A Low Blue Flame

by A. J. Downey

  “Yeah, I know, right?”

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I murmured, and he looked me over and nodded.

  “You know, you’re a cool chick, Lil. I’m sorry that guy, Mark, took advantage of you like he did. We both deserved better than what we got when it came to all that.”

  I said dryly, “There’s certainly no shortage of assholes in the world; is there?”

  He laughed and nodded, and said, “You’ve got that right.”

  A voice called out from down the aisle, “Yo, Backdraft!”

  Both of us turned our heads at the same time. A much smaller man, with brown hair and a matching, trim beard, waved at us from down the way. He had on a leather jacket and vest that was a match for Backdraft’s and I had to smile.

  “I’d ask if he was a friend of yours, but it seems kind of obvious,” I said.

  Backdraft laughed, “That would be Yale. He’s one of the city’s ADA’s.”

  “I see, the attorney you mentioned.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a grin, like he was pleased I’d paid attention, which, why wouldn’t I?

  Yale turned and said something to an equally small blonde woman who was bent over and looking at some handmade funky jewelry at a stall. She straightened and said something back and Yale raised a hand in our direction. She looked our way, smiled at Backdraft, and waved.

  “That’s Aly Cat. She’s Yale’s girlfriend,” Backdraft told me, but then her eyes fixed on me and widened.

  “Uh-oh,” I said with a smile, and sure enough, the next thing anyone knew there was this squealing girl jumping up and down excitedly in their midst, apparently going a little batty for no apparent reason.

  “Woah, busted,” Backdraft remarked coolly, watching Aly’s antics with mild interest.

  She gripped Yale’s shoulder excitedly and babbled in a rush as they walked this way, but by the expression on his face, he wasn’t getting even half of what she was spilling in his ear. To be fair, she was talking really fast.

  “I have to call Dawnie! Can I call Dawnie?” she asked and Yale blinked at her, bewildered.

  “You never have to ask permission to call your best friend, Pet. I keep telling you that,” he said, but they’d reached us, and she was back to squealing enthusiastically, and all I could do was smile.

  “Yes, hi. Backdraft tells me your name is Aly,” I said, laughing and holding out my hand, taking hers and shaking it. She was so overwhelmed her hand just sort of hung limp from mine, like she forgot what she was supposed to do with it.

  Awwww! I thought when it was apparent she was so excited she was tearing up and unable to speak for a moment. There were people looking at us now and I felt my cheeks heat. I hated being the center of attention, but her enthusiasm was taking the edge off of that. It sometimes helped when they were this excited. It was the sort of excitement that was infectious and made me just as happy to meet a reader as they were to meet me. Her emotion spilling through me via our conjoined hands meant that I was starting to get teary-eyed!

  “I am so sorry,” Yale said. “I have no idea what’s gotten into her; I’ve never seen her like this.”

  “It’s okay, I understand, it happens sometimes,” I told him.

  “Baby,” Aly said, and her tears began to fall, “She’s Timber Philips!”

  Yale’s look went blank as he tried to access the memory that would tell him who that was, but I could see he was coming up blank.

  “That’s me,” I said sheepishly, and Backdraft looked on amused.

  He finally helped his club brother out and said, “She writes romance novels.”

  Understanding dawned on Yale’s face and he gave an enlightened nod. He held out a hand to me, his other arm going around Aly and hugging her comfortingly into his side as she tried to get her overwhelmed tears under control. I let her limp hand go so that I could shake Yale’s proffered one and it was like she regained the use of them. Both of them flew to her mouth as she tried to curb her enthusiasm, at least just enough so that people would quit staring at her like she’d gone completely mad.

  “Damien Parnell, nice to meet you, Timber,” he said. “This is my girlfriend, Aly. As you can tell, she is somewhat of a super-fan of your books.”

  I laughed a bit, relieved as the crowd around us began to disperse and I said, “Pleased to meet you, and it's Lillian, actually. Timber is just my pen name, not my given one.”

