by Tom Abrahams
The app opened, but when he tapped the live video, it wouldn’t play. The signal was flashing between one bar and no service. The restaurant Wi-Fi was down since the power was out. He was about to slip the useless brick back into his pocket when the phone chimed as a text message box appeared on the display. He didn’t recognize the number. He took his eyes from the chaos unfolding around him and unlocked the device.
DANNY. HEY. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU WHEN YOU GET A SEC. COULD YOU PLEASE GIVE ME A CALL? HOW ARE THINGS IN LA? THIS IS MY CELL.
His jaw clenched when he read the end of the message. His blood pressure rose, and his chest tightened.
THANKS, MAN. DEREK.
Derek. Freaking Derek. Wife-stealing, home-wrecking, gazillionaire Derek.
Danny read the message again. It didn’t do anything to quell the nausea roiling in his gut. He read it a third time. Its contents didn’t change.
If he were being truthful to himself, he couldn’t blame Derek entirely for the devolution of his marriage. In some perverse way, he actually felt sorry for the guy. Derek was now responsible for Danny’s ex. He was now the one who had to put up with the overspending and the lies of omission that morphed into bold deception. The overspending wasn’t an issue for Derek, but Danny knew the dishonesty would eventually become an issue. Tigers didn’t change their stripes, even ones with fake boobs and lip injections. Especially ones with fake boobs and lip injections. But it could be that even the lies wouldn’t get to the guy. Danny figured Derek was all about having her on his arm at big fancy NorCal functions and didn’t care about much else.
From what he knew of Derek, the guy was loaded. He was a Stanford or Cal grad, he couldn’t remember which, and had made a bundle of money selling some invention to a big tech firm. Now he spent his money funding other people’s ideas.
At least that was what Google told him Derek did. He didn’t know from his ex. She just up and left one day, leaving Danny in a lurch. He couldn’t afford the rent, the cable, the electricity, or the car payment without her income. And he sure couldn’t afford the debt on the credit cards she’d maxed out.
With the help of Derek’s money, a fancy lawyer with a degree from Cal or Stanford had browbeaten Danny into giving up the modest house they’d shared and taking on the majority of the debt.
To afford a place to live, and the massive debt he’d incurred, he took a second job as a cook at the diner. When he fell asleep at his first job, the one that supplied him with health insurance and a retirement plan, he’d been fired.
Danny had never been one to shirk his responsibilities. In his most self-reflective moments, he might admit that he could have been a more attentive husband to a woman who needed all his attention all the time. But throughout his life, he thought of himself as a stand-up guy who did what he said and said what he did. That was why filing for bankruptcy was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
It had cost him dearly. He’d had trouble finding a new, cheaper apartment. He couldn’t get a cable company to install equipment, and he’d offered to sell his kidney as collateral for having the lights on in his one-bedroom efficiency.
Yet as bleak as his life had become, as difficult as it was to get up in the morning sometimes, he was making it. He still had his car, an old Volkswagen GTI that protested every time he twisted the key in the ignition. He also had Maggie, a mixed Lab who was smarter than his ex. She was more loyal too. She greeted him every evening when he got home as if he were the most important person in the world. It was a little thing, but it was something sunny in the darkness that had shrouded his life since he’d succumbed to the she-devil’s charms and then fallen prey to her evil ways.
He held his thumbs over the keyboard that filled the bottom half of his screen. He considered a half-dozen different responses. He thought about using emojis instead of words. Then he tapped a single letter so in case Derek was awaiting a reply with the text box open, he’d see the little response bubbles populate. He imagined Derek staring at his phone, waiting for the reply that would never come. It was juvenile, but Danny smiled privately and tucked his phone back into his pocket.
The crowds were dispersing. Clumps of people, however, still stood outside the diner. The plumes of smoke dotted the city in front of them like smoldering candles on a cake. Danny tried counting them, but he couldn’t tell where one fire began and another ended.
