The woman took a cab back to her apartment building, ascended, showered, pulled on pajamas and sat on the sofa. There, she let the air out of the coddle bag and withdrew the mandolin. The melody that she had heard four hundred and ninety-four times that day was the only one that she could hear, and so she played it.
A shadow fell across her bare feet.
Lisanne looked up. Standing before her was Osa, dressed in a violescent sari and raised clogs. The tall beauty held a bottle of champagne in her right hand, and a shopping bag that was laden with odiferous curries in her left.
“You don’t look real happy to see me,” said Osa.
“I was not expecting you.”
“That’s how surprises work.” The tall beauty glanced at the mandolin and asked, “Are you working? Should I go?”
Lisanne pondered the question for a moment.
“Fine.”
Osa put the food upon the coffee table and, without another word, stormed out of the room and through the door.
Alone in her apartment, Lisanne fingered a melody on her mandolin, contemplating the meaningful moments of silence in both “The Dotted Line” and her brief conversation with her mate.
Chapter XIV
Blood Pudding
Pudding Rodensby sat down, put his varicose right hand upon the controls of his buoyed chair, glided past his collection of antique firearms and floated toward the lacquered front door, where his surgically dwarfed white-haired English mastiff currently stood growling. The old man had acquired the dog when it was a similar-sized (but brown) puppy thirty-one years ago, and he knew that the little beast only made noise when it had a reason for so doing.
Ascot yowled. Pudding wondered at the cause of the hound’s midnight perturbation, and hypothesized that the noisy couple who had moved in up the hall were having another row.
The dog woofed thrice, and a chill climbed the flaccid skin that covered its master’s back: The old Englishman fully comprehended the gravity of a triple bark.
Wary, Pudding stood from his chair, adjusted his woolen pajamas and strode toward the automated hinge door. The tiny sentinel interposed its body between the oldster and the portal, barking thrice as a reminder.
Pudding smelled smoke. Suddenly, a fire alarm bleated in the hallway outside.
“Jasmine,” Pudding called to his wife.
“Occupied,” his spouse replied from the study. (Pudding received this response from Jasmine whenever he contacted her and she was on the telephone with a friend or reading a mystery novel with a conclusion that she could not foresee, which was a rare occurrence.)
Ascot woofed thrice.
“Was that a triple bark?” his wife inquired from the other room.
“It was. It seems that there is some sort of fire.”
“Really?”
Pudding looked through the eyehole, and the white fire outside made him squint. “Flames are apparent.”
Jasmine walked from the study, clothed in a green summer dress and padded socks, her upright posture resistant to the curvilinear solicitations of time. Clutched in the retired English professor’s right hand was a book entitled The Weird Demise of the Man Who Scratched His Back with His Toes. “I hear alarms,” said the woman.
“Yes. They started up just a little while back.”
“Is it outside our door? This conflagration?”
Pudding motioned for his wife to look for herself.
Jasmine walked to the door and peered through the eyehole. “That is bothersome.” Shaking her head, the woman stepped away from the portal.
“I suppose it would be a poor idea to open up the door and look for an avenue of escape?”
“Our apartment is hyper-oxygenated and contains a rather impressive amount of wood,” responded Jasmine.
The dog barked thrice.
“Ascot is taking this seriously,” said Pudding.
“I suggest we—”
A loud crack precluded the woman’s statement. The front door bulged, and the little mastiff voiced two foreboding triple barks.
“To the balcony!”
The ninety-one-year-old man flung a varicose arm around the back of his eighty-three-year-old wife and walked her across an Oriental rug, through the sitting room, down to the sunken den, up to the hallway of familial crests, past antique weapons and toward French doors that led out onto the balcony. Ascot trailed behind the aged couple, interposing itself between its masters and danger.
Through the exterior windows, Pudding saw a red fire wagon fly past, its lights glaring. “This all seems rather significant.”
“It does.”
Pudding heard the front door groan and crack.
“My goodness,” said Jasmine.
A cloth bookmark fell from the woman’s novel as the couple neared the French doors. Alarms rang, and Ascot scolded its charges in order to hasten their departure.
Suddenly, the lights went out. The fire alarm stopped, and unseen flames crackled.
“My goodness,” said Jasmine.
Pudding fingered the release placard, but the French doors did not open.
“The power is down,” said the woman.
“I am well aware of that,” responded the Englishman, gesturing at the darkness. “And this is no time for redundancies.” He fingered the placard once again, but the doors did not respond. “Damn.”
“The placard is electric,” Jasmine said, “and so the doors must be opened manually.”
“I see your point.” Pudding had no idea how to accomplish this task and thus began ruminations.
Ascot unleashed three triple barks.
“I’ve never heard that amount before,” remarked the Englishman.
“Nor I.”
“I’ll get a firearm—for the purpose of blasting open the door!”
Jasmine was irked. “You told me that none of your guns were functional.”
“Without bullets, that is indeed the case!”
