Fire Solves All Problems Perfectly pt 43

The dispatch room is small and cramped, with a single desk covered in radio equipment and walkie-talkies and trays of paperwork. You reach out to look at a sheet with your father’s familiar handwriting. You want to keep that hand? You yank it back as if he was right there. There is a white phone sitting mid-desk absent any dialing mechanism with a plastic dome at its center – this is where the calls now come from central dispatch. There is a logbook next to it, and the shelf overhead is filled with the very same books, years of emergencies stored forever. There is an enormous map on the wall of the city dotted with pins of all colors: the blues denote businesses that passed their inspections; the white pins are emergencies where they saved the day and the blacks are ones where they did not. The red pins scattered around the city are the houses of the firemen who don’t live in Fire Town, which is at the very top of the map in a row of pins lined up neat and perfect.

Jason emerges from the bathroom with a Hustler from the pile by the toilet; he slaps it on the table in front of Billy. Look at her snatch, he says tapping his finger on the centerfold girl with her legs spread, the pink cleft fascinating and disgusting. Tim comes over to see, chewing his thumb as the three of you huddle around her. My dad says they got three holes, Jason explains, one for pissing and one for shitting and one for babies.

No they don’t, Tim tells him. My dad told me about it.

Shut up, Jason says good-naturedly.

I don’t shut up, Tim retorts, I grow up, and when I look at you, I throw up.

My dad says that girls get an operation when they’re born to remove half their brain, you tell them, not wanting to be left out, and they laugh.

I’m going to nail so many girls, Jason says. I’m getting so much poontang. He drops to the floor and begins to hump the linoleum.

Jesus, Billy says what is going on with you kids? He takes the books to the couch.

What? Jason says. You ain’t queer or something, right?

What? Ricky turns, peeler dripping. What the fuck did you say?

Watch it, Billy says, shaking his head in warning, and points at you; Ricky’s face turns to stone and he tosses the peeler and says he’s going to work on Engine Two. Billy says nothing, keeping his eyes on his books.

Jason and Tim and waiting for you; you say Let’s go and leave back through the lobby passing all of those firemen eyes. You shouldn’t have said that to him, you tell Jason when the three of you are back in the sunlight.

Screw him, Jason says. He’s just scared of your dad, and he better be. He claps you hard on the shoulder, and gives chase when Tim tears off down Right Street; it’s all you can do to catch up to them.