I gasped, sucking in air around me, and covered my mouth with both hands at the sight of him reeling onto our big leather couch. He tried to stand but was clearly stunned as a thick man in a plaid suit swung his fist again, cracking my dad’s nose. I heard my mom scream off camera. I watched the man turn and when he did, my breath caught in my throat—I saw that terrifying ski mask. He left my dad and sprang in the direction of my mom’s outburst. My dad struggled to his feet and went after him, and I heard something break, something shatter, and then he came spinning back to the couch, and there was Ski Mask Guy bounding after him, raising a baseball bat high in the air—
And then the screen became a blizzard of pixels.
I was ice from brain to toes.
I could not move or think, breathe, or feel.
All I could do was stare at the tiny crackling black-and-white dots and allow myself to fall into them.
And then, zap! The picture was back, and I jumped, and it was my dad again, slumped on the couch with his nose and mouth streaming blood, his hands tied behind his back. Even with the poor picture, I could tell from the weird angle of his left leg that it was broken. Somewhere far away Lou yelled and a door slammed, and then Harry was barking and my mother was screaming, and I saw every sound, every plea for help register horribly on my dad’s face. His chin dipped onto his chest, and when it grew momentarily quiet, he lifted his head and looked into the camera.
“Sara Jane,” he said in a raspy whisper.
“Dad?” I said. “Daddy?”
“Please . . . I pray to God . . . that you find this tape,” he said. “There’s no reason you should, I have no hope, except . . . except that you’re you, Sara Jane. You may not be aware of it, but there’s something in you that’s . . . so strong.” He stopped then, trying to hold back tears, swallowing them, and said, “You were right, I should have told you about the family, about the bakery, and about me. Especially about me. But now there’s no time . . . ” And he jerked his head, hearing something I couldn’t. He grimaced, straining against the ropes that bound his hands, and freed them, rubbing his wrists and flexing his fingers. He looked nervously over his shoulder and then started speaking again, faster and more desperate, saying, “They might hear me, he might . . . listen carefully, sweetheart. Listen inside my words and behind my words.”
I moved close to the screen.
I touched his face and felt cold glass.
He looked at me and whispered, “Sara Jane . . . go to the God of Fire. Go to it, go through it, and discover all of its secrets. The God of Fire, Sara Jane . . . are you listening to me? Its secrets will save you. The God of Fire . . .”
“God of what? Who were you talking to?” a woman’s voice demanded, high and shrill, asking the question off camera; the poor quality of the audio allowed only that the voice was feminine. Ski Mask Guy lumbered into the frame, his back to the camera, as the voice shrieked, “Who you were talking to? What did you just say?”
Weakly, my father said, “Go to hell.”
Ski Mask Guy yanked him upright, my dad grimacing on broken bones. There was a second or two of imbalance and my dad seized it, twisting and throwing a perfect left hook, fist cracking on jaw, and Ski Mask Guy went into a slow tim-berrr, like a redwood about to fall. But then he found his feet, shook his head, and lunged with both hands. They wrapped around my dad’s neck just as they’d wrapped around mine, and I felt them again, watching my dad try vainly to loosen the punishing death grip.
“Repeat it or you’re dead,” the woman hissed. “Who were you talking to?”
My dad’s face was tightening from lack of oxygen, his eyes wide and bulging, and his fingers dug frantically into Ski Mask Guy’s hands as he uttered a few last words before the tape ran out.
I heard what he said but was unsure what he meant.
Was it an answer to the question—“Who were you talking to?”
Nobody! Nobody! No . . . !
Or, so much worse—was it a final plea for mercy?
No, Buddy! No, Buddy! No . . . !
* * *
The recesses of a troubled brain at rest are terrible places because they have no boundaries—no backward or forward or beginning or end. They are timeless, bottomless pits where a sleeping soul goes to sort out its worries and woes.
The body’s electricity hums at a lower rate while blood flow slackens its pace.
Limbs are immobilized, eyelids flicker.
Whispered clues escape moving lips.
