Speak Through the Wind (27 page)

She must have dozed off, because the minute she heard the knock she was fifteen years old again, racing down the back stairs to open the kitchen door. So great was her haste to get to the door before Clara, her legs became tangled up in her skirt and her arms were pinned helplessly to her side by the corners of the shawl. She lost her direction in the blackness of the room and fell against the bureau in her quest for the door. The knocking continued, giving her a target to aim for, and within two steps she found the latch.

He wasn’t the only man in the hall. The space was packed with men jostling each other good-naturedly for position. The walls were lined with kerosene-fueled flames ensconced in glass globes. The light behind him, coupled with her own bleary vision, swept away his features in dark silhouette, but his stance was unmistakable. Chest puffed up. Arms straight at his side. Fists clenched. Legs anchored as if ready to withstand an attack.

“Ben?” The word was thick in her mouth.

“Were you expectin’ some smelly fishmonger?”

She laughed and opened the door wider to let him in.

He walked through the door, rubbing his hands together. “It’s freezin’ in here. Colder than a—”

“Let me get a light.”

She took the candle from the bureau top and dipped it in one of the glass globes in the hallway to catch a flame. She closed the door behind them, and without invitation or request they sat side by side on Kassandra’s bed.

“I was not expecting you.”

“Liar,” he said, reaching over to smooth the strands of hair torn loose during her waking.

“You have not been up here in a long time, Ben. Months.”

“I shouldn’a started up again with you at all.”

“But you did.”

“I did,” he said before kissing her with the hint of soft penitence that always lurked behind the first kiss.

When Kassandra allowed her mouth to open to his, she imagined him cringing at the stale whiskey on her breath and tried to pull away, but Ben clapped his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her closer. Deeper.

She was alive when he was here. She imagined these kisses held the same promise as their first ones, and sometimes the same girlish flush came to her cheeks. Everything—memory, pain, disappointment, loss—disappeared behind this embrace.

It was much the same feeling that she had when she reached the end of a drink, only instead of staring into the bottom of an empty glass, she kept her eyes firmly closed, trapping her in darkness where she and Ben swirled together. Shadows of the people they might have been. Before he took her breath. Stopped her heart. Dropped her in this cold, dark place.

The muted sounds of gathering outside continued to seep through the walls, little more than some harmless rumble until something—or someone—collided with the door, threatening to tear it from its frame.

Kassandra jumped up from the bed. “What was that?” she said, heading toward the noise.

Ben caught her hand. “Leave it,” he said, pulling her back. And she obeyed.

She settled next to him again, and they sat in companionable silence, holding hands and staring at the floor.

“I am sorry,” she said after a time, “for spitting that drink in your face.”

He chuckled. “You know, I woulda killed any man that did that to me.”

“But you would not kill me?”

“No.” He brought her hand to his lips.

“Well, of course not
you.
But you might send someone else to do it for you.”

“Stop it, love,” he warned.

“Maybe it is time for young Ryan to get his first kill.”

“Wouldn’t be his first.”

“Oh, Ben,” she said, her bravado deflated. “He is just a child.”

“No such thing as a child here. You should know that.”

“You could send—”

“D’ya really want to talk about this?”

“Of course not,” she said, embarrassed that her levity had taken such a turn.

“Well, then …” He put his arms around her and eased her down on the mattress. She wound her fingers through his curls and tugged him down.

The fracas in the hallway continued at a constant, harmless volume, though occasionally there would be an insult or curse that would distract Ben, stopping his hands midcaress and lifting his head to listen. A particularly thunderous crescendo punctuated by the sound of shattering glass prompted him to disengage from Kassandra entirely—amid a cloud of his muttered curses—and tear across the room to throw open the door. The human missile aimed to collide with it flew through, landing with a
thud
on Kassandra’s floor.

“Hold your noise out there!” Ben called out into the hallway. He bent over to grab the fallen man by his collar and hauled him to his feet. “Get out of here, y’idiot,” he said, thrusting him out the door. “An’ quiet down before I wipe the floors with the whole lot of ya!”

The responding laughter proved that the only blows Ben would be throwing tonight were those delivered good-naturedly to the back of the ousted intruder.

“Lousy drunks,” he said, closing the door.

“There are enough of them here,” Kassandra said, scooting away from the bed’s edge as Ben sat down. “In fact, had I swallowed that drink instead of spitting it in your face, you would have no reason at all to send someone to kill me.”

“That bad, is it?”

“Awful.”

“Well, I’ve seen you drinkin’ enough of it.”

“What does that mean?” She sat up, dodging his lunging embrace.

“I just don’t like what it’s turned ya into.”

“I am exactly what you made me, Ben Connor.” She inched further away.

“I never set out to make you a drunk.”

“You put me here,” she gestured to the small, dark room. “This after a promise to take care of me.”

“Would you rather be out in the streets?”

“I had other options.”

“But you made this choice, love. You made the choice to come back here with me, and you made the choice to pour whiskey down your throat every night.”

“It helps me,” she said, consumed with the need to justify this to him. Wanting, like she never had before, to make herself seem worthy and blameless.

