by T. Gertler
“Help!”
Something exploded, and she thought the building was collapsing. Fragments struck her where she huddled on the floor. They sparkled in the dimness. A second explosion sounded closer. The skylight shattered. She closed her eyes against glass raining on the bed, the floor, her shoulders. When she opened her eyes, the skylight’s wire mesh had torn open and was giving birth to a fireman.
A black helmet dipped. A ladder touched down on the bed. Black rubber arms reached for her. She started to climb up but turned back for her manuscript.
“Forget it,” the fireman shouted.
One-handed, she climbed to him. With her other hand she pressed the manuscript to her side. The picture of her dead dog slipped away.
“The man who owns the store?” she called.
“He’s outside.”
The fireman delivered her through the skylight. A wave of air struck her. She tucked the manuscript under her arm and shivered on the roof.
“You’re crazy,” he said. The helmet hid his eyes. His face was dirty. He pulled her after him over the side of the roof.
Another ladder took them a long cold way down toward red lights flashing. They were escaping from one fire to another. When she tried to steady herself, her hand grazed stubble on his cheek. A dark wall passed, and a red light picked up the dull gleam of a drainpipe following them down. He had her balanced against his rubber shoulder. “I think I’m going to fall,” she said calmly.
“I never lost a crazy girl yet,” he said, and his grip on her tightened.
It made her sad that the ground was getting closer. She wanted to keep traveling on his shoulder and never arrive. Other hands reached for her. “Will you marry me?” she whispered to him.
“I’m married,” he whispered back. “But I got a brother Salvatore out on the Island.”
—
The street danced under her. Someone put a blanket around her shoulders, as if she’d run a marathon.
“What’s the name of the man who carried me down?” she asked.
“Stand back, sweetheart.”
Dan was hugging her and her manuscript. He smelled like clean air. His beard kissed her. “I looked for you,” she told him.
“Stretch the line,” a voice shouted.
“Hey, Lieutenant,” another voice shouted.
“I was coming home,” he said.
“What the fuck was it?” a voice shouted.
Firemen hefting long hooks went into the burning store. Some of the men wore masks and had yellow tanks on their backs. With their coats and boots, they might have been overdressed scuba divers.
“I don’t think there’s anything left in there,” she said.
“I had a first English edition of Godot and a first edition of Young Lonigan. I’ll miss them.” Tears were running down his face. “Only thing to do is, start another bookstore.”
“Can you?”
“Child, I’ve got friends. And as an American I’ve got something else.” Crying, he grinned at her. “I’ve got insurance.”
He sat up. The phone was ringing. The fifty-five-dollar Alice slipped from his chest to the sheet. Matty was sleeping, her face buried between the pillow and the sheet so that only her blond hair showed.
He answered the phone in the living room and checked his watch. His back hurt, his mouth was dry. Past eleven-thirty. He heard Suzanne. There were voices in the background, and a phone ringing. She might have been at a bar. She asked him softly if he would come and see her be arraigned in a courtroom downtown.
“Yes, I will,” he said.
“Do you want to know what I did?”
“I’ll find out soon enough.”
—
He arranged for his neighbor, Mrs. 9-C, to stay with Matty, who was still sleeping. Portly in a snagged navy terrycloth kimono, the woman brought with her a copy of TV Guide and two teabags. “I’m allergic,” she said. He thanked her and gave her the remote-control gun. She had questions about the zoom-in button.
Finding a lawyer was harder to do. The last one he’d dealt with had been Smiling Bob McGrath, Margery’s champion. Michaels of Russian Studies wasn’t home; the Thalia was running an eight-hour version of a twelve-hour Russian production of War and Peace with subtitles. Reinhardt the Joycean, awakened and feisty, said he had made it a guiding principle of his life never to do anything that needed a lawyer. “That downpouring letter about you today was agreeably excessive. Did you write it?” he asked. Reluctantly Howard called Bob Small, who was a lawyer. Anne answered the phone and, when she heard Howard’s voice, hung up. A woman he’d had an affair with in February was a lawyer, but she’d moved to Taos to become a potter. By the end of their affair she wouldn’t talk to him. He had no time to ponder his effect on women. Of the two writers he knew who weren’t impoverished or undergoing detoxification, one lived without a phone but with a word processor in a palatial former barn appointed with old neon beer signs outside Macon, Georgia; and the other, who had a brownstone in the city, never answered his listed number and kept changing his unlisted one. “The number you have reached,” the tape began.
