Lostart Street

by Vinnie Hansen

  Fire

  Lying in bed, I smelled the smoke as it puffed in my open kitchen window, but, even when I got up to investigate, I wasn’t convinced of the fire’s proximity until I heard its crackle. My trembling fingers searched the pages of the phone book for the fire department’s number. Sirens were shrilling from the fire station three blocks away before I thought to simply dial 911.

  I pulled on some sweatpants, picked up my school record book and hurried from my apartment to the end of the drive where the first fire truck was arriving. Florence staggered into Lostart Street, gesticulating toward the back for the firemen.

  Barefooted and beaming, Vince and Punky stumbled from their love nest. Punky carried Todd wrapped in a blanket, his small feet dangling against her brightly flowered, turquoise kimono. The mother and child pinched their noses at one another and giggled with contagious happiness although, for all they knew, the fire could have been at Vince’s. The source of their happiness was buttoning his shirt and combing his sun-bleached hair with his fingers.

  The Fat Lady waddled from her apartment dressed, apparently for work, in an ankle length orange muumuu covered with hibiscus. I’d never seen her dressed up before. She wore large hibiscus earrings, red lipstick and red sandals. For a half second, she pulled everyone’s attention from the fire, like a blaze of her own. I could see why chubby chasers chased her.

  Bucky appeared wearing a full set of flannel pajamas and slippers and hugging a squirming Dudu, sans ribbons, against his chest. A second fire truck stopped at the hydrant on Lostart Street and a third trailed the first one up the drive.

  Slurring her words, Florence explained to the fireman-in-command that Mrs. Bean was in the hospital and didn’t have to be rescued. The battalion chief sent word to the fire truck at the hydrant to run a hose back.

  “Stand back! Stand back!” the battalion chief shouted at us, although even The Fat Lady had joined us at the end of the drive away from the smoke, and we were all pressing toward Punky’s place, giving the firemen wide berth to drag the hose past. Three men had come on each engine and all towered above six feet and bulged with muscles. They seemed like a different strain of humanity, powerful and heroic, so in contrast to us, people like—

  “The Invisible Lady,” I cried.

  One of the firemen lugging the hose barely turned to give me the contemptuous look reserved for trouble-making kooks. I could see his sneer in the light from the windows and the blaze, but the people of Lostart Street knew what I meant. We huddled and conferred about whether The Invisible Lady needed to come out.

  I finally tugged on the sleeve of the fireman who seemed least vital to the hose and told him the problem.

  “I’ll check on her.” He trotted off.

  I moved far enough up the drive to watch him rap on the windows, call out, and finally pound on the door. After an effort that would have stirred the heaviest sleeper, he walked back. “No one’s home.”

  He returned to the fire.

  Heroes

  The residents stared at one another, so intent on this mystery they didn’t notice Lefty’s arrival. He had crept through Punky’s apartment and finding it vacant, stood now in her doorway, silhouetted by the light, his fingers clenched around the hilt of the butcher knife and his eyes locked on Vince.

  “Stay back!” the battalion chief barked in his carnival vibrato, as if he could sense their restlessness. “We don’t want a bunch of crispy critters.”

  The word critter triggered Florence’s memory. “Cowlickcoo!” she screamed, raising her arms in the air and fluttering her hands like tattered flags.

  The firemen were dousing the building.

  “Oh, God, my cat!” Florence wailed, bolting toward the burning apartment. “My cat’s in there!”

  Lefty lunged at the very moment Vince pounced forward, grabbed Florence’s arm, and spun her away from the burning building.

  The knife rammed into Florence’s belly. Stunned, Florence staggered back, Vince stumbling under her weight.

  “You’re a tricky bastard,” Lefty said. “How did you get behind her?”

  Lefty wrenched the knife from Florence’s gut. “I’m sorry.” He’d run the blade in with a lot of force and it took a moment to extract.

  “You’re nuts.” Florence watched the inches of bloody steel appear from her stomach like some sort of magic trick. She cupped the warm ooze where the first red leaked through her shirt, but she couldn’t feel any pain. This is it, she thought. Even as Lefty raised the bloody blade to try again, Florence turned to Vince without a flinch. “You should have let me get Cowlickcoo.”

