Chapter 10
IN THE morning, when Griff got to the station and went to shower, Tommy was in there getting dressed by himself. Griff was weirdly glad that the paramedic’s pants were already on, even if the front yawned in an open Y, showing his fuzzy bely. At a foot shorter, he had to literaly look up to have a conversation.
“Hey, Griff.” Tommy nodded at him and put his foot on the bench so he could tie his running shoes.
“Dobsky.” Griff made sure he smiled back and kept his face steady. “You just getting off?”
“Hardly.” Tommy laughed and switched feet.
Griff realized how that had sounded. Shit. “For the day, I mean.”
“For sure.” Tommy was just playing along like always. Dirty jokes were a regular deal. He grunted and finished with his shoes. His feet were as stubby and square as the rest of him. He squatted in front of his locker. At the base of his spine, a little patch of sandy fluff peeked over his waistband.
He’s like a bear cub. Griff realized he was watching Tommy’s body and raised his eyes quickly. Jeez! Get a grip, asshole! He didn’t feel any attraction for the stocky paramedic, but because of what he’d seen, he felt a kind of protective sympathy; they faced the same dragon.
At least Tommy didn’t seem to notice the attention.
Oh God.
Maybe Tommy had noticed; what if he thought Griff was giving him the once over, you know, like that.
Did Tommy check out guys here in the house? Had he ever looked at Dante like that? Hard not to, Griff imagined. Al of this was so dangerous. Say something normal!
The silence stretched. Griff couldn’t tel if it was awkward or not.
Tommy stood to button the bowling shirt over his hard, furry chest. His skin was flushed from the shower. He was real short, but he sure was solid, arms sturdy as a stevedore. “Boring morning. Some fat chick had a coronary on the train, and we spent most of it down in the Carrol station. You do anything this week?”
How to answer that. Uh yeah, Anastagio and I just spooged all over each other online for a Russian out in Sheepshead Bay. How ’bout you? Get ass-raped in any alleys? He couldn’t control the funny expression on his face.
Tommy tipped his head, looking at him strangely. “Griff?”
“Yeah. I went to the Anastagios for dinner.” Griff sat down on the bench and puled his hoodie over his head, then smoothed his bright hair back down.
Then he noticed the healing scrape on Tommy’s corded forearm and the faint brick-burn on his scruffy face. Griff gulped and blushed, eyes on his locker like a laser scope.
How many times had Tommy come in with scuffs and bruises that they al assumed he’d gotten on the job? How many times had Tommy lied to his wife, using the job as a cover?
For a crazy second, Griff wanted to confide in him. Not everything about Dante and the porn and al, but just to ask Tommy what to do about these crazy feelings he had about another guy. To talk to someone who was hiding the same thing, who knew what he was living with here in the station, out in the neighborhood. He wanted to know how he was supposed to hide and survive. Tommy would get it, get him, right?
Tommy went to peer into a mirror over the sink and combed his damp sandy hair.
Griff thought about the rough aley sex he’d witnessed a couple weeks back. He could almost see the calm, happy glow that Tommy had carried away with him. He wondered if Tommy had a boyfriend, if that Arab guy meant something to him or if it had just been a random fuck. Maybe Tommy didn’t want to have feelings for the guy. Maybe he didn’t even know his name. He was married and had kids. Jeez. Maybe Tommy wouldn’t understand at al.
“Catch you later.” Tommy clapped him on the shoulder and pushed through the door, headed home. The handprint stayed hot for a few seconds.
Griff grunted and was glad he’d held his tongue. That could have been a fucking disaster. If Griff did say anything, he couldn’t take it back. Once he’d poured himself out, that shit wouldn’t go back in the bottle. Heluva risk to take. Could he trust Tommy that much? Could he trust anyone that much? Wel, yeah.
Dante.
Wel, maybe that was the real solution. Maybe if Griff didn’t confess his feelings for his friend to his friend. Maybe he could just float the idea that he might like dudes, yes, like-like. But what if that changed things between them? What if Dante laughed and winked and offered to get him a discount on a HotHead membership? What if Dante felt weird around him after that?
He felt trapped.
Right. The thing to do was to try and get over Dante. He needed to find another guy and get used to the gay thing and move on. Fairytales were bulshit.
