by Cynthia Dane
***
“Look at this!” Candice cried, shoving a piece of thick paper beneath Alice’s nose. She had been reading a book when her roommate so rudely interrupted. “I won a trip to Las Vegas!”
“Huh?” Alice put her book down. “From whom?”
Candice squinted at the fine print. “The radio station. Yeah, I remember now. I think I entered when they asked someone to name George Michael’s five biggest hit songs.”
“You knew the answer to that?”
Candice shrugged. “Apparently. Does it matter? I won!”
“Nice.”
“Yup! I’ve gotta leave tonight, though! This must’ve gotten lost in the mail or something.”
“That’s… concerning.”
“What’s even more concerning is that I only get to take one person with me.” Candice’s face lit up again. “I know! I’ll take my sister! She broke up with that douche and has been moping about for weeks. Need to take her to someplace like Vegas for the weekend.”
“Aw, not me?” Alice was only half-serious.
Candice scoffed. “No offense, but you’ve got an on-call jet now. You don’t need my middle-class perceptions of Las Vegas to bore you. Besides,” she turned a chilling look toward Alice, “you’d probably try to get Elvis to marry you and your boyfriend. Classy folks.”
“Don’t even bring that up.” Unlike Monroe, who slipped their possibly impending wedding into every conversation they had. “I recently purchased a condo in Bavaria. I hear it’s the top honeymoon spot in Europe this year.” Suave. Alice, meanwhile, was content to slow things down. They were in love. They wanted each other. It was enough.
“Anyway, I’ve gotta go call my sister and tell her to pack her suitcase. I’m leaving in five hours! Take care of Pete for me, okay?”
The bird in question was asleep in his cage. Alice had no idea that birds snored until living with Pete. “No problem.”
Alice texted Monroe while Candice ran about the apartment throwing things into her own bag. “My roommate’s going out of town for the weekend. You should come over and bang me on her bed.”
She didn’t expect to get a response so quickly. “Love to, but I told you I’m in Manhattan this weekend.” Not “New York City” or even “NYC,” but he had to specify Manhattan. “Touch yourself while thinking of me instead.”
Alice could do that. She did that anyway.
Her phone vibrated again. “Will you be alone?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Stay safe. I love you.”
Did he have to sound so ominous about it? Alice picked up her book and resumed her reading, the phrase stay safe replacing every other sentence in her story.
***
That night, Alice dreamed of the only thing that mattered to her anymore. Monroe, holding her in his arms and whispering in her ear. Even in her dreams she could smell his flowery cologne. It was as much a part of him as she was now.
“Will you marry me, Alice?” he asked, his voice so soft that it felt like a breeze pressing upon her eyes and lips. “There is no other woman. Only you. Tell me no and I will die.”
In her dreams, this was a perfectly valid thing to say. In turn, there was only one thing to say to this man. “Of course, Damon.” Alice looked down at her hand and saw more than the emerald ring he had given to her. She saw a wedding ring, as pure and clear as her love for him. “Why wouldn’t I marry you?”
Things change quickly in dreams, especially ones that are built on the heart’s innermost desires and the soul’s abundant fantasies. Alice went from wearing a simple white wedding gown to the sort of luxurious cocktail dress she was getting used to wearing. She sat at a dining table, ornate with golden candlesticks and silver platters full of scrumptious food prepared by the live-in French chef. Sitting across from her was a young woman. No, a girl. A teenage girl with such perfect posture and the heavy look of her father and all the successful men who came before.
“You can stop studying for ten minutes to eat dinner with us,” Alice said. Her heart was divided between concern and undying love for this girl. My daughter! So studious. So hardworking. So like her father.
“I cannot,” the girl said, her hatred for contractions hopefully nothing more than a silly phase. “The Warren girl is five points ahead of me in mathematics. If I’m going to acquire the summer internship before her, I must beat her at her own logistical games.”
