Jan Burke - Remember Me, Irene

We made our way to an interior door. We stepped into a long, dark hallway. Several doors led off it. The floor was sticky, and the odor of urine permeated the cold air. I tried not to think about it, and swore I’d throw my shoes away when I got home.

“Prop that one open, too,” Rachel said. “Make it easier to find our way out.”

As we walked away from the door, the hall grew darker, and it was the darkness and sense of confinement, not the stench, that began to stir a growing panic within me.

I once spent a few days locked in a small, dark room as the guest of a couple of creeps who got their kicks out of hearing people scream. One result of the experience is that I sometimes have to sleep with the light on. Other times, it’s better not to go to sleep at all. Darkness is not my old friend.

I tried to keep my mind away from memories as we went on. Rachel kept moving forward. I followed more closely. She looked back at me, holding the flashlight so that it didn’t blind me.

“You okay? You want to wait outside?”

I wanted it more than just about anything, but I shook my head. “Lucas knows me, he doesn’t know you.”

“He’s not likely to be hanging out here during the day.”

“I’m going with you.”

She shrugged and moved on. She stopped often to listen as we approached doors. The only noises to be heard were the now-distant sounds of occasional traffic on the street, our sticky footsteps, and the hammering of my heart. My claustrophobia was kicking in.

“We’re making our way to a stairwell,” she said, her tone gentle, coaxing. “There should be more light there.”

I couldn’t answer.

She looked back at me again, then put the light on the doors around us. Some were marked, most weren’t. She paused, as if debating something. I started shaking. I tried to force insistent images from my mind. This is different, I told myself. You’re safe, you’re safe. I heard my own breathing-quick, short breaths.

“Slow down,” she said. “You want to carry the light?”

“No.” I made myself take slower breaths.

She reached back and took my hand, then started walking again. My own hand felt cold in hers. I wanted to protest, to say she was making me feel like a child, but I was grateful for her warm, firm grip.

“Hope that stronzo we found back there didn’t bother you too much.”

I shook my head. Useless in the dark. Get me out of here! I wanted to scream.

“Look at it like a hunter would,” she said. “Think of it as fresh spoor. Maybe your friend left it.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said, my voice tight. “Somebody else, maybe. Not Lucas.”

“Oh, so your friend the bum is such a saint he doesn’t ever take a shit, eh?”

I pulled my hand away.

“Oh,” she said, in the darkness, “so he’s a saint, just like St. Anthony?” She kept moving forward; I was forced to follow at a faster pace. “The saint who never took a dump,” she went on. “What a fantastic miracle to have to one’s credit!”

I felt my fists clench. “Stop it.”

“Maybe the pope will make him patron saint of the asshole. St. Bum of the bum.”

“Goddamn it, Rachel,” I shouted, “shut the fuck up!”

The words echoed in the hallway. She stopped, and flashed the light on the door just ahead of us.EXIT was painted on it. She turned back to look at me, bouncing the light off a nearby wall, illuminating both of our faces. She was smiling. “Much better.”

I realized what she had done, why she had done it. I dropped my gaze. “Forgive me if I don’t say ‘thank you’ right away.”

She laughed and opened the door.

There was light in the stairwell, and more air, a combination which helped me to calm down. I raced past her, up the stairs to the first broken window. I put my face up to the opening, took deep, gulping breaths of cold, fresh air. The knots went out of my stomach, I stopped shaking. Then, on that wave of relief, for the next few moments, I felt as if I might start crying.

At one time, an emotional reaction like that would have made me ashamed of myself. Now, I was growing used to it, and perhaps because I knew it would pass, it passed more quickly. I looked over at Rachel, who was waiting behind me on the landing, pretending to be studying her cellular phone. Her long hair cloaked her face, hiding her expression.

“Are my nose and cheeks as red as yours?” I asked.

She looked up. “Yes, and your orecchi -your ears, too.”

I reached up and rubbed a hand through my hair. “I can’t wait for this to grow out again.”

“It will, it will. That stubbornness of yours will push it right out of your head. Your hair will be longer than mine by summer.”

I laughed.

She smiled. “A good sound, that laugh of yours,” she said, putting the phone away. She began to lead the way upstairs again. “I figure we should start at the top. That okay with you?”

“We’re thinking the same thing. Corky said Lucas liked to go to the upper floors in a building.”

“Right.”

There was little conversation after that. The task of climbing fourteen flights of stairs kept us both warm and quiet. Rachel was in terrific shape; Frank, Mr. Really Great You-Know-What, once told me that Rachel had shamed him into a more rigorous work-out. I was still making a comeback from having been laid up for a while; for the last few floors, I had to put real effort into it.

At the top floor, we stepped out into a dark area near a set of elevators. We rounded a corner into a dimly lit hallway. The light was coming from two large glass doors, long plates of frosted green glass. Deco-style woodwork of mahogany and chrome framed the doors. Twin angels, as solemn as their counterparts on the exterior of the building, faced us. Draped in heavy robes, each held a sword. “The angels on this building are the saddest heavenly creatures I’ve ever seen in my life,” Rachel said, pushing one of the doors open. “Maybe I won’t feel too bad if I go the other way.”

The doors opened on to one large room. Light streamed in from three directions, from long windows that must have once offered a fantastic view of the city and the water. Now, taller buildings blocked much of that view. Behind us, a long bar carved with smiling cherubs stood before a big mirror that had lost a lot of its silvering.

“The happier angels are here at the bar,” I said, my voice echoing in the empty room.

“I guess those serious types at the door are the bouncers,” she said.

“Guardian angels. Must be-if my guess about the age of the building is right, that glass and the rest of this place survived the big quake of 1933.”

Rachel shivered and made an Italian gesture to ward off evil. “Don’t say the word ‘earthquake,’” she said. A hardwood floor, scarred and buckling, remained in place, although I doubted that anything other than dust motes had danced in this room in the last few decades. I squatted down closer to the floor to look at it from another angle.

“Doesn’t look like anyone has been staying up here,” Rachel was saying.

“No, but look at the floor. Someone sat up here and admired the view.”

There were places here and there that might have been old footprints, but a set that was clearly newer led across the floor to a place along the south-facing windows, and back again to the doors. Whatever tables and chairs had been in the room had long ago been removed, but an overturned crate was propped up near the windows where the footprints ended.

“Let’s take a look,” she said.

“These windows face south, toward the ocean.”

“Do you think he was trying to look at the water?”

“Couldn’t see much of it from here.”