As a metallic blue Toyota Camry was still embedded in the armor of her SUV’s passenger door, Clarissa was unsure how she’d come to be standing in the middle of the intersection of North Capitol and E Streets Northwest.
But she was.
The pale blue rayon of her Victoria Beckham dress was wilting in the heat, DC was headed for a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend. And the heat of the fire reached her a half block away with all the timidity of a sledgehammer.
She stood like any other gawker, staring up at the fiery wreckage of the George. A few laggard guests stumbled out the front door. People who had crawled out of wrecked cars stood or sat on the pavement looking upward at the burning brick building. Other cars, ones that had been too close to the falling debris, no one would ever crawl
