I banged on the side door, then banged on the front, calling Amy’s name, but there was no answer. The heavy smoke should have triggered the detectors, but I didn’t hear them, Laura, no doubt, having forgotten to change the batteries—if she’d ever bothered to install them at all. Through the front window, I saw the glow of the television, clouded and hazy. I should have run to the neighbor’s house and called the fire department—this was before cell phones, or at least before everyone had one—but all I could think was that I needed to get inside the house.
I ran to the side, grabbed a metal garbage can, and smashed it against the front picture window, the glass shattering, and I pulled myself through the opening, my palms bloody and nicked, shards of glass in my hair as I hoisted my legs through the window and dropped to the living room floor.
Passed out on the couch, Amy snored roughly but didn’t stir, her head propped up by a giant throw pillow, her glasses pushed down around her nose, the silver flask wedged between her legs. I shouted her name, but she only kept snoring, her glasses fogged from the smoke. (Only later would I learn that Amy, expecting my arrival, had left the front door unlocked. Too busy knocking and banging, I’d never tried the knob.) When I ran into the kitchen, I found a frying pan on the stove, a blackened hamburger patty doing its best firewood impression, the flames having jumped from the pan to a dishtowel to the curtains above the sink in a jagged dance and crackle, the orange tendrils snaking toward the ceiling as I grabbed the fire extinguisher—Laura actually had one!—and shot a fat blast of thick white foam straight at the blaze, my hands shaking as I pointed the nozzle every damn place I could see, the fire quickly yielding to the chemical spray, the smoke turning dense and putrid as it smoldered under the foam.
I held my breath until the extinguisher hit empty and the fire finally ceased, then opened the windows and ran to Sarah’s bedroom. Snuggled under her Snoopy sheets, Sarah slept peacefully, her face undisturbed.
Amy was sleeping, too. I shook her awake, her eyes finally opening as she looked at me and smiled. “Oh hey, you’re here,” she said, glancing at the television. “Great! Friends is on!”
I pulled her to her feet, but she was too smashed to stand. She flopped back on the couch and adjusted her glasses. “Shit! What happened to the window?”
“You almost burned the house down.”
“No. I was making a hamburger…” Her voice trailed off as her mind cleared, her eyes tearing from the smoke. “Oh, shit.”
“You could have killed yourself. And Sarah!”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I was making a hamburger …. damn it, meat is murder…we should be vegetarians, Duck.”
She reached for the flask and brought it to her lips, the last few drops of Schnapps dripping onto her tongue.
“Is Sarah okay?”
“I checked. She’s still sleeping.”
“Good,” she said. “Hey, you’re bleeding.”
In the frenzy of the moment I hadn’t realized it. I ran my hand over my cheek, fresh blood smearing my fingertips.
“I’ll kiss it and make it better,” Amy said, rising from the couch, but her knees buckled, and she lurched forward, grabbing her stomach and moaning before she threw up all over my shoes.
A minute later Laura Carpenter walked through the front door with some guy she’d picked up at a bar that night, a tall dude with a mustache and a tattoo of a cobra coiled around his bicep. Laura was heavily inked, the creepiest one being the black crow with an arrow through its heart drawn on the back of her neck.
She surveyed the damage and lit up a cigarette, looking straight at me.
“You’re paying to fix this, right?” she said.
. . . . .
Kelly sipped her ginger ale and looked out the window, the broad squares of the Midwest landscape visible through the glare like a checkerboard no one ever bothered to play.
“This story doesn’t end well, does it?” Kelly said. “If something happens to the little girl…to Sarah…I don’t want to hear it.”
“Okay.”
I picked up a magazine and started reading. Maybe five seconds passed before she grabbed my arm.
“What happened?”
All those years back, when the police had asked the same question, I had answered simply, “I don’t know.” This was after Amy had talked, after she made her accusations and turned our lives bat-shit crazy. The cops, of course, were skeptical of my ignorance. I was there at the beach, only a few yards away.
How could I possibly not know what had happened?
. . . . .
From The Pizza Elegies, Draft seven, an unproduced screenplay by Donatello Marcino:
EXT.A NEW JERSEY BEACH – MORNING
FADE IN from DONNIE’S POV: eyes squinting against the sun as he slowly awakens. We see the waves crashing against the shore, stronger now.
DONNIE sits up, shakes his head, and grabs a bottle of water and drinks. He sees AMY standing at the shore, staring toward the ocean. SARAH is not there.
He rises slowly, still sleepy, and walks toward AMY. He joins her by the water.
DONNIE
I hate sleeping on the beach. You should have woken me.
AMY
(a lethargic whisper)
I tried. You were out. You should take those pills.
DONNIE
I do, sometimes.
He looks around for SARAH.
DONNIE
Where’s Sarah?
AMY doesn’t respond. DONNIE sees a single child’s flip-flop bobbing in the water twenty feet from the shore.
DONNIE
(concerned)
Where’s
