by John Shannon
When I think back, sometimes, I get things pretty bad wrong. But the memory always seems right, no matter. I think what you really do is grab a few fragments, a few images, and your brain fills in the rest from what it wants to believe. The reality of this hotel fire will never be secure from my own fear of burning. Not for me. I will see Mr Liffey taking charge, Maeve standing by me, relive my own fears.
‘Conor! Wake up! They need us to get off this side of the roof!’
Strange. Without meaning to, he had apparently drifted to the opposite side of the roof from everyone else, and Maeve was tugging him to his feet. A noisy helicopter was hovering directly over his head as if it wanted to come down. Lord! He was so intent on blocking things out that he hadn’t even noticed.
She took his hand and they sprinted across the roof, driven into a crouch by the noise and beating of the aircraft descending, flailing their hair and clothing.
Omigod, he thought. Watching his feet on the black tarpaper as they ran past the vestibule in the exact center of the roof, he could see big bubbles swelling in the tar.
He did his best as he ran to call Maeve’s attention to the boiling tar in the center of the roof, but she was too busy rescuing him and watching her father at work on the far side of the roof organizing others and pushing them across toward the chopper.
‘They can only take three this time!’ Jack Liffey said. ‘No arguments! Women first!’
Jack Liffey coralled Felice and Millie and then grabbed Maeve and pushed them all into the blast of wind where the police helicopter hovered, only a foot above the roof, its overworked engine straining and groaning. A policeman in a black helmet leaned out the wide open doors to haul the women in. The skids tilted and touched down lightly from time to time as the big machine bobbed in its fierce struggle against gravity.
‘They’ll be back, and the ladder truck’s sending up its ladder, too!’
‘Dad, I won’t leave you!’ Maeve objected from beside the beast.
‘I said no arguments! Go!’
Maeve wailed some complaint into the overwhelming noise as she was tugged aboard last by the officer at the same time she was pushed by her father.
‘Don’t you dare get hurt!’ she shouted through cupped hands at her father as the machine rose straight up.
Jack Liffey flapped both arms upward in a needless shooing gesture as the chopper doors slid shut and the machine tilted forward and shot away, carrying Felice, Millie and Maeve. Next would be the old men and the boy, he thought. He and Gloria would go last.
Conor grabbed his shoulder and stabbed a finger wordlessly at the roof near the vestibule. The tar, the tar, he kept saying wordlessly. And the roof was clearly forming and popping big tarpit bubbles.
Oh, Christ, Jack Liffey thought, leave me to worry about one thing at a time.
Why was that damn ladder truck shilly-shallying?
He stared down off the edge of the roof to see a plume of fire shoot straight out of the hotel where the firetruck had once been parked. The truck had already backed away for some reason and was repositioning around the corner on San Julian where firemen were pouring streams of water over the building. Take your time, guys, he thought. We’ve got all night up here.
‘Jack, Jack!’ He knew Gloria needed his attention, but he’d heard the roof door flap open and on instinct he raced across to the vestibule and slammed the door shut with his back, feeling the escaping air like a blast-furnace. With his foot he scraped hot tar and torn crescents of tarpaper against the outside of the door. Then he took out his Swiss Army knife and shoved the blade into the door crack, pounding it home with the heel of his hand. None of this would hold for long.
‘Jack!’
He looked at last and saw Gloria leaning hard on the parapet, pointed off to his right. In just that instant, he could tell that she had been injured and could barely stand up, and he wondered how it had happened. What turnabout! He wanted to go to her, but where she stared with such intensity drew his own gaze to the top of the fire-escape, arcing over the parapet, where the two old men were fighting over who would get on the fire-escape first.
‘Stop! Stop!’ Jack Liffey shouted. ‘Don’t even think about it! It’s rusted out!’ Why was this like herding squirrels? He hurried toward them.
‘Listen, Mr Liffey, you got exactly what miracle to offer?’ Greengelb insisted. ‘You got to go down in fire! I shit on fire!’
