God, she’d been drunk.
She went into the kitchen, poured herself more coffee, and considered what was left in the pot. No, leave it, she thought, and turned her attention to the bottle of vodka on the sinkboard.
Had they had drinks when they got to his place? Probably. There were two glasses next to the bottle, and he hadn’t gotten around to washing them.
What a shock he’d given her! The touch, the unexpected warmth of his skin. And then his voice.
She hadn’t expected that.
She uncapped the bottle, opened the glassine envelope, poured its contents in with the vodka. The crystals dissolved immediately. She replaced the cap on the bottle, returned the empty envelope to her purse.
She made her cup of coffee last until he was out of the shower and dressed in khakis and a polo shirt, which was evidently what a Wall Street guy wore on the weekend. “I’ll get out of your hair now,” she told him. “And I’m sorry about last night. I’m going to make it a point not to get quite that drunk again.”
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for, Jen. You were running a risk, that’s all. For your own sake—”
“I know.”
“Hang on and I’ll walk you to the subway.”
She shook her head. “Really, there’s no need. I can find it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“If you say so. Uh, can I have your number?”
“You really want it?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
“Next time I won’t pass out. I promise.”
He handed her a pen and a notepad, and she wrote down her area code, 212, and picked seven digits at random to keep it company. And then they kissed, and he said something sweet, and she said something clever in response, and she was out the door.
The streets were twisty and weird in that part of Riverdale, but she asked directions and somebody pointed her toward the subway. She waited on the elevated platform and thought about how shocked she’d been when she opened her eyes.
Because he was supposed to be dead. That was how it worked — she put something in the guy’s drink and it took effect one or two hours later. After they’d had sex, after he’d dozed off or not. His heart stopped, and that was that.
Usually she’d stay awake herself, and a couple of times she’d been able to watch it happen. Then, when he was gone, she’d go through the apartment at leisure and take what was worth taking.
It worked like a charm. But it only worked if you put the crystals in the guy’s drink, and if you were too drunk to manage that, well, you woke up and there he was.
Bummer.
Sooner or later, she thought, he’d take the cap off the vodka bottle. Today or tomorrow or next week, whenever he got around to it. And he’d take a drink, and one or two hours later he’d be cooling down to room temperature. She wouldn’t be there to scoop up his cash or go through his dresser drawers, but that was all right. The money wasn’t really the point.
Maybe he’d have some other girl with him. Maybe they’d both have a drink before hitting the mattress, and they could die in each other’s arms. Like Romeo and Juliet, sort of.
Or maybe she’d have a drink and he wouldn’t. That would be kind of interesting, when he tried to explain it all to the cops.
A pity she couldn’t be a fly on the wall. But she’d find out what happened. Sooner or later, there’d be something in the papers. All she had to do was wait for it.
Burnout
by Suzanne Chazin
Jerome Avenue
When does something happen for the last time? Do you get a sign that Mike Boyle missed somewheres? For sure, it was that way with Gina. One minute, they were doing the usual dance — fighting and screaming and her throwing the lasagna pan at him and then making up and making out and all the sweet heat in between. And then bam, it’s all different. Like a Yankee’s pitching streak gone south. Instead of throwing the pan, she throws his duffel bag. “Go live with your other family!” she yells. “You like them better anyways.” She means the guys down at the firehouse on Jerome Avenue. That was six weeks ago. Forty-three days. More than a thousand hours and counting. And sex wasn’t the only thing that died for Mike Boyle that night. Something else died too — something even more important, if there was such a thing.
Mike Boyle forgot how to sleep.
Oh, he could lie down on his bunk. He could slip blinders over his eyes to shut out the fluorescents that automatically flick on when there’s a run. He could stuff foam plugs in his ears to mute the peal of sirens and the deep throttle of the diesel engines. But the plugs were about as useful as a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. Who could stop noise that reverberated through every pore of your body? If it wasn’t the static-charged dispatch reports over the department airwaves, then it was the gut-wrenching roar of the roof saws the firefighters started every morning. Or the air horn jackhammering the nerves as the truck or engine (this was a double house) barreled out of quarters. Slamming lockers. Ringing phones. Guys snoring. Guys farting. Rufus, the firehouse dog, barking. All of it twenty-four-seven in the tiled echo chamber of an FDNY firehouse.
“You look like hell,” Captain Russo had told Mike just before he started his shift the other evening. Mike was at the kitchen table, slumped over a chipped mug of coffee, stirring in spoonfuls of Cremora. Whole worlds of thought went into each swirl so that when he finally looked up at the captain, it seemed he was being lip-synced in a foreign film.
“I’m good,” said Mike, already unsure what remarks he was addressing. He noticed he had difficulty following conversations these days. Time seemed to compress and expand randomly, like pulled taffy. Espresso — that’s what he’d ask the guys to buy next time they shopped on Arthur Avenue. Maybe a dark roast that he could drink with a little lemon peel the way some of the old Italians who still live over in Belmont do. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and lit one, watching the smoke curl upwards, a gray plume to go with the white one in his coffee. Smoking was banned in city firehouses. It said so right on the bulletin board behind him — the one with all the burn marks in it. There are city laws. And then there are firehouse laws.
“Don’t you have some place besides the firehouse to stay?” the captain pressed. “I mean, look at you. This is no life.”
Even in the best of times, Mike Boyle never looked robust. He was Irish pale — with skin like gauze that showed every blotch, from the flush of a single beer to the shadows of a little missed sleep. His fine hair — maybe blond, maybe brown, depending on the light — tended to take the shape of any pillow or fire helmet that laid claim to it. He’d taken to wearing his navy-blue uniform pants and T-shirts around the clock, even sleeping in them.
“I’d rather stay here,” said Mike. Moving someplace — in with his brother Patrick’s family in Yonkers, or his sister Mary and her tight-ass lawyer of a husband over in Riverdale — that would mean this thing with Gina was real. If he stayed in the firehouse, time would stand still. A watch just waiting for a new battery. All he had to do was stick it out a little longer.
Captain Russo started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He was a dinosaur in the department — one of the last around to recall the Bronx of the 1970s and early ’80s, when whole blocks blazed like Roman candles, and firefighters sucked down equal parts black smoke and Budweiser on every tour. Whether it was smoking or leaving your wife, he wasn’t inclined to argue the particulars of how any man lived his life.