Pudding hastened back toward the heart of the apartment, and Ascot barked at its master, making a very small obstacle of itself. The Englishman stepped over the dog, entered the armory (Jasmine’s name for the firearm showroom) and was struck by the light and heat of the fire that consumed the reception area, which was only twenty meters off.
Suddenly sweating, the old man strode toward the World War II display case, swung its door wide, snatched a Luger semi-automatic pistol, opened a hidden drawer and withdrew a fully loaded ammunition clip that he then slid into the weapon’s stock. Emboldened by the hyper-oxygenated air, fire consumed the lacquered wainscoting and floorboards on the far side of the room. The dog chastised its master.
Man and hound soon sped away from the conflagration.
“I found the manual release lever,” Jasmine said when her husband returned.
“Swift work,” remarked Pudding, pleased that there was a point of egress, but also disappointed that he no longer had a reason to fire the gun.
The woman opened the French doors.
“Ladies first,” said the Englishman, gesturing outside.
Jasmine exited the hot hall, followed by Pudding and Ascot.
“Oh, dear,” said the woman.
Smoke and flames filled the night. The burning skyscraper in which the Englishman and his wife lived was reflected in the dark windows of the surrounding buildings.
“This is exactly why I didn’t want an apartment on the forty-first floor,” remarked Jasmine.
Pudding did not respond to her statement.
An explosion shook the building. Frightened, Ascot retreated into the apartment.
“Come back here!” Pudding yelled at his hound. “Ascot! Come hither! Come!” Tears
welled in the oldster’s eyes, and in that moment, he could no longer deny the perils that he and his wife currently faced.
Jasmine embraced her husband like an animate skeleton, patting his back with long phalanges. “He has fetched my placeholder,” said the woman.
Pudding pulled away from his wife, wiped tears from his eyes, looked at the ground and saw Ascot, who was seated by his right foot. Dangling from the little hound’s mouth was the recovered bookmark.
Filled with pride, the Englishman said, “This is why—for over two hundred and fifty years—the Rodensbys have accepted no other dog.”
Pudding patted Ascot upon the head, and during this reunion, Jasmine shut the French doors. All around, hot winds aggravated smoke and sparks.
“It’s like an oven out here.” The Englishman wiped sweat from his forehead, walked to the balcony edge, gripped the warm rail, looked toward the ground and coughed. “I can’t see past floor twenty-five.”
“I presume the fire started in that restaurant.” (Pudding knew what her next remark was going to be.) “This is precisely why I argued against commercial enterprises in our building.” (The Englishman’s assumption had been correct.)
Pudding saw a fire wagon emerge from the opaque strata of smoke. The craft ascended, blasted reverse thrusters and halted outside a balcony that was one flight below and eleven apartments north of the Rodensbys.
Scheming, the Englishman walked to his telescope (purchased at a discount through his astronomy club), swiveled it with his free hand and observed the fire wagon. The fleximetal door in the side of the suspended craft slid down, and a fireman who clutched a forge-ax and wore a neon-green watersuit leapt onto the balcony. There, he activated his reflector-spotlights, and looked like a bright alien.
Pudding wiped soot from the telescope lens and gazed again.
The fireman lit his forge-ax, swung the glowing steel into French doors and plunged into the apartment. Flames like windblown curtains reached out at the night. Nozzles upon the side of the fire wagon spat foam into the bright fury.
“One fellow has entered,” Pudding informed Jasmine. Standing upright, he gathered hot air into his lungs and yelled out, “Help us! Over here!”
The Englishman leaned down and peered through the telescope. Five more firemen in neon-green watersuits leaped from the open craft onto the nether balcony and raced toward the opening. Flames lashed the foremost man’s water-filled armor, and steam hissed from his shoulder pipes. The quintet adjusted their temperature settings and—surrounded by frigid waters and ice chips—raced into the flames.
A window shattered behind the Englishman, and he turned around. A cocker spaniel, dripping fire, ran in circles on the adjacent balcony. Saddened by the sight, the oldster looked away.
Somewhere in the smoke below, two people shrieked the word “Help!” over and over, until they were abruptly silenced.
A person wrapped in burning blankets fell from an upper story into the strata of black smoke below.
“Over here!” Pudding yelled to the fire wagon that floated eleven apartments north of his own and one flight down. “We’re definitely ready for a rescue!”
“They’re retrieving the Walters,” said Jasmine. “They’re a priority,”
Confused, the Englishman looked at his well-informed wife. “A priority? Why? Because they’re younger?”
“Yes. And because there are five of them.”
Pudding snorted, “That’s not fair.”
“But it’s not unfair,” replied Jasmine. (The sterling woman had an unflagging sense of propriety.)
Nettled by jealousy, the Englishman leaned to the telescope and looked at the fire wagon’s windshield. A person with weird eyes emerged from the rear compartment of the craft, sat in the driver’s seat and manipulated the dashboard. Three mesh spheres sprouted from the top of the vehicle and began to whirr, sucking black smoke from the air.