“I’m clocking out,” said Arthur. He’d appeared at Danny’s side without him noticing. “Ain’t no sense in sticking around with the power out. It’s closing time anyhow.”
Danny glanced over his shoulder at the restaurant and noticed his reflection staring back at him from the glass entrance. It was dark inside the diner.
“Who’s cleaning up?” he asked Arthur.
A broad grin spread across his face. He shook his head. “Brother, I’ve cleaned up at the end of my shift every day for the last ten years.” He nodded at the columns of smoke. “Some of that is near where I stay. I gotta go make sure my stuff isn’t burning up. Somebody else can clean the griddle today.”
He slipped his grease-stained apron over his head, balled it up, and slapped it onto Danny’s chest like a quarterback handing off a football. He slapped Danny on the back and took off in his long, deliberate stride toward the distant smoke. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, crossed the street, and disappeared into the crowd.
Danny gave the smoke a final glance and scanned the crowd. He spun on a heel and walked back into the diner. It was warmer than usual. The air-conditioning, which kept the open grill and oil fryers from turning the place into an oven, wasn’t working. Danny tossed the apron into a tall hamper in the corner. He walked back to his spot by the fryers and took stock of the place. There were abandoned plates of half-eaten food on most of the tables, and the grill was a mess. Thankfully, because the grill was gas, he could keep it hot enough to clean it.
He took a ketchup bottle filled with water and squirted it onto the grill’s surface. It sizzled, the water beaded and steamed, and he grabbed a clean spatula with his other hand.
He scraped the grill’s surface, alternately adding more water, loosening the crusty remnants of the day’s offerings. He worked the char into small piles and then shoveled them into a catch basin at the edge of the grill. He jumped when he heard a woman’s voice.
“You got stuck with it?”
It was Claudia, the waitress, hostess, and part-time cashier. She had three plates stacked like pancakes in one hand and a tray with glasses and flatware perched atop the other. She glided across the floor on the other side of the bar.
Danny shrugged. “I guess so. Arthur needed to check on his place. I don’t know where the other guys went. It’s no big deal. I’ve got nowhere else to be.”
“What about that puppy of yours?”
Danny scraped at a tough piece of crud in the center of the grill. He squirted another dose of water and steam puffed in his face. “Maggie will be okay. She’s crated, so—”
“You put your dog in a crate?” Claudia cut in. “That’s cruel. I could never put my puppy in a box. It’s like prison.” She harrumphed and disappeared into the kitchen. Danny rolled his eyes. She didn’t know what she was talking about.
Claudia could be counted as an expert on whether or not to get the fries, how filling the pancake breakfast was, if the soup du jour was good on any given day, and how to calculate a generous tip in her head. She was smart, sassy, good at every job in the place, but she didn’t know a thing about Maggie and what the dog liked or didn’t like.
What did Claudia know of prison, anyhow? Danny grunted as he dug the hard muck from the grill’s smooth surface. Another squirt of the water loosened the remnants, and he made a wide sweep across the three-foot-wide, rectangular metal hotplate.
The door chimed, and without checking to see who it was, Danny let them know service had stopped for the day.
“Sorry,” he called out, “we’re closed a bit early today. No power.”
“I’m n
ot hungry,” said Arthur, his voice booming through the otherwise empty space.
Danny paused mid-scrape. “You’re back?”
Arthur nodded and pushed his way behind the counter. “I couldn’t let you do all of the work.”
“Claudia’s here,” Danny said.
Arthur laughed. “Then I definitely couldn’t leave you alone. She’ll make you think you killed the Pope by the time it’s all said and done.”
“I heard that,” Claudia called from the kitchen.
Arthur lowered his voice. “I never met a more righteous woman than Claudia, and my mother was the lead singer in the AME church choir. So that’s saying something.”
Danny chuckled and moved over to make room. “Grill’s almost done. How’s your place?”
“Fine,” Arthur said. “I’m a few blocks from the closest fire. But it’s bad out there. It’s like someone took a blowtorch to the city.”
