Red Light

by J. D. Glass

That call took us almost two hours because the family wanted to go to a New Jersey hospital.

  Jean decided we’d stay on Staten Island on the way back; most of our calls were from there, anyway.

  “Mind if I eat?” I asked as we parked under the other side of the bridge, ironically almost directly across from where we’d been earlier.

  “Nah, go ahead. You worked day today too, right?”

  “Yeah, I did,” I pulled the sack out of the spot I’d stuck it in, “so bio fuel is not a bad idea.”

  Jean snorted as I dug into the bag. An apple, a bottle of Gatorade, and a plastic container. Trace had included a fork and napkins and, underneath, two cookies. Chocolate chip, very cool, and among my favorites.

  “Want one?”

  “I’m all right.” She laughed. “You probably need it more than I do.”

  “What?” I asked as I opened the container. Oh, awesome. Chicken cutlet and pasta. I was starving and done in moments, while Jean occasionally chuckled in my general direction.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked again as I uncapped the Gatorade.

  “You.” Jean smirked as she flicked the hair away from my neck. “That.” She touched a spot with a gentle fingertip, then leaned back against the door and regarded me smugly.

  I touched the spot and reached for the rearview. Dammit, large and fresh. I hadn’t even noticed when Trace had done it, and I hadn’t worn a turtleneck despite the cold because I’d forgotten, I’d been in such a rush.

  I settled back down in my seat. “So…what?”

  “So…that thing is so fresh you must have come up on the downstroke to answer the phone.”

  That was so close to the truth, as grateful as I had been for the phone to ring, that I could feel the heat rush to my face. But it was absolutely none of Jean’s business, and something about the casualness of her tone pissed me off.

  “Whatever,” I answered. I hunkered down in my seat and closed my eyes. I was tired and had already started to learn to catch a nap whenever I could.

  “Ah, come on,” Jean cajoled, “you can tell me about it. We’ve got hours of nothing ahead of us. She have her legs wrapped tight around your waist while you fucked her and got called in to work with me? Or better, was she blowing you, lips nice, fast, and firm on your hard-on while you picked up the phone? No, no, not to leave a mark that fresh there…”

  Every word she said brought a very visceral memory to the forefront of my brain, with an accompanying rush of blood to my groin. I hoped to hell the silence meant she’d stopped. I was wrong.

  “I know! She was riding you, her lips on your neck and her pussy nice and snug on your cock, and you had to go and answer the phone.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. “Will you please shut the fuck up?” I opened my eyes and sat up straight. Now that was just wrong—respect for myself, respect for the woman I was sleeping with, and Jean’s commentary lacked both.

  She laughed at me. “Are you fucking stupid? No, wait, you were fucking and you were stupid.”

  I was wide-awake now, and the heat that blossomed in my neck had nothing to do with embarrassment or sex. It was anger, pure and simple.

  “I’m serious, Jean, just shut up.”

  “Aw, what’s the matter?” she taunted. “Are you still hard? Still wet? Need a hand, because you were so fucking hard you couldn’t drive your car to get here after Marco’s call-us interrupt-us?”

  I shook my head. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I was so mad I unlocked the door and stepped out into the brisk wind that blew off Raritan Bay, hoping it would cool and clear my head. Jean had infuriated me, but her educated guesses were surprisingly on target, and just thinking about fucking had me so hard…and it all combined with the confusion that I felt about Trace.

  I leaned against the fender and decided I needed a cigarette. Jean climbed out of the truck and rested next to me as I lit it.

  “Come on, Scotty.” She pushed my shoulder lightly. “It’s cold out here, and you could be in there with me. Hell, you could be in me, because thinking about you hard and wet has got me going, and I know I could get you off.”

  I looked at her as I exhaled and said nothing, because I didn’t know how to answer something like this—this whatever it was she presented me.

  It was understandable: people spent hours together, locked in a little box, struggling with huge issues or sometimes plain old boredom. Sex as stress relief I understood but…this was so far out of left field, I decided it best to assume she was joking.

