After the Fire: The ‘Shorts’ Read online

  After the Fire

  The ‘Shorts’

  Nia Forrester

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author

  Also by Nia Forrester

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Stiletto Press

  Philadelphia PA 19109

  www.niaforrester.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  After the Fire/ Nia Forrester -- 1st edition

  For R & K

  Chapter One

  “Have you called him?”

  “No,” I said, my tone a little terse. “Anyway, he’s at work.”

  “All the more reason you should call him, Kendra. Things are getting …”

  “Yes, I saw. And normally I would be out there, but …”

  “At this point, that would just be disrespectful.”

  “Disrespectful?” I snapped. “It’s not about him.”

  “Okay, Ken. You do you. I’m about to go make dinner. Nachos, I think. Because I’m too lazy to make a whole meal and, whatever … the kids love it.”

  That was my sister’s way of dismissing me, but she probably also did have to think about making dinner. I decided not to take it personally. She was on edge. I was on edge. The entire world was on edge at this point.

  “Okay,” I said, letting the almost irresistible urge to bicker pass me by. “Talk to you later.”

  Hanging up, I turned to face the television once again. I had the volume turned all the way down. I stood watching the flickering images for a few moments then turned away to go consider options for my own dinner.

  The last two weeks had been hectic, and I hadn’t given much thought to mundanities like buying food, so all there was very little in my fridge—some eggs, a bottle of red wine, the butt-ends of a loaf of bread, some wilted lettuce and leftover Chinese from two nights ago when Gideon brought over way too much as usual.

  ‘I’m a big boy,’ he always liked to say, his excuse for shoveling in mouthfuls before I had a chance to get the food on our plates.

  I smiled when I thought of him. Even now, even after the fight.

  “Asshole,” I muttered aloud, sounding unconvincing even to myself.

  I took the Chinese food out of the fridge, and after a moment’s deliberation, grabbed the wine as well. I thought fleetingly about my sister, Maya, across town making nachos for my nieces and nephew. She was probably guilt-tripping about not making her family what she would call a “proper dinner” while I was thinking only about how I would trade my soggy orange chicken and lo mein for just about anything she might whip up in her kitchen. She was an excellent and inventive cook and even nachos for her probably involved a sprinkle of goat cheese with fresh cilantro as a garnish, and to add extra flavor.

  Maya was in almost every way my complete opposite—girly and refined while I was brash and tactless, settled into a calm, responsible semi-suburban existence complete with husband and three-point-four kids at thirty-five, while I had only just gotten my first job with a 401k plan a little over two years ago at the ripe old age of twenty-nine.

  A significant percentage of Maya’s and my conversations since I’d moved to town involved her expressing anything ranging from mild disapproval to horror at my life choices. Except when it came to Gideon. She liked Gideon as a life choice. Even though arguably, he was the one who had chosen me.

  I stuck the plastic container with the orange chicken in the microwave and then took it out again, adding a clump of noodles from the lo mein container and a spoonful of what remained of the white rice.

  ‘That chicken is going to be hard as a rock,’ Gideon’s voice said in my head. ‘It’s breaded. You have to reheat it separately.’

  He was always decrying my lack of domestic skills, swatting me out of the way with a kitchen towel and taking over whenever I tried to cook for a change, instead of relying on my preferred meal acquisition technique of simply ordering delivery. Unlike me, he was a good cook. A great cook, actually, having come from a family of four boys and no girls, where his father thought it his masculine duty to make sure his sons could cook, clean and do all the other household tasks so they didn’t work Gideon’s homemaker mother into an early grave.

  When he cooked for us, he even put on an apron, which had at first had me in stitches, seeing this tall, musclebound man donning a frilly peach-colored cooking garment. On his thirty-second birthday, I got him a more appropriate men’s apron and a chef’s hat, which he received with a whoop, telling me that it was considerate of me to help him reclaim his manhood.

  That was the kind of thing Gideon said even though he couldn’t really care less about things like gender roles. Which probably explained how he could tolerate me at all, with my argumentative and decidedly unladylike nature.

  “I’m not calling,” I said aloud to myself as the microwave pinged. “He’s the one who should be calling me.”

  And even if that weren’t the case, he was likely to call anyway.

  We bickered a lot, Gideon and me. Most of the time it was my fault. And yet most of the time, he was the first one to call a truce, to say he was sorry, to show up at my door past midnight looking contrite, to pull me into a long hug. I knew some of it had to do with his work. He had seen way too many people who regretted that unsaid ‘I love you’ or foregone a goodbye kiss, only to lose the chance to do either of those things ever again.

  Just as I slid my food onto a plate and reached for the wine bottle to pour a generous glass, my phone buzzed from the next room and I smiled, almost smugly. I knew he wouldn’t hold out.

