“You’re my husband,” says Swanny, “you can’t simply—”
“Husband schmusband. I’ve got to keep my priorities straight. Maybe we’re married, but Abby’s the one who’s gonna give me a whole litter of Dunklings. Pop ’em out like bam, bam, bam. She’s probably got the nine-month chunk already. Her tits seem bigger all the time.”
Abby peeks down inside her sweatshirt.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You’re absolutely disgusting,” Swanny tells him.
Ripple is distracted again by his LookyGlass. “Hey, you must be that other guy’s supervisor. Are you punishing him for how he just talked to me?”
This time, the LookyChat image is even grainier, an abstraction of outsized pixels and a voice that’s all gravelly distortion.
“My officer informs me that you’ve threatened to bring charges against the police department.”
“Fuck yeah, you insult my family and I come at you with fire.”
Fire. As if on cue, the street darkens. A smell like sulfur fills the air. Ripple looks up.
From below, the dragon does not resemble a living thing. It is an oppression, a ceiling on the world. It booms terror the way a speeding HowFly booms sound. Hooligan covers his eyes and peeks out between his fingers; Abby clings to the bird lady; Ripple trembles. Only Swanny is motionless, transfixed.
The creature is so endless, it takes a full minute to pass. The humans gaze up at the underside of its jaw, a vast spiny ridge; the undulating belly, algae-green scales fractaled out exponentially, some still barnacled with strange, otherworldly growths; the claws, the cruel, curving claws like pitiless carnivore tusks. This body is not the body of a single “I”; a lone personality would echo forever through such a yawning chamber of air and fire. So when it roars, the dragon is a cacophony in which every tone denies the others, every tone asserts itself and itself alone. The noise assimilates the teenagers, their voices, the thrum of their minds. They vanish into its smog.
When the fire pours down on the library, it is relentless—as though gravity has finally pulled the sun itself under its sway. The heat is volcanic.
“My God,” Swanny yells over the popping and crackling of the flames dancing on the building’s roof, “I was just inside!”
“New emergency!” Ripple screams into the LookyGlass. “This fucking dragon just torched the library!”
“We’re dispatching someone now.” The digitized face of the police commissioner shifts into a smear of flesh and shadow as he presses a button screen right. “He’ll be there shortly.”
“Didn’t all the firemen quit?”
“Don’t be alarmed by his appearance. Oh, and he may need your help.”
“What?”
The Metropolitan Police Department severs the connection; the LookyChat goes black.
“Nobody talks to me like that,” Ripple insists, unconvincingly.
“Don’t you worry none,” says the bird lady, reaching down to soothe her winged charges. “Library’s caught fire more times than I can remember, but it won’t burn. When we’re all dead it’ll still be standing there. Like a big know-it-all headstone.”
This last word dissolves into coughs, as thick smoke is now billowing from the venerable institution down onto the stony steps. The fumes are so black and gritty, it’s impossible to see two feet away. The birds take flight, briefly clearing the air with their flapping, and Ripple shoves the LookyGlass back into his cargo pocket. He, Hooligan, and the girls make their way down to the sidewalk and across the street. Only the bird lady stays.
“Fascinating how she can breathe in this,” observes Swanny. “A person can adapt to most anything, I suppose.”
Ripple doesn’t answer; he’s doubled over, having an affluenza attack. He digs through his duffel, tossing random items onto the pavement.
“The fuck…is my…inhaler?”
Swanny inspects the lighter shaped like a naked woman’s torso. “What does it look like?”
“Dunk, don’t die!” Abby tries to wrap her arms around his neck. He pushes her away.
“Relax…I just…gotta…” He finds the inhaler and takes several hits off it in quick succession. His wheezing slows. Relieved, he sinks down to the curb. “Phew, I’m still alive. No thanks to you fems.”
“I would have helped if you’d become unconscious. Mother taught me CPR in our Domestic Violence course.”
Ripple starts repacking the bag, then stops. “Hey, do you hear something?”
Abby tilts her head to one side. “Like, ‘whooo-ooh, whooo-ooh’?”
It’s a siren, all right, but something about it sounds off—an ambient crackle, a slight abstraction of tone, as if it is reaching toward them from the echoey caverns of the past. It takes a moment before they see why. The sound isn’t blaring from a rescue vehicle, or from a megaphone mounted atop a pole. It’s emanating from the duct-taped speakers of a battered Boom Blaster, held aloft on the shoulder of a figure half-visible in the smoke: a man in a gas mask, red peaked helmet, and yellow slicker. He pushes a hot-dog cart, packed with water tanks protruding from the top, trailing a length of hose. Black galoshes encase his feet, canvas gloves his hands. He breathes his own air. Nothing human of him shows.
16
URBAN LEGEND
Late one night, a little boy woke up to see a fireman standing at the foot of his bed. The fireman had on a helmet and gloves and a gas mask, so you couldn’t see his face.
“Is the building on fire?” asked the child. “Have you come here to rescue me?” The fireman walked out of the room without saying a word.
Years passed. The little boy grew from a child into a man. One night, when he was shaving, he saw the fireman’s reflection in the mirror behind him. The gas mask was made of old brown leather, stained and scarred. Behind the eyeholes, only darkness showed.
“Is the building on fire?” asked the young man. “Have you come to rescue me?” When he turned around to look at the fireman, the fireman was gone.
The young man married and grew older and moved into a new apartment with his wife and children. One night, when he was up late reading in bed next to his sleeping wife, the fireman appeared outside his window and beckoned, once. The man followed the fireman out onto the fire escape and then down the rattling metal steps to the alley below.
“Wait!” the man called after the fireman. “I’ve wondered all my life who you are and what you want from me. Please show me your face.”
The fireman stopped and looked back at him in the darkness. He slowly reached up and unbuckled the mask. There was nothing where his face should be, no skin or bones or muscle, nothing at all but empty air. His hollow clothes collapsed into a pile, releasing a plume of ash. The man heard sirens behind him. His building was burning down with his wife and children inside.