  She brushed the hair off my forehead. “You’re not wearing anyone’s ring…doesn’t your girlfriend share?” Her expression changed, the sardonic twist of her mouth replaced by a gentler expression, almost wistful.

  It was my turn for angry sarcasm. “Actually? I just found out that Trace, in fact, does share. I’m not sure I know how to handle that.” I twisted my head away from that easy touch and took another drag.

  “Trace.”

  The name floated out almost tonelessly, and Jean’s hand dropped as if she’d lost all nerve function within it.

  “Trace Cayden?” she asked in the same monotone.

  I glanced at her sharply. “Yeah. I take it you know her?”

  Jean shook her head, her hair haloed behind her in the wind. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…just finish your cig and hop in. Don’t freeze out here.” All the mockery, the taunting, the mirth—they were all gone from her voice as she jammed her hands into her pockets and let herself into the driver’s seat.

  I’d calmed down and was puzzled by Jean’s sudden change. Besides, it was really cold, and I didn’t want to smoke anymore.

  I got back into the ambulance where Jean had thoughtfully turned up the heat.

  “Thanks for that.” I pointed at the registers as the warmed air blasted us.

  “Yeah, it’s nothing,” she said, and stared out over the dashboard.

  I was tired, I’d been really angry, and when I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any more than I already did. I closed my eyes to nap.

  “We lived together for three years,” Jean said quietly, barely audible above the air vents. “It ended. I moved out about a year ago.”

  She had my attention, and for the second time that night, I opened my eyes and sat up. We were warm enough, so I lowered the heat. Besides, I really wanted to hear what Jean said, because she sounded so lost, and I could hear that strangely sad note clearly despite the rattling of the vents.

  “I’m sorry. You, uh, you want to talk about it?”

  Jean snorted and angled her head to peer at me. “You really are a nice kid, aren’t you?” She smirked.

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “I guess it depends.”

  “Oh, yeah? On what?”

  I grinned at her in an attempt to lighten her mood. “On how you define ‘nice,’ and how you define ‘kid.’”

  Jean gave a half laugh. “Look, let me do you a solid, okay?” She grinned, some of the humor back in her face. “Maybe someday, you’ll do me solid.” Her eyes sparked at me, but there was something sad in them all the same.

  She stared at her hands on the steering wheel and huffed out her breath, collecting herself. Finally she faced me.

  “Trace…she’s fuckin’ bad news, really bad news.”

  I shifted a bit. “Well, she’s kind of intense, but I wouldn’t say—”

  Jean waved a hand in negation. “You tell me how you’re gonna handle it when she’s fucking scarred you permanently, and believe me, she will. You think you can even be normal again when you’ve come with her riding your cunt and her knife at your throat?” The words tumbled out of her lips, terse, urgent.

  “Think again, kid, think again. You’re gonna cry for the days when all it took to make you come was a pretty girl and a steady hand.”

  I stared, shocked, not because Trace hadn’t already marked me, albeit not so permanently, but because I could easily picture those things, could feel that there were places Trace was pus
hing toward; and I was fascinated, because I’d never seen such emotion come from a person speaking about their ex the way Jean did. Some people were angry, some were sad, and others were okay with it, but Jean?

  She gave off waves of cold anger and self-loathing, which explained more than she wanted, I was sure.

  “I…I don’t, I don’t know what—”

  “Look, I’ll prove it to you if you don’t believe me,” she said and unzipped her jacket.

  She unbuttoned her shirt and showed me the scar. Keloid thick and white, just to the left of center on her chest, exactly where the curve of her breast rose. Two lines, perfectly matched in size and perfectly perpendicular to one another, crossing dead center, with little arms on each end.

  If I hadn’t been trying so very hard to focus on the fact that the pattern matched, in exact miniature, the one that had appeared under my skin and had yet to completely fade, I would have noticed more strongly the same light dusting of sprinkles across the pale, pale skin of her chest, and that the curve of her breasts was perfect from what I could see—but that wasn’t the point of this exhibition.