Meanwhile, the subconscious spins like an awful, haunted buzz saw. It turns faster and faster, ripping through the day’s events, shredding forgotten memories, and slicing to bits all hope for the future. Among that splintered debris, it searches for an answer, or if not an answer, resolution, or if not resolution, peace.
Willy was right—somehow I slept.
It was not restful sleep.
I did not wake peacefully or with resolution.
But I did have an answer.
I blinked awake late Saturday afternoon knowing exactly where I was and what had happened. Gray sunlight leaked through the glass windows and Harry had somehow made it to my cot, his head on my chest. I stared at the ceiling, parsing my dream, which had been less a dream than a search through the archives of my brain until I stopped on the day long ago when I rushed into the kitchen of the bakery, excited and upset over my first kiss, and melodramatically threatened to climb inside the oven.
I remembered my dad and grandpa overreacting in a way that seemed silly then, but meaningful now.
I remembered how Uncle Buddy was as confused as I was over their outburst, having no idea what they were talking about.
Then my dream switched to my literature teacher, Ms. Ishikawa.
She was pacing the front of a classroom, relating a subject that should have been boring except that she was always so excited, and her excitement was contagious.
Mandi Fishbaum stopped buffing her nails, Walter J. Thurber moved the hair out of his eyes, Gina stopped whispering, and Doug set aside his laptop as Ms. Ishikawa recounted with great drama the violent, stormy world of the Roman gods.
Jupiter was the king of the gods, the ruler of sky and thunder.
His wife, Juno, was goddess of the Roman Empire.
Together, they produced a misshapen little boy who eventually developed into civilization’s most famous pyromaniac.
Lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, I recalled the name of their son, who would one day become the God of Fire.
It was stamped in capital letters on the door of the bakery oven.
Vulcan.
12
LIKE A GANG OF ANTS frantically breaking down a molasses cookie, my mind went over and over what I now knew—clawing, chewing, and digesting it.
Sitting across the table from Willy, sipping tea, my eyes darted in time to a jumpy electrical thought process that ended at the oven, and only the oven. By the end of that long Saturday holed up inside Windy City Gym, it was clear that my single option was to go to the bakery alone. I had involved Willy too deeply already, which was why I didn’t tell him what I’d seen on the mini-camera tape. If I had, he would have insisted on coming along to help me, and I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to him—the only person I had left.
My plan was to sneak out of the gym before daybreak on Sunday morning.
It wouldn’t occur to me until much later that I’d missed my date with Max.
Maybe he waited outside the Davis Theater Sunday afternoon checking his watch or maybe he went inside alone and counted from Ten Seconds to Zero until the world blew up.
My own world was so focused on the great iron oven that served as the flaming core of Rispoli & Sons that the idea of Max seemed remote and out of reach, like a luxury I couldn’t afford but wanted nonetheless. I understood that I now had no time for him, but my heart disagreed—it thumped disjointedly in time to his name—with the difference between logic and desire equaling me thinking of him numbly.
Early Sunday, while it was dark outside, I shimmied down from the Crow’s Nest. Harry whined insistently as I tried to leave, showing signs of his usual, assertive self, so I wrapped him around my neck and brought him along. He hadn’t coughed up blood in twenty-four hours and was on his feet, but wobbly. He padded softly behind me across the gym and when I whispered “Stay” outside Willy’s apartment, he did. I crept inside and found the keys to the Lincoln on a brass hook, and as I lifted them, a soft buzzing rose behind me. Willy was snoring on the couch, glasses on his forehead, one hand on his chest and the other dangling loosely with a length of steel pipe on the floor at his fingertips. I knew how tough he was—I’d seen him spar with guys decades younger and teach them hard lessons to the nose and jaw—and knew the steel pipe was a sign that he meant business. If anyone came after me on Willy’s turf, he’d deal with them South Side Chicago style. His readiness to beat a thug sideways in my defense warmed my heart and steadied my nerve.
I found the Lincoln parked in the alley behind the gym.
