A Low Blue Flame

by A. J. Downey

  This blaze could be either be a junkie fire or a campfire gone awry. With how gutted the building was, I somehow doubted it was an electrical fire. In any case, the only people likely to be left homeless were folks that’d started out that way, this time. Still didn’t keep it from being a damn shame.

  We’d already responded here once, not for a fire, but for an overdose. That guy had been three or four days gone by the time we’d got here so we’d packed it in and left the coroner’s office to take over and do their job. It was sad. It was even sadder that this had become the new normal, but it was what it was. This was the job. Lately, we seemed to lose four for every one we saved, two of them easily to OD. It’d been a hard year across the damn board for emergency-service types and it was taking its toll by way of suicides. A lot of guys could only internalize so much pain and heartache before it chewed them up from the inside out.

  “Shit, we got visible flames, she’s lit up like a fuckin’ Christmas tree.” Ripley said and I shook my head and crossed myself, shooting up the too-often-uttered prayer of: Please, no bodies tonight.

  We pulled up, the sirens died on the smoke-choked air and all of us jumped out. I made sure my gauntlets were a good fit, flexing my hands before I opened the cabinet on the side of the truck and shrugged into the rest of my gear through the canvas straps and metal clasps. The tank was heavy, but I was used to it. I checked my pressure, got my mask on, and dropped my helmet on my head. Brody raised a fist and we knocked them together as Captain Walden snipped through the construction fence with bolt cutters, opening up a path for us to get to the boarded-up ground-level windows.

  As a ladder company, it was our job to blaze a trail, open things up to vent so the engine company could get the water where it needed to go. We were a fire-fight’s toolbox, carrying axes and bolt-cutters, our trucks equipped with ladders and the Jaws of Life. I hefted down my fire-axe from its holder on the side of our rig and we trooped up the sidewalk to where the Captain held the fence aside for us.

  “After you, gentleman! Watch your asses in there!” he yelled.

  I shot him a salute and said over the radio from inside my mask, “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Do it, Calder!” came over the headset and I hauled back with the axe and heaved it into the plywood in front of us. Handholds achieved, Brody got in there with me and we put our backs into it, ripping it out of the old wood window frames it’d been nailed into.

  Most of the glass was already busted out, but Ripley got in there with a steel pry bar and busted out the rest. I ducked and stepped through. It was smoky down here, but not too bad, not yet.

  “Get that ladder in the air! Start hosing it down from the top!” I didn’t recognize the voice over the radio but we weren’t worried about it.

  “Yeah, it’s a little bit of smoke but it’s not too bad down here,” Ripley reported.

  “Get to the second floor, but watch your asses.”

  “You got more to worry about out there than we do in here,” I said. “Watch that brick façade.”

  “You don’t need to say it, Calder,” Brody said unhappily. “We all know.”

  “Yes, the fuck he does.” Captain Walden shut him down. He softened his hard-assed tone some by saying, “Safety first, boys. We learn from our mistakes.”

  It was a bigger fight than expected and ended up being a first-alarm, all-hands-on-deck box assignment. Truthfully, I was surprised they didn’t rank it up higher than that. When all was said and done we’d found one DOA, but we couldn’t get him out. By the time we reached him, he was a crispy fucking critter and there had been drug paraphernalia surrounding the body.

  I sat on the end of one of the trucks, one of our guys on safety duty pouring water over my head to cool me down. Angel stood nearby monitoring, portable oxygen in his hands if I needed it. I waved him off.

  “Hell of a fight,” he said looking up at the smoking and steaming building.

  “How long we been at it?” I asked.

  “Something like nine hours,” he said. I shook my head.

  “Felt like three.”

  “Adrenaline,” he said casually.

  “Yo, Backdraft! You good?” I looked over and jerked my head in a nod. Blaze raised a hand and gave me a wave. He went back to what he was doing, which was working hoses. He’d come in with engine number forty-nine.