“He should rescue us while his men are locating the Walters,” said Pudding. “We are quite ready to go.”
“We’re not a priority.”
The Englishman put his right hand to the side of his mouth and shouted, “Hello! Please retrieve us! These flames are hasty!” He looked through his telescope to gauge the efficacy of his solicitations and was unimpressed. “That yob is not responding.”
“We’re not a priority,” repeated Jasmine. “He can’t abandon the firemen who’re—what’re you doing!?!”
Pudding pulled upon the Luger’s toggle joint. Metal dug into his thumb and index finger, but eventually, he mastered the Axis device. At the exact moment that his wife yelled “Don’t!” he fired a bullet directly over the fire wagon. The booming report echoed in all directions.
Lowering the gun, the Englishman peered through his telescope. The fellow with the weird eyes stared at him from behind the craft’s windshield.
“That roused his interest.”
Resolved, Pudding stood upright and pointed the barrel of the gun directly at the man with the weird eyes.
“No!” yelled Jasmine.
The fire wagon’s exterior speakers crackled, and a voice said, “Don’t go hysterical. I’m not a driver, but I’ll try and get you.”
The craft tilted toward the Rodensbys, and its rear thrusters flashed.
Stunned by the turn of events, Jasmine said to her husband, “You saved us.”
Pride expanded within Pudding like an atomic explosion, and as he put his right arm around Jasmine, he said, “I did.”
The woman scooped Ascot from the ground and kissed Pudding’s left cheek. “Thank you.”
“It was for love and honor.”
The fire wagon sped toward the English couple.
Ascot unleashed three triple barks, and a chill ran down Pudding’s spine.
“He is approaching rather rapidly,” remarked Jasmine.
“Run!’ yelled the amplified voice. “I’ve lost control!”
Pudding cried out, “Oh my—”
The fire wagon slammed into the balcony. Stone, a potted plant, the railing, the telescope, the miniature mastiff, the Englishman’s left side and most of his wife were crushed between the front of the craft and the building. Cracked ribs stabbed Pudding’s pounding ninety-one-year-old heart.
Chapter XV
Rotten Mangoes and Excreta Deleted
Champ returned the dissolvent nozzle to its holster on the garbage truck. “I feel a little weird about it,” he said to the sexy pink-haired Texan who had unexpectedly called him during his night shift.
“Why?”
“You bought me a shuttle ticket to Houston so that I could visit you. And I’m using the word ‘visit’ as a euphemism.”
“I have more money than you do, and I want to have fun on my birthday.” In a sultry voice, Doreen added, “You’ll get to pay me back for the ticket. Repeatedly.”
Prompted by the breathy utterance of the lascivious adverb, Champ’s phallus swelled inside his orange suit. “The terms of your deal are understood.”
“Champ!” Mikek shouted from the driver’s seat.
“I’ll get you a gift, though,” the garbage man said into his lily. “If I’m coming out on your birthday, I need to do that. I have some ideas.”
A husky laugh reverberated in his ear, followed by a request for the kind of birthday gift that Doreen wanted forcefully given to her.
“I’ve gotta go,” said Champ, adjusting his uniform’s crotch netting. “See you next month.”
“Looking forward to it.” Doreen audibly wet her lips.
The garbage man double-tapped his lily, walked toward the backseat door and twisted the handle.
Mikek said, “Champ…look,” and pointed to the sky.
Champ glanced north and
saw a thick pillar of firelit smoke. Horripilations beaded his skin. “What’s burning?” he asked.
“A high-rise on the Upper East Side.”
“Excuse me.” Champ walked away from the vehicle and double-tapped his lily. “Connect to Eagle.”
Heavy metal music wailed in the garbage man’s right ear. At the end of a tortured guitar solo, Eagle’s prerecorded voice said, “I’m busy right now. Leave your info. Stats if female.” Two beeps followed the outgoing message.
“Dad, this is Champ. Just heard about the fire and I want to make sure that you’re okay. Give me a call whenever you get this.”
The garbage man double-tapped his lily and entered the back of the vehicle.
“Nothing?” asked Mikek.
“Nothing.”
Champ slammed his door, withdrew a postcard-sized picscreen from his pocket, smoothed out its wrinkles and clicked its input bead. “Search: News; Nexus Y; fire on the Upper East Side.”
He waited for two seconds.
Upon the wrinkled picscreen shone a scintillating tower of flame, around which fire wagons swooped like lightning bugs. Little dark bits that were furniture, trees and people fell from the crumbling balconies and slammed upon the growing heap of unidentifiable detritus at ground level.
The lily in Champ’s ear linked to the audio, and a reporter’s voice commented, “—that the fire seems to have originated in the restaurant on the twenty-fifth floor when an—”
Champ double-tapped and said, “Search: Nexus Y; fire on the Upper East Side; fireman; casualties.” Holding his breath, he stared at the wrinkled picscreen, which showed men combating the malefic element.
Corpus Chrome, Inc. Page 26
