Burn Baby Burn

by Meg Medina

  Mrs. MacInerney sighs. “Come on, then, Kathleen. Let’s get the guest room ready.”

  Kathleen gives me a hug and whispers in my ear. “Save me. It’ll be like being trapped in a twenty-four-hour civics class with these two.”

  “I’ll call you later,” I say.

  “I should head out, too,” Pablo says.

  His voice startles me. In all the commotion, I’d almost forgotten he was here.

  “I’ll tell you what happens at work tomorrow.”

  We stand there awkwardly with Mima looking on. What I’d really like to do is hug him good-bye, but I keep my arms crossed, hoping he’ll get the message. Luckily he does.

  “Good night, then,” he says, sticking out his hand like a goof. He gives me a crazy grin and walks away.

  It’s still a while longer before Manny gets the all clear to let us back inside. Finally he gathers us tenants on the stoop for a meeting. He’s wrung out, but on the flip side, he looks a little puffed up with his man-in-charge role.

  “By order of the fire department, the basement is off-limits completely until further notice.” He points at the yellow caution tape blocking the steps. “The good news is that the rest of the building looks structurally sound except, of course, for 1E, which has sustained smoke damage only.”

  “Which will be repaired promptly,” Stiller grumbles. That’s her apartment.

  Manny crosses his arms and stares right at her. “Now, to be clear: according to the firemen in charge, nothing points to negligence on the part of building management.”

  “Then what happened?” Stiller asks. “Spontaneous combustion?”

  There’s a murmur among the neighbors, but before Manny can answer, one of the firemen steps forward. “It is too soon to tell, ma’am. Unfortunately we do see alligator charring near the beams over the trash cans, but we’ll have to wait for a report. Could take thirty to sixty days for the lab to tell us for sure. There’s a backlog.”

  Stiller frowns. “Alligator charring? What does that mean?”

  “It’s the way wood burns when a fire accelerant is used to ignite it.”

  It takes a second for the information to sink in. She turns slowly toward Manny and arches her brow.

  “Oh, you mean like arson?” she says pointedly.

  Manny holds up his hand. “Stop right there, Stiller.” He looks around at all the tenants, who suddenly don’t look so sure about him. “I don’t know who set this fire, but I will find out. I promise you: whoever started this little blaze isn’t going to get away with it.”

  I shift on my feet, thinking about Hector and about all that Mr. Mac has told me over the years. It’s not always money at the bottom of fires. Sometimes, it’s just the power of watching things destroyed.

  “¿Qué dijo el hombre?” Mima whispers.

  “They’re investigating,” I say.

  Mima crosses herself.

  Manny wraps up the meeting. “If you find smoke damage, see me in the morning,” he calls after us as we file inside. “There will be paperwork.”

  The smell is overpowering on the lower floors, but at least it gets better at each higher landing.

  Mima left the door unlocked when she ran out, but everything looks fine in our apartment. The only damage I can see is a tiny soot mark by the heat pipes where the smoke probably billowed up. I can touch it up myself and not wait for Manny to get around to it. God knows how many forms it will take for him to show up with a can of paint and a roller.

  Mima rubs her temples. “This smell is going to give me a headache,” she says. She walks to the bedrooms, trying to throw open our old windows to let in some fresh air. I hear her grunting. “Nora, come help me,” she calls. “This one is stuck.”

  But I don’t answer.

  I’m still standing near the door, where we always hang our keys.

  Our basement key is gone.

  “Nooooora! You didn’t get roasted in the bonfire!”

  I squeeze my eyes shut in prayer. Lord, I beg you: all I ask is that he falls and breaks his leg.

  Sergio is busy nailing sheets of plywood against Stiller’s window, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he works.

  I try to hurry inside, but the front stoop is a cluttered maze. Everybody’s junk has been hauled out of the storage units. Manny’s sign is taped to the glass doors.

  BASEMENT UNDER REPAIR!!!

  CLAIM YOUR ITEMS TODAY!!!

  UNCLAIMED ITEMS WILL BE DONATED!!!!

