Sundance

by David Fuller

  “I have this dream, every night the same,” said the flower man. “The firemen let me on the sidewalk and I hold out my arms to catch her. My Rosa is standing on the window ledge, and points to where I should be. I go there and she jumps the other way. I run to catch her, but too late. She sends me to the wrong place so she won’t crush me. I see her hit and burn on the sidewalk.”

  Longbaugh looked at the sidewalk.

  The flower man looked as well. “You would think the fire would go out as she fell.”

  “Some got out.” Longbaugh wanted to care about Rosa, but he only wondered if his wife had survived.

  “Yes, some. On the tiny elevator, until it stopped. On the fire escape, until it pulled off the building. And the owners got out. They were on the top floor and went across the roof to the building there.” The flower man pointed to the New York University building next to the Asch Building. “The tenth floor was above it and everyone up there lived. At least they should have the decency to die in their own goddamn fire.”

  “Easy, friend.”

  “I am easy.” Yesterday’s flowers were crushed under his arm. “This is me being easy.”

  “How did they identify the bodies?”

  “Took them to the wharf, lined them up, and people came from all over the city and walked past them. Many were too badly burned to recognize.”

  Longbaugh watched her run, hair on fire, flames browning her cheeks, bubbling and splitting her skin. He watched her pounding on the locked door until smoke and flames won and she fell on top of the others who were dying to get out. He heard her voice, shrieking his name. These images were irrational, he knew intellectually she had not died in there, but he was not thinking rationally, so he watched her perish over and over in his mind.

  Time passed and he eventually looked around, and the light was different. He didn’t remember the flower man leaving, but he was alone.

  He stayed until it was late. The city darkened with the setting sun, light rushing away above him, while the new incandescence slowly came up as if the city burned from within.

  • • •

  LONGBAUGH returned to the boardinghouse. He did not remember stopping, but as he approached the banister, he found one wrapped hard candy in his pocket. He didn’t remember eating the other one. On this night he did not leave it on the banister, perhaps because he resented the Chinese boy dragging him into the middle of Abigail and Levi’s marriage.

  He stopped in the doorway outside the downstairs sitting room where Abigail and Robert Levi sat on opposite ends of a sofa. He entered with Triangle questions burning in his mind. He was so preoccupied that he did not notice the livid raspberry on the side of Levi’s jaw. He did, however, notice that Abigail had changed out of the good dress she had worn while standing outside the restaurant. Only he knew about her earlier temptation. While Longbaugh had scared the vulture away, she did not know that the tall man had not been in there waiting for her, as it had been her decision not to go inside. He pulled the folded two-year-old New York Times out of the pocket of his suit coat and dropped it on the table in front of her.

  “How did she survive?”

  Levi glowered at his wife. “You saved this?”

  Abigail looked at Longbaugh. “She?”

  “You said Etta was there that day.”

  “I specifically said throw it away,” said Levi.

  “That day?” said Abigail, confused. “You mean—?”

  “Triangle, the fire, did she make it out?”

  “I know you lost a friend in there, but keeping this is morbid,” said Levi.

  “Yes, of course, Etta was fine,” said Abigail to Longbaugh, talking over her husband.

  “How did she get out?”

  Levi gave him a hard look and reached for the old newspaper, but Longbaugh brought his fist down on the headlines.

  “What happened?” In the wake of the falling fist, his voice was so quiet that Levi barely heard him.

  “Etta didn’t work there, she just went there that day. She was angry, she, she pulled some woman away from her sewing machine and forced her to go upstairs with her,” said Abigail. “Something about the conditions.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “She was on the top, the tenth floor,” said Abigail. “With the owners.”

  Longbaugh stepped back. She had gotten out, yes, she had gotten out with Queenie and now he saw it—angry about the working conditions, she had marched Queenie upstairs to confront the owners, and when the fire broke out, she had followed the owners over the roof to safety. That was her instinct, to go up, just as she had in the bank on that day so long ago. Even if it had been the owners who knew where to lead her, she would have sensed it as the right move. The girl on the wire was suddenly anonymous, and he lost her face and his mind’s eye turned away from her terror. He remained sad for the others, but his feelings shifted now that he knew she was not among them. In his selfish joy, the other women were dead and buried instead of kindred souls. He sat in a chair opposite husband and wife and was not proud of his lack of compassion, and while he tried to make excuses for his elation, he could not. He had to live with his happiness, that his search had found new life.

  He registered Levi’s jaw injury, then looked at Levi’s telltale raw knuckles.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing. Something at work.”

  “Something about work?” Longbaugh’s tone was so skeptical that Levi came clean.

  “No.”

  Abigail shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. Longbaugh found it difficult to make eye contact with her, even though he knew she hadn’t seen him inside the front door of the restaurant.

  “Let me guess,” said Longbaugh. “There’s another sandhog down there, knows you from the old days, so he figures he can say whatever he likes, and he made a comment about your wife.”

  Abigail looked away, blushing, biting her lip, her arms crossed. He had hit the mark. From Levi’s expression, Longbaugh understood that Levi had defended her honor without believing in it. Men always fought hardest for the things they could not prove.

