The Museum of Extraordinary Things

MAY 1911

THE STABLE was empty, although several of the liveryman’s pigeons managed to find their way in through gaps in the wooden siding to take shelter for the night. Eddie had taken to spending time in this gloomy place with both Mitts and North, breathing in the scent of hay, remembering how he had come here as a boy and slept beside the horses. After one tiff, when Mitts approached the wolf in an overly friendly fashion, the two got on well enough, if ignoring one another meant there was an uneasy peace. Eddie’s hand was still wrapped, but the pain had eased. He supposed the bones were mending. His heart, however, was not in a similar condition, precisely the problem with having such an organ, for it caused pangs of desire and regret, reminding an individual that he was indeed human, prone to human sorrows and desires.

Eddie had reverted to his old insomniac’s habits, avoiding sleep for as long as possible, existing on a diet of coffee and gin. When he did close his eyes, whether dozing in a chair or resting his head against the stable wall, Coralie came to him in his dreams. She was in the river, in his bed, out of reach and leaving him in a fevered and dejected state. He’d memorized several lines from the note she’d written him. I do not love you and cannot pretend to. I am promised to a man in France, a family friend, and it is to him I now go. Please do not follow me. Forget me if you can.

He wished to do exactly that, but had discovered it wasn’t possible. He’d taken to drinking with serious intent, not for pleasure but for sheer inebriation. He missed the presence of the liveryman, and now held a deeper understanding of why a person might turn to opium, as he, himself, had embraced gin, for it was gin alone that allowed him a deep, black brand of sleep. Eddie tried not to dwell on the fact that he would soon be homeless. In a matter of days, the stable would be rented out to a tenant who had put in an offer to let the entire building. The new renter was an ironmonger who wished to set up a furnace in the alleyway and use Moses Levy’s studio for storage. Eddie was to vacate by the first of June. It was already the end of May, and deciding where to go next loomed as an impossible task, for it was difficult enough to find loft space possessing good light, all the more challenging given his financial situation and the presence of two large canines, one of which was indistinguishable in form and temperament from a wolf. When Eddie was drinking heavily enough, he had half a mind to move onto Beck’s property and build himself a shack. There he would take the hermit’s place, equally embittered and alone, avoiding humankind, but close to the river, comforted by that proximity. Then he thought better of the notion, for what the old man had predicted would surely come true before very long. The woods would disappear, replaced by concrete and bricks. There would be no room for wild creatures, just as there’d be no room for men who wished to escape the concerns of city life.

Eddie soon unwrapped his hand from its splint. It had healed well enough in his opinion; he didn’t need a doctor to tell him so. He was mulling over where he might go, perhaps to Queens County or even out to the potato farms of Long Island, when Beck’s wolf-dog began to growl, the hair rising along his back. Mitts also fixed his gaze on the back door that opened into the alley. Eddie grabbed a pitchfork from a stall and told the ever-friendly Mitts to stay, while North accompanied him. A light rain was falling when he opened the door and stepped onto the pavement that led to the dirt alleyway. There was the stench of outhouses and of rotting garbage. North’s growl deepened as they walked along, and although Eddie spied nothing beyond the dark, the wolf-dog suddenly lunged forward. A man’s deep resonant voice rang out. “Hold him back, please! I beg you!”

Eddie grabbed North, pulling him off his quarry. The night was dark, starry, but in this narrow alleyway there was only a small slice of sky to be seen. As summer approached, a dense heat collected between buildings so that every inch was a tinderbox. Perhaps it was that heat, or perhaps it was the tension of a possible confrontation, that caused Eddie to break into a sweat. By now, his eyes had adjusted well enough to spy the hazy figure of a man. The stranger’s head was bowed as he examined a rip North’s sharp teeth had torn in the fine woolen cape he wore. “Please understand, I’m here for your benefit,” the man said without gazing up. “I don’t wish to frighten you.”

Eddie laughed. He had the pitchfork as his weapon and the hermit’s fierce companion beside him. “And how would you do that?”

The fellow stepped forward and North lunged again. Eddie kept his grip on the wolf-dog’s collar and held fast, all the while mesmerized by what he saw. Before him was a man entirely covered by hair, growing down his face so that his features were difficult to discern. He had a feral, wild countenance, yet he wore a well-tailored suit under his fine woolen cape.

“I’m a man, though you might think otherwise,” the stranger announced, obviously accustomed to a puzzled, often hostile response to his presence.

