Sometimes it is better to leave it behind. It’s just stuff.
The fire burned for three days. Not a raging fire, but smoldering with hidden flames until the last ember turned gray. On the first night, they stood watching, listening, and smelling the building burn. Raymond’s eyes stopped at a couple standing at the end of the block, as close as anyone could get. The twenty-something pair from apartment eleven. They silently watched their home burn, one of dozens. Firefighters moved around in careful formation, controlling the flames so they would not jump to the nearby buildings. The woman held her right hand to her face; he squeezed the left. The photo albums lost. The cds melted. The shoes reduced to puddles of plastic and blackened leather. The dead cat.
Raymond waited to enter the building until it exhaled the last puff of smoke. The four-story tile-trimmed structure was a grim corpse now. Burnt drywall hung from its frame. Pools of soot-filled water leaked from the devastated body. No delicate white curtains hanging in slender windows. No windowpanes even. No crowd of people stood down the street any longer. People walking by the building gave it a mournful glace, likely wondering if anyone died.
Raymond circled the building twice looking for security guards. None. The sun was getting low in the sky. It gets dark early now, and cold. Just enough light was coming through the collapsed roof. Not all the windows were boarded up yet. Leather gloves covered Raymond’s hands, protecting his skin from the broken glass as he crawled through the window frame. Inside he was met by a fog-covered mountain range in miniature. As he let his eyes move slowly around isolated valleys, the mountains turned into ash-covered clothes, magazines, dishes, pillows, throw rugs, and broken kitchen chairs.
He turned to the main staircase, but it was gone. He tried to recall details from climbing it for the past three years. What was the color of the carpet? Blue? No. Checkered red. The banister still stood in place: a strong, smooth tree trunk. What were once stairs are now a cavern leading to the basement. He thought of escalators in malls collapsing and looking something like this gaping hole with gleaming steel and littered with shopping bags. Raymond slowly climbed the edge of the missing staircase, holding onto the banister. The second-floor corridor was still in place, but Raymond clung to the walls, like walking through the hallways in high school. No eyes on him now. As far as he could tell, he was alone.
His door was the third on the left. Still closed, the charred edges told him to expect the worst. He fantasized that his apartment was preserved, perfectly intact behind that door. Holding his breath, he pushed and the door gave easily, falling into the hole that was once a floor in his small studio apartment. A coldness spread through his body, a feeling of violation. Ash and soot-covered what little remained, giving the place a uniform appearance, like wooden models painted flat gray with dark shadows. He imagined the room as it was just days ago, the white walls covered with posters, pictures cut from magazines, photos of buildings and people, his drawings, phone numbers, and a message from his girlfriend. What did it say? He looked at it every day for the past three months, but could only remember the red lipstick mark where she kissed the wall. Gone. He recalled the shiny hardwood floors covered with bottles of ink, stacks of books from thrift stores, and the red guitar and amp that stood in the corner. Now, large chunks of floor clung to the edges of the room weighted with his stuff. His heart kicked it up a notch as he imagined those chunks of floor breaking away right before his eyes.
He hugged the door jam, scanning the apartment. To his right, he spotted a pile of charred sketchbooks hiding in a built-in bookcase, and cowering beside them melted framed pictures. On the shelf below sat chalky gray books with brown curling pages and an ash-covered photo box filled with letters.
From the bookcase, he stuffed what he could into the two messenger bags that hung from his tall frame. He couldn’t remember what was in those sketchbooks. Missing sketchbooks entered his mind; he tried to recall where they were located and the colors and textures of the covers and the pages. Sitting on a stereo speaker, one made of red leather with linen paper was a gift from an ex-girlfriend. He hated the paper but filled it anyway. He thought of reconstructing those lost journals and sketchbooks, maybe making them better this time around.
Across the chasm was a box of drawings resting on a two-by-four that once supported the floor. No chance of jumping across the hole. He looked down at the apartment below. Finally, he could see the inside after wondering what it looked like the hours he stayed up late. Muffled music and laughter from the girl who lived below him played in his ears. Had she already returned? He didn’t even know her name. At the bottom he could see an odd collection of his own things mingling with the neighbor’s belongings. Unlikely friends.
He clung to the walls, moving from one fragmented wooden floor beam at a time. The box was charred along the edges and slightly melted. Part of the floor crumbled as he picked it up. A pile of burnt photos sat nearby, like a brick. He hadn’t scanned them yet. For a moment, he panicked. “How long… Lost…How often…,” his thoughts trailed off out of hopelessness. “It is just stuff,” he said out loud. He thought of the papyrus scrolls that were found at an ancient Roman villa buried by fiery lava from a volcano. Archaeologists found little lumps of charcoal that when unrolled held the remnants of ancient texts written two thousand years ago. He put the box and the charred brick of photos in his bag.
Raymond took out a disposable camera he bought at the corner store and shot a few parting glances before descending into the apartment below. He scanned the room one last time. Maybe he should not have returned. Just that morning, the fire meant a new start, to let him leave behind all the bad art and worse writing. And here he stood aching to find that journal from the first year he lived in Chicago. And the photo boxes. And his laptop. Melted.
He slid down the collapsed floor to the apartment below, grabbing at innards. Slivers of wood stuck into his legs and back. An ash cloud formed. He choked as his feet met the uneven ground.
Plywood boards covered the windows facing the street. A security guard was posted at the building for the first few days to keep desperate tenants out. One told Raymond that he should be happy he is alive. Alive? He was at work when it happened. Arson? That was a rumor. The thin plywood covering the windows looked clean and crisp against blackened windowsills. There were traces of red paint under the black soot. He shifted through the soggy mountain and weak puffs of ash filled the air. Peachy sunlight peaked through the slats of plywood igniting the ashy air.
A strange orgy of objects lay in front of him. Ruffled books, unidentifiable plastic blobs, chunks of furniture, a charred plaster skull, and his drawings. Some items were intact but dirty, other things were charred and smashed under the fragments of drywall, paint chips, and black soggy wood. He did not find his laptop and was met by a cardboard and vinyl disaster when he found a crate of records. A ceramic black cat, dried-up potted plants, glossy magazines, and more of his drawings. He was tempted to take some of his neighbor’s belongings. A round bubble-gum pink ceramic bunny stared back at him. Only one ear was chipped. He rubbed the soot from it with his gloved hand. “Just in case she comes back,” he thought as he placed the shiny bunny on an ash-covered pillow.
He collected a few more of his items in the black canvas bags and left through an opening in the wall. Ax marks snarled that this was a hot spot. When he turned to the right, he caught a glimpse of someone. They both froze as if they were caught stealing, no doubt thinking the same thing: please don’t be a security officer. They both relaxed, recognizing each other from the corridors, but not knowing each other’s name. Raymond waved and slowly moved in the opposite direction. The other person did the same. The sun was almost gone. He tripped over the gray-scale mountain range as he returned to the empty window, climbing through, first putting the bags on the ground outside. As he walked away, covered in ash, he turned for another look and one more photo. “Time to get rental insurance,” he said out loud.