  “It doesn’t say ‘Jean,’ now does it?” she remarked, her voice low with a bitterness I’d never heard before as she covered it back up. “It’s a cross, an iron fucking cross, a T for Trace, and she put it there—because I was ‘hers’ and she said she loved me, like she could ever love anything.” She gave a short, hoarse laugh, then leaned over.

  “Believe me, once she owns you, once you feel like you’re nothing without her—she’ll dump you for someone new, and fresh, and innocent.” She looked me up and down. “Just like you are, for now.”

  Whoa. That…was a lot of information to absorb, and what scared me was how much it jived with what I already felt, and I shifted uncomfortably.

  “Fucked till you’re raw?” Jean asked nonchalantly as she sat back. “Yeah, you’re gonna want to use a good lube next time, it’ll take a few days. Grab a few tubes from the back shelf. We can always pick up more.”

  I shook my head and said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  Suddenly, Jean started laughing, then grabbed the mic and keyed it. “Marco, I have a problem.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “Scotty’s giving me a hard-on.”

  I understood. She was joking, but only just, and I smiled as I shook my head. She was fucking crazy, but I was starting to think I knew why. She was also fucking funny.

  Laughter floated back through the radio. “So? Ask her if she’ll blow you. Hey, Scotty, you there?”

  Jean handed me the mic.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll give you a hundred bucks to blow her, and I’ll give you both an additional time and a half for the shift if you let me watch.”

  He had to be joking and I laughed. That was fucking ridiculous.

  Jean grabbed the mic from me. “She says she won’t,” she complained in an exaggerated tone. “What should I do?”

  “Did you show her your tits?”

  “Yeah, but she won’t blow me.”

  “Put Scotty back on.”

  Jean smiled and handed it to me.

  “Yeah, Marco?”

  “What’s the matter, Scotty, you don’t like tits?”

  I laughed harder. “I like ’em just fine, thank you,” I told him, “but I told you before, I don’t share.”

  “That’s right, that’s right, you’ve got a girlfriend. Okay. Hey, Jean?”

  I handed the mic back to her.

  “Yo!”

  “Go in the back and jerk off or something.”

  “Well, since you said I could, I will. Ten-four, Marco, thanks for being a pal. I’m gonna go in the back now and do that.”

  She hung the mic up and got out of her seat.

  “You’re not seriously gonna do that, are you?” I was still smiling.

  “Sure, why not?” Jean said in that same humorous tone. “I’m working with a hot girl who’s getting me all sorts of crazy and has a girlfriend that wants her to fuck around, but she won’t do me. What would you do?”

  She shifted into the back of the rig, and the only other sound besides the engine was the unmistakable scud of a zipper along its track.

  “Dude, you’re not—”

  Jean appeared back in the hatchway, smiling, her jacket unzipped. “No. I’m not. I’m just playing with you. You’re probably beat, though. This is your sixth shift in five days.” She settled back into the driver’s seat. “Go rack out in the back on the stretcher. I promise to wake you if anything happens.”

  “Yeah?” It sounded like a good idea to me.

  “Yeah, grab some z’s. I promise not to come in and molest you or anything.” She grinned rakishly.

  I could feel the corner of my mouth quirk. “All right.”

  Once I was in the back, I racked out on the stretcher, put my hands behind my head, and closed my eyes.

  “Hey, what’s the matter with your car?”

  I sighed, because it seemed like I’d never get to sleep. “I think the battery died.”

  A beat. “If we’re quiet all night, we’ll take the rig over there at seven, see if we can jump-start it, and if not, I’ll give you a ride home later, okay?”

  “Sounds good.”

  More silence as I settled in again and considered. It couldn’t have been easy for her to tell me those things about herself, and it had to hurt her even more to show me that scar.

  “Hey, Jean?”

  “What?”

  “Thanks—for everything.”

  “No problem. Don’t mention it.”

  I finally got some sleep.

  *

  My car did, in fact, have a dead battery, so Jean and I jumped it with the ambulance and my car started just fine, though she did follow me to the repair shop to make sure I didn’t have any problems on the way.

