A Boston Fire
“911, what’s your emergency?” The man listened to the monotone while flicking the wheel of his lighter in a slow, steady breathing of sparks. He watched as they bounced on the concrete in short bursts like mini supernovas.
“A fire,” he said softly, “Woodland Avenue, the building behind the Walmart.” He had always spoken in a gentle rasp–wasn’t one for loud noises. She had always appreciated that about him, but for now, he only hoped that the operator had understood.
The man let the phone slide from his hand to the floor in a short clatter of sound. It remained face-up, leaving a small, persistent glow he eventually looked down at.
It was a glow the man had stared at for hours after each exhausting day. A glow that woke him in the morning after every sleepless night. A glow he now kicked towards the tall shelves in the left corner of the dark factory.
The man sighed. Shouldn't have done that. He remembered the therapist had called it a “trigger”. He also remembered how she had paid more attention to her computer screen and how the price of those sessions caused him to lose the last of his rent money.
His friend had told him to go to the sessions, and even though they grew apart, the man still went every Sunday at 3 p.m. He didn’t know why he had continued going. Maybe it was because, even with her lack of interest, the therapist kind of looked like her in the dim light of the office.
He remembered the day that the young landlord, fresh from the deaths of her parents, put on a tough facade at his doorstep and told him to leave. She dressed in a grey suit, most likely her late mother’s, and pointed with a quivering, delicate finger at the street. Perhaps it was the warmth that remained in her brown eyes that made her help him pack all of his belongings into a duffel bag found in the depths of his closet.
She left shortly after, the last vestige of civility he would come to experience. Instead, he would come to know the street corners, parks, and alleyways of Boston as intimately as he had known her. The city opened its dark petals and engulfed him slowly, soundlessly. He wandered through bare October nights and slushy Spring mornings, searching for something, anything.
He spent nights on old park benches or bug-infested grass patches, wondering if the cost would amount to something. Only after a few months of nothing did he recognize the futility of aimlessly searching. Perhaps, he thought, he would find something in a newfound appreciation for stability.
He visited a homeless shelter for a few days, learned how others ended up like him. He learned of their sorrow, and knew he had no right to be there, to enjoy the food they deserved.
The overhangs of stores became his new sleeping dens. There was a sweet spot around 1 a.m where everything would turn quiet and he could finally get some sleep. Otherwise, he could only play video games on his phone–using store Wifi–to drown out the din of people. By the 300th repeat of Angry Birds’ first level, he had perfected the art of angular geometry.
But the thing he remembered most about his few months of homelessness was the cold. It sat on him, poked in and out of the pores of his skin until he was unsure whether he had frozen down to his blood cells. He could feel it even now in the dark warmth of the factory, an icy wind against his ruddy cheeks.
He looked up slowly, saw the rainy snow that invaded from an open window. Why had he ever come to Boston? Without straining his ears he could hear the engines of cars and the slapping of boots on slushy sidewalks and the lingering sound of sirens one could always hear on a silent day.
Beyond that, he could hear a faint voice, her voice. The same voice that greeted him every morning when he came downstairs after waking up late, along with her warm smile as she wrapped her thin arms around him. As they held each other in the chaos of their lives, he calmed himself for a moment with the cinnamon perfume of her honey blonde hair.
The man wanted to go up to that window and close it tight, yet it was too far above him. He wasn’t meant to do such a thing. Instead, he paced forward, proceeding to wade through cardboard boxes near the right wall of the factory. As he went, he dragged along a red gasoline can that spilled viscous liquid over the cardboard like syrup on pancakes.
He gazed at his handiwork, the chaos of the cardboard boxes strewn about, tossed from their tall black shelves. Perhaps someone else could find beauty in this swamp-like creation, yet the man found nothing. There was nothing beautiful about what he was doing.
Beautiful… like she was. She had died here. A falling package from a tall shelf. A stupid accident that couldn’t be blamed on anyone else. The man stumbled out of the sea of packages, already nauseous, perhaps from the smell of gasoline. He rubbed his hands up and down his scraggly beard as he paced back and forth. As an afterthought, he threw the old keycard into the cardboard mass, the one she had once used to enter this place. This dark, lonely place.
He could hear the sirens louder now and knew he had to act. He flicked on the lighter and tossed it into the center of the cardboard boxes. The lighter spun with slow revolution, and though his aim wasn’t nearly as good as it was in a video game, the lighter eventually dinked into a small puddle of gasoline and the fire spurted upwards in silent satisfaction.
The man was long gone though. Already outside, snow lashing at his unkempt hair and clinging to the yellow laces of his brown boots, the man watched the smoke pour out of the open window that had allowed the snow in.
He stood there long past the firemen came and left, his body awash with the red and blue of the police car’s lights. The car engines still raged one block over. This fire would be mentioned in some talk show and never discussed again. The snow still poured down, had already consumed the smoke from that open window. Eventually consumed him as well.