  “You boys did good,” Captain Walden said. “No injuries. Gotta like that.”

  “Hear, hear.”

  “Shit,” Ripley muttered.

  “Must be a slow news day,” Barnaby said.

  I looked over behind the line at the reporters trying to crowd it.

  “How long do you think before you can get in there and retrieve the body?” someone asked, and thrust a microphone into a guy from Blaze’s team’s face.

  “Fuck you,” he grated, and hefted a loop of hose over his shoulder and walked it forward.

  “Fan-fucking-tastic,” Captain Walden griped under his breath.

  “How the fuck they know about that shit already?” Barnaby asked, leaning back and taking a slug out of the half-empty bottle of brand-name water in his hand.

  “Cops are here,” Angel said mildly.

  “Better not be a leak on our end,” the Captain muttered and stalked off in that direction.

  I shook my head. After what happened with Tony and Chrissy, there was absolutely no love for the press in this town. The cops blue-walled them into oblivion and the ripples had been so far-reaching, we red-lined them right along with them. ICPD and ICFD had a good relationship, unlike most cities who, for some reason, had major animosity going between the two departments. We liked to give each other a ration of shit, but there never was anything meant by it other than good-natured ribbing.

  We had our boxing matches, basketball games, and hockey teams, and faced off for charity and shit, but whatever brawls came of it, that shit got left on the ice or in the ring. It never carried over. We didn’t understand why it’d kept up in other cities. It just didn’t make sense to us. We all played for the same team in the end.

  We ended up staying longer, which was typical. Eventually, another ladder and engine came to swap us out. This was one of those blazes that was going to need watched and need a crew or two standing by to knock down hot spots and flare-ups.

  “Come on, boys. Let’s get out of here.” Captain Walden sounded tired and annoyed. Welcome to dealing with the Indigo City press.

  “I don’t know why they even bother trying to interview any of us,” Ripley said dryly. “They make up their own shit anyway.”

  Some of us laughed in that unspoken ‘You’ve got that right’ way.

  The ride back to the firehouse was a sober, quiet one, and thankfully Barnaby was either too tired or had forgotten completely about Lil’s book. When we got back, I made sure to shower up and get out of the locker room first. I hid the book, which was right where I’d left it on my bunk, and laid down. I pulled out my phone from the bracket we’d put on the wall for it and lit up the screen.

  I was going to call her, I kind of wanted to hear her friendly voice and scrub the image of that burning corpse out of my mind but she’d already beat me to it. I had two missed calls from her. I smiled and hit the voicemail icon to play what she’d left.

  The automated voice told me, “You have one new message. To play message, press one.”

  “Hey, Backdraft, I saw you on the news this morning and I wanted to make sure you were okay. There was a paramedic standing near you with an oxygen tank and it made me worried. You didn’t get too much smoke, did you? Anyway, I’m up and I’ll be getting to work here soon. My day is mostly clear. Give me a text or a call back, okay? Talk to you later. Bye.”

  I saved the message, I don’t know why, before I called her back. She picked up on the first ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “Angel was just there as a precaution.”

  “Oh, good. I’m so relieved,” she said, laughing
nervously.

  “Thanks for checking up on me,” I said. “It’s kind of nice.”

  “The news said somebody died in that fire,” she said softly. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “Thanks,” I said quietly. “They were gone before we got there. Overdose.”

  “Oh, my God. That’s so sad.”

  “And common, unfortunately,” I said but I didn’t want to dwell on it. Dwelling on it is how this job got to you, how it ate at you until you drowned yourself in a bottle or worse. I flipped the script.

  “I don’t want to dwell on it too hard, tell me about your day. What have you got planned?”

  She sighed and it was a gusty, long suffering sound. I smiled, figuring it couldn’t be that bad.

  “Well, I’ve been up since four-thirty. So far I’ve written a couple of thousand words, had something like three different calls with Veronica, she’s my personal assistant, and I have to say, I am ready to tear my hair out.” She sounded unhappy and I frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m just frustrated. Typical flaky industry types changing things willy-nilly and every time I try to write, my phone is ringing again with another change or a ‘Oh and one more thing’ and I’m totally being a diva right now, aren’t I?”

