The fire engines and a pounding on his door woke Doc Granith.

He'd come back to his attic room in the house right after Gaga's service for Simone, skipping the reception afterward since he didn't have a date and wasn't feeling that good. Had taken a couple of Nyquil along with a stiff nightcap and had passed out on the sofa, still in his clothes.

He rolled his head now and could see that the cramped room was starting to fill with smoke.

More pounding on the door. He'd locked it out of habit, house customers sometimes liking to prowl and occasionally take stuff (not that he had that much to take).

He pushed himself up off the sofa, went over and unlocked the door, and when he opened it there was Patty, the new girl, panic all over her face.

"We gotta get out," she said. "The stairs are blocked."

"What are you talking about?"

"The fire for crissake. Go look."

Doc stepped out onto the attic landing and looked down the stairs.

Flames, big and orange and working fast, were down there below the third and second floor landings, cutting off the lower half of the circular stairway. Smoke was billowing up thick and hot toward him and Patty. The whole lower part of the house must be on fire. 

One of the other girls and a man who was naked were backing up the stairway toward them (the girl and Patty part of a skeleton crew who'd stayed behind from the service to take care of customers who couldn't be rescheduled). The girl and the man were moving slow, feeling with their feet behind them for the next step up, like the flames had them hypnotized. Then a piece of something big came loose down there, crashed and broke the spell. The two of them spun and ran the rest of the way up the stairs and stood with Doc and Patty.

Doc ducked back into his room and came back out with a raincoat. "Here," he said, and gave it to the man. The girl at least had a little thong and a cutoff T-shirt on.

The outside of the house was brownstone and the foundation was concrete and granite. But most of the interior was wood beams and paneling that were at least a hundred-and-fifty years old. Along with all the old furniture and rugs, the place was a tinderbox. In no time it was going to be one big roaring furnace. It almost was now.

Doc sensed that the firemen, who he could hear outside pulling up in their trucks and yelling, weren't going to be able to get through to them in time. "We have to go back down," he said.

The man in the raincoat stared at him. "Are you nuts?"

"There's a back stairway, but it doesn't come up this high. We can go down it if we use the third floor."

Doc took Patty's hand and pulled her stumbling down the stairs, turned around at the bottom and yelled back up at the couple, "Come on!"

The couple had no choice but to follow them down into the swirling heat. 

On the third floor now, Doc kept hold of Patty's hand and felt his way along the smoke-filled hallway toward the back of the house. He could tell there were already flames behind some of the doors they passed, hoped any girls who'd been in there had gotten out.

If they had, they were luckier than his group.

Because when he got Patty to the back stairwell and started down with her, he had to pull her back when he saw tongues of flame licking up from the landing below. The fire had beaten them here, had raced through the bottom two floors to cut them off again.

The man in the raincoat and the girl in her thong had started down behind them. Now with flames coming from where they were going, they all had to turn around and quickstep back up. 

Where now?

Doc tried to keep everyone steady while he thought what to do. Was this going to be the finale? End of story in a Hell's Kitchen whorehouse?

Actually that didn't have a bad ring to it.

They were back in the hallway now, raincoat man and the girl jogging in place on tip-toes, the floor under their bare feet too hot to stand still on.

Doc felt it, too, the hotness stirring some creative thinking – like knotting some sheets together and having everyone shinny down them, hoping the material didn't catch fire before the last person got to the ground. He was about to start looking for some linens when he heard a big smash, a bursting of glass behind them. He turned around and could see a light sweeping back and forth through the smoky darkness. A window down at the other end of the hallway had been shattered. A fireman had come through it – had come up a ladder they'd extended outside – and was shining his flashlight around.

Doc yelled, "Over here!"

The light swept onto him and the others, and the fireman yelled back, "Come to the light! Hurry up!" And then yelled, "Anyone need help?"

"No, we're OK," Doc called.

He grabbed Patty and led her and the other girl and raincoat back down the hallway, the four of them breaking into a run.

But then something he'd been carrying around in his head suddenly wanted attention. When he got to the stairway going up to the attic, with the stairs on the floors below him now completely in flames, that something got urgent – started pulling at him to go back up to his room. 

He stopped and pushed Patty toward the fireman's light. "Go. I'll be right there."

He turned and started quick up the stairs.

Patty yelled, "What're you doing?"

"Just go!"

The other girl grabbed Patty and pulled her away.

Doc could hear the fireman shout behind him when he was halfway up, "Where the hell's he going?"

Whatever Patty answered was lost in the blare of more sirens arriving and the roar of flames coming closer.

Doc pushed through his door and ran over to the kitchenette, reached into the fridge and grabbed the plastic bag out of the freezer.

The fetus.

He didn't waste time getting back out the door.

But even so, it was too late.

He stood on the landing and held onto the banister and watched the stairs below him – his one escape route – collapse in an explosion of flame. There was nothing below him now but a three-story cauldron of fire.

He ducked back into his room, hoping the others had made it out. Went over to the fridge and opened the freezer and put the fetus back in.

He stood for a moment, feeling the floor getting hotter and hotter through the soles of his shoes, wishing there was more space in the freezer. Then he reached to the cupboard and took out a bottle, pulled the cork and poured a healthy portion of the contents down his throat. 

