It was obvious that Marcus was evaluating the response. He surprised her by saying nothing more and just walking away. In a sense, that action might have been a compliment. He seemed to be indicating she needed no further warning. But the ladder caper was a far cry from the hydrant incident. Over and over again it had been drummed into the recruits while in training that a disabled firefighter was no good to anyone. Except in case of dire and immediate emergency such as the known presence of a fire victim in a burning house, safety measures had to be primary.
As she watched Marcus’s retreating back she decided that he really hadn’t given a damn about her safety. The station record was his only concern. That, and giving her a bad time.
Just having to talk over the incident became an overpowering need. She cornered Jess Kanaka who was her favorite sounding board. After hearing the story, he agreed with her, at least to some extent, and expanded on her evaluation of Marcus.
“You’re right, Judy” Jess said. “He doesn’t give a damn about anything but the safety record. Company 24 hasn’t had a single injury in over four-hundred days. Marcus wants to keep it that way, wants to break the record for any company.”
“What happened four hundred days ago?”
Jess laughed as he told about the Captain breaking a thumb when he released a clamp on a supply line. “He wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing, and the lever snapped up and damn near took the thumb clean off.”
“Well, I imagine Marcus didn’t read the riot act to him.”
“The hell he didn’t. Marcus does his dressing down in private, but as soon as Cholly got patched up, they both retired to his office. A half-hour later Cholly called the crew together and personally apologized for screwing up. Believe me, that’s not easy for a Chinese to humble himself that way. Marcus must have really chewed him out—superior or no superior.”
The conversation made Judy feel better, though in the back of her mind she still felt that Marcus had been condescending, that he’d regarded her as a fallible woman, not as a firefighter who had made a simple but very understandable mistake. Even so, she promised herself there would be no more safety violations on her part, at least not when Marcus was around.
A week went by without a single fire call. Judy wasn’t the least bored. There was always plenty to do at the station: frequent sessions to break in new equipment or master new technology, elaborate meals to feed the body, and fast and furious volleyball games to work off the inevitable results of too much good eating. Judy’s dynamite serve invariably made her an early choice in the pick-up games.
It was following a particularly grueling match ending just before dark that events occurred which would change Judy’s life. After relaxing showers, the comments veered off from discussion of the game to speculation about the long dry spell, both in the weather and in the lack of fire calls. Over pupus before dinner, Phil observed that this kind of quiet usually preceded all hell breaking loose. He had hardly said the words when the alarm went off. The truck radios and pocket scanners blared location as the crew slipped into their gear, the drivers revved up the engines and the sirens warned approaching traffic to beware.
All hell had broken loose. The signs of an arsonist were unmistakable. At least two separate fires were burning in brush behind a row of homes. Worse yet, smoke was coming from three of the houses. Two other career companies and a contingent of volunteers were on their way. As first officer on the scene, Cholly became incident commander. He quickly divided up his crew.
Structures always took precedence over everything else, especially if there might be occupants. Neighbors had gathered and were giving confusing and conflicting reports as to what happened and whether or not there was anyone home in the three houses. The sound of crashing glass had convinced some of them that Molotov cocktails had been thrown through the windows of the homes. From the looks of the situation, Cholly decided the guess was probably accurate.
Tanker 24 with Marcus, Judy and Kimo—Phil driving—rolled up to one of the homes. Phil started the pump. Kimo had hardly hit the ground when he began to run toward the house with an attack line. Marcus signaled to Judy to put on an SCBA, and before donning his own breathing apparatus, yanked out a couple of spare air bottles. Later, Judy remembered her annoyance at seeing Marcus beat her in gearing up by several seconds—then consoled herself with the thought that, while she had probably gone through those motions fewer than a hundred times, he had undoubtedly done so a thousand times or more.
Marcus was already at the front of the house, with Kimo behind him providing a fog of water. Masked, suited up, helmeted, with heavy air bottles on their backs, Marcus and Judy stepped inside and then dropped to the floor in a room where visibility was nil.