That painted a mental picture for Danny: the image of someone flying low over the southland in a helicopter, hanging free from an open bay door and sweeping a blowtorch across the rooftops, setting everything ablaze. He pictured Derek doing the honors, or even better, his ex. She’d taken a torch to his life, so why not large swaths of Los Angeles?
Claudia appeared from the kitchen and moved over to the men cleaning the area around the grill. She planted her hands on her hips, tapping her sides with her trigger fingers. Danny noticed the slightest crow’s feet fanning out from her eyes towards her temples. He’d never noticed them before. He’d always been too busy. Maybe Claudia was older than he’d thought. Or possibly she’d lived a harder life than he’d imagined.
“Can I get some help with the dishes?” she asked. “It’s a mess back there, the only light is from the red emergency bulbs that connect to the alarm system, and the dishwashers are all gone.”
Danny checked with Arthur, who nodded, before agreeing. “Sure. Give us five. We’ve got to finish this little bit.”
Claudia flashed a smile, deepening the crow’s feet. “Okay. That’ll give me time to clear the rest of these tables.”
She spun around, sliding her hand across the counter, and moved around to the center of the restaurant. As she passed the door, it flung open and a harried woman drenched in sweat stumbled inside. She was breathless, her ice blue eyes wide with fear. Her hair, sapped of color so that it appeared white, was pulled back in a tight bun. Her thin T-shirt clung to her body, not only accentuating the perspiration but also her muscular frame. She looked every bit the athlete.
“Everything’s on fire,” she said. “And it’s coming closer.”
No sooner had she finished her breathy sentence than the door swung open again. This time it was a firefighter, fully clad in turnout gear. His face was red and glistening. His hard expression warned of what they already knew from the woman. “I’m going to need to ask you to evacuate,” said the firefighter. His voice was firm but not overly aggressive.
“Really?” asked Claudia. She was standing at a table, washcloth frozen in mid-swipe. She motioned toward the street with her chin. “The fires are—”
“The winds have accelerated,” said the firefighter. “They’re shifting. We’re losing containment.”
“It’s crazy out there,” said the woman. “People are starting to panic. That’s why I ran in here. Out of the smoke. Away from the people.”
“That’s another reason we’re evacuating,” said the firefighter. “For our safety and for yours. So please—”
“We’ve got work to do,” interrupted Claudia. “We can’t just leave the place.”
Beyond the firefighter and the athletic woman, through the glass entrance, it was hazy now. It hadn’t been twenty minutes earlier when Danny had started cleaning the grill. The controlled swarms of onlookers had devolved into random clusters of directionless lemmings waving their arms and darting from one spot to another. Danny got the sense Claudia didn’t fully appreciate the situation.
The firefighter took a step closer to her. He spoke with his gloved hands in a measured, reasoned tone. His face softened to the expression of a man pleading for compliance. “Ma’am, I’m not asking. I’m telling you that you need to leave.”
Claudia’s expression shifted. Her brow furrowed. She swallowed hard, and her eyes bounced from Danny to Arthur and then to the woman standing next to the firefighter.
“Where do we go?” she asked. “If we can’t stay?”
“Home,” said the firefighter. “As long as home isn’t in this immediate area.”
Claudia laughed sardonically. “Like any of us could afford to live around here.”
“Hey, speak for yourself,” said Arthur. “I live a few blocks up.” He said to the firefighter, “It was safe a few minutes ago.”
“That was a few minutes ago,” said the firefighter. “As I said, things are changing rapidly. I can’t stand here talking about it any longer. We need to go.”
He stepped back toward the door and pushed it open. He stood there holding it as the sounds from the outside filtered in with wisps of smoke. There was yelling, arguing, crying, and suddenly loud wails and the chirp of emergency sirens.
Danny wiped his hands on his apron but kept it tied around his waist as he followed the firefighter’s orders and headed toward the exit. Arthur was a step behind him as they crossed the threshold onto the wide sidewalk in front of the diner. They stepped to the side when Claudia and the woman pushed their way through. The firefighter was the last out.