He called up Newman, who knew of a lawyer, Wally Kaplan, who’d written a book called The Law and How to Break It. A woman in the critic’s apartment laughed. “It wasn’t a good book,” Newman said. He sounded peculiarly exuberant.
—
He sat in the second row. The first row was empty, but a sign reserved it for attorneys and police officers. Behind him a woman with a straw drank something from her purse.
“Let’s get this straight, Miss DaSilva,” the judge said. “Your client says he doesn’t know how two thousand stolen fur pelts got into his apartment?”
People with folders strolled past the bench. A court officer chewed gum. Except for a tall black man, nobody dressed well. It was more like an open classroom than a court. The court reporter rubbed his nose on his cuff.
“Mr. Rodriguez knows how they got there, Your Honor. He didn’t know they were stolen.” The lawyer, young, round-shouldered, with a grimy beige purse hanging over her arm, stood with her client, a brown Afro riding an upturned violet collar, at a table before the bench. A poster-size calendar and a large manila envelope with frayed edges were taped to the front of the bench.
The judge, in a black robe, his tie loosened, shook his head. He was younger than Howard, and sleepier. “Looks like a guilt-to-the-hilt situation to me. I don’t see bail here for under ten thousand dollars.”
“Your Honor, Mr. Rodriguez’s wife and his employer are both in the courtroom now. Mrs. Rodriguez had a baby last month. His employer stands behind him. Mr. Rodriguez isn’t about to run away from his life here.”
“How many pelts to a coat, counselor?” the judge asked.
A door to the right of the bench opened on gray-barred cells. Escorted by a court officer, two men and five women came out and sat on a banquette at the wall. One of the women applied two shades of orange lipstick. She had on pink capri pants. She rolled a forefinger across her front teeth. One woman nodded to sleep. One of the five women was Suzanne.
Tall Wally Kaplan with week-old hair-transplant plugs reddening his scalp conferred with her. She looked up shyly at Howard. He’d come to see her in a school play. The court officer chewing gum read out a docket number, and Wally Kaplan helped Suzanne over to the table in front of the bench.
The judge wanted to deny bail. “She admits she set the fire.”
“But she called up to report it, Your Honor.”
“That was nice of her, Mr., uh, Kaplan. Nevertheless, she set it. That’s the fact.”
“Your Honor, nobody was hurt. I think Mrs. Ritchie needs professional help.”
“You’re after a 730, Mr. Kaplan?”
“I’m a tax lawyer, Your Honor, not a criminal lawyer.”
“We all have our problems, counselor. You’re suggesting that your client may not be competent to stand trial? You’re saying she may not understand what’s happening now and may not be able to a
ssist in her own defense?”
“Right. Yes, Your Honor.”
“Then you request a 730 competency exam.” The judge turned to Suzanne. “Mrs. Ritchie, do you understand why you’re here?”
“I do.”
She was getting married, Howard thought. She would toss her bouquet to him.
“Why are you here, Mrs. Ritchie?”
“Because they brought me here.” She pointed at two policemen. “I can stay overnight if I have to.” She took the black and white striped toothbrush from her purse.
“Do you know what the charges against you are?”
“Arson. But really it was attempted murder. And a billfold.”
“Mr. Donato?” the judge said.
Mr. Donato, a suntanned young man in yellow seersucker, limped to the bench. He was wearing one loafer and one sneaker with the front cut out to accommodate gauze wrapping on his big toe. He must have been an assistant district attorney. It was hard to tell without a program.