Happy endings were for suckers. People didn’t love each other forever.
Maybe what he needed was a hot jock to hump in an aley so he could stop fixating. Yeah. This wasn’t love; this was lust, pure and simple. It wasn’t Dante making him feel these things; Dante was just seductive and they were together al the time.
There were other Italian guys in the world. Hel, they grew wild on the vine right here in his neighborhood. He needed to get the hel over this demented crush and find someone else who was enough like Dante that maybe his heart, his head, and his cock wouldn’t notice.
Uh-huh. Good one.
Griff skinned out of his jeans, stowing them in his locker and putting on his flip-flops. He showered mechanicaly, not touching himself below the belt more than absolutely necessary.
Ever since he’d started watching the Monte clip at HotHead, his treacherous penis had developed a hair trigger around the firehouse—totaly embarrassing.
Dante’s porn-formance had made the bunker gear into an impossible fetish for Griff: the boots, the suspenders, even his own turnout pants. These last two weeks, riding back to the house sooty from a fire, he’d crack a fat in his underwear just from the weight of the clothes against his skin, remembering Dante’s dirty talk for the HotHead members. He knew every second of it by heart at this point.
Two stals down, another shower came on with a hiss. Another of the guys showing up for their tour.
Just to be safe, Griff rinsed off in freezing water. God, that’s cold. He stayed under it til his bals shriveled to the size of lima beans and his dick was a rubbery stub.
He reached out of the stal for his threadbare towel. He scraped it roughly over his goose-bumped skin and scalp, then knotted it tight around his hips. When he got back to his locker, he dug out fresh boxer-briefs and a thermal shirt. The cold water had made his nipples into tight pale pebbles. He tugged the towel loose and ran it over his fiery head and pits again. He put one wide foot up on the bench and then the other, bending over to rub his legs down.
Thunk. The locker room door opened. Griff flinched involuntarily. Behind him, someone gave a low wolf-whistle.
“Ass!” The familiar voice was husky and joking.
“Uh, hi.” Griff spun and held the towel over his front.
Dante stood there chuckling at the modesty. “It’s okay, G. I had a bod like yours, I’d never get dressed.” Griff roled his eyes. “You hardly stay dressed now.”
Dante sat down on the bench beside Griff’s underwear. His sweet muskiness filed the grungy room. “You gonna lift today? I need to stay pumped for Alek if
—”
Griff shook his head and grimaced to shut Dante up. Not here. He jerked his head at the tiled arch. In the other room, the shower switched off with a clank.
Dante nodded. Griff yanked his underwear over his junk and stepped into his pants before they had an audience.
“’S’up, hairbags.” Briggs came out drying his beergut with a bleach-stained towel. “You guys gonna lift later? My wife’s busting my bals.” Ugh. Briggs.
If ever Griff needed proof that he didn’t find most guys attractive…. He jammed his feet into boots.
Dante looked at Griffin to answer for both of them.
Griff eyed the door; he didn’t want to watch Dante undress up close right now. “Yeah. No. I gotta”— get the hell away from my best friend—“take it easy on my shoulder. Slept funny.”
“Ha ha. More like jerked off funny. Repetitive stress.” Dante winked at Briggs and puled open his own locker.
Jesus. If either of them knew the full story….
Briggs snorted and made a show of drying his bals. Moron. He plucked a razor out of his locker and shook it at them. “You know Anastagio, you oughtta try out for basebal again come spring. We could realy use you.”
After 9/11, Dante had played on the FDNY basebal team for three years, until his renovations started taking up his time and his attention. Dante played it to the hilt, smiling sheepishly with the big dog eyes and tucking his hair behind his ear with an “aw-shucks” sexiness that kept his fans creaming in their thongs. He played the way he did everything, as if his life depended on it: diving for impossible catches, pitching like lightning, cracking bals into the stands so he could amble around the diamond in his own sweet-ass time. His speed and agility and grace were heart-stopping.
Normaly Griff hated basebal; it al seemed like math and sitting around. Ugh. He was built for hockey and footbal, where his mass could do the most damage. He didn’t want to spend an entire game sitting around watching other guys sit around. What was the point?
