Her hair kept bursting into flames.

I met her at the bus stop. She was heading into the city and I was heading nowhere. The bus was crowded. I gave her my seat and she gave me her phone number.

We went to a diner that overlooked the traffic on Route 35, near the docks along the Jersey shore. The smell of salt and burned rubber hung in the air. We ate burgers and fries and then as she bit into a slab of chocolate cheesecake her head lit up. Flames exploded from her skull and singed my eyebrows. There was no damage to her luminous face.

I said, "Your head was just on fire."

She said, "Yes—it happens when I get excited."

I leaned forward and whispered, "Oh, and what gets you excited?"

"Anything with chocolate."

Later that evening I took her home. She lived in a two-room apartment just off the highway, on a crooked street with sunburned houses and broken asphalt. I kissed her lightly but with feeling. She kissed me back—like a sparrow pecking at a discarded cupcake. I felt some warmth, but no smoke and no fire. She said call her in a couple of days.

I called her and set up another date. I dressed in a new shirt and brought her some chrysanthemums. We went to a movie house on Route 34, tucked between a biker bar and a Motel 6, and watched the moon rise above the silo-shaped water tower that guards the entry ramp to the Garden State Parkway. We returned to her doorstep and I sucked her sweet lips as if they were cherries soaked in beer—it was summer, there was heat, and we hugged like two orangutans. But there was no incineration.

I said, "You look radiant."

She said, "I need a candy bar."

I ran to a vending machine outside her apartment and got her a Hershey bar. She bit into it and her head ignited. My beard was burned into ashes. There was a smoky carbon residue on her silver earrings.

She rested her head on my chest. She said, "That was amazing."

I called her on the phone. I said, "I've been thinking about you for days—your lips and your tongue, your eyes like two stoplights."

She whispered, "I've been thinking about you, too... Your chest and your shoulders, yours legs strong as parking meters."

Her voice trembled. She said she had to go, and I knew she was running to the refrigerator to get a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup. I could almost feel the fiery detonation through the phone line.

Three days later we went to the mall. The stores were crowded but I saw only her. We talked for two hours. We talked about cats and cousins and the best place to get pizza. Then we went to her apartment.

She asked me to come inside, so I did. We drank coffee. We flipped through the channels on her television. She showed me the silky sheets on her ocean-sized waterbed.

I'd always wanted to be a sailor—though I could barely swim. That night, I weathered a storm. The sea swirled with foam, the surf pounded the beach, the sky was purple and black and then turned to a dazzling shade of strawberry pink. I swam, I paddled, I thrashed like a madman.

Exhausted and frustrated, I waited for the flames. But there were none.

She reached into a nightstand and pulled out a chocolate bar.

She said, "I need this." I held her close as she swallowed. She exploded in blinding white fire. The drapes were obliterated, and the carpeting was charred into fiber-filled ash. But we were unharmed.

She said, "I love you."

"I love you, too."

I stared into the serene darkness.

"I'll bring you chocolate every day."

"That will be fine. That will be just wonderful."

THE END