Love and Chaos: A Brooklyn Girls Novel

by Burgess, Gemma

  “Fuck you!” I push past him. “I told you things I’ve never told anyone. Ever. I was so fucking honest with you! And you just … you lied and lied and lied!” My voice breaks.

  “But no, Angie, I didn’t lie. My parents are divorced, my mom is in New Mexico—”

  “And your dad? He’s dead, is he? How was it, dropping out of college?” I say, jabbing the button for the elevator. “Sam Carter! You even lied about your name!”

  “No, Angie, it’s my middle name—”

  “And you pretended you didn’t know New York. You grew up here! You probably know it better than anyone! You’re not living on your buddy’s floor; this is your apartment! That was your car service! And all that time we spent, counting our pennies, talking about how broke we were, what we’d buy if we could only get jobs—for what? All just to get laid? Just to trick me into bed? Or do you just like fucking with people?”

  “No! Angie, it’s not like that—”

  “Bullshit!” I stab at the elevator button again violently. “More bullshit!”

  “This is my brother’s apartment, really, it is, I swear, but yeah, I do sort of live here, now, but I haven’t lived in the city in a long time and my dad and I haven’t spoken in years, I never—”

  “Stop fucking talking!” I scream, putting my hands over my ears. “I trusted you! I am so sick of people lying and bullshitting me and just using me to get what they want!”

  Sam looks like he’s about to cry. “No, darling, no—”

  Finally, the elevator arrives. I step in, ignoring Sam’s pleas, and press the button for the first floor a dozen times. He tries to get in with me, but I shove him out of the elevator as hard as I can.

  “Fuck off! Just fuck off and leave me alone! I never want to see you again.”

  As the elevator doors close, I see Sam’s face crumple with misery. But I don’t care. I mean it.

  I will never see him again.

  Then I collapse against the elevator wall, sobbing. If this is heartbreak, it’s not a figure of speech: I’m in real, physical pain. Something inside me has broken and will never heal. My heart, no, my whole body hurts.

  I finally get to the lobby and look through the glass doors. The storm is raging wildly, the wind howling, the rain coming down so hard and fast that I can hardly see out of the building, let alone across the street. I’ve never seen a storm like this.

  But I have to get home.

  So I take a deep breath and push the doors open.

  The moment I leave the building the ice-cold rain hits me, like a solid wall of water.

  The trees are whipping back and forth, almost touching the ground, and above the screams and moans of the storm, I can hear sirens and strange cracking sounds. Half the streetlamps are out, giving the whole street an eerie gap-toothed look, and the night sky has changed from gray-purple to a scary green-gray. There are no cabs, not a person in sight.…

  Oh God, I don’t think it’s safe to be outside. But I need to get home to Rookhaven.

  I need my friends.

  I start running. The wind makes it feel like I’m being held back by invisible hands, and the wall of rain is sleeting down so hard it actually hurts.

  At the corner I hear a strange squealing sound, turn and look behind me, and—in a split second so surreal that it’s almost like I’m dreaming—I see an enormous tree fall over, with an agonizing lurch, across the street, crushing a car. Holy shit.

  My heart beating with fear and adrenaline, I push on, ignoring the instinct that’s telling me to get the fuck to shelter, listening only to the crazed voice inside me screaming, Run away, run away.…

  Then the hail starts. Chunks of ice smashing down to the ground, but also hitting me sideways, and whipping straight from left to right, like pebbles in a blender, pinging off cars with an audible cracking sound. What the hell?

  The sky is now flashing yellow and gray, debris whipping in circles, and the wind is shrieking all around me.…

  Oh, my God. I’m in a tornado.

  CHAPTER 35

  I saw a documentary once about tornadoes in big cities. Everyone thinks they only happen in the Midwest, with old farmhouses getting ripped up and landing on witches, cows whipping around looking mildly surprised, all that sort of thing. But they can happen anywhere. And the tornadoes in a city like New York are, in a way, the most dangerous. Because everything—everything—becomes a weapon of destruction. Street signs, garbage cans, trees, cars … You name it, and the tornado will use it to kill you.

