I have put Felipe on a little leash, and he sits on the seat beside me. We do not need the leash, for he will not leave his place; but it makes the conductor and porter more comfortable to see him like this—tethered to my hand. As if he is some kind of wolf, and not a shaking, sneezing beast who’s barely the size of a house cat.
The two of us are headed for Cassadaga. I don’t know where else to go. I don’t know where else to look for help.
I think I am doing the right thing. I hope I am not merely spreading this . . . this horror . . . or whatever is attached to me besides this small dog. I hope I’m not carrying it around, sharing it with everyone I meet.
• • •
I’VE decided this much: If the spiritualists think I am a danger to them, and if they cannot help me, I will leave. I will find some kind soul to keep Felipe, and I will end this myself. My service revolver is packed in the bottom of my bag. I have more than enough bullets to bring a man down. I don’t know why I brought the whole box. I only need one.
• • •
HERE is what happened. This is how it’s come to this.
• • •
THEY found Carmella Vasquez in the remains of her bedroom yesterday morning. In the remains of her bed, to be more precise. They think she fell asleep while smoking a cigarette, because they know nothing about her. Mrs. Vasquez did not smoke. She did not drink. She did not do anything to worry Padre Valero except indulge in too much gossip, and I don’t believe for a moment that she thought it was a vice worth mentioning in confession.
The chief said that the fire began there, in the bed with her . . . or possibly under it. “She dropped the cigarette,” he surmised. “It rolled beneath her.”
I shrugged, like this was a plausible solution to the mystery.
“By any chance, do you have the dog?”
“Yes, he’s here, with me.” I pointed toward the mango box. Felipe was there, hidden beneath a towel. Only his nose peered out. “Why? Did someone request him? Mrs. Vasquez was a widow, and she had no living children. But if someone wishes to claim him . . .”
“No, no. One of the men asked after him. He said a neighbor took him in, and told me to ask.”
“The dog is safe and well. He coughs a little, but that should clear up.”
“Yes, yes. It should.”
• • •
THE chief had not come to my door unannounced. I’d encountered him in front of the Vasquez ruins, writing notes on a clipboard. We’d stopped to chat, and he’d asked to come inside to ask me some questions. I’d had no reason to turn him away.
He left, as satisfied by my answers as either of us could hope. There was nothing of substance that I could tell him, and nothing of substance that he could tell me. We were useless, the pair of us.
I told Felipe, “You’re useless, too.” Like he’d heard the mutterings that went on in my head, or gave a damn about them.
He coughed softly and settled down beneath the towel.
“I don’t mean it personally. It’s no rebuke or accusation. If anything . . .” I went to the box and crouched beside it. I patted his hidden head, a lump the size of a peach. “It makes us two of a kind. Besides, I expect that you could do a much better job of”—I stood up straight and thought about it—“catching rats. Small dogs do that, don’t they? That’s what they’re for, isn’t it?”
He didn’t answer.
“And your nose is much, much better than mine. Your eyes are, too, for all I know.” Then, very suddenly, I wondered what he’d seen—and I felt sorry for him. “Well, you aren’t useless. Not at all. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it. You are a very helpful and pleasant companion.”
He didn’t agree or disagree, one way or another.
He did not ask me to feel sorry for him, either.
• • •
YESTERDAY, I took him to work. I’d become nervous about leaving him alone; what if my house burned down, too? The poor creature. He’d survived one cataclysm, and I could not in good conscience subject him to another. At least, not alone. If the little beast must face down another inferno, he should do so with me beside him.
So I took him to Cordero’s, despite the fact that I’d long sworn to Mrs. Vasquez that I would absolutely not entertain any dog in my shop, and despite the other fact that I’d resolved to take time to myself—and I’d been planning to take even more. A week, that’s what I’d decided. A week would give me time to visit Cassadaga and return.
This was my excuse to check on the store: I would tell Emilio or Silvio about the week I needed and make certain that all would be well in my absence.
The truth was that I needed to leave the house. I’d burned everything worth burning on purpose, and in doing so I’d turned up two more decent images of Evelyn and what looked like the mark of her lips. She’d sent me one such mark with every letter she ever mailed to the front—every envelope was marked on the back with her favorite red lipstick, pressed in a kiss.
Also, I burned Evelyn’s wedding veil. That’s how I got the lip print in soot. It was the most precious of the things I’d burned, and the most intensely difficult to set alight. But by that point, to be honest with myself and Felipe, I would’ve burned her dress, too, if I’d had it.
I am told she was buried in it.
• • •
IF that is true, then someone must have dressed her after she died. She wouldn’t have been wearing it around the house, waiting to pass and feeling pretty. Had it been her sister? She’d come into town, I think. Or was it Mrs. Vasquez? I’d never thought to ask her, and now the time had passed. She had certainly never mentioned it.
What if no one had dressed her? What if she was thrown in the group grave wearing nothing but the clothes she’d died in?
If that was the case, what happened to the dress? I cannot stand to think that someone stole it, though I do suspect that things were stolen from the house before I returned from the war. (It was vacant for several months after she died.) Little things were missing, here and there. The glass goblets we’d used to toast our nuptials. A small mantel clock that had belonged to my father. A watch chain made of gold, which I’d left behind in the nightstand drawer.
