They were jumping out of every window when the fire got bad, high story windows too. I’m almost sure I see them through thick billows of smoke. Others were climbing down from bottom story windows, clawing their way out of doorways through half-ajar doors. The air was full of screams. It was eighteen eighty two. We were ten men from the Fourty-Ninth Fire Brigade, in hard hats and tar-covered jackets. It was a summer day and it was beutiful. We had two horse-drawn fire carriages but no horses.

There was water and there were water buckets, but we weren’t rushing in with them; we were standing perfectly still. As we stood, blinded by the fire, men plunged into certain, unnoticed deaths. Every now and then you’d hear a man calling, an order shouted beyond the clouds in a clear voice like a marine captain’s on a stormy sail, but none of the silhoutted men would move.

A dog, horribly skinny, was tied with rope to the carriage beside me. He was barking murder, mad with the smoke thickenning and enclosing us. Billows of smoke. What do you think of that? Dreaming that dream almost every night since? Why would I dream of the Astoria burning?
The dream won’t recede, won’t fade. I carry it with me to the shower, to the bus station, to work. Not just because this unnatural repetition makes it more vivid; it’s that word I keep hearing, billows. Billows of smoke, billows of smoke. Ever since that day I try to avoid words that sound like your name. They cut. Billows. Bill. Billiards. Building. Thick Billows Bellowed as the Building Burnt. Bill me for that Billiards Ball, Bill.

In real life the Astoria never burnt, I checked that out. Am I thinking of that plane that took down the Empire State Building that September 13th? I must be. That’s where I’m taking this picture of men jumping from windows. Jumping into their deaths. Thick Billows Bellowed as the Building Burnt.