Friday, May 17, 2024 11:12 a.m.

For a small, quiet little Midwestern town, things were getting pretty crazy for a late Friday morning. The low rumble of machines had thundered along the pavement of Main Street like a parade of monsters. Great metal jaws with once-yellowed teeth now covered in rust and dirt chomped at the bit, eager for a taste of destruction. Yet no familiar metal ball hung, pendulous at the end of a steel cable ready to take its first swing. The street was too narrow and there was too much risk to the surrounding buildings for that to happen. An implosion specialist had been consulted so a carefully planned set of explosives could go off so that the falling building wouldn't damage any of the "wanted" buildings in the downtown area. Perhaps the town council wanted to destroy it so utterly and with as little damage to everything else as possible so that it would seem like the Phoenix had never existed at all. Yet this expert had determined that it would be too costly, impractical and dangerous to attempt on such a small building. A fire truck was at the ready in the yellow-painted parking zone across the street with its sirens silent, but lights flickering. The end had come for 312 East Main Street.

Or at least it would have at precisely 11:00 a.m. if not for one tiny detail.

"What are you, crazy? Lady, get out of the way!" The man with the backhoe shouted, being completely overwhelmed by the engine of the machine he was riding.

"Nothing short of hell opening up and swallowing me is going to move me from this spot! This place is worth saving!" The woman stood with her arms spread out as if ready to block the machine as a goalie blocked a ball or a puck. Except in this case, the puck was moving slowly and outweighed the goalie by a few tons.

A man in a torn red sweater stood at the sidelines a good distance away, tensing and leaning forward as if ready to run into the fray. Yet he seemed like he couldn't decide whether to join her or just pull her out before she got hurt. A salt and pepper-bearded man stood next to him, looking on quietly.

"Here for the show?" Red Sweater asked above the din.

"Not really." Greybeard continued staring at the building.

"On break for lunch and just came over to see what the fuss is about?"

"No."

After a solid moment of the bulldozer coming to support the backhoe in this odd confrontation, Red Sweater spoke up again, pulling at the sagging sleeve of his shirt.

"You know, she made this for me once."

"I beg your pardon?" The bearded man perplexed, but curious, turned to face the other stranger in the small, but growing crowd.

Red Sweater nodded, gesturing toward the woman chained to the front ticket booth. The once-recently added glass wall and doors had been removed for the occasion.

"You know that woman?"

"I'm her-"

"Husband?" Greybeard offered.

"Not exactly."

"I see." He smiled. "Love is often much more complicated than simple titles or roles we assign to others."

"Mira would like how you said that."

"Mira? That is a beautiful name."

"She would like that you said that too, but I'd probably get a bit jealous if she heard that. You understand, right?" He laughed, more of an awkward cough as opposed to anything resembling lighthearted mirth.

"Of course."

The two men looked away from each other and back at the unfolding scene. As passionate as the woman was and as cold and as indifferent the machines were, the events really weren't that interesting or exciting. It could be easily compared to 24-hour news coverage of something that would be more exciting for at most an hour out of each day. Yet the only media outlet which had bothered to cover the event was the campus newspaper, and even the budding young journalist was glancing at his watch and wondering if he could get away with running off to the diner down the street and picking up a sandwich and come back in time for something, just anything to happen. It wasn't that he wished the woman any harm or particularly cared if she was able to save the Phoenix. He just needed a story by that evening so it could print the next day.

By the quarter-hour point, the woman was starting to realize that perhaps she should have brought water or food of some kind to help her outlast the machines and thus help the Phoenix to outlast the machines. At the very least, she should have brought water. Her voice was completely gone now, yet she could still manage a solid defiant glare out to the men in their machines. For a moment, she snuck a warm smile to the man in the red sweater.

"Hi sweetie." He said quietly and waved his hand at the wrist mechanically.

Suddenly the rumbling engines ceased as their operators listened to their handheld radios for further instructions. For a moment, the two sides were at an impasse.

"She must love this place very much." The bearded man sighed.

"I know what you mean." Red Sweater agreed. "If she's willing to go through all this just for a building-"

"It's obviously not just a building to her."

"You're right about that. I've known her for a few years, and I still don't quite get why she's so drawn to this place."

"Have you ever been here?"

"It was shut down by the time I got here. I mean, I've walked by it a few times-"

"I mean, have you ever been inside it?" Just the way the bearded man said it with an emphatic tone, but with an almost hushed, low voice made Red Sweater realize that the Phoenix probably had another supporter, even if he was not chained up alongside the woman whom the man in the red sweater loved, but never quite understood.

"No." He paused and looked at the bearded man cautiously. "You never did answer my question about why you were here."

"Yes, well, I just came to say goodbye, of sorts." He explained.

"So you're attached to the Phoenix too?"

"In a way, yes."

Red Sweater had the strange idea that his new acquaintance had reasons to not be so forthcoming in answering the questions posed to him. Yet he figured it would be best if he didn't push him. It was hardly his business at all, but then again, he still told the bearded man about why he was there, hadn't he?

"Do you think I should stop her?" Almost changing the subject might help.

"Do you?" Perhaps not.

Now a sizable crowd had formed a safe distance away from the Phoenix. It seemed like the more quiet things got, the more people were drawn to it. Perhaps it was the opposite of conventional intuition that people are drawn to noise, but this now-silent woman surrounded by now-silent machines provided for a much more interesting even to gaze upon than the lumbering machines would have for all of their sound.