I put Harry on the backseat and buckled him in.
I turned the key, the engine hummed, and I lost that nerve instantly.
The bakery had always been alive to me, with its fresh tastes and familiar warm smells, its singsong soundtrack of spoken Italian, and the rightness of my family in that place. We owned it, and it owned us. When I thought of my grandparents, I thought of the kitchen’s powdery white flour and sweet yellow dough, the brass cash register, neon sign in the window, and sparkling cases filled with pastries. The musical clink of a wooden spoon as it turned batter around a bowl made me think of Uncle Buddy. In my mind’s eye I saw my dad concentrating like a sculptor and whistling an overture as he rolled and shaped cookies. The bell over the door jangled, and I watched my mom enter, chatting and laughing, holding Lou’s hand.
What I thought of now was how the bakery would be locked and deserted.
It would be silent, dark, and dusty.
Emptiness can be the most terrifying thing in the world.
I made an impulsive right turn and sped along desolate streets toward the Loop. The sun was rising over the lake, its pink glow reflecting on canyons of glass and steel, while lines of streetlights popped off behind me, one following another. There was a time not so long ago when I would beg my father to take me along on early morning deliveries of doughnuts and croissants. Even in the summertime, it was cool outside at six a.m. as we drove through the city with the delivery truck windows rolled down. The Loop (named for the elevated trains that loop around it) is the busiest area of Chicago during the week, with literally millions of people coming and going to work. Sidewalks are filled with fast-moving pedestrians while impatient cars creep behind jumpy taxis that dart around crawling buses. Commuter trains rumble past in a long, elevated oval, drawbridges clang up and down, airplanes roar overhead leaving white smoky lines, and car horns and construction noise and people shouting and sirens blipping are the orchestra of the city that does not slacken until late at night.
Early in the morning, it’s such a different place that it’s almost a different planet.
Cabbies, bleary-eyed from working all night or beginning at dawn, drive lazily along deserted boulevards. Maintenance men hose cigarette butts off high-rise sidewalks, Chicago Transit Authority workers in crisp uniforms amble toward subway and El stations, and the random go-getter, yoga-stretched and dressed for success hours before his coworkers, power-walks down empty sidewalks. This was the Loop I crept through in the Lincoln, unwilling or unable to face the tomblike atmosphere of the bakery, needing something safe and familiar to fortify my soul before I took the leap.
Blocks later, I hung a hard left onto Jackson Boulevard.
There was the old diner and its retro lampposts, Route 66 sign, and curved counter just inside the picture window.
The sign for Lou Mitchell’s glows in pinkish-orange neon, and announces humbly that it serves the world’s finest coffee.
I parked on Jackson, made sure Harry was comfortable, and entered the place that was already half full before most Chicagoans had even opened an eye. The old water purifier burbled by the entrance like always, the smell of crisp bacon and Greek toast filled the air like always, the background thrummed with morning conversation like always—these small, reassuring things connected me to my family. I sat at the counter and ordered coffee. The waitress paused when she set down the steaming mug, looking at her watch and then back at me. The coffee reached my nostrils hot and acidic, and I sipped its strength. As I did, I noticed the waitress’s gaze drift and her eyebrows raise. Without moving my head, I glanced sideways at a Chicago police officer in blue, also in mid-sip, taking the waitress’s cue to inspect me. His face remained blank as his eyes moved over me—the thick, gray walrus mustache twitching thoughtfully under his nose was the only giveaway that he was concerned. I realized what he was seeing was not pretty—a sixteen-year-old girl alone at six in the morning after more than twenty-four hours in the Crow’s Nest with no shower following a world-class ass-kicking, wearing ancient sweats, a face full of bruises, and a nose that, just by its disproportionate size, hinted at trouble. Trying to look casual in that situation was impossible—every fidget made me feel guilty of something, which made me behave guiltily, which made me fidget even more. I was scared to look at him, but realized that he was punching a cell phone.
He murmured into it while staring at me.
Suddenly, I felt as if the entire diner were staring at me.
