Finding Nick

by Janis Reams Hudson

  She smiled, and it spoke of sadness and perhaps empathy. She placed a hand on his arm. “You really have been stung by the media, haven’t you?” She gave his arm a warm squeeze. “The tape is just for me, to use as a backup for my notes and my memory. If it makes you uncomfortable, I won’t use it.” She picked up the recorder and made as if to put it away.

  Nick stopped her. “No, go ahead. Just do this the way you usually do.”

  She gave a small bark of laughter. “It was too late for that several days ago. However, we’ll start with basics. I’m going to ask you all sorts of things that might not end up in the book. But they’re things I need to know to get a better picture of who you are, where you were in your life on 9/11, how that affected you and brought you to where you are today. I have your vitals, date of birth, immediate family members, your education. I’d like to start with you telling me why you wanted to become a fireman, and when and where you first knew that was what you wanted. Then I’ll want to know how you went about joining FDNY.”

  “Okay, yeah.” He chuckled. “I can give you my entire life before our meal gets here.”

  “Tell me however much you’re comfortable with.”

  “That would be zip,” he said.

  “Nick. You agreed. Are you going to back out?”

  He huffed out a breath. “No, I’m not going to back out. Okay. Well. First, I was born, but I guess you figured that out on your own.”

  Shannon rolled her eyes. “Okay, then,” she said, turning on her tape recorder and setting it beside him. She stated her name, his name, the date, time and location. “What made you want to become a firefighter?”

  Nick huffed out another breath. “I was probably still in the womb, but I didn’t understand about fire and firefighters. When I made that connection, that things burned that shouldn’t, and men rushed in to stop it, I was about four, maybe. The truth is, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a firefighter. My mother used to say it was genetic. I come from a long line of smoke-eaters. My dad, his dad, my mom’s dad and granddad. There never seemed to be any question that Vinnie and I would both join the Fire Department of New York as soon as we could. And we did.”

  “You never thought of doing anything else?”

  “Not of my own free will, no.”

  “You mean because of your injury on 9/11. We’ll get to that. But first, how was it for you, working for FDNY? Was it everything you thought it would be?”

  “And then some,” he said, getting a faraway look in his eyes. “Growing up, Vinnie and I both hung out at the station house as often as we could, but then Dad got transferred from Brooklyn over to Manhattan. That cut our hanging-out time way down. But we saw and heard enough to know what went on, and we were both ready for it. I guess the thing we didn’t get, until we were there, was the bond, you know?”

  “The bond?”

  “You know, with the guys you work with. We call each other brothers. Except for the lack of blood ties, it’s true. Especially when you start fighting fires together. We hadn’t understood that part of it.”

  “That was your only surprise?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “You didn’t get tired of it, living at the station house so much of the time, getting called out at all hours? All that smoke, the fire, the danger? That didn’t get to you? Give you second thoughts?”

  “How could it give me second thoughts when it was what I thrived on? As far as I was concerned, fighting fires was the reason I was put on this planet. I loved the job.”

  Dixie returned with their dinners just then, so Shannon turned off her recorder and put it and her notepad in her bag.

  “We didn’t get very far,” Nick remarked after Dixie left them.

  “We’ll get to the rest tomorrow, if you can spare me a couple of hours during the day. It’s Saturday, so I assume you’re off?”

  “Mostly. I’ll have to spend a few hours at the gym and help the crew with their decorations for the dance.”

  “Ooh, this roast smells like heaven. Would that be the Homecoming Dance?”

  “That would be the one.”

  “You’re decorating.”

  “No, I’m making sure nobody gets killed falling off a ladder or sticking a finger in a light socket, that sort of thing. I am, however, one of the chaperones.”

  “Boy, are they in trouble.”

  “Hey, I’m a good chaperone. It’s ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ Wanna go with me? Be my date?”

  “To a high-school dance? You mean it?”

  “No, I was joking. Of course I mean it. You can wear your jeans and be right at home. Some of the girls will dress up, some won’t. I’ll even pick you up in the car.”

  Shannon did a little shoulder thing that made her look as if she were dancing in her seat. “The car? Wow. I have a date for the Homecoming Dance. Ooh, I can’t wait.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  Startled, Shannon stopped her antics. “Nick, no. I was teasing, mostly myself. It sounds like a lot of fun, and I mean that. Honest.”

  “You don’t have to go,” he said.

  “But I want to,” she protested.

  Nick hesitated, then said, “Good, then. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m positive. It’ll be fun.”

  He smiled. “If you like high-school dances.”

  Nick had never known a woman like Shannon. She had a million different moods, a mind like a steel trap and an outrageous sense of humor. With hair he loved to sink his hands into and a body designed expressly for him. Around her he felt at peace, which was an odd thing to think, since he also felt more excited than he ever had with other women.

  Not that he remembered any other women. When he was with Shannon, it seemed as if there weren’t any, had never been any.

  He had to get this damned interview over and done with so she could go back to New York before he did something completely stupid, like fall in love with her.

  But, no, he had to go and invite her to the game tonight. And the dance tomorrow night. That had been a stroke of idiocy. Masochism. But the thought of holding her in his arms and swaying to some slow, romantic song from the fifties had scrambled his brain.

