One Dead Drag Queen (2 page)

I finished sanding the left runner about six. I shut my eyes and slowly caressed the newly worked bare wood. I opened
my eyes, leaned back against my workbench, and enjoyed the pleasurable exhaustion I get when I’ve worked hard, and I can see and feel my own handiwork taking shape.

I wondered if I should clean up before Tom got home. He was a little late, but when he’d left, he’d said he wasn’t sure how long it would take. We didn’t have firm dinner plans. I wasn’t in the mood to go out. I was ready for a quiet evening at home.

I finished my shower just as the broadcast of the late-Saturday-afternoon college football game should have been ending. Instead, WBBM, the CBS affiliate in Chicago, was showing a special news report. A street scene. The reporter standing directly in front of a slew of emergency vehicles. Rotating lights in the immediate background. Farther behind, flames gushed from the front of a building. I recognized the local reporter, Brandon Kearn. He worked for MCT, Metro Chicago Television, which was started five years ago to rival CLTV as a local news source. Kearn was as famous for his good looks as he was for his legendary salary negotiations—he was by far the highest-paid reporter in the city. I wondered why he was on CBS and what part of Chicago had caught fire this time. I reached for the remote to change the channel. Just because another building is burning doesn’t mean I’ve got to watch. Nor did I want to see the unfortunate victims or inarticulate bystanders being interviewed live.

But I couldn’t find the damn TV remote. Why Tom can’t put it back in the same place every time, I don’t know.

Kearn was saying, “. . . ripped apart most of this city block fifteen minutes ago. There are six people confirmed dead. There are believed to be numerous victims still in the rubble. The fire department is working frantically to keep the blaze from spreading so possible survivors can be rescued from under the debris. It doesn’t look good.”

I found the remote under the seat cushion where it had slipped the night before as I was watching TV. My fault this time.

My hand froze on the controls as Kearn continued, “The Human Services Clinic was among the buildings almost completely obliterated.”

2

My memories of the rest of that night come back to me in disconnected flashes. I know I peered closely at the street scene behind the reporter. I recognized nothing. It was late and the clinic must have been closed. Probably everyone had left.

The phone rang.

Queasiness burbled in my stomach. A crazed computer hacker with a hate-on for us, or Tom calling to reassure me? The woman at the answering service said, “You have an urgent call.” She gave me the number. It was a 773 area code, which meant it was anywhere in the city of Chicago outside the Loop.

I tapped in the numbers. It rang seven times before someone answered.

I didn’t recognize the voice. I said who I was. The other person said, “This is Gloria Dellios. I work with Tom Mason at the Human Services Clinic. There’s been an explosion.”

“How is Tom?”

“No one has seen him. They think he’s trapped under the rubble. I’m sorry. They’ve pulled out a number of people alive. There’s still hope.”

I don’t remember hanging up the phone. I barely remember throwing on socks, jeans, shoes, and a sweatshirt, then grabbing my wallet and car keys. I remember wiping away tears as I took the elevator to the ground floor. Outside, it was a cloudless, crisp, perfect October evening.

I recall running several red lights on Michigan Avenue and not caring who beeped and cursed. I remember thinking about losing Tom and being without him for the rest of my life. I know I thought about all the things we wouldn’t be able to do together. I guess it sounds sappy, but I remember thinking it was too perfect a day for Tom to die. Maybe some of this sounds like cheap sentiment, but I don’t care. Tom knows how to use words—he’s the English teacher, not me—and Tom always says he loves cheap sentiment. That Dickens made a career out of it. I’ve never read Dickens. I just know I love Tom.

The Human Services Clinic wasn’t one building. It had started in a three-story former home on the northwest corner and had gradually expanded over the years to encompass all the buildings on the North Side of Fulton all the way from Racine to Elizabeth. Most of the buildings were over a century old.

I took Grand Avenue over the Chicago River and turned south on Racine. Maybe the trip took ten minutes. Maybe five. I couldn’t get within four blocks of the place. Parking on the near west and north sides of Chicago is hellish at the best of times. I found an empty spot in a little parking lot under the el tracks. The clinic paid to have these few spaces at a distance from the entrance as a staging ground for patients to be escorted from. I saw Tom’s truck parked next to
one of the struts supporting the el. As I got out of my car, a train rumbled by overhead. The cacophony it made was unable to drown out the screaming sirens still approaching the scene.

My first impression was of people frantically rushing about. Firemen, paramedics, and cops swarmed over the area. They were far outnumbered by the injured and the passersby giving assistance to them. People dripping blood were being carried away from the scene. The ambulatory were gently escorted to a triage area to await their turn. Sitting at a curb was a woman with a gash across her forehead. She held a weeping child.

I saw someone on a stretcher being wheeled up to a waiting ambulance. I hurried to get as close as I could. It was a black woman. I stopped a guy in fire gear to try to get information.

He said, “Nobody knows anything definite.”

“My lover was working in the clinic today.”

“I’m sorry, buddy.” He tried to pull out of my grasp.

I held on to his arm. “Who would know if he’d gotten out?”