‘Fire is my shtendik enemy!’ Morty began to titter and chatter in almost simian fashion, trying to force his way past Greengelb.
‘Stop it! Look here!’ They were so light; Jack Liffey tugged them both toward the corner of the roof above San Julian. ‘The fire department is raising their ladder right now. We’ll all be climbing down to have a beer in two minutes.’
‘Nu, I’m already completely incinerated!’ Morty Lipman announced, wavering where he stood.
Jack Liffey shoved them both to the ground. He’d pictured some kind of panic dragging all three of them over. The world was asking too much of him.
‘You were both fighters!’ Jack Liffey shouted. ‘Wait for the pros!’
He turned back and saw that Gloria had crumpled on to the roof herself. ‘Aw, shit!’ Jack Liffey forgot the men, forgot everyone else and ran to her.
‘I’m OK, Jack. I just twisted my ankle rounding up those women. It was stupid.’
‘Can you stand up?’
‘I think so.’
He offered an arm and felt the burden of too much of her weight as she hauled herself erect against him.
‘Just set me on the ledge. You’re damn good at taking charge, bless your heart.’
‘Fire’s coming up the stairwell, very soon,’ he explained softly, because she deserved to know. And like invoking the name of the devil, the door of the vestibule blew open, and a fireball billowed out into the night air like a frightened being escaping something far worse below, followed in half a second by the deep crump of an explosion below. He reached out to hold her shoulder, some kind of superstition. ‘We’ve got time,’ he said, though he had no particular reason to think so. ‘The firetruck is here.’
There was a roar and they all looked back – against their instincts – to see the entire vestibule blown upward thirty feet in a firestorm like the insistent flame of a blowtorch. The whole inferno below was apparently venting through this one chimney.
Jack Liffey had read somewhere of thirty-minute walls and sixty-minute walls, built into condos as a matter of county fire code to slow a fire and allow escape, but he bet nobody had heard of that when the Fortnum was built. They probably had two-minute walls at best.
‘How you doing?’
‘The ankle smarts – but hurting is just life. Don’t let go of me yet.’
‘Not ever, Gloria Ramirez. I swear to God, not ever.’
He could tell she wouldn’t welcome any further emotion just then.
‘Gentlemen! Gather over here,’ Jack Liffey called and beckoned. ‘You, too, Conor. Stop daydreaming. This is all real life.’
Greengelb gave Lipman a boost up and the two of them argued for a moment before starting toward Jack Liffey. Where was that fucking helicopter? He scanned the sky but saw nothing at all, which was strange. Usually the TV news choppers were on to any event like flies on shit. But, of course, this was only Skid Row, he thought. Only the homeless dying. Just the sparrows falling.
He steadied Gloria at the edge and then allowed himself to look over. With a sinking heart he saw they hadn’t even budged the ladder yet. He had a burning urge to hurl an explosive down on the firetruck, see it burst into an orange fireball, and if he’d had a grenade handy he probably would have done it. OK, he told himself, there was a rational reason for the delay – they weren’t idiots.
‘They’ve got some kind of hitch,’ he whispered to Gloria. ‘But they’ll come. Don’t look down. Not where you’re sitting.’
He heard a rending crash and glanced behind him to see a chunk of roof sailing away from a widened
urgent flame that was howling straight upward like the flame out of a rocket engine. That would pretty much discourage the choppers, he thought.
‘Let’s think about this,’ he said softly to Gloria. ‘You’ve got the experience. We need to keep everybody calm.’
‘Judging by your face, don’t let them look over the edge.’
He sighed. ‘I’m sure the ladder’s coming, but there’s some hangup.’
‘Liffey!’
It was too late. Greengelb was stabbing his finger urgently over the parapet. Jack Liffey looked down to see the ladder truck pulling away from the building.
‘What the fuck! Let me have the cell,’ he said to Gloria.
