Page 275 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 245

Solly started to take the framed black-and-white photographs down
from the walls. They grew too heavy too fast in his arms. He could save
more by grabbing as many negatives as he could from as many drawers as
he could open. Another explosion rocked the apartment.
Solly watched the wooden casements around the front windows break
into flames. The heat cracked the glass and sucked the curtains out into
the fire. Smoke billowed into the apartment. Solly was not one to panic,
but a wave of fear crashed across his face. There was no way out but the
back door that led to a small fenced yard dead-ended against a three-story
brick wall.
There was no back alley.
He carried a rolled manila envelope, stuffed with negs, under his arm
and ran out the back door. People escaping the other apartments clam-
bered over the fences, from backyard to backyard, running and climbing
in frenzied slow motion through the red glow of the fire and the rain of
falling ash. He hated Ryan’s movie game. He hardly had time to make up
his mind. He was running through a montage of The Last Days of Pompeii,
Sodom and Gomorrah, and the “Burning of Atlanta” all rolled into one.
Oh, Rhett!
“I’m going to die.”
Solly stood a moment on the landing. He sized up the situation and
climbed up to the second-floor porch. It was a chancy leap from there to
the porch next door, but it would get him over the fences and then to the
roof of a one story brick garage that he guessed by the number of people
running toward it was the only way out. He tucked the envelope of nega-
tives into the back of his jeans. He couldn’t help if his belt creased them.
Bent was better than burnt. Something was better than nothing. He stood
on the rail of the porch, wished he’d been more athletic in high school,
and jumped the five feet to the next porch. He collided with a man in full
leather leading out a naked man wearing handcuffs. The three of them fell
in a tangle on the hot boards.
“Sorry,” Solly said.
“What?” The leatherman shouted over the firestorm. “What?”
Solly shook his head.
The leatherman lifted the wrists of the man in handcuffs and said,
“We can’t find the key.”
Solly pointed toward the roof of the brick garage already crowded
with men shouting to be saved, “We’ve got to jump for it. You go first.”
The man in the handcuffs hesitated. “I can’t. I won’t.”
“We don’t have time to convince you,” Solly shouted. “You jump or

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