Eddie was bewildered. He gazed at the individual in the alleyway with unabashed curiosity. Though functioning through the haze of drink, he was still a photographer to the core, and he cursed himself for not having his camera at the ready so that he might record this visitation. “The world is more varied and wondrous than most men understand,” Eddie said to his visitor. “No one is what he seems.”

“I’d agree with that. And in that same vein, I’d say that beast is no dog.” The stranger eyed North cautiously. “Dogs usually prefer me to ordinary men.” Dogs, it was true, often had an uncanny sense of what a person was made of, while wild creatures did not take the time to discern such distinctions, for it was equally true that men mattered little in their world. Yet, it seemed that North recognized the stranger as an equal of a sort, for after he had assumed the stance of the dominant of the two, he seemed more accepting of the hairy man. The stranger appeared relieved. “We may need a wolf where we’re going.”

Eddie laughed at the notion. “Sir, it’s late in the evening and I plan on going nowhere.”

The stranger, however, seemed convinced otherwise. He had a rented carriage waiting on Tenth Avenue. He introduced himself as Raymond Morris, a resident of Brooklyn and a concerned friend of Coralie’s.

Upon hearing his beloved’s name, Eddie felt instantly sobered. “You’d best not include me in Miss Sardie’s concerns. She wrote me a note plainly stating she never wished to see me again.”

“Sir, you are mistaken. Coralie has not the ability to compose a note. She was never taught to write.”

Eddie was startled to hear this, for Coralie had spoken of her love of reading. “Say what you will, but I received her note,” he protested. Indeed he had the sheet of paper in the drawer of his bedside table, though he’d thought a hundred times of burning it.

“You received what the Professor wished you to have. The museum is closed and every employee has been let go. He has her trapped, for that is the only way he can keep her. The best course of action is for you to come with me, as I would never get a foot in that house. We may do well to let the wolf lead the way.”

Mr. Morris slipped on his hood, then gestured for Eddie to follow. Like a dreamer who asks not for reason, needing only a single mission to move him forward in his dream, Eddie accompanied his new companion to the street. North, for his part, was wary, but willing to follow the stranger.

The driver of the waiting hansom seemed a nervous man. He had on a cap and a formal suit, for he worked full-time for a wealthy patron, and took odd jobs in his off hours. He’d known Mr. Morris for some time and had become used to his appearance, but he didn’t care for the way the horse startled when it picked up North’s scent. “You didn’t say nothing about a wolf, Ray,” he said to Mr. Morris.

Mr. Morris handed over an extra ten dollars, an enormous amount considering the streetcar crosstown was a dime, but one had to take into account the distance to Coney Island, the secrecy of their journey, and the wolflike creature now leaping into the rear of the carriage. In his haste, Eddie had left the stable door ajar, and Mitts, who could never tolerate being left behind, managed to push his way out. The pit bull galumphed his way to the waiting carriage and made a beeline for the driver, cheerfully ingratiating himself, licking the driver’s hand and wagging his stump of a tail. Perhaps it was this genial, merry behavior that allowed them to gain their transit to Brooklyn that night, for the driver said he’d had a dog like Mitts in his youth and he firmly announced there was no finer or braver companion.

It was late when they reached their destination, after one in the morning. The sky was a bowl of stars in Kings County. The streets of Coney Island were deserted, but as the carriage passed by Dreamland they could see brilliant banks of lights and a boisterous crush of carpenters and workmen. A fiendish amount of last-minute construction was at hand, with hundreds of employees and day workers doing their best to finish before morning, when the park would open its gates for the season, with thousands arriving by excursion steamboat and ferry and railroad. In only hours, the first customers would be invited into the new and improved playground that had cost a true fortune to refashion. Great care had been taken to assure it would outshine all other entertainments, not simply on Coney Island but in the world.

Dreamland was illuminated by thousands of lightbulbs; the scene was so bright Eddie needed to blink to see within the gates as they passed by. He could spy the outlines of the grand entertainment Hell Gate, with its leering forty-foot-tall demons holding court at the entranceway to the ride’s covered tunnel. Every light in the park had been turned on for the workers, but the strain was too much. All at once, as their carriage approached, there was a short circuit, with many of the bulbs shattering from the burst of energy that surged before everything went black. Mr. Morris’s driver whistled for his horse to increase his pace, for he feared the creature would be spooked by the rising sound of the roars of lions and tigers pacing their cages, all startled and invigorated by the sudden dark.