She knew he wasn’t a man drawn to compassion, but he was prone to pity. And, under the right circumstances, guilt. She knew that was why he ever came to see her at all. Not out of love, not any lingering feelings from before. Not even because he was that every now and then he remembered her exile and took a passing shot at absolution by coming to her like this—sharing a laugh, sharing a bed—before turning back to the less bothersome realm of his conscience. She wished she could hate him for it.

“Drinkin’ never helped anybody,” he said, settling in to untie his shoes.

“It helps me forget.”

“It’s makin’ you fat.”

Had he thrown his discarded shoe at her he could not have shocked her more. “I am no such thing!”

“It happens to drunks. They tend to get a little puffy—”

“I am not
puffy!
I might seem that way because I happen to be wearing three skirts.”

“So now you’re one of them, the walkin’ poor, goin’ around wearin’ everything you own, all your worldly possessions on your back?”

“What I am,” she said, “is cold. This isn’t your flat. We do not have the luxury of a nice little stove in every room on the second floor.”

“But you have those other options, don’t ya?”

“Which I do not care to—”

“Ah, but you care when it’s me.” He reached for her. “Stop it.”

“Or Sean.”

“Do not talk about Sean.”

“He cares for ya, you know.”

“Does he?” Somehow she was lying down beside him again.

“I worry sometimes that he might take you away from me.”

“What if he did?”

“You wouldn’t go.”

“He has not asked,” she said, quickly learning that a multitude of skirts posed no problem to a determined man. “An’ I haven’t heard any of the others complain.”

“You are a pig.”

“Ah, but you love me.”

She wanted to tell him that no, she didn’t, but before she could utter anything at all his mouth covered hers.

They were, by now, able to ignore the concert of voices on the other side of the wall, though when they heard the sound of another broken glass, Ben wondered out loud if he was going to have to beat the life out of them. This time, however, the sound of the broken glass was followed by shouts of panic. Fear. A solid mass of terrified noise with one discernible word rising above all the rest.

Fire.

en was out of bed and at the door in an instant, throwing it open, allowing Kassandra just a glimpse of the pandemonium before slamming it shut again. What she saw terrified her—the opposite wall with a blaze snaking up from the carpeted floor, consuming the pattern of the papered wall. All of this subdued behind a thick haze of black smoke that billowed through her door even as Ben slammed it shut.

The sounds from the hallway proved just as frightening as the sight of those flames: screaming women and shrieking men; shouts to get out of the way; pleas to come back and rescue; footsteps pounding over wooden floorboards and—from the sounds of the cries—over fallen bodies. There was a pounding on doors—“Get out! Fire! Get out!”—and Kassandra could think of nothing else than to obey those voices. She got up from her bed and ran to the door, but Ben caught her round the waist and flung her away before her hand reached the latch.

“You can’t go out there!” he shouted, though she could barely hear him over the screaming crowd outside. “Open your window!”

She went to the window and raised it up. The air outside was crisp and cold, and she took in great gulps of it. She knew she should cry out for help, but nothing would come out of the tightness of her throat.

Ben pushed her aside, leaned out over the edge, and called to the street below, “Oy! We’ve got fire here! Send for a truck!” He managed to deliver this directive while putting on his shoes, balancing on one foot at a time.

Kassandra stood numbly in the center of the room watching the smoke creep in through the crack above the door.

I am going to die.

It was just a matter of time before the smoke would be followed by flames, eating a path across her wall, jumping to her bed, making it a blazing testament to the sin committed there. She shouldn’t be here. She should never have been here.

I am going to die here. I am going to die tonight.

She felt the smoke lodge in the back of her throat. The fire didn’t seem as dangerous now, not nearly as dangerous as this solid suffocation

I am going to die.

She was brought to her senses by a stinging slap across her face.

“Get down!” Ben was screaming, only inches away. He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her to her knees. “Stay there.”

He grabbed the towel she’d been washing up with earlier and tore it in two, placing one scrap of it over her mouth and nose and the other over his own. She felt a bit of relief from the choking smoke, but her eyes still stung. A solid band of orange lined the space under her door, and the fire roared on the other side. She was never going to get out of this room. She had landed herself in hell, and God was watching her burn.

“You have to get out of here.” He had taken one of the thin blankets off her bed and was plunging it into the water in her washbasin.

“I am never getting out of here,” she said, feeling her words trapped inside the cloth she held to her mouth.

“Come on.” He crouched down to grab her arm and help her to her feet, but Kassandra wrenched herself out of his grip, shaking her head violently.

“I will die out there!” she screamed, taking the cloth away from her mouth.

“Don’t be silly.” He moved her hand to cover her mouth again. “The window. C’mon.”

He dragged her to her feet and hauled her over to the open window. The street below teemed with activity—people poured from the tavern, shoving each other aside, knocking one another down and scrambling over the sprawled bodies. Faces appeared in the doorways and windows of neighboring buildings, casting worried glances towards the roofs lest the flames leap from Ben’s building to their own. Children ran around in manic glee. Nothing was quite so exciting as a fire—the breaking glass, the clanging bells, the chance to go in for treasure once the smoke was cleared.