  Sitting next to him in the bleachers, as the band finished its halftime marching number and people were streaming from the stands toward the concession booths, Shannon nudged him. “What are you looking so serious about?”

  He made a sound that even to him sounded suspiciously like a grunt. “Uh…nothing. Really.”

  “O-kay.” She said it as if agreeing with a mental patient that yes, of course he had three arms. Very carefully, so as not to upset him.

  Nick chuckled. “I was hoping they don’t play a lot of rap at the dance tomorrow night.”

  “You don’t like rap?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Do you?”

  She narrowed hers. “I asked first.”

  He shook his head. “Mostly I don’t get it.”

  “Well, that’s all right. You’re not who they’re aiming for, anyway.”

  He gave her a half smile. “The rap music industry isn’t aiming for an audience of old has-beens?”

  Shannon tilted her head and studied him. “That’s not really how you see yourself, is it?”

  “Is that an interview question?”

  She groaned and barely stopped herself from stomping her foot. “There you go again, answering a question with a question.”

  “You answer a question with a complaint.”

  She laughed at him, and he made a face at her.

  “Carlucci, how’s it going?”

  Shannon nearly swallowed her tongue when she recognized the man who came and sat sideways, facing them, on the next bench down.

  “Pretty good. How about yourself?” Nick shook the man’s hand.

  “No complaints. I’m being nosy. Maybe it’s the newspaperman in me, but I believe I know your friend. It’s Malloy, isn’t it? Shannon Malloy?”

 
Now she really was speechless. She had met Wade Harrison once five years ago at a Times Christmas party. Someone had introduced them and they had shaken hands and talked for maybe fifteen seconds, at most. And he remembered her name?

  When she realized both men were staring at her, she jerked and held her hand out. “Mr. Harrison, how are you? I can’t believe you remembered me after all this time.”

  Harrison smiled. “The Christmas party, right? You had been writing the articles on the city-council scandal of the time. Kickbacks, if I recall.”

  “That’s right.” She swallowed. The man was a legend. He was practically royalty in her business. “How are you finding life in a small town?”

  “I find it just about perfect,” he said. His smile practically beamed when Dixie, the woman from the diner, filed past with two young boys and one old man and waved on their way down the stairs.

  “His family,” Nick explained to her.

  “That,” Harrison said with a nod toward Dixie and the boys, “is what keeps me here. What about you? What are you doing so far from Manhattan? Working on a story?”

  She shrugged, suddenly shy about talking about her work in front of the former president and CEO of Harrison Corporation, one of the largest, most successful media conglomerates in the country. “A book,” she answered.

  “Anything to do with our boy, here?” He nodded toward Nick.

  She glanced at Nick.

  “He knows who I am. Was. Whatever,” Nick muttered.

  “You told him?”

  “Didn’t have to,” Harrison said. “I recognized him. We recognized each other, actually, and at the time, neither of us wanted our identity revealed.”

  “Now Nick’s the only one denying his past,” she said. Then she closed her eyes. “Nick, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Your past is your business and I’m not criticizing you for keeping it private. Honest.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Nick said. “Something tells me I’m about to be outed.”

  “Not by me,” she said honestly. “My book won’t be published for more than a year. And I’m certainly not going to mention where you live. If you lived in Manhattan, sure. But not a small town like this so that anyone could find you easily. I’m—”

  “I didn’t mean you,” Nick said, nodding a greeting to someone approaching from behind Shannon.

  She turned and glanced over her shoulder. It was the fire chief. The one Nick had been eyeing the night before at the bonfire.

  “Hey, Lon,” Wade Harrison said. “I assume you know Nick?”

  “No, don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” He held out his hand and Nick shook it.

  “Nick Carlucci, meet Lonnie Wallace, our new fire chief.”

  The chief cocked his head and peered at Nick. “I know you, don’t I? Not from here, but from before. Carlucci. New York, right? You were with the FDNY on 9/11. You’re the one who saved Barry.”

  “Barry Cunningham?” Nick asked.

  “Yeah. Man, it is really— If I’d realized who you were, I would have introduced myself and told you thank you from my whole family.”

  Nick looked stunned. Shannon took over the conversation. “Barry Cunningham. He’s one of the seven men Nick saved when he got injured, right?”

  “That’s right. It was all over the news, the way he pushed them out of the way, then took the hit himself when that giant beam collapsed. Barry was one of the seven. He’s my cousin’s husband. And I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  “No problem.” Shannon shook his hand and introduced herself.

  “You’re the reporter I’ve been hearing about,” Lon told her.

  “Nothing wrong with the grapevine in this town,” she said with a laugh.

  “You got that right,” Nick muttered.

  “How is Barry doing these days?” she asked Lon. “Is he having any of the adverse health effects we’ve been learning about in the news the last couple of years?”

  “Oh, no, Barry’s doing fine. Thanks to Nick, here.”

  “No, please,” Nick said. “I didn’t do much.”

  “You saved their lives. Hey, guys,” he called out. “Come over here and meet the man.”