  “I have to call Dawnie, she’ll never forgive me if I don’t.” Aly’s hands had come down and she had reached into her pockets and was already in the process of dialing her phone.

  “How did you two meet?” Yale asked, looking between me and Backdraft.

  “Oh, um…” I faltered and Backdraft came to the rescue. But of course he would. I thought with a smile. That’s what he does, after all.

  “You were there, you gomer. Remember the woman I gave a ride home to from the 10-13, that one night? It was a few weeks back, maybe a month or more.”

  Yale frowned and then that enlightened look crossed his face again. He nodded and said, “Ah, yes, that was you.”

  Aly’s voice cut in and she said into her phone, “Oh my god, Dawnie! You’ll never guess who I am standing here with.”

  I smiled and Backdraft nudged my arm with his elbow and gave me a look that asked Is it always like this? I kind of rolled my eyes a little bit and gave a half-shrug. Not always, but sometimes. Not always this intense but some iteration of the same. I smiled, and Aly’s rushed chatter filled the air and she held out her phone.

  “Will you say something to her?” she asked hopefully.

  “Oh, are you sure you don’t just want to send her a picture?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t help,” Yale said. I frowned slightly, puzzled.

  “Dawnie’s blind,” Aly said by way of explanation.

  “Oh,” I said hollowly, the wind knocked out of my sails a bit and the moment suddenly taking on far more gravity for me, more weight.

  I took the phone without hesitation. “Hello, Dawnie?” I said.

  “Holy shit, it is you,” I heard on the other end. “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me!”

  I laughed nervously and said, “It’s me, but I’ve gotta ask, how do you know?”

  “I only listen to like every interview you’ve ever given ever! Holy crap, this is really happening! I’m really talking to Timber Philips on the phone!”

  I laughed again and said, “Well, it would be really nice to meet you, some time. It’s a small city, so I am sure it will happen eventually.”

  There were several heartbeats worth of silence as I looked at Aly and Yale, who were both looking at me with very different expressions, Yale’s almost apologetically embarrassed and Aly’s ecstatic.

  Finally Dawnie said, “Wait, you live here?”

  “I do, just moved here over the summer,” I said.

  “Oh my god, this is the coolest thing ever!” Dawnie cried. “You gotta tell me, did my best friend totally act like a dork? I’m really hoping she totally acted like a dork.”

  I laughed and said, “I’m going to hand her back now. It was nice talking with you, Dawnie.”

  “Holy shit, this is like the best day of my life! I mean, it was nice talking to you, too.”

  “Bye for now,” I said smiling and handed Aly the phone. She and Dawnie squealed all over again and some of the people around us even laughed. I could see a couple of girls with pieces of paper and pens in their hands standing off to the side with a mix of eagerness and dread on their faces, and I smiled warmly at them.

  “Just a second,” I murmured to Backdraft.

  “Not at all, duty calls, I get it,” he said affably.

  I waved them over, determined to remain humble. Of course, the attention like this always got worse during a new book release or close to a movie’s premier. I was still getting used to it being the new normal, though. I was also determined to stay humble. These ladies, after all, were the reason I could afford to even be here, liv
ing this life. I owed them everything.

  The two girls I motioned over to me broke into excited smiles and came forward, and I took my time to chat with them and sign their papers. Alas, the Timber Philips signature came more naturally to me than my own anymore. I can’t tell you how many binding legal documents I had screwed up and had to have reprinted so that I could re-sign them with the correct name.

  I finished up with a few more signatures and turned back to Aly, Backdraft, and Yale. Aly had her hands over her mouth again, her eyes wide while Yale whispered in her ear.

  “I’m sorry,” she squeaked. “You were just trying to have a nice morning out and I totally blew it for you, didn’t I?” She looked like she was about to cry for a totally different reason now, and I couldn’t have that.

  “Oh, no! No, no, no!” I said laughing. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” I assured her. She was so sweet and looked so fragile that I went over and hugged her, which was something I almost never did. She hugged me back and she was so overwhelmed by it all she was shaking, trembling finely.

