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He’s right. It doesn’t. Now might be the time to mention how Jack told me about their history. I could talk about how they built this place together. Make him nostalgic so he forgets the sting in his heart each time he looks back at the smoldering carcass of the business they built together. But again, all concern for Greg evaporates after his next words.
“Hopefully it was just someone being stupid. A coffee pot left on or a cigarette someone tossed in the trash. Something like
that.”
A cigarette.
This is where I bite my lips. Turn my focus inwards to my inner eye as I recall my exhausting day yesterday. When I had trouble performing, I took a break. Before I found my way into Jack’s studio, I had a smoke on the roof. Two cigarettes, actually. Did I put them out? Where did I flick the butts? No matter how I think back, I can’t answer these questions.
Is it possible that I caused this fire? It seems impossible because that was last night, but maybe the fire smoldered for hours before really catching. Could I be the reason that we can feel the heat radiating off the building even from forty feet away? If they do determine it was a cigarette butt, what then? Are there security cams they can review? Would the video be stored onsite or off? Is there evidence, even now, that shows me flicking a cigarette carelessly, starting off the flames that have consumed everything Greg has worked so hard to build?
“Pretty shitty situation,” Jack says. He’s suddenly standing over me, smoking a cigarette. He flicks the ashes to his side. For entirely selfish reasons, it relieves a tiny ounce of pressure to see that I’m not the only smoker.
“Yeah,” I reply, not sure what else there is to say in such a situation. I catch myself wanting to ask if they have any idea what caused it. Maybe something has magically come to light in the past five minutes. But I stop myself.
“Luckily, we keep back-ups of everything off site.”
“Greg said the same thing,” I answer.
“And the website is run off a server farm somewhere in New Mexico, I think. So it’s not like we suddenly stop making money. We’ll just have to search for new studio space. That’s all.”
“It's in Nevada,” Greg says like he’s impersonating Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.
“What is?” I ask.
“The server farm,” he says with deep melancholy. “It’s in Nevada.”
While Greg is acting like someone has died, Jack treats this like a small hiccup. His impressive frame is not curled around itself as though he were trying to hide from the world. Greg and him are different creatures. In fact, it’s almost like Jack derives some sort of manic energy from the fire casting shadows across the two of us.
Jack flicks his cigarette to the pavement. Squashes it with this sole of his shoe. “The firefighters say it’s going to take the rest of the night to make sure the fire is well and truly out. Then comes all the paperwork. Until then, there’s nothing I need more than a drink.” He holds out a hand to help me up. “Care to join me?”
Like an involuntary reflex, a ‘No’ queues up to jump across my vocal cords. But the thought of Brice and that young nurse stop me from turning Jack down. Instead, I take his hand and pull myself up. “A drink sounds perfect.”
He doesn’t say a word to Greg. And Greg doesn’t look up when we leave.
Fifteen minutes later, the only reminder of the fire is the smell of smoke that occasionally wafts off our clothes. The bar that Jack chose is not the type where blue-collar guys stop by after work, delaying the inevitable return to their wife and kids. It’s not a sloppy, dark place where college kids play with their parents’ money. No, this is unlike anywhere I’ve ever visited.
Jack calls it a speakeasy.
The entrance is at the back of an alley. Although there’s no little window that slides open at eye-height, and no bouncer who asks for the secret word, it still manages to feel secretive. An unmarked door leads down to a little lounge area with three sofas and a large bookshelf. We are the only ones here. It’s the oddest set-up I’ve ever seen, and I wonder briefly if all of this hasn’t been a dream, because I simply can’t fathom how a place like this exists in the real world. It’s like someone dropped a man’s idea of a living room into the basement of a random building downtown.
I go to sit down but not Jack. He peruses the books along the shelf until he finds the one he was apparently searching for. He then pulls it out and opens it up. Smiles and turns it to me. Inside the book is hollow, a little black button where hundreds of pages should be. When he presses it, the whole wall—including the bookshelf—slides away, revealing the rest of the basement. The real speakeasy.
It’s two levels, the second level a mezzanine structure that runs along the circumference of the dimly lit room. At the back is a bar stocked with hundreds of whiskies, vodkas, gins, and everything in between. The roof is composed of square brass tiles in geometric patterns reminiscent of the 1920s. Jack leads me over to a table and quickly orders us two Old Fashioneds.
“This place is amazing.” That’s all I can get out between gaping around at the sights. The workers are dressed like early 20th century mobsters. There’s even a tommy gun behind the bar.
“Not to brag, but this is another one of my little investments,” Jack says. When my eyebrows shoot up Jack smiles. “What? Can’t a porn star own a bar?”
“No, it’s not that,” I say, though that’s exactly where my thoughts jumped to. It’s easy to forget that Jack isn’t just an actor; he’s the co-founder of the company I’ve been filming for.
“Well, the industry has been good to me and Greg. And while he’s squirreled his money away, I’ve invested mine. This speakeasy took a chunk of my change initially, but it’s paying back dividends.” He pauses and looks across the table at me like I’m the only girl on his mind. “So tell me, what do you do with your spare time?”
What do I do in my spare time?
If I’d been asked this two months ago, before my life took such a radical change, I might have answered that I didn’t exactly have a lot of spare time. I would have never brought up the fact that I watch far too many cheesy films and work on abstract oil paintings based on said movies. Instead, I might have made something up about picking up part-time jobs here and there.
If I’d been asked this question just before the accident, I would have said that I did Brice in both my work time and spare time. It would have been a good joke back then, but now my heart aches as I remember that Brice has someone else now.
