Fire Spirit (7 page)

‘What do you think? I was too busy trying not to get killed.'

‘Well, you didn't get killed, and I have to say that I'm pleased about that.'

‘Yeah, but if I had a decent car, instead of that junker . . .'

‘I told you to get a job.'

‘Yeah, like what job? Stacking shelves or something? Flipping burgers?'

‘Nothing wrong with either of those. It's all money, after all. I think Dean Huntley at the Red Lobster is looking for a dishwasher.'

‘Oh, great. How come Dan Collins' parents have just bought him a brand-new Honda, and they don't expect
him
to wash dishes?'

‘Because the Collins are rolling in it,' Craig retorted. ‘And right now, this family is very much
not
rolling in it. It's called a recession.'

‘Oh, great. Thanks a lot. Trust me to get born into the wrong frigging family.'

‘Wash your mouth out,' said Craig.

Jeff said, ‘I'm out of here. I'm going to Lennie's.'

‘Back by eleven!' Ruth called after him as he slammed the front door.

Craig sat at the table with his head bowed and his eyes closed. At last, he looked up and said, ‘He's right, of course. We should be able to buy him a new car. I really don't like him driving around in that beaten-up Pinto.'

‘Your parents never bought
you
a new car,' said Ruth. ‘You had to work for it. So should he.'

‘But that was the whole point, wasn't it? We were always going to be better off than our parents. We were always going to give our kids everything.'

‘Yes, we were. Maybe that's where we went wrong.'

Craig looked around the kitchen and frowned. ‘Did you say pizza?'

‘Yes. Do you want it?'

‘I don't know. I don't know what I want. I'm sorry. I've let you down, haven't I? I never thought that it would ever come to this.'

Ruth sat down beside him and took hold of his hand. ‘It's not your fault, Craig. Everybody's suffering, just the same. We'll get through it. We have to.'

Craig nodded. ‘Do you know what Ammy said to me today, when I was taking her to school? I was trying to explain to her that business wasn't going too well, and she said, “Whatever you've done, no matter how long ago it was, even if you've forgotten all about it, in the end you always have to pay for it.”'

‘
Ammy
said that? That was very deep. For Ammy, anyhow.'

‘I don't know. It was the way she was looking at me when she said it. I really got the feeling that she wasn't talking about the credit crunch at all. It was like she was talking about something else altogether, but I'm damned if I know what.'

Ruth stroked his cheek. ‘Craig,' she said, ‘the only thing that you have ever done is try to take care of us. You can't blame yourself for a worldwide recession.'

He stared at her, and his eyes were glistening with tears. ‘I love you, Ruth. You know that, don't you?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I know that. I love you, too. Now how about that pizza?'

As Ruth came upstairs, she could hear Amelia singing in her bedroom. Her voice was high and very clear, and she had almost faultless pitch. It was one of the peculiarities of William's Syndrome that she had highly sensitive hearing and had only to listen to a piece of music once and she could sing it or hum it note-perfect.

Ruth stopped outside Amelia's bedroom door. It was about a half-inch open, and she could see one corner of Amelia's desk, with her homework spread out on it, and a collection of family photographs, and three toy frogs sitting on top of her PC.

‘
I wonder where he's going

And he'll never see or hear from her again
.'

Ruth knocked and opened the door wider. Amelia was sitting cross-legged on the end of her bed, wearing her pajamas with the big pink flowers on them.

‘Hi. I heard you singing. That was a very sad song.'

‘I made it up myself.'

‘It's sad, but it's very good, too.' She nodded toward Amelia's desk. ‘Did you finish your homework?'

‘Most of it.'

Ruth looked at the photographs. There was a picture of Amelia sitting in her playpen, hugging a tatty pink rabbit; and a picture of Amelia walking hand-in-hand with her father, on the shores of Lake Michigan; and another picture of a blonde woman with curly hair and a pearl necklace, smiling vaguely at the camera as if she wasn't enjoying having her photograph taken. This woman looked remarkably like Ruth. She could have been Ruth's mother or her sister. But Amelia had found the picture in the bottom of her closet when they first moved into this house, and she could only guess that the woman was the wife of the previous owner.

‘I don't know why you keep this picture,' said Ruth. ‘You don't even know who she is.'

‘I
like
her. She's you, if you were my friend, instead of my mother.'

‘I hope that I am your friend.'

Amelia smiled, and then stopped smiling abruptly. ‘There was something I wanted to ask you.'

‘Oh, yes?'

She looked uncomfortable. ‘I'm glad I didn't go to Sandra's. I'm sorry about being so sulky. I knew all the time I was cooking your breakfast that you wouldn't like it.'

Ruth sat down next to her. ‘Hey . . . you don't have to be sorry. I thought it was a lovely idea. You can't blame yourself because you don't think the same way as most other people. Blame
me
, if you're going to blame anybody.'

Amelia laid her head in Ruth's lap. ‘But I'm always saying things and doing things even when I
know
that people aren't going to like them.'

‘We all do that, sweetheart. It's called being human.' She stroked Amelia's hair and they were silent together for a moment.

Then Amelia said, ‘You will be careful, won't you?'

‘Hey, I'm always careful. I have people who depend on me. Whenever I have to go into a burned-out building, I always make all of the safety checks first. I don't want any floors collapsing or ceilings falling on top of me.'

Amelia raised her head and looked at her seriously. ‘I don't mean that. I mean those people I was talking about. Now that they've found out how to come through, they're going to keep on coming.'

‘Do you know who they are?'

‘I'm not sure. They're not all the same. Like I said, some of them are very faint but some of them have white faces. I can sort of hear them talking but I don't know what they're talking about.'

‘Where do they come from? I mean, when you say that they've found a way to get through – through from
where
?'