  “Still, I’m sorry, but you don’t understand. Dawnie and I have been reading your books since the very first one ever.”

  “Wow!” That was a long time and a lot of books ago. “I am super honored to meet you, then,” and I was. I didn’t often get to meet someone who started reading me way back in my indie days anymore.

  I stepped back and Backdraft asked, “You wanna grab lunch at the 10-13?” He looked at me as he asked, a suggestion more than a question in my case, and I thought it sounded like the perfect idea. It would get me out of the crowded public space and give Aly a little time to calm down.

  “That sounds like a great idea,” I said. “Would you two like to join us?”

  “You’re serious?” Aly asked, her look blank, as if I had just put her on overload.

  “Of course, I am.”

  “Can we?” she asked Yale, and her voice was brittle. Judging by the way his dark eyes swept over her, the answer was an unequivocal ‘Yes.’ That man was so in love with this girl, I couldn’t see him denying her anything.

  What I wouldn’t give for a man to look at me like that someday. The thought came naturally but unbidden, and with it, a crushing sadness swept my soul. Still, it was like a cloud scudding over the sun. The light dimmed but didn’t go out, and as soon as the cloud passed the light was as strong as ever. It’d been a good long while since I’d been in such a good mood.

  “Of course, we can,” Yale said with a smile, and Aly threw her arms around him and hugged him tight, giggling.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said. “I’d like to go back and buy some of the honey that was being sold back there. I’m one of those ‘look at everything before you buy’ kind of people.”

  I was met with a chorus of “Sure,” “Absolutely,” and “No problem.”

  “Can I call Dawnie back and have her join us?” Aly asked, her bottom lip captured between her teeth, and I smiled.

  “That sounds like a fine idea; I would really like that,” I said.

  7

  Backdraft…

  “What’re you reading?” Barnaby asked, pulling himself into the top bunk above mine.

  “A book,” I answered honestly, but I was only half paying attention to what he’d asked. I was actually sucked in to this thing.

  Back on Saturday, we’d walked over to the 10-13, met up with Dawnie getting out of a cab, and had lunch ‒ the five of us. We’d had a pretty good time. I didn’t get to hang much with Yale, and it’d been kind of nice to connect with that brother. Truthfully, the brothers I spent the most time around were Youngblood, Blaze, and Oz. The first, because he was my best friend; the second, because we ran into each other often enough while on the job, and he helped me work on my brownstone; and the third, because he came by the firehouse once a week to lift with us. A change of pace, he called it, from his regular gym routine, which in and of itself, had become a regular gym routine for him.

  I’d given Lil a ride home after lunch, which had ended right around when dinner was supposed to get started. She’d pouted a bit and had said she wished she could, when I asked if I could take her for a ride, but she had work to get back to. I thought she maybe worked too much, but I couldn’t throw stones, living in a glass house. I was here four days a week and the other two I was retrofitting and renovating the busted-ass fixer-upper brownstone that I lived in.

  Technically, I should be working the fire house on a much different schedule, but we were short, a hiring freeze was in place city-wide, and that made the department hard up enough that they were handing out mandatory overtime like fuckin’ candy. Still, it didn’t amount to much in the long run, though. Firefighters were paid shit.

  “Huh, no shit? A book? Really.” Barnaby said and shook the whole damn bunk as he settled in.

  “Yeah, as in none of your fuckin’ business, Barn. Now shut up, I’m trying to read this,” I shot back.

  One of the other guys started cracking up across the room and clapping and I frowned, redoubling my efforts to read the print on the page. I was so into it, I couldn’t be bothered to turn on the fucking light in my bunk despite the increasing gloom.

  After I’d dropped Lil off, I’d had to go to the grocery store for some TP for my place. I’d found myself back on the magazine aisle staring at the cover of her book. Aly’s reaction had been something else. Dawnie’s expression of awestruck wonder behind her hippie glasses had been priceless, too. That girl was a tough nut to crack, but Lil’s presence had done it. Aly’s blind best friend practically glowed and was as cracked wide open as I’d ever seen her.