  To Nick’s credit, Shannon noted, he barely cringed, but there was no mistaking the resignation in his eyes. His secret was out. She wondered why it had been so important to him to keep his past buried in the first place.

  Two young men wearing Tribute Fire Department caps came from the other side of the bleachers. “What’s up, boss?”

  The fire chief introduced Nick and Shannon to the two young volunteer firefighters, then someone else overheard and stopped by. Within minutes they were surrounded by a knot of people, one of whom was one of Harrison’s stringers for the newspaper, who just happened to have his camera with him.

  Shannon wondered which one would make the front page of the next issue—homecoming or Nick Carlucci, 9/11 hero.

  “I wonder,” Lon said to Nick. “Could I impose upon you, Nick, and ask your advice?”

  The smile Nick managed was a little weak around the edges, but Shannon doubted anyone but her noticed. “Sure,” Nick said. “What about?”

  “Well, I guess you’ve been out of the business a while, but you’ve still got more experience fighting fires than I do. I mean, I trained up in Wichita Falls and worked there for several years, so I’m no probie, but, well, tomorrow we’re scheduled to go over the nursing home and check their escape plans. Maybe see about a fire drill. They’ve got some new employees over there that I hear aren’t up to snuff on emergency procedures. I’m wondering if maybe you might be able to stop by over there tomorrow around ten and give me a pointer or two, see if I’m missing something.”

  “I doubt I’ll be able to tell you anything you don’t already know, but I’d be glad to help.”

  “Great.” Relief was visible on Lon’s face. He shook hands with Nick again. “Great. Thanks. I really appreciate it. Come on, fellas, let’s leave Nick to his date. Ma’am, nice meeting you.” He nodded to Nick and to Wade Harrison, then he and his fellow firefighters ambled down the steps.

  “I guess he was a little nervous about this inspection tomorrow,” Wade said. “It was good of you to agree to help.”

  Nick gave a small shrug. “I doubt I’ll be any help, but I couldn’t really say no, could I?”

  “Guess not. And now you’re outed.” Wade stated the obvious. “Even my ace reporter overheard.”

  Nick winced. “You’re not gonna make a big deal out of this in the paper, are you?”

  “You saved his cousin’s life.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So, he thinks it’s a big deal. I’ll do what I can to keep it as low key as possible,” Wade said, “but I won’t be able to keep it out of the paper. Sorry, pal, but you’re news. Too many people will want to know why the paper never mentioned a New York reporter was in town. The rest will come from there.”

  When he left, and they were finally alone again, Shannon reached over and took Nick’s hand. “I’m sorry you’ve been outed.”

  Nick looked down at their joined hands and threaded his fingers through hers. Hers were so delicate, he could probably crush them just by squeezing his together. Yet they held the power of the sword in them, by way of her writing. When she touched him in bed, they held such fire as to render him senseless. Now, compassion. All of this, just from her delicate hand.

  “Don’t apologize,” he told her. “It had to come out sooner or later. I knew when you came to town people would wonder why a New York reporter wanted to talk to a high-school custodian.”

  “I’m thinking of a book.”

  With a wry grin, he looked up from their joined hands to see her staring off into the distance, with that I’m writing in my head look in her eyes. “About a high-school custodian? That ought to sell about three copies.”

  “A crime-fighting high-school custodian. He and the students get involved in various capers…. I could write
an entire series. Nancy Drew, look out.”

  “Nancy Drew appeals to girls,” he pointed out.

  Shannon gave him a long, slow look up and down that had his temperature rising.

  “So do some high-school custodians.”

  Chapter Eight

  “You don’t have to stay, if you’d rather not,” Shannon said, her nerves twisting into tight knots.

  Nick tore his attention from the television and looked at her. “You want me to go?”

  The Tribute Tigers had won their homecoming game, and after joining the throng for an ice-cream cone at the Dairy Queen, Nick had walked her back to her room. He’d turned on the television and stared at it without saying a word. That was ten minutes ago. He was brooding. She recognized it easily, as her father used to act the same way when something heavy had weighed on his mind. The trick was getting him to unload, or share the burden.

  “No, I don’t want you to go,” she told Nick. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He stared at her, then looked back at the television. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Shannon felt a hot stinging behind her eyes. Her vision blurred. She whirled away from him and closed herself in the bathroom until she could beat back the threatening tears. He had just shut her out completely. They had been as close as a man and woman could be, physically, but he wouldn’t talk to her about what had happened at halftime with the fire chief. Nick had lived quietly, anonymously, in this town for more than two years, and now things were going to change. People were going to see him differently, maybe treat him differently. They would ask questions that they thought were innocent but that would cut him to the bone, about what it had been like that September day.

  She knew what he would be going through because she’d heard it all a dozen times from other men and women who had been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale.

  If there was one thing she knew, silence was Nick’s enemy, yet it was the one thing he held on to the hardest.

  Well, to hell with that. She flung open the bathroom door and marched over to the television. She couldn’t turn it off because Nick had the remote in his hand and she didn’t know where the power button was. Searching for it would take something away from the statement she was trying to make, so she stood in front of it, arms folded, and stared at him until he looked her in the eye.