by A. R. Shaw
It always happened that way, he thought, after the shock wore off. The scratchless were the ones to blame. Not a mark on either of them but they both set Death into motion that day. He’d blame himself entirely but then again, he wasn’t driving the damn car. So in his mind, he made Carmen the accomplice to the crime of Samantha’s ruin.
He did become a smokejumper a year later, though not in the way he’d imagined. Man’s war caused more mayhem and destruction than anyone thought possible in the time between. That summer, death and fighting over something or nothing took new meaning in the country’s hot city streets and even America’s small towns. It was everywhere. No one could escape. Fires set on purpose. Hate and viruses unleashed. Some called it a justified war of civil disobedience or a civilization reset. That was the new term. To him, it only meant every man, woman and child had a valid excuse to lose their shit.
Matthew just thought everyone had collectively lost their minds. But Mother Nature matched and surpassed the might of man’s best efforts to tear itself apart and Matthew put down the guilt and grieving and took up his quest once again.
40
Kim
“Me and you…we had this conversation before, baby. Don’t you remember?”
“Get…out of my office.” He busied himself gathering papers and then pulled the little knobby chain on his desk lamp, since not even the menacing light of fires crept through the windows to spread light in the darkness.
She didn’t say anything for a time. Just watched him shovel papers into a computer case.
“Still printing them, I see. Killing the planet with invoices. You think keeping your business offline will save your ass when the cops show up, don’t you?” She clicked her tongue and shook her head and couldn’t help laughing a little. “Won’t save you from me, though.”
He stopped and looked up at her through those thin silver-framed glasses reflecting the lamplight.
“Nothing will save you from me, Paul.”
“Get…out! Or I swear they won’t ever find your body. Your kids are better off without you anyway. You convinced me of that years ago.”
She had his attention now. She knew by the throbbing vein in his neck and the rising tone of his voice. Even his face changed instantly to a bright cherry red.
“You’ll never hurt me, sweetheart. I only want what’s mine,” she said and took two steps forward. “You promised the cash to me when the job was done, and the job’s been done for a long, long time now.”
“You…will never get a goddamn cent from me, and what makes you think I won’t take you out?”
“Because I know something you don’t, baby.”
“What?”
Kim folded her arms in front of her and whispered sweetly, “I know where she is.”
Had she not known him since childhood, she never would have caught the tell. Just a flicker in the temple on the right side of his eye.
He held her gaze a moment and then reached for the chain…clicking them to darkness.
41
Dane
“Promise me you won’t behead the guy at the front desk.”
“Are you kidding me?” she shook her head. “I can’t believe the frickin’ water turned cold so fast. Damn water heater’s the size of a coffee cup.” She’d resorted to mumbling lately and wondered why she couldn’t speak in full sentences or make eye contact with Matthew since they did the thing. He was infuriating.
“Frickin’? Censoring cuss words for me now. Soon you’ll be making me sandwiches. Don’t…don’t look at me like that. I’m just teasing you. Jeez, Dane.”
“Seriously, stop Matthew. This damn elevator is taking forever.”
“Pounding…on the buttons won’t help. Stop that! Just…adds to the bill. And look…the doors have magically opened on their own. Again…don’t kill the front desk person. They probably have a family to feed.”
He kept talking even as they walked through the dark lobby of the hotel, though she was in no mood to listen. “I know you’re trying to be funny, but seriously Matt, stop.” Those were the words she said as they approached the front desk. She was embarrassed for blaming him at first. After jumping out of the shower, she thought that he surely had unlocked the door and somehow changed the water setting without her knowing, but the door was still locked from the inside. She hated to admit it was her time lapse in the shower. She wore the relentless memories right under the surface, like a second skin. It also frustrated her that Matthew didn’t mind taking a cold shower one bit. He didn’t even complain. How can a person not complain about having to take a cold shower?
It wasn’t a guy at the front desk but a young lady wearing a burgundy blazer. With her dark almond skin, her hair a corkscrew curly mop, Dane thought she certainly skipped her early morning grooming routine. Maybe she had to take a cold shower too. She guessed her age at about twenty, if that. It was hard to tell anymore. Everyone looked as if they’d just rolled out of bed. The young and the old wore the same worn expressions, like…do you believe this crap we’re living in now? It was a constant unspoken question. And the query ranged from all the strife in the streets to politics to the grandmother of them all, fires destroying everything and everyone in their wake. Didn’t society realize there was more at stake than their own manmade crisis? It was unfathomable to her but then again…she quit trying to figure them out long ago. Since the nightmare began…she just survived and chose her enemy as her vocation to live into the next day. Without fire, she knew she’d likely succumb to death’s grip. There was no other way…until Cal gave her an idea that a grand distraction was useful, and she had the best of them at her disposal.
“We’re checking out,” Matthew said before she could form a sentence in her less than caffeinated state.
Dane leaned her elbow on the counter. “You know…we don’t have to actually ‘check out’ anymore…they have this handled.”
The lady looked them over briefly without saying a word and then flashed her attention to the computer screen in front of her and started tapping on the keys. After a moment, she said with a rehearsed smile, “Did you have a nice stay?”
