Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [25]
“Don’t worry. Everything’s going to work out fine no matter who’s here. You have a good day, Annie.”
“Bet’cher ass, sweetie.”
14. THE DOOTER IN THE HELMET
After they’d done the dinner dishes, Finney and Jerry Monahan collapsed in the station recliners, Monahan channel-surfing with the remote control, Finney unable to motivate himself for even the simplest task. The whole battalion knew Finney had lost the promotion, the topic picked over by the twin vultures of gossip and Monday-morning quarterbacking; they were bound to connect it to his performance at Leary Way. It ate at him to know that everybody was talking about him again.
“I didn’t want to tell you before you went down there,” Monahan said, “but I knew you weren’t going to get the job.”
“What? How did you know that?”
“Somebody who works down there told me. I’d rather not say who.”
“Jesus. Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Are you kidding? Who wants to tell a guy a thing like that?” Monahan let his belt out a couple of notches. They’d made fajitas, the four of them—Finney, Sadler, Monahan, and Iverson, who was manning the air rig, Air 26—and except for Finney, who’d lost his appetite, they’d eaten too much. Iverson was hiding out on the other side of the station with a calculator and a stack of personal bills. Sadler was in his office on the phone.
Monahan ballooned his belly out, lifted his leg, and farted. He wouldn’t swear out loud, but he would fart in a cathedral. “Geez-Louise, why do I eat so much?”
“Same reason you break wind in public,” Finney said, still smarting over the fact that Monahan had known in advance about his not getting the promotion. “Lack of character.”
Passing off the insult, Monahan chuckled as if it were a joke and turned his head at the sound of knocking at the back door. Finney crossed the room and opened the door. It was his brother, Tony.
“Just thought I’d come by and see how you were.”
“You heard?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Monahan rose and scratched the back of his head. “I better go see if I got November seventh off. I’ve been asking about it all day.”
“Why do you need the seventh off?” Finney asked.
“My wedding anniversary,” Monahan said, nervously. “I forgot last year. You can bet your booties there was heck to pay. Thirty-two years. I get anything wrong this time, the little woman’ll really pin my ears back.” Monahan stepped around the corner into the corridor and knocked on Lieutenant Sadler’s door.
“Some place we can talk?” Tony asked, giving Monahan a sour look as he left the room.
They walked out into the cold apparatus bay behind Engine 26 and stood facing each other on the concrete floor.
Taking after their mother’s side of the family, John was blue-eyed, easygoing, and genial. Tony resembled their father, penetrating dark eyes, blond hair. A captain at Station 17, Tony was three years older and four inches shorter than Finney. Tony and their father were the hardnoses in the clan, both calculating and intense, and each with a mean streak, though recently they’d both worked at taming it—Tony, perhaps because of the bad marriages; their father, because of the cancer.
“He’s not trying to put this off on Leary Way, is he?” Tony asked.
“Maybe a little.”
“You know, when he was a captain at Thirty-one’s, somebody dumped a dooter in his helmet. You ever hear that story? You got to really hate somebody to drop a hot turd in his helmet.”
“Thanks, Tony. Thanks for coming by.”
“You should have called the minute it happened. You got anybody else to talk to? How about Laura?”
Finney had been divorced from Laura almost six years. “Not likely.”
“Jesus, you’re right. I know how pissed Doris gets at me when we’re not married. God, I was at Seventeen’s to pick up my check, and they were saying you and Reese almost came to blows. Until now everybody’s pretty much been waiting to figure out his style. But this goes against all tradition. You were top dog on the list. By rights you should have snagged that first job. Nobody’s ever been head man on the list and not gotten a job. Now everybody’s going to