Love at the Goodwill

So there we were at the Goodwill, with an overflowing shopping cart parked outside the dressing room door, which kept swinging open to reveal Lauren, Lexi, and Josie showing off their sartorial picks. Jenny was off scouting out work clothes, and Simon and I were feeling mighty triumphant about the the size 10 Orange County Choppers biker jacket we had scored. I tell you, between that and his cast-off stocking cap, he looked like Trouble with a capital T.

The young hoodlum had two dollars to spend and wanted to check out the toy section, so we wandered into the back room. I inspected a selection of wobbly floor lamps while he unearthed a blue lightsaber, a Nerf dart gun, and one of those tinny echo-mics that work way better than you think they will. I picked out a couple of toy phones for the Hillman City Time Capsule: one a rather deadly singing Elmo cell phone, the other a classic googly-eyed Fisher-Price rotary model.

The time capsule was supposed to be sealed up a year ago, but it's still sitting in my office awaiting burial at the Rainier Avenue Church, and I haven't been able to stop myself from slipping a few more items in, even though my friend Greg has warned me that I may be causing a dangerous rift in the space-time continuum. In this case I feel at least partly justified, because I had "toy phones" on my time capsule wish list from the very beginning. I've always marveled at the way these goofy plastic gizmos keep up with the rapidly changing reality of their adult counterparts -- the toy iPhone must be in the pipeline somewhere -- and yet that googly-eyed rotary phone is still selling. What is that about? Do the kids even know what it is? What on earth will they make of it in 2057?

Anyway, I was standing at the end of the aisle trying to persuade Simon that he didn't need the Bob the Builder circular saw he was brandishing so hopefully, when my eye fell upon a most remarkable item nestled among the deeply discounted Christmas decorations on the shelf in front of me.

It was a hideously adorable candle in the shape of a boy-groom and girl-bride kissing, rendered in flaking apricot-tinged wax, with the wick sticking out of the top of the boy's oversized head. I added it to my armload of treasures, not really intending to buy it, but thinking my sisters might get a laugh out of it, anyway. But somehow I was still clutching it when we got to the checkout line, and since it didn't have a price tag, the lady gave it to me for free. So I brought it home.

Yesterday, we lit it up.


I had it in my mind that the couple's sickly-sweet cuteness might take a disturbing turn once the boy's head was gone and the girl's face had melted away. Some observers had wilder speculations: my favorite had the wick curving down into her body through their joined mouths, so that there would be a moment when she'd be breathing fire into the space once occupied by her bridegroom's head.

Alas, this wasn't the case. In fact, things turned out pretty much as I expected. But in a way that took me by surprise, if that makes any sense. For one thing, I hadn't counted on the lovely amber glow that quickly filled his whole head.


Or the way his cranium gradually became a bowl of hot wax, which then suddenly emptied out into a puddle around their feet. Or how his face was the last to go -- a delicate mask in front of the flame that had consumed the rest of his head. Or how it slowly started to merge with her now-softened face, transmitting the amber glow to her, just as his ears curled and melted away, and his last wisp of rational thought went up in smoke.


Sort of makes you remember what kissing is all about, eh?