Slow Burn

The koi fish in the pond is a splotchy yellow with whiskers the length of Nico’s pinky finger. Its round, black, beady eyes seem to stare at him in expectation. 

What? 

It opens its gaping mouth and the wail of a siren sounds. The sky darkens and clouds with smoke. More koi float to the surface, belly up. The portly yellow continues to wail. 

Nico startles awake atop his bed. The AC unit shoved into the window shoots out cold air. The remnants of a Pringles can dust his Metallica shirt in a crunchy constellation, his tongue thick with the taste of sharp cheddar. 

A dream, then. 

In the cigarette dish beside his bed is the cold stub of a spent joint. 

So why can he smell smoke? 

The wailing continues, punctuated by the drone of a voice through a megaphone: A mandatory evacuation order is in effect. There is a fire. Leave your homes, immediately.

Smoke roils outside the window. A police cruiser with its windows down and its lights flashing slowly rolls down the street. 

Fuck. 

Nico leaps off the bed, tripping over his feet on his way to the window. He peers out, face so close to the pane, the tip of his nose leaves an oily smear on the glass. In the distance, the Santa Monica Mountains are on fire. 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

He runs a hand through his hair and scrambles out of his bedroom, taking the stairs down to the first floor two at a time, calling for his Aunt M. No reply. He looks out the picture window toward the empty driveway. 

Fuck. 

She’s out. Gone. He reaches for his phone in his back pocket, only it isn’t there. His quiet voice an endless stream of increasingly panicked curses, Nico returns to the stairs up to his bedroom where he finds it on the bed. 

He fumbles the password twice before his lock screen gives way to emergency alerts and messages. 

Allen: Lucy broke up with me, man

Allen: can I come over? could really use a hit

Allen: fck, LA’s on fire

Allen: should I call Lucy to see if shes ok r nah

Endless photos from the Whatsapp of LA on fire. 

At the very bottom of his notifications is a text from Aunt M: Do we need oranges?

He calls her. It rings and rings. Nico paces. C’mon. C’mon. C’mon. Her cheery voice says: I can’t come to the phone right now–

Another curse. He hangs up. Texts furiously: Call me. Fire emoji. Have to evacuate. 

He throws on his sneakers he’s not supposed to wear inside the house and now feels a weird sense of guilt about, but what’s it matter if the whole house gets torched anyway?

Nico shimmies under the bed for his kilo of weed. Stands up and stares at the filmy plastic-wrapped brick, debating whether it’s worth taking up space in his bag when a shelter is bound to check it. 

Fuck it, he thinks, shoving it into his ratty Nike duffel. He can always toss it later. In goes a clean shirt. A couple of clean pairs of underwear. A small bed roll. A lighter. Should he grab a few things for Aunt M? But what? He stands in the doorway to her bedroom much too long thinking about it. Nah. The stairs soar under his feet as he leaps straight to the kitchen. He opens the fridge, unsure what he wants, or why he’s bothering, when he checks the crisper and inanely thinks, We do need oranges. From the junk drawer, he grabs duct tape. A flashlight. Batteries. From the bathroom, a roll of toilet paper. A bar of soap. From the pantry, he grabs a handful of beef sticks, then it’s out to the garage for his bicycle. He mashes the garage door button, throws on his helmet and kicks out past the opened door. The heat and smoke hit him like a slap, and his eyes immediately begin to water. The siren’s wail is distant. The inferno is brighter. Closer. Nico spares a look for the neighbor’s yard, unable to spot the pond rocks or the water lettuce that mark the koi pond through the smog. Movement in the third story window. A cat is looking out at him.  

The Jeffersons’ new cat. Morph. Or Monte. Nico can’t remember. A striped orange and white tabby that the wife didn’t want but the husband got anyway for their four-year-old Odessa. 

Heart thumping a dirge in his chest, Nico watches an ember catch on the leaf of a dying palm tree in their front yard. In seconds, its head is a matchstick, its trunk an ever shortening handle. The fire descends to the roof. 

The cat licks its paw in the window. 

Not my problem, Nico thinks, even as he cycles toward the house. He ditches the bike on the lawn and finds the front gate locked. He climbs. The weight of the duffel is awkward on his back. He raises the strap over his head, lets the bag drop, hoists himself up and over, shirt catching on the metal spike at the top, before he drops down and runs to the garage door. Unlocked. The family BMW is gone. Nothing but the husband’s candy-red Porsche. Nico’s stomach lurches. He opens the sidedoor that deposits him into the kitchen and calls out even though he knows the house is empty. It’s eerily quiet inside as the fiery winds batter the house. On the kitchen island sits a hello kitty plastic plate with half-eaten macaroni and dinosaur nuggets with the heads bitten off. 

A meow greets him from the bottom of the stairs. The cat whose name he can’t remember traipses in, tail tall and twitching, obliviously unaware that his new family has abandoned him. 

