Chapter 2: ii
The sound of the breaking glass still echoed in her ears, a sharp punctuation mark to the end of her ordinary day. For three seconds, Margaux stood paralyzed in the darkened shop, the key biting into her palm. The smell demanded action.
She spun, her eyes scanning the wall near the checkout counter. The red cylinder of the fire extinguisher hung like a forgotten relic. She’d passed it a thousand times, never touching it. She wrenched it from its bracket, the weight surprising her, and stumbled toward the back room. The pin came out with a stiff, metallic squeak.
She pushed the storeroom door open.
Heat hit her face first—a dry, aggressive wall of it. Then the light: an angry, dancing orange that cast monstrous, leaping shadows up the walls. The window was a jagged black hole. Across from it, the old storage shelves, laden with packing supplies and overflow stock, were a solid curtain of flame. It wasn’t a small, containable thing. It was alive, chewing through the dry wood and paper with a sound like rushing water and cracking bones. Black smoke boiled against the ceiling, a churning, toxic cloud.
Her eyes watered instantly, a sharp, stinging pain. She raised the extinguisher, aimed the nozzle, and squeezed the lever. A pathetic, hissing cloud of white powder shot out, dissipating into the inferno before it even touched the base of the flames. It was like spitting on a bonfire. The extinguisher sputtered and died. Empty. Probably for years.
A high, shrill scream pierced the muffled roar from the street outside. Then a man’s voice, raw and loud: “Holy shit—call 911! The bookstore’s on fire!”
The words, the bookstore, snapped something in her. The futility of fighting it crystalized into a single, laser-focused priority. The books. Not the stock. The books.
She dropped the extinguisher with a clang. Her mind, usually a quiet library, became a stark list. She turned and ran, not for the door, but for the humidity-controlled glass case along the far wall of the main shop. Her hands didn’t shake as she found the small key on her chain, unlocked it, and yanked the door open. The cool, regulated air sighed out, immediately violated by the invading heat.
Inside were twelve volumes. A first-edition The Great Gatsby with its original dust jacket. A signed To Kill a Mockingbird. A collection of Poe’s tales from 1845. They were the store’s soul, and her responsibility. She scooped as many as she could into her arms, the smooth leather and cloth bindings pressing against her chest. She didn’t think about value. She thought about the words inside, the specific, irreplaceable ink on each page.
She bolted for the front door. The haze was thicker now, stinging her nostrils. The bell jangled a frantic, discordant note as she shoved her way out onto the sidewalk.
A small crowd had gathered across the street, faces illuminated by the hellish glow now visibly flickering in the back windows. Someone had their phone out, filming. “Miss, get away from there!” a woman yelled.
Margaux ignored her. She knelt, depositing the armful of books into a careful stack against the base of a lamppost, away from the gutter. One of the bystanders, an older man in a tank top, stepped forward. “Let the firemen handle it, kid!”
“There are more,” she said, her voice a rasp. She didn’t look at him. She turned and went back in.
The second trip was harder. Smoke curled into the main room, reducing visibility. She coughed, the ache deep in her lungs. She grabbed the remaining treasures from the case—a Woolf, a Hemingway, a fragile Blake—and clutched them close. As she turned, her eyes swept the nearest fiction aisle. Her favorite copy of Jane Eyre, a vintage paperback with a cover she loved. On pure impulse, she snatched it from the shelf, adding it to the precious pile in her arms.
Outside again, the air felt cool and alien. She placed the second stack next to the first. The old man was arguing with her. “That’s enough! Look at it!”
She looked. Orange light now pulsed behind every window on the alley side. The rushing sound was louder. Sirens, distant but growing, wove into the noise. A deep, groaning crack came from within.
She moved toward the door a third time.
“Are you insane?” the man shouted, grabbing her arm.
She wrenched free with a strength that surprised them both. Her brown eyes, wide and streaming from smoke, met his. “I’m not done.” It was quiet, final. She went in.
The shop was a cave of nightmares. The shadows leaped and churned. Embers, like evil fireflies, drifted through the air from the back. The heat was a physical pressure. She ran to the poetry section, directly across from the storeroom door. She could see flames licking the frame. She grabbed a handful of volumes from the ‘S’ shelf—Sexton, Stevens, Szymborska—not even seeing which ones.
A thunderous crash shook the floor. Part of the storeroom ceiling had given way. A rolling wave of heat and black smoke vomited into the shop. It blinded her, choked her. She stumbled backward, the books pressed to her stomach, tripping over her own feet. She fell hard, her elbow smacking the floorboards, the precious cargo scattering.
Coughing violently, on her hands and knees, she groped in the gloom. Her fingers found the spine of one, then another. The sirens were right outside now, earsplitting. Red and white lights strobed through the front windows, painting the smoke in grotesque, swirling colors.
A figure materialized in the doorway, massive and silhouetted against the emergency lights, wearing a helmet and a mask that looked like a bug’s face. A harsh, mechanical voice boomed from it. “EVERYONE OUT! NOW!”
A gloved hand closed around her upper arm, pulling her up. She clutched the two books she’d recovered to her chest. “My books—” she choked out.
“OUT!” The command was absolute. He half-dragged, half-shielded her as they plunged through the front door and onto the sidewalk, where another firefighter in full gear rushed past them, pulling a thick hose line.
She staggered, gulping the clean air, her lungs heaving. The man who had grabbed her released her arm. “Anyone else inside?” the mechanical voice asked, slightly modulated now.
She shook her head, unable to speak, her whole body trembling.
He gave a sharp nod and turned back to the chaos.
Margaux stood on the sidewalk, watching as the red engine blocked the street. Men moved with a brutal, efficient purpose, shouting commands she couldn’t parse. A great jet of water exploded through and shattered the front window, glass cascading into the shop. The sound was a monstrous hiss and roar.
She looked down at the books in her arms. A collection of Sylvia Plath. Leaves of Grass. At her feet, on the soot-stained sidewalk, was the stack she had saved. Twelve rare editions. One paperback Jane Eyre.
Behind her, with a sound like a giant sighing, the back room of The Odyssey collapsed. A plume of sparks and black smoke shot into the purple twilight, mingling with the first premature bursts of distant fireworks. The heat warmed her back.
Margaux fell to her knees.