Women much older than Mira seemed to be more in awe that the Phoenix was still standing at all, as if in complete surprise that it hadn't been torn down much earlier. They whispered to each other wondering why such a brash young woman would bother with such a thing. Back when they were younger, the place had a bad reputation for showing licentious films. Why would anyone want to save something like that?

Some kids who lived in a nearby apartment building watched in morbid curiosity to see if the machines would rev up again and just plow her down along with the building on top of her. That would have definitely made things more interesting in this boring place. They soon lost interest and went back home to watch television. School had gotten out early that year due to the lack of snow days, so at least they could look forward to an early summer. One of them was at the age where parents expected her to find a job. The only options were at the mall or the movie theater. Like hell she was going to work at a restaurant.

The men in their machines continued to exchange glances at each other as a booming voice came in muffled on their radios. The woman continued standing, bracing herself for any reprisal. Some police cars pulled up, yet none of the officers bothered to get out of the car. Another car pulled up as a woman got out of the car with a radio in one hand and a folder of plans in the other. She briskly walked toward the woman chained inside the theater. The two exchanged a few words. Even if nobody else could hear what was going on, it wasn't hard to guess that these were hardly friendly words despite the civil appearance of their interlocutors. The chained woman gestured to her coat pocket. The other woman pulled out a piece of paper, scanned it quickly, crumpled it, and tore it into pieces before storming off. The men in their machines watched her pass with the same amount of disinterest they had about the entire affair. Either way, the building was going down, even if they had to go home for the night and come back the next day. Sure, the woman inside looked like she could stand until doomsday, but everyone knew that the end was inevitable.

Perhaps deep down, the woman herself knew that too. But for now, she was going to give them hell. After all, she knew for a long time that anything was possible at the Phoenix. She had taken the good with the bad over the years and hoped that there would be someone else who could help her carry the weight of its preservation.

As the woman with the radio drove away, the man in the red sweater looked at the bearded man once more.

"So, what's your story with this place?"

Greybeard gave the "well, you've caught me look" full with his eyes crinkling and revealing his years. He was probably younger than Mira, but still seemed matured, like the sum of his life experience had been condensed in a few years.

"I met my wife here."

It was such a simply constructed sentence. Subject, verb, direct object and a preposition. Yet the weight of it could probably support an entire building. Red Sweater pondered that perhaps if he had met Mira there, things would be different. Maybe he would have been able to understand her.

"You should have seen it. This place used to be beautiful." His eyes fogged over as the memories of the wistful often do. "I know that much earlier, it was a movie theater, but when I met my wife, it was a wonderful Indian restaurant. There was even a laundromat in the back to appeal to the college crowd, but by then I already had started my residency at the hospital and rented my own apartment with a washer/dryer unit."

"Mira never told me that." Red Sweater mused. "Are you Indian?"

"No, actually." He shook his head. "I'm Persian."

"Ah." It was an interjection of understanding, but the answer really didn't explain much of anything if there was anything else lying in the initial question.

Greybeard looked on as the machines started up again. "It looks like these machines are as tenacious as your Mira."

"She is strong, but I feel like I should be trying to protect her." He looked up at the clouds gathering. "Yet as long as we've been together, I was never really able to claim her or the idea that we belonged together."

"But you are still together, right?"

Red Sweater realized that the man's wife was not with him. Along with the earlier statement of "saying goodbye," he came to the conclusion that the man's wife had died.

"Yes, we're still together." He wished he could be more eloquent in asking his new acquaintance such a sensitive question, but felt it would be best to just jump right into it. "Where is your wife now? If you were going to say goodbye to the Phoenix, you'd do it together, just like how you first met, right?"

Greybeard stared at the now dim marquee. "She died of cancer a few years back. She always told me that she knew I'd outlive her, and not just because I was younger. Like any husband, I would have loved to prove her wrong. No one wants to go through life alone."

"You weren't alone for all of your life though. At least you had her with you for awhile."

"You're right, I did." He smiled wanly.

"Does it hurt to see this reminder of your past destroyed?"

"Strangely, no. Maybe I needed to see this happen to finally accept that she's gone." Red Sweater could see tears slightly blurring Greybeard's eyes.



It was then that Everett realized what he had to do. He always knew he was never meant to help Mira save the Phoenix. Of course, he would take no joy or satisfaction from its destruction, but at the same time, he wanted to show her that she could live in the present. As cheesy as it sounded, he wanted to explain to her that the place would never be gone as long as she remembered it for what it was. Of course, Everett was never really the eloquent type anyway.

His lungs puffed as each step hit the pavement. He was never used to running, but felt that the occasion was urgent enough to warrant it even if the machines still had made no progress toward their goal. It was surprisingly easy to lift Mira's arms and pull her up so the chains fell at her feet. Before she could protest or hit him with a mysteriously-drawn placard, he pulled her out and dove out of the way so the machines could finally crash through the building.

There was a crunch and scrape. The sound was so loud varied in pitch that it almost sounded like human screaming. As Everett covered Mira with his body as if to protect her from the sight as well as potential flying debris, he could feel her fists against his chest as well as the sound of her yelling and sobbing as she collapsed into him. The machines reversed and rammed again and again until the roof caved in, taking the walls with it. Everything seemed to crumble from within much like the imagined controlled implosion could have been. The whole thing seemed almost too easy, like the building was just waiting for the right opportunity to fall apart. What had taken years to build and rebuild, decades to decay, had only took several moments to render asunder.

As the dust cleared, Everett coughed and looked down at Mira who was still in his arms on the sidewalk several yards away. "Wanna go get something to eat?"

She glared up at him, as if thinking about punching him in the jaw, but instead patting the dust out of his hair.

"Ok."