Greg threw down his headphones and hat. He kicked off his Birkenstocks and unbuttoned his shirt. He was going to help save Stuart Little’s son. He was going to help save Stuart Little’s house.

There was a lot of shouting from the ladder.

Greg rushed past the firemen and into the smoke.

“Greg!” Peaches shouted after him.

“Ted’s fine,” Mandy said, clinging to Stuart.

“He’s fine,” Stuart said into her hair.

A walkie-talkie crackled.

“They’re coming out!” someone yelled.

The front doors had been propped open. The glass was broken. Greg emerged in his sooty sock feet carrying a small body wrapped in a bright yellow Ikea blanket. A dark head poked out from the blanket. Ted.

Stuart and Mandy sat on the bottom step of their neighbors’ house with Ted between them. Greg sat behind them, the yellow blanket covering his shaking knees. His pant legs were caked in ash. Peaches gave him small sips from a bottle of water and listened to his lungs with a stethoscope.

Roy and Wendy Clarke, Tupper Paulsen, and a stocky, red-faced teenager straddling a bicycle stood behind a police barricade across the street.

“Everything all right?” Wendy shouted.

Peaches gave her the thumbs-up.

Stuart remembered the Macaw. He pulled out his phone and played back the footage. A swath of something burning flew into the open kitchen window. The bills beneath the bed caught fire. Ted came upstairs and poked at the fire with various kitchen implements. Ted left the fire. The fire grew. Firemen peered into the windows and began hosing things down. Greg burst in with his shirt off, grabbed a gallon of organic milk and a gallon of extra-pulp orange juice from out of the fridge and poured them all around the bed.

“Jesus Christ,” Stuart said.

Then Greg walked through the kitchen, carrying Ted.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, the firemen said. Structurally everything was sound. There was a lot of water damage. Good thing some of the windows were open and that kid on his bike had dialed 911.

Mandy rubbed the space between Ted’s skinny shoulders. Ted was fine. Their house was fucked, but Ted was fine.

“We’re lucky,” she said.

“Yeah. Thanks, man.” Stuart reached behind him and fist-bumped Greg’s foot. It looked like they might have to move out for a bit. Not from Cobble Hill though. His son was a pyro and his wife was a beautiful, lazy liar, but this was their home and these were their people.

The ladder was lowered. Firemen continued to tromp in and out of the house with axes and rolled up their spent hoses.

Stuart rubbed his knuckles against Ted’s bony knee. “Better get you to the hospital so they can check you out for smoke inhalation and all that cool stuff.”

“Do we have to?” Ted whined.

“The fact that he’s whining probably means he’s fine,” Peaches said.