Inside Hell Gate a team of workers who were mending fissures in the tunnel with hot, sticky tar that would shore up any leaks were suddenly engulfed in utter blackness. In the confusion that followed, with men panicking and rushing to escape the falling glass shards of the bulbs, a pail of burning hot tar was kicked over. It flowed much like lava, the black goo sparking with crimson flashes of heat.

“It seems we have good fortune on our side,” Mr. Morris murmured as they passed the chaos in the park. “The dark is good for deeds such as ours.”

Whereas Surf Avenue had only moments ago seemed as vivid as a theater’s stage, there abruptly fell a cover of pitch. If a kidnapping of sorts was what they would attempt, then fate was indeed favoring their actions. The carriage halted on the corner, where the driver was paid another exorbitant fee and told to wait with Mitts, until their return.

The two men drew near the museum, one cloaked, the other still shaking off the haze of his heavy drinking. The wolf followed at their heels. Eddie half-imagined he was still inside a dream. Men did things such as this in dreams: approached a dark house filled with treasure, sank into a sea of true love, traveled with wolves and wonders on a warm night. The air smelled acrid from the tar across the road, and there was a tinge of sulfur to it as well, for inside the tunnel at the Hell Gate a flame had broken out. The workmen quickly scattered away, due to the rising smoke. A rush of air followed them through the tunnel, flinging sparks in every direction, as if the stars themselves had been replaced by embers.

Once in the garden, Eddie and Raymond Morris took shelter beneath the pear tree. There Mr. Morris revealed he had a key to the kitchen door in his possession. “A friend was kind enough to give this to me. She was to meet us here, but perhaps she’s been held up by the ruckus on the street.” He looked over his shoulder, worried, scanning the empty garden. At last he turned back to Eddie. “We have little choice but to go forward without her.”

“Did your friend say where we might find Coralie?” Eddie assumed Morris referred to the red-haired woman he had photographed in the garden, for there was a softening in Mr. Morris’s tone when he spoke of her.

“The cellar. A room you surely remember.”

Eddie nodded. “I remember more than I’d like to.” He still had nightmares of that room and of the box that contained the cold form of Hannah Weiss.

Eddie brought forth the two small keys he kept as a talisman. He hadn’t known why he’d hung on to them, but perhaps it was due to a remnant of the abilities Hochman insisted he possessed. His thoughts were tangled in the puzzle of where fate had led him, to this house on this night. Through the din inside his head, a very real siren sounded. It was two minutes before two in the morning. The usual stillness of the hour had been broken by fire alarms at Dreamland. Sparks from the spilled tar had traveled with astounding speed. Canvas and fabric caught first, then the papier-mâché statues and rides went up, and finally there was a terrible leap of flame to wooden structures and rooftops. Already the firehouse at West Eighth Street, a hundred yards away, and the station at Fifteenth, near Surf Avenue, had sent out horse-drawn carriages, as well as their new hook and ladder trucks. The police had been called in, and scores of men in uniform advanced toward the New Iron Pier, some still pulling on their boots and buttoning their coats as they ran toward the disaster.

On the porch where they stood, Eddie and Mr. Morris could feel Surf Avenue vibrating as the first buildings at Dreamland began to fall. A scream barreled down the avenue, for fire has a voice. Eddie closed his eyes against the flashes of light in the sky. For a moment he was on the outskirts of his village, running through the forest while fire took everything that had been left behind; he was on the sidewalk of Greene Street watching beautiful young girls fall through the air, their hair and clothes aflame, in the woods watching the hermit’s shack burn, embers floating upward like fireflies. He knew the language of fire, and recognized its destroying call. There was little time to waste, for time itself would soon be devoured by the flames that were increasing at a ferocious pace, racing faster than a man could think.

Mr. Morris hurriedly unlocked the back door. It was their good fortune to enter a quiet house. Sardie was nowhere in sight. All the same, North was left behind to guard the entryway as the men hastened to the cellar. The stairs creaked under their tread, and the darkness doubled until Eddie found and lit a lantern. He thought of the moment when he’d stood in the garden of this house and gazed up to see Coralie staring back at him. He wondered if the river had carried him here, and if perhaps he was again the person he’d been before he walked away from his name and his fate.

