Thomas Sniegoski: Walking In the Midst of Fire

“I was hoping I’d catch you,” Steven said. “Didn’t realize that you’d have company.” He reached down and picked up the paper bag at his feet. “We can do this another time. I’m Steven by the way,” he said to Linda, sticking out his hand as he stood. “You must be Linda.”

“Yeah.” She gave him a spectacular smile and took his hand. “Yeah, I am. It’s really nice to finally meet you.”

Steven’s own smile slowly waned as he returned his attention to Remy. “Give me a call. I know I’ve been out of touch, but I’m back now. We need to talk.”

Remy was about to reply, when Linda beat him to the punch.

“Hey, you know, I’ve got to get up early tomorrow,” she said, her eyes darting to Steven and then to Remy. “I was planning on going right to bed. Why don’t you stick around, Steven?”

Linda looked at Remy. He saw what she was doing, and loved her all the more for it.

“Why not,” Remy agreed.

She smiled briefly at him, and then turned it to Steven. “Promise you won’t keep him up all night.” Her eyes dropped to the paper bag in his hand. “Or that you won’t get him too drunk.”

“Promise,” Steven said, holding up his hand in a Boy Scout salute. “I know what a sloppy drunk he can be and I wouldn’t want to subject a sweet thing like yourself to his shenanigans.”

Linda laughed out loud.

“Shenanigans?” she repeated. “Who uses these words? Let me guess, you have a word-of-the-day desk calendar, too.”

“He gave it to me for Christmas,” Steven said with a completely straight face, pointing at Remy. “Why?”

The silence on the roof of Remy’s brownstone was practically palpable.

He and Steven had grabbed some glasses and filled a bucket full of ice in the kitchen before heading up to the rooftop deck. Marlowe had been ecstatic to see his friend Steven and had insisted on joining them. He now lay beside Steven’s chair, looking up at him lovingly, tail wagging.

“How ya been?” Steven finally asked, breaking the silence, reaching down with his free hand to pet the black dog’s blocky head.

“Are you asking me or the dog?”

“Both,” Steven said. He brought his tumbler of Glenlivet 18 to his mouth and carefully sipped at the scotch.

“I’m doing all right,” Remy said, having some scotch of his own. “How are you doing, Marlowe? Steven wants to know.”

“I love Steven,” Marlowe said, tail thumping excitedly upon the rooftop. “Miss him.”

“Well?” Steven asked.

“He says he’s good,” Remy said, not bothering to share the extent of the dog’s emotions. “He said he missed you.”

“I missed you, too, buddy,” Steven said, leaning over in the chair to scratch Marlowe behind the ear and accept a wet, sloppy kiss.

Remy swirled the ice around in his glass, deciding to tackle the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. “Here’s the real question,” he said. “How are you?”

Steven moved uneasily in his chair, looking out at the twinkling lights of the city.

“I’m good now,” he said. “I’m getting there . . . getting better. I’m all healed up physically.”

“You know I’m sorry for what happened,” Remy told him. “If I had known what I was asking you to do would put you in any danger I would never . . .”

“It’s cool,” Steven said. “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

“When you wouldn’t answer my calls . . .”

“If we talked then it wouldn’t have been all right,” Steven said, downing the remaining contents of his glass. He set the empty tumbler down on the patio table and fished a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket, tapped one out, and lit it. “I just needed some time to think about stuff,” he said, blowing a stream of smoke into the cool night air. “I needed to think about what I’d seen . . . and how it was connected to you.”

Remy listened, sensing that his friend had more to say.

“I know you’d told me stuff in the past,” Steven said with a nervous chuckle. “But I never imagined . . .”

Steven’s voice trailed off, cigarette smoldering in his hand as he stared off into space. Remy was certain that he was experiencing it all again—his nearly fatal brush with the supernatural.

“I never meant for you to be exposed to that part of my life,” Remy said. “You asked me to keep it as far from you as possible, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job until . . .”

Steven looked at him with fear in his gaze. “It’s terrifying,” he said. His hand was shaking as he brought the cigarette up to his eager lips. “The things I saw . . .” Steven finished the smoke, stamping out the remains in an ashtray on the table.

“I know,” Remy said. “I’m sorry.”

“How do you sleep?” Steven asked, pulling the stopper from the bottle and pouring another few fingers of scotch into his glass. He added some ice as an afterthought.

“I’m not sure you remember, but I’m not human,” Remy said. He quickly looked to the doorway that led onto the roof, just to be sure that Linda wasn’t there to overhear, before looking back to his friend. “This kind of thing—I’m sort of built for it.”

“And I’m not,” Steven Mulvehill said, bringing his glass to his mouth for a sip of his drink. “But now I know what’s out there . . . not just what you’ve hinted at . . . what’s really out there, and I’m terrified . . . terrified to have anything to do with you because it might force me to come in contact with something that, this time, would finish me off in the most horrifying way imaginable.”

“I figured as much,” Remy said, sipping what remained of his drink.

The two were silent, the sound of Marlowe’s deep snoring the soundtrack to the moment.

“So how about now?” Remy finally asked him. “Are you still scared of what’s out there? Of me?”

Steven laughed, looking at his friend.

“Fucking terrified.”

That made Remy laugh, too, and shake his head.

“I wish there was something I could say or do to take away your fear, but . . .” Remy stopped, considering his words. “But it doesn’t change the fact that those threats are out there, and now with what happened in Back Bay . . .”

“You were involved with that,” Steven stated. “How did I fucking know you were involved with that?”

“You are a police detective,” Remy said. He leaned forward in his chair and reached for the bottle.

“I was out there,” Steven suddenly stated.

“Where?” Remy asked as he poured more scotch over the dwindling ice in his glass.

“The streets around where that business was happening.”

Remy sat back. “Did you see . . .”

“More shit that I wish I could unsee,” he said.

“Why would you go anywhere near something like that if you knew . . .”

“I saw it on TV and just about shit myself,” Steven explained. “I knew it—as soon as that special news report started, I knew that it must’ve had something to do with the crazy shit that you’d gotten me involved with.”

“Still doesn’t explain why you would go out into it,” Remy said. “Especially after what you’d gone through before. I don’t get it.”

“I was afraid,” Steven said.

“Yeah, I get that, but it doesn’t tell me why—”

“The fear was eating me alive,” he interrupted. “It was all I knew. . . . I woke up with it. I had lunch with it. . . . It was with me constantly, and it liked to remind me that it was the fucking boss.”

Steven took a big long drink, almost draining his glass.

“And when I saw that business on the television I wanted to pull the curtains and hide myself away. . . . That was what the fear was telling me to do.”