Page 61 of One Night in Alaska
Rather than driving straight home like a wise man would do, I decided to head to the bait shop to see Ryan. I’d been wanting to speak to him about all of this ever since Georgia had left, but I had been avoiding him, not returning his calls, not even speaking to him at all because I didn’t want to tell him what had happened. I wasn’t even sure how to explain it since I didn’t know what I had done.
When I pulled up to the bait shop, it was apparent something was wrong—or had gone wrong since I’d last been here. One side of the shop, in the back, toward the small storage area, was black and charred. A large timber that used to be painted white still jutted into the sky with its black burn marks heralding to the world that something had gone catastrophically wrong.
For a moment, I thought the place surely must not be open. How could it be when it looked like that? There were no vehicles parked outside either, but then, Ryan usually walked over since his car was so old it might give out on him at any time. I’d offered to buy him a new one, but he said he didn’t really need a vehicle when he had two feet.
Getting out of my truck, I stepped over to the door to see if it was unlocked. The “open” sign greeted me, so I turned the handle and heard the familiar bell.
Ryan stood behind the counter, wiping it down with a wet rag as if he were working at a bar or restaurant. Behind him, the wall was half gone, more charred wood sticking up in jagged pieces.
“What the hell happened?” I asked him.
Looking confused, Ryan searched the store floor for what I might be referring to. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary in front of him, he asked, “What do you mean?”
I gestured at what looked like the gaping mouth of a dragon behind him. “Um, that,” I said. “What did you do? Put the popcorn in the microwave for a couple of hours?” I remembered that the microwave had been placed against the wall behind him in the other room, the one where the entire door was destroyed and I could see sunlight streaming in behind him.
“No!” Ryan said defensively. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” He shook his head, turning to look at the wall. “Can you believe it took out all of my employee of the month pictures? Stupid fire.”
“So if you didn’t start it, who did?” I asked. For a moment, the thought of Don, the owner, committing insurance fraud came to mind, but I didn’t think he’d do something like that.
“The microwave did it,” Ryan replied. “All I did was put a hotdog in there to warm it up, and it lit up like a fucking bonfire!”
Puzzled, I walked behind the counter and entered the remains of the storage room and break room. The microwave was still sitting there, but it was burned to hell. I couldn’t imagine how a hotdog could cause such a blaze. “Was the hotdog made of dynamite?” I asked him.
“No, dummy. It was just a regular hotdog. I got it from Joe on the beach. He was selling them the other day, so I picked one up for lunch. I got distracted by a couple of customers, so I had to heat it up. I only put it in for about fifteen seconds. I was checking old Mr. Robinson out at the register when he started freaking out, pointing, shouting, ‘Fire! Fire!’ Sure enough, I turned around, and this whole wall was ablaze.”
I thought through what he was telling me. Joe was a local who liked to make a bit of spare change from cooking hotdogs and hamburgers down by the bay from time to time. In my experience, he usually wrapped them up for people to carry them home. “Did you take the aluminum foil off?”
Ryan tipped his head to the side and stared at me for a moment before he asked, “Now, how in the world is a person supposed to know you’ve gotta do that, huh? It’s not like there are directions on the side of a damn hotdog that say, ‘Do not put the aluminum foil inside the microwave.’”
“That’s true,” I said with a shrug. “I guess it doesn’t say that on the hotdog.”
“Thank you.” He gave a look that showed he was proud of himself.
“But it does say it right here on the side of the microwave.” Even though the apparatus was charred and ruined, I could see the words on the side of the microwave where it said not to put metal and a few other items inside.
Ryan’s forehead crinkled as he bent down to read it. “That wasn’t there before,” he insisted.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “What? You think the firefighters decided to come and put it there after you ruined the appliance?”
“Well, if it was there before, I didn’t see it. Besides, I was in a hurry. Old Mr. Robinson doesn’t wait for a person to eat lunch, you know?”
Seeing no reason to continue to argue with him, I decided to let it go. “I’m glad you didn’t kill yourself, man.”
“Nah, it was nothing like that. By the time the flames got higher than the ceiling, the firefighters were already here. And Don had showed up with a hose. He did what he could to try to put it out himself, but he needed the big guns. Thankfully, there wasn’t much water damage or smoke in the main part of the store. Now, Don’s got a reason to remodel, right? He wanted to do that anyway.” He chuckled and punched me in the arm, but all I could do was shake my head at his logic.
“What time do you get off?” I asked. My self-imposed sobriety was about to end. I needed a drink and a chat with a friend.
“Actually, I was about to lock up for the day,” he said, looking at his bare wrist. “It’s five o’clock somewhere. I wanna hear all about your new lady friend.”
We walked back out to the front and he locked the cash register, which could’ve been picked up off the counter easily enough, and when we walked out the front door, he locked that, too, as if no one could come in through the hole in the back. I wondered if they’d considered the fact that bears could get in there.
I drove us over to West Wharf, and we found our favorite table, both of us ordering our usual beers. It tasted good going down, though I knew it wouldn’t taste so great coming back up. I didn’t plan to drink that much tonight, though.
“So how is Georgia?” Ryan asked with a crooked grin. “I figured I hadn’t heard from you for a few days because you were having too much fun. Wait, are you supposed to be back already?”
So many questions in so few words. “No, I wasn’t supposed to be.” Ryan could tell by my body language that I wasn’t happy. “She left.”
“She left? Dude, what happened?” Ryan shook his head, seeming upset on my account.