4 a.m.

I look at my phone - it's 4 a.m. I don't even know what to do with 4 a.m. Sure, 4 a.m.'s OK if you're about to fall asleep. Or if you've just woken up and in the mood to work - nothing else to do at 4 a.m. but work or sleep. But what if, like me, you've already tried working. You've already tried sleeping. Neither works - what then?

Then you just sit there and get irritated by the irregular sound of the blinds being cleaved by the wayward slab on the air conditioning vent. Like a snaggletooth with less charm, or a persistent cowlick, the moment you let it irritate you, you've set forth on an irreversible spiral into madness.

And why is there stain on my glasses? A filthy, grimy smudge. Can't they keep themselves clean? I clean myself every day - is it too much to ask that they do the same? I bought them. I keep them safe in their little case. Is it really too much for them to show some appreciation? Some common hygienic decency?

And why is the earplug in my right ear not as good as the one in my left? I wouldn't even need earplugs except for the stupid sound from the stupid blinds because of the stupid broken AC vent. But of course it is and they do so I must, to keep me from going insane, but now there's more noise coming into my right ear than my left, and that's a recipe for lunacy if I've ever heard one.

What am I supposed to do? Eat? I just ate. It's getting cold in here. But you know three seconds after I turn down the AC, it's going to be too hot.

If only I had something to distract me. If I had worked all day under the hot sun, or in the dark mine, then I'd be too exhausted to worry about this stupid stuff. But no, I had to spend the stupid day in the stupid coffee shop, typing to stupid people online while trying not to make eye contact with the lady in sunglasses sitting next to me.

"Sunglasses?" you snicker? "How can you know if you're making eye contact with someone in sunglasses?" you laughingly question? Well, I'll tell you - when you know the person is hungrily stalking you as a lion a lame gazelle, waiting for the slightest opportunity to strike…up conversation.

And, yeah, OK, maybe I did the same thing with the cute blonde girl on the plane, but that's the price she pays for being cute. I'm not cute, I'm just there, and the conversational predator next to me would as gladly prey on my momentary unabsorbedness and careless gaze placement as she would the next guy's. It's just I'm the easiest pickins 'cause I'm the closest target.

Life is brutal.

Overcast

It was the beginning of a new semester at the University of Pittsburgh, and the first week, which was also the first week of September, looked as if it had been misplaced from somewhere in late October. The drizzle, chill, and wind forced the girls to hide their wares underneath oppressive layers of fabric. It was as if the dance of the new semester had undergone a theme change at the last minute, from “Basking in Nature and Each Other’s Gazes” to “Shelter from the Elements”.

Happy to be inside, under the comforting fluorescent lights of the engineering building, the large windows in the hallway functioned for me much like my head as it poked out from under the covers on a cold night – enhancing my comfort by showing me what I was one down comforter (or, in this case, a double window pane) from enduring.

I sat at my desk, trying to muster some forward momentum on my attempts to write a program to quickly model light-diffraction. In fact, it was already quick. The problem was that it was nowhere near accurate. As I sat there, hoping the success I felt at having turned on the computer would carry me forward to something even greater, I heard her.

From her cough, I could tell she was attractive – maybe 5’4”, 115 lbs, long black hair, white skin, a longish, beautiful face, a pretty-but-conservative dress. Maybe smart. Maybe a bit of a sorority girl. But dignified, as those things go.

I headed down the hall toward the water fountain specifically to see her. I turned the corner, and there she was – 5’2”, maybe, light-brown skin, ringlet-curly dark hair with blonde highlights. Freckles. Cute. Perhaps quite a distraction if she had some personality to her. But not someone to make me fall all over myself. Unless I thought about her to much. Or she smiled at me.

In the past, each had proved critical mass.

I continued past her down the hall toward the water fountain, filled up the water bottle I’d brought with me, and headed back, by which time she’d vanished.

Five minutes later I sat fully hydrated in front of my computer, the code of the modelling program confronting me. I decided I should probably check if Jose was in yet. I walked across the hall and knocked.

“Come in,” he said.

I did, and, to my utter shock, found that my view of Jose was blocked by ringlet-curly highlights, sitting quite boldly on the desk of my colleague and newly former friend.

