Chapter Nineteen - Tyler
“Shit,” says Maddie, looking through her purse.
“What’s up?”
“Can’t find my house keys. Diane and Caroline are gonna be about done with me, I think. We already had to change the locks once after all my shit got taken with my car.” She looks at me pointedly.
“I—What? It’s not my fault!”
“You picked me up and left my car there.”
“I did. Got it. OK. Sorry that your free will was malfunctioning that night.”
She smirks and says, “Suck a dick.”
“Is that what you’re into?” I smile at her and bounce my eyebrows.
“Dork,” she says.
Holy shit, this is great! I feel so… Normal. I can’t believe it. I mean, if I step back and try to look at everything, I can’t believe all that’s happening.
Mostly because it feels…good. I’ve been pretty much on the run for the last dozen years, trying to find I dunno what. This. This feeling. And then, suddenly, here it is. I found it back where I started.
Shit. That’s so hilariously cliché that it’s cliché to even point out that it’s so cliché. But fuck it. It is what’s happening. And I don’t feel like running now. So I’m just gonna sit back, enjoy it, and not examine it too closely. In my hard-learned experience, when things aren’t all FUBAR, it’s best not to think about them too much and just let ’em be.
I’m shit at doing that, of course. Letting things be. But I’m going to try. Because right now everything is… nice. Which is a word I’ve never used to describe anything ever before.
Which is also nice.
Fingers snap in my face.
“Where’d you go there, buddy?” Maddie asks. I must’ve been rambling. But I can tell I’m smiling, so I don’t care.
“Nowhere. Sorry. What’s up?”
“The club. We have to swing by Pete’s. I need to see if I left them there.”
“You wanna just come stay at my place and we’ll find ’em later?”
“You mean stay at Evan and Robert’s place?”
“You say tomato, I say my place.”
She smiles. “Nah, I should go home. But you go out and get your own place and I will be there every night. I’m sure it’ll be nicer than where I live.”
“Well, that is very much incentivizing me to buy sooner than later. Damn, girl. You ARE really good at real estate shit!”
She shakes her head and rolls her eyes.
I’m an absolute scamp.
Everybody says so.
At this hour of the morning and at the speed I’m driving, it only takes about twenty-five minutes to get back to Vegas, but Maddie’s already dozing off next to me. Of course she’s exhausted.
It’s been a long life for her so far.
I so much love looking at her sweet face with her eyes closed like that that I have to be careful not to drive us off the damn road.
“Mads.” I reach over and nudge her. She stirs and opens her eyes.
“Shit, I fell asleep,” she says.
“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” I chime. Which makes me realize I’m hungry. I’m gonna get some eggs, I think. Possibly also bakey. We’ll see.
“Wow.” She yawns, looking at the sky through the windshield. “The sunrise is amazing.”
“Yeah?” I ask. I hadn’t noticed. I glance ahead to see what she’s seeing.
Except I don’t.
I don’t see the sunrise.
What I see is early morning sky beginning to lighten from darkness, rousing itself from sleep, but the orange hue being cast onto the canvas of dawn isn’t coming from an emerging sun. It’s coming from something else. Something familiar.
“We’re headed west,” I mumble to myself.
“What?”
“We’re headed west,” I say louder. “That’s not the sunrise.”
“Whatayou—?” She doesn’t get out the word ‘mean’ because she can now see clearly what I’m talking about.
It’s Pete’s. Pete’s Strip Club. Pete’s Strip Club in Las Vegas, Nevada. The place that brought me and Maddie together and back into each other’s lives. Pete’s Strip Club, owned and operated by one Pete Flanagan.
Pete’s Strip Club that is, at present, being swallowed whole by what looks like a raging tornado of flame.
Oh, my God.
The inferno ahead that’s gobbling up the building belches fire and smoke into the air. It is not the dawn, but the way the fire colors the dissipating blackness of the night in a surreal red haze offers a beautiful, ghastly imitation of it.
“What the fuck?” she whispers.
I don’t say anything, just press down on the accelerator and propel us faster in the direction of the roaring conflagration.
As we approach, the swirling lights of fire engines come into view. There are four of them. All have their hoses out and aimed at the searing structure that just a few hours ago was a place called Pete’s. But not anymore.
We pull up as close as we can get before the cops also in attendance stop us. Maddie throws open the passenger door, jumps out while the car is still rolling to a stop, and is past the police and skittering by the camera crews from the local news stations before anyone can even attempt to stop her.
I throw the Defender in park, jump out, and have to push my way past a policeman who tries to hold me back. I hope he doesn’t think he’s gonna shoot me or arrest me or anything. That would totally suck. The night’s been going so well. Well, until now.