  Lil was the true superstar of the day, though. She’d been patient, kind, and free with her time to every person who had come to her with a pen and paper, or even a story idea of their own. She’d patiently coaxed out details and had encouraged every person that their book needed to be a thing, that the world needed their story.

  We’d been stopped no less than five times between the market and the 10-13. Once she’d been made, iIt was like the super-fangirl set came out of the woodwork. Likely, someone had posted her last-known-location as the market because, no joke, when we’d ridden by it on our way to take her home, there were women and girls all over the park toting books under their arm and talking in excited clumps, all of them looking at their phones even though the tents had all come down and the food trucks had all started pulling away.

  For me, though, it was Lil herself. Her selflessness and the fact the whole morning into the early afternoon had played out the way that it did… that’s what sold me on picking up the book for myself. I was super surprised to find that I was glad that I did. There was a whole lot more to her writing than a love story. There was intrigue and a little danger to it, too.

  She knew how to tell a story and I was suddenly kind of ashamed of passing the whole genre off as a load of crap all this time. Of course, to be fair to myself, a stereotype became a stereotype for a reason. Usually because there was some truth to it. Unfortunately, it was how we tended to unfairly apply stereotypes that was the problem. Not necessarily the fact that they existed in the first place.

  Damn this woman made me think. She challenged me, and I liked it. Count me grateful to have made a friend of her.

  Her book got snatched out of my hand.

  “What the fuck, Barn?”

  “I wanna know what you’re reading!” he cried, laughing and I pounded a fist into the bunk above me, bouncing him on his mattress.

  “Give it back, asshole!” Too late, Barnaby was fucking howling with laughter.

  “You’re reading a fucking romance novel?” he mocked.

  “It’s not like that,” I said and hated that it sounded defensive. I mean, what the fuck did I have to be defensive about? Other than their macho bullshit.

  “Oh, then what is it like?” he demanded.

  “None for your fucking busi – “ The alarm sounded, red lights flashing, the grating sound drowning all else out. />
  “Time to go to work!” Captain Walden shouted.

  “Yeah, you two can finish your lovers’ spat later,” Ripley joked. I got out of my bunk and ripped my book out of Barnaby’s hands and dropped it on my rumpled blanket.

  Barnaby’s eyes glittered with tears he was laughing so hard. I struggled not to pop him in the mouth. Arrogant prick.

  We slid down the pole and suited up, half of us dragging our gear to finish suiting up in the truck on the way.

  “What have we got?” Brody asked over the headset.

  “Structure fire, no occupants that we know of. Looks like abandoned building.” Captain Walden briefed us.

  “Squatters?” I asked.

  “Could be, so look alive.”

  When we reached the structure fire we realized it was at the old Indigo Moon Brewhouse which was derelict and given up for dead despite being on a prime chunk of real estate at the edge of the city. The old industrial area had been undergoing a gentrification and revival. Artists had pretty much taken over the neighborhood and it was full of the granola set. Galleries, artist’s lofts, vegan eateries, and coffee shops had taken over a lot of the smaller brick buildings and they were in a fight to the death with a historical society over what to do with the old brewery, which had a beautiful, original-brick façade.

  The main consensus was to turn it into lofts and apartments, but the historical society wanted to preserve the building as much as possible to its original state. Negotiations took place, diplomacy was deployed, but eventually, the talks broke down and a volley of lawsuits were launched. The whole thing had been tied up for the better part of a year and in that time, a decent sized chunk of the city’s homeless had peeled back the construction fence and moved right on in.

  Like most of the homeless population across the country, it was rife with people who had lost their way, homeless as a direct result of the opioid epidemic. I couldn’t tell you how many burned-up junkies we’d had to deal with as a result of them cooking up their poison and passing out in their drugged-out fugue with candles lit, touching off a blaze. It was especially difficult when they burned out several neighbors in the process, leaving hardworking but poor families with no place else to go but the streets, themselves.