The back of Suzanne’s dress stuck to her legs. Something glistened at her ankle. A dark spot formed on the brown linoleum. “Hi,” she said to Mr. Donato. She was peeing.
Mr. Donato said hi to her and asked the judge agreeably, “How about observation?”
It sounded like sightseeing. They sent her to Bellevue.
“Only for seventy-two hours,” Wally Kaplan assured Howard. “I’m sure that’s what it is. She said to tell you hi.”
—
One reporter, a man in a sweatshirting vest and running shorts, peered past the policeman into the blackened doorway and estimated it would take the landlord fifteen minutes to announce a renovation plan for co-ops. “Gentrification proceeds apace,” he said. A photographer asked a fire marshal where the bodies were.
“Say, Diane, how’re you doing?” The photographer dropped his cigarette in a puddle. The camera strap crushed his collar. He had a brown beard but no mustache.
“The name’s Dina,” she said. She was sitting on the hood of a parked car, the manuscript on her lap.
“What do you think, Tina, were you lucky or what?” His camera clicked and hummed as he spoke. “Where’s the guy who rescued you? Maybe you’d like to give him a nice big thank-you kiss.”
In front of what had been the store, Dan talked with two fire marshals. They held charred objects in plastic bags. The photographer went to snap them. One of the objects must have been a book: a college dictionary or Gray’s Anatomy or the complete works of Shakespeare in fine print.
—
She rocked back and forth on the hood of the car. A few times she saw herself in the hot white room, crying. Each time it took longer for the skylight to blast open.
A wreck of a car rattled up beside her. It had a suitcase tied to the roof. The driver’s door was a different color from the rest of the car. In the streetlights she couldn’t tell what the colors were.
Bask said from the car, “You okay?”
She nodded.
“I waited for you to call,” he said.
The last of the fire trucks drove away. The reporters and the photographer had already left. Bask parked his car near a dripping fire hydrant and got out. The wet street glistened around him. She followed his stare to the burned building.
Parts of walls were gone. The firemen’s axes had made new windows. The fire had made new views. Beams had stopped holding. The building was black lace. She spread her hands to see them whole.
—
He took Dan and her to an all-night Greek coffee shop on University Place. Grilled cheese made her think of melted flesh. She didn’t want a char-broiled hamburger. She didn’t want toast. Facing away from the kitchen, she guarded a cup of coffee. Her manuscript lay on the table. She’d refused to leave it in the car. “I have to finish that,” she said.
“Not tonight, I hope,” Bask answered.
She had no clothes except what she was wearing. What she’d left behind with Larry didn’t exist for her. She had no money, not even to pay for her coffee. She didn’t have a job. She didn’t have a typewriter, blank paper, a pen. She had no place to sleep.
She had part of a book and the likelihood of money to finish it. The dedication would read: “To Salvatore’s brother.” She had no place to write.
She had parents who would buy clothes and a typewriter for her. They would buy twenty-four-pound one hundred percent cotton rag paper and a sterling Cross pen. If she preferred a gold-plated Parker pen, they would buy that. They would share their home with her. Hidden from the glare of the California sun, beneath a bulletproof, fireproof, floodproof plastic dome forming a germ-free environment, she would sit in an ironed turquoise designer writing outfit at a massive typewriter complete with automatic pilot and commiseration, and not write. She would be a professional daughter. She would have business cards engraved DINA LEITMAN, DAUGHTER and pass them out at parties on carpeted patios. A Spanish-style red roof tile diving three stories would intersect her path to the chip dip. She would die of a crushed skull inches away from the marble cake. The designer party outfit would be ruined. Somebody’s Mexican housekeeper’s daughter would end up with it, dye it black to cover the bloodstains, and wear it to see Diana Ross at the Hollywood Bowl.
“You can stay with me at my friend Bill’s place,” Dan said. “We’ll work things out.” He transferred a split radish from a mound of chicken salad to the side of the plate.
She leaned over and kissed him. “Thank you.”
Bask said, “I have a great idea.” His face reddened. He asked the waiter for more orange juice.
