The Smoke Room

by Earl Emerson

  The evening after the fire I took my mother to the Seattle Aquarium, and we spent an hour watching the new sea otter pups. I could tell she knew something was wrong, but she didn’t press me. As was her habit, she took dozens of pictures with her digital camera and then had bystanders take photos of us together. I did my best to look carefree, but I don’t think I pulled it off.

  Two days after the fire my doorbell rang.

  When I answered the door, Iola Pederson breezed into my small duplex without invitation.

  “How did you know where I live?”

  “The other night I found your address on the desk, under the glass.”

  “I wish you’d called first.”

  “I do things on the spur of the moment. It’s the kind of girl I am. How have you been?”

  “Surviving.”

  “That good, huh?”

  It was late afternoon. I was in sweatpants and a fire department T-shirt, my hair mussed. Looking at her, all I could think about was the sex dreams I’d been having. There’d been a lot of TV footage from the fire, and this morning’s paper carried another piece on the grieving family, so I figured that was why she’d shown up. If my crew wasn’t going to rat me out, perhaps she was.

  “Well, well, well,” she said. “So this is where my little boy toy lives.”

  She did a walk-through of the kitchen, eating area, and living room and then sat heavily on my couch. Much of my paycheck went to the car out in the garage, so my furniture was mostly castoffs and hand-me-downs. Iola gave me that look—the same one that started things back at the fire station. She picked up a pair of my mother’s walking sandals from the floor next to the coffee table. “Girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Tiny feet, whoever she is.”

  “About the other night—”

  “I’ve always fantasized about making love to a fireman in a fire station. I still get goose bumps when I think about it. The thing is, in the fantasy my partner doesn’t get up and run out before we’re finished.”

  “The bell hit.”

  “I don’t see any bell here.”

  She got up, walked to the end of the hallway, pushed my bedroom door open, and strolled in. Articles of clothing began dropping off her limbs like autumn leaves. Nude, she jumped between my sheets and pulled the covers up until only her head and auburn hair peeked out.

  I went into the bathroom, half closed the door, and brushed my teeth, staring at myself in the mirror. Just looking at her brought back all the trauma of the night of the fire, and for a moment I considered tossing her out. On the other hand, there would be no consequences this time. And maybe being with her would erase some of the earlier memories.

  “What’d you do the other night after we left?” I asked from the bathroom.

  “Went home. Watched TV.”

  “You watch the news?”

  “I never watch the news.”

  “You read the papers?”

  “I read memoirs.” She didn’t have an inkling of what had happened at the fire.

  Tronstad called it DSB: deadly sperm buildup. I’d been thinking about her all day—when I wasn’t thinking about dead people—and the tantalizing glimpse of her backside and heavy, swinging breasts as she leaned over to peel back the covers on my bed moments earlier had aroused me, just as she knew it would.

  I slipped off my shirt, my sweatpants, and my socks and climbed under the covers.

  It was nearly five o’clock when she gathered up her clothing and scurried into the bathroom. When she emerged, I was at the kitchen sink washing lettuce for a salad.

  “See you later, darling.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Got to.”

  “I’m fixing dinner. Enchilada soup.”

  “I have to get home. I’ve got something going on tonight.” Uncertain of the etiquette involved, I stood facing her in the kitchen, mute and embarrassed. Kissing her good-bye seemed redundant, probably because we’d already done so much kissing that my lips were sore.

  “Can I have your phone number?”

  “I’ll be in touch,” she said.

  “What if I want to call you?”

  “Oh, don’t look so pitiful, honey. I just prefer you not to call.”

  “Could I drop by? Would that—”

  “Don’t ever come to my house!”

  I must have looked sadder than a broke-dick dog, because she closed the distance between us and kissed me on each cheek, my forehead, and the tip of my nose. “Don’t take everything so seriously. You really need to lighten up, sweetie. Anybody ever tell you that? Look, I’m in between phones now and we’ve got workmen in the house all day, so you don’t want to show up there. You really don’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “You do want to see me again?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t sound too sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I watched her drive away in a brand-new Toyota Land Cruiser that cost easily twice what my car had.

