Room for Love (34 page)

My throat feels as if enormous, frozen hands are squeezing it tightly. If I open my mouth to speak, I might let out a scream that would never stop. Poor Court. I can't believe she has been going through all this and hasn't felt like she could talk to me about it or that she's been going through it at all. I don't know how I'd survive if Courtney and Brad got divorced. Their relationship has been the one sure sign of hope for me. To imagine it crumbling is to imagine life as barren, cold, and loveless, desolate like a postapocalyptic landscape out of
Mad Max,
so much more devastating than my own breakup with Anthony. The guilt I feel at being unaware of Courtney's pain is unbearable.

“But, Courtney, Brad loves you,” I say.

“I know he does. I just fear we want different things.”

“No, no, that's not true,” I say, digging for the words I think Courtney needs to hear. “That's never been true. You've always been happy together, for almost fourteen years. This is only temporary, Court. This is nothing when you think about sixty more years together. It'll be a mere blip. Think about it. You'll be ninety and going, ‘Didn't you go on tour when we were in our thirties, honey? I barely remember that.' But you'll still have each other and your kids and your love. You'll still be reading him his horoscope and bugging him to take his herbal remedies and he'll be rolling his eyes, then thanking God for his wonderful, loving wife. Please, Court, you are so lucky to have each other. Don't risk losing that, please talk to him. Please go see him and talk it out and see what you need to do to work through this. Go tomorrow. Call in sick. Please, please, Court, will you go call him right now and tell him you're coming?”

“Okay,” she says weakly, as if she's only doing it to make me happy, and I'm so pathetic right now that she'd better do whatever it takes to cheer me up. She slowly pulls herself out from under the covers and puts her feet on the floor. As she walks unhurriedly out the door, I pat the covers to get Chaz's attention.

“Come here, baby,” I call. He jumps back onto the bed and I pull him over to me. I fall asleep spooning the big furry white beast.

When I wake up, I'm alone in bed. Chaz and Courtney are nowhere to be found. I pad out into the kitchen and find a note on the counter from Courtney saying she went to work and to give her a call. She says there's muesli and tea in the cupboard next to the fridge. I glance at the clock on the stove and am shocked to see that it's ten-fifteen. I must have really needed to sleep. I pick up the phone and dial
Flicks.
Steve answers.

“Hey, you,” I say.

“Hey, where are you?” he asks.

I tell him about my apartment and ask for the day off. He tells me to take as much time as I need.

“Though don't forget we're closing next Friday,” he says. “Your glance back at the work of Rock Hudson looks good, but your ‘best movies to get your man in the mood' piece is due. Do you want to have Sam write it?”

“No, no, I'll get it done,” I assure him and then reconsider. “Actually, yeah, would you mind?” It's the first time I've ever turned down work, but I feel incapable of writing an article right now, especially a lite & snarky one.

“Hey, don't forget the Movies Matter party tomorrow. I understand if you can't, but I would really like it if you could make an appearance.”

I'd forgotten all about this event that the magazine is sponsoring, an enormous multimedia exhibit in a warehouse in Chelsea with political video installations and performance art and a DJ. Some band is playing at midnight.

“Oh God,” I say. “I completely forgot. Yeah, I'll be there.” It's my managing-editorly duty, even if my whole life did just get blown to bits. “Oh shit, I have a meeting at the burnt-out shell that used to be my apartment. I have to run,” I tell him. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

My mom left a message last night to meet the marshal at noon and she was going to try to get an insurance agent there at the same time. I persuaded Jeremy and Alicia to join us. They always manage to make me laugh even at life's cruelest moments, a talent I thought could come in handy around now. I call Courtney and she tells me she had a productive conversation with Brad last night that lasted two hours. He's in transit today, but suggested that she fly up to Toronto over the weekend, because they'll be there for three days and have a light schedule. He said he loves her and wants to work everything out. My heart feels as though it's going to bust out through my rib cage.