Give him ice and a puck or a set of pads and pigskin, he’d play til his ears bled and his eyelashes froze. It made sense to hit other guys, to fight over something, push toward a goal. No. Basebal was Dante’s game; his long, tight build was perfect for it; he had a kiler arm. “From whacking off so much,” he always said.
Stil, as much as Griff hated the game, he never missed a chance to see Dante in that uniform for anything. Hel, the straightest guys in the department teased Anastagio about his tight ass in those pants. Girls (and a few brave guys) lined up to thank him and ask for pictures. These days, Dante stil tried to go to a couple games a year.
Dante shook his head. “Nah. I dunno. With the renovations and everything… I don’t realy have time, Briggs.” Before he’d finished talking, Briggs threw his towel over a shoulder and wandered back toward the sinks, showing a bright green Shamrock tattooed on one cheek.
Gross.
Then Dante raised his T-shirt to rol a fresh layer of deodorant into his pits. His abs bunched, and the slim treasure trail leading down them was glossy.
Griff didn’t actualy lick his lips, but he wanted to. “Hey, uh….” He fished in his bag for an envelope with $1,400 in fifties, tucking it into Dante’s warm caloused hand.
Across the room, Briggs was whistling at the sink.
“What is this?” Dante looked at the cash, confused.
“Money from… that thing. You know. I forgot before and I didn’t want you to have to ask.” Griff nodded, like it was normal. “Look, I gotta talk to the chief.”
Dante shook his head and held it out. “This is yours, G.”
But before Dante could hand it back, Griff headed out the door, puling his shirt over his head, trying to think of someplace in the house to hide from his best friend for the next twelve hours.
THE wail of the alarm woke Griff up where he had hunkered down in one corner of the breakroom to hide.
“Engine…. Ladder….” The automated voice echoed through the house. “Engine…. Ladder….” Griff could hear the clomp of boots on the stairs as the guys made their way down to the rigs, grumbling at the late hour. Griff shook himself and headed for the door.
Half the night he’d managed to steer clear of any alone time with Dante. The breakroom was the only place that Dante couldn’t ever get him alone. The constant audience meant that any conversations had to stay strictly pussy- or game-related. Groups were fine, but when it was the two of them, Dante had this way of pushing close to him while Griff went slowly out of his gourd. He knew Dante noticed, but there was no helping it.
The Anastagios had always been physical and affectionate, but what with everything, the contact was too much for Griff to handle. Dante patting him and pushing him and squeezing his shoulder made him feel like he was going to bust. A few more weeks of watching “Monte” and coming to work, and they were gonna have to clean him off the ceiling and wals.
“Engine…. Ladder….”
Down on the floor, guys were puling themselves onto the truck. Dante was inside already; he thumped the seat next to his. “C’mon, gorila. We were worried you might sleep through it.”
Griff bobbed his head, closing his jacket as he sat down. He could smel Dante, and the pleasure unnerved him. “Yeah. I slept like hel last night.” The rest of the crew piled into the rig. Briggs and Watson, bitching about nothing. Tarlton was chauffeur. Siluski rode shotgun, shouting over his shoulder as they puled out into the street with the sirens blaring and the emergency lights strobing the block with red.
The truck rocked and jerked over the streets, braking and leaning sharply when they had to navigate parked cars and drunk drivers and coasting taxis.
Tarlton could thread the ladder through these little streets blindfolded.
They puled up in front of a large store—appliances, it looked like. The high windows facing the sidewalk were cracked; looters had made off with some swag. Nice. Already a couple of vultures were circling around the whiff of juicy tragedy.
As the men dropped out of the rig to the asphalt, the acrid stench stung their eyes. Even down here it was hard to breathe. Griff’s lungs burned.
“Plastic.” Siluski sniffed the air as he shifted his helmet on his head. “A lot of it burning. Jesus. I’d know that smel anywhere.”
“Totaly fucking carcinogenic.” Watson’s eyes were already raw and tearing.
They clambered down into the street, staring up at the column of oily smoke above them. The chief was already working out a plan of attack. The engine company was already at the hydrant, and their probie had started puling the hose. Fire was visible in the windows from the third floor up. This thing had gotten awful hot awful fast.
Griff could almost hear his dad’s voice in his head: “probable arson.” They needed to tread softly in here. Anything could be waiting for them.