I don’t recognize the firemen I see. Looks like they’re from a different engine company than Evan’s. But then, from behind, I spy a guy in full turnout gear who apart from wearing fifty pounds of shit and walking towards death itself otherwise looks like he’s out for a stroll in the park. Not like he doesn’t care—everything he’s doing has an urgency and efficiency to it—but there’s no panic or anxiety coming off him at all. His composed stillness in the midst of the roiling mayhem all around makes him stand out like a blue marble in red sand.
“Dean!” I yell in his direction. He turns in time to see Maddie streaking toward the blaze. (What she thinks she’s going to do when she gets there, I have no idea.)
Dean steps to intercept her and stops her before she can melt her face off.
She’s shouting almost incomprehensibly.
I can’t hear what he’s saying to her from where I am, but in my mind it’s something like, “Hey, now. Relax, baby. Dean’s got it. Everything’s gonna be allllll right.” (Apparently, in my mind, Dean has become Barry White.)
As I land where they’re standing, I see that New-Guy Brandon and Baby-Face Jeff are also here. The guys at their station rotate shifts, so the fellas with them are unfamiliar to me. Faces I’ve maybe seen, but names I don’t know.
“What the fuck, man?” I ask of Dean over the cacophony going on around us all.
Maddie’s incomprehensible shouting continues.
“Dunno,” he says. “Call came in. The cleaning crew showed up to do their thing and I guess shit was already burning when they got here.”
“Thank God,” I say. “At least nobody’s inside.”
And that’s when it finally becomes clear what Maddie’s been trying to sound out. “Pete!” she screams.
Her shout draws the attention of Jeff, who trots over to hear what’s up.
“What?” asks Dean.
“Pete,” I say. “He’s the owner.” I turn back to Maddie. “What about him?” I ask her.
“He basically lives here! I know he supervises what the cleaning crew does! Where is he?”
Oh, shit.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Did you clear it?” I ask Dean.
He shakes his head. “Nah, man. When we got here there was another crew on the scene. They said the cleaners told ’em the place was closed and that they didn’t know if anyone was in there but they didn’t think so.”
“And they didn’t fucking check?” I ask in astonishment.
“Shit was already lit up when they got here, man. They just got right to trying to contain it.”
Maddie’s still yelling and waving her arms. It’s hard to make out the words, but not at all hard to understand what she’s saying.
And then…
All of the sudden—and fuck, you can goddamn see it fucking coming…
“I got it!” shouts Jeff.
He slaps his visor down and goes tearing inside, through the wall of fire.
Doesn’t put on his tank, doesn’t even consider the best way to breach, just goes racing inside. I guess because, in his mind, he has to.
“Yo!” Dean calls after him.
And then…
Without a word, Brandon throws his oxygen tank on and rips off inside too. After Jeff. Heavy 44. That’s where Brandon came from. The ones who rescue the rescuers.
Maddie turns to face me and buries her head in my chest. I don’t know what else to do, so I stroke her hair as she cries all over my shirt.
The cop I blew past to get here rolls up, but Dean pulls him aside and seems to be explaining the situation. He’s persuasive.
The hoses all around us are blasting full tilt, four crews of firefighters all working diligently to bring things back under some version of control. But the hoses seem to be doing almost nothing. It strikes me that we were just, not a half hour ago, embedded within more than enough water all around us to snuff this candle out in about ten seconds flat, and what a shitty irony that is, but whatever. It makes no difference now.
And then…
Without warning, there is an explosion.
I have no idea where it comes from, apart from somewhere within the building that is no longer a building, not in any meaningful sense. Upon hearing and seeing it, I flinch. Thankfully, Maddie flat-out jumps and shrieks so that she can’t see me react the way I did. I don’t give a shit because of my dumb fucking ego or whatever, but because it’s clear in a real vivid way that I’m gonna need to be here for her, and I can’t afford to allow my feelings to get in the fucking way right now. Even if they’re authentic.
“What was that?” she screams.
“I dunno,” I tell her in as soothing a voice as I can find. “Could be a lot of things.”
And while that’s true, I honestly can’t imagine what could have caused a fireball like that to erupt from in there. It’s a fucking strip club, not a chemical plant.
And then…
The roof collapses.
“No!” Maddie’s wail rips through me.
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” I assure her.
It’s not OK. Not even a little bit.
And then…
As the fire swoops around on itself and swallows its tail, like some kind of cannibalistic swan of flame, Brandon emerges.
Carrying a limp Jeff over his shoulder.
The curtain of fire sweltering all around them makes it look like he’s stepping out of the River Styx. I imagine.
“Crash!” shouts Brandon with an urgency I couldn’t imagine his voice having.
Someone comes wheeling a crash cart over and Brandon tosses Jeff’s ragdoll frame onto it as a paramedic cuts open his gear and starts warming up the paddles.
(Jesus. Is this what it was like when they had to come for me? I feel like an asshole. And then I feel like an asshole for thinking about myself right now.)
“What happened?” yells Maddie. “What happened to him?”
