Fire of Unknown Origin

Chapter 2

Chapter 2The goddamn phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Outrageous for such an inconsequential and grey Wednesday at six in the afternoon, at least in that particular house. The tall man stretched himself across the brown couch after the seventh ring, honestly hoping that the person on the other side of the wire would lose patience and find enough decency to stop this remote bullying. He had successfully ignored the previous two calls by focusing his attention on the bluesy notes which were radiating across the room from the small wooden speakers, while the recently purchased gramophone needle treaded confidently over the classic vinyl. The weathered voice of Albert King was permeating the chamber, gently bouncing of the walls alongside an occasional cracking sound that the old gramophone would produce. Just a little longer and the phone will quit. It has to quit. Nobody’s going to answer. Stop ringing, you horrible piece of junk. Two seconds later, the ringing died and the man on the couch smiled contentedly, after which he lazily scratched his groin over his boxer shorts. On the wooden table near the couch lay a half-eaten burger, the handiwork of Fat Joe and his highly esteemed grease-joint, ingeniously called “Eat at Joe’s”. The best burger within the tri-state area, unquestionably. Its best quality was that it was perfectly edible even after having spent six hours on that table. The tall man reached out his hand toward the symphony of meat, bun, onion and mustard, brought this culinary triumph to his maw and took a rather large bite. Delicious, even after six hours. “Good times." mulled the man on the couch. After putting his burger back on the table, the prostrate figure grabbed a glass full of caramelized liquid which was standing by. The pride of Tennessee. He needed something to help the remnants of the burger safely find their way to their final destination. The situation was beginning to resemble an ideal afternoon in San Antonio – the American dream in the State of Texas, built on greasy hamburgers, American whiskey and the music which carried with it a wistfulness of times gone by.

A few moments after the tall man had guzzled down the Lynchburg gods’ distilled nectar, the phone started ringing again. It was not unexpected – he was just hoping that it wouldn’t happen so fast. With a deep sigh and a twist to the side, the man stood up and approached the black infernal box from which the irritating sound was originating.

Leaving a window of silence for several seconds after he had picked up the phone, the raven-haired man lazily muttered, “Yes…?” and yawned deeply, while scratching himself and flexing.

“Gabe, why do you even have that phone? I’ve been trying to reach you for the past two hours.” The female voice from the other side of the wire sounded extremely agitated.

Having once again waited for a couple of breaths, this time while he was looking for the next closest bottle of whiskey, the tall man moved two steps toward the table and stretched the phone cord to its limits, all the while trying to reach the much-needed booze with his other hand. During this time, he managed to gently subvocalize several cusswords directed toward Alexander Graham Bell, General Electric and everybody who had taken any part in production of telephones over the past hundred years.

“Janine… You know how much I hate this ringing. I was hoping you’d drop it after the first hour." the man finished slowly, coating his coarse voice with another fine layer of liquefied corn, rye, malt and barley. “Where’s the fire?”

“I’m calling to tell you won’t have any more classes to teach come next week, since O’Halloran is coming back from maternity leave.”

“That’s it, huh? I was just starting to like those punks. I’m pretty sure that at least eight of them from that class can now successfully read." said the man named Gabe in a slight fervor inspired by intense consummation of spirits.

“Stop talking crap, they’re high school sophomores. They can read and write.”

“If you say so, Janine… I wouldn’t show their essays to the general public, that’s for sure. So, you got any other options for me? There has to be someone else who needs a substitute.”

“Nope, nothing. Sorry, Gabe. It’s this week and then it’s over. You know I’d have told you if I’d heard anything.”

He knew she was telling the truth. Janine was the class coordinator at the local high school where Gabriel Bronson had spent the last nine months teaching the English language. He lectured to a bunch of misunderstood teenagers and tried to shape them into people, at least until the hysterical O’Halloran would come back and destroy it all with her endless random Shakespeare quotes, insisting all the while how the novel “Scruples” by Judith Krantz was a modern masterpiece that every girl had to read. Also, Janine lived in the house next door to Gabe when they were kids and their mothers would often have coffee together and make weekend gatherings with barbecue and salads for other neighbors. He thought of her like a sister, in a way, and she had always been there to help him over the past four years since Gabe had returned from New York to his hometown of San Antonio. Janine wouldn’t lie to him. Good old fat Janine.

“Alright then, sonofa… when will I get paid? And am I getting half the salary for May, or all of it?”