Amelia closed her eyes and repeated the door-opening gesture she had made in the kitchen, only more slowly. ‘I don't know. There's a whole crowd of them in the doorway and there's too many of them and I can't see past them.'

‘Do you have any idea what they want?'

Amelia shook her head.

Ruth gave her a kiss. ‘You know what I think? I think you need to stop worrying about these people. They're all up here, inside of your mind, that's all. Just like those imaginary pets you used to tell me about when you were little. You remember Puffy, your imaginary poodle? Just like him. Just like the man in your song.'

‘
He's
real, but he's not a man. He's only a boy.'

‘Oh, yes. Who is he? Somebody from school?'

‘No,' said Amelia. ‘I don't know his name. But I saw him in the street.'

‘Which street?'

‘
This
street, of course! He was standing right outside.'

‘When?'

‘This evening,' said Amelia. She was beginning to grow impatient. ‘That's why I made up the song.'

‘The boy in your song was standing outside our house this evening?'

‘
Yes.
He was there for ages.'

Ruth took hold of Amelia's hands. ‘What did he look like?'

‘He looked sad.'

‘You should have told me. Maybe he was looking for a lost dog or something.'

‘He was just standing there, staring. He had black hair and a black T-shirt and red jeans.'

Ruth stared at her. She felt a tingling sensation in her wrists. ‘Are you sure? A black T-shirt and red jeans?'

‘
Yes.
'

Ruth stood up and went over to the window. She drew back the flowery cotton drapes and looked down into the street. Her view of the sidewalk was mostly obscured by the huge old basswood tree beside the driveway, but she couldn't see any boy standing out there.

‘What's wrong?' Amelia asked her, after a while.

Ruth pulled the drapes together, making sure that she closed them tight. ‘Nothing, sweetheart. There's nobody there now. It's time you thought about washing your teeth and going to bed, isn't it? It's school again tomorrow. By the way, what were you going to ask me?'

Amelia said, ‘If I write a song on a piece of paper, but then I burn it, what happens to the song?'

‘I'm not sure. So long as
you
can remember it, it won't be gone for ever, will it? And even when you've forgotten it, maybe the smoke will go on singing it.'

FIVE

T
ilda was just about to climb into the bathtub when the doorbell rang. She stopped, one heavy leg still raised. Who was calling on her at this time of the evening? More to the point, who was calling on her at all? She had only one really close friend – Rosemary Shulman at the office – and Rosemary wouldn't come around to her apartment to see her, quite apart from the fact that she didn't drive.

She waited. Maybe somebody had made a mistake and pressed the wrong button. It happened now and again, especially at night, because the neighborhood kids were continually breaking the light over the porch. Once she had opened the door to be confronted by a handsome black man holding out a huge bouquet of yellow roses, but it had turned out that he was looking for Etta, the skinny black salesgirl who lived next door.

She dipped her toes into the foam to check how hot the water was. She had been paid on Friday, so she had indulged herself this evening with a chicken-dinner-for-two which she had preprepared at the Dream Dining franchise down on East Markland Avenue. She always made a dinner-for-two because it filled her up and stopped her snacking so much during the evening, and so that the kitchen helpers at Dream Dining wouldn't realize that she always ate alone, on her lap, in front of the TV.

The doorbell rang again, twice, as if the caller was growing impatient. She took her foot out of the water and bent over to dry between her toes, the way that her mother had always told her. She tugged at her straggly brown curls to make sure that she looked presentable, and then she took down the pink candlewick robe that was hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and put it on, grunting with the effort.

She crossed the living-room and went to the intercom beside the front door.

‘Who is it?' she asked.

‘Pizza guy.'

‘You have the wrong apartment. I didn't order pizza.'

‘I know. But this is
free
pizza. Complimentary, on the house.' The pizza guy's voice sounded hoarse, as if he had asthma.

‘What do you mean?'

‘You order pizza from Papa Joey's, don't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, this is your reward for being a loyal customer. Tonight every loyal customer gets free pizza.'

Tilda frowned. Somehow this didn't sound right. But on the other hand, she
did
regularly order pizza online from Papa Joey's, and if this wasn't a legitimate promotion, how did they know where she lived?

The hoarse voice said, ‘Listen, ma'am, I don't want to rush you or nothing, but I have twenty other deliveries to make. Do you want the free pizza or not?'

Tilda bit her lip in indecision. ‘The problem is I ate tonight already. Can I have the pizza some other night? Like tomorrow night, maybe?'

‘Sorry, ma'am. The offer is good for tonight only.'

‘What topping is it?'

‘Same as you always order. Hawaiian Barbecue Chicken.'

‘OK, then,' she said. ‘I'll take it.' If the pizza guy knew what she regularly ordered, he must be legitimate. And even if she wasn't hungry now, she might be later, before she went to bed, and she could always save any uneaten slices for tomorrow morning. She enjoyed cold pizza for breakfast, just as much as she enjoyed cold fried chicken and cold cheeseburgers.

She pressed the entrance buzzer and after a moment she heard the elevator whining. She heard the doors jolt, too, as the elevator reached the second floor. But then there was a long silence, almost half a minute, and she inclined her head toward her front door, listening for footsteps. Nothing. Maybe this was a hoax. Some of the neighborhood kids shouted insults at her when she arrived home in the evening, calling her ‘lardass' and ‘porky' and ‘thunder-thighs'. But the pizza guy on the intercom hadn't sounded like a kid.

Without warning, there was a sharp knock on the door, which made her jump.

‘Pizza guy!'

‘OK, OK. Wait up a second!' She squinted through the peephole. All she could see was a man wearing a white Papa Joey's cap and a red T-shirt. He was holding up a Papa Joey's pizza box. Normally, she would ask the delivery boy to show his order number, but of course this pizza had arrived unordered.