  Lefty’s arm swayed like a cobra’s body, the knife a deadly fang aimed at the distracted Vince.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” Bucky shouted at Lefty, his speech impediment vanished, or maybe, Florence thought, she’d stopped hearing it. He let Dudu spring to the ground, and the Hallmark-card ball of fluff growled and took after Lefty’s ankle.

  “Ahhhhh!” Lefty bleated, dropping the knife to swat Dudu.

  Bucky caught the off-balance Lefty by the arm and twirled him to the hard asphalt. “Help me!” Bucky shouted.

  The Fat Lady moved first. “I’ll sit on the bastard.” She plopped on Lefty’s chest so hard they all heard his fart-like expulsion of air. Her muumuu ballooned out to cover Lefty’s body. She rested her swollen feet on the arms Bucky pinned to the blacktop. As Florence sank toward the ground, Punky rushed to her.

  All this happened before the firemen took their attention from the flames, in about the time it took Cecile’s frozen scream to thaw.

  The Sparks

  I kept a palm over my mouth as two firemen bandaged Florence. Was our town so small there were no EMTs? At least the firemen seemed to know what they were doing.

  “It looks like you’ll be okay,” one said.

  “You never can tell what’s happening inside,” the other replied.

  “Thanks a lot,” Florence mumbled, her face blanched.

  “Well, if he got your liver or lungs, you’d be gone by now,” the first fireman said, tugging down her shirt over gauze and tape. He put a coat over her. I knew from the disaster preparedness drill at school that Florence was probably in shock.

  A third fireman had radioed for an ambulance and a sheriff. Caged between the legs of The Fat Lady and draped in her flowered muumuu from neck to ankles, Lefty seemed completely subdued and disoriented, but a fourth fireman hovered near Bucky and The Fat Lady to make certain the dangerous Lefty didn’t pop back into the picture.

  Punky bowed over Todd with her back forming a barrier between her child and the violence of the world. Vince placed a protective arm around Punky. My heart yearned for the strength and warmth of an embrace like that.

  “Are you all right?”

  Strength and warmth circled me. A fireman was wrapping a jacket about my shoulders.

  By screaming, I’d broadcast my need to the world. The man crouched so he could peer into my eyes, as if I were a little girl. He had pitted skin, but brown eyes so solicitous they scorched at the casement I’d spent a year and a half constructing around my heart. I felt myself melting to the idea of someone caring for me and looking after me.

  I doused these warm gushies with icy water. That type of dependency had caused me nothing but pain, and I’d vowed never to be there again.

  “I’m fine,” I lied, flapping the jacket back to him as if to beat out any sparks.

  A Glimmer of Enlightenment for Vince

  Slowly, but logically and inevitably, Vince realized the butcher knife had been intended for him. When The Fat Lady lifted herself from Lefty, the dazed young man offered his wrists for the sheriff’s handcuffs, muttering that God had told him to kill the devil. Vince now recalled the shouts outside Punky’s door. To Lefty Hunt, he was the devil.

  The dilatory ambulance carted off Florence with fanfare, its siren wailing and red light whirling. That could have been his body in the vehicle shrieking up Soquel Drive. The firemen picked up their gea
r. Even though a cat had died in the fire, they had no doubt seen worse. As the men departed, Vince stared wildly at his neighbors. Even in his desperation, he could see they were a motley crew: a fat lady, an English teacher, and a man with limited mental ability. Without Florence they seemed sprung awry like spokes without a hub.

  “Do you guys realize he was trying to kill me?” Vince asked. “I was the devil. Remember, Punky? He called me that?”

  Punky put her arm around him.

  Vince’s shoulders sagged. “Jesus, I shouldn’t have turned Florence around.”

  “Shhhh,” she said, carrying Todd with one arm and leading Vince with the other hand. “There’s no way anyone could have predicted what he was trying to do. He’s crazy. Don’t blame yourself. If you blame yourself, I have to blame myself. After all, he was after you because of me.”

  Vince couldn’t fault her logic. He followed her into her apartment.