The routine was part of a long-established drill. Marcus crawled ahead on his belly, arms sweeping the area as he went, searching the room for possible smoke victims. Judy’s job was to act as anchor person, keeping one foot against the wall as they advanced, while grasping Marcus by the ankle to keep him oriented. She checked under and on top of a side table that broke her contact with the wall, then let go of Marcus as they explored opposite sides of an intervening couch.
Renewing contact, they worked their way through a couple of bedrooms and back into the now alarmingly hot living room. A red glow now perfused the heavy smoke. Water poured in from the entrance as Kimo spotted flames which were eating their way though the ceiling above them. It had chimneyed up unseen, inside the wall, creating one of the firefighter’s worst nightmares, if the supports were involved, the whole roof could collapse. Judy signaled to Marcus, and shouted that the roof was going. For a moment he hesitated, then surged forward, almost breaking contact with Judy. “It sounds like a baby in there,” he shouted back. It’s hard enough to communicate when wearing helmets and breathing masks. With the added noise of the fire, Judy could barely make out what he was saying.
A flaming chunk of wood crashed to the floor only a few feet away, throwing a momentary and dim light on a door standing slightly ajar. Judy remembered the stories told by training officers of how children would often hide in closets when fires broke out. Behind them, Kimo responded to the flare-up with a stream of water, and the light quickly died. Then, loud enough to be heard over the other sounds, the muffled sound of the warning bell on Marcus’s air bottle issued from the closet. Five minutes of air left for Marcus, and she knew her own bell would be ringing soon.
Hearing more timbers falling, but now unable to see them, Judy began to feel the edge of panic. Why isn’t Marcus backing out? “Got him!” She could just barely make out what he’d said over the din. The heat from the front of the house had become intense and the sudden cessation of water streams from that direction told her their escape had been cut off. She tried to pull Marcus back into one of the bedrooms, hoping for a window exit, but what had seemed a relative refuge from the fire moments before, was rapidly becoming an inferno. That whole side of the house was engulfed.
She turned and groped her way along the hallway to the right, pressing one foot to Marcus’s shoulder. Marcus grabbed her ankle and extended his arm, helping to propel her along the wall. Another metallic ring joined the cacophony, and Judy knew her own air bottle was almost empty.
Finding an open doorway, she yelled to Marcus to follow and entered to the sound of crashing glass. No fire, only smoke—blinding smoke. No possibility of breathing without the compressed air, but now there was some light as the smoke begin to pour out of the broken window. A flashlight aimed into the interior of the room caught Marcus’s face. He was gasping for breath. Judy slipped her arms under his arm pits and dragged his heavy frame to the window. Eager hands reached in to help him out and other hands tore of his mask. She was quick to follow, tearing off her own mask and sucking in breaths of fresh air still heavy with smoke.
Marcus was recovering quickly, as two volunteer firefighters helped him toward the waiting ambulance. In moments he was waving them aside. An excited ten-year old boy rushed
up asking, “Did you find Mimi, Mister?”
Marcus reached into his bunker jacket and pulled out a squirming kitten. “Is this Mimi?” he asked. The child’s answer was a broad smile as he reached for the kitten, just as a photographer’s flash lit up the scene. Judy was at a loss for words. The loss continued through the mop-up and back to the station. It was well after midnight before the day crew could get away.
She had showered at the station, but at home, tired as she was, she decided she needed to soak in a hot bath to remove the last reminders of the fire. As she relaxed in the oil-scented water she reviewed what had happened. She had a lot of questions. Had Marcus really heard something that sounded like a baby? When did he realize there was only a kitten in the closet? There were more questions, but exhaustion was setting in. Toweling herself off, she barely made it to bed. Her next sensation was the clock radio, which she had selected so she could be awakened to music, rather than something that could be mistaken for a fire alarm. That would have been just too much.