Alice sighed, in frustration, and in pride. “Don’t beat her too badly. Your father has been spending the past two months trying to arrange a marriage between her and your brother. We need her to be hale in spirits and healthy in body.”
“Which brother?”
“Does it matter?” The boys were so close in age that either one was a candidate for the heiress of the only other family that truly rivaled the Monroes in wealth and social prosperity.
Soon the table was full of both familiar and unknown faces. The Culvers arrived, Alice’s parents trying to rattle their grandchildren with good humor, never able to truly go head-to-head with someone of a Monroe’s aloof genetics. Terrence, battered by his conditions but still chipper enough to come to these dinners, played video games with the two boys at the far end of the table.
The oldest daughter continued to study as if no one else was there. The youngest? She clung to her mother’s legs, the poor thing still so shy even though she was in kindergarten.
“My love.” Monroe sat at the head of the table, flanked by two golden candlesticks. “I love you.”
They held hands on the table, Alice so content that she didn’t flinch when Mr. Culver lit one of the candles and promptly set the tablecloth on fire.
The children screamed, but did not run. The oldest girl subjected herself to fate with a resigned look that was classically Monroe. The boys retreated into their video games while Terrence shielded them from the first burst of flames. Linda Culver grabbed the baby and shrieked in terror when her husband lit up like one of the candles.
“What have you done?” Alice asked her husband. They were the only ones untouched by the flames that ravaged their family.
It was not her husband looking back at her.
It was the man not invited to the family dinner.
“Goodbye, Ms. Culver.”
Alice looked across the table. Julia Monroe sat in the chair the oldest girl once occupied. “I told you,” she said, shaking her head. “You didn’t listen to me. You didn’t run when I told you to.”
A coughing fit snapped Alice out of her dream. She kept coughing.
And coughing.
She couldn’t breathe.
Nor could she see. Her room was so full of smoke that it was a miracle she wasn’t already dead.
Chapter 15
Air had never been such a precious commodity. Alice rolled out of bed and dropped to her floor, gasping for any tincture of breath she could find. Not much, unfortunately. Smoke poured in beneath her door. She crawled toward the window, choking, coughing, and struggling to remember whether or not a fire escape existed outside her window.
“Hey!” What was that in the background? Was that fire licking at the door? Alice couldn’t tell! “Hey, hey! What’s going on? Thanks, bitch!”
Alice thought of those safety videos shown at the beginning of airplane flights. Help yourself before anyone else. Pete would have to wait. Oh my God, I’m so sorry Pete.
The window didn’t budge. Alice’s attempts to pry it open were met with little groans – oh, that was her making those groans. Oh, well.
She fell onto the floor again. The room was so dark. Was it always this dark?
“Hey! Whatcha doin?”
“Get back from the door!” someone shouted. Before Alice could think too hard about what was going on, the bedroom door kicked open, the biggest body she had ever seen barreling in and swooping down to grab her.
Good thing Dee was so damn big. The window was nothing to her.
***
“Take deep breaths,” the
paramedic coached Alice. An oxygen mask was stuck to her face, pumping the elixir of life while crews of firefighters yelled at the flames overtaking the apartment building. Evacuated residents lined the closed off street, some of them tended to by other paramedics, but most of them sobbing in their bathrobes and pajamas. Alice didn’t feel much better. Even with a thick blanket on top of her, she still shivered in her T-shirt and pajama bottoms. So much for warm summer nights. “That’s it, honey. Keep breathing for me. You’re gonna be all right.”
Dee sat on the ambulance bumper, holding her own mask to her face. Sometimes she took it off to shout at someone – mostly the police that kept badgering her about who the hell she was and what fucking right she had to run into a burning apartment – but mostly she spoke to Alice. Five minutes later, she had a freaked out parrot on her shoulder, an animal control officer chasing poor Pete down.