Dan said, “That’s a good idea, not a great one.”
Bask got very interested in his fork.
—
Because a suitcase and his typewriter took up most of the backseat, the three of them sat in the front, Dina in the middle. She smelled of smoke. He wanted to bathe her. He drove as slowly as he could, but soon they made a left off Greenwich Street and onto Chambers Street. Across the river, in dark New Jersey, a lighted sign urged COLGATE.
“Right here,” Dan said.
The car stopped in front of a bakery. “Bill’s got a loft upstairs. In the morning all you can smell is bread.” He got out, and Dina slid over to follow.
“Wait,” Bask said. There was too much beach-towel seat-cover between them. Separation seemed worse than the fear of having her close. “I’ve got an idea.”
Dan leaned into the open door. “A great idea?”
The horn startled Bask; he’d hit it by accident. His ears heated up. “I think you should come with me to Massachusetts,” he told her. “For a while. No problems, no hassles, nothing you don’t want. Just a lot of room in the country to finish your book in.” He wondered if he should be on one knee.
“I don’t know you,” she said.
He needed more light to read her face. “You don’t have to. It’s common sense. I’ve got the room and I don’t need to be alone up there.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I’ll give you an advance on your advance. You’ll pay your own way, don’t worry.”
“It’s not your house, it’s your friend’s. Didn’t you tell me that?”
“She won’t mind and she won’t be there.”
“What if I don’t like it?”
“I’ll drive you to the train and lend you money for a ticket and a cab back to Dan.”
“What if it turns out I don’t get a contract and I don’t get an advance?”
“Then I’ll sell your body at a town meeting.”
She turned to Dan for advice.
“You’re welcome to stay with me and Bill,” he said. “Or try it with Vince. If it doesn’t work out, come back here.” He stretched, as if he’d awakened from a nap, and smiled. “Vince’s offer sounds good and communal.”
—
She fell asleep sitting up before they got past White Plains. The safety strap ran neatly between her breasts. On the radio Willie sang “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” Headlights cruised
past in time to the music. The car hit a pothole, but she kept sleeping. He slowed down. Her eyes were shut tight against the lights of the oncoming cars. Her hair blew against the headrest. He should have rolled up her window before they got on the turnpike. Bringing her with him was one step beyond dumb.
At a gas station outside New Haven she woke up and walked unsteadily to the bathroom. His hand was yellow in the station lights. She came back and asked for a quarter.
“I should’ve given you money before.” He gave her two twenty-dollar bills and a ten. “How’s that for now?”
“I still need a quarter,” she said.
Past New Haven, she asked him to stop at a rest area.
“Hungry?” he asked, yawning in the almost empty parking lot.
“No.”
The restaurant was closed for the night. She asked him for a dollar bill. He bought two cans of apple juice from a vending machine, and she bought four sanitary pads. An Oriental man in a soccer shirt mopped the restaurant floor.
She slept again till Springfield and woke up hungry. He gave her a can of apple juice. She was cold, and he told her there were shirts and sweaters in the suitcase in the backseat.
“Want to drive?” he asked.
“I don’t have a license. It was in my purse at the store.”
“Are you tired?”
“No.”
“I’m tired. I vote you drive.”
“I don’t know where I’m going.”
“Details, always details.”
The car halted at the side of the highway. She rolled up the sleeves of a red and blue flannel shirt that covered her to the knees.
With the first light, she was the one driving past Holyoke on the way north.
—
They passed through a sleeping town, a village green with a high bare flagpole and a real cannon mounted on stone above a bronze plaque. The cannon was aimed at a white clapboard church needing paint. They passed a narrow cemetery with worn gravestones in tall grass. They passed a closed Friendly’s. They passed a billboard selling antifreeze. They passed a windowless shopping mall sprawled in a field of unoccupied yellow-lined parking spaces. A dairy truck crossed yellow lines on its way to a supermarket at the end of the mall. They passed a stable and four cows. They passed signs for schools and deer crossings.