“It’s gotta have started in the bogs, right, think about it, where those guys were running out, you know, probably faggots, like what were they doing in there anyway, when ‘Come On Eileen’ starts up just as I’m about to duck in there myself for a quick waz, thought I might need to barf too but first I couldn’t open the door, and like the handle was all hot, and then, fuck man, everything suddenly goes mental, the whole bar is on fire and it makes sense you know because, right, think about it, that’s all pure alcohol, pure alcohol right, so it goes up like fffffwoosh…”
He made an explosive gesture with his hands.
“…so then there was the alarms going off really fucking loud, but some of those dumb bints in there, they’re so off their tits that they’re like wwwwwwoooooooowwwwwooooo and they start jumping up and down and they’re all come on, Eileen, ta-loo-rye-aye…”
For added verisimilitude he was jumping and singing now, his grimy beige polo shirt drenched in sweat, yet he continued to narrate seamlessly and without ever apparently needing to breathe. I thought to myself that he could be really good at the didgeridoo, or musical theatre.
“…then the bouncers and the guys behind the bar are all there on the dance floor and they’re like ladies this is an emergency but they’re like wwwoooowoooooooo and trying to dance with the bouncers but then the fucking bar explodes man, like we’re in a fucking James Bond movie, and suddenly everyone can see the place is fucking on fire, right, and they’re like shitting themselves, so then everyone’s running out screaming…”
He jogged a few steps in a mincing, tottering impression of a woman running in heels.
“…so there’s the fire engines outside and there’s the pigs there right, and they’re like nobody leaves until we’ve talked to you all but Jiz Harvey, you know Jiz from Peterhouse, he’s off like a fucking rocket because he’s scored on the way out here and now he’s paranoid as fuck, and this copper slams him down, but anyway the rest of us when we get outside and there’s the fucking fuzz, you guys saw it, right, they must think it’s arson, fuck man…”
I reflected that the audience of this monologue must have been present for the entire adventure, but that one might as well tell a firehose one is already wet. His voice trailed off, Doppler-like, as the group passed, and I walked quietly through the alley behind the Church of St. Andrew the Great, towards the scene of the disaster.
The actual fire must have been put out, and now the night air smelled of smoke and damp ash. I couldn’t see The Cop, and I didn’t dare approach anyone else. There was a smattering of journalists and photographers around but they seemed mostly to be leaving. I hovered near the dying babble of the aftermath to overhear someone—maybe a firefighter—say over a radio that six people had gone to Addenbrooke’s. Three, it seemed, were dead on arrival. One killed by the explosion, two in the crush to get out.
I skirted round the building, down a short flight of steps into the narrow brick passageway that led to Christ’s. This was the edge of Lion Yard, an awkwardly modern, ugly 1970s addition to the city centre. The floor of the passage was laid out in zigzag tiles, grouted in between and scattered with grey chewing-gum splotches and occasional cigarette butts. I noticed a pattern in the gum, approximating a smiley face with a lipstick-stained butt for a nose. We want patterns, especially faces. Crave them so much that our brains have evolved to see them everywhere.
There was something sparkly trodden into the dirty grouting, right where an earring would have graced the flat countenance. I dug it out with my fingernail: a little crystal attached to a metal link. Probably from a pendant necklace. Or, indeed, a real earring, erstwhile of a real ear. It reminded me of the plastic baubles on my once-beloved necklace, the one I hadn’t worn since my classmate pointed out how cheap it was. This crystal looked the way they used to look, before she said that. I guessed that one of the Cinderellas fleeing this burning ball had dropped it in her hurry. I pocketed it for myself with no intention of seeking her out. No Prince Charming, me.
Under the street lamps, it looked as if there were a tiny rainbow fire burning inside the crystal. Best it stay trapped in there, I thought, where it can’t do any damage. Back in my rooms, I scrubbed the dirt from under my fingernails, rinsed off the crystal in my basin, and threaded its metal link onto my choker.
—
I caught up with The Cop the next day, and I asked her about the people who’d died in the Cindies fire. I’d heard on the news that one of them was a young woman, but didn’t learn her name. As we meandered from Parker’s Piece towards the Grafton Centre, The Cop told me the woman who died was Madeleine somebody. She was local, not a student.
“A townie?” I asked.
The Cop stopped and looked round. “Uh…so you know, that’s not always the best word to use when you’re talking to one.”
I suddenly felt my face burning. I had heard other people use the word, and I knew what it meant on the surface, whom it referred to. I had just never thought about the weight of its meaning. Its undertow. I had never had to think about that.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” I said.
She smiled and said, “S’okay. Just don’t do it again or you’ll be cruising for a bruising!”
She air-boxed me several times, bobbing and swerving to avoid my non-existent counterattacks.
—
I wore my choker every day. The skull, the sequin, the wing, and the crystal bunched together and weighed it into a V-shape. This little