Dane walked away while refraining from rolling her eyes. She was fine with him handling the business and while they chatted, Dane turned her attention to the hotel lobby’s television mounted in the corner of the attached dining room. The volume was set to a low hum that she found comforting, but her stomach clenched at the image of Chicago engulfed in fire on the screen. Then, the news flashed again on the next news banner inciting past outrage over the DNA Release Bill. Apparently, privacy was no longer a right if you were a good citizen with nothing to hide. The problem was, even good citizens had things to protect, but that no longer mattered.
42
Paul
Her father said the lab had never looked cleaner when he walked in the next day. It was true he’d spent nearly all night scrubbing the damn place. There was this funky yeasty smell when he’d started and by the time he finished, the place smelled more like the dentist’s office.
Paul wanted the job. He needed the money but most of all, he’d do anything for her. And when she came to school that day, too many years ago now to count, they’d sat outside on a sunny day eating their homemade sandwiches and bypassing the endless school lunch line, and she said her dad needed an assistant since she’d started soccer. He didn’t waste time telling her…he was available. He’d been to her house and met her father as a tag-along kid. The boy no father worried about. Just a friend since the second grade.
“Oh, I didn’t mean you,” she’d said with a lisp, still getting used to her new braces, and it jabbed his heart. “I just meant, he wanted someone to help him in the evenings and keep the place clean. His new experiments are going well, I guess. He’s figured something out reconstituting vodka that actually works this time. He seems really excited about it. I’ll let him know if you’re serious about working for him. Are you sure? It’s pretty boring work.”
“I love hangi
ng out with your dad. Yes, I’m totally sure.”
He could still see the innocent expression on her face. Her chocolate brown eyes wide. Her red lips rounded in the question. She was his greatest pastime when he should have been studying, but he knew every expression she made by heart, every mood she was in, every tiny detail about her. How she used her hands to explain something she had no words for. He’d say, “How’d that go, again?” with a little smile on his face just to make her repeat the motion. She fascinated him. But that was a long time ago and so much had happened in the expanse since.
Paul leaned back in his chair, sitting in the dark living room of his powerless apartment not far enough away from his office downtown as he remembered that fateful day more than a decade ago. They were just kids then, barely teenagers.
He’d appeased Kim earlier by saying they’d meet tomorrow and discuss things and then left her standing in the hot, dark office alone, like he was in his apartment now. Kim had him, and she knew it. She was like that. Dammit. There was only one thing that would get him to listen to what she had to say and Dane’s location was it.
“It’s probably a lie.” He raised his whisky glass to whomever cared. “That bitch. I’ll never be rid of her.” He took another sip of the whisky he’d poured over a handful of ice that was left in his freezer and let the cool liquid slide down his throat. Still…if he knew where Dane was, he could end one nightmare, but he’d always have to contend with the other.
43
Kim
She’d left a while after he’d abandoned her to the darkness of his office. The boy never had decent manners. She’d thought about spending the night right there on the office floor, but then again…the fires were too close for comfort and she didn’t have much faith in firemen, not since that last time when she watched the whole damn house burn down before they even arrived. She’d seen them in action more than she cared to and they weren’t that good at their jobs, either. Houses still burned down. People still died. Whole forests burnt to the damn ground. What the hell good were they? Wouldn’t it be better to just let it all go up in flames? Besides…it was too loud downtown with all the alarms going off and sirens blaring as they made their way to the inferno that was once only for the rich man. Let it burn.
“Nah…I’ll go to Mama’s. She owes me, anyway. Let them have this mess.”
On her way out, Felicia still stood in the open doorway.
“What you still doin’ here, girl? Get yourself home. Didn’t you come in with Paul?”
Felicia wavered against the back of her hands leaning against the hard surface, teetering from side to side. “He said I had to wait to lock up until you were gone. Paul said not to let you in again.”
Staring without a flinch, Kim let Felicia’s words suspend in the air like sluggish missiles until Felicia dropped her gaze hard to the ground. “You gonna let him treat you that way? Don’t you have a goddamn backbone? Why you standing here…out in this smoke? You’re a waste of flesh, girl. Only walnuts in there. I thought we were friends, you and me.” Kim clicked her tongue and shook her head as she turned down the sidewalk back the way she came. “You’ll be seeing me, Felicia. You can bet on that one, chicka.”
“Be seein’ me, bit…ch. Be seein’ me. Biiitch.” Kim kept repeating the words over and over, enunciating first the ‘t’ part and then the ‘ch’ part a bit louder as she made her way several blocks east. She kept her eyes on the same distant gas station where she’d seen Sammy earlier. That’s when the air cleared of the insistent smoke a little more with each step. There was an old bag getting into her Cadillac. Her blunt-cut gray hair was the same shade as the ash collecting on the ground. She wore one of those floral button-up blouses that she must have still taken the time to iron because of the tight creases showing on the edge of the sleeves, and the rosy pleated skirt she had on nearly met her ankles. She was an old fashioned one, but what really got Kim’s attention was how the old lady struggled to lift her right foot, affixed with a clunky beige orthopedic shoe, into the driver’s side as she leaned hard on her cane. Kim stopped her stride. Looked around. As far as she could tell, the old lady was on her own. “Hey, Mama. Hey! Let me help you in there.”