  After that we saw each other several times a week, and each time she left me feeling physically trashed and mentally bewildered. She quickly became verbally abusive, which I ascribed to her personality, assuming she was like that with all men. Perhaps because of the age difference, I tolerated it. As the number of our meetings increased, the manner of our first sexual encounter in the basement of Station 29 receded further from my thoughts and more into the forefront of hers. She never tired of talking about it, using the story almost as an aphrodisiac at each of our liaisons. It seemed to be the high point of her autumn, that evening in the station.

  We fell into a disturbing pattern.

  She showed up unannounced, parked out of sight around the corner on the potholed side street, blew in as if I were expecting her, and within minutes swept me into the bedroom, where we tore each other’s clothes off and went at it. After a while we started having sex on the sofa, on the floor, in the shower, or parked in her Land Cruiser in various locations around West Seattle. She was as randy as I was. She’d show up at lunchtime, or midafternoon. Only once did she arrive after supper.

  When I suggested we take in a movie or go out to eat, she invariably declined. What she wanted was sex, pure and simple, and she made no bones about it. She called me her boy toy, her little fireman, and the nonstop sex machine. I didn’t much care for the way our relationship was evolving, but her visits were spaced far enough apart that any notions I had about talking her into a real date dissolved by the time she showed up: DSB. Tronstad called it the perfect setup, sex with no entanglements. “Unload your nut sack without having to take her out in public.” Aside from him and Johnson, I told no one.

  We never discussed the fire or the deaths, and I hardly thought it possible she didn’t know about them, yet she didn’t seem to.

  A week after Arch Place, the battalion held a post-fire review, where talk circulated among the troops that I deserved an award for dragging the two civilians out. Chief Abbott dismissed the idea out of hand, creating general outrage, but I told everyone I didn’t want an award. What I wanted was to replay that night and get it right. Probably because it was heartfelt, the sentiment endeared me to all who heard it.

  7. CADAVER IN THE CAT HOUSE

  CHARLES SCOTT GHANET was one of our regular customers, a man every firefighter in the station knew by name. In fact, at 29’s we didn’t even call him Ghanet but referred to him less than affectionately as Charles Scott.

  Typically he called 911 somewhere between two and five A.M.

  Our crew believed his complaints were mostly fictitious, that he called because he was a hypochondriac and because he was lonely. Viewed in one light, he was sadder than a lost orphan in a bus station. On the other hand, getting up at three in the morning because some clown needed a warm body to talk to got old fast.

  Ghanet, who was sixty-eight but looked younger, routinely complained of stomach ailments, headaches, and pains in his joints and had several times hinted that he
might commit suicide, a theme he abandoned after he was told the SPD automatically responded to suicide threats.

  Despite our mixed feelings—and the fact that his house reeked of cats—we tried to treat Ghanet with the same courtesy and regard we gave each of our patients.

  It was a Sunday night when we got the call. Charles Scott Ghanet lived near Schmitz Park in an area of dry yards and treeless avenues, in a house that was small and nondescript. When we rolled up, I got off and collected the aid and vent kits while Tronstad grabbed the Lifepak. On the sidewalk, Lieutenant Sears spoke to a Latino man in jeans and an unbuttoned plaid shirt, then filled us in as we marched up to Ghanet’s front door. “Neighbor said he’s worried. He hasn’t seen any lights for a couple of days.”

  “Charles Scott didn’t call this in himself?” Tronstad asked.

  “The neighbor.”

  “Don’t you think this asshole might have called at noon instead of three in the morning?” Tronstad muttered. “Is this whole neighborhood retarded?”

  “Settle down,” said Sears.

  We banged on the barred door, and Lieutenant Sears called out loudly, “Charles Scott? Fire department! You okay? Charles?”