No need to rush. The day shift wouldn’t be going on until ten, today. Stiff, but with no specific soreness, she stretched and had just made it back from the bathroom on the way to the coffeemaker when the phone rang. It was Marcus. “Can I buy you a morning coffee?”
Seldom speechless, this came as too much of a surprise. Before she could answer, he added. “Danish thrown in. No extra charge. Millie’s Café in fifteen minutes?” There seem to be no reason to turn down the offer. Millie’s was only a couple of blocks away, and the coffee was Kona. Besides, this would be a chance to get answers to some questions.
Marcus was the first to bring up the previous day’s events. “Thanks, Judy.”
She looked puzzled. “I didn’t do anything any other firefighter wouldn’t have done.” She felt as though she should take offense. Was he being condescending? Had he expected so little of her that he was surprised she could hold up her end in a real fire situation? But he seemed genuinely grateful, and she had to admit the praise still felt good, deserved or not.
“I owe you an explanation,” Marcus continued, carefully cutting his pastry into bite-sized pieces. “I did think there was a baby in the closet.”
The question rushed out. “When did you realize it wasn’t a baby?”
He shrugged, looking down at his pastry. “That’s kind of hard to say. A lot was happening about then. I felt around and it wasn’t until I picked up the kitten that I was really sure it wasn’t a baby.”
Another question lingered in her mind. She decided to ask it. “Would you have gone into that closet if you had known it was just a kitten?”
He paused for a long moment, took a bite of the pastry, then sighed. “I guess I owe you a real apology, because I think I would have.”
She should have been angry knowing that he would have risked both of their lives over a cat, but her reaction was different and so confused that she couldn’t really identify the emotions. Talk shifted to other firefighting matters. The impromptu breakfast ended with “see you.”
The day’s work left little time for Judy to think about the morning coffee meeting or the previous day’s events. Hoses had to be repacked, air bottles recharged, and various other minor but time-consuming matters attended to. Two false alarms had kept the night crew from doing most of the refurbishing work that ordinarily would have fallen to that shift.
It wasn’t until after six, when Judy was about ready to drive home, that Marcus came into view for the first time that day. He sauntered over to the car and leaned over to talk to her. “Could I interest you in dinner tomorrow night?”
Afterwards, she wondered if her face was more expressive than she realized. Without waiting for an answer he said, “It’s not fraternizing, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve been transferred to Company 18. Their security officer is retiring and I’m taking his place. In fact, the day after tomorrow is my last day with 24.”
Judy pondered the offer, decided that fifteen years difference didn’t make that much difference, smiled and said, “Sure.”
The dinner was a success, both in terms of the excellent food served up at the resort hotel restaurant, and in terms of the conversation. Wine helped them both relax. Marcus regaled her with stories of former fires. Judy unveiled the long series of doubts that had hounded her through training. Since they had both brought their own cars, they parted at the parking lot.
The following day, at the end of the shift, day and night crew gathered to say their farewells. Marcus shook hands all around, held Judy’s just a shade longer than he had held the others, warned Jess Tanaka, the temporary security officer, not to take any shit off of the crew and drove off into the night.
It wasn’t until the next day that Judy decided gender equality included the taking of initiative. Near midday she rang Station 18 and asked for Marcus. She was a little surprised at his quick acceptance of a return dinner invitation, this one at her apartment.
Returning the phone to the hook, she smiled to herself, wondering where the evening would go and decided that if it went the way she thought it might, it was nice to know that a safety officer would probably be a firm believer in safe sex.
Judy skipped the candles. After all, there was a limit to what she would do in the furtherance of seduction.
If anything, the evening went better than she anticipated, far better. She hadn’t realized the size of Marcus’s arms, even though she had seen him in short sleeves. Stretched out on the bed, resting after very satisfactory sex, she traced her hand across his chest.
It was at that moment that another question which had been lingering in the back of her mind since his first mention of the transfer resurfaced. She leaned over, her breasts brushing against his bare chest, and looked into his eyes. “When did you decide to ask for a transfer?”
