I can hear the roar of flames devouring the brothel, even if I can’t see much. Then the smoke clears just a little, and it looks like we’re in hell. I can barely make out bookshelves, partially charred and burning; over to my left, smoke is pouring from an area that I think might have been the bar. The walls are burning—or maybe that’s the curtains. I don’t know, because it’s hard to think with so little oxygen. I’m coughing like crazy. The heat singes my skin, and I hold out my arms as the inferno around me starts to spin. I hope to Christ I don’t pass out before we get to Merri.
I’m shoved once more before the gun pressed into my neck is slammed violently into my eye, and through the blood pouring down my cheek, I can see Jesus looking blurry and angry, framed by smoke. He says something about David. I think I say I’m sorry. I just want to stay on my feet until they take me to Merri.
I pass out for a minute I guess, because when I wake up, we’re standing in front of a burning staircase. I’m irritated. Why are we here? And that’s when I hear Merri screaming.
Merri
WHEN I SEE Cross, I start screaming again. I can’t help it. Maybe screaming will help hasten my end, because as soon as I start, I black out and fall down to my knees. I grab onto the railing when the black spots clear enough so I can see. I just want to make sure he’s gone now—that I really am hallucinating.
But when I glance into the inferno of the main floor, there he is: bleeding from the head and being hauled toward the stairs on Tito’s back.
“NO, NO, NO! No…no!” I flop against the railing, pulling my hair over my mouth because maybe it will filter some of the smoke. I end up clutching at my hair and shaking, unable to move. I really don’t think I can breathe this time. I can hear my lungs trying and the sound is terrifying.
“Cross.” I start to sob. If I’m going to die, I want to feel his arms around me one more time. And then suddenly, I do. I can feel his body behind mine; over the roar of the fire, I can barely hear him whispering my name.
I hear screaming from somewhere: angry yelling. I can make out ‘David’ and the Spanish word for whore. Cross grunts like he’s been hurt, and I can hear the fire crunching through things around us. It’s so hot.
“Cross,” I hiss, “I’m sorry.”
I can’t think straight enough to remember what for, but with the hand that’s not chained to the statue, I grasp around for him, finding something I think is his shirt and holding on.
“Merri…I’ve got to get your hand out of this thing.” I feel him tugging on my bruised and bleeding hand, the one clasped in the cuff, and I can’t help but whimper.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
And then my hand is ripped apart. I’m screaming, screaming, screaming. Then I’m floating through the flames.
Cross
I BREAK MERRI’S hand—on purpose. Before she even gets a scream out, her body goes limp.
I throw her over my agonized right shoulder, holding onto her by her legs as I move through smoke and flames. I try to remember which hand it was: the left or right? Was it her dominant hand? Did I break it in a way that spares her three middle fingers, or will the whole hand be fucked up—like mine?
I’m so dizzy, the problem of her hand is magnified, so it seems more tragic than the fact that we’re midway down the stairs and fire is everywhere. There’s no way we can pass through that. No fucking way.
I can barely tell which direction is up, but I can feel the stair rail with my left hip, and that’s how I get us back up to the second floor—by pressing my hip against rail as I struggle up the stairs. When the smoke is too thick for me to breathe, I lean against the railing, praying to God and the Virgin that it doesn’t crumple underneath the weight of us. The prayer must have worked, because I make it back upstairs with Merri still over my shoulder. I can hear her groaning, talking nonsense, but I ignore her.
I need to think.
I find a window—big and vertical—but it’s covered with a film of smoke so I can’t see how far it is to the backyard. I turn a circle, but all I see down the hall on either side is flames.
I lean my left shoulder against the wall, worrying about the smoke Merri is breathing, and then there’s a boom from somewhere and the floor shakes. The ceiling to our right, above the hall that way, has caved in, and fire is rushing toward us like a tidal wave.
I need to do something, but all of a sudden I’m paralyzed because I’m about to die. And it never seemed right, it never seemed real before, because it seemed like it would be too much. That I’d be cheated out of too much. But now I’ve met Merri. I have Merri with me, and I’m pulling her down my chest so I can feel her face in the crook of my arm, and I’m damn near crying because I wanted something better for us both.
Merri says, “Cross…” and something else, but I can’t tell what. Her eyes close. I look around me one more time, but it’s an inferno. The only way out is this big, smutty window. I rub a circle on one of the panes and use my limp left hand to make a haphazard cross before I look outside. And when I do, I see the glittering green-blue water of a lit-up swimming pool.
RIGHT BEFORE WE jumped out, I heard gunfire. Turns out it was Marchant. After running through the building, trying to get all the staff out, he split off from the EMTs and firefighters in the front of the building—where evacuees had gathered—and ran around to the back, where he used his burned hands to push back a thin slab of concrete below which a pool was hiding. He said he thought it would prevent the fire from spreading, at least behind the building.
Usually the concrete was pulled back via remote, but somehow he got the thing to slide, so of the 100-someodd feet of rectangular swimming pool in the deck behind the brothel, I had about thirty to jump into.
Lucky for Merri and me, the Carlsons have always had a pool, and more than once in high school, Lizzy and I jumped out the second-story window of the pool house into the deep end. I knew I needed to get a running start and overshoot it some. I hardly remember doing it, but I know I considered throwing Merri down first, and I discarded that idea because I was worried that she couldn’t swim. Her body was limp, so I jumped with her.
I remember being worried we would hit cement or yard instead, and I remember that at first I thought we had. That’s how bad the impact hurt my burned skin. I remember thrusting Merri up toward the surface as I choked on chlorinated water.
And that’s it. That’s where our story ends, at least in my memory.
35
Cross
I’M IN AND out of consciousness for two days at University Medical Center, which, so far, is three days fewer than Merri. I’m a big pain in the ass and get myself discharged early, the third day after admission, just as long as I promise to stay off my fractured ankle and let the ICU nurses coming in and out of Merri’s room put an oxygen mask on my face a few times a day. Apparently my lungs are still fried to shit, but I’m told they’ll heal if I suck back this bitter-tasting breathing treatment. I’m glad to do it if I can sit by Merri’s bed and watch her sleep.