“I can’t have you standing here,” he said. “You need to vacate the area.”
“Vacate,” Danny mumbled. “I’ve heard that before.”
“Anybody got a car?” asked Claudia. “I take the bus.”
“Danny’s got one,” said Arthur. “A VW, right?”
Danny shook his head. “I didn’t drive. I took the bus too. Trying to save on gas. It’s too expensive right now.”
The woman wiped sweat from both sides of her nose. “I have a car. It’s a couple of blocks from here.”
Danny and his coworkers exchanged glances and shrugged. “Okay,” said Danny. “We accept.”
The woman twisted her lips to one side. Still, she waved them to follow her and started speed walking away from the chaos.
“I’m Gilda,” she said over her shoulder. She was leading them upstream. Despite the apparent evacuation order, everyone other than them appeared to be moving toward the smoke and heat.
“I’m Danny,” he said. Claudia and Arthur introduced themselves. As a group, they weaved their way amongst the thinning crowds.
“Why are you going with us?” Claudia asked Arthur. “Your place is back the other way.”
“If the man is telling me my place isn’t safe, I don’t want to be there. This woman up here,” Arthur said, pointing at Gilda’s back, “if she can get us to a safe place that isn’t going to burn down, I’m all in.”
Danny hurried to catch up with Gilda. There was something about her he recognized. It was her intensity. She was like his ex that way.
“Hey,” he said, “how far is your car?”
“Just around the corner,” she said. “It’s a pickup.”
“A truck?” Danny asked in a tone that must have betrayed his surprise.
“You have a problem with that?”
“No,” Danny said. “Just didn’t have you pegged as—”
“Having a truck?”
Danny demurred. “I guess.”
She was walking faster now, pushing Danny to keep pace. He was sweating now despite the stiffening breeze that came from the ocean one moment and the hills the next. His calves were straining.
“What did you have me pegged for, then?” she asked. “A Prius?”
Danny suppressed a chuckle. It was exactly what he’d imagined her driving.
She shook her head. “Typical,” she murmured and rolled her eyes.
She slowed in front of a silver Dodge truck. It had two doors and a single bench seat. It was easily tw
enty years old and likely had a couple of hundred thousand miles on it. There were spots where the silver paint had chipped or worn away. Bondo covered some of the rust. The rest of it traced the hinges and wheel wells.
Gilda fished a jangle of keys from her pocket and inserted one of them into the lock on the door. She glanced over her shoulder at Danny, who was watching her manually unlock her vehicle. It must have been obvious he hadn’t seen anyone do that before.
“Don’t even say it,” said Gilda. “This is a work truck. I’m a sort of…botanist. I have a green thumb and I plant things.”
“What’s a sort-of botanist?” asked Arthur. “That kinda like being sorta pregnant?”
“Or sort of sexist?” Gilda shot back.
“Touché,” said Arthur.
“One of you is going to have to get in the bed,” said Gilda. “There’s only room for three of us up here.”
“I’ll do it,” Danny volunteered.
“How far are we going?” asked Claudia. “Where are we going?”
Gilda stood beside the truck, one foot on the side rail and one hand on the door. She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Away from here? I didn’t plan this. We could drive along the coast, try to get to somebody’s house. My house even.”
Claudia tilted her head to one side with suspicion etched on her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “This is too much.”
Arthur stepped closer to Claudia, filling the space between the waitress and the sort-of botanist. He put his sizable hand on Claudia’s shoulder. “What?” he asked.
“She comes into the diner out of nowhere,” said Claudia. “And she’s magically there when the firefighter tells us to leave. Then she happens to have a car—”
“A truck,” corrected Gilda.
“A truck,” Claudia deadpanned. “Whatever. Then she offers to drive us, three strangers, to her house? Doesn’t add up.”
Claudia had a point. Besides, she did know people. One of her many skills was detecting complete and utter crap doled out by the people she served every day.
Gilda stood there silently for a moment, her eyes roving up and down in measurement of the skeptic in front of her. She shook her head.
