The 4th of July

“I’m going to set myself on fire”

Her eyes glowed a fierce magenta.

“I mean it Billy. I’m going to”

It was July the 4th. Macy’s annual firework display was brighter than ever. The sky was a spectacular shade of emerald with sparks of red and yellow poking through the dark. I couldn’t help thinking that the sky looked like it was in pain, bloated with patchy white smoke, wounded by neon flamed missiles and ashamed by the chanting and cheering crowds below.

We weren’t too far from Times Square, the firey sky stretched over the Hudson River. When my neck ached from looking up for too long I watched the display in the Hudson’s shaky reflection. I remember what that night smelt like, warm hot dogs and salty pretzels but there was something more, something sweeter and out of place in the sweltering city.

“Are you listening to me Billy?”

“Uh-huh”

She was always so afraid that I wasn’t listening to her. Without my faithful ears her words risked becoming forgotten cosmonauts in a cold, vapid space. She always wanted to be heard, it was an obsessive compulsion. What she didn’t realize was that I was the only one that was in fact listening to her. It wasn’t me she needed to direct her are-you-listenings to. When her pretentious art gallery friends gazed around the room for something more hip and happening to listen to I was still holding on to her every word. I never stopped listening, watching, responding, never. Not even when she told one of her long-winded jokes about Russians riding a bike through New York. These self-made jokes never went anywhere and bordered on being highly offensive yet she told them over and over again and I never tuned off. Not once.

“Before I get old and saggy, before someone finds me dead and decaying in my own wrinkly flesh I’m going to set myself on fire and explode into the night”

“Like a firework?”

“Oh even better than a firework. More explosive, more Kaboom more Pow!”

“More pow?”

“Yes!”

I doubt anyone could be more “pow” than Rosa, not that night, not ever. She looked ablaze with her red hair collected in an overflowing ponytail. She wore a black top with black shorts that barely covered her bottom. A simple outfit you might think, but a lot of thought went into it, a whole theory even. Black stood for her rejection of that corn-fed all American patriotism she despised. She said it reminded her of the small town she was running from. She also explained to me during the subway ride that she was secretly grateful to be American and thankful for the opportunities she had been given whilst living in the city. Hence, underneath the black attire, lay a small US flag, subtly sown on to her underwear. Naturally I spent the rest of the trip thinking about that flag but I was quickly yanked out of my fantasy when we got off at Times Square. We were running late and the fireworks had started. Rosa, having little to no care in the world for what other people think about her, grabbed my hand and pulled me through the hordes of people until we made it to the Hudson.

“You’re lucky you have me Billy”

“Why is that?”

“Else you’d be stuck back there with the overweight pretzel munchers, tip toeing to see a glimpse of firework.”

“True”

The first time I met her she knocked on my door and asked to use my shower. Not only had her lack of introduction completely taken me by surprise, she was also topless and her plaid miniskirt was completely drenched in a red stain that smelt a lot like ketchup. Without asking any questions I showed her the way to my bathroom. When she came out, looking strangely beautiful in my sports clothes she explained that she had been involved in a feminist protest, only no one showed up and she was too ashamed to go home with ketchup down her thighs. She stayed with me that night and she never left.

“You know what?”

“What Rosa?”

“Tonight is wonderful. You’re wonderful”

“Thanks”

“Everything…is just so wonderful”

I pang of guilt exploded in my stomach. I was leaving Rosa. There was a one-way flight booked to New Delhi with my name on it, departing the next day. I had been asked by an old friend to help run an orphanage on the outskirts of the city. It was something that I had always wanted to do. I knew if I told Rosa she would come with me, she wouldn’t even have to think about it, she wouldn’t bother to pack or consider quitting her job. She would be a flurry of excitement, a Catherine wheel erupting through the apartment but I knew that where Rosa went, disaster followed. It was a fact, it was inescapable; there was something about her, an inextinguishable desire to self-destruct. As much as I loved her explosive nature, I knew it teetered on the edge of dangerous. This year had been her fourth trip to the ER after a cocaine overdose. I found her in an abandoned loft, deserted by upper east side party animals who were probably overdosing some place else. She wasn’t the type of person who could run an orphanage, she was someone who needed constant care and it couldn’t always be me.

“I think it’s over Billy”

The fireworks stopped, a thunder of applause followed. Rosa cheered the loudest. The sky was a hazy purple, the sky looked defeated.

“You know, if I died in this moment I wouldn’t even mind because…I’m so happy”

We hugged and kissed and joined the drifting crowds. I thought about how I was going to tell her I would be gone tomorrow but before my mind wandered for too long she interrupted me:

“Want to hear about the drunk Russian riding his bike through Central Park?”

“Always Rosa, always.”