Finally the audience wandered away, back to their own unscorched homes, where the air did not smell like an apocalypse. When I moved from my spot on the sidewalk, I left light-colored footprints behind in the shape of my shoes. I didn’t realize I’d been standing so still for so long. I hadn’t thought about my suit and how it was probably ruined.
Well, if I couldn’t clean it, I could always burn it.
• • •
THEY let me go home, so I went home.
I stepped over one limp hose, all of its water spent. I splashed in the black, oily puddles that were left behind, all around, on the sidewalks and in the grass. I went to my front door and let myself inside. I closed the door. I leaned my back against it.
The air inside was much fresher than the stuff beyond. Thank God I’d closed up all the windows before leaving to run my errands. Thank God it hadn’t been me, and my house, and what was left of my life lying ruined in the ashes.
(It probably should have been me.)
My skin felt clammy and cold, even though I was sweating. I looked down at my arms, and yes, my suit had gone from a light blue-gray to something the color of death. I rubbed a thumb across the fabric and managed only to smear the residue of Mrs. Vasquez into a grimy streak.
I turned my hands over and saw how pale my palms were, compared to the backs of my fingers. I wiggled my wedding ring and saw the lighter skin beneath it. It was a line left by this filthy burning air that had come to rest upon everything. Heaven knew how far the soot would travel and how many houses would wear the evidence of that old woman’s cremation.
The thought sickened me, but it sickened me in a distant way. By then I was mostly numb. I felt dirty, and I felt tired. And somewhere far away, in the far regions of what decency remained, yes, I felt sickened.
• • •
MRS. Vasquez at her Dutch door, the smell of her cooking wafting across the little alley between our houses. The sound of her singing to herself as she dressed for mass.
• • •
I stood there in the foyer and I peeled off my clothes. First the jacket, then the buttoned shirt. I left them in a pile. It’s never a dignified pursuit, pulling off one’s pants—but who was watching? No one. One leg at a time until I stepped free and they were a heap on the floor. I used my toes to fling them backward. They smacked against the door and collapsed into a pile there. I removed my underthings and treated them likewise, then strolled as naked as the day I was born into the washroom.
• • •
ALL the curtains were open. A few people were still milling about, gossiping about what must have happened and wondering how much of Mrs. Vasquez would ever be found. Would there be enough to bury?
I did not care if they could see me.
I did not care what they would say about me if they did.
• • •
I turned on the faucet knobs, left and right, one hot and one cold. I let them both run, and I took the biggest bar of soap I could find.
In the mirror, I looked exactly as disgusting and distracted as I felt. There was a seam around my collar like the one around my wedding ring. Not a winter tan, but a place where the ashes had not quite touched me. But they’d infiltrated the divot at my throat and spilled down onto my chest.
I added some soap flakes to the bathwater to give myself some bubbles—using the harshest laundering detergent I could find. I did not think that a bar of Palmolive alone would do the job, but maybe I did not give it credit. Maybe I only wanted the best possible chance of getting clean.
For half a minute, I wished for a big bar of the ferocious lye soap the army used. It was terrible, and it left my skin cracked and dry, but it washed away every smoky sin. So there was that to recommend it. If nothing else.
The water reached close to the curled rim of the tub, and I stepped inside.
I sank down to my chin, and then lower still—keeping my eyes tightly shut. I held my breath, reached for the bar of inferior (if gentler) civilian soap, and wrapped my fingers around it. I submerged myself, letting small bubbles escape from my nose. I bobbed to the surface again. I scrubbed the bar of soap into my hair and scraped my fingernails along its surface to collect it there and scrub even those tiny crevices.
The water cooled. I drained it and then ran a fresh bath to rinse myself off. I smelled like cream and perfume, and I was sticky with the leftover bubbles until I washed the last of it away. I held my head under the tap and gave my hair one more pass.
• • •
YOU see, the hair is always the worst. You can wash your hands all day; you can stand in the showers until the sun sets, but if you do not scrub all the ashes from your hair, you will smell them in your sleep.
Or I would.
I hated the memory of it. I baptized myself of it.
I ran those terrible thoughts, and the hideous undreamed dreams, right down the drain where they belonged—into the sewers, where it is dark and wet, and where nothing will burn no matter how many matches are struck. Either here or in hell.
I hauled myself out of the tub and grabbed a nearby towel from the rod. I dried my face first, and swabbed down the rest of myself—then collected a house robe and put it on. It was warm inside. I wanted to open the windows, but I knew better. By now, it would smell like death out there. It would smell like Mrs. Vasquez, her skin baked and peeling like pork, her hair dissolved in flames.
But outside, I heard a foot on my stoop. Then another. Someone was walking toward the door. Someone was knocking. I would have to let the bad air in after all, goddammit.
I slid my feet into a pair of slippers and went to answer, still holding the towel and rustling it through my hair as if I needed an alibi.
I looked through the window and saw two policemen. One was holding something; the other was looking at the door—up at me, through the glass. “Mr. Cordero?”