  Setting down the wine I ran to grab it, not even glancing at the screen before I answered.

  “Kendra,” the voice on the other end said.

  My shoulders sagged in disappointment, and I tried not to acknowledge what that meant about my resolve not to call, and my confidence that Gideon would.

  “Hey Viv, what’s up?” I said, taking the phone back into the kitchen.

  “Are you out there?” Vivienne asked. “You don’t sound like you’re out there.”

  “I’m not,” I confirmed. “Why? Are you?”

  “No,” Viv said, exhaling. “And to be real. That’s probably for the best.”

  “Why?” I glanced toward the television screen and saw it before she could say it.

  “Things are going sideways a little bit.”

  A little bit? In the five or so minutes since I’d stepped away, things had definitely escalated. Onscreen there were images of a building ablaze, and scores of people breaking out the windows of stores and cars. A group of men were heaving one side of what looked like a Crown Victoria, probably an unmarked police vehicle, and trying to turn it over.

  “Shit,” I said, reaching for the remote.

  “Yeah,” Viv said.

  “Are those … Any of our folks involved?”

  “Who can tell at this point?” Viv said. “I mean, it’s all-out mayhem right now, so …”

  “Where is this?” I asked, squinting to try to recognize landmarks onscreen.

&n
bsp; I turned up the volume a little and the newscaster was describing the melee, but not giving any information about the location of the unrest.

  “Who went out this evening?” I asked.

  “Demetrius for sure. I think Nathan. Maybe Lucy. You know, that crew.”

  “Have you been in contact with any of ‘em?” I asked, sinking onto my sofa, eyes still fixed on the tv.

  “Not since much earlier. And now no one’s picking up phones. For obvious reasons. I DM’ed all of ‘em since I know they’re using Twitter to keep in touch with our people. But no one’s read the messages.”

  “You think they got picked up?”

  “I don’ know, Ken. But we gotta make sure they’re okay. Those kids are out there because …”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “But how’re we supposed to …?”

  “We have to go down there,” Viv said. “And find them. Scoop every last one of them up, go back to the Center, do a headcount and make sure every person is accounted for. Because this is … this is way out of the bounds of what we …”

  “I know. But …”

  Suddenly, a street sign flashed onscreen. A familiar street name, with the number of the block above it.

  “I can’t go down there, Viv,” I said.

  “What? But we …”

  “I know, but I can’t. I … I can go to the Center, open up the doors and we can use that as our home-base for contacting folks. I’ll get online there and reach out to everybody one by one if I have to; and tell them to come back. To the Center.”

  On the other end of the line, Viv exhaled a long, deep breath.

  “Kendra, I was counting on you to go, and I would get on social. I have Malik this weekend. He’s with me now, so I can’t … I can’t haul my ten-year-old out onto the streets where shit is on fire, looking for …”

  “Can you drop him off with Ray?”

  Viv sighed yet again. “Dammit, Kendra. Yeah. I guess I can. But you know I’ma hear about it. And I … Tell me again why you can’t go?”

  “I just saw a street sign,” I admitted. “It’s happening in the 24th District.”

  “For real?” I could practically hear her grimace.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So …”

  “Fine. Lemme get off the phone then and call Ray. You owe me for this, Kendra. You owe me big.”

  “I do. I know. But …”

  “Yeah. It’s complicated,” Viv said, a slight note of sarcasm in her voice. “Things have a way of getting like that when you’re sleeping with the enemy.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “This is what you want to do right now?”

  “No. Because right now I need to call my son’s father and tell him I’m about to drop our kid off and go join a damn riot,” she said.

  I exhaled. “Look, I’m …”

  “Just go down to the Center and see who you can get in touch with. And tell them to get their little asses over there so we can make sure they’re safe and give them some kind of bullshit pep-talk about how unrest can remain ‘civil’.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “For taking the hard part. I know that …”

  “Whatever, Kendra. If I’m gonna do this, I gotta go now.”

  Viv hung up on me.

  I sat still for a moment then reached for the remote again, turning the volume up even higher. In the few short minutes since Viv had called, things were looking even worse. More cars had been destroyed, the flames were higher and burning even brighter from the rooftops of a row of commercial buildings. And now, cops in riot gear had entered the fray.

  I studied their figures for a few moments, trying but hoping not to see anyone who looked familiar. Hoping not to see Gideon. He was a detective in an Anti-Gang and Organized Crime unit, but the 24th District was his beat and when something like this happened, everyone was called into the action.

  By now, he would be in riot gear just like the guys I was watching, waving a baton and beating back the out-of-control crowd; the crowd that under normal circumstances might have included me.

  His words from two nights ago came back to me, his tone uncharacteristically firm and uncompromising.