The ambulance puled up and Tommy popped out, hauling his big kit around the back.
“I know this building. Slick Wilie’s has the ground floor. Showroom and offices. Shipping too.” Briggs groaned. “Electronics chain.”
“Perfect. I been shopping for a new widescreen for the Super Bowl.” Dante grinned as he closed his jacket over his muscular chest.
Watson had come around the rig, the emergency lights flickering over his features.
The heat from the plate-glass windows baked Griff’s face and watering eyes. “What about the higher floors?” Briggs swung the irons onto his back. “I think they rent the uppers as storage. I fel through the floor once. Broke my tibia and my clavicle. Nothing is up to code.”
Siluski grumbled, “Fucking fantastic. It’s gonna be a flea market in there.”
“Fire sale!” Dante laughed. “Maybe I can pick up speakers to match.”
“Masks on, ladies.” Siluski wasn’t joking. “Awful hot from here.”
“I’l take the loading dock with the probie?” Briggs pointed. There was a driveway along one side of the building, wide enough for a semi. He grabbed the youngest member of the team and hooked around to investigate without waiting for an answer.
The chief grumbled and turned to the rest of his men. “Muir! You and Siluski take the main floor up to three. I got a hinky feeling about this one.” Griff and Siluski strapped on their irons and masks and helmets.
“Anastagio!” The chief hooked a finger at Dante. “Take Watson and sweep the fourth and fifth. Deli guy who caled it in says there may be squatters up there.”
Watson jogged to the door and tugged it open; Dante folowed. The light caught the surnames emblazoned in reflective letters across the tail of their bunker coats.
“Hope no one was working late.” Siluski slapped Griff’s back as they trudged for the entrance. Griff was watching the day-glow ANASTAGIO letters sink into the stinking smoke ahead of them.
Up ahead, Dante grinned and cracked his neck like a boxer. “Let’s go make a fucking mess, huh.” SILUSKI and Griff made quick work of the showroom. The ground floor seemed smoky but untouched. Filthy water dripped from spigots overhead. Their boots slapped in a half inch of water pooled on the uneven linoleum.
“What’s up with the sprinkler system?” Griff was walking aisle to aisle, scanning rows of stereo bulshit and televisions and display racks. No civilians, no fire.
Siluski checked in with the chief on the walkie. “First floor and mezz, I got smoke but no bitch. Headed to three.” Griff could hear the fire above them, but the sprinklers were dead throughout the vast store. “What’s with the sprinklers?” They pushed through the emergency doors into the stairwel.
“Primary search negative on five.” Dante’s voice echoed from three floors up, barking into his walkie, then his voice rumbling to Watson as they clomped down to the fourth floor.
Siluski was scowling as he climbed. “Maybe someone was playing a prank? Seems like a bulshit cal for al this water.” Up on three it was hot and much smokier; even if they hadn’t found it, something was stil burning. The entire halway was stacked with unused packaging, thousands of large corrugated cardboard boxes in flat stacks. Obstructing al movement and totaly unsafe. At one end of the airless hal they met a locked door, baking to the touch.
Griff nudged Siluski and looked at the ceiling tiles overhead. “What did Briggs say they use the upper floors for?”
“Dunno. Empty packaging al the hel over. I’m guessing storage mostly. Or shipping. I gotta pop this.” Siluski wedged the bar in and cracked the frame. Heat roled out, and that godawful greasy smoke—barbecued plastic.
They stepped into a big space filed with high shelves and deep tables and a thick veil of roling blackness. On the opposite wal, windows faced the street.
Emergency lights flashed just out of sight below.
“Uh, Siluski….” Griff squatted and pointed at the ceiling. Above them the pipes were split, and the beams around them showed dents and heavy strokes of a sledgehammer. No way was this an accident. Above the mangled system, the fire was crawling across the ceiling, slow and gold as a pool of spreading oil.
Siluski already had his radio out. “Chief, I got heat on three sides. It’s in the wals on three. We’re gonna need a line up here pronto. Somebody has sledged the sprinklers.”
“Copy.”
Shouting came from overhead. A pop-pop-pop as a couple windows blew out upstairs from the heat.
“10-45! I got one,” Watson belowed from above; it sounded like the dumbass wasn’t wearing his mask.