“I don’t know who could tell you. I gotta go.”

“What if he’s in there? Are they going to be able to stop the fire?”

“There’s a chance.” The fireman pointed. “The fire’s at the far end of the block near Carroll Street. They’re doing everything they can to stop the spread.” I let him go.

I got as close as I could to the destruction. I was on Fulton Street halfway between Racine and Elizabeth. The entire city block from Carroll to Fulton and Racine to Elizabeth had been nearly obliterated. Masses of debris, great heaps of rubble, shattered glass, innumerable fragments of people’s lives, were scattered between me and the center core of devastation. To the east of the devastated block across Racine
Street, several buildings, including the new Health and Fitness Forever Club, had been severely damaged.

Rescue workers swarmed over the building remnants at the end of the block near me. Few glanced at the approaching flames. In the street nearby, every few moments someone would rush about bringing injured from the scene or toting stretchers to it.

No one stood and stared at the devastation. No one told me to go away. I moved forward to help.

Rotating lights, flames inching closer, car and truck headlights, orange streetlights, burnt-out cars. It felt and looked wickedly strange. I’d dropped Tom off at the clinic several times, but I was even more familiar with the neighborhood from the deli we stopped at once in a while on Carroll Street. Mr. and Mrs. Fattatuchi served the best chicken salad in the city. Flames were already past where their restaurant had been. They were a sweet old couple. Saturday night was the busiest of the week for them. They would have been inside when the explosion came.

The block had been a mix of upscale urban renewal projects next to three- and four-story buildings long past the need for a wrecking ball. Like the clinic complex, many of these were over a hundred years old. Many were caught in a lawsuit between preservationists and developers. That suit would be moot now. Lots of these buildings were “residential hotels,” a synonym often used in more polite circles to describe a flophouse. The newer buildings had brightly lit, glass-fronted, trendy retail stores in first floors, mostly offices and a few lofts on the floors above.

Along the block, between the fire and me, parts of interiors and a few exterior walls still stood. For the one hundred yards nearest to me, not much remained above two feet high. I wondered how anyone had gotten out alive.

The Human Services Clinic had been a focal point for protesters for years. The clinic gave prenatal care and family planning counseling as well as performing abortions. If it was a slow news day, the local press could count on at least a few people from one or both sides in the controversy being in front of the building. Usually there were a couple bored cops making sure the two sides kept apart. Quite a while back when the picketing had started, the demonstrations had become violent, but I didn’t remember hearing anything in that vein for a long time.

They didn’t let Tom work out front where the women came in. Some of the clientele and a few of the employees were pretty hostile to the presence of men. That was okay with Tom. He worked in the basement. Filing, typing, stuffing envelopes.

A woman approached me. Her blue jeans were torn. One sleeve of her white shirt was ripped off at the shoulder. A large bandage covered that arm from wrist to elbow. The remnant of the shirt was covered with grime and dirt.

“Scott Carpenter?”

I was wary as I always seemed to be of strangers these days. “Yeah?”

“I’m Gloria Dellios. I recognize you from your pictures in the media.”

“Is Tom all right?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know.” She pointed halfway down the block. “There’s an alley down there. Debris was blown from that point outward in all directions. There’s a huge crater in the ground. The clinic was at this end of the block. I was on the steps walking out when the explosion happened. I was lucky, I was in front of one of the stone pillars. Still I was thrown halfway across the street. I’m afraid Tom was working
in the back, about a third of the way down the block from the explosion.”

I felt tears.

“The fire isn’t near there yet. It started on the south side of Carroll Street. They’ve pulled out eight survivors from the clinic so far, so there’s still hope.”

A bulldozer lumbered up to the entrance of the alley. I figured they were trying to move the debris to create a firebreak. At the moment it looked as if it might not be necessary. Water cascaded from four different hoses between the fire and this half of the block. At this point I could barely see any flames.

“Is there anyone who knows anything definite?” I asked.

“I’m not sure anyone would really have information beyond what we can see. Everybody’s concentrating on stopping the fire and getting people out first, then they’ll start investigating.”

I hated the reasonableness of her words.

I found a group of people clearing debris near where I thought Tom might have been working. Twenty feet away, a line of ambulances moved almost continuously as victims were hurried inside. I wanted to stay close to the medical personnel. Where they worked was the most likely spot to bring Tom when they found him.

I wondered how they would be able to discern any desperate voice through the frantic sounds of the emergency vehicles. The innumerable fire personnel were forced to add to the noise and confusion as they performed their essential tasks.

All I remember of the next half an hour is chaos unimaginable. Heat and flames. Water and smoke. Shouts and cries. Fire hoses and darkness. Jury-rigged lights swaying from wobbly poles. A man and woman sobbing loudly hurrying
past, followed closely by a camera crew. I remember thinking the damn reporters could cease their inanity for a minute and do something really important, like help. The mostly silent workers around me only occasionally stopped to stare at the slowly abating conflagration. Periodically a gentle breeze floated in from the lake carrying heavy white smoke drifting in our direction.