Bronx Noir

“If my wife kicked me out, I’d go home and beat the crap out of her.” Marital advice from Chuck of all people, the senior man in Ladder 123. Twenty-two years in the same firehouse and he still insisted on driving the rig all the way over to Arthur Avenue to buy groceries from the Italians. “I don’t buy from these,” he’d say, bringing the flat of his hand in front of his face: firehouse code for blacks. Chuck’s real name wasn’t Charles. It was Harry. Harry McGreevy. Chuck was short for “chuckles,” firehouse black humor. No one ever accused Harry McGreevy of being lighthearted. To Chuck, women were whores or lesbians, kids were parasites (he should know, he had five, all grown with two still living at home in Throgs Neck), and the city was personally out to screw him. His hobby was writing up parking tickets (a power no other firefighter in Mike’s memory had ever invoked). And he spent much of every tour talking about his theory that intelligence was inversely related to how close your ancestors lived to the equator. Mike wondered whether that meant people in the Bronx had a leg up over the other boroughs, but he wasn’t taking bets on it.

“My church runs a prayer group for couples.” More advice. This time from Frankie Bones—a.k.a., Frank Bonaventura—the biggest guy in the firehouse. Six-foot-four, three hundred and fifty pounds, he looked like a Mafia enforcer out of central casting and used to have a reputation to match. But about ten years ago, Bones and his wife found Jesus and it had transformed him entirely. Of course, the joke around the firehouse was that if Frankie Bones went looking for you, you’d better damn well be found.

“I’m not religious,” Mike reminded him.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“None more mysterious than you,” Chuck told Bones. Being senior, Chuck could say anything he wanted, even to Bones.

“Hey, man,” Jimmy Francesco piped up, “you can stay at my place.”

It figured that Tig, of all the firefighters, would make the offer. Francesco was everyone’s favorite firefighter, nicknamed after the Disney character Tigger because he was always bouncing around, ready for action. Too much action, as Mike saw it now. If his hands weren’t slapping his thighs, then he was doing a drumroll on the table. Or stroking the ever-needy Rufus. Tig had been a cop briefly before joining the FDNY, but no one could picture him arresting people. If he ever managed to collar some gangbanger, he’d have probably let him off with some cheery Disney advice like, Don’t do that again, buddy boy, okaly-dokely?

“We’ve got the spare bedroom,” said Tig. “At least until the baby comes.”

Mike watched Tig doing a drumroll on the table and wondered what twenty-four hours of that would feel like. Wondered how his wife stood it. A baby thumping at her insides, a husband doing the same from without.

“Naw. Thanks anyway. I’m good.”

Well, maybe not good. But insomnia did have its up side, even if it seemed to take longer and longer for Mike to tie his shoes or fit together two lengths of hose. The less sleep he got, the more he noticed he could manage without it. Had he really been spending a third of his life in willing oblivion? Death before death, as he saw it now. He watched firefighters napping in their bunks, people dozing on the subways, and he studied them with almost scientific detachment. They were dying every day and they didn’t even know it, slipping into their own private heaven and hell. Maybe that’s all heaven and hell was anyway, a longer bit of sleep.

“I’m flling for separation,” Gina told him over the pay phone at the firehouse one day. “I think we should call your folks.”

The morning crew was testing the saws and two other guys were arguing the Yankees batting lineup, so it took him a minute to process the news.

“Was it the uniform?” he asked finally.

“What?”

“The uniform. My coat. My helmet. The big red truck that went ding ding through your neighborhood?”

“You’re not making any sense, Mike.”

“You get turned on by a little Nomex cloth and plastic?”

She said something after that, but Mike couldn’t hear. The guys on duty had a run. Curses. Shouts. Feet slapping the rubber mat as they slid down the pole. The diesel throttling. The gears in the apparatus door cranking away as they rolled up to reveal the hot, steamy August morning heat and the vague smell of urine on the pavement.

“You even know who I am?” He wasn’t sure if he’d said those words or just thought them before hanging up. It was hard to tell over the noise.

For a blessed moment after the truck pulled away, it seemed to suck all the noise with it. He didn’t feel the rumble of the Jerome Avenue elevated overhead or the honk and grind of buses and gypsy cabs on the blistering street. Then the great doors closed again and he felt for one panicked moment like he was drowning.