Marcus smiled. “The day after you joined the company.”
Judy had some problems digesting that fact, then reared up—her eyes ablaze. “You mean you were setting it up, right from the beginning? You intended to end up here, just like this, from the minute you saw me? Why you bastard!” She swung her right fist, the one famous for its volley ball serve, hard against his huge biceps. It was hard enough to make him flinch.
Before he could reply, and still angry, she asked, “And what would you have done if I hadn’t been such an easy mark?”
He smiled, then became serious. “You know Judy, if it hadn’t worked out this way, there was no way I could have been around you day after day. Win or lose, I had to get out of there.”
Judy looked into the brown eyes, thought about what he had said for a moment. This time the punch to the biceps was very gentle. “You couldn’t have answered that question any better,” she murmured, putting her head back down on his shoulder.
____________________
IT’S IN THE GENES
Sharlene liked the crew she worked with, got along well with her boss, and even enjoyed being a waitress—mostly. Her feet could sure hurt sometimes, and right now she was looking out on the restaurant floor and leaning on the ledge to ease the pain in her legs.
Melissa was standing nearby, the inevitable cigarette hanging from her lips, and with her smoker’s hoarse voice whispering into Sharlene’s ear. “Quite a hunk, ain’t he?”
Sharlene hadn’t realized she’d been eyeing the newcomer, pilot of an eighteen-wheeler that had rumbled into the big parking lot in front of Jerry’s Truck Stop some ten minutes earlier. The heavily-muscled arms under the six-footer’s short-sleeved shirt had caught her attention, and that wasn’t all. As though reading her mind, Melissa added in a louder voice, “And a nice pair of buns, huh? Name’s Jeff, by the way. On the Memphis run.”
Cookie, the black cook, whose hearing could match a hunting dog’s, sidled her bulk up next to Sharlene and looked over the ledge. “You kids don’t know when you well off. Just cuz some dude’s got arms like an elephant don’t make him any great catch. My first husbin woulda made him look like the circus thin man, but he
didn’ have anythin’ in his head to go with it.”
The Professor, Jerry’s regular dishwasher, came over to join in now that the noon rush was over. His yellow, wrinkled face broke into a grin, showing the vacant space left by his missing front teeth as Cookie went on. “Big muscles was fine back in cave man’s days when wimmen didn’t mind being pulled around by their hair so long as their man could carry a stone club to beat off those big-tooth tigers, but there ain’t no need for that kind no moh.”
“As usual, Cookie is showing remarkable wisdom,” the Professor said. “The only reason you ladies are so attracted to all that brawn is because you’ve inherited the genes of the prehistoric women who needed a man’s muscle to protect them and their offspring.”
Cookie looked over at the Professor as she started back to the stove where the hamburgers were sizzling. “I don’ know nuttin’ bout genes, Perfessah, but if that’s what made me hook up with my first husbin, and I’d a knowed about it, I’d a cut ‘em out and throwed ‘em away.”
The others laughed. Melissa went out to the floor to pour more coffee for the hunk and his companions who were finishing up their meals.
“Oh, not again!” Sharlene said, a note of exasperation in her voice.
The Professor looked out at the floor to see the object of her exasperation coming in—a short, slender man whom he recognized as the driver of the local bakery truck. “Is he giving you a bad time?” he asked, nodding toward the newcomer who sat down at a table near the cash register.
“Uh-huh. That’s Fred Baron. He keeps trying to strike up a conversation. Even offered to drive me home after work on the night shift.”
“Hassling you?”
“Not really, I guess. No grab-ass or anything like that. And he always leaves a nice tip.”
“So, what’s wrong with him?”
“He’s such a midget. Hardly any taller than me.”
The Professor showed a few of his remaining teeth as he went back to the accumulating pile of dishes. “Yes, it most definitely is in the genes.”
Dear Diary, I'm In Love Page 23