“Okay, babe,” I said, winking at her. I kicked the pedestal and candelabra next to me over with a resounding crash. “So let’s do it.”
And we went to work, Fiona pulling down the pictures and the red and green curtains while I took my bat to the china cabinet—smashing the glass as though it were a thin layer of ice, sending shards of it flying, bludgeoning the green plates and gold leafed vases like piñatas, like the shattered skulls of imagined enemies, until 243 years of history lay a glistening wreck at my feet—just so much broken detritus to be burned with the rest; just so much dust and memory to be erased and finally forgotten. At which I looked at Fiona and she looked back, smiling, her teeth large and slightly crooked, carnivorous—because it was a pleasure to burn, an ecstasy to bu