The workers and the paid performers who lived at Dreamland were already being evacuated, rushing down Neptune Avenue, which was hardly far enough. The Lilliputians had their own fire department, with small fire trucks and hoses. Once the women and children of their community had been evacuated, the men set to work pumping streams of water on the flames that were ready to engulf the baby incubator house. Nurses in the infant house had taken six premature babies from their incubators, making sure to wrap them in damp blankets to protect them from falling sparks. Under cover of the spray of water, they raced away from the park, with each child saved.

All through the neighborhood the cries of the animals could be heard as more than eighty beasts, all of which had been located in cages only yards away from Hell Gate, were rushed into the arena. Ferrari and Bonavita and eight other trainers did their best to keep order, which was all but impossible. Mortal enemies were let in together, bears with antelopes, leopards and hyenas alongside the high-strung Shetland ponies, which had to be blindfolded so they would not panic. Only the beloved elephant, Little Hip, who nightly slept beside his trainer, Captain Andre, now at a party in Manhattan, refused to be moved to the arena, despite a chain and whip.

Flames had spread along Surf Avenue, and the enormity of the disaster was just beginning to be understood by residents and bystanders. The heat was nearly unbearable, the black sky turning bright in fits and starts, with garish shadows falling everywhere. Mr. Morris’s hired driver had taken off the moment he spied the inferno. He dared not tarry, for the rush of firemen and policemen would soon enough cordon off the area and the officials might decide to appropriate his horse and carriage to cart away survivors. The driver, who felt the need to save his own skin, apologized to the pit bull as he let Mitts out to fend for himself, certain that the stalwart nature of the breed would help the dog to survive.

The dog moved through the frantic crowds, making his way to the yard of the museum. In a desperate search for his master, Mitts managed to push open the back door. He quickly made a mess of things in the kitchen, leaping atop the table so that pots and pans scattered across the floor. Upon hearing Eddie’s voice echo from the cellar, Mitts raced down the stairs, whimpering and panting, at last settling uneasily when he spied Eddie, now working feverishly on the locks.

The heat being thrown off by the fire could be felt even in the cellar, and the effects were dizzying. Hard to think, hard to breathe. In a dream you must go forward, Eddie told himself, otherwise the dreamworld will disappear with you still inside of it. Paint was melting off the walls and the knob on the workshop door was hot to the touch. Eddie groaned as he fiddled with the brass lock, finally unclasping it. He immediately set to work on the lock fashioned out of iron.

“We have time to get her out,” Mr. Morris said through the billows of smoke that were filling up the corridor.

Eddie continued on, though blisters were rising on his fingers. Mitts was huddled beside his master. When the dog heard footfalls in the kitchen above them, his cutoff nubs of ears pricked forward as he began to growl.

Mr. Morris cocked his head, upset, certain that Sardie had found them out. Eddie paused for a moment, and they steeled themselves for a confrontation, but no one came down the cellar stairs. Instead, the back door opened, then clattered shut as the footsteps withdrew. Eddie felt himself pulled back into real life, for this was no dream. His hands were sweating, but he managed to open the second lock, and at last threw open the door. A rush of dust, and heat, and darkness greeted him and then Coralie was with him, the scent of sulfur in her hair. She’d heard the cries of the wild beasts and the shouts of men. She’d dampened a cloth and tamped out any stray sparks that flew between the boards set across the windows. When clouds of smoke began filtering through the cracks in the stone foundation, she’d believed her life was about to end. She’d knelt on the dirt floor and said good-bye to the beautiful world. She’d held in her mind a vision of all she would miss: Brooklyn, the tortoise in its sandy enclosure, spring, the pear tree in the yard, Maureen’s steady advice, the man who stood beside her now.

The fire alarms continued to ring so loudly that Coralie could hardly hear Eddie’s words as he embraced her. She thought he said The world is ours, and she believed him, though it was tumbling down around them. By now the Dreamland tower had been set ablaze and could be seen for more than fifteen miles. Debris was picked up by the wind; all manner of burning belongings were flung into the air, only to set fire to other entertainments. Fire Chief Kenlon had ordered a double-nine alarm, a desperate plea that called upon all thirty-three fire departments in Kings County. Fireboats and tugboats approached from Gravesend Bay, using seawater to hose down the piers in an attempt to stop the fire from destroying the entire length of Coney Island. Huge crowds had begun to gather, but soon they were stopped a mile away from the sight. Anyone who passed the police stop point was entering into hell’s gate itself—no ride, no trick, no loop-de-loop, but the scarlet portal of hell, with all its fire and agony.