  So I do the only thing I can think of: I run right back up the street to Sam’s apartment building, around the side, and down a driveway ramp slick with rainwater to the underground garage. It’s inch-deep in water already, freezing cold and pitch-black, but it feels about as safe as I can imagine.

  I climb on top of a Hummer—a car I’ve been known to climb on before, funnily enough—and sit there shivering, listening to the storm rage outside.

  My cell has no reception, so I’ll just stay here until it’s over. I lie back, staring at the concrete ceiling as tears stream down my face. They haven’t stopped since I left the apartment. Sam lied.

  I hear cracks and creaks and shrieks and thuds. My imagination quickly goes wild picturing all of Manhattan and Brooklyn flattened, every building smashed to smithereens, every tree uprooted, like something out of a movie—something that matches how I feel inside. Sam lied to me. He lied and lied and lied.…

  I think back to every conversation we ever had, every chance he had to tell me he was a rich boy just like Stef’s gang. Instead he said he was from Ohio, that he’d dropped out of college, that his dad was dead.… Why? Why?

  Then, just like that, everything goes quiet. The storm is over. The rain has stopped. But the ramp leading down here has become a fast-flowing river of water and leaves and garbage and—

  Holy shit! I’m moving. The Hummer is floating across the garage. I look around wildly. The garage is flooding! Then again, of course it’s flooding. It’s a fucking basement. It’s the first thing that floods. Thank God my bedroom is on the third—

  Oh no.

  Vic.

  The moment I realize Vic could be in danger I climb down from the car, splash my way through the dirty storm water, trudge up the ramp to the street, and run as fast as I can toward Union Street.

  Brooklyn is battered. Every single tree has been stripped of any early spring leaves, some ripped out of the earth and thrown across sidewalks and cars; skylights and chunks of roofs and iron gates are lying, bent and twisted, in the middle of the road; car windows are smashed in by hail … It’s like a war zone.

  It takes me forever to reach Carroll Gardens, but I don’t even notice the wet sweatpants flapping around my shoes, or how numb with cold my hands are, or the storm-created chaos I pass along the way. I don’t think about Sam, or my life, or my problems.

  All I think about is Vic.

  He’s all alone. What if he fell? What if he’s trapped inside? People drown all the time in flash floods. He’s old; he’s probably frailer than he looks.

  Finally, I reach Union Street.

  “Are the basements flooded?” I ask a woman coming out of her brownstone, just a few doors up from Rookhaven.

  She stares at me, her eyes lit up in panic. “Boerum Hill is flooding! The storm drains gave way, it’s three feet deep in water! My sister lives up there, and—”

  “But what about our street?” I interrupt her. “What about our basements?”

  She turns and looks back at her brownstone. “Oh … shit.”

  Immediately, the woman turns and runs toward her basement, and with a thud of dread, I sprint the last thirty feet to Rookhaven, going straight to the door underneath our stoop.

  “Vic? Vic! Vic!” I pound my hands against his front door, slapping them so hard my skin hurts.

  No response. I hold my ear against the door: I can’t hear anything inside, but I’m suddenly sure, totally sure, that he’s in there.

  �
��VIC!” I scream at the top of my lungs, and then listen again.… I think I hear a knocking sound, but I’m not sure.

  So I turn and run up the stoop, two steps at a time, fumbling in my clutch for my keys, and let myself into Rookhaven.

  “Is anyone home?” I yell.

  No response.

  I run through the house to the kitchen and out onto our back deck, which is covered in broken branches and still-frozen chunks of hail. From the railing, I can see Vic’s backyard: a swirling, churning mass of brown water, lit from our kitchen window. And it’s surging toward his apartment.

  Holy shit.

  Rookhaven really is flooding.

  Without pausing to even think about it, I take off my sodden coat and climb down over the fire escape railings, dangle for a few petrifying seconds, and land with a splash in the backyard. The dark, dank water comes up almost to my knees and is freezing cold and flowing fast. I wade, with difficulty, to the door leading to Vic’s kitchen. I can see the water pressure changing as I get near the house and feel the pull on my legs: it’s swirling, seeping in underneath the glass door, but still rising.…

  I cup my hands over the glass door and try to look in: nothing but darkness, but again, I’m overwhelmed by the strongest feeling that he’s in there. I knock frantically, screaming, “Vic? Are you in there? Vic! It’s me, Angie! I’m coming in!”

