At the far end of the eighteenth floor, a portion of the aluminum Curtainwall outside has heated to the point where it pulls away from the framework of the building this opens up a channel leading as high as the twenty-first floor. Clouds of hot smoke billow up the resulting flue and stream across the windows of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first floors, heating the metal frames.
On the twenty-first floor, a window suddenly cracks and drops from its frame, plunging to the street below to shatter between two cars.
The draperies inside twist and dance in the hot blasts of air, then start to blaze. They lash back inside the office, flapping against a wall poster that says simply “Motivational Displays Move Products.”
A curling edge of the poster browns, blackens, and begins to burn.
Three floors below the beast pauses as it realizes it has almost run out of food. Abruptly something stings it on one side and it retreats a few feet. There is another, more painful hit and it recoils farther. It is suddenly frightened; something is trying to kill it.
The pain is continuous now and it slowly but steadily falls back upon itself. It senses a growing numbness.
CHAPTER 37
Through the long early moments of the emergency, Wyndom Leroux sat silently, watching the dialers. They were in no immediate danger and they seemed for the moment to know it. A sense of futility was settling over him, drowning his thoughts in a deadening blanket. He watched the diners and their reactions as though he were seeing them through the wrong end of a telescope. He was scarcely aware of Jenny or of his wife on his left.
For a while, after word of the fire had spread throughout the Promenade Room, the diners had treated the emergency almost as a lark.
The roar of the fire engines below, the free wine on -the house, the sense of danger and yet at the same time realizing they were far removed from it, the sensation of being suspended in the sky while the world below burned … all of these combined, evoking a mood of almost frantic gaiety. A few of the diners had quietly left, taking the scenic elevator down, but the others found themselves bound together by a tight camaraderie. A quiet night out now became a block party with people at adjoining tables joking and sharing the sense of distant danger, or else drifting out onto the promenade to try and see what was happening on the streets far below. They pointed out to each other the barricades and the police cars and fire engines, half hidden by the drifting snow.
It was great fun.
Then the ambulances pulled up to the edge of the plaza and tiny figures carrying rolled-up stretchers disappeared into the building; these reappeared a few minutes later bearing the same stretcher with a blanket covering it.
From that distance it was impossible to tell whether the blanket completely covered the figure on the stretcher or not. The party atmosphere began to die as the entire dining room emptied. Nearly everyone crowded onto the promenade to silently watch the scene below.
The smoke billowing from windows many floors beneath them and the driving snow made visibility difficult. Still they could see the oil truck drive down the ramp into the basement but few guessed the reason why. Shortly afterward a steady stream of cars began to leave the parking garage.
At the north entrance, taxis picked up pajamaed tenants on their way to their lodgings for the night.
Moments later the windows on the fire floors began to explode outward. The tiny figures on the plaza scattered as the glass knifed downward, shimmering briefly in the falling snow. The diners became far more sober after that and the babble of cheerful conversation fell to an occasional murmur or whisper. A feeling of apprehension started to build in the room. Guests drifted slowly back from the promenade to drink and eat in silence, occasionally asking questions of the hostess.
She seemed to have lost none of her self-assurance but she seemed disturbingly uninformed. Her calm had done a lot to reassure jittery diners earlier; now her calm seemed forced and her lack of information frightening.
Several of the more perceptive diners guessed the the phone lines to the lobby had been cut by the fire. A few more quietly paid their tab and drifted over to the scenic elevator, where a line began to form.
Leroux felt more uninvolved than at any other time in his life.
He ate and drank mechanically and made small talk when it seemed to be expected of him. He could tell that Jenny was terrified and went out of his way to say all of the usual things to calm her. Thelma, he knew, was watching him carefully, trying to guess at his inner strain.
There was no way that she could; his business affairs had been a part of his life that he had seldom shared with her and it was a little late to start now. Intellectually, he knew and accepted what was now going to happen: The public outcry, his personal crucifixion in the newspapers and on television, the investigations, the lawsuits.
He also realized that it hadn’t hit him yet emotionally.
Thelma and Jenny, the dining room and the fire itself were remote from him; in a sense, they didn’t exist. The fire was a catastrophe that he-had yet to acknowledge, could not acknowledge. The worst that could happen had, but he couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t face what it meant. In the long war of Wyndom Leroux against the world, he had never found it necessary to prepare a line of retreat.
Now it was necessary but there was no line. He had no plan of action.
“Wyn.
He looked up, startled. Odd, for a moment he really hadn’t been there at all. He had been thinking, of New Orleans when he had been a young man. His father had forced him to work on the docks so he would learn early what the world was like and what it took for a man to hold his own in it. The experience had been invaluable, but he had never forgiven his father for it.
Thelma started to say something to him, then stopped in mid-sentence, smiled, reached out and grasped his hand.
He squeezed it, then drew back. He saw that she sensed his remoteness and was withdrawing. She turned her attention to Jenny instead. Jenny replied to her attempts at conversation in monosyllables. Odd, Leroux thought, we’re both retreating, each from a different reality.
There was now a chill to the air in the Promenade Room and the faintest suggestion of stuffiness. Leroux sensed it first, probably because he was the least concerned with what was happening at the moment. The ventilation and heating system had been turned off, he realized, or at least the supply to the upper floors had failed.
“Mr. Leroux.” Quinn Reynolds hurried to the table sudden alarm showing in her face. “Some of the diner’s‘ are trying to leave by the inside elevators. I’ve tried to dissuade them because I didn’t think it was safe, but they won’t listen.”
It was like stepping out of a fog or coming up from a deep dive in a pool. This was something he could handle.
“I’ll be right there, Quinn.”
Two couples were in the foyer, arguing with a frightened bellboy.
“Look, son, nobody here knows what’s happening and we’re not waiting around to find out, not one more minute.
There’s no sense waiting in line for the scenic elevator; this one’s just as fast.”
The bellboy was white-faced. “I’m sorry, sir, I’ve got my orders and nobody’s supposed to use these elevators.”
“Sonny, I’m not paying the prices they charge up here to argue with the hired help.” He started to push the boy aside, then suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder.
“The boy’s perfectly right,” Leroux said quietly. “The elevators aren’t safe. You have to transfer at the sky lobby and from there the elevator will have to travel through the fire zone to get to the first floor. I doubt that it would make it-or if it did, that you would.”
The man turned and glared at Leroux for a moment.
Early thirties, Leroux guessed, about his own size, probably ex-football and out of shape. The other man was the same age, though somewhat smaller; probably played on the same team. Old college buddies taking their wives out for a night on the town. His eyes flicked briefly at the women. Suburban. Too much make-up, girdled and