To Coralie, being alive seemed a wondrous trick of fate, or perhaps it was a true miracle at last. She felt the least she could do was act on behalf of the creatures that had depended upon her. She thanked Mr. Morris for his kindness and his care, and told him to hurry and find Maureen, then began toward the exhibition hall. Eddie followed, Mitts at his heels, as he urged Coralie to come away. But she had already begun unclasping the doors of the birdcages, letting loose hummingbirds and cockatiels, along with a stray blackbird the Professor touted as Poe’s pet raven when it was nothing more than a fledging that had fallen from its nest. When Coralie threw open the windows, smoke drifted inside, but the birds were able to make their escape. She turned then to glass containers of monarch butterflies, spotted beetles, and blue dragonflies, releasing them all in a swirl of color. At last she went to the tortoise’s pen, and sat there weeping. This being that looked so monstrous to some had been a dear friend to her, defined by its patience and silence.

Eddie came to crouch beside her, concerned. “We can’t save him.”

“I can’t leave him behind.”

Eddie realized it simply was not in her nature to abandon even the lowliest creature. He felt overtaken by his love for her. Love like this wasn’t what he’d planned or wanted or expected, surely it was indeed a trap, for even when you tried to run away, it followed you through the grass and lay down beside you, it overtook common sense and willpower. Though the fire was approaching, Eddie did as Coralie wished. He quickly struck down the low wooden wall of the flimsy pen with a few well-aimed kicks, then collected one of the velvet curtains at the doorway so they could push the tortoise onto it. He dragged the tortoise into the kitchen, with Coralie then making sure to hold the old beast steady as Eddie hauled it onto the porch, then hurriedly down the stairs. Already, the hedges were burning, the leaves turning to soot. The tortoise’s shell clattered on the wood, the thud resounding so loudly Coralie feared they might mortally damage the very creature they intended to save. There was a last loud thump and the tortoise was free. It had been a hundred years since this had been so, and the poor thing seemed stunned, pulling in its limbs and head instinctively.

By now the air was billowing with smoke. Mr. Morris had searched the avenue for Maureen and had returned, having failed to discover her. He was beside himself with worry. “She should have been here hours ago. She’s never late or thoughtless, especially when it comes to Cora.”

It was then they spied her on the roof. The vision seemed like a dream, as all the night had been. In fact, Maureen had arrived too early, for she abhorred lateness, and the Professor had discovered her in the garden before Mr. Morris’s rented carriage arrived. He’d grabbed her so that he might berate her, pulling her into the house to question her, demanding to know if she’d stolen the keys to his workshop and assisted the liveryman in his thievery. When flames broke out, he insisted she help him douse the roof with water. He did this every summer when lightning crossed the sky. Then and now his main concern was to ensure that all of his treasures would escape the fire. He was on the roof, at work with a hose that had been connected to the old well, shouting at Maureen, who’d been forced to fill buckets and pour them out inches away from the flames.

“He’s going to finish the job,” Mr. Morris said. “He’ll have her burn to death.”

Morris dashed inside, maddened, making his way upstairs so that he might gain access to the roof. He stepped out the window, as he had on the day he left his home, only on that occasion there was pouring rain and now the sky was pouring fire. Maureen went to him as soon as she saw him, forgetting that she was afraid of heights, and of fire, and of the Professor. She followed him through the window and then, at the last moment, thought to close and latch it.

In the kitchen, Maureen and Coralie embraced.

“I do not wish to leave you,” Maureen told her charge, though Mr. Morris insisted they must do so immediately. She was streaked with soot, and her clothes were drenched. She clung to Coralie before stepping away. “But what we wish we cannot always have.”

Coralie watched her dear friends go. They disappeared into the garden, then onto the avenue, where they would most likely seem like ordinary people, compared to what now roamed the streets. It was three in the morning, and there was a sudden shooting blaze above Dreamland. The tower that had burned for half an hour was now completely in flames. It crashed and hung on cables just above the animal arena. The keepers had no choice but to shoot as the animals attacked each other or leapt over the fences. In the yard Coralie and Eddie could hear screaming on the wind, and the horrible death song of Little Hip, whose keeper had returned to see his elephant burning alive. Dreamland was no longer an entertainment, and Brooklyn was no longer Kings County, but a wild country where the beasts ran down Surf Avenue.