  I laughed, “I don’t know,” I said. “Is consistency really too much to ask for?”

  “Oh my god, right?”

  “So what do they keep changing on you?” I asked.

  “Transportation to New York. First they want me to take a commercial flight, then they want to charter one, then they want me to charter one. I have to be there Thursday, no, Friday, but no later than Friday morning! The only thing that hasn’t changed is the hotel.”

  “It’s in NYC?”

  “Yeah.”

  I shrugged, “So how about fuck ‘em all? Take a ride with me. I have Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off and I’ve got no plans. We can take the bike, it’s supposed to be nice. You can do your thing and I can find something to do.”

  “Would you be interested in attending a movie premier?” she asked. “I mean, it’s a romance movie, obviously, but at the same time, you could check that whole experience off your bucket list.”

  “For real?”

  “I wrote the book,” she said, laughing. “I get a plus-one.”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I’m down.”

  “Want to know the stupid part?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “It’s not even this weekend, it’s next.”

  “Wait, so how many times are they planning on changing things between this week and next, then?”

  “Well, they’re not, now. You’re really sure you want to do this?”

  “Yeah. You really sure you’re up for a ride that long?”

  “Yeah,” she said and giggled a bit, which went straight to my dick. I told it Down boy! and smiled.

  “Look, I hate to cut this short, but I’m beat and need to grab some sleep. I meant it, though; thanks for checking up on me. It was sweet.”

  “No problem, seriously. You, um, maybe up for doing something this weekend, too?” she asked and it was almost shy, like she expected me to shoot her down or something. Considering she’d become the highlight of my week, that wasn’t happening.

  “Yeah, I’d like that. I’ve got my Friday night, free. Want to do something then?”

  “I could really use something low-key,” she said.

  “Dinner and Netflix?” I suggested.

  “As long as it’s the original slang definition of ‘chill’ and not the new one,” she said laughing at her own joke.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure we’re like the definition of ‘old’, the fact that just made me roll my eyes.”

  She laughed and said, “Kids these days, what will they come up with next?”

  “Who the fuck knows, but just so you know, you’re safe with me.”

  “Thanks,” she said softly and I yawned.

  “Try to have a better rest of your day.”

  “You, too. Get some sleep and sweet dreams.”

  “Thanks.”

  We ended the call and I dropped my phone on my chest and sighed. The guys started coming in to find their own bunks. Barnaby pulled himself up into the top one above mine, and thankfully, still didn’t say anything about the damn book. I wanted to read some more, but at the same time, I didn’t want a big deal made out of it.

  Shit. If I was going to see this damn movie, I needed to finish the book. I put my phone back where it belonged and closed my eyes. I was so exhausted, I was out inside of a minute.

  8

  Lilli…

  “Marco!” I called, eyes closed, lightly treading water in the warmth of my building’s pool.

  “Polo!” several young, giggling voices called back. I swam in their direction and called out again.

  “Marco!”

  “Polo!” But this time, a familiar, warm, and rich masculine voice called out from the edge of the pool behind me. I opened my eyes and turned and a bunch of the kids were turned that way, too.

  “Hi!” I called. “You’re early!”

  “Yeah, well, somebody told me that for certain appointments, it was a good idea to show up an hour early just to make sure you wouldn’t be late.”

  I laughed and Emilio, sounding disappointed, said, “Does this mean you have to go, Lilli?”

  “Aww, no!” Backdraft said. “I’d hate to interrupt such a fun time.”

  “They have loaner suits,” I called.

  “You’re kidding me,” he said. I grinned and shook my head.

  “Just go to the front desk and tell them you need one. Give them my apartment number, forty-four-oh-three.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said with a salute and walked back towards the lobby.

  “Who’s that?” Rosario, Emilio’s little sister, asked.