The old lady’s eyes darted to Kim and narrowed. “I’m fine. You stay back from me.”
“No, no,” Kim said, her hands outstretched. “I’m just trying to help you. Don’t mean you any harm. This fire’s bad. We need to help one another, don’t you think so?”
The lady let out a quick, relieved breath with a little smile. “Why, yes. Yes, of course. I’m just…not used to being out at night but they said I have to leave.”
Kim took a couple of steps closer. “Where you going to? You have family nearby?”
“Well, my sister’s. She lives in Naperville.”
“That’s an hour’s drive from here on a good day. With the evacuations…you’ll be in your car for hours with all that traffic. You ought not to go that far by yourself, ma’am. Is there anyone who can help you?”
“Nah,” she smiled and waved off Kim’s concern. “I’ll make it just fine.”
“Hmm…well, I just hate to think of you falling asleep out there in traffic or causing an accident when everyone’s pulling together here. I tell you what, I live just over there with my momma. What if I…drove you and then caught an Uber back home? I just hate to think of you out there by yourself on that highway. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to cause an accident…harm someone. This isn’t safe,” Kim said as she took another step toward the old woman.
The cane the old lady held shot out and shoved against Kim’s shoulder. “I know what you’re trying to do. You stay away from me. You keep back!” Her sudden shrill voice yelled loud enough to warrant the attendant’s glance.
He stood from the overturned bucket he sat on earlier. Looking at them. Trying to figure out who was yelling at whom.
Kim shoved the cane to the thin air beside her with the back of her hand. “You’re a crazy bi-tch. You’re gonna hurt someone with that thing. Go ahead. Get yourself killed. Kill someone else while you’re at it.”
By the time the old lady roared past her down the road moments later, Kim’s cheeks burned red. Somehow the old woman saw right through her. “Bi-tch!”
44
Dane
For a few weeks, Dane knew what she must do, though she hadn’t made up her mind yet until she saw the broadcast that morning.
“Here’s your water.” He held it out and she didn’t even look at him as she put her hand around the bottle. “What…are you…not talking now?” Matthew said as he closed the truck door. “Look…nothing’s changed. I mean…God, you’re hot and last night was…amazing. And...”
“Stop!” Her hand shot up. “Look…I’m just not ready for…this.” There was no way she could keep this up, but she also couldn’t tell him what she planned to do next. He couldn’t take it. She had to get this over with. He was becoming too much like…family. She was too comfortable in his presence, and she wanted to be in his presence, and she’d never achieve what she needed to do with him around.
Shaking her head, she tried not to glare at him too much. It was hard. “What’s next? Where are we going?”
“Back to the hospital,” Matthew said, staring straight ahead. “Owen’s been released. We can pick him up now. He’s cleared for duty. At least he got to sleep in a comfy bed last night.”
A moment passed, and Dane said, “The nurses probably kept him up all night. I bet he didn’t sleep a wink.”
Matthew took in a longer breath than usual. She had to make things seem okay. Keep the attention off herself.
“Yeah,” Matthew said, his lips a straight line as he pulled out of the gas station parking lot. “We’ll pick him up and then head to the air field. We’re going home, finally, and not a moment too soon. This place is a loss.”
She stared out the passenger side. The smoke had compacted in some streets, leaving eerie shadows where they should not be. Too easy to get lost
in. As they drove, they passed a woman wearing her hair bundled up inside a baseball cap walking the street in the wrong direction.
Matthew saw her, too. “Where the hell is she going?”
“No one knows. And no one really cares.”
After Matthew fiddled with the truck’s radio, enough to find a station with actual news, they listened in silence. After a few minutes Dane said, “Can you just turn that off? I can’t take it anymore.”
“I can’t believe that group is still torching pipelines.”
“That, and the guy that’s taken it upon himself to sniper any and all Catholic priests, school protests, police protests, military protests—we’re lucky the hospitals are still running.”
“Firefighters and medical staff…we’re the suckers in life. We show up even when no one else wants to do their job.”
45
Paul
The sound of sirens woke him. He’d fallen asleep again against the side of the wingback chair. His neck—the ache he knew too well from leaning over either a desk or the lab equipment— would betray him all day, as it had many times before. That’s all he needed…more enemies. Everyone was out to get him. No one said a successful life was an easy life. The opposite, in fact, was true. It was a lesson he’d learned too late. Way too late.
On the side table, the screen flashed with another text message. From Felicia, he imagined. She was always blowing up his phone, but she was harmless and loyal at least. She took care of his needs…all of his needs…and she didn’t complain from the lack of reciprocated attention. He’d been forthright with her from the start. He’d never marry her. It was only about the sex. She could keep those fantasies to herself and work for him as long as she wanted to but never get clingy. That was his only rule. Every now and then he had to remind her of that rule, but she was getting the idea more and more as time went on.