There was a low crack above them. A few ceiling tiles fel in a shower of sparks.
“The hel is going on up there?!” Siluski’s voice was hushed inside the mask. “Get low.” The pounding spray of water against the windows faltered. The guttural roar of the fire had changed pitch and the ceiling was hotter, the fire bluer. Footsteps thumped past overhead, and Dante shouted instructions far away.
Something heavy slammed down behind them and punched through to the floor below. A large hole in the ceiling between two beams was sucking air, churning the smoke, and feeding oxygen upwards. Through the impromptu chimney, they could hear Dante shouting instructions up on four loud and clear.
No mask either, fucking idiot.
“The hel was that?” The chief’s grim confusion was palpable.
Flame licked down the wals on the west side of the third floor halway. Plastic rubble popped and fried around them, running in stinking molten rivers that stuck to their boots.
The chief’s voice cracked on the radio. “You boys pul out! It’s too hot and we got a dead hydrant. Get out of there.”
“Lieutenant?” Griff’s gut tingled with certainty. “Hey! Siluski?”
“Copy that. Already on it.” Siluski nodded at Griff and pointed back the way they’d come. They crouched and hustled for the open door.
Outside, the halway was a jumble of paper and sheetrock. The air was starting to cook. Sounds filtered to them from the unreachable stairwel. Breaking glass overhead and someone screaming at Dante and Watson.
Siluski jerked his chin at Griff to hang back.
Navigating the smoky halway was like swimming in scalding mud. Griff’s breath hissed behind the rebreather. Even with the beams on their chests and the flame down the west wal, they were fumbling blind. Siluski tried to tug a toppled wal-sized cabinet out of their way with his haligan bar; it fel with a thud and threw up a cloud of sparks. Its drawers emptied files against the burning wal. No way could they go out the way they’d come.
“B-stairs.” Griff gestured, and they doubled back and headed for the door at the other end, crouched and kicking aside the boxes and charred drywal. Griff used his mass to plow through some of the debris toward that back exit. And then they were taking the stairs down three at a time. The bitch was chasing them and picking up speed.
THE chief was speaking to Siluski very calmly. “… some kinda accelerant. They want to torch TVs for the insurance, I’m not gonna lose good men over that bulshit.”
Without enough water to pour on the conflagration, the engine company was crippled. Briggs and the probie were standing at the back of the rig. The ladder was extended for a hose hanging limp with no water. The stink of scorched plastic clogged everyone’s noses.
Where the hel was Dante?
Siluski spat black at the ground. “Chief, there’s no one to grab! That hot and we’re supposed to go in with a limited crew to rescue cardboard boxes? Fuck that. It’s just overstock bulshit, and you better believe it’s insured.”
Feeling claustrophobic and impotent, Griff puled his own mask off and paced. Sweat ran down his face and throat as he looked up at the glare in the high windows. Dante and Watson were stil working their way down, taking their goddamn time.
Then a shout and Siluski trotted toward the door. Briggs folowed and the chief turned to look.
In the smoky entrance of the store, Watson was dragging someone, bracing the weight on his hip. His shout was muffled til he clawed the oxygen off. “Can I get a hand?” A scorched bum was dead weight against him, beard burned half off.
Relieved, Griff started walking toward him wanting to yel at someone. Dante stil wasn’t visible.
The chief was already caling the 10-45 before Watson even made it outside: fire-related injury.
EMS had their kits out; Tommy was trotting toward Watson to take over.
The homeless man had puked down his own front and one side of Watson.
“I lost Anastagio!” Watson’s eyes were bloodshot under the soot. “Trying to get this genius to the stairwel.” Griff’s heart squeezed. “What do you mean, lost?”
Watson leaned over, bracing himself against the truck. The men gathered into a knot around him. “He was behind me. So fucking hot up there. I was talking to him the whole way. Then nothing. Maybe he made a grab?”
“Without his mask.” Griff’s voice was hushed in his own ears.
“Dante, position?” Siluski asked his walkie and got no response. “Watson, fourth floor?”
“Ladder! Fourth floor.” The chief looked up at the smoking windows. “Shit stil burning up there?” The other guys around the rig were only a couple yards away from Griff, but they seemed like they were on Mars. The emergency lights strobed over the smoky faces, red-blue-red-blue. Siluski looked so pissed he had to be terrified.