I turned the knob and opened the door. “Yes, I’m sorry. I hope you haven’t been knocking long. I needed to . . . to clean up.” I dropped the towel over my shoulder. “Can you tell me, is there any word of Mrs. Vasquez? Do you know what happened?”
He shook his head. “We can’t check the house until everything has cooled. We hope that she was not inside, but there’s no evidence to the contrary. Perhaps she has left town, to visit family? You are her nearest neighbor; do you know if there’s any chance she was not home?”
The other officer said, “Or if she’s traveling, do you know how we might reach her?”
“No, I’m afraid to say that I cannot help or offer encouraging news. She was here just this morning. I saw her . . . it was around noon. I had errands to run. I waved at her as I left. Everything was fine.”
“So you were not present when the fire began?”
“Of course not.” I sounded defensive. I could hear my own protests ringing in my ears. “I was at the post office, then the market, then the library. I stopped at a newsstand,” I added, as it occurred to me. “When I returned, the firemen would not let me come close to my house. There was a big man, a colored fellow in red suspenders. He said I had to stay clear.”
“Sir,” the second officer said, holding up one hand—and holding his peculiar bundle with the other. “I’m sure it was a terrible accident. This is no interrogation.”
I sighed, not as a matter of dramatic display, but from exhaustion. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so strange—it’s just that I had a fire here, the other day. It was . . .” I chose my next word carefully. There was no need to lie, and perhaps a good reason to tell the whole truth up front. “Unexplained. There were questions—most of them mine, but the authorities had their queries, as well. I’m on edge because of it. It might have been my own house. It might have been me inside. I apologize. Mrs. Vasquez was my friend, and I am shaken.”
“Naturally.” The first officer nodded. Then he gestured at his companion. ??
?And we are sorry to bother you at a time like this, but it is as you said: Mrs. Vasquez was your friend. There may be more questions later, in case you can help the firemen determine what happened, or when it happened—you might be able to narrow things down—but that’s not why we’re here right now.”
The other copper held up the bundle. It was wrapped in a rough wool blanket, no doubt pulled from one of the fire trucks. It was about the size of a large bread loaf. “We found this under a police car. Someone said it belonged to her.”
I took the smelly offering and lifted the blanket’s hem. Felipe’s big black eyes looked up to me. He trembled all over; I could feel it through the cloth. He was not his customary white with brown ears and a brown blotch on his behind. He was almost entirely gray and black.
“Yes,” I said. “This is Felipe.”
The officer shuffled his feet. “I don’t know if you like dogs, sir, but somebody ought to take him.”
I do not like dogs, as a general rule. My instinct was to foist this one back into the policeman’s arms, but I could not do it. I had never before been so happy to see the little fellow. I had never before been happy to see him at all, but now I clutched him against my chest. “I’ll look after him. I’ll clean him up and get him fed.”
“Will you keep him?” he pressed. He was a young man, and he had a kind, earnest face.
“I’ll either keep him or find someone to keep him. Someone good,” I specified. “I’ll . . . I’ll hold on to him for a few days, at least. Until you’re sure about Mrs. Vasquez. Just in case . . . in case she returns. If she comes back,” I said, like I thought there was half a chance in hell, “she will be glad to see he survived.”
Satisfied by this, the men took their leave. I closed the door and unwrapped Felipe, who must’ve been hot under all those layers, but he quivered like he’d been hiding in an icebox.
“It’s all right, little fellow,” I lied to man’s best friend. If you can lie to yourself, you can lie to anyone. “Come. I’ve had my bath, and you must have one, too.”
• • •
EXCEPT for the unceasing trembles, he held perfectly still and let me clean him off, from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail—even his belly and ears. He stared straight ahead all the while, not looking at me. Not looking at anything. It was the stare of a soldier who has seen awful things, and done awful things. It looked like shell shock, or war strain, or one of those words. I wondered if he would have headaches and smell smoke for the rest of his short, uncertain canine life.
I dried him with the same towel I’d used on myself, and I made him a little bed from a mango box and a spare pillow.
“It’s all right, Felipe.” He looked at me that time. Not accusing me of anything, but asking me what I meant. “One way or another, it’s all right. I won’t let you go hungry, and I won’t let anyone hurt you. That’s all I can offer. Is it enough?”
He blinked slowly, stood up, and turned around a couple of times before settling into the bed like he owned it. He put down his head and closed his eyes.
“So we settle for one another. We may as well.”
I wanted to copy him, to lie down someplace soft and sleep. I also wanted to ask him what he’d seen and go outside to listen to the last of the officers—fire and police—as they finished their reports and speculations and surveyed the blackened rubble of Mrs. Vasquez’s home.
I had babbled to the men on my doorstep about the coincidence of it all, and I did not know if they thought it was likely that these two fires had happened so close, one and then the other, and were not connected at all.
I, for one, did not think it was likely. The longer I thought about it, standing there naked except for my slippers and robe, drying in the somewhat clean air of my parlor, the less I believed in coincidence and the more I worried about what had happened and what was to come. I worried so hard that I didn’t think I could sleep if I were to try.
A drink, I thought. Just one. Some rum and orange juice, and a light meal. I should make something for Felipe, too. He would be hungry eventually. Even in grief, a dog must eat.