  But as Levi and Abigail exchanged guilty looks, his mind returned to the Triangle fire. Etta may have gotten Queenie out, but for Moretti it was moral ammunition to use against her, as Etta had exposed Queenie to the worst fire in the city’s history.

  Longbaugh abruptly stood up and left the room. He needed time alone, to celebrate his relief in shameful silence, and to regain his empathy so that he was no longer pretending to care about the grieving families, the sad lovers, and here in Etta’s former home, the brooding couple.

  He took the stairs two at a time, but at the top he heard someone coming after him. He turned to see Levi at the bottom of the stairs. He heard a door slam downstairs and knew that it had been Abigail.

  “Is it you?” said Levi.

  Longbaugh was impatient and invincible and in no mood after the good news about Etta. He had already helped the sandhog once today. “It’s not, but if you need to take it out on someone, then come on.”

  Levi appeared ready to accept his offer, but stopped three-quarters of the way up, and Longbaugh couldn’t help noticing the frayed rug under his feet. Levi closed his eyes to tamp down his anger. Longbaugh watched as Levi talked to himself, and after a moment lifted his hands in a reluctant gesture of capitulation.

  “Look, I—I think I . . . but . . . aw, hell, I don’t know,” Levi mumbled.

  Longbaugh was disgusted.

  “I know I shouldn’t have.” Levi came up abreast of him, chastising himself. “First the newspaper, then, well, all the other things.”

  “Was that you looking to apologize?”

  “No. Okay, maybe.”

  “She told you to.”

  “Well, no.”

  “No?”

  “I think I’m confused, I mean, if
it was you—”

  Longbaugh took hold of Levi’s muscular upper arm and led him to the second-floor parlor, sat him down, and kicked the door closed behind him. “You are not good at this.”

  Levi hung his head. “She says I have too much imagination.”

  Longbaugh growled in the back of his throat because something had almost happened at the restaurant, meaning Levi’s imagination was on target, but he fed him the lie. “Yeah, and you’re thinking too much, you’re looking for betrayal, and when you look that hard, you can bet you’ll find it, because anything you look at that closely will suddenly look like proof. But just because you can see it that way does not make it so.”

  Levi looked up at him. “It’s not that I don’t want to trust her.”

  “Make up your mind, Levi, doubt or trust.” Longbaugh shook his head, irritated, standing over him. He became quiet as he thought it through.

  The pause grew so long, Levi shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  Longbaugh was conflicted. If he started this, it was sure to turn awkward in a hurry. He had to keep Abigail’s secret while reassuring Levi and maybe give their marriage a fighting chance.

  “You loved her once.”

  Levi decided he might be insulted. “Still do.”

  “And you won her.”

  Less certain this time. “Yes.”

  “So something was different then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a long way from the heroic sandhog.”

  “So maybe I was more . . . easy, more like myself.”

  “You were cocksure, with a head full of hope, and now you’re eating your own tongue.”

  Levi looked as if he’d gotten all of it embarrassingly right. “I thought once we were married and got, well, together, it would be okay.”

  Longbaugh squinted at him in irritation. “What about little things?”

  “What is this? Who are you to—”

  “Ah, so now you don’t have enough imagination.”

  “Say!”

  Longbaugh again turned it over in his mind, not caring that Levi went fidgety whenever a pause stepped into the conversation. He knew too much about where each of the partners stood. He did not want to give advice. He preferred to be the affable uncle who shared wicked truths, as opposed to the earnest, well-meaning father hoping to protect his children from repeating his own ancient mistakes. But after seeing her outside the restaurant, knowing that if things stayed the way they were, that something like it was bound to happen again, he was intent on making Levi understand. Part of it was Etta’s escape from the fire. Part of it was the bruise on Levi’s chin. Part of it was the predatory son of a bitch in the restaurant who didn’t deserve her. But another part of it was the uncomfortable memory of how he had felt when he watched Abigail as she danced.

  He spoke slowly, as if he did not trust his own words. “You see a bird with a broken wing.”

  Levi looked behind him as if someone else was in the room. “What?”

  “And a cat lurking.”

  “What’s this got to do with . . . ?”

  “Do you step in or leave it to fate?”

  “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “Simple question, how do you see the world? Broken wing. Hungry cat. Take part or leave it to chance?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Cat’s closing in.”

  Levi sat up. “Where am I, the woods, the street?”

  “Do nothing and that cat gets dinner. Step in and the bird has hope.”

  “Shoo the cat away?” said Levi uncertainly.

  “He’ll come right back when you leave.”

  “Suppose I could move it.”

  “Bird just saw the cat.”

  “Um, pick it up?”

  “In your hands?”

  “Yeah, okay, but this is strange.”

  Longbaugh opened his own hands, exposing his palms. “Show me.”

  Levi threw him a scowl, hesitated, then made a cup shape with his raw-knuckle hands, but he flew them apart as if the bird’s fleas were crawling between his fingers. Longbaugh left his hands in place. Levi reinforced his scowl, but brought his hands back together. When Longbaugh didn’t move, Levi took the next step and mimicked picking up a wounded bird from the floor.

