James Hynes - Next

“Did you check his pulse?” Kevin asks without turning around. When she doesn’t answer, he turns to see her fingers plucking at the air near his sleeve, as if she wants to pull him away.

“Did you?” he says.

“Yes.” Her eyes flicker side to side. “He’s gone.”

Are you telling me the truth? Kevin wonders. Or are you just trying to get me out of the hallway? Before he can think about it, he’s pinched the thumb of the hand between his own thumb and forefinger and waggled it side to side. It’s warm to his touch but completely limp. Kevin puts two fingers on the wrist, the way he’s seen actors do it on television, feeling nothing and leaving a pair of bloody fingerprints. What if he’s doing it wrong? What if the wrist has a weak pulse and he’s just not feeling it, not with his own pulse racing and the woman tugging at his elbow?

“Come on,” she says. “Please.”

At last he lets her pull him away by his elbow, back around the corner.

“I told you not to go down there,” she says, and for a moment Kevin and the Yellow Rose are a longtime couple, bickering but affectionate, strolling arm in arm. But only for a moment, because as they step between the elevators, they both see that smoke is now rising from the gaps between and around all six sets of crumpled doors and pooling in a cloud over their heads. The woman whimpers at the back of her throat, two descending notes, the sound she might make in another context, if she’d just discovered that her cat was on the counter, say, or that her cake had fallen, or some other vexing but minor quotidian disappointment. She sags against Kevin, and he has to slip his arm around her waist to prop her up, planting more handprints all over her nice suit.

“Come on.” He urges her on rubbery legs past the smoking elevators and onto the ledge of flooring where she first found him. She’s positively shuddering now, and the best he can do with his injured hands is grasp her clumsily by the elbows and lower her slowly to the floor against the wall, even as he tries to scuff the broken glass away with his shoe.

“It’s okay.” His own voice is breaking. “It’s all right.”

He drops her the last six inches and she thumps against the floor, nearly toppling onto her side. Her face has crumpled, her eyeliner is running. The stray eyelash is gone, who knows where, and she shivers against the wall, her hand pressed to her mouth, her cheeks streaked with black. Kevin squats unsteadily before her, wanting to dab at the inky tears, but his hands are still stained with blood.

“Oh God,” she says. “I thought if I came up…”

The best he can do is brush her hair with his knuckles. She clutches one of his wrists with both hands and gazes at him with brimming eyes. “The floor was on fire,” she says in a hoarse whisper, as if she’s afraid of being overheard. “So was the floor below me.” She snuffles, swallows. “I could hear people screaming.”

“Jesus.” Kevin strokes her hair with the back of one hand, while letting her cling tightly to the other. He’s almost in tears himself now. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The woman’s sobbing uncontrollably now, and Kevin folds her in an awkward hug, the two of them crouched in the intersection of floor and wall. He can feel her heart beating. Then her sobs subside almost as quickly as they started, and she looks up, their faces close enough to kiss. Behind her blusher and lipstick and runny eyeliner, she’s very pale.

“I didn’t want to lose hope,” she says in a weak but steady voice. Her eyes are glistening, but no longer overflowing. “I believe hopelessness is a sin?” Her rising inflection makes her sound uncertain. Kevin swivels clumsily off his feet to sit beside her, his arm around her shoulders. He sniffles, gasps, knuckles his own tears away. She tips her head back against the wall, watching him.

“There’s always hope in God.” Her voice is weak but steady.

“Unless there isn’t.” Kevin’s not looking at her, he’s watching sunlight shafting through the smoke rising across the wide gap where the conference room used to be. He’s already thinking, this is the last sky I’m ever going to see.

“Don’t you believe in God?” She’s watching him with a childlike intensity.

No atheists in burning skyscrapers, thinks Kevin, but she’s still giving him that innocent look, so he says, “Maybe we shouldn’t get into this right now.”

“If not now,” she says, with a directness that pierces him and annoys him in equal measure, “when?”

Acrid smoke penetrates to the back of his sinuses. He glances back. Black tendrils ripple along the ruined ceiling, struggling against the hot wind blowing from outside. Kevin looks at the woman.

“What’s your name?” He tightens his arm around her.

She presses against him, twisting her knees toward him. “Melody.”

“I’ve never met a Melody before,” says Kevin. “That’s a lovely name.”

“What’s yours?”

“Kevin.”

She pats his lapel and sniffles. “I’m glad you’re here, Kevin.”

“I’m not,” Kevin says before he can stop himself, and he starts to laugh. He squeezes her with his stinging palm.

She laughs, too. “Me neither, I guess.” Then, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“About God?” Melody says, but before Kevin can answer, the phone in his jacket starts to buzz, startling them both. She recoils and clutches him at the same time, digging her polished nails into his jacket.

“You have a phone? ” she says.

“It’s not mine,” Kevin says.

“For God’s sake!” Melody yanks at his lapel and plunges her hand inside his jacket. “Why didn’t you say you had a phone!” She plucks out the cell and turns away from him, expertly flipping it open and pressing Talk.

“Who is this?” she demands, her voice suddenly sharp, and Kevin, speechless, can hear the tinny voice of the boy he talked to earlier.

“Yes, I know. I’m in the building.” She listens a moment, then says, “Hang on, I’ll ask.” She presses the phone to her chest so the guy on the other end can’t hear.

“Leslie?” she whispers, and Kevin shakes his head and makes a diving motion with his hand.

“She’s not here,” says Melody into the phone. “I think she got out already.” The tinny voice speaks, but Melody interrupts him. “Sir, what’s your name? Blake? Listen, Blake, could you call 911 and let them know there are two people trapped on… what floor is this?”

Kevin gasps, stammers, says, “Fifty-one, I think. Maybe fifty-two.”

“Go see if it says.” She jerks her chin toward the elevators. Kevin stiffly levers himself up off the floor with his throbbing hands, and steadying himself against the wall, which is beginning to get warm, he peers around the corner into the elevator lobby. If the floor is marked, he can’t see it. Now smoke is pouring out of the hallways beyond the lobby and out of the elevators themselves, trembling against the breeze blowing through the gap.

“It’s the fifty-first or fifty-second floor,” Melody’s saying in a steady voice. “Tell them to hurry, please, won’t you, Blake? We’re counting on you.”

Kevin slides to the floor next to her. “The smoke’s getting worse.”

But Melody’s not listening; she’s cut Blake off and is thumbing in 911 with intense concentration, biting her lip and splaying her legs before her. She lifts the phone, listens, groans in frustration.

“It’s busy,” she says. “How can that be?”

“I think they probably know by now what’s going on.”

She holds up her finger to silence him and enters 911 again, listens, cuts it off, enters it again, cuts it off again. “ Damn it all! How can it be busy? ”