Nightjack (19 page)

“I’ll come in on the train and we can have a late dinner,” he told her, only half-listening. He kept rereading the rejection. He liked the word histrionic.

“I’d say don’t bother, it’ll probably be close to midnight before I finish up, but we haven’t seen much of each other the last few days. Won’t you be too tired tomorrow?”

Their conflicting schedules didn’t often bother them since they usually spent afternoons together, after he got back from school and before she left for the restaurant. But lately Emilio had been asking her to come in earlier, and the novel had been taking up too much of Pacella’s time. Without Jane as a stabilizing influence, he felt himself growing more irritable, his temper getting shorter.

“It’s no trouble. I’d just like the chance to sit with you for a bit.”

“The cook and one of the bussers will still be here. There’s some kind of problem with one of the ovens and they’re trying to fix it. I think they’re just making it worse though. They’re taking turns hitting it with a big hammer.”

“Sounds like they’re about as mechanically inclined as I am.”

“Don’t worry though, before he ruins it completely I’ll have him make you a plate of Chicken Parmesan. And I’ll have a bottle of Chablis waiting. There will also be candlelight.”

He said, “Thank you, baby.”

“What’s the matter?” she asked, and then answered herself. “Another rejection? The book is good, Will, it’ll sell soon.” He was about to read it to her when she said, “Need to run, see you soon.”

He took the Long Island Railroad and spent the time grading essays on Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It was always illuminating to see how teenagers viewed a poem about the fear of aging. Despite his discussions, few of them understood the root of the work, which—while it was to be expected—still showed a depressing lack of sensitivity and acumen. Three kids thought Prufrock was upset because his cats died. Others thought it was because the oceans were so polluted he couldn’t get good crab legs anymore. Pacella wondered why the hell he kept assigning the piece.

He bundled the paperwork up in his briefcase as the train pulled into Penn Station. It was 10:40 and the line at the cab kiosk on Seventh Avenue was short enough that it only took a minute for him to hop in a taxi. The driver crossed over to the east side at 33
^rd
, passed the Empire State Building, turned up Second Avenue and headed uptown to
Emilio’s
.

Pacella enjoyed Manhattan at night and again regretted that he and Jane lived so far out on Long Island. Jane spent over two hours a day on trains, subways, or in traffic, but she’d been raised in the city and never seemed to mind the travel time. He was a suburban boy through and through and Jane was often amused by his capacity to still be dazzled by Manhattan action.

The cab let him off at the northeast corner of York and 67
^th
and Pacella walked the half-block to the restaurant.

He was immediately aware of the smell of smoke.

He thought, They really were using a hammer. The dumbasses threw a spark into the gas line and now they’re burning the place down.

He dropped his briefcase and sprinted to the front door, burst through and saw flames rising across the faux olive trellises surrounding the coat check. He called out for Jane. The heat blasted against him before he saw the full extent of the fire. The skin of his face tightened and ash circled him, rising and falling, sweeping along as he moved through the smoke. Flames rose in a funnel-shape through the center of the room, extending outwards as it crawled across the ceiling. Several tables had been consumed already.

Jesus Christ. He rushed through the dining room and screamed for Jane. Already his voice was a dried-out husk and he went into a coughing fit. He found one of the busser tubs and came up with a linen napkin that he tied around his face. It didn’t help much and he kept lifting it free of his mouth so he could shout for Jane as he stumbled through the fire.

The overwhelming noise surprised him—the crackling and snapping of all the wood, the constant popping of superheated embers and clanging of expanding metal. He finally thought of the sprinklers and looked up. There wasn’t even a dribble from any of them. What the hell had gone wrong?

He spun and shouted again and saw someone else was there in the fire.

A figure near the open door to the kitchen. He moved to it thinking it was Jane. Relief rushed through him. He said, “
Thank God
.”

Pacella’s eyes were tearing so badly he could hardly see, but after he took three steps toward the figure he realized it wasn’t Jane or the cook with the big hammer. He could barely make out a guy over there in a tight-fitting overcoat cinched at his waist. Just a silhouette really, but with these strange details about it. Looked like maybe he was wearing small racing gloves and actually smoking a cigarette, leaning back as if he enjoyed the show.

The fuck?

Pacella had a split-second view of the kitchen and saw the cook and the busser back there on the floor beneath a thick layer of black cloud. Tied and gagged, already dead from smoke inhalation, having choked on their own vomit. Their bodies were quickly being covered with flames shooting across their chests in zigzag patterns, like the way somebody spritzes lighter fluid across a charcoal grill.

Pacella knew then that the guy had started the fire. Maybe even using the candle that Jane had set for Pacella’s meal, making it look like an accident. Pacella’s mind raced as he put pieces together. Jane might be in the office, hiding there. The guy would’ve come in through the back door, tied up the cook and the busser. Maybe a fight breaking out, shouts. She might’ve heard him. She might’ve hidden beneath the futon, in the corner between the filing cabinet and the wall. She might’ve made it that far, except the fire had already moved across the office door. There was no other way out of the office, no windows. The smoke would be killing her.

Even as he thought it the door flew open and she emerged. She’d taken off her blouse and used it to cover her head. He saw the edges of it dripping and knew she would’ve only had a glass of wine back there. She must’ve pissed on the cloth to try and protect herself.

You went mad by fractions.

You went mad by the stress cracks in your fingernails digging into your palms.

You went mad when your love took five faltering steps from the manager’s office through the inferno and emerged on the sixth step a beautifully ignited pyre that stared at you with boiling eyes.