  I try to open the door; naturally it’s locked. I look around for something to use to break it open and see an old flowerpot outside the kitchen windowsill. The flowers in it are destroyed by the storm anyway, so I pick it up and smash it hard against the glass of the back door.

  The flowerpot shatters. The glass is intact. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

  I look around again and see a little wood-and-metal stool that Vic sits on sometimes, floating in the dark water. I pick it up and, with all my strength, swing it as hard as I can against the back door window. It smashes clean through. Then I take off my cardigan and use it to pluck out the broken shards of glass, until there’s a hole big enough to reach in and unlock the door from the inside.

  As I open it, I’m swept into the pitch-black apartment so fast I fall over, landing face-first in the revolting floodwater. Oh, God, I hope no sewage pipes have burst; it stinks, this water stinks. Fighting panic, I push myself up, leaning against the wall to stand up.

  “Vic?” I yell. “Vic?”

  Nothing. I’ve never even been in Vic’s apartment before, so I don’t know where I’m going. I’m going to have to feel my way through the apartment inch by inch and find a light switch.

  “Vic? Are you in here? It’s Angie! I’m coming!”

  Rookhaven is unusually wide for a brownstone, but also long, and from the back of the house to the front is a long way. Especially in the pitch dark. And even more especially in knee-high freezing floodwater.

  Calling Vic’s name the whole way, I edge through the kitchen, my hands groping wildly in the darkness. I can feel the edge of the counter, a fridge, a sink, and then a door. The water swirls around me, pulling and pushing me, rising by the second.

  I wade through the doorway and down a hall. There is a room immediately to my left, and I shout Vic’s name again. The hollow echo makes me sure it’s the bathroom, the one that Sam’s been helping Vic renovate, and Vic’s not in there. Sam. My heart aches for a moment. But I need to find Vic. Nothing is important right now except saving Vic.

  I continue slowly making my way down the hall, smoothing my hands up and down the walls looking for a light switch. Nothing! Where are the light switches in this damn house?

  Then a space opens up in front of my arms. Thanks to light coming in the windows on the far wall, I can just see that I’m in the living room and can barely make out a door on the far right wall. The bedroom. He must be in there.

  “Vic? Vic!”

  It feels like forever, but I make it to the doorway and hear a funny buzzing sound that starts, stops, and starts and stops again. Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.…

  I peer around, trying to make out the shapes in the room. I think I can see a bed, and a person lying on it.

  Suddenly, I hear a moan.

  “Vic?” I say. “Vic, is that you? Are you okay?”

  There’s definitely someone here. The buzzing sound has stopped, and I put my hands out to the wall for the light switch.

  Found it.

  Just as I’m about to turn the switch on the buzzing starts again, and with it, a strange, tiny spark. For a brief moment the room lights up, and I can make out a bed, with Vic lying on it. The spark came from the base of an old lamp on a nightstand that’s almost covered in the murky floodwater.

  Oh, my God.

  I snatch my hand off the light switch. I’m standing in three feet of fast-rising water that’s about to touch live electricity.

  I could be killed at any second.

  CHAPTER 36

  I do the only thing I can think of.

  I reach out to the nearest piece of furniture, a tall dressing table, and climb on it. My clothes are wet and heavy, but the adrenaline is rushing through me and I don’t even notice.

  “Vic? Vic, it’s Angie. Are you okay?”

  “Girlie?” I can hear Vic’s voice, soft and breathy. “I was fixing the lamp. I was—”

  “Did you get an electric shock?”

  Vic tries to reply, I think, but all that comes out is a sort of wheezy sound. Fuck! Does he have asthma? The water is about to cover his bed, too. If it does, he’ll be killed.