  “Maybe he had a stroke,” said Johnson, who had a theory about everything. “My aunt had a stroke.”

  Tronstad headed around the house with a flashlight, attempting to peer through the windows. Lieutenant Sears looked at Johnson and said, “Why don’t you go with him?”

  “A black man peeking in windows at three in the morning? I don’t think so.”

  I left Sears and Johnson glaring at each other. Together, Tronstad and I circled the house, pushing through knee-deep weeds. The blinds and drapes were pulled tight on the other side of the barred windows. Behind the house Ghanet’s fifteen-year-old pickup truck sat in the garage.

  “Fuckin’ Fort Knox,” said Tronstad. “I always wondered what he’s hiding in there.”

  “He got burgled once.”

  “I got burgled once, but I don’t live in a fuckin’ vault.”

  When we returned to the front door, Sears gave us a grim look.

  “What?” said Tronstad.

  Johnson said, “Take a peek through the mail slot.”

  Switching on my medical flashlight, I propped open the mail slot with two fingers and swept the beam across familiar stacks of old newspapers six feet tall and the backside of a piano half buried by storage. A distinctive odor wafted out the slot. Without waiting to be told, I went back to the rig and retrieved the Halligan tool and flathead ax we carried for forcible entry. It took a minute to get the heavy steel door open. Inside, the smell was worse—a lot worse.

  “Hey, yo,” Sears said. “Charles Scott? You in here?”

  Ghanet was a pack rat, one of those old-timers who hoarded every newspaper, article of clothing, coupon, magazine, book, car battery, camera instruction booklet, and canceled check he’d ever touched.

  Tronstad forged ahead, plowing through the piles of garbage as if on an Easter egg hunt, while I jumped in front of Lieutenant Sears. After the Arch Place fire Sears had treated me gingerly, thinking I’d been shaken because of the deaths. This would be my chance to prove corpses didn’t bother me.

  “Jesus. I wonder where the cats are?” Tronstad said as something dark and furry shot between my legs and out into the yard. A second feline shadow followed.

  It was a three-bedroom house, and if there hadn’t been garbage piled higher than our heads everywhere, we might have searched it in thirty seconds. As it was, it took our little train over a minute to reach the nook in front of the flickering television, where we usually met Ghanet. He was nowhere in sight.

  Like hamsters burrowing into tall grass, we continued our search. Tronstad went into the bathroom, while Sears made his way into the master bedroom. I explored the kitchen. A minute or two later, we met in the cramped pathway Ghanet had carved in the litter between the kitchen and the living room. “He’s not in there,” I said.

  “Not on the shitter,” Tronstad said.

  “Back East they lost a body in a situation like this,” said Sears. “Somebody found her a year later. She’d turned into a mummy.”

  “That isn’t going to happen here,” said Tronstad, with uncharacteristic resolve. “We’re not leaving until we find him.”

  Tronstad was already making his way to the second bedroom. Because of the junk in disorderly rows along both walls, we couldn’t see any of the hallway, or Tronstad, but we knew from past visits that except for the master bedroom, the other bedroom doors were padlocked.

  When Sears heard Tronstad forcing the bedroom door, he said, “Hey, Ted. What are you doing?”

  “He might be in here.”

  “The door’s locked from the outside, isn’t it?”

  “Home invasion. They break in and lock him inside. We go away and he turns into a mummy. You going to leave without taking a look?”

  The bedroom door burst open and Tronstad disappeared inside as if falling through a trapdoor. Sears followed, while I edged my way through the stacks. We found a neatly made queen bed, a bedside table, and a dressing stand, no disorder whatsoever. Gauging by the layers of undisturbed dust, there’d been no visitors in years. Tronstad opened the closet and pulled out a woman’s dress on a hanger, dangling a brassiere off one finger.

  “This is like Miss Havisham’s,” Sears said, peering under the bed.

  Tronstad exited the room. “Who’s Miss Havisham? Some patient you had when you worked at Thirty-one’s?”