“Thanks much, bitch!” He said it so cheerily that Alice could only infer the best intentions… even with the slurs that made Dee glare at him. “Thanks, thanks, thanks!” Pete attempted to dance but stopped when he realize he didn’t have enough breath to do so.
“Come here.” The animal control officer caught him as someone else arrived with an oxygen mask for the bird. “You may have a foul mouth, but we’ll make sure you breathe right again, buddy.”
Alice wanted to collapse from the confusion. So happened that’s what her personal paramedic wanted her to refrain from doing. “Alice, honey?” she kept saying, as if calling her honey would get her to cooperate. “Stay with me, baby.” Oh, it got better. “You’re gonna be okay!” Why the fuck was she yelling?
For a second, Alice panicked about Candice. Where was she? Was she okay? Did someone find her? Did she make it out in time? That’s right. She went to Las Vegas yesterday. Alice was ready to pass out on her stretcher when she heard some rough, male voices start talking to Dee.
“What’s your name again?”
“Deanne McCormick. How many times I gotta tell you?”
“Tell us what you saw again.”
“Look, I’m this lady’s bodyguard.” Dee took a moment to use the oxygen mask before continuing. “I’m paid to watch over her. So I watch over her. I was standing out in the hallway ‘cause she didn’t know I was here and I didn’t want to freak her out. So when I saw smoke, I did my fucking job. We did this training all the time when I was in the military. You know how many times I’ve run through burnin’ buildin’s grabbin’ unconscious people?”
“You didn’t see how the fire started?”
“Nope. Not my problem, either. Why don’t you go talk to the fire marshal?”
One police officer put his notepad down with a huff. The other took over the interview. “Who pays you to watch over this woman? Why?”
“This woman is Alice Culver, or do you not read the tabloids?” Dee scoffed – and coughed. “She’s Damon Monroe’s girlfriend. He’s the one paying me to guard her.”
“Damon…”
“Monroe…”
The policemen exchanged a look before taking off.
“Idiots,” Dee muttered. “You okay back there, ma’am?”
The paramedic looking over Alice nodded. A huge spray of water lifted into the air as another hose turned on against the fire licking the fifth floor of the apartment building.
“I’ll be fine,” Alice insisted. Shit, it wasn’t easy speaking.
She closed her eyes. What she would give to have Monroe with her now.
***
Alice didn’t fight the paramedics who took her to the hospital for further observation. She was too tired, too weary, and too full of paranoia to insist otherwise.
Fuck. The paranoia.
Something wasn’t right. She had no further information about the fire, but her gut told her that it started too close to home. I saw the fire. Alice lived on the fifth floor. Aside from what spread to other apartments, hers was the only one truly affected.
She supposed it could’ve been an accident. Wouldn’t be the first time the toaster sparked, after all. That was why they always unplugged it after use. Alice unplugged it after her morning bagel, right?
Nobody was forthcoming with more information. They were more concerned that she was comfortable in her cheery private room and that she was happy with the staff assigned to her, the most competent team of nurses with the kindest bedside manners. Monroe. Did he own this hospital? How about the wing she was in? It would probably be named after him soon.
Where is he? Alice’s phone was gone. Had someone texted him? If he had anything to do with Alice’s current accommodations, then he must have known. So where was he? Would he tear himself away from his precious meetings and corporate takeovers for a whole hour to come check in on his very public girlfriend?
Shit. That’s probably why everyone was so nice to her. They recognized her, and nothing more. “Don’t let Mr. Monroe find out that we were anything less than hospitable to his girlfriend,” Alice swore she heard one nurse say. “His father is a gracious donor.”
Aside from Dee, who had been released the same night she was admitted, Alice had no visitors the first full day she was in the hospital. Not until the early evening, when she argued with a nurse whether to leave the curtains open to watch the sunset or not. Couldn’t a girl get some form of entertainment? The TV was stuck on freakin’ baseball 24/7. Was it a ploy to make her sleep more?
