James Hynes - Next

She mutters something against his shirt, and he relaxes his grip.

“You smell like coconut,” she says.

He sighs and looks up. The ceiling of smoke is even lower now. If they were standing, their heads would be in the cloud. More smoke is coming from over the rubble that chokes off the hallways to either side.

“We need to get lower,” he says, and before she has a chance to reply, he lifts his arm from around her and starts sliding on his butt toward the crack in the floor, clutching her wrist and pulling her with him. He no longer cares about the glass on the floor but pushes heedlessly through it as if it were sand, hauling with his heels, pushing with his other hand. He feels a resisting tug, and looks back. Melody is balling her fist and trying to pull her wrist out of his grasp.

“No,” she whispers, ghostly pale. “I’m not ready for that.”

“Neither am I,” Kevin says firmly, not letting go of her, “but we need to get lower, away from the smoke. Okay?”

Without unclenching her fist, she looks up. The smoke cascading along the ceiling is a torrent now, a roiling, snaky, upside-down black river. She inches slowly alongside him, and sitting thigh to thigh they hang their legs over the crack and down the slope. Like a pair of schoolchildren they’re holding hands. Kevin’s hand still stings, but he doesn’t loosen his grip.

“It’s not as steep as it looks,” he says.

“Maybe we should take off our shoes,” says Melody. “For better traction.”

Kevin nods, and without releasing hands, they each use a free hand to bare their feet. Kevin lets his remaining shoe drop and it skids to a stop halfway down the slope. He peels off his socks one-handed and tosses them limply after the shoe. Melody bends at the waist, demurely twisting her knees, and takes off one pump and then the other, placing them neatly side by side next to her, at the edge of the crack. They sit with their bare feet brushing the sloping floor, which, to Kevin’s touch, is feeling warmer than it ought to. Waggling their backsides, they press closer together, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, their hands squeezed together between them. This, thinks Kevin, is the last time I’ll ever touch a woman.

From behind them comes a rush of heat, as if someone has opened an oven door, and simultaneously they look back to see orange flame sheeting through the smoke along the ceiling, swelling like a tide up and back, up and back, a little closer to the gap with each surge. Kevin and Melody can feel each rising increment of heat on their backs, can feel it tightening the skin of their cheeks and foreheads. They look at each other, and neither of them speaks for a moment.

“You’re a Christian?” he says.

She nods.

“I know a story about this martyred saint, I forget his name.” Kevin had heard this from Father Vince, his mother’s priest. “The Romans roasted him alive over a fire, and just before he died, he said, ‘You can turn me over now, I think I’m done on this side.’ ”

Melody’s eyes fill with tears. “This isn’t a time to joke.”

“If not now,” says Kevin, “when?” He nudges her. He’s crying, too.

“Will you pray with me?” she says.

What for? thinks Kevin. To whom? And suddenly he’s angry at the God he doesn’t believe in for abandoning them to this, for looking away when they need him, for lying down on the job. Way to go, lord. Nice work, asshole. Thanks for nothing, motherfucker.

“Why don’t you pray for both of us?” he says.

Melody tightens her grip on his hand, making it sting almost unbearably, and as the heat from above begins to sting their backs and singe their hair, she closes her eyes and says, “Heavenly Father, please forgive my sins and the sins of this good man here—”

Actually, I’m not so good, thinks Kevin.

“—and take us both quickly to Your bosom—”

A-fucking-men. As quickly as possible. We’re going to burst like water balloons.

“—and please, dear Lord, look after my family and this man’s family and ease their sorrow and help them know that we reside in Your house now, with You, where there’s no more pain and uncertainty and fear, forever and ever.”

This is unbearable, thinks Kevin. I’d rather jump than listen to this. But at the same time, he thinks, keep talking. Don’t stop.

“In Jesus’ name,” says Melody, opening her eyes, “amen.”

Kevin’s eyes are stinging with tears and smoke. The smoke’s lowering slowly over their heads like a hood, and he can feel the backs of his ears blistering, can feel the heat pounding through his jacket and his shirt and scalding his back. Kevin grips Melody’s hand, and without speaking they scootch over the crack and bump onto the tilted floor below. Right away gravity drags at their ankles, and they slide too fast, their bare feet scuttling like crab legs without purchase.

“No,” whispers Melody, as if she’s afraid of being overhead, “no no no no no no no.” She grips his hand so tightly that his blood squeezes through their fingers. Their feet are scrabbling like cartoon feet, and the edge of the drop slides irrevocably toward them, but at the last moment Kevin and Melody simultaneously plant their feet and skid painfully to a stop, their momentum almost, but not quite, tipping their center of gravity over the edge. Instead they rock back onto their backsides, squatting barefoot a few inches from the drop like a pair of shoeless peasants. Kevin’s heart is pounding, and he can feel Melody’s pulse, too, through the warm, slick grip of their palms.

“Know any more jokes?” Melody says breathlessly.

Kevin starts to laugh, and for a moment he’s afraid he’ll never stop, that he’ll laugh so hard that he’ll rock them over the edge. A scrim of smoke rises from below, dimming the blue sky and obscuring the construction crane and the condo tower with a hole in it and the tiny white faces watching them from windows in the building across the street. Kevin can see past his knees straight down into the street below, and it makes his stomach churn. He sees the little oblongs of fire trucks and ambulances and cop cars, all at irregular angles to each other. He sees dots scurrying between them.

“Guy falls off the top of a skyscraper,” he manages to say, and Melody catches her breath.

“No, listen.” Kevin squeezes her hand. “Guy falls off a skyscraper, and halfway down, he passes the window of a guy he knows, and the guy in the window says to him, ‘Hey, Bob, long time no see. How you doing?’ And the guy who’s falling says…”

“ ‘So far, so good,’ ” says Melody. “Everybody knows that one.”

Kevin shrugs. “I guess.”

At least it’s a little easier to breathe here. The sheet of fire is still some ways above them, and the smoke is being carried upward through the gap above them. Through the scrim of smoke Kevin can see a helicopter, its rotors sparkling in the sun. It looks like a toy. He’s afraid to move, afraid to make the slightest shift, afraid to even turn and look at Melody. They’re both trembling, and it doesn’t seem to matter how tightly they cling to each other, they shudder like a pair of dry leaves in the wind.

“I’m sorry,” says Kevin.

She’s looking at him, but he can’t bear to look back at her.

“For what?” she says.

“For everything.” Kevin’s mouth is very dry. He turns to her finally. Stella’s not here, Beth hasn’t spoken to him in ages, who knows where Lynda or the Philosopher’s Daughter are these days, so Melody will have to do. “Will you forgive me?”

He realizes that he’s left her an opening to bring up God again, but instead she dips her head and nuzzles him. Her hair scrapes his cheek, and she presses his hand to her heart. He takes her chin in his hand and lifts her face. Both their faces are sooty, and where they aren’t sooty, they’re sweating and reddened from the heat. But their eyes are dry, and she looks at him as if she’s known him for years, knows everything about him, all his secrets, good and bad and in between, and loves him anyway.