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Dante's Fire Prologue
PROLOGUE When Jackie kissed him, she felt something. This is not to say that all those other times with men who had somehow just caught her eye, Jackie had not felt anything at all. She had felt a lot, in truth. The first time with Andrew, a beautiful man with hair the colour of lacquered gold whom she had met attending a student conference, she had felt only warm. Nothing else. She felt warm when he slipped inside of her underneath the covers. They rocked each others bodies, back and forth, swinging like a sweet pendulum made of limbs and flesh, gasping, clawing at each other's skin, but not seeing each other, because the lights had been turned off. Andrew was that sort of man, the sort that turned off the lights before he undid a woman's clothes. He had a sad politeness about him that could almost be mistaken for sweetness if you did not recognize it for what it was. There, in that air-conditioned room, under the hotel's pristine sheets, Jackie had felt only warm, like all the o
Dante's Fire Chapter One: Big Jack
Chapter OneBIG JACK When the last shipment came in, Jack Maeto, was at the stash house, waiting. He was in his work clothes: a limp pair of black overalls, a yellow scarf tied loosely round his neck, knotted at his nape, old work boots at his feet. Besides the ring he received as a gift from his wife at the altar, Big Jack wore no jewelry. Even though she was long gone and it was lusterless silver, near tarnishing, it was adornment enough for him. It would always be. A man whose notoriety had earned him the moniker, Big Jack, he was as the name suggested. Thickset, thick arms, thick voice. All around him, workers in similar apparel swarmed, moving boxes to the far end of the room, trying to make space for the new shipment. It came, and the store's single door was dragged aside to accommodate the van, its tires screeching its displeasure as it went. The truck rolled in. Big Jack knew all his drivers by name. He had to, considering the fragile nature of his shipment. You did not hand
Dante's Fire Chapter Two: Dante
Chapter TwoDANTEIt was snowing when the phone rang the first time, and Dante was at the corner store buying groceries for the night. They had come early this year, the snowflakes, suddenly filling the sky and blocking out the sun, thin tufts of white drifting downwards like brown leaves from trees in autumn, like locks from God's scalp. Only this morning, children played at the basketball court, scuffing knees and bruising elbows, jumping several feet in the air to dunk worn-out basketballs in the even more worn net. It was still warm outside. Not enough to warrant sun-dresses and bare thighs, but not frigid enough to make people encase themselves in coats or carry parasols with them, hurrying as they went, looking like frozen burritos. The cold had crept up on them, on the entire New York, out of nowhere.At the store, Dante's fingers were freezing. He had forgotten his mittens at home. He pulled the coat tight around his shoulders and shoved his hands into his pockets for warmth.
Dante's Fire Chapter Three: Jackie
Chapter ThreeJACKIE It was nearing dusk and Big Jack had not made it to yet another graduation. The fact that she had expected his absence did not make it hurt any less, and the fact that his absence could still hurt her made Jackie realize she had not changed. She was the same after all these years. She was still the same girl she was when she was ten years old, a pinning braces-wearing girl, waiting for her father to make it home in time for Christmas. Jackie sat on one of the seats at the convocation auditorium long after everyone else had left, savouring the quietness. The note of finality it had. She was still swaddled in her graduation gown, wide like a caftan. The tassel of her hat hung before her, swishing in the evening wind. The air in San Diego was like the air inside a kitchen: crisp and warm, still tepid at the start of December. The snow often came quite late in San Diego. But unlike Big Jack, at least it came. When it began to get darker, the sky obfuscating from
Dante's Fire Chapter Four: Jackie
Chapter 4JACKIE It was the afternoon after graduation night that Jackie finally saw the numerous calls on her phone. They were all from her father. On her phone, she had saved his name as Big Jack, the moniker everyone knew him by. It was amusing sometimes, how the name made him sound impressive and colossal, but it was she, a six year old with eyes like white oil and lips like cramped petals, who started calling him that. Suddenly, everyone they knew took up the name, and it stuck. If she was Little Jack, then he was Big Jack. It made sense at the time.Her mouth tasted of vileness when she awoke. It was bright outside, a watery, egg-yolk sun hovering above, its light spilling through the shutters weakly. Her eyes were still swimming from all the liquor she had drank the night before when she saw them, the missed calls lighting her phone. She had picked the device to check what the time was. Jackie made to toss the phone back onto the mattress before she noticed the notifications.
Dante's Fire Chapter Five: Dante
Chapter FiveDANTE The pale, ash skinned man lying on the gurney before Dante was not his father, was not Raymond Bianchi. This man had hazel eyes that were wide open, ugly feet, and a small chest. He must have been in an accident the way his body was broken, the way the bones in his feet were shattered like a China doll's. One of his ankles was twisted, and his arms were scratched badly, his fingers bloody, as though he had been clawing at something. Perhaps, the something which had inevitably lead to his death. In the greenish brown of his eyes, there was crimson, and by the expression of wide-eyed shock that they held, by the peeling back of his lips, you could tell that his death had been sudden, that it had surprised even him.Dante did not care for the man, did not care to find out how he had died. The body that he was there to identify had a face like his, a face that he had seen crinkle with a smile a few days ago, a face that he had seen repeatedly all his life. He was at a
Dante's Fire Chapter Six: Andre
Chapter SixANDRE Andre watched the snow fall. It had been falling for days by now, unendingly. Silently it fell, at first, then it gathered momentum, tumbling down in straight lines. It soon became an torrent that pressed down on the people below, shoving their parasols with the wind that accompanied it, pounding the roof of cars, of cafés and restaurants and the awnings of bookstores.New York. A clutter of tall structures and old trees and hurrying people. Even when it was silent here, it was loud. While daytime was a carnival of colours, the night was one colour. Grey. It was all grey. Even with all the lights shining in the numerous apartments across the city, the colour grey prevailed. Andre liked the enveloping darkness, relished it. He came here every other night to look down at the grey city—even if were raining, or snowing, as it was now. The building at the top of which he stood was tall, quaint, sandwiched between a store and a block of residential buildings. Andre had
Dante's Fire Chapter Seven: Jackie
Chapter SevenJACKIEJackie called.She called her father's mobile phone, then she called the home cell. It was all the same result: no reply. A sense of foreboding loomed over her like a thundercloud on a rainy summer day. Her calls to his cell went straight to voicemail, and those she patched home went unanswered. She could not help feeling as though something had gone terribly wrong.Those were not gunshots she had heard over the phone, Jackie told herself. It was something else entirely. Perhaps firecrackers. Yes, firecrackers. Kids in the city were known to be crazy, wilding out at every given opportunity. She would not put it past them to be shooting firecrackers at the beginning of the season. They could totally do it. Right?Jackie had enough money to go to law school when the session began, then some extra. Her father had built a trust for her and all her money came from their. It was one of the nicest things the man had ever done for her. That way, Jackie did not need to ask
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