How did she know Jose? And why was she sitting on his desk, dangling her foot off the side like that? How had he kept this secret from me? More importantly, why?

He’d been hiding her, obviously. Jealously guarding her – secreting her away, when a creature of her beauty and grace deserved to be free to roam the entire engineering department unhindered and uninhibited. He deserved, nay, required a harsh rebuke and severe reprimand for his greed and arrogance.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, man,” he said.

“Hi,” she finally decided to say.

“Hi,” I responded

He looked at me, slightly smiling. Waiting. She looked at him, then back at me. I looked at him, then at her.

“Oh, haven’t you two met?”

Come, come now, Mr. Bond – you know as well as I that we’ve never before exchanged so much as a glance.

“No,” I said.

She shook her head.

“Zoraida, this is Sam.”

We shared our assessments on the acquaintance-making that had just occurred, (and, in what was perhaps a sign of our compatibility), assessing it identically – as nice.

There was an enchanting confidence in the way she spoke. Her speech accented undeserved final syllables just often enough to deny a listener’s attention any rest. I didn’t know if it pointed to her accent or her personality. Maybe the interplay of the two.

I excused myself when I felt things were getting awkward, which is usually well after things had actually gotten awkward. I returned to my desk and busied myself with tedious work, going over the simulation’s code and making sure all instances of the old equation had been replaced by the new one and that no doubling factor remained anywhere.

I got a reprieve with lunch and a couple afternoon classes, then returned to finish changing the code. I had little realistic hope that this latest attempt would result in any kind of breakthrough, but, as always, there was that rather significant bit of unreasonable hope that the first run would miraculously yield exactly the pattern we’d been looking for, and, at that point, I was too tired to even try to suppress it.

The first run yielded an error message, and I decided either I or the computer had to go, and the machine seemed firmly entrenched.

I stopped for a bagel on the way home and saw Jose in the cafe. He told me to sit with him. It felt awkward – I was sure I stunk of jealousy and that my eyes accused betrayal. As I looked down to sit, I told myself, “When you look at him again, just pretend he’s a normal person, not the traitor he is. But my brain was too smart to believe that, and I was sure my feelings were tattooed on my hot face and my thoughts telegraphed through my every pained action and muted reaction.

Luckily, he spoke first.

“So, how’s it going, Paleskin? Looks like there’s a storm coming, eh?”

I looked out the window at the sky, which had finally switched from overcast to dark.

“Yeah, well, you can’t always believe what you see,” I said.

“Hmm… you seem very wise today.”

“Clouds bring me clarity.”

We talked for a bit – Family Guy and international politics – the usual. Finally, he stood.

“Well, I should get going.”

“I’ll join you.”

We exited the café.

“So, this Zoraida…” I started.

He smiled. Turned. Looked at me. Lost the smile. Raised his eyebrows.

“Yes?”

“How… how long you known her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a year. We TA’ed Circuits 101 together two spring semesters ago.”

“Where’s she been since then?”

“She studied abroad in Mexico for a year,” he said as we continued our passive-aggressive race against the weather, walking down the sidewalk toward our places in Shadyside.

“You must be glad she’s back.”

He turned to face me again.

“Why do you say that, Paleskin?”

“I don’t know – you guys seemed like friends.”

“Yeah. It just felt like you might be implying something more.”

“Would that be offensive?” I asked, looking down at my shadow.

“I’m not sure. Coming from you, a lot of things seem to be.”

“Seem to be.”

“Perception is reality,” he said.

“Well, one version of it, at least,” I said, slowing to take off my jacket – all this activity had warmed me up.

“But each of us only has one version.”

“I didn’t make the rules.”

“But you play by them.”

“Under protest.”

He gave me a look.

“Paleskin, is there anything you want to come out and say to me?”

“Sorry, buddy – I’m still not gay.”

“What?”

“’Come out.’? I know your code.”

He sighed.

“Are you ever serious?”

I looked up and felt his gaze follow mine to the bright-golden late-afternoon sun.

“Only when it’s cloudy.”

A Shocking Conversation

“I just don’t like it,” she said, staring at him with those big brown eyes under smoldering brows.

“You think I like it any more than you do? But what choice do I have?” he asked, his blue eyes wide.

“You have no choice.”

“I have but one choice – to die for my country.”

“That’s not a choice, that’s a path.”