The wind had shifted and the fire moved inland. In a matter of minutes sheets of it raced along the streets. The crowds on Surf Avenue panicked and ran, trampling one another, when a creature all in flames leapt through the Dreamland entrance. It was Black Prince they saw, the beloved lion, who raced through the crowd and across the street into the entrance of an entertainment called Rocky Road to Dublin, a scenic railroad ride to an outdoor pinnacle. The crowd backed away in terror, more so when the police began to fire at the lion despite the mass of human life. The creature climbed the ride until he reached the top and stood there in flames. It was his trainer, Bonavita, who had raised him as a cub and was more devoted to Black Prince than to his wife, who gave the order to shoot him. It took twenty-four bullets before he fell, and it was said the police were so terrified of him they split his head open with an ax to make sure he didn’t somehow spring back to life. The crowd attacked the poor dead beast, vying for his tail and mane and teeth as souvenirs of this terrible night.

Sparks had been flung upon the roof of the Museum of Extraordinary Things, and the flames that raced along the eaves were impossible to douse. It was the only building on the north side of Surf Avenue to catch fire. Sardie had no choice but to give up his mission. He dropped the hose, which slithered across the roof and fell into the yard, water bursting upward in a rush, dousing the old pear tree. He went to the window, but the latch was down, and as he rattled it, trying to open it, he spied the wolf on the roof. The Professor had had contact with such creatures before, but only after they had been in the hands of a taxidermist. He had a dozen wolf’s teeth in his collection, bought in Canada for a small sum, which he had attached to the mouths of certain specimens to make them appear more vicious. He’d been the master of creature after creature, but not when they were alive and on an equal footing. He ran from the beast, but there was no escape in the air, and he tumbled from the peak of the roof with no net to catch him, and no one who could reach out and break his fall.

By then, the police began to shoot every animal they saw. Bears and their cubs, horses gone mad, trained birds that could speak in a dozen languages, several tigers, along with a yellow-eyed wolf perched atop the roof of a small museum entirely set aflame, a loyal creature who plunged into the dark garden, lifeless before he landed beside the house.

The tar on the streets was melting and a streetcar burned, letting off oily black clouds. Police went door to door, alerting those who lived nearby to flee. People ran north and east; they climbed into storm cellars and jumped into boats so they might head out to sea. By now the Dreamland Pier was smoldering. The Atlantic had turned dark with cinders and the seaweed washing onto the shore was sparked with embers, giving off the scent of hellfire and salt. Eddie stood in the grass that had already begun to burn. He thought of his mother, and how she had remained a part of him, how he’d carried her with him, just as his father had. He kissed Coralie, believing this to be their good-bye, but she pulled away and said “You know the world is ours,” even though the roof had caught, a line of flames flaring along the gables and the eaves where the Professor had fallen. Eddie wondered if Coralie would suggest they try to make it to the shore, though clearly that was impossible. Every inch between the museum and the beach was burning. By morning little would be standing, with more than four million dollars in property burned, and Dreamland completely destroyed. Johnson’s carousel, the Whirlwind Ride, Taunton’s Bathing Pavilion, Balmer’s Baths, nearly everything along the New Iron Pier would be ashes.

But rather than flee, Coralie pulled Eddie back into the house. Surely she knew it was a death trap, and that every extraordinary thing contained within would burn in a matter of minutes. Still, she insisted. They went through the kitchen, into the parlor, the pit bull following at his master’s heels. There was the cereus plant embellished with two enormous white blooms. This was the plant’s one extraordinary night, but already the flowers were closing, dying so rapidly it was possible for the human eye to see the life sifting out of it. The petals were folding up more and more with every instant, no longer brilliant white, but a pale dove gray.

Coralie led Eddie to the exhibition hall, emptied now of all living creatures. The only things remaining were bones and minerals and the preserved bodies of creatures that would never again be seen: the white alligator, the cat with five legs, the conjoined monkey twins that held each other’s hands. Coralie bid them all good-bye. They were already melting. The heat caused the chemicals inside the glass canisters to rise to a boil and the glass to crack. All at once, there was a wash of clear liquid upon the floor, as there had been in Coralie’s dreams when she was a little girl, when there was so little difference between night and day she expected her dreams and nightmares to greet her at the breakfast table.

