented Der Keller’s nightly congregation, from dancers to boozers to bar-staff, seemed all to have found something far more interesting to look at for the moment.

She held her arm out straight and lifted her chin slightly. Her teeth looked very white in the light from the candle.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I like it of course. Because I like it! Why else?”

And then she began to sob convulsively, tears making small deltas, black with mascara, down each cheek.