“Nothing to think on,” he said, gulping down the purple sugar water.
“What’s your name?”
“Diamond.”
“I’m Tony.”
“Used to be I worked in this place.”
“This school?”
“Naw, but one like it. Down the way a bit. Used to be. They took me away.”
He didn’t share anything more.
An hour after that, he checked on Catherine. She was slick with sweat and shivering. She’d wet herself. He’d read enough to understand she was going through the first stages of withdrawal. He could hope it was heroin but there were no needle tracks on her arms, which probably meant it was this concentrated fentanyl shit or worse. He’d asked plenty of questions but not enough; he’d sent her money every month when she needed it; he’d let her plead her way out of any reckoning. He was at least partly responsible for this, and now it was going to kill them both. When Catherine had been little she’d refused baths with borderline violence, especially if Dad was the one enforcing her hygiene. Once, trying to get her in the tub, she even bit him. Of course, once she was in the bath she’d have the time of her life and never want to leave and another fight would ensue to get her out. He’d pull the drain and she’d try to put it back in, stand in the water and stomp her feet furiously. How feeble these memories felt in the face of an inferno. That was when he coughed, tasting smoke yet again. He clicked the flashlight on, and there it was: wisps creeping under the door, gathering in the beam.
“Goddamnit,” he moaned.
Diamond tore his coat off and stuffed it into the crack, but it was still seeping in around the edges. He stepped back beside Tony and Catherine. The dog whined.
“I’m sorry, brother,” said Diamond.
“No,” said Tony, stroking his daughter’s face, thinking about the time she was seven and he wouldn’t let her stay up so she shouted You’re a tyrant! and launched a bowl of SpaghettiOs at the wall. “I’m sorry.”
Smoke sipped in around the frame of the door, exploring the ceiling and crawling, a step at a time, toward them. Catherine woke as the smell became too powerful. He smiled and put his arm around her.
“Hey. How you doing?”
Her face crumpled with misery. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“For what? There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Holly’s going to be so mad at me,” she whimpered, and despite the dread filling him, he couldn’t help but laugh at that. Diamond looked at him like he was a madman. Then, abruptly, all three of them started coughing. Choking on smoke, he had the urge to claw his throat open, as if this would siphon clean air into his lungs. He was going to die scratching his throat apart. They all were.
At first, he thought the sound of the siren was his imagination and ignored it. But then his friend, huddled against the wall with his knees drawn to his chest, trying to keep his face buried in his rags, heard it too. He looked at Tony. “Where it coming from?”
The brays of some kind of emergency vehicle. Tony left Catherine, held his breath, and climbed the stairs to the door. He put his hand on the metal, and it was too hot to touch. He ran right back down where the smoke was thinner. He looked up at the window with its orange slice of light. The sirens and the horn grew louder. The dog lifted its head and perked up its chocolate ears. Tony dragged a broken student desk below the window, ordered Diamond to hold it, and climbed up. The window had metal wire covering it, but he could at least see out. The sirens grew louder, then the strobing red and white lights began to splash across the burning night, and finally—never having flirted with religion for even a moment—Tony understood what it was like to watch an angel appear. An honest-to-Christ fire truck pulled to the curb outside the middle school, lumbering to a halt on the lawn. It was covered in ash, a sooty scorch mark slashing through the LAFD logo. Tony began screaming through his hoarse, burning throat.
“In here! Heyyyyy!!! In here!!!!”
Three firefighters leaped from the cab, and then the bulky angels were running toward the school, oxygen tanks bouncing, masks like deep-sea divers, wielding axes. How did they know?
“We’re in the basement!” He smacked the window with both fists, and this sent pain shooting through his busted head and scorched lungs. The dog got the idea and began barking at a steady clip. “The basement!” And then his lungs exploded into another coughing fit, and it felt like he was choking on barbed wire.
Three more figures leaped off the rig, while one turned a water cannon on the building. He just couldn’t believe it. He crawled off the desk, trying to stay the coughing of his smoke-scarred lungs long enough to command the others: “Scream!”
And the three of them began shouting all at once. The dog barked furiously. Tony bounded up the stairs to the door, pounding on the metal even as it burned his fist.
From the other side of the door: “Stand back!”
“It’s unlocked!”
Nevertheless, the door burst inward, slamming against the wall and rebounding. Clad in orange jumpsuits, three women came hurtling through like Navy SEALs, rushing them with silver foil. One stuffed an oxygen mask over his face before he could even get a word out. The smoke stung his eyes, but he could clearly see this savior had a tattoo on her face. She was also missing most of her bottom teeth.
“C’mon, man, we gotta beat feet!” she cried.
“My daughter,” he wheezed.
“They’ll get her. Let’s go.”
One of the women was wrapping Catherine in a foil blanket and then hoisting her over her shoulder without asking, picking her up like a bag of laundry. The dog barked.
“C’mon, pup!” cried the third woman, who’d gone to Diamond.
Tony followed on the firewoman’s heels. Through a smoke-choked hallway, sucking cool air from the oxygen mask, and out into the savage night. Fire everywhere. Burning so bright, the night was forgotten. Every home he could see was in some state of nature’s arson, whether it was cinders spotting on the roof or the whole structure wrapped in flame. It felt like it was a thousand degrees outside, and the wind blew hot and spiteful into his face, peppered with a cool mist evaporating from the barrel of the truck’s water cannon. The hellscape ran on in every direction, as far as his vision allowed.
The woman hauled Catherine to the fire truck, another carried the dog in two arms like a bag of concrete, and Diamond brought up the rear. As they reached the rig, he saw a man in a shirt and tie holding the door open, looking like he’d wandered out of a boardroom into the hell he most likely deserved. At first Tony figured him for another person the women had rescued. Then he realized who he was looking at.
“Corey?”
“Is she okay?” his brother-in-law shouted, trying to be heard above the blaze.
“She ate some smoke,” said the woman loading her into the truck. “But she’ll be fine.”
Despite the searing knives in his chest and the ringing in his head, Tony was caught staring at his brother-in-law, stunned dumb. The firewoman grabbed him by the collar and practically threw him into the truck. He collapsed in a seat opposite Corey, still just staring. Corey’s sleeves were rolled up, his blue button-up pit-stained, his tie askew, gray ash resting in the tips of his buzzed hair.
“Let’s fucking go, ladies!” screamed the woman with the face tattoo, who seemed to be in charge.
“Corey, what the hell?” Tony whispered through the glass of his throat.
The siren wailed and the truck lurched up a hill, hanging a left on Sunset, racing down through a cool tunnel of air between burning shops and restaurants. Corey wrapped Tony in his arms, crying and laughing and slapping his back.
“You crazy motherfucker, Tony! Your balls are almost as big as these gals’!” He let him go and then threw his arm around the firefighter sitting next to him, an exhausted Black woman with a gap in her front teeth. He planted a kiss on her cheek. She shook her head, neither amused nor repulsed, just tired.