“Yes, I have but one path – country-death.”

“So it’s not heroic, it’s just tragic.”

“Yeah, I’m a tragic hero.”

“You are tragic.”

“Heroically."

"Actually, I take it back – you always have a choice."

"Yeah, to starve or to do the devil’s work – some choice."

"Weaker men than you have chosen the former."

"DUMBER men than I have chosen the former."

"I can’t tell you what to do."

"Seems like you are."

"Well, I can’t make you do what I want."

"Not for lack of whining."

"Where’d u hear that?"

"The President of Canada."

"Canada doesn’t have a president."

"Then I declare myself President of Canada!"

"You’ll have no power."

"Neither do those Windsors, but look at all the fun they have."

"Technically, they do, but they’re only to be consulted when all else has failed."

"Like Bush!"

"I guess."

"So, that’ll be me, minus the power."

"I don’t see the point."

"It’ll be great! You can be my mistress!"

"Mistress?"

"Yeah. I’ll need a respectable wife, but you’ll provide just that hint of scandal that keeps people interested – you’ll be my Camilla."

"Your Lewinski."

"Exactly!"

" Fat chance."

"Ha ha!"

"My gosh – let the poor woman rest in peace!"

"I’m pretty sure she’s still alive."

"I should hope so – she’s sleeping on my couch."

"Oh, is that who that was? I thought it was your sister."

"My sister’s in another state."

"Which one?"

"Shock."

"What happened?"

"She fought the law."

"And the law won?"

"Yeah, the law of physics – she was fixing this one outlet – turned out it was a live one."

"Was she like, 'We’ve got a live one here!'?"

"No, she was like, convulsing."

Words

That’s what my Nana used to say to me when I’d open up a fresh tin of sardines. But she’d often doze off in the midst of her soliloquies, not colloquies – or calls o’ quay, which are like catcalls at construction sites, but 100 times worser, as are seamen to construction workers - after which she’d awake refreshed and stinking of gin. That was Nana – who was I to say anything? Only a teenage tart just then coming into my own. A pop tart, they would call me today, had I been a pop singer, which I wasn’t, so they wouldn’t – they’d have just left me alone.

A clear style is beginning to emerge from these incoherent ramblings, and that is one of a desperate debaucher. Not “dee baucher,” as Fraulein Magda used to call the meat-cutter. But a depraved human being with a fondness for base animal desires like to eat and to sire. Debased and unstable like rolling stone. Gather no moss, but at what cost?

Bloom’s day. Bloomingdale’s. Which one for this culture prevails? But intellectual snobs have been propping themselves up with their judgments on others’ crass desire for basic human necessities for as long as there have been noses to look down. Perhaps longer, if you consider East Asians to have no nose, which only a quack with notions whack would ever really try to back with any kind of argument – one truly full of rage up-pent. Or an inveterate liar like Verbal Kent, but such was his bent, the merry gent, his legacy now in cement.

Though that’s still not exactly what I meant when I set to talk of things ill-sent. The first of these, the government-‘s taxes claiming your last red cent. And that scent it leaves behind, nothing like autumn leaves and fine red wine, which ‘round us right now we find, as we in this ship’s bowels dine, for once vowing to take the time to find out what the other needs – or says they need, which says it all. Not straight out, but off the wall. A carom shot, a blowing glance, a glancing blow thy lover’s lance the source of pain and of romance, the pleasure only to enhance like those crazy cosmopolitans in France. That one last chance, a wine romance, what more need thee than song and dance? But song so sweet and soft and full like Ray relaxing at the pool. You’d have to be a bloody fool to miss this chance to hear unspool melodies from the king of cool. Forty acres and a mule is all they asked the world cruel, but it declined – sent them to school – not one equipped with a slide rule. Rather, that of hard knocks – violence and cunning their only tools. Hard knocks, not knocking hard, though the latter recalls a scene in our front yard – rather, at our front door, some years before, a young man I’d come to know came calling one day just as though my parents were as liberal with me as each of us is with ourselves, hardly a feat one might expect encounter, much less assume from people strange – and strangers to him they today remain, their trust he never seemed to gain, for his search ended up in vain, his search for beauty, truth, and the humane, a quest for only the insane, for only they can find the strength to pursue to any depth or length a goal with such model-slim odds one might as well defy the gods.

