the girl who saves the world.

We starve waiting for our order at the Lucky Chinese Food.

Not because they're slow mind you, but because we were too busy fucking to bother eating breakfast or lunch before our $800+ three-hour class on vampiric folklore which we're crashing for free.

The clouds race across a Ford's windshield parked out front much too fast, and people begin to race by as well, looking up at the sky over the building we're haplessly sitting in.

Outside there's a dark torrent of smoke curling up over the row of eateries and shops. Lucky's asian owner runs into the Domino's to tell the counter wage grunt that the building might be on fire.

Rounding the corner we find an amphitheater curve of 20+ gawking, just watching what may as well be the fire channel as far as they're concerned. Atop a huge heap of plastic and cardboard, flames seven feet high begin to lick the side of the rear wall, already engulfing a back stairway and blocking the rear entrance to the Domino's. Aside from Lucky's owner running off with an empty little bucket, it seems the audience has let the fire merrily continue for quite awhile, and if left, that fire's going to win.

Christina, of course, is the first person to note a certain something only 15 feet away.
"Isn't that a hose?"
"Sure is, babe."
"Shouldn't we use it to put out the fire?"
Gods, she's so smart.
"Yes, let's. I'll get the faucet."
Grabbing the hose, Christina strides right up to the blaze in her white Steve Madden hightop wrestling boots, belted black cotton hot pants, and proud pigtails, an exceptionally buxom vision, her powers of reasoning fearlessly focused, and just lets the fire have it full blast.

Over my shoulder an accent matter of factly says, "Fire is a good servant, but a bad master." African student straight out of the veldt, except for his UA football jersey and baggy sag jeans, grins, explaining that it's an ancient proverb. The fire reflects in his dark eyes, and I know it's not the only holocaust he's ever beheld.

Somewhere in the middle of the girl versus flame face-off I get behind Christina to yell over the hissing steam and angry sizzle, "You are so superhero!" The crowd now looks as awed as I feel.

By the time five fire vehicles do arrive, Christina's doused the whole conflagration into wet & smokey submission. She hands the hose to a firefighter, and we thanklessly slink away to the front to pay for our takeout, which still wasn't quite done.

Walking back to the car I can't help re-examining Christina, unable to stop smiling at her.
"What?!?" she says. "Stop staring at me."
"I can't believe it."
"Believe what?"
"That it's somehow even possible to look at you with more admiration than before."
She smiles back, blushing, and we kiss, tasting the smoke on our lips, the shared heroics making our evening all the sweeter, a heat greater than any fire.

We pass by the heart of the sprawling university, looking at the unsuspecting masses who never realized what danger had just been averted a mere half a block away. "You know, all of this would be a heap of blackened rubble if it weren't for you! All these fools owe you their lives!"

"Well, not everybody can be action figure Christina!"

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

an open letter.

One night you will search for yourself, Miss Kris Nicholson, and you will find this, thereby finding me.

Come September it will be 11 years since I walked away from you on the curb of the New Orleans airport, trying my hardest to never look back -- but a part of me has been looking back ever since, unable to forget the splendour in the shadows of that old whorehouse turned hotel on Rue Dauphine. We only stopped long enough to eat oysters in the Vieux Carre, returning for more on bended knees & arched backs, over the ottoman, & upon the silks. 

Talks of literature applied to living. Drama from the page, characters & plots twisted from lips that echoed the leaves even more than mine, so worth the listening as hours became minutes. Your skin, a pallid pleasure wrought in alabaster, hair a red river silted in gold. I never tired of looking at you.

I never got the chance to. You poisoned us. 

You went back to your once-spurned fiance willingly. Know that you were the last person I could love more than myself & you put paid on that innocent mistake. Maybe on some level you felt undeserving, returning to a man who'd hit you, an unimaginative parasite who had already cost you years. I had no choice but to leave. 

Then some odd Thanksgiving I spotted you, a ghost. You looked worn & tired. I was nearly relieved at the sight. Katrina had destroyed 90% of Hattiesburg and even after so many years my first thought worried if you were still in Mississippi, crushed beneath the wreckage of the South. But Tom was near, towing the lesser and later vision of you, and that looked to be a far slower demise than nature could devise. 

You were the love of my life, but you don't deserve such high regard. What is eight months of passion compared to many dedications of three years? Yet I think on you more, for good or ill. Equal measures of pride & self-respect have kept me from actively seeking you out. They still do. They still will. 

In letter & person I was the night to your day. And it seemed to be half you. Was it actually you? Or was it the heaven you made me feel? It was both. Only far later I realized it never really needed you as an external catalyst, because it doesn't come from another -- that bliss comes from oneself. It just wanted you to share with, and that was the miracle we had together. 

But on rare nights it still hurts, the poison, burning that lesson inside me. In turn, remember me on this sainted day of love when we'd first touched one another in earnest. Remember that I bought a star in Scorpio to name after you, lit smaller than a pinhole & greater than all the world.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.