Who would’ve taken them? What kind of terrible person steals from the dead and from the deployed?
• • •
WELL, the world is a terrible place—and maybe the afterworld is, too. Because I am on a train, keeping to myself, petting my small dog. (He is my small dog now. He is mine, and no one else’s.) I am headed to either my salvation or my doom, and I don’t know which.
I’m not certain that I care. I am so tired.
So very tired.
• • •
BUT. Earlier. Before the train.
I arrived at Cordero’s with Felipe under my arm. I was worried about his coughing, and I didn’t want to overexert him. He is a small thing, and he’d been through quite a lot. I know all too well how it feels to breathe smoke and fire, when the mask is out of reach or grasped too slowly. I wanted to give his lungs a chance to recover. One of us deserved to recover.
Emilio positively squealed when he saw the dog.
He darted forward to pet him. He collected him from under my arm and held him up—then clasped him close and cooed, “Oh, he’s a handsome thing. What’s his name?”
“Felipe.”
“What a handsome little fellow you are, Felipe . . .” He rubbed his face on the dog’s nose.
Felipe offered a short tail wag in response.
Then Emilio tucked the dog under his own arm, cradling his belly with one hand and stroking Felipe’s head with the other. “He’s very handsome . . . but I heard about your fire next door yesterday, and I was going to come by after the shop is closed. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I waved away his concerns. “The firemen kept the flames
from spreading. The neighborhood smells like ashes and damp, and one wall of my house is filthy with soot. And now I have this dog because there’s no one else to keep him. I believe that means you’re all caught up.”
He scrunched his forehead at me. He bounced Felipe forward. “What does he have to do with this?”
“He belonged to the woman whose house burned. She died in the fire.”
“She died?” He sounded scandalized.
“They found her an hour or two ago. She was . . . she was smoking in bed and fell asleep. Whoosh,” I added, miming an explosion.
“That’s terrible!” He turned Felipe about and held him up so that they were nose to nose. “I’m so sorry, little fellow!” Then he asked me, “Is the dog hurt?” Before I had time to answer, he was spinning the Chihuahua gently around, checking him from ears to tail.
“He’s unharmed except for the cough.”
“He has a cough?”
“It’ll go away.” Probably. “He’s mine now. He has no one else.”
“Oh . . .” He was cooing again, snuggling Felipe with enough vigorous affection that the dog began to look uncomfortable. I suppose he was accustomed to his momma’s more straightforward form of spoiling, with roasted chicken bits and cheese. I was afraid he might bite. (I had no idea if he’d ever bitten anyone. Even if not, there’s a first time for everything.)
“Here, let me . . .” I held out my hands, and Emilio reluctantly gave Felipe back.
“He’s lucky to have you.”
“So I’m told.”
“You’re lucky to have him, too.”
“So Mrs. Vasquez would have said. She’d been bothering me to take a pet for quite some time.”
He nodded as if this were the deepest possible wisdom. “It is a pity for him, but a good thing for you. You’ve lived alone too long.”
“Yes, you sound just like her.”
“She must have been a wise woman. The world is a lesser place in her absence.”
Then we chatted about the shop, and which articles of clothing needed to be cut and sewn, and who was expecting which suit and when. It wasn’t more than a minute or two; business is slow but sufficient, and the brothers are on top of things. It couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds, now that I recall it more concretely. It was less time than that, maybe.
Felipe began to wiggle in my grip. I shifted my hold on him, thinking he might be uncomfortable. He whined. He wrestled. He wanted to be set down on the floor, but I did not have his leash, and I didn’t want him roaming unattended. I squeezed him tighter. Not so tightly that I’d hurt him.
“What’s the matter?” asked Emilio.
“I don’t know.” But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew—as quickly as that—what the matter surely was. I smelled it: the insidious creep of warm smoke. “Tell me: Is the iron on?”
“It shouldn’t be. What is it? Why would you ask?”
“I can smell smoke. From somewhere. Don’t you smell it, too?”
He frowned hard, concentrating, trying to confirm or deny my suspicions. “I smell . . . something?” He might have only been humoring me.
“I’m not a madman, I swear. It’s definitely smoke . . . definitely something is burning. But where is it coming from?”
• • •
FELIPE whined, and a wave of pain washed over me. My head ached with an immediate, impersonal throbbing that made me want to close my eyes and lie down. But I did smell smoke. I must have staggered, because Emilio’s hand was on my arm.
• • •
“TOMÁS, here. Sit for a moment, and I’ll go find the problem. I’ll get you a glass of water.”
“I don’t want any water.”
“Stay here,” he admonished anyway. “I’ll go look.”
“You don’t believe me.”
Felipe believed me. He writhed and fussed, demanding to be set loose. I would not let him. He was my only witness, and I would not let him leave me, too. I watched Emilio go, back into the workspace. The door swung shut behind him.
The room was growing dark. Emilio should have felt it.
Why did he leave me?
