PRAISE FOR
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
“Bender’s taut prose works its wise melodies throughout this first collection … Each short story packs a heavy punch, and each should be savored. From cleverly comic to starkly surreal, Bender’s audacious characters surprise and delight. Sometimes, they even make you weep.”
—Boston Globe
“Bender’s world is strange and fabulous, an ultravivid, matter-of-fact presentation of extraordinary circumstances and bizarre fulfillments … Declarative and telegraphic, Bender’s stories read like modern fables—with a healthy sense of twisted humor thrown in for good measure.”
—Village Voice Literary Supplement
“A wild imagination, full of bikini-bold sexiness and brute deformity, shaped into art by the sure hand of a fabulist.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer, Best Fiction of 1998
“You don’t know weird until you’ve read this original, at times borderline-absurd short story collection.”
—Mademoiselle
“These stories plumb and expose deep tensions hidden in the mundane.”
—Washington Post
Aimee Bender
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
Aimee Bender lives in Los Angeles. Her stories have appeared in Granta, GQ, Story, Harper’s, The Antioch Review, and several other publications. She is the author of An Invisible Sign of My Own.
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1999
Copyright © 1998 by Aimee Bender
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1998.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The following stories appeared previously and are reprinted by permission of the author: “The Rememberer” in the Missouri Review (Fall 1997); “Call My Name” in the North American Review (Spring 1998); “What You Left in the Ditch” in The Antioch Review (Fall 1997); “Quiet Please” in GQ (May 1998); “Skinless” (under the title “Erasing”) in the Colorado Review (Spring 1996); “Fugue” in Absolute Disaster/Santa Monica Review (Spring 1997); “Fell This Girl” in Faultline (Fall 1997); “The Healer” in Story (Winter 1998); “Loser” in Granta (Winter 1998); “Legacy” in Cream City Review (Spring 1997); “Dreaming in Polish” in Threepenny Review (Spring 1995); “The Ring” in the Massachusetts Review (Fall 1997).
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:
Bender, Aimee.
The girl in the flammable skirt: stories / by Aimee Bender.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3552.E538447G57 1998
813′.54—dc21 97-44485
eISBN: 978-0-307-80446-4
Author photograph © Jerry Bauer
v3.1
FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER
CONTENTS
The Rememberer
Call My Name
What You Left in the Ditch
The Bowl
MarzipanQuiet PleaseSkinlessFugueDrunken MimiFell This GirlThe HealerLoserLegacyDreaming in PolishThe RingThe Girl in the Flammable Skirt......