  ‘Kendra, I’m tellin’ you. Do not join in that mess. Not this weekend.’

  He said that when no one had seriously considered that there might be all of the chaos I was witnessing right now—the fires, the destruction, the all-out riot. He said it before we knew it would touch the 24th District.

  Or maybe he had known.

  Part of Gideon’s work involved working with street-level informants, people who fed him intel about a simmering grudge between rival gangs, a heavyweight drug deal that was about to go down, or maybe even a plan to start a ruckus in the city’s most dangerous neighborhood where police officers were known to not always go by the book.

  If he knew in advance, or heard rumors, he still wouldn’t have told me. Not explicitly. He would have done what he did—all but forbidden me from going out and doing what was part of my job, part of my personal mission. It was a fine line Gideon and I walked, but till now we had done so successfully. And that was saying something, when you were a social justice advocate and the man you were in love with was a cop.

  Chapter Two

  I delayed only long enough to eat two heaping forkfuls of reheated Chinese food, shove my feet into my sneakers and grab my pocketbook on the way out the door. My block was quiet, almost eerily so. Alternate side of the street parking had long been suspended, so there were cars crowded against the curb on both sides bumper to bumper as families had been hunkering down for weeks.

  Though it wasn’t even midnight, there was no sight of the usual dog-walkers and evening strollers as I made my way to my car, looking left and right before unlocking it and getting inside.

  Scanning my surroundings before ducking into my car wasn’t just an overabundance of caution. Although most of the crime around here was property-related, there were still occasional armed robberies and, a few weeks back, reports of a sexual assault. I lived in a “transitioning neighborhood” on the westside of the city, where residents joked good-naturedly that the transition never seemed to fully actualize.

  Three blocks south there were decrepit row-houses and mom-and-pop stores that were barely hanging on. And to the north, five blocks give or take, a Fresh Foods market had recently opened up. It even had dedicated spaces with charging stations for electric vehicles in their parking lot, which I thought was a harbinger of the types of residents the area was likely to have in the next three to five years. Gideon and I sometimes shopped at the Fresh Foods, him selecting picture-perfect produce with gusto, and me, guiltily, thinking about the displacement of small businesses that had to happen to make way for the shiny new grocery store.

  When I started the ignition, my car’s Bluetooth detected and connected with my phone, reminding me that he still hadn’t called. And that I hadn’t called him either. The uprising was happening in his district, right on his working doorstep. A quarrel wasn’t reason enough not to check in. Not to mention, Viv was headed his way, and some of our kids were already down there. Letting him know at least that much was the smart thing to do.

  I maneuvered carefully out of the tight parking spot and pulled forward, pausing long enough to make the call. Gideon’s phone rang three times, four, and then his no-nonsense voicemail greeting: ‘Sergeant Gideon Santana. Leave me a message.’

  Hearing his voice made my entire body heave. I swallowed hard, preparing to speak. But I didn’t know what to say. To tell him to look out for my friends while he was in the middle of this crisis, especially after all the crap I said when we last saw each other, seemed pretty callous under the circumstances.

  So I hung up.

  I said nothing, hung up and pulled off, heading for the Center.

  * * *

  Maya’s husband, David, worked for the city’s largest employer, a mammoth communications company that has its flagship building right in the center of downtown. My brother-in-law was one of the
overpaid chief executives in charge of community relations. He apologized for his good fortune by inviting me to events where the company served fancy food and drinks and awarded grants to community-based non-profits like mine. You know, the kind that operates with a margin of barely three months’ financial breathing room before they’ll be forced to lay off all their staff?

  But I loved David, so I didn’t hold against him his plush position and ridiculous salary because like me and Maya, he was just one generation removed from working-class roots, and still suffering from the lingering pangs of survivor’s guilt. David’s guilt manifested in making sure his pesky sister-in-law was always on the guest list for funders’ luncheons; and mine manifested in working for a salary well below what I might earn elsewhere, just so I could have a hand in saving the world.

  I met Gideon at an event in the great big shiny corporate headquarters where funders interested in supporting programs for youth experiencing homelessness were gathered for a catered lunch. To ensure balance of perspectives and the one thing everyone these days didn’t want to be accused of not being attentive to—representation—these things were always scripted in the same way. We would hear from the “affected population” then from people “on the ground addressing the problem” and from “public system stakeholders.” As part of the proceedings for this particular event we listened to testimonials from young people, homelessness service providers and finally, law enforcement.

  I always cringed through the parts where young people described the horrors they survived because of the failure of public systems. After they were done, all the adults in the room fixed their faces into expressions of awe, empathy and wondrous support and applauded as though they had just witnessed a bunch of monkeys reciting the Declaration of Independence.