Smoke from a Burning Building

Isabella groaned as she rolled over, hooking one arm beneath her pillow and pulling it firmly down over her head. She had moved into the Baymont in downtown Spokane a week earlier, and this was the third time that the fire-alarm had gone off in the middle of the night. She knew without looking at her clock that it was somewhere in the early hours of the morning, because she had only arrived home from work around 2am. Overhead, the fire alarm let out a high, keening beep. A white light flashed, illuminating her room in sharp, brief bursts. Even through the pillowcase, Isabella could see the alarm blinking against her ceiling. Pulling down the pillow, she glared at the alarm--squinting slightly each time it let out a flash.

She had come to Spokane because she worked as a musical technician--there was a music festival being set up at the Palisades Park, and she was in charge of looking over the set-up of the sound equipment for two of the main stages. Something that she couldn't do if she couldn't fucking sleep. Finally, letting out a deep sigh, she pulled the blankets away from her body and stood. She took her time, stretching her arms behind her back and shaking out her legs before she made her way to her closet. Pulling out a pair of sweatpants and a sports bra, she zipped up a baggy PVRIS sweater along the front of her body. Pulling her hair back into some semblance of order with her fingers, she made her way to her door. If she looked like shit, good--she silently cursed the hotel supervisor as she made her way down the hallway and descended the three flights of stairs to the ground floor.

Making her way passed the indoor gym and a small, café-style restaurant on the ground floor, she pushed open the swinging doors at the front of the hotel. She could see the flashing lights of a fire engine coming down the street. Even the spinning lights on top of the vehicle seemed to be moving almost lazily, as if it was as annoyed as she was. Outside of the air-conditioned hotel, the night was muggy. Isabella drew a pale across her forehead, wiping away the small beads of sweat that had sprung up as soon as she stepped out of the doors. By the point, she knew most of the hotel residents who had already gathered on the square parking lot.

People shuffled around, chatting with the people they were staying with but otherwise mostly quiet; they looked like a herd of cattle, Isabella though--and she was one. Luckily, her car was parked almost right in front of the hotel doors; three spaces down. Putting her palms flat against the hood, she lifted herself onto it. Hooking the heels of her bare feet against the bumper, she settled her elbows on her knees and dropped her chin into her palms. The light from the fire engine was becoming brighter, casting the front of the hotel and the street around them in rotating white and red light. It whined loudly as it came down the street, but she heard the siren turn off as it approached the hotel parking lot and turned in. She watched men bustle out of the engines cab from the corner of her eyes. She paused as a flicker of movement caught her attention.

She wouldn't have noticed the men if one of them hadn't been smoking. She almost laughed as one of the firemen gave the smoking man a long, hard look--and then felt her laughter evaporate as she realized that it might have nothing to do with the cigarette between the man's fingers, but with the colour of those fingers. The smoking man seemed unperturbed, tapping the end of his cigarette and giving the firefighter a broad smile.

The other man scowled as he followed his fellow firefighters into the building. The smoking man turned and said something to his companion, who laughed. Isabella leaned slightly closer, but she couldn't make out what was being said. Instead, she studied the men out of the corner of her eyes. They were both exceedingly attractive, she decided. She couldn't be sure, because one of the men had his back to her; but she could make out a pair of broad shoulders, dark hair cropped close to a pair of handsome ears, and an almost elegant neck. Both men were dark-skinned. The man who was smoking was a few inches shorter than his companion, but still stood well over her own height. He was probably slightly over six feet, she guessed, which made his companion... six-five? Six-six? The other man, who stood with his back to her, had his hands tucked into the pockets of his sweatpants.

Both men were dressed similarly; a dark blue and a dark green tee-shirt respectively, grey Roots sweatpants, and a pair of black running shoes. She caught a small flash as the smoking man turned his head to where the firefighter had gone. A pair of dark-jeweled earrings caught the light from the hotel doorway; blinking almost like the alarm in her room had. He smiled at something that his companion said, revealing a set of broad white teeth.

