Transits by Jaime Forsythe Page B

soften, succumb too much to his own liquid comings and goings, he might lose touch with the outside world completely, might find himself swallowed up by the fog hanging ghostlike in every pocket of the city. The trees thickened and the smoke faded in and out of sight. Andy looked forward to drinking his coffee when he woke up. Maybe go through some of his old drawings, linger there.
    The burning stench didn't fill Andy's nostrils until he turned onto his street. Even then, he didn't imagine it might be coming from his home. The evening he had just passed had been so familiarly round, looping around to blend seamlessly into other evenings like it, that a plot twist did not seem possible.
    Beams from the fire truck glowed long in the air. Andy's neighbours, most of them strangers, stood in socks or bare feet on the street behind yellow tape. Their eyes zeroed in on Andy as though he carried an answer. The liquor inside him leapt and rushed to his head. He saw no red or orange, only black and grey and streams and streams of water flying from the firefighter's hoses. Andy recalled the words “No Pets” from his lease while observing the ferret, the cat, and the Chihuahua clutched in tenants' arms. He hated knowing strangers' small indiscretions. He felt the exhilaration and dread of everything falling away. A scrap of burnt paper drifted lazily to the ground.
    Andy was sure this paper was one of his portraits. He was never good with faces, so that became his thing: portraits without faces. Instead, he sketched a hovering hat, pair of glasses, moustache, the curve of an ear. His drawings were not meant to replicate. They evoked. This was how he kept straight all the odd and wonderful people who had passed through his life. It wasn't that he needed to see any of them again, these friends that had scattered after claiming their degrees, but he needed to remember they existed. He did not want to lose that time when the calendar spinning was OK, because he was always with others. They sat and smoked and slept on couches. They interrupted one another with their ideas. Fingers massaged Andy's neck, a hand took his hand. They dressed up and danced in the living room. This much, he can conjure, but the specifics are now muddy, watercolours running into a brown pool.
    Standing on the street that night, Andy subconsciously gravitated towards Lila, the only tenant he knew. They have been acquaintances since they were both six years old. She has always simply been there: in his classrooms, in line at the grocery store. The day they ran into one another, stepping out of their adjacent apartment doors, she'd exclaimed over the “crazy coincidence.” Andy was not impressed. It was a city of coincidences.
    When Lila saw Andy that night, she grabbed his arm and teared up. “What's going to happen to us?” she asked, her voice cracking. Lila wore a red kimono and flip-flops, and her hair was up in sponge curlers. Her young face contrasted with the clothing of someone much older.
    Andy disliked these tears. He had no idea how to comfort Lila. His sense of hearing faded in and out; he wasn't sure his feet still touched the earth. He wasn't used to being exposed in front of a group of people. Things had gone wrong in his life before, but never in such a concrete, literal way. Lila's question was a good one. Andy felt sorry for her. He felt sorry for the damage to the businesses below the apartments. The aromas of warm pizza dough and samosas, the steady thump of giant dryers that he often mistook for the approaching steps of a visitor: gone.
    Lila's pale face was lit up by the twin beams of the fire truck, a wet and slippery moon. The image filled Andy's mind until he couldn't see anything else. Viciously, he wished it gone.
    In his mother's guest bedroom, Andy feels like a geranium hovering between clay pot and garden, roots dangling immodestly.
    Before the fire, he had projects: a shelf he was building, a transistor radio