  “The old maid in Great Expectations,” I explained. “Charles Dickens. Miss Havisham wore her wedding dress until it was rotting on her.”

  Tronstad stuck his head back in the doorway. “Charles fucking Dickens? You need to get a life, Juicy Fruit.”

  Within seconds Tronstad had cracked the door frame on the second bedroom and was stepping inside. I followed. Unlike the first bedroom, this one was a total mess. As we looked around, the lieutenant shouted from the other end of the house. “I found him. Code green the search. I found him.”

  I followed Sears’s voice to the bathroom, where the tub was stuffed with a large, swollen corpse, his head huge and bulging, as were his limbs and stomach, testicles the size of baseballs. All of his skin was black, and he looked like a blimp. “Where’s Charles Scott?” I asked.

  “This is Charles Scott.”

  “But Charles Scott isn’t black.”

  “He’s been dead a few days. This is what they do sometimes. Ted searched in here. How did he miss this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Geez, he’s ripe. I’ll call for a C and C. Tronstad! We found him. Code green the search.”

  Lieutenant Sears and I made our way through the junk to the front door and stepped outside into the cool night air. Sears keyed the mike on his portable radio and asked for the police and medical examiner. I took several deep breaths of clean air, but the stench seemed to have permeated my nostrils.

  When the neighbor Sears had spoken to came out of a house two doors down, Sears walked over and met him. As they went inside, I climbed into the officer’s seat next to Robert Johnson. “You find him?” Johnson asked.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Was it bad?”

  “No.”

  Johnson cradled the steering wheel and stared at the empty street through the windshield, his eyes drowsy. Five minutes later I felt somebody bouncing the rig and turned around to see Tronstad standing on the tailboard with a large black plastic garbage bag in his hands. A moment later Tronstad jogged to Ghanet’s house and disappeared inside and was still in there twenty minutes later when the police car arrived. Then as Sears and the SPD officer went through the front door, Tronstad sneaked out of the back, carrying another plastic bag.

  “What do you think he’s doing?” I asked, but Johnson was asleep.

  Obviously we weren’t supposed to touch the dead man’s belongings, yet on two previous alarms I’d seen Tronstad remove items from dead people�
�s homes, in one instance four commercial pornographic tapes. He claimed he was doing the dead man a favor by removing them so his loved ones wouldn’t be shocked. On another alarm with another DOA, he hooked a small picture frame. None of the items were of much value; it was almost as if the nature of the event required him to snitch souvenirs.

  Moments later, as Tronstad climbed into the crew cab, I said, “What’s in the bags?”

  Tronstad peered past me toward the dark house. “The place was full of old papers. Nobody’s going to miss them.”

  “Newspapers?”

  “Yeah. Papers, man. It’s nothing.”

  “Well, you’d better put them back anyway,” I said.

  “Hey, man, don’t get your panties in a knot.”

  “You guys ready?” asked Sears, climbing into the rig.

  Five minutes after we got back to the station, I discovered Tronstad and Johnson arguing in the bunk room.

  8. BEARER BONDS

  TRONSTAD AND JOHNSON were squared off in front of Tronstad’s clothing locker, at their feet three bulging black garbage bags. “You can’t keep this,” Johnson said, shaking his head.

  “It’s just junk.”

  “It’s not your junk. You can’t keep it.”

  “Watch me.” I’d seen them bicker before, Tronstad a man who could get contentious about something as inconsequential as whether to have peas or green beans with dinner—afterward acting as if the squabble never occurred. “You just watch me.”

  “It’s not right and you know it.”

  “Oh, yeah? And it’s right to go bad on one alarm out of four?”

  “I don’t go wrong on one out of four.”

  “The hell you don’t.”

  I stepped into the bathroom at the west end of the bunk room to use the urinal. Before Sears galvanized them into a posture of unity, these two had quarreled almost daily. Tonight their tone was more malicious than usual, especially Tronstad’s, as if the months of holding back had built his grievances to the point of bursting.