She didn’t even want to look, as if a light had gone out within her. He could see by her ashen skin and clenched teeth that she was in intense pain. He punched in 911.
‘Please state your emergency—’
‘Shut up and listen! I’m on the roof of the building that’s burning down on The Nickel, the Fortnum Hotel, and your ladder truck is driving away. I have five people up here who need help. What the hell is going on? I want to know now!’
‘Sir, I’m sure that—’
‘Don’t you fucking reassure me! Put me in touch with someone who knows what’s happening.’
‘Sir, I’m sure they’re—’
‘Stop now! One of the people up here is a cop who’s hurt – and I swear to God, the way she’s looking right now she’s going to come down there and shoot you dead if I tell her you’re saying one more meaningless word to me.’
All he heard at the other end was a kind of electronic wind. He looked over to see Gloria suppressing a grin. ‘Great, Jack. Maybe they’ll all just drive away now.’
The noise of the venting flame had become almost intolerable – a jet airliner fifty feet overhead – and the flame had eaten a big rude shape in the roof.
The others had gathered around him, but he heard a squawk coming back from Gloria’s cell in his hand. He could see she was almost unconscious with the hurt and he supported her back, on the parapet.
‘Hello, are you on the roof?’
‘Yes, I am. Who is this?’
‘This is Fire Captain David McConnell. We’re doing our very best with mechanical problematics here, sir. We’ll get you down, we will.’
‘Define the crap you just said.’
‘Please don’t be angry. This never happens, but it did. The ladder mechanism on one of our trucks locked up. They test it every week. But you don’t care about that. Another truck will be here in minutes. In the meantime we’re going to be spraying you with water to keep you cool. We can do that. Is that all right?’
‘Man, is a bear Catholic? Look, if your folks can get inside the hotel, there’s a black policewoman in the lobby who’s injured. Possibly shot.’
‘Do you know where she is in the lobby, sir?’
He noticed that the man’s voice didn’t even betray a hitch at the word ‘shot.’ How could you become that inured to catastrophe? He shook Gloria’s shoulder to call her to full consciousness. ‘Where do you think Paula is?’
She came around, barely, and he felt the weight against him lessen. ‘Near the basement door, behind the counter.’
He repeated it.
‘Stay on the line, sir. I’m going to hand you over to firefighter Willie Stone while I attend to things. You’re in good hands. Is that OK with you?’
‘Go, go!’
‘Hello, sir.’
‘Hello, Willie. How come you’re expendable?’
The man laughed once. ‘I’m a rookie, but my dad was a big fire hero so they keep me close to the captain. And I know what I’m doing. Who are you?’
‘My name is Jack, and I’ve got four other people up here that I’m responsible for: a teenage boy, two very old men and a police officer who’s my wife and who’s nearly unconscious with injury. Tell me the truth about the chopper.’
There was the tiniest of hesitations. ‘Aerial won’t be back, sir. Not with a twenty-meter plume of flame shooting out of the roof. Sorry, Jack, the Fortnum looks like a birthday cake from hell. But it’s all defined procedure now. We’ve got you. It’s a toss-up whether Westlake Number Eleven from Seventh and Union, or Chinatown Number Four from North Main will get there first to replace the defective truck. They’re both less than a mile away and coming like hell on their sirens. They’ll be there damn fast, I promise you.’
He could hear the wails approaching. ‘Have you got guys inside yet?’
‘Yes, just now. Tommy Smiley from Station Number Nine with a full silver firesuit and oxygen.’
A mist began wafting across the roof and then a steadier patter, plopping down on them. ‘Whoa, we got water here.’
‘Good. You’ll get more, sir.’
And as he said it, the artificial rain redoubled.
‘I suppose that’s reassuring,’ Jack Liffey said dubiously.
‘Yes, sir.’ The man didn’t add, ‘That’s probably all it’s good for,’ but Jack Liffey could sense that’s what he was thinking.