“Anastagio!” Siluski shouted into his radio again. “Quick jerking off up there!”
“Anastagio!” Siluski shouted into his radio again. “Quick jerking off up there!”
Griff felt a weird holow torn in his gut. Something took a bite deep inside him, leaving a shredded space. A shark, it felt like, maybe; the whole world was underwater.
Mask off, Watson was shaking his head and spitting. No response on the walkie.
Time slowed down til Griff could hear his heartbeat as two completely separate and distinct sounds.
- Lub… dub…. -
The crew was staring at the chief. For what seemed like an hour, they waited for the chief to give an order.
- Lub… dub…. -
Griff did not. He didn’t know what happened, realy. He didn’t even think; he just saw it happen because he was somewhere else with a view. Suddenly, the legs under him were moving, fast, but they were somebody else’s legs. With the detachment of a hawk, he watched some big pale stranger in his gear sprinting through that burning door, headed back for the B-stairs he’d just left.
- Lub… dub…. -
Someone else’s breath whooshed in ears that didn’t feel like his. He felt the stolen legs underneath the gear pump as they pushed toward his best friend suffocating upstairs, or worse. Like the air wasn’t hot, gray-orange soup. Like rancid smoke didn’t curl in front of the mask.
- Lub… dub…. -
Only when he was alone did Griff force himself into his own skin, into the fire. Everything moved slowly around him. Think, idiot. They’d been up on four when Watson made the grab. He climbed the steps into the inferno. Cinders floated in the air around him.
Upstairs, he stayed low and made his way down the smoking halway.
Please.
“Dante?” Under the mutter of the fire, he listened for Dante’s radio. “C’mon, you fucking idiot.” There was only the hum of the fire turned loose on al that cardboard and plastic, the prefab furniture popping and buckling, glass breaking. Metal beams growning overhead. Dante wasn’t anywhere.
Griff’s panic rose in him, paralyzing him as he spun in place, straining for a sign, a sound, a clue in the roaring dark.
- Lub… dub…. -
Finaly, at the north end, he heard an electronic squawk on the other side of the wal. He put his hand against the baking sheetrock, straining to listen.
Siluski’s voice was faint and staticky, but nearby. “Anastagio!”
Griff didn’t hesitate. He hefted his axe and hacked a man-sized gap between the struts. The hot air slammed into his face, scorching his lashes. He swung his hooligan hard and tore his way inside, ramming in with his shoulders. Football in Hell. The heat roled out, broiling the air in his lungs. Hunting for Dante, it was September 11th al over again.
Mask. He felt stupid for not having it on, but he wasn’t going to waste time now. Dante wasn’t wearing his either, which was worse. Inside the room, a table had flipped. Dante’s helmet was flipped on the floor, and he scooped it up. He was walking on broken plastic and charred cardboard. He heard Siluski saying Dante’s name on the radio again and flung the table behind him.
There! Against the wal, a reflective strip caught the beam from his chest and bounced it back. —STAGIO. He’d never been happier to see the fluorescent tail of that jacket.
Dante’s pop had once told him that their family name, Anastagio, meant “divine” or “reborn.” In this scalding room, seeing the reflective letters crumpled together protecting his friend, that sounded just about right.
Better than 9/11; at least we’re here together.
Griff dropped the helmet and crossed the blazing room.
I’d rather die with him. He won’t be alone this time.
Against the wal, Dante was crumpled half-buried under masonry and part of the ceiling, snug against a pile of huge corrugated boxes. A beam had clipped him and stunned him long enough to fil his lungs with the suffocating smoke. His scalp was bleeding pretty badly, but he didn’t seem burned or broken. His nose was crusty with toasted insulation and soot, but his breath was steady if shalow. Alive.
Dante groaned and shifted; his hands flexed. Spine was sound, thank Christ.
“Dante?” Griff crouched under the smoke and roled the body, puling off one glove to check him—no cuts, strong pulse. Head wound of some kind, but no time for a colar or a flatboard. They had to get the hel out of the heat that was baking the room around them before they both suffocated.