                                                #          #          #

The house was in full flame when I got there, me breathing hard after running all-out from Ninth. Fire trucks and cop cars jammed the street, hoses on the pavement snaking every which-way, neighbors crowded behind yellow tape the cops had already put up. Everyone was looking up at the house, watching three people – two of Ms. McG's girls and a barefoot guy in a raincoat – backing down a fire ladder propped under a third-story window. They'd made their exit just before flames started pouring out of where they'd been. 

Two firemen at the bottom helped them off the ladder. Another one took off his canvas coat and put it around the girl who hardly had any clothes on. The raincoat guy ducked under the yellow tape and disappeared through the crowd into the night. The girl who did have clothes on I recognized as Patty, the new girl, who I called to from the other side of the tape.

She saw me and ran over. 

"What happened?" I said. "You OK?"

"I'm fine," she said, "but Doc's upstairs."

"What?"

"He went back up to his room to get something, but I think the fire cut him off from getting out."

"Shit."

I ducked under the tape and ran over and grabbed one of the firemen and pointed to the fourth floor. "There's a man still up there," I said.

"We got a guy up there, too, and I think we just lost him."

He was looking at that third story window that had flames shooting out. The two firemen who'd helped Patty off the ladder were climbing up to it now. I knew they'd help Doc if they could, but their priority would be to save one of their own. And besides, the window in Doc's room faced the river, which meant he was around the other side of the house, that side looking like it would be a problem getting equipment to the way the house was situated. 

I glanced down the alley toward the steps that went down to my place and could see it was a burnout. All kinds of flaming shit was falling out of the house and piling up in the dugout outside my door. Never mind the torching that had to be going on inside.

Cops yelled at me when I ran around to the side of the house where that window of Doc's was. Same thing here – flames coming out of all the busted windows, me covering my head with my hands so sparks wouldn't set my hair on fire. I looked up at the fourth floor and for the moment those windows seemed OK, the fire not getting to the attic yet. But I knew that could change any second.

And then I saw Doc.

He'd opened his window and was standing there with a bottle, ninety-proof I was sure.

"Doc!" I yelled. He didn't hear me. I cupped my hands and yelled loud as I could.

Either he finally heard me or my waving arms caught his attention. Anyway, he looked down and I could tell he saw me.

And now what? What was I going to tell him to do? The man was four stories up.

At least he knew I was here.

I looked all around me, taking everything in and trying to come up with a plan. And now here came the cops, to pull me back behind the tape.

But my eye had caught something in back of the house and the plan hatched.

I turned and ran to the building next door, an old four-story apartment conversion, yelling some mumbo-jumbo over my shoulder to the cops. 

I ran up to the door and hit all the buzzers, but of course everyone was out watching the fire. I kept on buzzing. And then, piece of luck, a straggler came out, an old woman whose dog I walked sometimes. I caught the door before it closed and ran up the three flights of stairs. 

Got to the roof door and set off the alarm when I pushed through and ran outside, ran over to the coaming and looked across at the burning house. I saw right away that this building could go up too, it was that close. Hoses do your number.

I could see Doc was still there, at the window that had a ledge running underneath it, that the flames were close to but hadn't reached yet. He took another hit from the bottle.

"Doc!" I called again.

He lowered the bottle and looked across, me hoping he could make me out in the dark. "What're you doing?" he called, me barely able to hear him. The echo between the two buildings from the roar of the flames was like a hurricane.  

I yelled back and pointed. "I need for you to step out on that ledge."

The ledge ran from the front of the house all the way to the back. 

My hope was that he was just buzzed enough to do what I had in mind, but not so drunk he'd fall off the ledge before he got to where I wanted.

But either he didn't hear me or thought I'd lost it. He didn't move. I was going to have to do a demo.

"OK," I yelled, "watch me."

I made sure his eyes were following me (the flames reflecting off me helped) as I made my way across the tar roof to the back of the building. I looked over the coaming and down at the huge maple tree that grew in the house's back yard – it being so big that a good part of it came almost to this building.

Some of the leaves closest to the house were smoking from the fire.

Don't think, just do it.

I made sure Doc was still watching, then swung my legs over the coaming and sat on the edge, feet dangling. I judged that the top branches of the tree – full dense branches with lots of leaves, cushioning leaves I hoped – were about ten feet out and the same distance down. But that was the top. What about below that?

Just go.

I launched myself, pushing off with my feet against the building and spreading my arms as wide as I could, twisting in the air so I'd land on my back when I hit the leaves.

And hit them I did.

And kept going.

Went probably another eight or ten feet through all kinds of snapping and cracking, poking and scraping, until the leaves and branches slowed me enough that I could grab hold of a decent-size branch and stop myself (all this happening in about two seconds).

I was hurting, had whacked my head and knew I had cuts. But I'd made it.

Hoped I'd set a good example for Doc.

I took better hold of that branch and got a foothold and tried to look up through all the tree stuff to see how he was doing. It was dark and unsteady in where I was now, flames flickering behind the leaves and making weird patterns.

"Doc?" Trying to let him know I was at least alive.

But he didn't answer. Or if he did it was lost in the fire roar and more sirens.

I pulled myself back up a couple feet higher to see if I could get a better look. Squinted up there and could see that flames had reached the attic.

Not good.

And then suddenly the man himself came crashing down on me, knocked me loose from my perch and the two of us went tumbling down through the branches ass over ass.  

(To be continued...)