The Inhale

We were on our way to get my things when a man in a bright neon yellow hooded sweatshirt waved my former roommate down. The two of us paused at the street crossing to allow his approach, my roommate beginning a conversation even with the unlikelihood of the man hearing it, while my eyes crept upward to the row of houses before us. The damage really didn’t look so bad, at least not from here. Not as bad as one figured it would be, having watched news coverage of the height of the blaze when the tendril flames were at their strongest, leaping from house to house, robbing the structures of their integrity and their inhabitants of a good night’s rest. 

My roommate shook hands with the stranger. I readied for an introduction that did not come. Their postures were at their best in this worst of situations, hands clasped in front of them, jaws hardened appropriately to the severity of topic. The block seemed still jittery from Friday’s event. A bevy of curious glances, both hidden behind spared houses as well as in plain sight, kept the two survivors standing taller and talking grander than I imagine they otherwise would have. 

“I had just bought a new TV,’ this new man was saying to my roommate. “I hadn’t even set it up yet, it was still sitting on the coffee table, out of box but not on the stand yet. It’s a good thing I didn’t move it, cause the water got pretty much on everything but that table.”

“Luck,” my roommate gloomed. Through his unofficial prognosis of our home’s damages, his room had suffered the mightiest blow. Everything was lost, not so much to the unforgiving consumption of flame, as others could speak to, but to the insidious swallow of the water used to put it out. 

“You lost everything?” the young man asked of him. 

“Still making my list for the insurance. But yeah, mostly everything.”

“Yeah,” he echoed. “Everything.”

I could admit my attraction to their solemnness. These sort of things I’ve found sit well with me, regardless of my personal standing with the event’s destruction. I eased onto their grave expressions as I once did years ago, standing in line to purchase an inflated hotel stay after a sudden, debilitating snow storm had halted the usual bustle of the city’s early Wednesday evening. Of course I wasn’t spared the communal annoyance and anxiety of such a situation, but I believe I was of the few who found a relaxation, an almost relief, to the overwhelming, unquestionable stoppage of the day’s activities. 

I had been on my way out of work, heading home but never making it, inching my car with hundreds of others in the direction of the overrun hotel, covering two blocks worth of street in the span of hours. In my car I had fumbled for chips and water that had served no previous purpose but now fell into my hands like gold. My mind pushed aside everything but its most basic concerns: shelter, water, food, communication. Safety poured over me like a drug. Pride kept me tall and alert in that line, for I was evidence of my own ability to navigate mother nature’s cruel whims. I had taken care of myself and survived, just as the others around me, and their frustrated murmurs and open headed musings about what this would mean for them, their day, their week, sat on me like inclusion. Speaking to them was easy, because everyone had the same thing to say, and tidbits of my own experience in the weather reinforced theirs. Togetherness of such a sort lives in no other place, as I have yet to find. 

“You didn’t look so good coming out.”

The man nodded. “I have bad asthma. When I came out of the house, I had the cat in my one hand, and the firefighters were hitting the house and actually hit me too. My damned shoe pretty much blew off.” There was humor to be had in that, and we took it graciously. “So I get away and sit down cause I couldn’t breathe but they came up to me and told me I had to keep moving, keep moving. I told them I couldn’t breathe but they didn’t care, they just said keep moving, keep moving.”

My roommate grumbled in solidarity. I stood in silence, unable to offer anything of my own, as I was out of town at the time of the blaze. And without even a hint of the damage I faced, I found myself rather useless to their recount. I looked at my roommate with hopes of reminding him of our purpose. 

“Well good luck,” he soon concluded with the neighbor. Their hands met once more, and I was given a polite nod which I returned a step too quickly.

More neighbors stood at the mouth of our house. We were quickly sucked in with the high speed gossip, the explanation of me and our presence at the house swept under by great theories of how the fire started and what the true levels of fallout were. When that topic burnt out it changed to more general recalls of scandals of the neighborhood, both past and present. The man with the neon yellow sweater had found his way back among us, briefly the spotlit member of the group as an older woman with thick black glasses teased him about a previous girlfriend who once lived in the now destroyed house. 