Nico isn’t a cat guy. Aunt M had a tank of a black cat with FIV and one eye named Meowster who was a vision of bliss in front of his owner and one of terror toward Nico. Bit Nico’s ankles any chance he got. Growled at him from the top of the stairs. Pissed on his clothes discarded on the bathroom floor. 

Pure evil. 

Meow. The tabby sits at his feet. Blinks its big, green eyes. A premonition of sorts takes up residence in Nico’s body. 

I got shit news, bud. Nico hears something on the roof or in the roof and the smell of smoke is so thick he can taste it. The cat yelps as he picks it up and carries it football-style out into the yard. It wriggles, its claws increasingly digging into his side. He looks out through the rungs of the gate wondering how the hell he’s going to get them both over. The roar of the fire consuming the house at his back serves as a ticking time bomb. 

A sudden idea, the only idea. 

Nico hastily tucks his shirt into the waist of his jeans. Grimacing, he stretches out his collar to fit the cat hissing and spitting into his shirt and shoves it down. 

It’s for your own good–ow!

Visions of the cat scratch fever (it’s a real thing) he got from Meowster years ago when the monster was still alive balloons in his head. His hand swelled up, the puncture marks red like two beady eyes, until he had passed out on the stairs and Aunt M called an ambulance. 

A scare for future him, if he ever gets the hell out of here. 

He scrambles up and over the gate. His shirt holds. His stomach screams with new lacerations. He lands awkwardly on the other side, ankle protesting. He wrestles open the duffel, pulls out a wad of his underwear and stuffs it in the gap between his torso and the cat. 

Coughing, he wraps his one spare shirt around his face, gets on the bike and pedals. Nico finally chances a glance over his shoulder–his shirt soaked, the smoke making him light-headed–at the fire engulfing the homes on his block. 

The thought of the cat trapped inside alone as it burns tightens his throat. He stands up and pedals faster.

Nico catches up to the police cruiser now ordering people to leave their cars congested in the street. There are people honking. People cursing from their rolled down windows. A man rear ends another car in a desperate bid to get past before he hops the curb. The officer rushes up, one hand on the hood, the other on his belt. Screaming. A person on a bike hesitates in the hubbub on the sidewalk and a mob immediately swarms him in a bid for the bicycle. 

A silent prayer on his lips, Nico who thought he couldn’t go any faster speeds up. The cat has quieted or the surrounding chaos is so loud Nico can’t hear its wailing. The sidewalk increasingly busy, he opts for a side street and hooks a right at a corner convenience store where a homeless man is asleep on the stoop.

Another cat bolts out of a side alley directly into the path of Nico’s bike, and he breaks. The world spins, Nico flies over his handlebars, tilting his body to its side, hugging his arms around his middle to protect his passenger. He lands hard on his shoulder and skids, the helmet protecting his head from cracking like an egg on the cement. The perpetrator disappears down the street. 

You OK, kid? 

The homeless man is awake, staring at Nico with rheumy eyes. 

Fire, Nico manages. There’s a fire. He points. 

The man gives him a dismissive wave and reclines back on the stoop. 

Nico gets up, his shoulder throbbing, hip aching, and peeks into his shirt to see the cat peering up at him, mouth open in an anxious pant. 

I know, buddy. Here we go. 

Nico rights the bike. It rides wonky; the back wheel is slightly bent, but there’s little he can do about it now. He fishes his phone out of his front pocket to call Aunt M. Again, no answer. 

He grinds his teeth. Has a mind to leave a scathing message. Why doesn’t she ever charge her damn phone? He’s told her again and again. Now that a real emergency’s happened, he can’t reach her. 

I’m safe, he says into the receiver. I left the house. Don’t come home. He pauses. Nearly tells her the house is likely gone, but what good will that do her now? The fire is close, he says. I’m headed toward the shelter on Sunset. 

The air is smokey with the smell of burning plaster and asbestos. And yet the bars are open. There is a line at a drive-thru only coffeeshop. Cars are still in their driveways. A man stands outside watering his hydrangeas. 

Nico keeps pedaling. 

The Sunset shelter is full. So are the next three he visits. At the fourth, he returns to the lamppost where he leaned his bike to find it gone.

Fuck. He adjusts the duffel strap over his shoulder and begins to walk. The cat has gotten restless again. Nico soothes it through his shirt. 

The fifth shelter doesn’t accept animals. He knows this because Allen tried to sleep there one night after running away from home with his dog, Skeeter, but the others are filling up, and Nico is exhausted, and the cat probably needs water, and all he has is beef sticks and a kilo of pot, and he’s got to hole up somewhere so he can tell Aunt M where to find him. 

Nico dips into an alleyway and sets down his duffel. It's near full, and he needs to make room. Nico pulls out the plastic-wrapped brick with a belabored sigh and stashes it behind a dumpster.

He untucks his shirt, and the cat tumbles out. He holds it on his lap for a minute, strokes it, panting still, and says, No meows. You gotta trust me, OK? 