Isabella cursed under her breath, directing her attention away from the men and back through the hotel doors. She could see a couple of people milling about in the hotel lobby. A moment later, the building alarm turned off; another false call. She glanced back at the men briefly, but stopped her eyes when she realized that the smoking man was staring at her. She pretended not to notice, turning her head to the sidewalk in front of her car bumper. She picked at one of her nails mindlessly--a habit that she had been trying to beak for years.

Of course these two had appeared the night before she was set to move to the venue; they couldn't have shown up a couple nights earlier, when the fire alarm had sent her to the bar down the street. She supposed she could still introduce herself. She wasn't technically allowed to bring guests to the venue grounds, but she was the best sound-technician in Spokane County; well, maybe not the best, she admitted, but she was good and replacing her at last minute would not only be expensive, but impractical. She turned over the thought for a minute, and then dismissed it.

It would be fun, but it wasn't something that she needed in her life. She could feel the man's eyes on her as she lifted herself off the car hood. Putting her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants, she arched her back and stretched slightly. It was a natural gesture, for somebody who had been sitting as she had been for the past ten minutes--and if the fabric of her sweatpants pulled against the cheeks of her bum and gave the man a decent indication of what the ass beneath it looked like... well, it was what it was.

Walking to the hotel doors, Isabella pulled them open and stepped into the brightly-lit lobby. She could see the last of the firefighters coming down the stairs--a pair of young men wearing what looked like about fifty pounds of equipment. Their hard-brimmed yellow hats were pulled down over two pairs of tired-looking eyes. She gave the men a nod as she walked passed them, and one of them nodded back respectfully. She ignored the way that his eyes lingered on her shoulder as she went passed them and began up the stairs. Embarrassingly, by the time she reached the top of the third flight, she was breathing slightly harder.

Time to hit the gym again, she shook her head at herself--Jesus.

Making her way to her hotel room door, she realized that she hadn't locked it on her way out. It didn't really matter; she had a soundboard that would have been worth a fair bit--if somebody could find a place to pawn such a thing. They were rarely accepted. Usually stolen, and hard to flip for their price. An acoustic guitar stood in a hard leather case in the corner, and there was her clothes in the closet. The travel-bag she had stuffed into the top was Michel Kors, which she supposed was worth a fair bit--she had gotten it from an ex-boyfriend about five years previously. Flipping the light switch, she grabbed a beer from the fridge and cracked the cap. It pinged quietly as she tossed it into the pile of empties she kept in the small blue-bin beside the counter. Holding her beer bottle carefully in one hand, she fell onto the couch and snatched the television remote off the end table. The television clicked quietly as it came on, throwing moving fluorescent light over the room; another House of Cards re-run. She didn't care, settling back against the couch. It was firm below her; she enjoyed that--there was nothing worse than a couch that you felt like you were sinking into. Isabella blinked in the light of the television. She could feel the exhaustion in her body, but her mind was completely awake. It was a blessing and a curse. She could go two days without sleeping, but once she was awake... she was awake. She knew it would be another two hours before she could get back to sleep, if her body decided to let her.

Finishing her beer inside the space of two minutes, she lifted herself off the couch and went to the fridge to get another, tossing her empty bottle into the blue bin on her way by. She cursed quietly as the open door of the fridge revealed nothing behind it. Liquor store--she glanced at the electronic clock on the microwave, 3:44am--closed. Travel bags? She thought about it. Empty. She shrugged, tugging the zipper of her sweater down slightly so that a small amount of her breast was exposed beneath the grey fabric. Couldn't hurt. Pulling open the door to her room, she went to the next one and knocked quietly. Please have bar bottles, please have bar bottles...

As the door swung open, Isabella opened her mouth to explain what she was doing there--and swallowed her words. It was the taller man. She had been right, on her first quick examination; the features of his face matched his body. They were broad. A wide nose stood out over a pair of proud lips; turned slightly upward in a quizzical smile. His eyes were a brown so deep as to be indiscernible from black, and a pair of long eyebrows pulled down over them--not angrily, but questioningly.

"Can I help you?"

