A pool

The message read, Sorry, we cannot take bookings for, on my Airbnb home page. I erased it and left the cursor blinking.

Standing over the empty hole that had been my house, I thought this might be the right moment for a swimming pool.

The trauma came with inventory, smoke, flames, melted plastic, and a fine particulate matter that would almost certainly get its own class action lawsuit. My memory was slightly scrambled. Not dramatically. I still knew right from left. But certain words had gone missing. I would stare at things and wait for their names to return. A specific kind of tree. A waxed rain jacket. A type of clam. The tiny ones. What were those called? Maybe I never knew.

At Target, the scale of it hit me. I needed a new one of everything. Everything I owned was either destroyed, melted, or embedded with soot. Even the things that technically survived were compromised, like they had seen something they could not unsee.

I stood in front of the display of electric toothbrushes. Aggressively expensive. I should steal one. Not out of desperation. When you need to replace your entire life, it seemed reasonable to begin by not paying for a toothbrush.

At the house, I watched from my car, praying to hear the blare of a siren. By the time a fire department SUV arrived, smoke was still pouring out of the front window. The first to arrive was Larry, who struggled with his fire overalls, putting them on backwards, then wrestling out of them like an angry five year old before getting them right. The rest of the trucks were even later. Let’s call them Curly and Moe.

I imagined the Target cashier with her translucent skin, dyed black hair, watching me slip the toothbrush into my coat and tracking me all the way to the counter. Her look would break me. I would place the toothbrush on the counter, then slowly empty my pockets, toothpaste, floss, mouthwash, a night guard I did not even need. I would arrange them in front of her like a confession.

Yeah, I would say. You got me.

She would take my arm, lead me to the front of the store, pull the large key ring off her belt, lock me in the little room between the automatic sliding doors. The doors would hiss shut behind me. The police would come. I would sit on the bench and wait. It would be fine. Possibly restorative.

It was not like Moscow.

In Moscow, they took my passport at Sheremetyevo Airport. A pimply faced officer walked me down a long, windowless hallway clearly designed to remove hope. Door after door. Finally, a small room. One table. One chair. One gun.

The officer’s name was probably Alexey. It was always Alexey.

Alexey looked at me, then at my carry on, and reached for it. That was a hard no. He said, Not fly.

His skinny frame blocked the door and I said, Yes fly.

He shook his head. I attempted insistence. Yes, fly. I have a ticket. I go.

This was optimistic, given that Alexey now had both my ticket and my passport.

Three thousand dollars, he said.

The number landed badly. I said no, firm, automatic, American. The kind of no that assumes systems exist.

Alexey recalibrated. One thousand.

The sudden price drop surprised me. We were negotiating now. I wondered if I could have offered the Target goth a cut of the dental materials. Some sort of revenue share. Maybe I would bump into her at the Stockade bar a few days later, dressed in her real clothes, black and veiled, and we would shoot each other gleaming white smiles.

One hundred, I said.

Alexey actually considered it. Then his radio squawked, garbled, metallic, like the 4 train speakers announcing something in three languages at once, none of them meant for me. He ignored it.

Five hundred, he said quickly. This was going the right way.

I opened my wallet and fingered the cash. Passport and ticket first, I said. Another squawk. Louder.

Nervously, I added, Seems like you are needed somewhere.

Not even a nyet from dear old Alexey.

Alexey reached into his jacket and placed my passport and ticket on the table. He put a hand on them and slid them closer.

That was enough.

I peeled off a little over two hundred and fifty dollars, crumpled it, and pushed it into his hand. He did not count it. My passport was already back in my coat, my carry on in my grip, and I was pushing past him. The man who had seemed immovable only moments before let me slip right by.

As I did, I said, You scared me with the opening number.

That was when I understood the full extent of his English, no fly, numbers with zeros.

Walking back down the long hallway, I understood traveling the hall in the opposite direction was not designed to restore hope. But I felt a little buoyant.

From the gate, I saw him again. He was sitting with his work friends, quiet, drinking tea. His face unchanged. Our negotiation already gone from him. It occurred to me he might not even remember me. And yet he was now with me.

Back home, I started again.

Sorry, we cannot take bookings for the next six months.

As if fire were something you could block off on a calendar.

I stood there a long time after sending it, looking at the empty hole where the house had been.

If I was honest, the pool did seem like a good idea.