When you are engulfed in flames - By David Sedaris Page 0,12

surface was crowded with objects: green glass candy dishes, framed photographs of movie stars, cigarette boxes with monogrammed lids. An umbrella leaned against an open steamer trunk, and, when I observed that its handle was Bakelite, my new landlady unpinned her saucer of cherries and predicted that the two of us were going to get along famously.

And for many months, we did. Rosemary lived on the ground floor, in a set of closed-off rooms she referred to as her “chambers.” The door that led to them opened onto the parlor, and when I stood outside I could sometimes hear her television. This seemed to me a kind of betrayal, like putting a pool table inside the Great Pyramid, but she assured me that the set was an old one — “My ‘Model Tee Vee,’” she called it.

My room was upstairs, and in a letter home I described it as “hunky-dory.” How else to capture my peeling, buckled wallpaper and the way that it brought everything together. The bed, the desk, the brass-plated floor lamp: it was all there waiting for me, and though certain pieces had seen better days — the guest chair, for instance, was missing its seat — at least everything was uniformly old. From my window I could see the parking lot, and beyond that the busy road leading to the restaurant. It pleased Rosemary that I worked in such a venerable place. “It suits you,” she said. “And don’t feel bad about washing dishes. I think even Gable did it for a while.”

“Did he?”

I felt so clever, catching all her references. The other boarder didn’t even know who Charlie Chan was, and the guy was half Korean! I’d see him in the hall from time to time — a chemistry major, I think he was. There was a third room as well, but because of some water damage Rosemary was having a hard time renting it. “Not that I care so much,” she told me. “In my business, it’s more about quality than quantity.”

I moved in at the beginning of January, and through-out that winter my life felt like a beautiful dream. I’d come home at the end of the day and Rosemary would be sitting in the parlor, both of us fully costumed. “Aha!” she’d say. “Just the young man I was looking for.” Then she’d pull out some new treasure she’d bought at an estate sale and explain what made it so valuable. “On most of the later Fire King loaf pans, the trademark helmet is etched rather than embossed.”

The idea was that we were different, not like the rest of America, with its Fuzzbusters and shopping malls and rotating showerheads. “If it’s not new and shiny, they don’t want anything to do with it,” Rosemary would complain. “Give them the Liberty Bell, and they’d bitch about the crack. That’s how folks are nowadays. I’ve seen it.”

There was a radio station in Raleigh that broadcast old programs, and sometimes at night, when the reception was good, we’d sit on the davenport and listen to Jack Benny or Fibber McGee and Molly. Rosemary might mend a worn WAC uniform with her old-timey sewing kit, while I’d stare into the fireplace and wish that it still worked. Maybe we’d leaf through some old Look magazines. Maybe the wind would rattle the windows, and we’d draw a quilt over our laps and savor the heady scent of mothballs.

I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the good kind that was collectible but the bad kind that had arthritis. One afternoon in early April, I returned from work to find a lost-looking, white-haired woman sitting in the parlor. Her fingers were stiff and gnarled, so rather than shake hands I offered a little salute. “Sister Sykes” was how she introduced herself. I thought that was maybe what they called her in church, but then Rosemary walked out of her chambers and told me through gritted teeth that this was a professional name.

“Mother here was a psychic,” she explained. “Had herself a tarot deck and a crystal ball and told people whatever stupid malarkey they wanted to hear.”

“That I did.” Sister Sykes chuckled.

You’d think that someone who occasionally wore a turban herself would like having a psychic as a mom, but Rosemary was over it. “If she’d forecast thirty years ago that I’d wind up having to take care of her, I would have put my head in the oven and