Part Next:

They came in unrelenting waves, like Latinos into the construction trade or South Asians into hospitals. One after the other, like the locusts in the tale of Rip Van Winkle, or the Liliputians from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. An undeniable hunger pulled them forth – or was it a terrible fear that drove them on? No one could say, for no two shared a language. One might be desperately escaping while his compatriot, his comrade, his brother-in-arms, was relentlessly searching. Every which way but loose. Indeed, loose was the one thing they dared not be. A bad reputation would be a permanent scar – this group was all they had, and it was imperative that they keep in good stead. How a reputation is acquired when no language exists is a pertinent question, and one I’m glad you’ve asked. However, they dared not take that risk.

A little while on, when the cliff walls closed in to reveal only a narrow stream of sky above, the more cautious of them raised a cry of protest. But how does one distinguish a cry of protest from a call to persevere when one knows not the language of the protestant? Being a lone protestant in the group ranking as greatly more desirable than being alone in the canyon kept the group together and progressing.

When the stream above had turned from blue sky to black ink, finally the leader sat to think. Or so his followers may have thought. This, we have no way of knowing. But follow him still they did, stopping around him and waiting. Some reclining, others pacing. With time, more the former, fewer the latter. Soon after gravity overtook them, sleep followed.

Not for nothing had they come this far. The morning brought a renewed vigor to their march, and by high noon they had crested the hill and overlooked a valley pasture. Perhaps those who were running felt the fear in them abate. Perhaps those who were seeking found this is what they’d sought. They each of them spread out across the land, claiming their own plot, no longer part of the group, but still members of the community.

Perhaps it takes a village to raise a child. Perhaps it takes a group of confused individuals with more-or-less-coinciding goals to raise a village. The rivulet of sky they’d followed was now a vast sea supporting nebulous lily pads. The rocks, still so close as to look on, were in sharp contrast to the blanket of grass shot through by the occasional tree.

Over the horizon who knew what lay? Was it desert, swamp, plateau – the land changed so quickly here, it was hard to know. Perhaps over the horizon lay lusher fields. Maybe placid lakes abounded.

But, geez, you gotta stop somewhere.

Bodega Girl

She loved sitting in the late-afternoon sun in the street outside the bodega. The orange-yellow light of the sun draped the dirt street and the plaster walls in an even browner, oranger tone than they natively possessed. She didn’t mind the boys who would walk by and give her long looks and short smiles as they tracked home from school or work, a contrail of dust in their wakes. But she’d loved this time even before she attracted the boys’ gazes; even before she’d cared what the boys thought. This was the time of the day when the Earth, like the people, settled down. It began to cool off from the noon sun, radiating away heat like someone sweating. Most days, her face was sticky from dried sweat by this time, her hair sticking up of its own accord, and she’d have to blow it out of her face or tie it back. She also took a guilty pleasure in glancing at her reflection in the shop window at times like these – she felt the honest work had made her beautiful – not in the way of a princess at a ball, but a more real - more desirable, really - beauty that didn’t wither with time but bloomed. The way she saw her mother’s beauty blooming in the wrinkles around her eyes when she smiled, and coming to full ripeness after cleaning the shop, or washing the dishes, or digging in the garden. This was a hearty kind of beauty that wasn’t at risk of being blown out by the wind or washed off in the rain.

Today she stood in the doorway holding Miguel, her nephew, and in him too she saw this kind of beauty. He was a happy child. He rarely cried and was content to sit with her for hours, sometimes, just amusing himself by watching her, or a spider in its corner web, or a lizard on the wall.

Tonight she would go out, she thought. The work week was over and she hadn’t had time to herself in days. She would go wash up – “working pretty” was fine for the afternoon, but it didn’t hurt to fancy up for a night out every now and then – maybe put on her short olive green summer dress and go look for Marisa and Bobby in the square, where she could watch the boys dance and sing and juggle and fight and in general make themselves look foolish trying to win some attention.

Boys...boys were still a novelty...

