it just exactly that sort of boldness that had brought Augie to his door in the middle of the night? That had cleared the air, got them talking again? There was a lesson there, Phipps thought. He had other friendships that were in trouble. What had happened to Yates, to Natchez, to their close if barbed camaraderie? Yates had left town without a word; Clay Phipps knew it only by his absence from the airwaves. Between good friends, it had come to that. But Natchez was here, a mere four blocks away. Why not go to him? Why not hammer on his door, wake him up, grab him by the shoulders, and force upon the poet the kind of cleansing confrontation that Augie had initiated with him?
Excited by his own resolve, he dressed by the light of a bedside lamp and went out into the night.
It was close to three now and the moon had set. A filmy canopy of mist slid along the sky, it was visible only by the way it dimmed the stars then thinned to let them shine more brightly. The heavy air carried reminders of the ocean, a hint of fish and seaweed. A stray and unkempt dog lolled by, its tongue hanging, its paws making dry clicks on the pavement, its head down in the shameless skulking posture of the scavenger.
Clay Phipps felt brave and young in the empty streets, he almost strutted. But his knees were not good at stairs, and as he labored up to Roberto Natchez's garret, he used his arms as much as he could to haul himself along the banister. By the time he stood on the third-floor landing, he was sweating and winded. He looked through the skylight at the flickering stars, took a moment to compose himself.
His newfound boldness was a tenuous thing, and his first knock was a soft one. But no matter-the poet's door, which was not locked or even closed securely, swung open under his light touch. Phipps, nonplussed, fell back half a step, then peered into the dark apartment. 'Natch?' he said.
There was no answer, and something in the way his own voice was swallowed by the darkness told him with certainty that no one was at home. He stepped into the corridor and switched on its dim light. The first thing he saw was a small reddish feather on the floor, the first thing he heard was the erratic whirring whine of an out-of- balance ceiling fan. He inhaled and caught a strange bad smell, a smell from the bottom of a forgotten garbage can.
One small step more brought him to the living room. He switched on the ceiling light and his jaw fell slack. On Natchez's desk was a strangled chicken, its yellow feet clenched and brittle; the bird's narrow head faced back along its spine, a single drop of blood had spilled from its beak and dried on the poet's blotter. Swinging slowly from a blade of the ceiling fan, slightly stretched from the outward force of turning, was a hanged gray cat. It had been hanged with an old necktie, its fur overlay the knot like the loose flesh on an old man's throat; its open eyes were glazed and bulging, its claws were out and just barely whistled as they sliced the air.
Rapt by this dead menagerie, Clay Phipps did not for a moment notice the Augie Silver painting murdered on the wall. When he saw it he could not believe it. He moved closer; the dead cat's tail brushed against his ear as it swung by and he shuddered. He lifted a tatter of canvas; he felt the flaking paint and felt, as well, the rage, the hate. 'Good Christ,' he said aloud. 'It's Natch.'
Dizzy, reeling, sickened, he bolted the apartment and trundled down the stairs. Sweating in the silent street, he turned toward Augie Silver's house and begged his flaccid legs and burning lungs to take him faster than they could.
He was still five blocks away when he started hearing sirens.
45
Dade County pine is rich in resin and makes good kindling. Houses built from it burn very fast and very hot, with blue and yellow flames that lick their way from board to board and make popping crackling sounds as they sear into the deep hollows of captured sap.
The fire at the Silver house did not seem to have a beginning in either space or time. It sprang up everywhere at once, and there was about it an awful aspect of fulfillment, as though embers had been smoldering forever, waiting with a patient malice to burst forth and consume. Flames crawled up the porch steps and lapped at the front door. In the side yards, sparks shot from knotholes and ignited shrubs and palms; green things hissed away their moisture in the instant before they caught and blackened. A ring of fire framed the backyard like something from an infernal circus; oleanders burned like pinwheels and gave off poison fumes, the great umbrella of the poinciana began to flame, its dainty leaves tore off and flew away like fireflies.
In the same horrifying instant everyone woke up. Augie and Nina, naked, feeling their skin begin to bake and coughing in the strangling smoke, ran into the hallway. Reuben, in his innocent pajamas, was already on his way to fetch them. United now, they staggered into the hell of the living room. Sheets of yellow flame were flapping like ghosts in the windows; here and there panes exploded from the heat. The picture of Fred the parrot turned incandescent in the ungodly light; the bird's red eyes absorbed flame and flashed back blood. There was a low whistling roar as the fire greedily sucked air into itself, leaving less and less to breathe.
Bent low, their hands cupped over their mouths and noses, the three of them moved toward the front door just as the door crackled and began to blaze. They wheeled through the thickening smoke, coughing, choking, eyes tearing and the tears instantly simmering to nothing. Reuben led them over the steaming floor to the back of the house, he picked up a chair and smashed the glass panels of the French doors. Fire was converging on the portal, it was becoming an unbroken archway of flame. Reuben went through first then grabbed Nina by the wrist, then Augie, and pulled them after. There was no way out of the backyard, all its borders were made of fire, black smoke billowed up, rained down, spread its toxins everywhere. Reuben pushed his friends toward the swimming pool, urged them toward the flashing water, the only thing that was not burning.
Weakly, desperately, Nina and Augie dragged themselves across the patch of lawn and tumbled in. The splash of their landing was lost in the sputter and whoosh of the fire, the mild water felt like dry ice against their reddened flesh. For a moment they did not realize that Reuben was not with them.
Then they turned back toward the blazing skeleton of their home. The tin roof had buckled, entire walls had burned away, the house was ceasing to exist. Against the wreckage of what was left, moving through the indigo smoke sparked with orange flame, they saw a slender form. Reuben was going back in; he was going to rescue Augie's canvas.
'My God,' the painter said. He screamed out Reuben's name to call him back; the sound was swallowed by the fire and the futile whine of approaching sirens, for all its anguish it went no farther than an unfelt prayer.
The young man vanished in the black and choking fog. When he appeared again, the huge prophetic picture of the parrot was on his shoulders and he was struggling toward the doors. But the flames were beyond all boundaries now, there was no inside and no outside, there was only fire everywhere. The fire caught up with Reuben, and when he staggered through the blazing archway, he himself was burning. Yellow flame crawled up his legs; pathetically he tried to run and the flames streamed back behind him; a blue gleam came off his burning hair. He struggled forward then pitched down on the patch of grass; with supreme effort he tried to throw the monumental painting clear of the inferno; it landed very near him, singed but not destroyed.
Augie, dazed, acting without the need of thought, pulled himself from the water and crawled beneath the waves of smoke to the unconscious Reuben. An acrid smell came from the young man's scalp, flames still licked at his back and legs; Augie smothered them with his own wet body, choked back nausea at the unspeakable feel of his friend's oozing skinless flesh. He pulled and rolled the ravaged form toward the coolness of the pool; it left a trail of ash and blood. Nina helped him lower the unmoving body into the water, then cradled it against herself as Augie, weeping, worked desperately to breathe life back into Reuben's slack mouth.
46
Charles Effingham, the white-maned chairman of Sotheby's, had been in the business forty years and could predict the success or failure of a given sale by the presence or absence of a certain smell in the auction room. This smell needed to be ferreted out behind the aromas that always pertained in gatherings of the wealthy-the round spiced scents of expensive perfumes, the creamy leather musk of the finest shoes and handbags. The odor Effingham sought out was rather less refined. It was a lusty, avid smell; nervous and glandular, it was a grown-up,