  We worked together quite a bit after that, with me either as third man on the medic bus or with her doing BLS with me. We didn’t speak about Trace again, but we did talk about work, the year of experience necessary before we could take the paramedic class, what volunteer hospitals might be hiring—and we’d stop by during free time on our shifts to inquire. She eventually got a per diem at Saint Vincent’s as a paramedic, which was great. We also talked about ourselves.

  I told her about my mom and Elena, about growing up in my cousin’s bedroom, about Nico and Nanny, and how they were like older siblings. I even told her a bit about Nina, and how I normally never spoke about our being related so no one would think I was just trying to get by on her name, and how weird it was, because she was family to me, but something different to the rest of the world, except for Samantha.

  Jean vaguely knew Samantha from when they were kids, because Mr. Scanlon was a retired firefighter and had worked at the same station as Sam’s father, Mr. Cray, and was probably the last person to speak with him before he’d been killed in the line of duty, a death Jean told me was still under investigation. I wondered if Samantha knew that, but I wasn’t going to bring it up unless I had to.

  Jean had met Samantha at family events at the station and had even attended Mr. Cray’s funeral when she was ten—which was how I found out Jean was in fact twenty-five and about to be twenty-six.

  She wouldn’t tell me when her birthday was, though.

  “Hey, if I tell you that, you’ll get me a card or something, and I might start thinking you like me, because you know, we’re lesbians, and we’re all like ‘hey, she said hello, what does that mean?’ and I’m already half crazy about you, and I’ll be wrong because you really hate me and it’ll drive me to drink, and then I’ll become an alcoholic and ruin my life because I’ll end up homeless and have to camp out on your doorstep and your cousin will have me arrested for stalking and then I’ll waste away and die in jail—you wouldn’t want that, would you?” she said all in one breath.

  I cracked up as she grabbed the mic.

  “Barbara, she’s doing it to me again!” she com
plained through my laughter.

  “What?” Barbara’s exasperation reached us through the speaker.

  “She won’t declare undying love and affection for me even though I’m sittin’ here with my heart in my hands. She’s laughing at me!” Jean concluded, her voice playfully aggrieved.

  “Did you say ‘heart in’ or ‘hard-on’?”

  “Uh, I was pretty sure it was ‘heart,’” Jean answered. “I haven’t shown her my hard-on yet.”

  “Show her your pee-pee, kiss her, and get off my radio!”

  I was laughing so hard I was crying, and I couldn’t sit right.

  “Why do all the pretty girls laugh at me?” Jean asked no one.

  But in addition to the kidding, Jean told me about growing up in Brooklyn, her older brother, Patrick, whom everyone called Pat and who was a cop working in Manhattan, and her dog, a female golden retriever she called Dusty—because she liked to roll around in everything she could.

  After work, she introduced me to Lundy’s, a Brooklyn icon in Sheepshead Bay, and way too many shellfish at the raw bar, after which we’d grab a beer and walk the pier. Jean lived close by in Manhattan Beach, because it was a great place to do the two things she was really into outside of work: scuba diving and cycling.

  I promised Jean we’d ride together when the weather got better, because I liked to cycle too and knew some really good routes, and Jean promised to teach me how to dive, something I’d always wanted to do but never had the time for.

  I introduced her to black and tans and the burgers at Peggy O’Neills in Bay Ridge, a place I’d discovered by accident with Roy and Bennie one day after class when we felt like taking a drive and visiting all the private ambulance companies we could find.

  The place was so much fun to hang out in, because of the food, the live music, and the occasional very competitive dart games, that we had all started dragging friends there, and we often ran into Bennie, who was working with a different private company, or Roy, who’d managed to snag a per-diem spot at Bayley Seton Hospital—affectionately nicknamed Barely Breathing Hospital.

  Both Bennie and I had goggled at him over a beer and waffle fries when he’d told us, and he shrugged. “You know, it’s a guy thing,” he said. “It’s not for any other reason.”