  “That’s my friend, Backdraft,” I said.

  “He’s a biker?” Emilio asked.

  I laughed, “And a fireman.”

  “Really?” another boy from the building exclaimed. “That’s so cool!”

  I smiled, laughed, and closed my eyes spinning around in the water three times and calling, “Marco!”

  Three enthusiastic cries of “Polo!” met me and I surged in their direction to a bunch of squealing laughter.

  “Marco!”

  “Polo!”

  “Annnnd gotcha!” I tagged someone and opened my eyes. The older boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen, laughed and waded a few feet away.

  “Right, okay.” Backdraft came out of the locker room, running his hand back through his hair which was much darker when wet. His borrowed pair of black swim shorts were… short, and left very little to the imagination. Of course, with how he was built, the material sort of strained around his muscular thighs but my brain had gone out to dinner without me because... abs.

  I’d spent a lot of time browsing through cover model photos for my covers, but Backdraft had them beat. I blushed and averted my gaze as he trotted alongside the pool to where it was deep enough, and threw himself in.

  “Lilli says you’re a fireman!” Emilio said and Backdraft smoothed back his hair. He was head and shoulders above the water and my arms and legs were getting tired from treading.

  I moved closer to the shallow end, bristling with jealousy, while Backdraft smiled at my young friend and said, “Yep, I am.”

  “That’s way cool,” the older boy, whose name I think was Neil, said.

  “How do I become a fireman, too?” Emilio asked.

  Backdraft said, “Well, first off, what’s your grades look like?” and I felt my face split into a wide grin.

  Rosario rolled her eyes. “Terrible,” she said. “Our tutor is so boring. Emilio falls asleep.”

  He didn’t even bother to deny it, just looked sulky, and said, “Yeah.”

  “You’ve got to stay awake,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s only more of the same the older you get
.”

  “Now, hold up, Lil,” Backdraft said, and he asked Emilio, “Why is it boring?”

  “I already know all the stuff! She never tries to teach me anything new.”

  “It’s true, Emilio just doesn’t do his work. He passes every test, though.”

  “Have you tried talking to your father?” I asked gravely.

  “Pfft! He doesn’t listen!” Emilio said bitterly.

  Backdraft and I exchanged a look.

  “Tell you what, you do the work anyway, even if it’s boring, and get three good report cards in a row, I’ll take you on a personal tour of the firehouse.”

  “Really!? Like the whole thing. You’d show me everything?”

  “Scout's Honor.” He even held up two fingers, which was absolutely adorable.

  We played with the kids and swam for the better part of an hour before I declared I needed a break; that I was starving.

  Watching Backdraft haul himself out of the pool was a treat, and I committed it to memory, words flowing through my brain like the water down his muscular back. Purely for research purposes, of course. I was definitely not ready to jump into another relationship after what had happened with Mark. In fact, I had made certain Veronica knew that my friendship with Backdraft was strictly platonic and that we either had to have a hotel room with two beds, or two separate hotel rooms altogether.

  She’d sworn to me on a stack of Bibles that it would be so, but still asked me double that stack of times if I was sure. I was lucky to have her in my corner. She was more of a friend to me than an employee, and I wished we lived closer. Alas, she called New York home and I was here in Indigo City. I was super excited to see her next weekend, though.

  I went into the women’s locker room and pressed my thumb against the scanner on the face of the locker that’d I’d put my things in. It beeped twice, flashed green, and popped open. I still got giddy and thought it was the coolest thing. The front doors to the condos had the same biometric locks. It was super convenient when my arms were loaded with groceries.

  I ditched my towel in the hamper. It was another amenity of the building. They had a full laundry service, no need to bring your own towel, or even your own robe, down to the pool. They also had both a trash and a laundry chute on every floor, and even though they were clearly labeled, we’d already had several electronic notifications not to confuse the two. I think it was a lot less stupidity and a lot more carelessness on some tenant’s part.