  He and the child and Punky all got into bed together, but only the child went to sleep and even he whimpered in the night as though he were having bad dreams.

  Vince and Punky lay side-by-side holding hands. Normally he might have gone to the laundry room with his need to vent, but Florence was not there. Florence might not ever be there again. He stared into the darkness. She was just a drunk, and yet he always felt better after he talked to her. For some reason, in spite of the catnapping, she seemed to really like him.

  “Do you suppose they took her to Dominican Hospital?” he whispered.

  “Probably,” Punky murmured, squeezing his hand. “We’ll find out and go visit her tomorrow. We can visit Mrs. Bean at the same time.”

  They lay awake, but sometime in the morning he finally dozed. He awoke to a brilliant Friday morning with the birds singing and the warm, cuddly Punky next to him. He lurched up, terror in his stomach. In the commotion he hadn’t set an alarm. When the night had begun centuries ago, he hadn’t intended to stay with Punky. He sprang from the bed.

  “Vince?” Punky asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “Some of us are supposed to go to work,” he said, instantly regretting his harshness. She had the phone right by her bed, and he dialed his work number. They’d probably tried to call him and hadn’t received an answer. At best they were worried about him—he was, after all, very reliable—but, at worst, they’d be pissed.

  “Airesearch,” the receptionist chirped.

  He asked her to put him through to his supervisor.

  Instead the receptionist recognized his voice and said, “Vince, are you playing hooky today?”

  “Look, Wendy, you wouldn’t believe my story if I told you, so let me talk to my supervisor.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “Why?”

  “He’s not too kindly disposed toward you right now, if you get my drift.”

  “I have a good story.”

  “Oh, it’s not just that you didn’t come in and didn’t call or anything. That’s the icing on the cake. He was already mad when he left yesterday.”

  “I left about five minutes before he usually does, Wendy, and he wasn’t mad at me when I left. How could he have gotten pissed at me after I was gone?”

  “Well, first of all, you forgot to take your bottle of mice with you, and secondly, he could have gotten pissed at you after you were gone because someone told him how that pallet in the basement got broken.”

  “That’s ridiculous! That pallet was already cracked.”

  “Look, Vince, don’t get fired up at me. You know, that’s really your problem.”

  “What’s my problem?”

  “You have sandpaper in your craw.”

  Before Vince could reply, he heard the dead sound that meant Wendy was transferring the call.

  Bad Luck Can’t Last Forever

  When Vince’s supervisor suspended him from work that day, calling it, on the phone, “a mandatory sick leave,” Punky didn’t say anything. She secretly congratulated the receptionist and supervisor for doing what Punky now considered her dirty work, to help Vince smooth out his abrasive personality.

  Punky viewed relationships as two people rubbing together their rough edges to become better, more polished, human beings. His roughness would buff her to a shine, and, in the meantime, he’d be worn smooth. They did, she insisted to herself, have a relationship, although neither of them could define it, but then, a person never could define a relationship, not if it was healthy and growing.

  She commiserated with Vince, but personally was happy about the day’s suspension because every time she looked at unit nine she half expected to see Lefty Hunt appear. With Vince nearby, she felt safe.

  Vince seemed begrudgingly glad for the day off, too. He sat on the futon. Out loud he mulled over Wendy’s comment. He frowned at Punky. “Maybe there’s some truth to it?”

  Punky stayed quiet and bustled in the tiny kitchen, letting Vince process the feedback.

  “Wendy is a sweet gal,” he said. “Seriously she is completely impervious to sarcasm. No wit at all. So I think she meant it.” He scratched at a finger. “But she’s not too bright.” He glanced up at Punky. “And what’s wrong, anyway, with speaking the truth?”

  His sunny face clouded up. “But deducting the cost of the pallet from my check—that’s just not right.” He stalked to the phone and protested the unfairness to his boss.

  She couldn’t hear the boss’s side of the conversation, but Punky could see that nothing stirred Vince’s heart like injustice. A typical Libra, she thought, but again, wisely, opted not to say anything. Instead she brewed coffee, steeped tea, and toasted bagels for breakfast.

