Suck It Up and Die (3 page)

She plunked his hat back on. “Much.”

Losing his hay-field-hit-by-a-tornado head of hair was the biggest thing that made Morning harder to recognize. It hadn’t been voluntary. He had gotten a military-style cut every two weeks since beginning his training at the New
York City Fire Academy. Morning checked his cell phone to make sure he still had time to subway uptown and catch a bus to Randall’s Island, where the academy was located.

Portia took the sunglasses off and eyed him. “Do you ever miss your hair?”

“No, it was always a disaster. Do you?”

She answered with another question. “Do you ever regret going to the fire academy a year early and not finishing high school?”

“Hey, I
finished
,” he declared. “I got a GED, and now I’m chasing my dream: becoming a firefighter.”

“Sometimes I think you blew off senior year for another reason, besides not being in the same high school as me, of course. It was the only way you could be”—she air-quoted with single fingers—“
older
than me. To skip a year.”

He grinned. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I like it. I’ll always be your upperclassman.”

She tilted her head. “Really, Morn. Do you ever regret missing your senior year?”

“No. I got tired of being looked at like a freak.”

“It’s not like you’re
not
a freak at the fire academy, unless there’re other vampires in your class.”

“No, I’m the only one, but it’s totally different.”

“How?”

He finished his Blood Lite. “In high school you’re always walking a tightrope over a pit of humiliation. It only takes one slip, one fall, and you’re smeared with shame till the day you graduate alongside the other geeks and nerds and losers.”

“So there’s no humiliation at the academy?”

“No, there’s plenty, but it’s not the same. For one, the
tightrope stretches over a pit of fire. For two, you’re not alone; you’re a team, a crew. You’re all on the rope together, and if you slip, there’s someone beside you who gives a crap. Your crew will reach out and grab you ’cause if they don’t you’ll be dead, and they’ll be the ones smeared with shame for losing you. Instead of the everyone-for-yourself insanity of high school, at the academy you’ve got a crew that cares. It’s a brotherhood.”

Portia arched an eyebrow. “I thought there were a few women in your class.”

“There are, they’re part of the brotherhood too.”

“Even though they’re sisters.”

“You know what I mean.”

She waggled her head. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But maybe we should invent a new word for ‘brotherhood,’ you know, a word that includes guys
and
girls.”

“Like what, ‘unisexhood’?” Morning suggested.

“No ring to it.” She scratched her temple. “What if we cut the gender out of it. What about ‘neuterhood’? I mean, think about it, it would be so much more accurate for all those monks and nuns who’ve taken vows of chastity. Instead of saying ‘Sister Mary’ and ‘Brother Patrick,’ it would be much more honest and accurate to say ‘Neuter Mary’ and ‘Neuter Patrick.’ ” She stoked her monologue with another sip of coffee. “Even better, if priests dropped the whole ‘Father’ thing and went with ‘Neuter,’ imagine how it could clean up the church. All those pedophile priests might cool their wicks if they heard boys say things like, ‘I’d like to confess now, Neuter O’Conner,’ and, ‘Okay, I’ll give you a neck rub, Neuter Flannigan, but then I have to go home.’ One little word change might fix the whole problem.”

Morning let out a half laugh.

Portia kept riding her caffeine buzz. “Jeez, Morn, I thought that was pretty good material. Especially for this early.” Her eyes suddenly bugged as she slapped a hand over her mouth. “Ohmigod. I’m
so
sorry! I totally forgot about your—” It was her turn to tongue-tangle.

“Yeah, my neuterhood,” he said, completing her thought. “My little sterile-as-a-vampire thing.” As much as he understood the science of why vampires were sterile—immortals have no need to produce the next generation, so their biology accommodates the lack of necessity with infertility—it was still a major source of embarrassment.

She grabbed his hand and gushed. “I’ve always said it’s never gonna be a problem. I mean, I don’t have time to be a baby maker. I’ve got gobs of films to make. It’s who I am; it’s what I’m always gonna be: a filmmaker. And that’s why we’re so perfect together. That’s why you’re my EB.”

Morning blinked. “EB?”

She eye-rolled. “You know what EB stands for, and if I have to spell it out, it might jinx us. You know”—she took his hand—“the love that can’t be spoken.”

He knew exactly what she meant. His heart thudded with the excitement of another boundary being crossed.
She had said it: EB!
“Right”—he nodded as he heard his voice go scratchy and high—“the love that can’t be spoken.”

She leaned closer and whispered, “Well, you know, as much
E
as this mortal coil has to offer.”

“Please”—he intertwined his hand with hers and put a finger to her lips—“don’t say another word.”

She looked around, thinking some street crazy was about to pounce. No one was there. Her eyes returned to him as she silently mouthed,
Why?

After a year of being in love, Morning thought he had memorized every plane and curve of her face. When he looked at people on the bus, he would see the flat space under a woman’s jaw, and think,
That’s just like the eave under Portia’s chin before it corners into her neck
. Or he’d see a portrait in a museum and think,
That lock of hair is exactly like one of Portia’s, the way it curls back on itself like a sleeping dog with the tip of its tail over its nose
. But now, over breakfast, he had discovered a new quirk in her face.

He leaned in and gave her a kiss. With every press and parting of lips, with every teasing probe of their tongues, Morning reveled in the feast of firsts that breakfast had served up: how the dimple in her cheek formed a perfect comma, and the letters that had never been uttered.

