Chapter Forty-Seven
“Sorry about the delay.” Felski bustled in through the back door. “Apparently, it’s impossible to find a light around here. Had to go to the store up the street. Two bucks for a pack of matches. Can you believe that?”
Dame was quiet. She kept her back to him.
“Cold shoulder, huh?” He struck one of the overpriced matches and held it against his cigarette. “Well, not for much longer, I’m afraid.”
Still, Dame said nothing.
“Where’s that potty mouth of yours now, huh? This is your last chance to use it.”
“Let me ask you a question, Felski.” Dame cleared her throat. “Why can’t women parallel park?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I said, ‘Why can’t women parallel park?’”
Felski started to laugh. “You’re going to tell me a joke?” His laugh turned wet and ugly. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why can’t women parallel park?”
There was a quiet click and Dame took a steadying breath. She turned around to face Felski. “Because men keep telling us that this” — with two free hands she made the insignificant measurement — “is what seven inches looks like.”
Felski’s mouth fell open. “How —?”
To Dame, everything that happened next seemed to happen in slow motion. Felski’s cigarette unglued itself from his bottom lip and fell end to end onto the gasoline-soaked floor. When it made contact, there was an impossible moment of silence and then, a great whooshing sound. Almost instantly, the room blossomed with blue and yellow flames. Dame took a couple steps back. The once-dark hotel was now a riot of colour and light. A howling chorus filled the air.
“There’s no way out, Dame!” Felski hollered over the noise.
He had a point. The private investigator stood between her and the back exit, and everything else had long been blocked off or boarded up. So Dame ran — not toward the door — but toward the southwest corner of the building.
Felski chased after her. “Where do you think you’re going?”
The heat was intensifying, and the smoke thickened with every step. Fire billowed all around her. She hurtled closer and closer to the wall — twenty feet, fifteen, now ten. She waited until the last possible moment before she made her move: an abrupt left turn. She looked over her shoulder and saw Felski trying to corner, but knew it was too late. She heard the rotten crack of the floor giving way, and heard his scream end abruptly as he hit the concrete below.
Dame stumbled back to where he fell. She tried to catch her breath, but there was too much smoke. In the chiaroscuro light of the fire, the hole looked like a mouth full of bad teeth.
What’s it called, Anton?
A low moan came up out of the blackness.
Misdirection.
The fire climbed the wall now, snapping at the timber, tonguing the already-damaged ceiling. All around her, flames advanced like an ambush of bright tigers. She unzipped her jacket and removed the photographs of Aki and Howlett she’d tucked inside. She tossed the pictures into the fire and watched the heat swallow them whole.
Dame doubled over coughing. Ashes circled her head like a swarm of late-summer flies. She pulled her shirt up over her nose and started toward the exit. There wasn’t much time.
And then from above, a flaming rafter came hurtling down and sent Dame sprawling into a pile of rubble. She tried to push herself up from the filth, but her arms buckled beneath her, and she collapsed back onto the floor. Her breath was coming in short gasps now, her lungs searching for air but finding only smoke. Her eyes closed against the sting of it. She struggled to stand, but the heat had an impossible gravity that dragged her to the ground.
Dame realized she was alone. Her father wasn’t going to pull off another one of his magic tricks this time. He wasn’t going to appear from the smoke and carry her out in his arms. Dodge couldn’t save her anymore. No one could. And part of her wanted to stay where she was, in that strange vacancy, so close to the beating heart of the fire. Maybe, it was just what she deserved.
But then, when she opened her eyes, there was someone else there — the curly-haired little boy — standing across the room in his pyjamas, watching her.
“Get up,” she heard him say.
Dame tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.
“You have to get up,” the boy said again. “You don’t belong here anymore.”
She blinked and the boy was gone. Summoning the last of her strength, Dame put one foot on the ground, and then another. She found her balance and stayed low. And for the final time, she made her way out of the Sainte-Marie Hotel.
“Ugh. It’s too hot in here.”
The kid leaned her head back against the seat of the Buick and fanned herself.
“Open the window,” the woman said.
“Couldn’t we just buy a car with air conditioning?”
“No, but you could open the window,” the woman said again.
The kid sighed. She cranked the handle and let the evening into the car. Her mother did the same. Ahead of them, a convertible honked and a streetcar clanged. The day was about to end, and as they headed west on Queen, the chrome and steel of the traffic flashed white with sunlight.
“Are we ordering takeout tonight?” the kid said.
“It’s Friday, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Is Peggy coming over?”
“As far as I know.”
“With dessert?”
The woman smiled. “Maybe.”
“Hey.” The kid sat up in her seat. “Why is there a truck sticking out of the side of that building?”
“That’s the CHUM-City Building. They make TV shows there.”
“Like Read All About It?”
The woman shook her head. “I think they film that in Brampton.”
A few minutes passed in silence. Eventually, the woman pointed out the window. “You see that park beside us?”
The kid nodded.
“There used to be a huge college there. Trinity College. White brick and Ohio limestone. It would’ve looked like a castle from here.”
“What happened to it?”
“There was a fire. And then the city didn’t want to take care of it anymore, so they tore it down. The foundations are still there, buried somewhere under the ground.”
“That’s kind of sad.” The kid stared out at the park as they drove past. She tried to imagine a castle in all that empty space. Traffic moved slowly, street light to street light, until they came into view of the Dufferin Street Bridge. The kid pointed up as they neared an old hotel.
“You told me about this one, right? It has some kind of weird metal elevator or something?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Want to go have a look?”
“Do we have time?”
“Of course,” the woman said, switching on the turn signal. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”