  Vince helped Todd put on his shoes. She’d been unfair to Vince with her first judgment. He was not the insensitive, unkind jock she’d imagined. Even if he did refer to Todd as a varmint, his actions belied the words. Or maybe varmint was an affectionate word in Vince’s world of mice and snakes and lizards.

  Punky put the plate of warm, buttered bagels on the floor by Todd and Vince. The two were now squatted before the terrarium, inspecting Love.

  “She looks better,” Vince said. “She tried to run when I reached for her. Maybe she was just mourning the loss of Peace.”

  “You know,” Punky said, “I bet Lefty Hunt came in my house and stole Peace.” She shivered to verbalize this fear. Unspoken, it had remained nebulous, gossamer, like the feeling of running into an unseen spider’s web. Spoken, the old fear hardened—cold and stark—like the knife blade stuck into Florence’s belly and pulled out with plums of her blood clinging to the silver.

  Punky’s mouth collected saliva as if she were going to vomit.

  “I wouldn’t doubt it,” Vince said as he bit into a bagel.

  Vince, Mr. Logical himself, was giving credence to her fear. Punky retched but there was absolutely nothing in her stomach.

  Vince studied her.

  “It’s okay. I’m not going to puke.”

  She castigated herself. If she hadn’t dismissed her own intuition, back when Peace disappeared, maybe the truth about Lefty would have been revealed sooner. If she’d called the Sheriff’s Department again when the first cruiser vanished, maybe last night would not have happened. She broke Todd’s bagel so he couldn’t twirl it around his finger anymore.

  On the other hand, her impressions of Lefty could have been as erroneous as her impressions of Vince. A person had to cut some slack for people. But with all that had happened, perhaps that wasn’t wise. She sighed. If she didn’t give the benefit of the doubt, didn’t she become jaded, given to forgone conclusions, prejudiced?

  She’d bitten meditatively into a bagel when the phone rang in the bedroom. She kept her phone there, a safety precaution learned in The City, not that it had done much good. Someone had entered this apartment—twice—and she hadn’t even known.

  When Punky returned from the phone, Vince had Todd hoisted before the kitchen sink and was washing his face and fingers. “Do you want to go to Dominican to see what we can
find out?” he asked her.

  She smiled. The phone call had been good news and after so much bad luck, she wanted to laugh. “That was the Unemployment Office,” she said. “They want me to come in today. They have a possible interview for me at a private grocery store that deals in specialty items, gourmet food, that kind of stuff. Very Santa Cruz. They’re non-union but they’ll pay well for an efficient cashier. They even have some health benefits. The woman at the Unemployment Office said she naturally thought of me. I have all the right qualifications, and she said I was one of the few people she thought wanted a job and wasn’t just going through the motions in order to collect a check.”

  Vince listened, eyes wide.

  She could tell the mood change was a little too much for him—fifteen minutes of Punky melancholic sadness, followed by her talking a mile a minute.

  Vince lifted Todd in the air and then swung him to the floor in a way that made the child squeal with delight.

  “What time do you need to go?” Vince asked.

  “The woman at the Unemployment Office wants me to be there at one o’clock.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said I wanted to come today, but I had to arrange a babysitter, and I didn’t know if I could do that, so I’d call her back.”

  “Go call her back,” Vince said.

  She studied his face, tenderness welling up in her.

  “Quick,” he said. “Before I change my mind.”

  “God, you’re great.” She threw her arms around him. More than the sex (which had been good) and more than the security his presence gave her, the voluntary help flooded her with love for him. “I’ll pay you,” she whispered in his ear.

  “You don’t have that kind of money,” he grumped. “But we could take it out in trade.”

  The Lesson

  My proclivity toward organization unraveled. I couldn’t teach the stuff penciled neatly, in detail, under Friday, November 4, in my lesson book. If I hadn’t already missed Monday, I would have called for a substitute.

  Instead, as first bell rang, I sat on the ledge of my lectern, butterflies in my stomach at the imminent prospect of “winging it.” My freshmen entered, not at all like the squirrelly monsters in the horror stories I’d heard before I’d started my job.