  Next to it is a sheet of looseleaf with Stiller’s writing: If any of your personal belongings are illegally confiscated, call me.

  The MacInerneys’ number is listed next to her name.

  I pick my way through ash-covered boxes of Christmas ornaments, rusted bed frames, and old cribs. There’s even a couple of Mattel Big Wheels that belonged to the kids from 3C. The plastic wheels have melted down like crayons. It’s practically modern art.

  My own bike is propped against the building among the junk. It’s covered in soot, spiderwebs cling to the spokes, and the chain hangs off the gears. Other than that, though, it’s in miraculously good shape. It’s been so long since I’ve ridden it that I almost forgot I even owned a bike.

  I pull it free to take it upstairs, but Sergio hops down from his stepladder and saunters over to me just as I’m struggling with the door.

  “You’ll never be able to haul it up three flights of stairs all by yourself, babe.”

  “We’ll see.” I kneel down and crank the pedals so I can hook up the chain. “And I’m not your babe.”

  “You know, if you weren’t so bitchy, I might offer to help you bring it upstairs.”

  “And if you weren’t such a dreg, I might want you to.” I stand up and wedge the door open with my butt. Then I spot Hector’s bike. It wasn’t so long ago that he’d race down the block on that thing. I go back and drag it out of the pile, too.

  Sergio leans against the mailboxes, watching as I struggle. “By the way, you owe me some money for a certain mirror. Didn’t anybody ever teach you to respect people’s property?”

  I stop what I’m doing and face him square on.

  “I don’t owe you a dime,” I say. “And I’ve already asked you to leave Hector alone. He’s got enough problems without adding in you.”

  Sergio pretends to rub his eyes as if he’s crying.

  “A troubled kid. Waaaaah . . .”

  I wobble up five steps to the first landing and drop my bike. The fender scrapes my leg. I look up the next set of stairs, a much longer climb. As much as I hate to admit it, Sergio is right. It’s going to be a bitch to get up to the fourth floor.

  “Have fun doing it the hard way.” Sergio blows a kiss at me. Then he takes off, whistling.

  That night we’re eating dinner, side by side on our portable TV tables as usual, when the doorbell rings. No one buzzed from the lobby. Mima puts the chain on the door and peers through the peephole, just in case it’s Stiller.

  “¿Quién es?”

  “Fire Department.”

  She looks over at me and opens the door with the chain still on.

  “Ma’am, I’m James Costa with the Bureau of Fire Investigation.” The man in the hall holds up his badge. “We’re investigating yesterday’s incident. We’d like to ask you a few questions. We’re interviewing all the tenants regarding a suspicious fire.”

  For once in my life, I’m pissed that Mr. Mac has so many friends willing to do him favors. There are dozens of other fires they could be investigating, entire boroughs that they could be digging out of rubble, but no, here they are, investigating a blaze that took out a few garbage cans.

  Mima holds up her finger to tell him to wait and closes the door. She turns to me. “Nora, mira a ver lo que me dice este señor . . .”

  I never like translating for Mima, but this really puts me on edge. I didn’t say a word to her about the missing key, deciding I’d ask Hector myself. Unfortunately I’ve tried to get him alone all afternoon, but Mima has been in the
way.

  I glance at him, but he doesn’t even seem to notice that we’ve been interrupted. He keeps eating his congri, eyes glued to the TV screen.

  I go to the door to slide off the chain.

  “Hi,” I say. “My mother doesn’t speak English, so —”

  “This will be brief,” the fire marshal says without looking up from his pad. He writes down the number of our apartment and our surname from the handwritten tab over the doorbell. He has a holstered gun, I notice, and a set of handcuffs.

  Mima stands next to me as I repeat each question he reads from his list.

  Does she know if anyone kept a grill downstairs? Did she notice paints or paint thinners? At what time did she first become aware of the fire? Had she seen anyone unfamiliar in or around the building yesterday? Who was home with her at the time?

  “Mi hijo,” she says. My son.

  I blink.

  “She says my brother was home.”

  “How about you? Were you home, too?”