The water streams arcing down at several points couldn’t do anything about the superhot flare in the middle of the roof, steaming away to nothing as they approached it, but he noticed that where water pattered down on the tarpaper nearby it was starting to boil off to a fog, and he felt the roof getting tacky under his shoes.
Then the water began to splash heavily on to them and became a little unpleasant.
‘You got an ETA for those ladder trucks?’ Jack Liffey asked.
But Willie Stone was apparently otherwise occupied, though the phone crackled as if the line was still open.
‘I’m a narc!’ Thibodeaux shouted, as they surrounded him. ‘You’re all in real trouble now!’
‘Man, you’re so fulla shit your eyes are brown.’
‘I’m going to set off a grenade and take you all to hell with me!’
A man named G-dog tripped him from behind and several of them pinned the minuscule white man down to the street against his desperate thrashing.
‘Listen up, assclown, you nothing at all!’ G-Dog shouted in his face. ‘Stay the fuck still.’
Two police officers were striding their way toward them – Smarty and Pantsy, as they were known locally, but not to their faces. Chopper Tyrus was sitting on the curb, holding his stomach and arm where he’d been stabbed, and he was moaning a little, but he didn’t appear to be bleeding badly. A middle-aged woman held out with two fingers the large knife someone had grabbed from Thibodeaux – as if it were a dead rodent.
‘Officers! That there’s the cutter who attacked us. You gots to take him.’
Is there more vanity in holding on to your miserable scribblings or in throwing them carelessly into a fire to suggest that you just don’t care about your own ego and its outpourings?
‘Stop writing now, Conor! You have to pay attention to what’s happening right here!’ He wasn’t actually writing. Jack Liffey grabbed the small black notebook out of his hand as he seemed to be contemplating tossing it toward the pillar of flame.
Ironically, he came near doing the same thing out of pique. But he hesitated, with a glance at the boy, as if to check whether he was worthy. The whole world around them was transforming into a miasma of hot fog.
‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m a bad accident, I think. Go on and throw it in the fire. It’s valueless.’
He tucked the notebook into his pocket with a grimace. ‘Maybe everybody deserves to try to be known.’
Moses Vartabedian had finally managed to get the smeary little sash window in his supply room to stutter up eighteen inches, and his chin rested on the sill, his eyes fixed on the scene outside – a single towering flame rising off the roof and more fire down at street level. The blaze was obviously well on its way to consuming any hope for a Fortnum Luxury Lofts, the heart of the new arts downtown. The rear of a big firetruck was visible peeking around the building from San Julian and fire hoses seemed to be having little effect.
He had no doubts, really, no rationales to struggle with any more. McCall and Thibodeaux had gone apeshit over there for some reason – predictably, he supposed, but expressly against orders. Yet who in the press or the D.A’s office was going to take the side of an Armenian slumlord? A man with far more money in the bank than any of them had. Look here, people, a prime example of immigrant greed. And he’d contributed to them all, too – election years, public record – so they’d be forced to make an example of him to exonerate themselves.
All he’d ever wanted to do was his part to make the city better and more habitable, more beautiful, one or two buildings at a time. It did no favor to the homeless to bottle them all up in that one sewer of neglect, and certainly did no favor to the city. The Nickel. Skid Row. He hated those expressions. The New Arts District was what it would be. It was just starting to happen and would come to fruition one day, but without him now, he knew that.
‘They’re here!’ Jack Liffey yelled.
As fate would have it, both the replacement ladder trucks arrived at the same moment and began to defer like mad to one another – Alphonse and Gaston – but finally one conceded the game and the other one backed up to another flank of the building. None too soon. The blowtorch flame had been carving the roof outward minute by minute despite all the water pouring onto it. One section of roof toward the far edge had caved in and was leaking ugly black smoke. They hugged one another in the artificial rain and fog, their immediate world getting very warm and humid.
