Just Like Flying

Jack got a call from his wife Elaine. She told him smoke was coming in the room, coming through the vents.

Her breath was laboured. Jack asked her why she didn’t go down and she said it was really hot out there. Jack said, ‘Darling, it’ll be all right, you’ll get down.’ She said that she loved him and to tell the boys she loved them.” Jack said, ‘I love you too and to call me when you get down’.”

Elaine never called.

She was found on the street in front of the building across from hers.

Whether she jumped, Jack didn’t know. He hoped that she had succumbed to the smoke but it did not seem likely.

In some ways, he thought, it might just be the last element of control, that everything around you is happening and you can’t stop it, but this is something you can do. To be out of the smoke and the heat, to be out in the air . . . it must have felt like flying.