Critique of "Siesta"

Feedback from the contest judges on my failed story (I think perhaps the positives were written by a different person than were the negatives, as several aspects seem to be mentioned in both the "liked" and "disliked" categories):

''Siesta'' by Matthew McHugh - WHAT THE JUDGE(S) LIKED ABOUT YOUR SCRIPT - ..................It's easy to like the protagonist, especially with his willingness to put himself in danger for the cat. The details in the story add to its realism.......There is an interesting and odd sense of humor at work in the piece, certainly. The final punchline is part of that overall odd world that is masterfully created throughout.................................................... WHAT THE JUDGES FEEL NEEDS WORK - ..................I think the title could be more relevant to the subject matter. While the ending is amusing, it doesn't seem like enough of a resolution.......I'm not sure that the main character is as interesting or funny as he thinks he is. I think a little more less of his interior world and a little more action might be worth considering. I got a bit "tired" of him pretty early on and wanted more compelling things to be taking place in the story. Maybe it's just his digressive way of talking that irked me a bit......................…....

Siesta

I wrote this fictional piece (of...) for a contest
Contest stipulations:
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theme: Evacuation
Word max: 2,500
Contest Result: Loss

“Evacuate! Evacuate!”

The call came, curiously, from behind the bathroom door. In my brother’s voice. Having just come in, I began to bombard the door with fists and Nikes and to shout in return. If I was evacuating, it was going to be to the sight of his heels.

“Stephen! What’s the matter?”

“Hey! I’m using the bathroom here!”

My panic waned to concern.

“What’s the matter?”

“I didn’t know anyone was home.”

My concern changed to confusion.

“Then who’re you shouting at?”

“My bowels.”

My confusion ignited to anger.

“You’re a shithead.”

“Probably. I’ve been constipated for like a week.”

My anger dissipated to contempt. I walked away.

Kicking off my shoes in the direction of the door to the garage, through which I’d entered, I went up to my room and sat down in the last of the good midafternoon sun, before it became just grayening orange illumination for couples in sweat suits walking their dogs through the shadows. I sat on my bedroom floor and attended to the half-finished (in space, for who knew about time, as it’d been sitting in approximately this state for the past – what? – two months now) miniature construction kit that had begun to look like an elaborate, multi-turreted castle. My consciousness was quickly melted by the warm light, and, as I lay on my side, perhaps to get a different take on the structure, I asked myself, again, why it is that we don’t have siestas.

The next thoughts I remember were, 1.) Why am I awake? 2.) Why is the sun still in the same place, and 3.) Why won’t the feather duster let me be?

In a strangely asymmetrical resumption of consciousness, I pegged the relative passage of time before I realized it was our dog’s tail that was buffeting my nose like a belligerent cloud.

However, it was rare that I would awaken to such a fate, as 1.) I rarely slept on the floor these days, and 2.) our dog hadn’t been allowed up the stairs since he’d wagged goodbye to puppyhood, at which point Dad had stated that he wasn’t “going to raise another worthless slug like the two of you,” meaning that, unlike Stephen and me, Gus had to earn his keep by sleeping at entry level.

In practice, this came to mean that, instead of sleeping on the floor of my parents’ bedroom, as he had as a puppy, Gus had the choice of three different couches as his bed. His preference usually tended toward the short-but-plush model in the den, though, on nights when thunder rang out in the distance, he would move to the longer one in the family room so as to provide a place for repose for whomever descended to staunch his whimpers.

I realize I may have digressed from my main task, which was the relation of the manner in which the eventual evacuation was effected. The point to be made here is that the presence of Gus’s tail in my face as I lay in my room was quite unusual and sparked in me, half-asleep though I was, and fully though I wished to be, a certain unsettlement of thought. Following the imaginary line from Gus’s raised tail to his upturned nose, which usually led one directly to a plate of brownies or a turkey sandwich, my gaze sidled through the crack in the window and followed the color gradient of the smoke I saw outside until it ran smack dab into the neighbors’ window.

The boy known as Stephen was downstairs blending food in the mixer and loudly.

“Hey! Steve?” I shouted, when the aural carnage recessed.

“I’m blending!” came the reply.

I stumbled down the hallway and the stairs as I regained full consciousness and avoided the helpful, anticipating form of Gus doing his best to lead me wherever I was going. We reached the lower stairs as Stephen once again took up blending.