When I hang up, I call and order flowers sent to Courtney's office, with an apologetic haiku on the card:

Sorry I checked out

Love you more than Häagen-Dazs

Now go fetch your man.

xo, Jacquie

I arrive at my building and take deep breaths before opening the front door and entering the lobby, where the curmudgeon who lives on the first floor is checking his mail. A horrible, toxic smell assaults my nostrils. I can only imagine what it's like upstairs. My neighbor's eyes light up at the sight of me. “How are you, miss?” he says, the first words we've exchanged since I moved in. “Horrible tragedy, horrible. Do you have a place to stay?”

“Yes, I'm staying with a friend. Thanks for asking.”

“Good, good,” he says.

“Do you know if everyone else in the building is okay?” I ask. “Was there any damage to other apartments?”

“Several have minor water damage, I believe, but only Lucinda's was seriously damaged,” he says. “She's directly below you. I think she'll have to stay away for a month or so as they work on her apartment.”

“Poor Lucinda,” I say. “I feel terrible.” I make a mental note to find out where she's staying and bring her flowers and a treat for Larry.

“Have a good day, miss,” my neighbor says, closing his door behind him. Maybe he's not such a curmudgeon after all. I slowly climb the stairs to my doom.

My apartment is black and wet and dark, the gaping cave of a man's mouth who has had all his teeth bashed out with a hammer. For some reason I think of
Saving Private Ryan,
Omaha Beach after the storm. All I can do is stare, blinking. The windows have been boarded over, so only pinpricks of sunlight enter around the edges, sending thin, diagonal shafts onto the floor. I have to step up a good foot and a half to enter, and my shoe lands not on the floor but on something mushy and soft. I'm standing on a mound of sludge, some combination of plaster, ash, water, and what I imagine is the remainder of my stuff. My eyes take a while adjusting to the absence of light. There isn't much left of my bedroom walls to my left. Most of the drywall has burned through the bottom half, leaving the wooden skeleton standing there like charred Popsicle sticks. The entryway closet is another stump. I can see right through it to the washer/dryer in the kitchen, black with soot. I might hyperventilate. It looks like there's still a tub, toilet, and sink in my bathroom, hooray, but they're cracked and battered. I guess the heat of a fire busts porcelain right up. Random wires hang from the ceiling.

I tiptoe over the mountain range of muck on the floor to make my way in. My eyes are starting to acclimate to the dark. It's cold here. I wonder for a minute if I'm hallucinating, if this isn't really my amazing apartment that I only bought a few months ago. I remember sitting on the floor with Courtney, lighting candles, making wishes. Was that right here? For a moment, I am stupefied that my life has changed so drastically since then, that I had a boyfriend who has since left me, an apartment that burned down, a life I barely recognize. There are certain things I've always been sure of: that I'm a good person, an honest person, a good sister and friend, that I'm able to acknowledge and laugh at my flaws before working to reverse them. But lately I'm not so sure. I've been lying to Anthony ever since I met him. Lies roll naturally off my tongue. I have become one of those people who frantically justifies her behavior rather than takes responsibility for it, one of those people I've always disdained. I don't recognize myself any more than my apartment. And I can't blame Anthony for the shift. He never asked me to change. I wanted him so badly; I wanted to be immersed in his world so much that I sacrificed my own.

My buzzer buzzes—nice to know it still functions—and I let everyone in. In a minute, Jeremy and Alicia are standing at the door with the fire marshal and a woman I take to be the insurance agent. Jeremy and I look at each other for a second—and then burst out laughing. My sister joins in, until the three of us have to hold on to one another for support as tears of laughter cover our faces. The fire marshal and insurance agent smile at us politely, mystified.

One word at a time, I spit out, “Nice. Apartment. Huh?”

The spell is broken, and I put out my hand to shake those of Bob the fire marshal, a strapping guy in the expected attire, and Ms. Stelling from my insurance company, who is appropriately dressed in jeans and galoshes. Guess she knew to expect a swamp instead of a floor. “Hi, I'm Jacquie. This is my apartment.” We walk around together as Bob describes what happened.