“They’ll pay you Friday, as soon as you’re done. You’ll get half of May. Today is the 9th, but they’ll pay you as if you’ve worked for two full weeks. I managed to get you that much." Janine said, sympathetic to the situation in which her past neighbor and soon departing colleague was in. “Listen… if you’re in a tight spot, let me know.”

“Nah. It’s OK, I got some cash stashed away. I’ll get by." Gabriel said while skillfully using the whiskey’s texture to cover the pulse of lies in his voice.

“Alright, you know I’m here if you hit a rough patch. Want me to ask my dad if he still has a guy at the precinct for that position? Pays well, you have the experience, and it’ll be easy for you. I think it’s about time.”

“I can’t go back to that. It wasn’t my first career choice in life to be a goddamn substitute teacher, but I can’t go back to being a cop.”

“It’s been more than four years, Gabe. Don’t do that to yourself. Rose would’ve wanted you to do something you love.”

“Something I used to love.” Gabriel replied, exhaling sharply through his nose. “Either way, forget it, Janine. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Where will you be tonight?”

“Probably at Benny’s, getting drunk.”

“Why do I even bother asking… Of course, you’re going to that dump. Customer of the year. Don’t feel stupid about calling me if you change your mind. I’ll see you tomorrow." Janine ended carefully.

“Janine…”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks." Gabe said and slowly put the phone down.

Feeling fortunate that his living room didn’t have a mirror or any other object in which he could see his elongated, sharp face and the rotten feeling of uselessness that was permeating him, Gabriel Bronson closed the whiskey bottle and put it under the table with the remains of his burger. Forcefully suppressing a scream from within, he decided to chew and swallow that candid anger and instead stretched intensely, contracting and straining every still sinewy, but almost completely rusted muscle in his lean body. After he approached the small round desk in the only well-lit corner of the room, Gabriel covered his back with an old bathrobe and sat on the wooden chair. In front of him resided the greatest problem which had long been afflicting him and which he had been unable to solve for weeks. A “Remington 5” typewriter, the golden standard of master wordsmiths, nothing more than an elegant dust collector in his home. It was impeccably sturdy and flawlessly preserved, even though it was bought as a second-hand piece and manufactured way back in 1936. The obstacle here wasn’t the machine’s functionality. The color plate was patiently waiting to be put to use and there was plenty of paper lying around, although Gabriel had often been using it to make paper balls which he would then try to throw into the little trash bin while aiming comfortably from his couch. The “Remington 5” even had a key for mechanically automated and precise insertion of indentations for each new paragraph. The perfect machine for creating, albeit missing one essential item which would bring it to life – a few small drops of inspiration.

A year before that he had tried to write one of those novels about coming of age and life and everything that young people want to do, as Salinger had done once upon a time, or even Joyce before him. Fortunately for Gabe, he quickly realized the futility of that labor and decided to spare himself the wasted time. A forty-something year-old man couldn’t write a book about life since he still had no idea what life was really about. That and quite a few others things were taught to him by the filthy streets of New York in their afterhours. The only thing they obviously hadn’t taught him was how to write something meaningful. Having thought for a second how he could instead write a story about a man who never learned how to write and after blocking the urge to violently swear afterwards, Gabe crossed his fingers and stretched them and then leaned back into the chair.

After several minutes of staring intensely at the dusty apparatus, the substitute English teacher blew into it forcefully and removed the fine layer of bundled dead cells from the keys and the upper plate, ran his fingers through the letter brands on the inner side and fed the “Remington” with a sheet of premium paper. He hesitated at first. Deep down inside, he was aware of his limitations and almost convinced that he didn’t know how to write something truly insightful and wise. It pained him that he couldn’t channel his thoughts into words which would be quoted with pride in the decades to follow, and whose song would inspire people in their hour of need. What he could do was tell a story. All the sights which he had witnessed throughout the years were more than enough to leave men in awe. The images he kept in his thoughts pulsated with life and death alike. All which remained now was to imprint that onto paper. After closing his eyes, Gabriel Bronson held out his hands in the air and momentarily resembled a grandiose classical pianist. He reached with his fingers toward the ancient instrument of written thought and – nothing. Blank. Eerie, empty and black and pathetic and impossible. Goddamn rusty brain and his obviously deceased Clio, an unused muse drowned in liquor and a life without purpose.