“She used to feed all these cats,” the woman laughed. 

“She did.”

“You should beg her to take you back. Such a nice girl.”

The man appeared far enough from the grief of lost love to find her words amusing. “Oh no,” he smiled. 

To my relief, an older gentlemen brought the conversation back to the nature of disaster. Laughs were lost to grim shakes of the head as it became known that both me and the yellow sweater man had yet to receive calls from a local organization who had helped other survivors of the fire. 

This angered the older man, his giant stature storming off to make a call. I forgot him altogether until he remerged with his phone laid out to me. 

“They want to talk to you.”

Using another’s person phone is a delicate, near intimate thing. I couldn’t suppress a wave of discomfort as I placed the stranger’s phone against my ear. I was watched closely as I gave my information to the person on the other line. The older man then pointed to the man in the hoodie. 

“Yes, there is someone else who wasn’t helped.”

“What’s the name?”

I pulled the phone away. “What is your name?”

“Jim.”

“Jim,” I told the line.

“Last name?”

“Last name?”

He pointed at his sweater: Metclaw Construction. I spelled the name out for the person on the phone, who required little else of me before hanging up. I handed the device back to the older man and thanked him for his effort. Jim Metclaw echoed my sentiment. 

Conversation died down from there, and my roommate used the lull to excuse us from the group. 

“We’re going to gather his stuff,” he explained to the people. “What we can of it.”

They looked at me in pity. “Well good luck.”

Good lucks all around. We headed up the stairs, still somewhat riddled with glass from the windows the firefighters had to smash. A strange, sudden urge in the pit of my stomach dictated my stopping just before the door and calling out to a retreating Jim Metclaw. 

“What’s up?” he hollered, his face slightly blurred with the distance but his tone unhiding of the confusion for being called by me. To him, I remembered, I remained nameless. 

The obvious path to further interaction with Jim Metclaw would have of course been to ask for help moving my belongings. At the risk of offending my roommate, I could have suggested some objects were above of the capabilities of just two men. 

But whatever pulled at me to include this man further in my day had no foresight to lie. And so I asked, rather bluntly, if he had any interest at all in observing the damages to our home. My mind raced on the tail end of that strange question to justify it: perhaps seeing the dispossession of my belongings would make him feel better about his own losses. Perhaps strolling through the smoky muck would satiate his innate human intrigue for destruction and loss. Maybe he just had nothing better to do for the rest of his day and would oblige a way to kill time. 

I dug for a way coming inside would benefit Jim Metclaw, just as I dug for a reason I had invited him in the first place. But it turned out the man needed neither, as he was chuckling and jogging in our direction without further prodding. 

“Well hey,” I caught him saying. “Why not?”

We covered our mouths in uncomfortable plastic masks before entering. This I didn’t mind, though I winced at the feeling of my mouth pinched in just like the others. I didn’t expect the smoke to be as bad as it was. Even with the protection I felt my throat buckling within seconds. It almost felt as if there was still a fire going. 

“You alright?” my roommate thought to check on Jim. 

“I’m good.”

My room was the first on the left, the closest to the exit, and as fate would have it, the most spared. It was originally a large walk in closet and the flimsy fold in doors showed it. I was a bit embarrassed to push them inward to get us through.

“Wow.”

The ceiling was no more, its white strips littered on the floor, exposing a thin layer of wood above. Our footsteps pressed down into the still soaked carpet, coming up in an unpleasant suction sound. Not having had a closet inside the closet, my clothes were stored neatly on the floor as well as on a chair beside the door, which in current conditions was not the wisest of places. It was jarring to walk about the room with these changes I had not adopted or expected. The force of the water had not just soaked the place but had knocked many things over. A lamp and some glasses I had left still unwashed were shattered. If not for the obvious cause of the mess I’d be rather humiliated at the state of the place, what with a stranger in company. 