“Smoke rises,” he explains, pointing at the walls of the living room, which are progressively blacker as we look up toward the ceiling. Some furniture is standing, but it's disgusting and soggy from the massive amount of water the firemen sprayed on it. My two wicker and pine bar stools are lying crumpled halfway across the room from where they used to sit. I imagine the big strong firemen flinging them there, breaking the legs right off. Burnt books are scattered all over. Of the ones still on the shelves, the higher I look, the blacker the spines. I wonder what can be saved. I probably have too many books anyway. Certain spots of the floor are visible through the muck, the floorboards no longer flat, but each curled into a C shape from the heat. It's pretty in a bizarre way. I tell myself to bring a camera next time.

“Here's my rug,” I say to my sister, indicating a solid, black ball of damp fabric the size of one of those exercise balls at the gym that is scrunched up in the corner. I pick it up and pry apart the tightly wound, drenched fabric. “Maybe a good cleaner can save it?” I say.

“You're dreaming,
hermana,
” Alicia responds.

The kitchen got hit harder than the living room, I guess because it shares a wall with the bathroom, which is where the fire started. The stove and fridge are covered in thick black dust. The granite countertop is there, but it's lying on top of a heap of soggy, charred bits of plaster, ash, pots, pans, other remnants of my cabinets, which were swallowed whole by the fire. The backsplash is still there, leading all the way up to the only two pitch-black cabinets still hanging. I run my finger along Zach's handiwork, making a clean trail in the soot to reveal beautiful, unscathed metallic tiles still clinging to the bare walls. I rub the black dust between my thumb and forefinger in a daze. Nothing remains of my desk or anything on it. It seems to have dissolved completely into the mountain of debris covering the floor.

The fire marshal tells me they've determined that the fire was accidental, the result of a spark coming into contact with polyurethane that had recently been put down on the bathroom floor. Apparently the walls had also been painted, creating additional fumes. The spark most likely came from ancient wiring in the light above the bathroom sink. I freeze. I cringe. My breath stops flowing into my lungs. This was my fault. Or not exactly my fault, but I should have had that fixed months ago.

I take deep breaths and continue to follow the marshal around, into my bedroom, which has also been decimated. My bed frame melted onto the floor, the way a record used to warp if you left it sitting by a window in the days of vinyl. The insurance agent announces that she has everything she needs and asks me to e-mail her a list of my possessions, indicating everything that was damaged or destroyed, and says a lot of it will be covered. I say a silent prayer that I took my parents' advice for once and got homeowners' insurance. She says she will be in touch and takes my cell phone number.

“Hey, Lucinda downstairs has insurance, doesn't she?” To my relief, she says that she does and that she's handling her case, too. Bob announces that he's taking off as well and tells me to call if I have any questions. I borrow a flashlight and promise to drop it off at the station on my way out.

Once they're gone, Jeremy, Alicia, and I start chuckling again, but it's sad laughter this time.

“Let's go find your coat,” Jeremy says. I make my way into my bedroom closet. The door, well, half of it, which now has the consistency of burnt firewood, is still dangling from its hinges, but the mirror that was affixed to it is nowhere to be found. I shine light inside the somber cave and notice that most of its contents are bundled in a big colorless ball on the floor jammed up against the back wall, which I approach. I pry off a layer and examine it: a crispy, hard, shapeless board that on further inspection becomes the red polka-dotted dress I wore to my birthday party. I try to flatten it in my hands and it rips in half. Alicia giggles.

“It's not funny. I love that dress,” I say.

“Well, maybe you can use that emergency debit card to go shopping. Two hundred bucks can get you six items from H&M,” Jeremy says.

“I don't think that's what the Red Cross has in mind,” I tell him.

“Why not? You lost clothes in the fire,” he says.

“Shut up,” Alicia says. “You'll get bucks from insurance and we'll buy you a whole new wardrobe. I always thought that dress was a little 2002 myself.” I hit her on the head with the left half of my crispified former favorite dress. It breaks. “That stinks,” she says. I flick some ashes out of her hair.

“Let's get out of here. I can't deal with it,” I announce, and we all go get coffee at my corner café. I tell the cute waiter what happened and he says my latte and croissant are on him. I can't remember the last time I actually paid for anything there.