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 amp; 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.
The majority of my brain function was devoted to Vulcan.
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.