 Having Jim Metclaw around gave a surreality to the inspection. His inclusion felt just as random as the fire itself, and I was unsure what say or do with any of the mess before me. My roommate took over my responsibility in a way, walking about and guessing at the likelihood of survival for certain items. 

“Bed’s gone,” he concluded. “You’ll never get the smell out.”

“Wasn’t much anyway,” I replied. 

The lamp, the small personal fridge I kept on a table, a handful of the books, many papers, and the desk were also deemed unfit for taking. I didn’t disagree with any of it. 

“Look at that.” 

We both turned to a smiling Jim. 

“Your TV survived too,” he laughed. 

Indeed it had. 

“Right place,” I agreed.

“Funny how stuff like that makes it through.”

He was right, of course. Irreplaceable items like my journals and laptop were well destroyed. I had not backed a single file up or thought to make copies of anything. 

“The hard drive might be salvageable,” I was comforted.

“Maybe.”

The three of us left my room to take a quick tour of the rest of the downstairs apartment, awing at the wreckage before returning with bags to scoop up what was left of my things. There was less talk throughout this process than I would have liked. I seemed to be the least interested of all of us in this rescue mission of items, paying little attention to what I or the others were throwing into the bags. 

“This smell’ll follow us forever,” Jim piques up after some time. “Smoke doesn’t come out of anything. Even now it’s digging in.”

I ponder the meaning of this, unsure of how to respond. “That’s unfortunate,” is what I come up with.

Jim laughs. 

“Will you toss the clothes?” my roommate asks me. 

“I have no others.”

“Any personals?” Jim asks as he tosses another bag into the hallway to be taken down to the car. “That aren’t drowned, I mean.”

They watched me pace around the room, expecting me to pull up photos or sentimental gifts, something of the sort given to me by others, some keepsake leading my heart back to a friend or a family member or an old lover. A real, true loss, something credible to mourn. The obvious path was to report that all my many things of such value were sadly lost to water and smoke. But my shoulders were ahead of me, shrugging before an illusion could even be created. 

“I’ve got nothing,” I admitted. 

The two of them nodded, frowning beneath their face coverings, and started at the bags stacked up in the hallway. The process of taking them to the trunk of my car took less than ten minutes. Everything that was breakable already broke, so what was left was able to be tossed with little hesitation. 

“You sure you don’t wanna try for that desk?” Jim asked me. “I could bring the truck around.”

“It’s alright.” I waved him off. “Only a desk.”

When we were done, my roommate headed for his own car, promising to keep me up to date on things of little concern to me: how the fire started, what was to become of the house I no longer lived in. I shook his hand and thanked him for his help. A similar ritual played out with Jim, who added a smack to my shoulder and a wish of good luck. 

“Can smell this damn smoke already,” he sniffed at the air and patted himself in vain. 

“I’m sure it’s got the whole car,” I nodded. 

“Yeah mine too.”

My tongue held out for a final branch of courage I didn’t have. I was spent, sooty, and yes, rather encased in a thick scent of woody smoke I likely won’t be free of for some time, if ever. Maybe in the next disaster I come across, a way will be found to extend the talks with those one meets past the initial fallout of the snow, the fire, the smoke.  

Maybe one day I will require less circumstance to find common ground in those around me. 

“Yo dude.”

Jim waved me down, still without my name, as I planted myself in my car.

“I’m getting a beer soon” he said, leaned down and looking at my front left tire. “If you wanna stop by, I won’t be the only chum smelling like fire.”

I took his information and gave mine. The rest of the night was spent unpacking my things, leaving what I could outside, as I was advised to let the soiled items breathe for a few days. As the sun went down I went to my car again and followed directions to a bar a few corners down from where the fire first sparked. Beers were clinked as the room quickly became about us, our story, our smell. Everyone wanted our inside knowledge, our personal losses of the fire that dominated the local news cycle now for four straight days. Everyone wanted to know how we were coping, where we were staying, what we were doing now in this scary limbo we’ve found ourselves in. 

I inhaled, burning my nose on the smell until my eyes teared, and talked more than I had in a very long time.