"Hey, sorry--I didn't know..." Isabella was sudden conscious that the tops of her breasts were not just visible in her tight sports bra, but framed perfectly by the incline of her sweater and the dangling strings of its hood. It had been the effect she wanted, but she hadn't know at the time exactly who she was going to be turning that effect on. "I, uh... Sorry, I can't sleep unless I drink, and I work in like five hours. Any chance I can raid your mini-bar?" She pulled a thumb at her hotel door, "I've got cash."

The man chuckled; it was a good-natured sound from deep inside of his chest. Strangely, Isabella thought, his eyes stayed fixed firmly on her face--they didn't wander an inch downward to her chest. She was grateful for it, and crushed the part of herself that was just a little bit disappointed. Disappointed, come on girl. It dawned on her suddenly that the man might be gay. It made sense, she supposed--he and the other man certainly seemed as if they were a couple. They hadn't done anything outwardly to make her think so, except that they were clearly very comfortable around one another and were sharing a hotel room. He didn't look at my boobs, so he must be gay--she nearly rolled her eyes at herself. She could hear how conceited it was, but she couldn't help thinking it anyways.

"Don't worry about cash," the man opened his door slightly wider, "come on in--" he glanced at her and saw her obvious hesitation, chuckling again, "--right. Or not. Good call."

"It's not..." she began, but he waved a large hand in the open space of the doorway.

"No, no. I'd have my daughter's head off her shoulder if she stepped into a strange man's hotel room. Wait right there, I'll grab them."

Daughters.

The man might have a year or two on her, which made him... perhaps twenty-eight. Thirty tops. She supposed it made sense, but it still took her aback slightly to hear. Probably not gay, then. They could have adopted. What's wrong with you tonight? She shook her head at herself. She could hear the man walking through the room; the door swung closed very slowly behind him, and she caught it with the side of her bare foot. Isabella had never had any interest in children, herself. She liked them, but couldn't possibly imagine having one of her own--shit, she still thought of herself as a child most days. Besides that, she spent most of her time travelling around the country from one gig to another. Other people did it, she knew, but she just couldn't bring herself to consider it seriously. She was interrupted from her thoughts by the sound of the man's voice speaking on the other side of the mostly-closed door.

"Car hood girl," she heard, and immediately began listening more closely while pretending to be casual. The other man said something that she could not hear, and the man she had been speaking to laughed. He had a good laugh, she thought--it was deep and thoroughly natural.

A moment later, the hotel door pulled away from the side of her foot and swung open once more. The man reappeared, carrying a handful of travel-sized plastic bottles. Two were rye, two were bourbon, and one was vodka. He held them one-handed, offering them to her. Isabella took them from his hands, nodding at her hotel door.

"You sure I can't pay you for these? They're like five bucks apiece."

"Don't worry about it," he waved away her offer, and then hesitated, "You headed to the concert?"

"What makes you ask that?" Isabella asked, surprised.

He nodded to her sweater, "Headlining. Thought maybe we'd see you there."

"I'll be there," Isabella tucked the bottles into the bottom pocket of her sweater, "probably won't see me though. I'm running the sound systems, so I'll be behind the curtains most of the day."

"Oh," the man raised his eyebrows and pressed his lips together, nodding a couple of times, "that's impressive. Damn, good on ya. Anyways," he raised a hand. Isabella offered her own and he shook it--his grip was obviously gentled, but she could feel the strength of his fingers as his hand clasped around hers. He released it almost immediately, making to close the door as he stepped back, "You have a good night."

"Thanks, and--" she indicated the bottles in her sweater pocket, "thanks again. You guys have a good night too."

"Will do."

The door clicked closed, and Isabella let out a deep breath--barely catching herself in time to make it silent. Turning back to her own room, she pulled out one of the miniature bourbons and cracked the cap as she pushed her hotel room door closed behind her. She put her finger on the lock, and then lowered her hand slowly--she didn't quite go so far as to consider why she left it unlocked. Instead, she raised the tiny opening of the bottle to her lips and drank it in a single long swallow. She tossed it into the blue bin, cracking the cap on a second as she dropped onto her couch. The television buzzed inaudibly in the background, beneath the actors' voices. Blinking sleepily, Isabella raised the small bottle and tapped it against the wall behind the back of the couch in a tiny gesture of cheers.