Brandon pulls his helmet off. Bends over. He’s drenched with sweat. He takes a hit of oxygen. Then, gulping breaths, he says, “Smoke. And a… Dunno… Beam… Or something… Hit him in the head. He…” He stops saying the most words I’ve ever heard him speak, takes up more oxygen, and the sweat around his eyes creates the illusion that he’s crying. I think it’s an illusion.
And as I look over and see them pull off Jeff’s helmet, I observe the blood that has baked itself onto his baby face.
Maddie is barely holding together. Given everything I just found out this evening, so am I. The parallels are impossible to ignore.
“Pete?” she now coughs out. “What about Pete?”
Brandon shakes his head.
“What does that mean?” she bellows. “He wasn’t there?”
Brandon raises his eyes to meet hers, stands up straight, and shakes his head again. “No… He was.”
And then…
Paroxysms of tears from Maddie. Only word to describe it. Shaking, convulsive paroxysms of tears as she collapses to the ground in a heap.
I start to go to her but I first ask Brandon, “What—?”
But once again, he just shakes his head and eyes me. You don’t want to know, the eyes say.
Fuck. Fuck! FUCK! And he’s right. No. I don’t wanna know.
Time slows in combat. Everybody knows that, even if they’ve never been in combat. It’s the same thing that happens in, say, a car accident. There’s always that moment when shit gets preposterously slow for no good reason, the brain dialing it all down a notch because it can’t hold onto the events in real-time.
As I look toward the smoldering heap that they’re just starting to get under control now that the roof has collapsed, everything about it washes over me in half-time. The people running, the lights flashing, the world burning. It’s kind of… beautiful.
That’s a real oxymoron about fires and explosions and stuff. They’re so destructive, but that destruction brings with it its own kind of poetic beauty. The same way a rose bursting into full bloom just means it’s that much closer to wilting and dying.
The combustible force of life is a wonderful, amazing thing. But it comes at a cost. The comforting thing about that, to me, has always been that then, finally, after the price is paid, and the fire that drives us all forward is extinguished, we finally get to rest.
And, as I watch the cinders rising, turning all that was there into ash, I think of Pete.
Pete Flanagan. My friend. Thanks for everything, man. Go. Go be with her
again. Rest now.
Or maybe it’s what I have to think to put enough of a spin on it to keep from having the glue that’s barely holding me together melted clean away by the heat of everything happening at the moment.
And then…
“Clear!” someone shouts as they put the defibrillator against Jeff’s bare chest.
I glance over at him again and see that his chest is stronger than I would’ve thought. Just because he seems small, I suppose. Even though I suddenly realize he’s not really. But his chest is smooth. Young. I remember the smoothness of his hand when I gave it a shake a few weeks back.
I don’t know why I think of that now.
“Clear!” whoever shouts again.
Doesn’t matter.
I know death when I see it.
I’ve observed enough of it.
They can keep trying to shock him back to life all they want.
Jeff’s gone.
He’s gone.
Goddamn it, kid.
Part of me wants to just go make them stop, but they’re already loading him in the EMT truck to, I suppose, keep giving it their best.
I’ve said it before… People fighting the inevitable always gives me the hardest time. But if it makes them feel better to try, who the fuck am I to stop them? They need to believe, so let ’em believe, I guess.
And there’s absolutely no fucking time to even begin thinking about all the shit I’m starting to think about. Maddie’s coming undone and I need to be there for her.
I pat Brandon on the shoulder and he nods at me like, Go. And so I do. I go to Maddie, who’s still crumpled on the ground in the parking lot.
“Hey—” I start, but she waves me off. That’s fine. I get it. I mean, damn, I really just wanna try to fix it. But I can’t. So I’ll stand here and see if I can not get in the way.
And then…
Like out of fucking nowhere—and this is probably the last thing in the world I’m expecting—her phone dings.
This is not something I should be able to hear. There’s so much going on that the dinging of a cell phone shouldn’t even register. But it does. I dunno why. But it does.
She has an odd look on her face. I can’t describe it. Not in words. But if I had to try I’d say it looks pained, defeated… knowing, I guess.
She pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket and, sure enough, the screen is lit.
She looks down at it, slowly.
And then…
She throws it to the ground, balls her hands into fists at her sides, looks up at the dawn-breaking sky being kissed by tendrils of hot orange and sooty black…
And she lets loose a guttural, primal scream that begins in the center of the earth, rips its way through her body, past her breaking heart, out of her mouth, and up into whatever bullshit heaven sits in the sky, where a bullshit God looks down laughing, having broken his promise to me that I was being given the chance to repair the damage I created.
That was never the deal.
I get it now.
I am back here to be forced to watch Maddie suffer.
Because I missed it all the first time.
Fuck you, God, you lying cunt.
I pick her phone up off the ground to see what it was that affected her so.
It’s a text.
It says…
“U got 3 weeks. Nowhere left to hide, bitch.”