James Hynes - Next

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he’d whined as he thundered down the stairs in his stocking feet, and Aunt Mary had said, “I’m so sorry, hon, I forgot all about you upstairs, I’m so sorry,” leaving Kevin to face a houseful of cousins, glum and smug in equal measure, while Kathleen lifted her eyebrows at him, saying only “Hello.” But the voice he’s hearing now is louder, practically shouting, and the touch is rougher than his Aunt Mary’s, fingernails digging into his arm. “Hello!”

“What?” He opens his eyes and clenches his stinging fists. A woman is squatting next to him, not his Aunt Mary, not Kathleen, but someone else. Disheveled brown hair, watery blue eyes, cracked lipstick.

“Are you hurt?” says the woman, gripping his shoulder. Her skirt is a little too tight for her to be squatting, and her touch is as much to steady herself on the toes of her pumps as it is to reassure Kevin.

“No,” he says. Then, wincing and opening his fingers, “Yes, a little. I picked up some glass.”

She lightly cups one of his hands with one of hers, and her warm touch thrills Kevin like a lover’s. He’s seen her somewhere before, but where? He doesn’t know anyone in Austin. The woman says nothing, but looks away through the ruin of the outside wall and into the hazy glare. She tightens her grip on his hand and says, “Where did you come from?”

“Ann Arbor, Michigan.”

The woman winces. “No. I mean, where did you come from in this building?”

“Oh.” Kevin doesn’t want to disappoint her. He doesn’t want her to let go of his hand. “Nowhere. I mean, I was right here, on this floor, with…”

“With whom?” Ever the copy editor, even now Kevin notes the correct use of the objective pronoun. Then the full horror of what just happened jolts him again, an electric shock to his heart. “There was a girl,” he says. “A young woman, I mean.”

The woman glances around, still cupping his bleeding hand, still steadying herself on his shoulder. “Is she going for help? Did she find a way down?”

She did, thinks Kevin, but not what you have in mind. “No.” He wishes he hadn’t mentioned her. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

Kevin lifts his chin toward the gap, over the edge. “I didn’t know her name.”

The woman closes her eyes and sighs, twisting slowly down on the toes of her pumps as if she’s deflating, ending up next to Kevin against the wall. There’s soot on her face and her brown hair is tousled. She’s his age, maybe a little younger, though it’s hard to tell — she’s a little too made-up for him to be able to see the woman underneath clearly — and now he remembers where he’s seen her before. She’s the woman from Starbucks, the woman with the laptop and the little suitcase on wheels, the woman who asked his opinion about letting some guy down gently. The woman with the fancy coffee who’d never heard of Damon Runyon. The Yellow Rose.

Kevin starts to speak, but his throat tightens up. She turns her wide, cornflower blue eyes to him, not seeing him, her gaze entirely inward. He notices that one of her false eyelashes lies like a caterpillar just under her eye. “Where did you come from?” he says.

She gazes at him unblinking, He nudges her and says again, “Where did you come from?”

Her gaze snaps into focus. “Below. One floor down. I think.”

Kevin notices her nostrils flaring, a little Bewitched twitch of the nose. She’s sniffing the air like a mouse.

“I peed myself,” he says.

“What?”

“I pissed myself.” Kevin gestures feebly at his damp, stinging lap. “That’s what you’re smelling.”

Involuntarily the Yellow Rose glances at the dark stain, then meets his gaze. “Hon, if that’s the worst thing that happens to you today, you’ll be a lucky man.”

“Yeah.”

Now she’s tucking her heels under her again, balancing on the toes of her shoes and steadying herself against the wall. She combs the tangles out of her hair with her fingers, scowls at the soot on her palm. “I’m not exactly feeling fresh at the moment, either.”

“Why are you here?” Kevin says.

She’s got that directionless gaze again, the thousand-yard stare. Perhaps she misunderstood the question, the way he misunderstood the one about where he’d come from. Perhaps she thinks he’s asking her an existential question. Aw hon, she’ll say, why are any of us here?

“Why’d you come up,” he says, “instead of down?”

She narrows her eyes at him. “How bad are you hurt? Can you stand?”

“I’m fine. It’s just my hands.”

“Come on.” She hooks her fingers under his elbow and tugs, helping him slide up the wall to his feet. His knees are a little wobbly; she senses it and tightens her grip, but when she tries to pull his arm around her shoulders so that she can support him, he shakes her. I can do it, Mom. Still, she clutches his sleeve, and Kevin almost apologizes.

“Will you help me find a way down?” Her eyes struggle to focus.

“Sure,” he says, “why not,” as if he’s doing her a favor.

She tugs him between the elevators, where the six doors, three on each side, are buckled to various degrees. The woman keeps close to Kevin, tightly gripping his arm; Kevin curls his bleeding hands spastically close to his waist, holding them stiffly so that they don’t shake. The ceiling above is crumpled, too, but it hasn’t fallen in, though Kevin can feel grit under his stocking foot. Together they scuff along like runners in a three-legged race. With only one shoe on, Kevin limps as if one leg were an inch shorter than the other. The hot breeze from the gap presses at their backs, carrying the smell of something burning. Kevin tries to ignore it. The Yellow Rose leads him up to one of the crumpled elevator doors and gingerly taps the warped metal with the tips of her fingers. Her nails are long and bright red, and she bends her fingers back, jerking them away and then touching the metal again. She takes care of her hands, Kevin notices; they look younger than her face.

“We probably shouldn’t take the elevator,” Kevin says, and the woman looks sharply up at him. She’s petite; without her pumps she would come up only to his chin.

“They say don’t take the elevator in emergencies,” he says.

“I know.” She’s placed her palm flat on the buckled door. “That’s good,” she murmurs, then tugs him farther on, past the elevators into the hall beyond, which splits right and left. At the junction they each tug in a different direction, then stop and pull close again, the woman clinging to Kevin’s sleeve. Each direction is the mirror image of the other: a narrow hallway with a high ceiling and a couple of tall, anonymous doors. The Yellow Rose’s hall on the left is full of glaringly lit haze and dust. Kevin’s hall, on the right, is hazy, too, but more fitfully illuminated by a flickering light around the corner.

“This way.” She tugs him to the left, and they hobble together to the first door. The woman tests it nervously with her fingertips, then lays her palm against it before trying the handle, while Kevin hovers at her side. It’s locked, so they scuttle to the next door, which is also locked, and then follow the hall around a sharp corner into the glare of twin emergency spotlights. They stop short, squinting into the white light at a door with a red-lit EXIT sign above it. The haze is thicker here, though not enough to make their eyes water, and without speaking Kevin pulls free of the Yellow Rose and hobbles, sock, shoe, sock, shoe, toward the door. The floor is cool under his stocking foot.

“That’s the way I came up.” The woman hangs back by the turn in the hallway.

Kevin stops inches from the door, hands still curled, hip poised at the crash bar. He looks back at her. In the harsh glare of the emergency lights, her disheveled hair looks like a wig, and her makeup looks like a mask.