Flecks of burning paper floated down onto the two of them like angry moths. Griff fumbled for his rebreather and held the sweet, metalic air over Dante’s nose and mouth for a moment. Griff kept low to the ground beside him, their faces about three inches apart. He saw Dante’s eye move under the delicate lid.
Across the room, Griff heard a window explode with the heat. His own lungs were scorched. Down in the street, sirens and people shouting. He took another lungful of canned oxygen and then strapped his mask onto his friend’s bloody face. Déjà vu watching Dante near death; he’d done this before.
Time to go.
Griffin shook his head. “Hang on, buddy.” On autopilot he leaned down, put a shoulder low, and scooped Dante up, bracing his powerful legs against the weight.
Not dead weight. Not dead weight.
With a shout, Griff hefted Dante into a tight cradle and strode for the gap he’d made in the wal, kicking and shouldering his way through.
- Lub…. -
He turned for the fire door and tried not to inhale.
- Dub…. -
His chest cramped and his arms burned with Dante’s weight.
Please-please-please, God. I’ll do anything.
Things were easier in the stairwel; with gravity on his side, he was able to brace against the wal a couple times as he stumbled his way back down to the street. Fire was starting to seep down the wals.
- Lub…. -
As Griff picked his way down the steps, trying not to drop his precious burden, a memory came to him: the two of them getting trashed on Jägermeister shots the summer before they’d started at the fire academy on Randal Island. They’d been “watching” the Anastagios’ house, and Dante had gotten wasted with three girls and had a couple hours of weird sex while Griff passed out on the couch.
For reasons Dante never could explain, he had let the trio scribble al over his long body with paint pens before passing out. When he woke up the paint had dried, blue and red gibberish on every square inch of his body that wouldn’t come off without scrubbing.
In the morning, without thinking twice, Griff had stripped down, picked up Dante, and climbed into the shower with a hard brush and literaly scoured his best friend head to toe, both of them laughing, so they could make it to church for some cousin’s christening. That was the only other time in their lives he’d carried Dante.
- Dub…. -
I could never do that now. Carry him naked. Then again, Dante would never do that now. Would he?
Griff could see the bottom of the stairs, could taste the first hint of cold air. His eyelashes were burning. With the last strength he had, he squeezed Dante to his chest and slammed out the door.
Then they were in the street and he could breathe and everyone was yeling at him. He was nearly blind with the smoke, and the whole world was a stinging blur. His nose was caked with ash and his eyebrows were singed.
“Down! Put him down!” The EMTs peeled his grip loose and lifted Dante onto the gurney. Tommy leaned over him, checking pulse and giving low instructions to the other paramedics. A beefy black woman was suctioning his airways and muttering.
Dante took a loud gasping breath. Reborn. And Griff knew the exact music of his breath. Thank you, God.
Griff tried to see him but went to his knees, hacking and retching. The blackened spit ran from his mouth in long, poisonous ribbons on the pavement.
Now I know what broiled television tastes like.
More windows burst high above them, and an enormous chunk of ceiling gave on one of the upper floors, sending a bilion cinders spiraling into the air. A colossal whoomp of flame licked at the sky .
That could have been him.
“What in the hel were you doing, Muir?” Someone was beside him, yeling down. Briggs. “Almost got your fat ass broiled.” Fuck you. Griff spat again. He couldn’t get the taste out of his throat, or the sight of Dante crumpled against the wal. What the hel had Dante been doing?
Umm, his job? He’s a fireman too.
Dante hacked and coughed as Tommy put an oxygen line under his nose and made him breathe, checking for damage with gentle hands.
Thank you, Tommy.
A freckled paramedic held his eyelid up and ran a penlight over the pupil, muttering something to the others. Tommy nodded and looked at Griff… and nodded. It would be okay.
Next round at the Pipe Room is on me.
Briggs was pissed. “Fuckwit, we had a ladder on the way. You couldn’t wait three goddamn minutes for your fucking girlfriend?” Like that, Griff was on his feet, fist raised to pound Brigg’s face into pulp right there in the street when Siluski caught hold of his arm and yanked him back like a Rottweiler.
The chief stepped in front of Briggs, holding up a hand. “Leave it, Briggs! It’s his brother.”
“If you say—” Briggs took another step, and Watson put a hand on his chest.