  “Careful, she’s nervous,” said Longbaugh. “If you’re going to help her—”

  “—you got to make her feel safe.”

  Longbaugh nodded almost imperceptibly so as not to spook the bird.

  Levi sat with the wounded creature cupped on his lap. Then he realized he looked absurd and set it free with a violent shake. He jutted out his chin. “Abby’s not wounded.”

  “No.”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “No.”

  “Or is she?”

  “Maybe not.”

  Levi nodded then, to himself. “Because I’m the one. Because it’s me.”

  “You can change it.”

  “You think I haven’t tried? But the way men look at her . . .” He swallowed his thought, exposed and ludicrous.

  Longbaugh was still for a long time. Levi looked as if Longbaugh was the cat and he was the meal. Longbaugh thought long and hard and tried to choose his words carefully, as there would be other predators in other restaurants, and while only she could put a stop to that, she’d have to want to. Then, suddenly, he realized he was angry.

  “Shut off your idiot brain, give her the benefit of the doubt, goddamnit. Do something, some little thing, just . . . hold her hand, touch her cheek, Christ, help yourself out.”

  Levi raised his hands helplessly.

  “Rub sand in your suspicious eyes, pretend to trust her, maybe you’ll start to do it. But don’t, dammit, just don’t push too hard.”

  “What if I’ve already tried?”

  “You always give up so easily?”

  “Aw, hell.”

  “Or just with her. Because you think she’s looking around and you’ve got your pride.”

  “Okay, all right,” said Levi from under a pile of self-disgust.

  “You were a sandhog, for cryin’ out loud. Toughest bastards in the state of New York. And she was the right one.”

  Levi thawed with the memory. “She was . . . something.”

  “Think there’s a reason she wears your ring?”

  “Sure,” said Levi, attempting a joke. “I asked.”

  “And she said yes.”

  “Damn, no wonder Etta loved you.”

  Longbaugh looked aside. The sound of her name brought something else into the room. Longbaugh gazed at a spot as if he could see her there. He drew a long, slow breath. “A man asked me once about a thing that happened in prison. Said he’d heard about a fellow who wasn’t violent, yet he’d beaten the hell out of a much bigger inmate. His knuckles looked like yours.”

  Levi looked at his own hands.

  “He’d just had his letters returned, ones he wrote to his wife, all unopened. The big man was shooting his mouth, ‘She’s like all the rest.’” Longbaugh’s eyes were dead cruel. “I remember how he looked afterward.” He then looked directly at Levi, still cold, as the memory lingered. “Tell her . . .” He wondered how far he should go, and then he knew what to say and his voice changed and grew quieter. “Tell her you love her, tell her—you hear music inside her. Tell her that.”

  Levi stared at him as if he was afraid to move and uproot the fragile moment of revelation. He jerked to his feet. “I have to go, I have to see her.”

  Longbaugh laughed softly. “Slow down, sandhog, easy, it took time to get here, it won’t clean up overnight.”

  “No. I understand. You’re right. I know that.”

  Levi stood in place, looking this way and that, trying to physically sl
ow himself down. His whole body shook with the effort. Then he didn’t care.

  “I have to see her.”

  Longbaugh shrugged. “Go.”

  Levi left the room in too big a hurry. Longbaugh watched him with envy. He wondered if he had been insane to try to help. He could be making things worse. In reality, he wasn’t convinced Levi could ever again reach Abigail. She might already have given up. After a few minutes he was sorry he had not called Levi back to lower his expectations.

  To his surprise, Levi came back to the doorway with a grave look in his eyes.

  “Oh, no, what did you do?” Longbaugh regretted their conversation now, another mistake to add to the list. Levi had pushed her and taken it too far too fast, destroying all his evident goodwill.

  Levi spoke in a whisper. “A kid downstairs, looking for you.”

  Longbaugh thought it must be a mistake. “A kid?”

  “Some Chink, mentioned Paris.”

  Longbaugh moved out of the room and to the balustrade. He looked to be sure he could not be seen through any of the windows. Levi now grasped his urgency and turned off the hall light behind him, but Longbaugh said, “No. Leave it.”

  Levi turned the light back on. Longbaugh looked down to the first-floor hallway where Abigail blocked the Chinese boy.

  “Cowboy,” said the Chinese boy.

  “What is it?” This could not be about Abigail again, not in front of her and not in front of Levi.

  “Man outside, all afternoon, asking questions.”

  “Still the neighborhood conscience. What questions?”

  “About any new people. In the neighborhood.”

  “New immigrants show up every day, you sure he means me?”

  The Chinese boy made a face. “You’re different. So is he.”

  “Okay. Where is he now?”

  “In front. Watching for you. Very patient.”

  “Who’d he talk to?”

  “Came in a circle. Started two blocks east, asked stuff.” The Chinese boy pointed his finger in a new direction. “Then went south, same questions, then west and north. Then he came closer, one block in, east again. More questions but a smaller circle. Like he knew you were here.”