I went to the kitchen and stared at my pantry, then stared at my stove. I stared into the sink where I’d been test-burning all sorts of things, hoping for more words from my wife. Evidence of my experimentation remained. Anyone who looked could see in a moment that something had been burning in my kitchen, and it wasn’t anyone’s supper.
Surely, no one would come looking.
Surely, it was a waste of effort to collect it all and throw it into the bin, and then scour the sink and the countertops until mine gave every appearance of being an ordinary kitchen, belonging to an ordinary bachelor. But I did it anyway. The very first fires had started themselves, in my absence or while I was not looking.
How far away could they light themselves? In another room, I knew for a fact.
In another house? Was that possible?
I asked myself these things aloud, in a rumbling mutter as I wiped down everything one last time and tossed the rags into the laundry bin. I’d wash them all, first thing in the morning. I’d do them myself in the bathtub, rather than send out for the service. No one else needed to see them.
From behind me, a scraping noise approached.
It was Felipe, dragging the mango box and pillow. He pulled them up beside my feet, under the kitchen table. Satisfied with this proximity, he climbed back inside and went back to sleep.
I sat down on the floor beside him. I stroked his head while he snuffled and snored, all stuffy nosed from the smoke. I felt the soft suede of his ears, and the damp, smooth fur of his back, but I was careful to avoid the round bulges of his tightly shut eyes. With a pathetic catch in my throat, I wondered when I’d last touched another living soul—apart from a handshake, a patted back, or the professional ministrations of a tailor to a client. I resisted the urge to awaken the small dog and pull him into my lap.
I sat there beside him instead, petting him just to feel him breathe.
13
ALICE DARTLE
Cassadaga, Florida
SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAS happened, and I don’t know if it’s my fault or not—but it probably is.
I’ve indulged this phenomenon, and worried about it, even as I invited it and encouraged it. I’ve opened myself up to danger, and danger has responded. It is listening. It is looking for every opportunity to present itself. I feel like a specimen under a microscope, wriggling upon a slide while some terrifying eye observes my every move and waits for the best, most terrible chance to toy with me.
Everything is a sign, if you’re looking for a sign.
I can’t control this. (I was never meant to control this.)
• • •
AFTER I discovered the speakeasy with the help of David Fine, Sister Francine and I went to catch the next showing of The Mark of Zorro. (The Cassadaga Calliope—like Candy’s—is also on the other side of the tracks, it should be noted.) She said it’d be all right, and no one would miss us except for her prayer group, and they could do without her. Frankly I’d had enough Maker’s that I was too fizzy to concentrate on anything much more serious.
I shouldn’t have been drinking—certainly not in the middle of the day. I shouldn’t have skipped the seminar with Gwen Millard, because she’s a talented medium and I have much to learn from her. But the nun told me God would forgive us, and Spirit didn’t care in the first place.
Good heavens, I wonder what that woman actually believes—when it comes to the structure of the Great Beyond.
At any rate, we paid for our tickets at the glass booth and went inside to a small, bright lobby with posters hung up for the movies to come. A red popcorn cart rattled in the corner, overflowing its pan with the fluffy snack—and filling the lobby with the most wonderful scent of warm butter and salt and things that are simply beyond delicious when one has gotten herself a tin
y bit drunk and it’s not even suppertime. The man who’d taken our tickets gave us each a small bag, which I mostly finished before the newsreel was over. I don’t remember which seat we sat in, and I don’t remember what row. I fell asleep about ten minutes into the story, and I don’t remember any of that, either.
But I remember coming around to the smell of smoke, and to Francine shaking me. “Get up, get up! There’s something wrong in the theater, and we have to go!”
I shot awake, is what I did. The lights came on a few seconds after my eyes opened, which did nothing to help with my grogginess—I was still baffled and blinky. I was disoriented and confused, but Francine was firm. She was an inch or two shorter than me and sixty pounds lighter, but she had me up out of that seat and under her arm before I could get my feet in line with each other.
The film reel was rattling, and the picture had gone off the rails; the great screen down front showed blurry frames that were melting as I watched. The light from the projector passed everything along: the celluloid losing its shape, the lens warping, and the flames catching hold of everything.
“What’s . . . what’s happening?” I asked, continuing my long and ignoble tradition of stupid questions presented at the worst of all possible times.
Francine answered by pulling me forward, and both of us shuffled with our feet one in front of the other, single file, because we’d been sitting in the center of the auditorium. The rows of chairs were narrow, and not all of the seats retreated upward, folding mostly flat—like they were supposed to do.
My guide knocked them up with her knees if they fell before her. They knocked my knees on the way back down as I followed behind her. I pushed them aside with my thighs and wrangled past them, twisting myself into all sorts of undignified shapes until we made it to the aisle. It was wider there. We could hold hands and run.
Run to where? The only way out was the way we’d entered—through the lobby (as far as I knew).
After a moment of scrambling and coughing, we followed the other audience members to that doubled door on the squeaky hinges. A man reached it before we did and gave it a shove. It swung open, and smoke billowed outward.