Andrew Fox - Over Our Heads

‘Now,’ Chloe says when she has finished, ‘I’ll turn you over to my colleague.’

Four sets of eyes ratchet in Julian’s direction. His hand shakes slightly as he distributes supporting materials in cobalt folders embossed with his and Chloe’s company logo, but when he turns to actionable time frames and real-world deliverables, his voice is steady. He fields questions that fall within his purview and hands off to Chloe those that fall within hers. He cracks wise with the compliance guy about the Celtics and invites them all to a Warriors game next time they find themselves in the Bay Area.

‘Well,’ Bobst smiles, ‘you’ve certainly given us a lot to think about.’

‘It’s been our pleasure,’ Julian says.

As he is heading out the door, he realizes that Chloe isn’t following. She sits on the edge of the conference table, legs crossed at the knee and a foot wagging. Bobst leans above her with a palm stretched flat by her thigh. She presses his wrist and nods her head and opens her throat to laugh.

‘Chlo?’ Julian says.

The smile on Bobst’s face freezes.

‘She’ll catch you up,’ he says.

‘I’ll wait for you in the lobby.’

‘I might —’ Chloe says. ‘I’ll see you at the hotel, okay?’

‘I’ll walk you out,’ the compliance guy says, his hand brisk at Julian’s elbow. ‘And what about baseball? Can you get good seats for the Giants when the Sox are in town?’

Julian tells him, ‘The best.’

He had hoped for the opportunity to wander around the city a bit between meeting and flight, maybe eat a celebratory steak with Chloe in one of the places on Stuart Street, but now, back at the hotel, Julian finds his energy drained, his appetite depleted. He calls down to reception to arrange for late check-out, then changes into his travelling clothes — good jeans, a collared shirt — and packs his suit and shoes. Out the window he can see the Prudential Tower’s severity of glass and angle. What the hell could Chloe still be talking about in there?

As someone who reads signs and makes predictions for a living, Julian hates it when he misses things — has he missed something?

He goes to the bathroom, fills the sink and dunks his face. Water runs in ribbons down his nose and cheeks. He towels off, breathing slowly. He brushes his teeth against the bitter taste that has gathered on his tongue, then slumps on to the bed and grinds his teeth and presses a thumb into his eye. He turns on the TV to a hotel station where a man in full colonial dress stands in the lobby of a seafood restaurant. The camera zooms in on a bowl of bubbling chowder. A cartoon lobster with rubber bands around its claws scuttles happily across the screen and winks.

After a while, through the wall, Julian hears the click of Chloe’s door.

Then the second fire starts. The alarm begins as a low, two-tone hum out in the hallway, after which Julian hears a series of heavy clunks that he understands to be the fire doors falling shut.

‘Christ,’ he mutters, thinking drill or false alarm, but pockets his phone and his wallet just in case. He tries to open the adjoining door but it won’t budge.

‘Hey, Chlo?’

There is no answer. He goes out into the hallway where the alarm is louder — its low notes hoarse, its high notes shrilling — and knocks on Chloe’s door.

‘Hey, Chlo? Come on, Chlo, I think this might be serious.’

A family from the far end of the hallway hurries towards him. The children, a little girl and a little boy, are in pyjamas; hers — weirdly, Julian thinks — have pictures of football players on them, while his have pictures of ponies. And now all of the phones in all of the rooms are ringing. And now all of the lights fail and it is dark. The emergency lights flick on and everything is blue and nocturnal and submarine. The little girl screams and the little boy whimpers.

‘It’s okay,’ the father says.

‘We’re just going on a little adventure,’ the mother says.

Chloe’s door opens. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she says, the skin of her face blue and in her eyes the same thing Julian saw at the airport.

She starts towards the elevators but Julian reaches for her hand and leads her towards the stairs instead. In the stairwell it is very hot and very loud. The air is dense with smoke. Women in suits and men in bathrobes join them at each landing. Julian’s heels are stepped on. Someone breathes in his ear. They make it to the lobby where hotel employees wave their arms and shout directions. Firefighters in heavy coats hustle through the lobby doors. And now everyone is running, pushing over potted ferns and leatherette chairs and ottomans and each other. Julian’s shoulders and knees are jostled and his grip on Chloe’s hand strains and, finally, breaks.

He turns to look for her but, as he does, the woman in front of him trips and falls and he slams into her hip and vaults over her shoulder. He lands with an elbow jammed under his ribs; someone’s leg falls across his shoulder blades and flattens his lungs. He drags himself to his feet and looks around for Chloe but he can’t see her. He tries to push back the way they’ve come but there are too many people and they are moving too quickly. Their eyes are too wide. They push and they keep pushing.

‘No returns,’ a firefighter shouts and points to the door. ‘You need to get out. Sir, you and everyone need to get out right now.’

The sidewalk is crammed but firefighters are shepherding people behind a tape perimeter the police are scrambling to roll out at a block’s distance in both directions. Julian backs towards it, craning his neck up to see gouts of smoke eddying from the hotel’s top three floors. There is something sinister, he thinks, about a fire in the daytime; the clarity of dark smoke against blue sky is awful. He can see shards of curtains waving, individual lampshades aflame and, a floor below them, identical curtains and lampshades waiting.

Behind the barrier, he takes out his phone to call Chloe but the network is down or the tower overwhelmed. Police sirens scream and fire engines honk. Overhead, already, a news chopper is whirling, and on the corner, two crews of EMTs have unloaded gurneys from the backs of ambulances parked at hasty angles. The EMTs stack the gurneys with oxygen canisters and heavy medical bags and fistfuls of supplies wrapped in pale blue plastic. One of the bags bursts and rains pipettes to the ground. A roll of gauze falls free and bounces and unspools. Sitting on a kerb, Julian sees now, is Chloe.

As he runs to her, he notices the bright stream of blood dribbling at her temple. She holds a hand to her head and is missing her left shoe. Julian is standing next to her before she recognizes him. She looks up at him and frowns.

‘Are you okay?’ he says. ‘Boy. Two fires in two days.’

‘Yes,’ she says, but her face is uncomprehending.

‘That has to mean something?’

‘Are you hungry?’ Chloe says.

Julian kneels beside her and folds his arms around her shoulders. He lays his cheek against hers; and he holds on, even as she tries to pull away, tight.

Whenever things got too much for me, during those bad years when we lived on Harrington Street, I used to leave the flat and go out walking for as long as it took to get my head together. Usually a quick stomp around the block would do the trick, but sometimes I would be gone for hours, marching in aimless fury or boarding buses with a vague desire to spread my anger thin over distance.

No matter where my rambling took me, though, I’d always finish up in the same place. Before going home I’d buy a pack of cigarettes and sit on a bench by the Grand Canal to smoke a few, end to end. I had a favourite spot: just beyond Baggot Street Bridge, where the towpath sinks below the level of the road and is separated from the pavement by a tall black fence. There I could expect to find the silent company of a drunk embracing a bottle of strong cider, or on weekends that of an unimaginative father watching a son or daughter pelting the swans with bits of bread. I liked it down there. It was a place where you could be by yourself without having to suffer the horror of being alone.