EB. Eternal beloved
.

Morning made it to the academy with time to spare and went to the locker room. He changed into the simple blue uniform that probationary firefighters wear during training. While making sure every button was buttoned and his shirt tucked tight, one of his fellow “probies” came around the corner and opened a locker. Armando was a big Latino who could toss Morning across the room if he wanted. Luckily, Armando was more into tossing trash talk.

“Yo, McCobb,” Armando boomed as he pulled a bottle of Rogaine from his locker.

“Hey, Armando, what’s up?”

Armando squirted Rogaine foam in his hand. He was convinced it helped his thick, dark hair grow back even though he knew it would be shaved off again. “Did you hear about our first live fire exercise in a couple days?”

Morning had memorized the fire academy’s eighteen-week training schedule, but it wasn’t something he bragged about. “Yeah, I heard.”

“Are you freakin’?” Armando asked, working Rogaine into his scalp.

“Why should I be freakin’?”

“I thought fire ranked ten on the vampire pucker-factor scale.”

Morning fought the urge to tell Armando about the time a vampire slayer had reduced him to a pile of ash in the desert outside Las Vegas, and how he had been reconstituted to human form with a few drops of Portia’s blood. But he knew Armando would twist it and ask bozo questions, like
When you’re running on chick blood do you go all girlie? Do you get PMS?
Morning went with the safe route. “If anyone should be freakin’ it’s you Lifers. If I get smoke inhalation or get crispified, I’ll be the one who heals right up. You’re the one who’s gonna suffer permanent damage.”

Armando laughed as he tossed the Rogaine in his locker. “I’ll remember that when I’m screamin’ for someone to run through a wall of fire to save my ass.”

The morning classes held no surprises until the last one before lunch. It was a one-week course on the history of the FDNY. Morning could have slept through it since he’d already read three history books on firefighting in New York City.

The surprise came when a guest speaker walked through the door to give the probies a special presentation. Captain Prowler was the grizzled firefighter Morning had met a year earlier when he had ducked into Prowler’s firehouse. The white-mustachioed fireman had told him about the code firefighters live by, and how the best ones aspire to be “knights of the fire table.” More important,
Prowler had helped Morning get into the fire academy. Being stuck at sixteen, Morning was technically too young for admittance, but Prowler got him over the age hurdle by convincing the brass that Morning came to the FDNY with “special skills.”

Prowler was carrying a metal bucket. He acknowledged Morning with a wink and put the bucket on the desk at the front of the room. “I’m Captain Prowler,” he began with his husky, smoke-eaten voice. “I’m here to talk about a part of fire not many people think about. The spirit of fire.”

The probies chuckled at the notion.

“Go ahead, have a laugh,” he said. “But if you think fire is nothing but a chemical reaction, I can assure you”—his bushy mustache stretched as he grinned—“you’re gonna get burned. The fact is, you don’t kill fire till you kill its spirit.”

A probie shot up his hand. Joey Sullivan, or “Sully,” got away with being a smart-ass because his uncle was second-in-command at the academy. “Sir, if I’d known a firefighter had to get all spiritual, I would’ve become a cop.”

The probies stifled laughs.

Prowler took Sully in. “Son, I knew your dad before he died in nine-eleven. You may have a chip on your shoulder and think this is some woo-woo New Agey crap, but you might wanna take a listen.”

Morning was all ears. In the past year, he had hung out a lot with Prowler, listening to his stories, even riding in his fire truck to a few calls, but the spirit of fire was nothing the cagey old firefighter had ever talked about.

Prowler reached into the bucket and pulled out a
candle. “Combustion comes in two varieties: work fire and wild fire.” He flipped open a cigarette lighter and lit the candle. The wick ignited to a steady flame. “Work fire is made of two plumes.” He passed a finger through the flame. “A plume of burning gases.” Then he passed his finger above the flame. “And a plume of radiant heat.”

He reached into the bucket again and pulled out a pine bough. “Wild fire is a different animal.” He used the candle to light the bough, which ignited with crackling fire. “It’s made of
three
plumes: flame, heat, and”—his gray eyes followed the sparks shooting up the swirling column of smoke—“spirit. This is where the wild fire lives: the one that wants to spread and grow and destroy everything in its path. It is a red dragon bent on devouring the world. And when the red dragon wakes, with its crimson terror, it’s our job, the knights of the fire table, to slay it.”

A second before the licking fire reached Prowler’s fingertips, he dropped the burning bough in the bucket. He gazed at the two dozen probies. Then he shrugged and smiled at Sully. “Maybe it’s all just a bunch of woo-woo New Agey crap, and maybe there’s no such thing as the spirit of fire. But during your first live fire exercise, look into the flames, and maybe you’ll see the red dragon.”

After class, Morning gave up trying to get past the probies asking Prowler questions. Figuring he could talk to him at the firehouse later, Morning headed out the door. He turned the wrong way. Captain Clancy was coming toward him. Clancy was the academy’s second-in-command, the equivalent of an assistant principal. He looked like a walking steroid storage facility and took particular pleasure in making Morning’s life miserable.

Morning spun on his heels, hoping to avoid detection and one of Clancy’s pop inspections: one stitch out of place on a probie’s uniform could result in a UV, a uniform violation, and the demerit that went with it.

“Hey, McCobb,” Clancy barked. “I saw that move! You trainin’ to be a ballerina or one of the bravest?”