But tonight’s dinner had been cans of Campbell’s nuked and eaten separately. The remnants of his beef stew were cold in the bowl, alongside a novel, the spine cracked so the book lay flat.
Once the panic faded, he realized that the sound was different, muted. Like it was coming through walls, he thought, and on the heels of that, he realized that it must be from their tenant’s apartment. The ventilation on the first floor wasn’t any better than theirs.
Tom sat back down, pinching the bridge of his nose. Muted or not, the screech wasn’t helping his headache. One of those lingering mothers that hung behind his eyeballs. When he moved them, it felt like something tugging at his optic nerve, a cold, nauseous ache that made him want to close his eyes. While he was at it, open them to find himself somewhere else. Somewhere warm, with a soft breeze and a hammock. Maybe the smell of the ocean. Sometimes he pictured Anna with him, lying against him: the old Anna, the old him, fresh and in love, before their dreams became a burden. Sometimes he didn’t.
He sighed, took a sip of bourbon, and turned back to his book, a novel about twenty-something American expatriates living in Budapest. They were looking for themselves, and for their fortune, and they were beautiful, and so heartbreakingly young it hurt to read, not because Tom couldn’t believe he had ever been that age but because he couldn’t believe he wasn’t still. In that secret center that he thought of as himself, he was in his mid-twenties, astride the intersection of freedom and responsibility. Old enough to know who he was and what he wanted, but young enough he didn’t owe anybody or need to get up twice a night to take a leak. A good age.
He planted elbows on either side of the book and rubbed sore eyes. Mid-twenties… D.C., the apartment in Adams Morgan, a second-floor unit above a bar-and-grill. He’d still been harboring dreams of becoming a novelist, had typed in the evenings to the smell of hamburgers drifting in the open window. Anna had her own place, but slept at his most of the time. They’d thrown a Halloween party one year, and she’d gone as an abstract painting, naked except for a flesh-colored bikini and swirls of fluorescent body paint. When they’d made love that night, the paint smeared the sheets with flowers, and she’d laughed about it, thrown her head back and laughed that good laugh, then wrapped her painted arms around his back and rubbed color onto him.
He took another sip of bourbon.
There was a tentative knock at the door. He said, “Yeah,” and Anna stepped in. She wore cotton pajamas and no makeup. Her eyes were round and puffy.
“Do you hear that?”
The smoke alarm was perfectly clear, but he fought the smart-ass remark, and just nodded. “Bill’s, I think.”
“It’s been going for a while.”
“Just a minute or two.” Even as he said it, he realized that this wasn’t like an alarm clock, something to ignore. Stood up. “I guess you’re right.” He stepped past her, tracing one hand along her hip as he did.
She fired a tired smile at him. “You want me to come?”
“Nah. Go back to bed.” He walked the creaking hardwood hall to the kitchen and grabbed the keys to the bottom unit. He and Anna had fallen in love with the building the moment they’d seen it: a brick two-flat, almost a hundred years old, in Lincoln Square near the river. The neighborhood was great, safe and full of families, and the house backed up to a park they had imagined taking their own children to someday.
Of course, the building ran two hundred grand more than they’d anticipated spending. But renting out the bottom floor let them swing the house payments, more or less. More or less: the modern way. Tom opened the front door and started down the steps. Mortgaging the present to afford the future.
The smell of smoke pulled him from his reverie. “Shit.” He hustled down, yelled over his shoulder. “Anna!” The door to the foyer stuck, and he yanked hard to open it. Behind him he heard her footsteps, but didn’t stop, just stepped into the narrow vestibule. A trickle of gray slid beneath the door to Bill Samuelson’s apartment. Shit, shit, shit. Tom banged on the door, feeling silly, like the guy was going to hear knocks but not the smoke alarm. He fumbled with the keys, trying one and then another before he got the dead bolt open. Tried to remember everything he’d learned about fire. Touch the door, he thought, see if the flames are on the other side, if you’re going to feed them oxygen. But the wood was cool. Anna stepped behind him.
Tom twisted the knob. The front room was a haze of smoke, the aftermath of a rock concert. The alarm screamed panic. “Hello?” He couldn’t see any flames, so he opened the door all the way and stepped in. The room was spartan, just a battered easy chair and a big television propped on a particle-board entertainment center. A halo of swirling yellow clung to the top of the lone lamp.
The décor reminded Tom that he was in another man’s apartment, but he pushed the thought aside. This was his house, his building. He quickstepped down the hallway. The smoke grew thicker and darker. He pulled the hem of his shirt up over his mouth, sucked hot air through it.
The kitchen overheads drilled tunnels of shifting light. Tom could sense heat before he saw flame, primitive instincts feeding dread as he moved toward the stove, where spikes of yellow and green danced. The flames wrapped a blackened teakettle, cloaking it in fire, and for a split second he imagined that the kettle itself was burning, and then he realized that the fire was coming from the gas jets. He lunged forward, spun the knob to kill the gas, feeling the fire like a wave of heat. Nothing happened, and he realized the gas wasn’t the source, that the fire came from below and around the metal ring. Months of dribbled grease had caught and pulsed with a sweet black smoke. The wall behind the stove was blackened.
“Shit,” Anna said from behind him. “Does he have a fire extinguisher?”
Tom threw open the cupboard beneath the sink. The air was clearer down here, and revealed cleansers, a couple of half-empty liquor bottles, but nothing useful. He stood. There was a mug on the counter beside a jar of Sanka. He could fill it with water… Wait. Better. The dishwashing hose. Tom stepped to the sink, spun the water on, then reached for the gun.
“No!” She had to shout over the alarm. “Grease fire.”
Grease fire, grease fire, grease fire. Right. Water would just spatter it, send flying blobs of burning oil in all directions. What the hell did you use for a grease fire?
Anna was answering the question for him, pushing past to open the doors of upper cabinets. Canned soup, pasta, a box of Girl Scout cookies. Teas and coffee. Spices with the price tag still on. A ten-pound sack of flour, blue letters on white paper, the top rolled down and rubber banded. She pulled it from the shelf, knocking glass bottles to clatter on the counter. The flames had spread to a second burner. She snapped off the band and opened the sack, then leaned closer to the fire and dumped it, thrusting the bag like she was flinging water from a bucket. An avalanche of powder poured out over the stove, the wall, the counter. The flames sizzled as the flour hit, and then with a whoomp were buried beneath mounds of white. Particles rose in the heat, spinning and dancing like dust motes.
Tom felt his breath whistle out, realized he’d been holding it. The world seemed suddenly strange, that post-panic moment when things returned to normal. For a moment they just stared at each other, then Tom said, “Good thinking.”