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affair. It roars and screams and groans and moans. It howls like a banshee into the air. It burns until it runs out of fuel or someone comes along and puts it out.
    “And now,” Fuller says, “we shall have a cigarette.”
    He lights his cig and leans back against the desk in a parody of sexual satisfaction and exhaustion. After a minute he says, “Three phases of fire, ye thirsters after knowledge: smoldering, free burning and flashover. The first act often dies from its own lack of energy, it suffocates from lackof air; the second phase can be put out by prompt and appropriate action; the third phase, flashover—well, Katie, bar the door.
    “So what is fire? A dry chemical interaction between molecules. A three-act drama that often ends in tragedy. A metaphor for sex, which reveals itself in our language of love, i.e., the ‘heat of passion’: ‘You get me so hot, baby.’ The stereotypical seduction setting of the bearskin rug in front of a roaring fire. The heat that can only be extinguished by the emission of cooling exothermic fluids.
    “This is the chemistry that old Prometheus instinctively understood,” Fuller says. “He gave it to man and man has used it to warm his caves, to cook his food and—being human—to incinerate his fellow man in all manner of nasty combustion.
    “Well, let the sparks fly. Let the eagles feast.”
    He finishes his cigarette, tosses it into the trash can, then says, “Let’s go dance with the bitch.”
    Dance with the bitch?

13
    The crazy bastard puts them into a burning building.
    Jack loves it.
    Fire school—
outrageous
, man.
    The little Irish dude walks them out onto this big concrete square where there’s this two-story concrete building that looks like an air control tower designed by some sort of Soviet architectural committee. Thing’s got doors and windows and fire escapes all over it and there’s firemen standing around looking at the students like they are meat.
    Firemen have these little smirks on their faces, like
good morning, welcome to our world. Welcome to your hosing
.
    Firemen standing in front of a stack of oxygen masks.
    Which makes the students a little, you know,
apprehensive
, then one of the older firemen comes up and starts giving them a briefing about how to put on the masks and how to use them.
    Five minutes later Jack is standing in a crowded mass of his fellow students on the second floor of the concrete building, and it’s hot and sweaty and then it’s pitch black because the door slams. Some of theboys start scrambling to put their masks on, but a voice comes over the PA screaming,
Not yet!!!!
    There’s something we want you to experience first, gentlemen.
    Suffocation.
    More properly, asphyxiation.
    First thing Jack feels is like this intense heat, then the room starts filling with smoke. Jack’s like,
This is wild
, and wild it is because what you got here is a bunch of men crowded into a dark locked room, part of which is on fire.
    Jack gets the game.
    The game is, you put your mask on before the order comes, you are
out of there
—out of the building, out of the school—so Jack squats down as close as he can manage to the floor, where there’s still some air. But it’s only a minute or so before his eyes start burning and tearing, and then he starts choking and gagging, and everyone is choking and gagging, and Jack feels this moment of absolute primal terror—which is like
panic
, man. He feels it and appreciates it—this is what they
want
me to feel, this is the moment they want me to confront. Want me to give in, freak out, lose it.
    Which is what a couple of guys do—they’re history, they’re past tense—but Jack is like,
Fuck that
. Jack’s been held under by a wave more than once in his young life. He’s already experienced not breathing, so he’s like,
Bring it, dudes
.
    I will fucking die in here before I reach for the mask
.
    But is nevertheless very pleased to hear Fuller scream,
Put your masks on, you silly