Pacella moved through the smoke and reached for Jane as she floundered blindly forward, but it was too late. She held her melting hands out to him, sensing him there somehow, and understanding the futility of another breath.

He screamed. The scream started in his chest and worked up his throat and kept going up, slashing through the soft tissue of his brain, and still rising. Jane shrugged away almost as if she were terrified of the scream and had flinched from it. She fell backward into the fire and joined it, became one with it, remaining in his vision as a brightly lit smear of dancing orange that soon receded beneath the rest of the blazing waves.

Even after the scream ended, it was still there rebounding inside his skull. It had been joined by many other voices also shrieking. A few were crying, begging, lecturing. He heard his father yelling at him, telling him to take out the trash.

Some of them suggested he untangle the many subplots, delete the extensive flashbacks, and streamline his often unnecessary forays into understanding his own failures. They felt his life was rather histrionic but uninvolving.

Pacella stumbled toward the torcher but he’d become very weak and could barely breathe and went down against one of the busboys’ tubs. The guy was still over there, smoking his cigarette, his face hidden in smoke and flame. He had to be crazy to have stuck around. He had to be suicidal not to move after all of this. The guy watching his work. He flicked the butt away and started for the kitchen.

You went mad by trying to decide your next step.

You went mad with the wonder of Why.

You opened your mouth and a hundred tongues fell out beneath the linen napkin. The force of them tore the cloth from your face.

The garbled shouting voices were loud enough to be heard even over the raging fire. The torcher froze and turned back.

Pacella’s hand shot forward and brushed against silverware in the busser tub. His hand was open and a steak knife leapt into it. He felt a rush of gratitude, not merely for the blade but
to
the blade.

The hand wasn’t entirely his hand anymore. His legs lifted him and carried him forward, the scream still going, some of the voices giving advice now on the best way to get free of the room.

The torcher turned and moved more quickly but he still wasn’t running. Pacella went after the guy, easing through the scorching colors and coiling ribbons of smoke. There was a great sense of speed and capability as he was ferried by the crowd, people appearing all around him and pressing him onward.

He was going so fast that he nearly overshot the figure. He lunged and the guy sidestepped but not fast enough. Pacella felt the blade scrape bone.

His attack heaved him forward into the kitchen. He tripped over the dead cook’s burning body and blundered into a wall. He turned and the scream told him to go back into the dining room and finish the job, but by then he was starting to burn.

More tongues fought their way free of his throat and he spit them on the floor. His father was still yelling about the garbage.
Wash out the tuna cans. Separate the papers and bottles
. Why was the old man always going on about the trash?

The ceiling groaned and a flaming rafter dropped down straight in front of him. The dead busser was on fire as well, but beside the corpse, beneath the back counter, Pacella saw someone else. A girl whose hands were tied to those of the dead busser, lying semi-conscious, trying hard to breathe through her gag and crawl away pulling the corpse along with her.

It was the waitress who’d started working at
Emilio’s
a couple of weeks ago, the one Jane thought might be skimming. Pacella had only met her once before, a week ago while he drank Italian beer with Emilio Cavallo and she served him a dinner of Seafood Alfredo that he didn’t want but Emilio insisted he eat. A Greek teenager with dark hair and sharp aquiline features, black eyes as cold as quartz that seemed to be ninety percent of her face. You looked at her and that was almost all that you saw, her eyes.

He could imagine Jane figuring the books, calling the girl back in, wanting to get it all out in the open.

He lifted her still bound and carried her out the back door, dragging the busser’s corpse a few steps before the broiling skin of the dead guy’s wrists slid off like a glove and the body fell away.

The instant Pace hit fresh air he threw her down because he was on fire. It almost felt good. It was nearly enough to draw him away from the screaming. He hit the ground and rolled across the cement in the Manhattan night, vomiting tongues in the gutter.

You went mad by multitudes.

You saved Cassandra Kaltzas’s life.

~ * ~

Pace finished his leap to stop Rimmon from igniting the world but the plane tossed again and he lost his footing.

He was wearing a different shirt and he could taste the faded taste of vomit. Pia turned in her sleep beside him. He checked his watch. More than four hours had passed. The aphasia had hit again and he’d been frozen through the storm.

Faust was the only one awake and he was staring at Pace. He looked like he’d been awake the entire time, his gaze focused.

“We survived,” he said.

“Obviously. What happened?”

“We survived.”

“Yeah. Tell me what happened while I was out, Faust.”

“It wasn’t an agreeable experience. In fact, it was rather horrific. The storm battered and attacked and cudgeled. We were swept down toward the sea. The pilots were screaming. Hayden cried. Only Pia enjoyed herself. She still wants to die, you know.”

“I know.”

“One of the engines blew out. The jet wanted to shake apart. We were doomed, as we’ve always realized. You threw up on yourself. We all threw up on ourselves. I spoke the great prayer.”

Pace cocked his chin. “The great prayer? Which one’s that?”

“The one you taught me.”

“The one I taught you?”

You could spend your whole life repeating what other people said and just adding a question mark to it.

“The prayer of power. Our father who art invoked. And the Lord our God answered. He showed mercy and stayed the hand and sword of his champion archangel.” Faust gently rocked in his seat, his fingers trembling. “The engine restarted. We passed through the storm. The weight of our debts continues to grow. Soon we’ll each have an entire mountain on our backs to carry.”

“Don’t we already?”

“Of course not, that’s why we went crazy in the first place. To relieve ourselves of such burdens.” The starlit sky gleamed behind him through the window. “We go to our deaths now. Our deaths come to us.”