Turning on my stool, the entire place looked like it was stuffed with cops.
Nerves tingled sickly in my stomach as I glanced around the room. Every table and booth held one or two burly guys with close-cropped hair, or a pair of tough-looking women with no-nonsense expressions. All of them wore casual clothing meant to disguise their copness, which only broadcast it instead. I was sure they were looking at me, or just looking away from me, or trying to act as if they weren’t looking at me at all. Maybe Detective Smelt had been tailing me all along and these were her people. Maybe they were just waiting for the right time to pounce.
I sipped coffee, trying to calm down, but then listened to my gut.
It said to forget calming down and wise up.
It told me that unless I did something quick, I’d be leaving the diner in handcuffs.
The officer leaned toward me and smoothed his mustache, about to say something, but I jumped to my feet and hurried to the restroom. I entered the last stall, locked the door, and began biting my thumbnail—there were no windows to climb out of, and I doubted that sprinting for the exit would result in anything other than being tackled by cops. I felt like all four walls were pushing in at me, and that my fate rested just outside the door. I held my head in my hands and stared at linoleum, searching for a solution.
There it was, on the floor between my feet.
I picked up a book of matches, despite my parents’ warning never to play with fire.
Except that I wasn’t playing—I was deadly serious.
I counted to three, then left the stall and began working quickly, yanking paper towels from one dispenser and the other until both sinks were full. I wet half of them and stuffed them into the bottom of a garbage can. Then I packed the dry paper towels tightly on top, praying that the wet ones would extinguish the others if need be.
I struck a match and smelled sulfur.
It flamed and I realized what a stupid and dangerous thing I was doing.
I didn’t care, and dropped it.
Bits of fire attacked the dry paper towels, leaping nimbly from one to another. Just like in Girl Scouts, I blew on the baby flames until they spread and grew, and the trickle of smoke became a black plume filling the restroom. When it was hard to breathe, I counted to three and kicked open the door, shouting, “Fire! Fire!” The room froze until a thick, scary gust of smoke rolled out behind me, and then everything was in motion. People screame
d, an alarm was pulled and began to wail, some customers leaped to their feet and ran for the exit while others came toward me. A jittery busboy with a fire extinguisher tripped and dropped it, its contents sliming the floor, a waitress slid and fell, and I jumped over her, headed for the door, when a steely grip attached itself to my arm.
The cop said, “Hang on there! Stop!”
“Let me go!” I said, trying to yank free.
“What’s this about?” he said. “Did you . . . ?”
And then someone bellowed for help, and the restaurant manager was tugging desperately on the cop’s sleeve. He was torn between me and a real emergency. I saw the choice on his face, and he gritted his teeth, released me, and ran toward the restroom. I turned and shoved through the crowd, elbowing my way onto the sidewalk, desperate to get to the Lincoln, and darted into the street.
That’s when I was hit by the fire truck.
I was in such a hurry that I hadn’t seen it flying up Jackson Boulevard.
A blast of its horn and squealing brakes were the last thing I heard before everything faded to black.
When I came to, I was lying on a gurney in the back of an ambulance with my head bandaged. I sat up and the world tilted, and I puked on the floor. The pain on the left side of my skull was so intense that I gasped, and I touched at it gingerly, feeling it pound against my fingertips. My ear was still there, which was good, and my face felt like it was in one piece, but barely. Bits of memory came to me then—glancing up at the last minute, seeing the bright steel mirror of the fire truck and feeling it clang against my face as the rest of the enormous red vehicle roared past. I looked at the scene outside through the windows of the ambulance—firemen hustled around Lou Mitchell’s, leaky hoses snaked through the street, flashing lights rolled on top of the fire truck and police cars—and I was overcome by a wave of guilt. Like waking from a dream, I realized that I’d caused all of this because I’d been gripped by paranoia.
I knew it was a delusional result of fear and anxiety (thanks, health sciences class) that attacked a person with feelings of a perceived threat.
Cold Fury Page 11