“I just did. That’s why I’m wearing the white shirt, dipshit.” The chief stepped forward. “That’s why I got officer bars on my chest. Cool off.” Griff knew he was breathing too fast and tried to slow his gasping so he didn’t hyperventilate and pass out. As the medicos cut Dante out of his turnout gear, Griff could see the block letters on Dante’s navy T-shirt: “KEEP 200 FEET BACK.”
Try and make me.
Siluski put a hand on his arm, snapping him back to the sidewalk in front of the smoking building. “C’mon, kid. They got him.” Griff looked down at the hand on his sleeve, feeling like his massive arm didn’t belong to him. The muscles were stil shaking and cramped. “Yessir.” Griff let some volunteer ambulance chick steer him to the side of the EMS van and administer pointless first aid to him, just so he didn’t murder and mutilate Briggs in a public place.
After they’d finished playing doctor, Griff walked on robot feet to the truck. He needed to cal Dante’s parents. Above them, the building smoldered under the one good hose.
Fucking city. Fucking Republicans. Fucking budget cuts.
The chief handed him Dante’s helmet. “Gidwitz found this.”
“Thanks.” Griff gathered it against his chest like an infant.
“The hel were you doing?!”
“It wasn’t me realy. I mean, I didn’t think.” Griff coughed. God, it stank. “I didn’t….” He felt powerless, mad for no reason. He wanted to crush Briggs’s skul for caling Dante his girlfriend, for picking that moment to be an asshole, for trying to shame him.
“No. You did good. He could’ve died up there.” Chief nodded. “I’m stil writing you up, but off the record? That was a good thing.” Griff cradled the helmet and breathed. Blinking felt weird; he realized his eyelashes had been singed short and blunt.
The ambulance carrying Dante puled away at high speed and Griff felt his heart go with it, unspooling-unspooling from his chest like a long thread that wouldn’t break.
THE Slick Wilie’s fire gave in after about three hours. Finaly, Engine 361 showed up from the other Red Hook house, thank Christ, and they hammered at the bitch til she gave in. They tapped another hydrant that wasn’t vandalized, and the other men went back in. The engine soaked the facade with water, then ran another line inside to hose the hotspots.
After getting his ass chewed, Griff sat the rest out, staying down on the street trying to get air into his scalded lungs. Everyone could fuck off. Not one thing he would have done differently. The medics told him that if he’d been a smoker, he probably would have suffocated. For the milionth time, he was glad Dante hated tobacco in his house.
When the blaze had died down, the other guys went back up to do a floor-by-floor in the soupy ash and charred appliances and smoldering cardboard.
Once they’d given an al clear, everyone was more than ready to ditch this shitbox.
In the end there were no “roasts” at al; no one had died in the building. The fire marshal would do a walkthrough in the morning because “multiple points of origin” was pretty much a flashing “insurance fraud” sign. Evil idiots.
Dante wound up being the only serious medical situation, and it was his own damn fault. Tommy was pretty sure he had a head injury, but he was responsive, so Griff didn’t have a good excuse to go with them to the hospital.
On the rig the guys were silent. They’d been lucky and Griff had been stupid. ’Nuff said. No one was going to blame him for saving a life, especialy one of theirs.
Jostled by the pitted road and riding backward, Griff checked the other faces. Was anyone looking at him weird? Had they paid attention to Briggs’s bulshit?
No. Everyone knew that he was an honorary Anastagio. They were letting him panic in peace.
Where was Dante now?
“I’m getting too old for this shit.” Griff tried to swalow. His hands were shaking. He was soaking wet under his gear. He stil wasn’t sure he hadn’t pissed his pants when he’d found Dante unconscious and burning.
Siluski shook his head and wiped his mouth. “Nah. Seems to me you’re just old enough, kid.” Griff closed his eyes and rested inside the rocking truck, ignoring everyone else. Facing backward like that—not being able to see where he was headed—
always made him a little queasy. His eyes burned and he cried a little in relief, but who could tel under the scorched grime. He wanted a shower, a drink, and a nap. He needed to sit down and talk about everything and nothing with the only person who turned him inside out without even trying.
And just like that, he knew with a terrible certainty: he couldn’t hide forever.
Even if it wrecked him, nothing was scarier than losing the chance to tel the man he loved the truth.