  My mind is racing. Could an electric shock cause a heart attack? Does Vic have a pacemaker that could have short-circuited or something? I don’t even know. He’s about eighty years old; an electric shock probably isn’t the best thing that could happen to him no matter what other health conditions he might have.

  “Where can I turn off the electricity, Vic? Where’s the fuse box?”

  “Kitchen,” he wheezes. “Above the icebox.”

  I jump off the dresser, landing with a splash in the still-rising floodwater. It’s midthigh now; in just a minute or two it’ll cover his bed!

  With agonizingly slow progress, I swim-jog down the hallway back to the pitch-darkness of the kitchen. There, I find the refrigerator, and the fuse box above it. I open the door and feel my way along the little switches. What am I doing? I can’t remember doing this ever before, in my whole goddamn life … but I remember seeing my dad doing it once, when the Christmas tree lights blew out all the electricity in the living room at my grandmother’s house. He just flicked the one switch that was facing the wrong way back to the same side as the others.

  So, since all these fuses are turned on, and all the switches are facing the same way, all I need to do is turn them back the other way in order to turn them off. Right? Right.

  I quickly flip each switch one by one with a satisfying click. When I’m all done, of course, nothing happens.

  But now I’m less likely to be electrocuted. So let’s call that a plus.

  I make my back to Vic’s room, my heart pounding with cold and adrenaline and fear.

  He’s still breathing but now seems to be unconscious. “Vic! Please wake up!” I shake his shoulders, my voice high with panic. “Vic! Please!”

  I try to pick him up, but I can’t budge him. He’s over a foot taller than me, and though he’s skinny, he still weighs a ton. If I got him off the bed into the water, I could never support him, he’d just sink through the water to the floor. He would probably drown. But I can’t leave him here, either. He needs medical help. God! What am I going to do?

  He doesn’t stir. I put my ear to his mouth—the way Sam did to Coco when she overdosed—to see if he’s still breathing. But I’m trembling so hard from the cold I can’t feel anything.

  Shit. I don’t know what to do. I just … I don’t know what to do.

  At that moment I hear a voice at the door. “Vic? Vic! It’s Julia, are you okay?”

  “Julia! Help me!”

  Another voice. “Vic? It
’s me, Sam!”

  What the fuck is Sam doing here?

  “Angie?” Julia’s voice is high with stress and panic. “Where are you? Where’s Vic?”

  “He’s in here, in the bedroom!” I call. “He’s unconscious; I think he was electrocuted or something!”

  “How did you get in?”

  “I broke in the back door when I saw the flooding, but listen, you need to call an ambulance, okay? Vic’s in bad shape and the water’s still rising in here.”

  “I’ll call 911!” shouts Julia.

  Then I hear Sam’s voice, but louder, and I can see the shaky whiteness of a flashlight in the living room. “Angie? Where are you?”

  Seconds later, Sam wades into the bedroom. The flashlight is so bright that I shield my eyes. “How long have you been here? Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know, a few minutes? Vic was conscious before; he told me he was fixing the lamp. I think a lightning strike caused a surge of electricity or something.” I ignore Sam’s second question.

  “Angie, we have to talk—”

  “Now really isn’t the fucking time, Sam,” I snap. “We have to help Vic.”

  “I was so worried about you out in the storm, I’ve been combing the fucking streets—”

  “Not now! Help me carry Vic out of here!”

  In silence, we carry Vic through the floodwater to the front door, where there are two steps up to street level. Thank God Sam is here: Julia and I could never have supported the weight of Vic alone. Outside, the water hasn’t even risen as far as our stoop. Rookhaven—our part of Rookhaven—is fine.

  We gently place Vic on the sidewalk, lying flat, his head resting on Sam’s coat, and I crouch next to him and hold his hand.

  Sam checks his pulse and his breath, the way I did earlier.

  “I did that already, he’s breathing,” I say. “But I think it’s getting weaker.”

  Sam checks Vic’s hands. “Does he have any injuries? Electric shocks can burn the skin. Can you smell anything? You should be able to smell the burn.”

  “No,” I say. People get cooked by electric shocks?

  Julia comes bounding back down the stoop.