Absent Friends

And now she is finished, graduated back in June up at City College, Jimmy late because he has to trade shifts, take that long train ride into Harlem. Graduation's outdoors, clear and warm and not a cloud in the sky. Jimmy's way in the back, way on the side, when the graduates march in. The wind is up. They have to hold their flat hats on and their black gowns flap and Jimmy has a little trouble picking Marian out, he's so far back and they're all dressed the same. But when the dean calls her name and she strides across the stage like someone really tall on her way to someplace important—though she's shorter than Jimmy, and she's only going to shake the dean's hand and sit down again—Jimmy watches her and knows that if he forgets his own name, forgets where home is, forgets why you fight fires, he'll always remember how Marian walks.

When she starts the new job two weeks later—she lined this job up before she graduated, that's Marian's way, how she does things—Jimmy takes her out to celebrate. Just the two of them at Montezuma's, in St. George, they eat paella and lobsters and drink wine, neither of them knows what paella is before they order it, but it's great. Though Jimmy thinks maybe they could be eating cardboard and on this night he'd like it.

Jimmy lifts his wineglass, offers a toast.

To saving people, he says.

Candlelight sparkles in Marian's wineglass and her eyes. To saving people, she says, smiles at him. Your way and mine.

That smile, when Jimmy sees it, he'd slay dragons if they were keeping Marian from finding her way.

Someday, he says, and though he's still smiling, his voice has gone quiet in a way that makes Marian lower her glass and really listen, someday you'll be the one. The one making decisions, how to save people, who to save.

Marian tilts her head. Someone has to, she says.

Her eyes are almost black, with tiny lights, some reflected from the candles, but some Jimmy's seen before, light that's always there in Marian's eyes. I'm glad it's going to be you, he says.

And he doesn't say: And I'm glad it doesn't have to be me.

To do the kinds of things Marian does, the things she wants to do, you have to be pretty sure you know what's good for people.

But, Marian would say if he said this to her—he knows she would, because she has—like little Jeanine: her sister's a hooker, her mother's a drunk. How can you not be sure it would be good for her not to be like them?

When she says things like that, Jimmy can't argue.

But still.

His kind of saving, it's different. Buildings are going to burn, he puts the fires out. People inside are going to die, he fights a tug-of-war with death, and if he wins—so far, he's usually won—they live. There's not much to figure out: not burning is better than burning, living is better than dying.

Anyone knows that.

When they leave Montezuma's, Jimmy puts his arm around Marian. Her shoulders are warm under her soft sweater, and he has to stop and kiss her. The way she holds him when she kisses back, he almost abandons his plan so they can go straight home. Instead he takes her hand and leads her downhill.

Where are we going?

You'll see.

They wind up at the terminal. Jimmy pays two nickels, and they're on the ferry. As the boat starts to move, he unslings his backpack on the deck, pulls out a bottle of real champagne from France, and two glasses. Marian laughs, like music. Jimmy pops the cork. Champagne fizzes up, spills over his hand and tickles. She holds the glasses while he pours, and they drink champagne all the way to Manhattan, watching the towers with their sparkly lights get closer, get bigger. And then, all the way back home.

That night, Marian's graduation night, summer was starting; tonight it's close to ending.

In bed in the Cooleys' basement apartment, Marian walks her fingers along Jimmy's ribs as though she's counting them. Superman, she says, something on your mind?

Me? No, uh-uh. Jimmy smiles. Only you.

Seems like you're worried about something.

Jimmy's surprised. On his way home he was thinking about Markie, about Jack, about Mr. Molloy asking for help over a beer in Flanagan's. He was trying to figure what to do. But when Marian opened the door, kissed him in the doorway under the stairs, well, that was the end of that.

Just stuff, says Jimmy.

He could tell her: what Mr. Molloy's problem is, what he wants Jimmy to do. But there's two things about that. One is, Marian gets mad at Jack a lot these days. Grow up! she tells him. Anyone else saying the kinds of things to him that Marian does, Jack would blow up. But Marian always had special ways she could talk to Jack, ways no one else could. And Jack could always make Marian laugh. Always before; but not now. Now when Jack's wild, when he does his stupid stuff, Marian gets mad.