I rubbed at my eyes with one hand while struggling to contain Felipe with the other. I was very confused and I was becoming afraid. Was I having some kind of fit or delusion? Was I imagining things? Was this the sort of shell shock people talked about when they talked about the shattered men who sleep on street corners, wrapped in their own filth?
I am not like them. I am wrapped in fine tailoring, performed by my own hand. I do not drink myself to sleep on the sidewalk. The headaches come only sometimes. The smell of smoke is usually real, and not something I’ve conjured up in my mind.
• • •
I do not always dream of fire.
• • •
EMILIO was gone and Felipe finally stopped squirming. He was either resigned to his fate or exhausted by his protests. We sat together in a chair where I give consultations and offer fabric swatches. The chair was plush but firm, with a high back.
No, the chair was hard and made of coarse-hewn wood. It had no back. It was a bench, and I was sitting upon it. I was holding Felipe, except that I was not. He was gone, and I did not know where or when or how he’d vanished. My hands were manacled in iron. The room was dark. What light came through the windows high overhead was orange, like the sky was on fire outside.
(The sky might have truly been on fire. I have seen the sky on fire. I know what color it turns.)
“Felipe,” I said in a whisper so hoarse that I must have been breathing the smoke for days. I thought I could hear him whining, somewhere in the distance. He was calling me to come back, but I didn’t know where I was—much less how I ought to return. “Emilio.” No real answer from him, either. “Evelyn?” I tried, because there was no one else left.
“Tomás.”
My name was a lightning bolt. I sat up straight; I was stunned, and I was alive. I knew that voice. I loved it. I mourned it. “Evelyn?”
There was a shape before me in the dark, shrouded with a veil (but I burned her veil). No, this was a black veil, made of thick lace. The figure approached slowly, moving like a woman moves, shaped like a woman is shaped. It wore black, and in the darkened room I saw only the edges where the light burning through the windows caught the outline and showed me a hint of a long black dress, and hands that were shrouded in gloves.
The specter shimmered and shook, and changed. In an instant, it was something else—something much larger and thicker, a looming presence with no touch of the feminine to soften it. This was a solid block of night, or something darker, something hotter. It stood above me, and its eyes flickered wetly.
“Who are you?” I did not ask it if it was Evelyn. I knew it was not. “What are you?” Maybe that was a better question.
It didn’t answer that one, either.
I opened my eyes.
I’d kept them closed all this time, squinting against the headache. I do not know how I’d seen the woman, the shadow, the manacles. (But I saw them; that’s all I can say.) I lifted my lids, and I heard Felipe keening beneath my arm; I turned my head and I saw my shop as normal as it’s ever been. I saw the rows of suits on hangers. I saw the counter where Silvio keeps the books if I’m busy in the back. Over there was the pedestal where I made men stand so I could pin the hems of their pants. There upon the desk, the iron and glass lamp that flipped on and off with a tug of its chain. Beside the door to the workspace, a headless mannequin torso, ready to model whichever items I required.
The door to the workspace.
The knob rattled. It turned. Emilio stepped forth, a worried look upon his face.
Behind him, the sun exploded, and the rest was light and fire and the sound of war.
• • •
I was on the floor, my head dash
ed against God knows what.
My ears rang. My eyes swam. My dog was barking ferociously, just loudly enough to cut through the ringing. He was pulling at my hand—his small mouth biting and tugging, his panic tempered with a fearsome and admirable determination.
I rose to one elbow. I touched my temple and felt the blood there. I saw fire on the ceiling, and I thought my clothes might burst into flames if I did not leave. I crawled, following the demands of the dog. I looked back and saw something slumped in pieces. It was not alive. It might have been Emilio. It must have been Emilio, for all I wanted it to be the mannequin. But I’d seen dead men before, men blown apart and burned, and I know what they look like, and I knew better than to crawl backward to save a single piece of him. He would never know the difference.
I followed the dog on my hands and knees, through broken glass and through smoke that came so low, so thick, that I could no longer see the blaze above me.
I let the dog lead.
One of us was in his right mind. One of us was low enough to the ground to see the way out. One of us was fighting to live.
• • •
OUTSIDE I could see the whole block was ablaze. Outside, I could breathe.
Outside, Felipe begged me to stand. Ordered me to pick him up. Commanded me to run.
• • •
I could not run, but I could shamble. I pushed past the anxious, screaming people who pointed at the stucco as it cracked, split, and splintered. I waved away anyone who wished to lend me aid. The police had not come yet. The firemen were on their way. My business was gone, and I was gone. Emilio was gone. Or the mannequin was gone. Both of them, then. Everything. All of it except for this dog, who needed someone to survive—because he could not carry on alone.
I made it home but I do not remember how.
I must have put my head down and walked like a strong, purposeful man who has business elsewhere, never mind the burned clothes and the charred hair or the bleeding head. I must have walked like the soldier I used to be, even though my head hurt so badly that the whole world moved back and forth with every step, and more than once I nearly dropped Felipe, who whispered with his tiny grunts and whines that I must make it home . . . I must pack . . . I must leave, before I ran out of time and lacked the strength to do so.