Gus, torn between the terror that was for him the blender and the uncompromising law of inertia, borne on by the low-friction tile at the stairs’ landing and his eagerness to track the smoke, managed to skid into the wall next to the opening to the kitchen, turn himself 80 degrees to the right, and sneak, head down, over to the door to the garage, seemingly undetected by the blender.

“Steve!”

“What?”

“I think the McPherson’s house is on fire.”

“Really?”

He shut off the blender.

I followed Gus to the door, collecting my shoes on the way. I opened the door to the garage and then the automatic garage door. Gus led. Stephen followed.

We ran through the hedgerow into the neighbors’ yard. We looked to the street and saw it as vacant as ever. I had a vision of the house going up in a blazing orgy of black smoke and remorseless fire and everything outside this plot of land continuing on untouched in sunny afternoon suburbia.

The front door was closed. We could hear the fire alarm inside. Stephen went to open it, then withdrew his hand as if realizing he’d mistaken the handle for a viper. I pushed him back and felt the door. It was only slightly hot.

“The key!” he shouted and ran back toward our yard. I took off my shirt and made it into a hand turban. I got a grip on the handle through it and rotated it, confirming its lockedness.

Stephen was back with the key. He unlocked the door with a bare hand. I turned the knob and pushed it open.

The powerful, shrill whine of the smoke alarm shot out at us on the heavy, particulate air. Immediately, my eyes began to burn, and Stephen and I both began to cough. Gus sneezed continuously.

I stepped inside. The air was caustic. Even just inside the front door, I felt I could barely breathe. I coughed uncontrollably. I looked behind me but Stephen wasn’t there. Then he came around the corner, holding his shirt, balled up and dripping, over his mouth. He motioned around the corner and I saw the water spigot was open.

“The fire department!” I said.

“I hit the button!” he said, pointing back to our house.

I took off my shirt and held it under the spigot. I turned to follow him in, then thought again and went back to the spigot and did my best to wet my pants from the knees down, as well as my shoes. Then, following Stephen’s lead, I put the shirt over my mouth and entered. Amazed I could breathe, I followed Stephen to the foot of the stairs and began shouting.

At the door, through thick tears, I could see Gus barking and continually entering, sneezing, and leaving.

“Gus, no! Stay!” I shouted.

As usual, he didn’t.

I ran to the door to push him away, but he wouldn’t give up.

“Suit yourself,” I said as I stepped outside and tore my T-shirt in two. I encased his muzzle in one of the sleeves and tucked another piece of the shirt over the end, covering his nose.

He ran straight for the stairs and began to climb them until his head was level with ours. At that point, he sneezed, backed up a step, backed up some more, almost to the floor, then stood barking.

“Steve! I think…”

He said, “I think he thinks there’s someone upstairs!”

“Yeah!”

He looked up the stairs, then back at me.

Then he motioned toward Gus.

“But he’s an idiot!”

I shrugged acknowledgement mixed with uncertainty.

He said, “Yeah, I know!”

He started up the steps, then turned and said, “If I don’t come back, tell them where I went!”

I froze in indecision and responsibility. I should have gone first. But now, I couldn’t follow him – if neither of us came back, no one would know we’d gone.

I waited and looked at Gus, expecting accusation. Instead, I saw he’d turned his head and was now barking directly at the opposite corner of the second floor.

I focused on the ground, trying to think. My gaze fell on the shallow plastic trough my mom had given Mrs. McPherson when our parents had given up trying to train us. Every time she came back from visiting Mrs. McPherson, Mom would then tell us, disappointedly, that it always held one pair of shoes for each member who was home with that jealous gleam in her eyes that backlights the reflection of a utopia one knows one deserves but whose gates one must stand idly by as one watches another enter.

Now, it was as empty as it had always been at our house.

I ran out to the garage. I looked through the glass panes in the door. The smoke was less here, and the garage was clearly empty.

I ran back in the front door. Gus was still barking in his new favorite direction.

With Gus’s barking and the smoke, I couldn’t hear or see Stephen. I started climbing the steps. Halfway up, even the T-shirt-filtered air was too harsh. Coughing, I knelt down and began to crawl, then realized I needed both hands for that. I wrapped the shirt around my face and made to tie it in the back. I only had enough slack to make a perilously loose knot, but it held.