“Baby!” Was that… well! “Alice, honey!” Linda Culver barreled over a nurse in pink scrubs the moment she saw her daughter lying in the hospital bed. “Are you okay?” Short, brown curly hair bounced through the air as the stout woman in cheap jeans and a thin T-shirt rushed to Alice’s bedside. “What happened?”
“I’m fine.” Alice fought back tears at the sight of her mother. While she had spent most of her adult life living fine without Linda hovering over her at all hours of the day, Alice had to admit that there was no better face to look at right now. Tell me it’s going to be all right, Mom. Alice hadn’t felt like this since she broke up with Matt an age ago. “I promise, Mom. I’m fine.”
Still, Linda wouldn’t listen to the nurses who begged her to not squeeze her daughter so tightly. Alice folded into the maternal embrace that smelled of Avon perfume and school nurse sterilization practices. It was a weekday. Had Linda taken time off to drive down from Long Island? Who had called her? The police? Were Dad and Terrence okay?
They were all fine, as Linda tearfully told her daughter when she finally sat down in a folding chair. Terrence hadn’t heard about the fire yet. He hadn’t been feeling well recently, so Linda didn’t want to throw him into a fit over his sister’s well-being. Alice’s father was being his usual stoic self. He went to work that day on both of their behalves. Students would’ve worried if both the nurse and her schoolteacher husband were gone without warning.
“I came as soon as I heard.”
“It’s such a long drive, Mom.”
“What happened? Is your roommate all right?”
“Candice is fine. She was in Las Vegas this weekend.” Alice motioned for a drink of water. “Pete is in protection until she can come claim him.”
“Pete?”
“The parrot.”
“Right, right.” Linda squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Thank God you got out of there.”
“I hear nobody was hurt too badly.” Mrs. Jenkins was in another room down the hall. Not one half as nice as Alice’s. The old woman wasn’t happy that her apartment was burned down too, but she and her cats were alive. “It was a freak accident.”
“You come home with me if you need a place to stay.”
For the millionth time that day, Alice thought of Monroe. Would he let me stay with… Russell Monroe appeared in her head, shaking his head. No. Alice didn’t want to stay in a place where the man who tried to have her killed lurked.
Alice was convinced. The longer she had to think about it, the more she realized that Russell’s threats had finally manifested into something beyond id
le. He had said it himself. “The third warning won’t be so cordial.” This was the man who paid someone to walk up to his ex-wife and light her on fire. What made Alice so special that she didn’t deserve the same treatment? She was beyond a nuisance now. She was a threat. A threat to the Monroe legacy. How many times had Russell told her to get the fuck out of Damon’s life?
Alice had always heard of the monster mother-in-law. No one warned her about a psychotic father-in-law.
“You okay?” Linda smoothed her daughter’s sweaty bangs. “Baby?”
“I’ll be fine, Mo…” Before Alice could finish addressing her mother, a voice roared down the hospital hallway.
“You will let me see her!” It was the kind of voice that struck fear in Alice’s heart. Not because she feared the man himself, but because it instantly reminded her of the other man who put her in this place to begin with. Why do they have to sound so alike? “I don’t care if she already has a visitor! Do you know who I fucking am?”
A nurse dropped something in front of Alice’s door. She didn’t bother to pick anything up. How could she when a haggard man in a three-piece suit mowed her over and launched himself into Alice’s room? Even Monroe’s bodyguard struggled to keep up with him!
“Alice!” Linda didn’t exist anymore. Her and her chair were thrown back, almost comically so, as Monroe barged between her and Alice’s bed. “What happened! Who did this to you!”
Damon Monroe did not ask questions. He barked. He shouted. He wormed his way into every conversation and didn’t care who got in his way. For as much as Alice missed her boyfriend ever since this bullshit started, she only wanted to cry now. There were too many emotions overcoming her.
“Who is this?” Linda mouthed from behind Monroe.
“Answer me, Alice!”
