Summary

In “Lit the Fire (1962), present day Ernest mentions that he and Gracie “must have read forty or fifty novels during the long year that Gracie had been required to work upstairs as a Gibson girl” (259). Ernest, as he is reading a favourite book of Gracie’s, changes the sad ending to a happy one, since she does not remember how the book ends. Gracie’s not pleased with the happy ending, but asks, “People don’t find real happiness in the end, do they, young Ernest?” (260) Gracie says she misses Maisie, and that Ernest should have been with Maisie. Gracie starts to remember events at the Tangerine, the brothel she went to after she left the Tenderloin. She tells Ernest that “[her] pride couldn’t keep up with [her] body” but the proprietors of the Tangerine did not...