Summiting the stairs, I saw Stephen fifteen feet ahead of me, moving down the hall, the sleeves of his shirt sprouting in opposite directions from where they were knotted at the back of his neck. He was moving toward the darkest of the smoke.

“Steve! I don’t think anyone’s home!”

He didn’t turn.

Moving a foot in there felt like ten yards. I pulled off my shoe and threw it at him. It hit him in the backside and he flipped around as if it had been a falling beam or a red-hot poker.

“No one’s home!” I said.

He crawled closer to me.

“No one’s home!” I repeated, shaking my head, and, pointing toward the door, “The shoe tray’s empty!”

His brows communicated confusion, then comprehension, then – was that judgment?

“Gus! Stay!” Stephen said, and I looked to see the barking dog halfway up the stairs, still turned as if he were trying to scratch his back with his chin.

“Gus! No one’s home!”

Then I heard a meow from the other end of the hallway. So did Stephen. He began to follow me toward the noise.

“Get him out of here!” I said, pointing to Gus.

“OK!” he said.

“One cat – that’s it, right?”

“I think so!” he said as he took Gus’s collar and rose up into a crouch near the bottom of the stairs.

I crawled toward the room at the far end of the hall. Entering the master bedroom, I finally got a visual on the cat. I headed straight for it. It was near the far corner of the room. I felt my pace quicken as I got close.

I made to crawl the final six feet between us as quickly as I could, and it shot back into the corner. It felt as if the heat had just increased, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up – I had seen myself emerging in a few seconds, cat in hand, as the house crumbled in the background. That picture changed – I was going to die trying to rescue a suicidal cat.

I decided I had to give it one fair chance. I forced myself to inch toward it, then I remembered that I had seen this cat once before, along with how it had only allowed me to pet it after I’d followed the McPherson’s girl’s instructions to lie on the floor a painstakingly long time, just calling it.

I figured I’d give it a shot. I lay down with my hand out, palm up, and called.

“Come on, Bisquick. Come. Come on. It’s OK, Bisquick. Come on.”

He inched his way out of the corner, performing practice retreats with his nose every other second. Still, he was making progress toward me. The smoke seemed to be getting heavier, but I forced myself to stay there, trying to exude as calm a demeanor as possible.

“It’s OK, Bisquick. That a boy…” I said, waving my fingers toward myself as I looked back down the hall and for the first time saw actual flames. They were making their way toward the stairs.

“Come on, Bisquick! Come on!” I said, staring at the flames, trying to will the fire into stasis.

Feeling the rough flame lick my fingertips, I whipped my hand back to my body and looked up to see the cat move from where he had been rubbing his sandpaper tongue on my hand almost all the way back into the corner.

“Son of a…Bisquick. Sorry. My fault. Come back. Come on. It’s OK.”

Strained now by the additional irritation at myself, my patience ran out. I moved toward the cat, figuring I’d either corner it or chase it into oblivion. Either way, I’d take the sweet tumble down those stairs any second.

Bisquick flattened to half his already-insubstantial height, but didn’t run. I moved closer. Making myself believe what I saw in his eyes was a look of waiting to be directed, I reached for him. Magically, I felt my hands close around his torso. I pulled him to my chest like a running back with a golden pigskin and slithered across the carpet like an earthworm.

I made surprisingly rapid progress, as, before I thought to check in again with the flames, I saw the banister at the top of the stairs at the edge of my vision. Realizing any flames in my path wouldn’t affect my route, I pivoted, cat brushing banister, and began what was shaping up to be a head-first descent.

My hip left the top step for the second with a thud, whipping my head into the stairs. The T-shirt dropped from my face. I didn’t think to hold my breath until I’d already breathed. At that point, I couldn’t do anything but cough. Trying anything else just made me convulse with each stifled cough.

I began to stand up, figuring I just needed to make it to the door. I stumbled down the steps and into someone’s bare chest. Stephen pulled me down the steps and pushed me out the door, where the air was the best thing I’d ever felt, like a combination of water and air and food and freedom.

I lay on the grass for a while, then retreated to the side of the yard when I heard the sirens.

Stephen had brought Gus back on a leash. He sat wagging his tail, sneaking glances at Bisquick.

“All right, Bisquick,” I said, looking at my stockinged foot. “We made it.”

Stephen looked at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Man, the cat’s name’s Biscuit.”