Isabella stood behind the soundstage. She had a stage plot folded on white paper in the back pocket of her shorts; the master plot was on top, but there were a dozen other pages--each one filled with detailed diagrams in clean black lines and covered in notes in her own cramped, slightly sharp handwriting. The stage was just about ready. Lighting technicians hung in rigging above her head, shifting the black fabric of the stage curtain one was or another along the sliding metal pole as they worked.

Overhead, the sun beat down relentlessly. It promised to be a hot weekend. There wasn't a cloud in sight, and the sky was open and blue. Sunlight did not seem to fall so much as it lay like a blanket over the grass-stripped, slightly rolling ground; the only flat space had been artificially cleared for the three-tiered stage. It was one of four, taking up close to a mile of space. Already the small dirt roads in front and behind her were bustling with life. A few people had already turned up, and set up a temporary make-shift camp in the parking area. She could hear music blaring from that direction. The people who worked around her were vendors--food workers from Boston Pizza, Tomato Street, Jack in the Box, two different stalls getting ready to serve A&W, and a guy who just called himself Taco John. She had been chatting with him earlier, and he had made her laugh with a well-placed and strangely knowledgeable joke about voice coils. Behind the food vendors were beer tents, security checks, ATM pop-ups and portable outhouses. Isabella looked around, smiling faintly--this was what she loved; the few hours of peace before a concert, where everything was chaos and yet strangely peaceful. Six months of effort coming together. In all her time doing this, something disastrous always happened--and yet it always turned out seamlessly.

Tucking her hands into her pockets, she went through her checklist for opening. There were two other people doing the same thing, but she never let anybody else have the final eye; she didn't think of herself at untrusting, or as a control-freak, she was just... careful. Tucking her hands into her front pockets, she made her way around the stage. She didn't need to look at the sheet of paper. She mentally checked things off as she saw them--cables taped, center stage spiked, rigging secured, pyrotechnics safety equipment present, speakers connected, extra equipment stored--mics, cords, headpieces, earplugs, all accounted for. She kept going down the last, circling the stage three times. All in all, it took her about an hour and a half. At the end, she was left nodded to herself.

No curse, she reached out and tapped two knuckles on the flat wooden face of the stage, fucking nailed it.

She heard somebody laugh on their way by her, and she turned toward the figure. It was a young woman of about twenty, her sandy blonde hair pulled back in a rough ponytail. Isabella searched for the woman's' name for a moment--Sandra! She was one of the people who worked under Isabella; she had come with her from Boots and Hearts in southern Ontario, and she was awesome. She allowed her smile to include the young woman, who returned it.

"Feels good, doesn't it?" Sandra asked, a loop of extension cords wrapped around her bare arms, "This place suits you, you know."

"Does it?" Isabella's smile widened slightly.

"Yeah. Gotta run!" Sandra lifted the wrapped cords slightly in both hands, "Stage two's a bitch."

"John's problem," Isabella called as the girl walked away, bringing a trailing laugh.

Making her way through the park grounds toward her vehicle, parked on the far side of the parking lot in the Staff Parking area, she caught sight of herself in the side of an enormous, stainless steel beer fridge. It sat, fully stocked, beneath a Bud Light tent. At first, she thought that it was a warping of the reflection--like a mirror seen at a strange angle.

This place suits you. The words spoke in the back of her head and she slowed her step, and then paused. She studied the reflection that stared back at her.

Sometimes it still took her aback that the woman who stared out of the mirror was skinny; not skin and bones skinny, but skinny in the way of lithe, youthful fitness. Four years previously, she had been nearly two hundred pounds. Her bare skin still showed a number of faint, pale stretch-marks along the creases; around where her arms met her shoulders, along the top of her hips, at the small indents around her breasts. She didn't mind them in the slightest--in fact, she was proud of them. She turned one way and then the other, letting the short length of her straight-cut dark hair swing first over one shoulder and then the other.