The cat goes easier into his duffel than it did his shirt. Nico zips the duffel to where there’s only a pocket left open for the cat to breathe. 

Nico gets in line, clutching the duffel to his side, wracking his brain trying to remember if they check bags. A kid with a big red face howls in his mother's arms. Another man without pants is to the side, persuading the attendant at the metal detector to let him in. 

Nico sees his chance and darts past the metal detector. 

Hey! someone shouts, but Nico keeps walking and disappears into the crowd. 

He beelines for a back corner. The more people between him and the front the better. The cat is starting to really meow. Nico choses a slab of open floor no bigger than a single human lying down and sits beside a woman changing a toddler. She serves him a heavy dose of side-eye as if to say, Why would a lone guy choose to sit so close to a lone woman and her currently exposed baby? He gives her a cursory smile and deposits his bag. 

The room is already overcrowded, the few floor mats sitting up to half a dozen people. It smells of smoke and sweat and bodies packed in like sardines. Nico gives Aunt M another call. Nothing. How long is a simple trip to the grocery store? She has to have heard of the fire by now. The cashier, the other customers would be talking about it. Why hasn’t she bummed a charger? A phone to call him?

The woman who bounces the newly changed baby must take pity on him because she asks Nico: You’re here alone?

He rubs his burning eyes with the heels of his palms. Yeah. I can’t get ahold of my aunt. 

The baby motor boats its lips and forms a bubble.

She went to the grocery store, Nico continues. I think her phone’s dead. 

I’m sure she’s OK. 

Yeah. Maybe. Thanks. Is it just you two?

Yep. Just us. A shared experience of doom and despair isn’t enough to persuade the stranger to offer up her name. Nico tells her his anyway. 

I’m Nico. 

She hesitates. Trish. And this is Simon. 

Hey, Trish. Hey, Simon. 

You’re bleeding. 

Oh. Nico looks down at where his bloody torso peeks through his holey shirt. Yeah. Luckily, he doesn’t have to explain. 

The cat pushes its head up through the gap in the zipped bag. 

Oh!

I know there aren’t supposed to be animals in the shelter, he hurriedly says, but the others were full. 

Trish smiles. Your secret’s safe with me. I run a cat cafe. Luckily at the moment it’s not in the immediate path of the fire but I’ve been watching the camera footage on my phone. I have a friend on standby to transport them, should the need arise. Simon batters his little fist against her chest. It’s hard to believe such a cute little girl did all that. 

Oh, it’s a boy. 

Trish blinks. It’s a girl. You can tell by the mew line. Is this not your cat?

What gave it away? he says more snidely than intended. Exhausted. Wondering if he really hadn’t the time to search for a carrier or kibble or a water bottle. Suddenly he finds himself confessing he took the neighbors’ cat. 

I never understand when people leave their pets behind. They’re family. 

Nico nods. Yeah. He pets her head with the back of his fingers and she wriggles the rest of her body out of the bag. He places her beside him, trying to shield her from view from the rest of the room. 

The cat squats and pees. 

Fuck. 

Trish hands him a diaper he uses to sop up the spreading mess. 

You don’t have water on you, do you? he asks. 

No, but they’re passing out water bottles over there, she nods toward a table on the opposite side of the room. 

Can you watch her? I’ll grab you one. 

Sure, thanks. 

He moves to join the queue when he spots the Jeffersons with bags and bags of stuff in the middle of the room, Odessa howling. Nico freezes, his heartbeat ratcheting up to cardiac arrest speeds. The last thing he wants is to be seen. He shuffles toward the queue and keeps his head low. 

Two waters, please. A woman with a shaved head and a septum ring passes him two bottles. Thanks. 

It’s on his way back that he takes the long way round to avoid the Jeffersons. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Jefferson is just coming back from the bathrooms with a crying Odessa. 

Nico?

Hey, Mr. Jefferson, Nico says entirely too cheery for someone who’s in a shelter after just evacuating his home. 

Is your Aunt M here? he asks looking around. 

No, I can’t get ahold of her, Nico says, but Mr. Jefferson has already lost interest, fully distracted by an inconsolable Odessa. 

She’s in a fit because we had to leave her kitten behind. 

Ah. 

I told her the shelters don’t accept cats, besides the little devil clawed its way through its carrier and Jean hadn’t yet gotten a replacement, so. 

That’s that, huh? 

Sometimes you have to leave things behind. The important thing is we’re all together. 

Right. 

Mrs. Jefferson waves at Nico who nods and holds up the water bottles as explanation for why he makes his leave. 

Here you go, he says, handing Trish the water bottle. 

Thanks. Looks like you know someone else here. 

Yeah, he says clipped and pours water into the bottle cap for the cat. 

What should we name you? he whispers. How about Toast? Morbid. He chuckles to himself and drags his hand down her flake. She laps at the water. Purring. Lifts her rear in the air, tail twitching. 

Nico’s phone buzzes. He fishes it out of his pocket, looks at the screen, taps the answer button and says, Aunt M.