  “I was at work,” I say. “I got back just as the fire trucks were arriving.”

  He looks past me. “Is this your brother over there?”

  I nod, uneasy. “Yes.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “¿Qué dice?” Mima asks as he steps into our living room. “Estamos comiendo, por Dios.”

  “We’re eating,” I repeat.

  But the fire marshal is already standing near Hector. He looks back at me and smiles. “I’ll be out of your way in a moment. All right?”

  My heart is pounding, wondering if Hector’s yellow sheet is about to get longer. Cops and firemen are pals, after all. Mima and I stand by helplessly as the marshal asks him the same questions. My brother answers with precision, but they are all lies. He’d seen the smoke around the pipes. He’d run down the stairs in the first rush of tenants. No, he’d seen no one “suspicious” in the cellar or around the building.

  The fire marshal flips his notebook shut and glances at the full ashtray. One of Hector’s lighters is sitting beside it.

  “Were you down there at all yesterday?” he asks.

  The pressure in my ears makes me feel as though my head is going to explode.

  “In the basement?” Hector says.

  The officer smiles. He reminds me of Mr. Mac somehow. Calm, unassuming.

  “Just taking out the trash,” Hector says with a shrug. “That’s it.”

  “Was the door locked when you went down there?”

  Hector leans back, thinking. “No. I don’t think it was.”

  “No?”

  “No.” He shrugs. “Weird, right?”

  “Is it usually locked?” the marshal asks.

  “I don’t know.” He turns to me. “Nora is the one who’s in charge of taking out the trash. I did it because she was working. Ask her.”

  My mouth goes dry as the officer turns. Hector grins at me from behind his back. My eyes flit to our bedroom, where the closet door is slightly open.

  “It’s usually locked . . .” I let my voice trail off as I look back at him. “People forget sometimes.”

  I want to scream in the quiet that follows as he writes my words down.

  “Are you a friend of Mr. Mac?” I blurt out. “His daughter, Kathleen, is my best friend.”

  He looks up and smiles pleasantly. “Mac’s the very best.”

  Hinges squeak behind us. Mima holds open the door.

  “Dale las gracias.”

  “She says ‘Thank you,’” I say, although I’m sure what she really means is Get out. “I’m sorry we couldn’t help.”

  He hands me his card. “Sorry to have disturbed your dinner.” He nods at Mima. “Gracias,” he says.

  I close the door and sit back down to stare at my cold dinner. The doorbell rings at Miss Burne’s apartment across the hall, and a moment later, I hear the murmur of voices.

  Hector leans back and lights up.

  He’s lying, and there has to be a reason. I turn to him, ready to ask, but one look at Mima’s face and the words turn to ash on my tongue.

  No one says a word.

  The basement is off-limits. Manny was very clear on that point.

  I step over the caution tape anyway, grinding broken glass under my shoes as I climb down the stairs in the dark. I waited until Hector and Mima were asleep before I came down.

  The lamp must have been smashed when the firemen hacked down the door, so I have to sweep the flashlight beam on the steps as I go, but it doesn’t help much.

  As soon as I push the door open with my foot, the stench of a cold fire greets me. I move my flashlight along the sooty walls. The washers and dryers are ruined, their metal warped and black. Same for the garbage cans.

  Maybe this is just my stupid imagination. We’ve mislaid that key plenty of times before. It’s possible that one of us just forgot to put it back when we took out the trash.

  I step inside.

  Water drips down from the overhead beams, and the ash on the floor is like shoe-sucking silt. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for, except for some reason to believe that Hector didn’t set this. My eyes scan the mud for any sign of him, his lighters, a can of fluid, anything.

  But just then, a shadow flickers outside the window. I switch off my light and hold my breath, waiting. A few seconds later, I hear scratchy footsteps coming down the stairs. Panicking, I dash for cover and wedge myself behind the door just as it swings open.

  Soon Tripod’s wet snout is poking at me. His fur is matted and his three paws are completely covered in muddy ash.

  “Get out of here,” I tell him.

