That was the only dramatic part. Then came the only funny part. Elena rang back to say in a very calm and patient voice, When the firemen come, could you ask them to take off their boots before they go upstairs? She was thinking of her runner – the strip of carpet. She was in shock. I suppose we all were.
The firemen came. Ten huge Darth Vaders yelling, GET OUTTA HERE! GET OUT! GO! GO! GO! I got out, with the others. I didn’t linger – didn’t linger to ask them, in my ponciest English accent, to slip out of their boots. And up they stomped. We all got out and stood staring. Now there were flames up there. Flames up there like hyenas after a kill. So busy. So greedy. So much to do. So much to eat…
We spent the night as guests of kindly neighbours, Jaime and Isa across the road, Inez and I a couple of doors along. The two Amises had very temporarily joined the 60,000 homeless of New York City.
I know what you must be asking yourself. What’s all this about a happy ending? Well it did come about. I can still feel its blessing, and I must gather such things to me, as I age, ever mindful of the destined mood…
Bright and early next morning we visited the scene. The FDNY, New York’s Bravest, rightly so called, had to drown all those jackals – every last one of them. And quickly too – there were babies sleeping in numbers 20 and 24. So they strode to the top floor and humourlessly unleashed the regulation gigaton of water.
And yes, the fire was gone. But so was the house. Elena’s precious runner, for example, was gone – and so were the banisters, the sidewalls, and the stairs.
Now as you’re getting on in years, my reader, that kind of mishap can be conclusively discouraging. I’m certain, for example, that Kurt Vonnegut, having started a fire in his house – an ashtray fire – never recovered from it. In his Letters it’s there as a totem. Ever since the fire…And it set the emotional tone of his Act V. I was uncharacteristically firm in my mind that we wouldn’t get defeated by the fire. And we haven’t been.
But the happy ending concerns Inez…
Now Inez, taking after me, is petite, is little. One day, aged fourteen or so, she stood in the hall in Strong Place and said, with adult clarity, ‘What do I want? I want to grow.’ You can imagine how helpless that made me feel. True helplessness – it’s like finding yourself floating in water, without connection…
She was taken to a specialist who said she’d be lucky to reach five feet. Inez burst into tears. I’m glad I wasn’t there for that (Elena was of course there for that). But I was there for much else. You see, I know short, I know all about being short. So I was rooting every day for Inez. I was her growth coach – I was with her every millimetre of her ascent to five feet. You can do it, Bubba. And she did it, she did do it.
‘Now you’re fine, you’re safe,’ I said at the impromptu party that developed on Sixty Inches Day. ‘You made it.’
That was not very long ago. So I was hugely surprised when…Wait. Before we moved into my mother-in-law’s place, we moved into my brother-in-law’s place. Where we camped out under the January snows. Every day Elena returned to the dripping ruin of Strong Place, saving what she could. As seldom as I dared, I joined her, and stood in my study gathering scraps of paper and wringing out books.
So not a very festive time. And then one night, at the family table, Eliza nonchalantly revealed that Inez had grown two more inches.
I scraped my chair backwards and said, ‘Two inches?’
‘Not two inches,’ said Inez. ‘Two and a half.’
And for some reason no one had thought to tell me, me, the titch-in-chief, the oldtimer from Lilliput. And I was so glad I hadn’t heard – because it was such overpowering news. Two and a half inches! When I was her age I’d hardly dare dream about two and a half inches. It would’ve made me practically five foot nine. Even now my head spins…
And right then and there I thought, Fair enough! If God had said, Inez will grow a bit more, but it’ll cost you your house, I’d’ve said, Where do I sign?
So that’s my destined mood, maybe. Because something similar happened with regard to Hitch…My mother-in-law, Betty, is getting on for ninety years old, and at present she’s in Battery Park at an assisted-living parlour called Brookdale and subtitled ‘Senior Solutions’.
In a way that’s an attractive American attitude (and selling point) – senior solutions. But it’s a misnomer. Old age, as I’m coming to realise, is insoluble. There are no senior solutions. There are no senior solutions.
Christopher sought and found a senior solution. Only he wasn’t a senior. He was sixty-two. Maybe that’s it. Maybe you need to be comparatively junior, if you’re going to find the senior solution.
Chapter 1 Christopher: Everyone Pray for Hitchens Day
‘Who else feels,’ I read out from the moist sheet of thin white paper on my lap, ‘who else feels Christopher Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer was God’s revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him? Atheists like to ignore FACTS. They like to act like everything is a “coincidence”. Really? It’s just a “coincidence” [that] out of any part of his body Christopher Hitchens got cancer in the one part of his body he used for blasphemy? Yeah, keep on believing that, Atheists.’ I paused and Hitch said,
‘As you may be starting to suspect, Mart, this chap isn’t very bright.’
‘I wondered…Yeah, keep thinking that, Atheists. He’s going