Perhaps he really wasn’t good enough to be a writer. Perhaps he wasn’t even good enough to be a substitute English teacher. If one were to ask a slobbering eighteen-year-old what he would want from life and where he’d like to be when he turns forty, one would get thousands of different answers, a sea of wild hormone-driven ambitions and true desires. What one would not get is an answer which would sound something like “substitute English teacher and a wannabe writer who gave eight hundred bucks for a f*****g “Remington 5”, only to not write anything for three f*****g years, f**k”. It would be even worse when this answer would actually become someone’s reality. Everyday reality. It’s there when you breathe, Gabe. It’s there when you close your eyes. It’s there when you drink.

Chew it, swallow painfully, throw up. Rose and New York and the idiotic detective work in the shittiest, most malevolent and most ruthless civilized city in the world. Chew it, swallow painfully, throw up. Insomnia at home and endless camping in crappy stakeouts in Bronx at four in the morning. A concrete mill that lies to you with its nice facades, wide boulevards, bright lights, just until you step into the dark and begin to feel it grind your feet, one bone at a time. Chew it, swallow painfully, throw up. You don’t have a single friend who doesn’t have a badge, you have no family among the living. Only Rose, and you never see her because of the job. The job you love and which makes you nauseated. Only Rose, waiting to have you brought back home with a bullet embedded into your sharp, stubborn forehead. Chew it, swallow painfully, throw up. A righteous and cunning beast, immune to the incompetence of lesser ones, immune to being fettered by slimy mediocrities, immune to all the nastiness that man’s nature could spit in your face, as long as you have Rose. You don’t have Rose. You haven’t had Rose for the last four years. You have neither Rose nor yourself, for four damn years. Chew it, swallow painfully, throw up.

He knew, regardless of the fact that he was trying to subdue it and hide it from himself, that there was just one singular and absolute thing which he was not simply good at, but exceptional. Rose would’ve liked it, he was certain. Rose would’ve been there to support him. Rose isn’t here anymore. You are here. He had to do what he knew.

Jumping suddenly from the wooden chair, Gabe disposed of the bathrobe from his back and within a few steps found himself in front of a small mound of clothing, under which once lay a rather comfortable armchair – or at least that was what his memory was telling him. For quite some time he hadn’t been brave enough to remove it all and find out whether the poor leather armchair was still there. That pile of stuff had been in the same place for so long and it seemed as if it was constantly growing, which made Gabe think it was absolutely possible that his clothes were engaging in wild, unprotected cotton s*x when he wasn’t around and that this was allowing them to reproduce spontaneously. After some productive diving through layers of wardrobe of various types and degrees of cleanliness, and praying he doesn’t find a yet undiscovered life form in that ratatouille of fabric, his hands grasped what he was looking for. A thin, two-part sweat suit with a hoodie. It looked clean enough, even too clean for the purpose which was intended for it. He pulled it on over his undershirt and boxers, found a tolerable pair of socks and put on his old sneakers. Propelled by his newfound elation and powered by the energy from Fat Joe’s burger, he ran out through the yard of his small prefab house and just kept on running. Chew it. At first slowly and unsurely, allowing his legs to remember the mechanics of this primal motion, progressing gradually. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by the same pressure like in front of the typewriter, a wave of electricity, a burning desire to succeed. Gabriel opened the throttle and accelerated his pace, rushing down the street past other prefab houses and their crummy fences. He was advancing with determination toward the west, heading to the nearby park and defying the fat, scorching ball of hydrogen and helium which was breaking the horizon in the afterglow.

He got there as quickly as his long legs diminished by months of recreational drinking had allowed him. He ran as a desperate man, a penitent man and a man haunted. The scathing, hot sweat was drenching his old sweat suit, his sinuses and lungs were burning from two miles of heavy breathing in the dry Texas air and overall dehydration, while his thighs were cramping and screaming as if they were being eaten by boiling battery acid. Swallow. After taking off his hoodie, Gabriel Bronson gripped the steel beams and lifted himself in a pull-up: one, two, seven, ten. Not feeling his arms and back anymore and convulsing in a brazen attempt to contract his rusty muscles and tendons once more, Gabriel let go of the beam and landed in a half-crouch. He did not possess the luxury of breathing. He had just stripped himself of his last privilege of strength and his entire body was trembling with strain. He wanted to scream again, to release a primal, animal cry, but now not out of rage, weakness or pain. He wanted to scream because, after several years, he felt alive again. Broken and reborn, he plunged into the grass and felt a powerful heartbeat in his finally clear thoughts, twisting his cracked lips into a smile just a few moments before he was about to furiously vomit the half-digested, whiskey-soaked remnants of Joe’s burger.