They went to the tank where she had been displayed. In her confinement she had always felt a sort of safety, cut off from the outside world of men and their cruelty. Eddie hesitated, confused, possessing the panicked notion that they were entering into their coffin, a place from which there was no escape. He thought of his father at the dock, how his coat floated out around him when he hit the water. They could hear the fire consuming the house with a whoosh of living breath. It swept through the upstairs bedrooms and was racing down the stairs, devouring carpets and beds, wooden banisters and the umber-colored Oriental rug in the Professor’s library. The books caught all at once, the paper flaming into red ash, the leather bindings curling up and flickering into flame. The fire caught the withering cereus plant in its grasp. The twiggy stems caught first, becoming embers in an instant. The fading flowers turned rose-red and soared up to the ceiling before fluttering down to the floor. They carried a fragrant mix of perfume and salt water and cinders.

Coralie dove into the tank, keeping her head above water. “Now,” she told him, for the walls were moving, bending in toward them. Eddie thought he was imagining it, but the plaster was curling up, inching away from the fire. Mitts looked at his master beseechingly, trusting as always. Eddie lifted the dog, dumping him into the tank before splashing in after him. Coralie took his hand, pulling him down, like a mermaid who had captured a sailor, and, like a sailor who desperately wanted that capture, he sank down beside her. She had the breathing tube, which she passed to him, for she herself seemed to have no need for air at all. Perhaps she was more fish than even she had imagined. Eddie gratefully took in air, then grabbed Mitts and pulled the dog to the bottom of the tank, placing the tube in the dog’s mouth.

A sheet of fire passed over them. It was only seconds, but they could feel the burst of heat as the world turned bright and red. If the air they breathed through the tube hadn’t been cooled by murky water, surely they would have burned their lungs. As it was, they huddled together while the water turned black until the roar of the fire moved farther away. Chunks of plaster fell from the charred wooden beams, walls caved in, windows stood alone in empty space. When Eddie climbed from the tank, the half-drowned pit bull under his arm, he found himself standing in a boiling soup, a mixture of spiders and crystals and shards of glass. Luckily he and Coralie had not had time to remove their shoes.

They found the wolf, shot, sprawled out in the blackened grass. They buried him beneath the pear tree, for it was the one thing in the garden to survive the blaze. Though the earth was hot with cinders, Eddie took a shovel from beside the trash heap. He dug until his hands were burning, and each breath burned as well, until Coralie stopped him, assuring him the grave was deep enough. Eddie set the wolf into the earth, knowing he was not made for the streets men built or for the cities they constructed. The hermit had been correct in his assessment. A city as great as New York grew without regard to men and beasts, and where it resided, certain creatures were no longer welcome. As they left, Coralie spied the tortoise. It had crawled under the porch to dig into the cooler earth, where green weeds were matted down. That was where they left the ancient beast, to enjoy its freedom.

On Surf Avenue people were sitting on the stoops of burned-out buildings and weeping. There were children who had seen wild animals on the rooftops, and women who had lost their husbands, and families who had been burned out of their homes and owned nothing, not a scrap of cloth or a cooking pot. There was a scrim of black clouds above them and the sidewalks were hot beneath their shoes. Coralie and Eddie had nothing but the soaking wet clothes they wore, which dried later in the day as they navigated through the marshes, for the sun was bright by then. Eddie knew the way. He and the liveryman had followed this very route, and had stopped nearby to view the body of Hannah Weiss, a young girl who had been robbed of her life.

Nothing was fair in this beautiful world. There were blackbirds settled on stalks of tall plumy grass, and the sky was blue and gold. Mitts walked soberly beside his master. The dog would never be as free-spirited again, and from that time forward he shied away from water, even when they moved outside the city and could see the Hudson from their porch. Eddie, on the other hand, was drawn to water after that night. He drank eight glasses every day, which he had come to believe was a tonic, good for the long life Hochman had promised he’d have. Each time he embraced the woman he loved, he thought of water, for he knew she longed for it, and, because of this, she had saved his life.

At night, when the window was open and his arms were around Coralie, he often dreamed he was fishing. As he slept he prayed that no one would wake him, for it was in dreams that a man found his truest desires. At last he came upon the trout he had been searching for, a slice of living light, darting through the shallows. He walked into the water after it, unafraid, still wearing his shoes, his black coat flowing out around him. It was there he found his father, waiting for him on the shoreline, as if they’d never been apart.