Burn Marks

again and heading back down the hall.

My arms were beginning to tremble from overexertion. I couldn’t remember any real poems so I started chanting jumping-rope rhymes to give some rhythm to my movements and take my mind from my fatigued body.

“Dance, girl, dance, girl, hop on one foot.” But hop to where? I didn’t remember any other doors in the section of basement we were trapped in. Then, at the intersection of the two corridors, I thought of the dumbwaiter I’d inadvertently found.

I stuck a hand in and explored it. It was a large space, originally used for hauling furnishings from the basement. When the hotel had been built it stood in Chicago’s most exclusive neighborhood. They’d needed lots of linens and things, and before a widespread use of electricity this made an ideal passageway.

If the fire was inside the building, the shaft would also be an ideal conduit for flames. But if it had been started on the outside and was working inward, we might have a grace period. It was possible, of course, that rats had long since chewed through the cables. Anything is possible, Warshawski, my old Latin teacher used to say. I want to know what is.

I slipped Elena from the mat and hoisted her, straining, over one aching shoulder. “Up we go, Auntie. Just relax and breathe normally.”

I slid her into the box. It was high enough that she could have sat up, but I laid her on her side. I looked at where the mattress lay. Travel light or keep my only tool? I hoisted it up and folded it into an awkward bundle next to my aunt, checking to make sure she had breathing room. Finally I stuck a foot into the box and hiked up to the top.

It was covered with greasy dust and little things that were probably rat droppings. “But there are no rats here, Auntie, because they’ve all been clever enough to burrow underneath the building. We will rise above it all.”

I fumbled in the dark for the cables, found one, and tugged. It creaked ominously but the box didn’t move. There was tension on the line, though-it was still connected somewhere. I pulled again and felt the box sway a little. Maybe I had the wrong cord. I held on to it with my left hand and waved my right around in the dark air. Finally I found another rope on the other side of the shaft.

I shifted my weight across the box and tugged with both hands. The dumbwaiter jerked underneath me and started to move. It was slow, tedious work. The rope burned my bare palms. My biceps had pretty much turned to water by now and strongly resisted the idea of more exercise. “You’re at the wall now, Vic-go for the burn,” I mocked myself, then returned to rope chants.

I’d been through my repertoire twice when we finally came to the opening onto the ground floor. The door was shut. When I put a hand on it, it was scalding to the touch. A poor exit choice. I tried looking up but it was a futile exercise. Even adjusted to the dark, my eyes could make out nothing.

I started hauling again, sticking a hand up every few pulls to see if I was going to run into ceiling. The pain in my head had passed beyond agony to some light, remote feeling, as though the top of my head were floating some miles from my body. Every time I stopped working to feel about, though, it came crashing down with a pounding thud. Was this what it was like to use heroin. Was this what Cerise had crawled off to the Rapelec site to feel- her head buoyant above her body?

“Last night and the night before, twenty-four robbers came knocking at my door. Asked them what they wanted, this is what they said”-the words kept spilling out, against my volition, long after I couldn’t stand the sound of them. In the dark I was seeing pinwheels spinning through the elevator shaft, flashing strobes of light from my burned-out retinas. Future and past disappeared into an endless present, presence of rope, of muscles beyond fatigue, of hand over raw hand, and the unbearable sound of my own voice spewing out childhood chants.

The rope abruptly stopped moving. For a few seconds I kept tugging at it, frustrated at breaking my liquid crystal movements. Then I realized we were at the end of the line. If we couldn’t get out here, we were-well, at the end of our rope.

I sat down on the box. My knees were stiff from the long haul upward and gave me little protesting stabs at my abrupt bending, I leaned down and felt for the dumbwaiter door. It was cool to the touch. I turned around, climbed down the front of the box, and twisted around to sit against the bulk of the mattress.

The door was stiff but not locked, as I’d first feared. I leaned against the mattress and pushed as hard as I could with my wobbly legs. The door creaked. I drew my knees to my chest, ignoring their throbbing, and kicked hard. The door popped out of its frame.

I slid out and turned around for my aunt. Years of abusing her body had given it great resilience-she remained unconscious, but her shallow uncertain breaths still came snorting out.

I propped her against the wall and forced my tired legs down the hall. Now that we were above ground, faint light from the full moon and streetlamps gave a pale glow to the walls, enough that I could walk without feeling my way. In the distance I could hear the deep excited honking of fire engines. All I had to do was find a window where they could see me.

“Love will find a way,” I sang softly to myself. “Night or day, love will find a way.” I was skating, moving so smoothly I was almost floating. My cousin Boom-Boom and I were on the forbidden frozen lagoon, circling round and round until we slid dizzily onto the ice. We weren’t supposed to be there, no one knew how thick the ice was, if it gave way, we’d drown for sure because no one would rescue us. The first one to give up was a chicken and I wasn’t going to be a chicken to my cousin. He was a better skater than me but he wasn’t tougher.

He was near roe someplace, I knew that, but I couldn’t quite find him. On and on I skated, calling his name, opening every door but not seeing him. I got to a window and stared through it at a metal platform. I thought Boom-Boom was behind me, but when I turned he was gone. When I looked back at the window all I found was my own reflection. Beyond the glass lay a fire escape.

I struggled with the window but it was painted shut, I looked around the room for a tool, but it was completely bare. I lifted my trembling right leg and kicked as hard as I could. The ancient glass shivered and cracked, I kicked again and the whole bottom pane gave way.

I looked down. Below me the building was burning steadily and fire was licking upward. We’d come up three stories and we’d better get back down them fast. The fire escape was at the back. Whatever firepower belonged to the distant engines was around the other side of the building.

I lurched back down the miles of corridors I’d traveled until I came to Elena, still snorting away under the dumbwaiter. I pulled her pallet from the box and got her settled on it again. At some point my body must surely give out, no longer respond to the senseless commands of an imperial brain. I flogged myself onward, a good warhorse, old and near collapse but responding to one last call to arms.

Back at the fire escape I wrapped my sweatshirt around my right arm and knocked out the remaining shards. Then I slid Elena to the floor, moved her pallet to the fire escape, and lifted her again, my hamstrings and back shrieking in dismay, and laid her out on the mattress.

“You’ll have to wait here for me, Auntie. I’ll be back, just breathe deeply and don’t be afraid. I’ve got to get help, I can’t carry you on my own.”

Slowly, each leg weighing a thousand pounds, I dragged myself down the stairs, down through the cloud of smoke, past the point of feeling, to the place where breath and sight were collapsed into one solid pinpoint of agony, finding the end of the escape, swinging down, feeling the bottom flight fall loose and my feet dragging on the ground.

I rolled through the smoke and staggered around the side of the building. A multitude was there. Firemen, onlookers, cops, and a man in uniform who came to me and told me sternly the building was dangerous, no one was allowed beyond the police barricades.

“My aunt,” I gasped. “She’s up on the fire escape around the side. We were in the basement when the fire started. You’ve got to get her.”

He didn’t understand me and I turned to a fireman helping guide a heavy hose. I tugged on his sleeve until he turned in annoyance. I pointed and gasped until someone understood and a little troop jogged off into the smoke.

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