  “Who’s there?” a voice calls out.

  I hold my breath, but a second later, I’m blinded by a flashlight.

  Manny stands there in a dirty undershirt and pajama pants, looking like he’s going to explode.

  “Nora? What are you doing down here? I told you to keep out!”

  I point suddenly to the dog.

  “I saw him slip in here and tried to get him out.”

  “At three in the morning?”

  I swallow hard. “I couldn’t sleep with all the commotion. I saw Tripod from my window. He was sniffing around the cellar steps. I didn’t want him to get hurt. There’s glass everywhere.”

  He crosses his arms, and I can tell he doesn’t believe me.

  “Let’s go, Tripod,” I say, whistling to him.

  Manny stands in my way. “Are you sure this is about the dog?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that it’s strange to find a kid wandering around here in the middle of the night, especially since we’ve been having some trouble lately. A break-in . . . A fire . . .”

  Can he smell a rat? I channel the spirit of Stiller and stand my ground.

  Tripod watches us, growling and circling.

  “First of all, I’m not a kid. I came for Tripod. That’s all. Somebody ought to care about a disabled stray, for God’s sake.”

  Manny gives in and shakes his head. “Stay out of here. You could get hurt,” he says. “And stop feeding this mutt, will you, please? This is a no-pets-allowed building, remember?”

  I edge past him.

  “Come on, boy,” I call out. “Let’s clean you up.”

  I WILL DO IT AGAIN.

  I wander the deli, trying to look busy instead of thinking about the newest murders or the message left behind.

  Pablo and I don’t talk about Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau as we work, but it feels like they are around every corner. They were eighteen and twenty years old, more or less like us. They went to the movies and found out that the city isn’t huge at all. In fact, it can shrink down to the size of a gun barrel, just like that.

  Customers are crowded around the deli case, but nobody is clamoring for coffee or orange juice. Mr. Farina, on his afternoon break, isn’t arguing with Sal about Joe Frazier. It’s Wednesday afternoon, and despite the big crowd in the store, it’s so quiet that I can hear my own footfalls again
st the grit on the floor.

  A special news report of Valentina’s funeral airs on the TV set that’s bolted near the ceiling. Reporters are crawling all over St. Theresa’s in the Bronx, holding up microphones to kids dressed up in their Sunday clothes. Cops photograph the crowd in case the killer is hiding in plain sight and has come back to see his handiwork.

  I glance at the screen in time to see Mrs. Suriani being helped up the church steps.

  And then I wonder: Does the shooter have a mother, too? Does she know he’s a monster? Is she afraid to say so and turn him in?

  I WILL DO IT AGAIN.

  The threat is at everyone’s throat. The shooter left a note to the city in the laps of the victims as they lay dying.

  The question now is: Who’s next?

  I tuck a loose bobby pin back inside my bun and reach for the next row of cans as Pablo and I check expiration dates. I move down each section like a machine, growing more irritable as the news report goes on and on.

  Cream of celery soup, 1978, fine. Chicken and stars, 1979, good.

  I stop at a can marked for this month.

  “Does April 1977 count as expired or what?” My voice is too loud, annoyed. I show Pablo the suspicious green pea soup. “What do you think? Can it kill you or not?” Tears spring to my eyes.

  He stands so close to me that I can see a tiny shaving nick near his jaw. He takes the can and tosses it into a box marked PERISHED.

  “Why don’t you take a break?” He glances at the mesmerized crowd. “It’s stuffy in here.”

  I let my feet dangle off the concrete ledge and drink a Coke to clear my head. There isn’t much fresh air out here on the loading dock, just smelly puddles and rusted fencing. The lots behind all the stores are stacked with odds and ends: buckets, broken broom handles, old signs. Still, it’s better than being trapped inside with the funeral coverage.

  But the truth is that it’s not just the funeral that has me in a funk. It’s everything. It’s wondering why Mima lied about Hector being home when the fire broke out. It’s the fact that she hasn’t found a full-time job. It’s about how Manny will start breathing down our necks again any day now. And it’s about people knowing we’re not making it.