I’d long supposed the only fatal flames to be the physical variety—the sort that destroyed my parents, ruined my livelihood, snuffed the life from the stargazers trapped in the Pell Street tinderbox. But there are plentiful killing phrases, I was learning, words that sear a man and leave snakelike scars, I’d been an idiot not to realize it, and whether we’re perishing instantly or by inches, the results are the same. The worst death New Yorkers have ever managed to come up with is slow burning, a fate reserved for rebellious black rioters and traitors to the natural order. And I have said I
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