Bronx Noir

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.

And besides, on shifts at least, Mike was still pulling his weight. He pumped himself full of nicotine and caffeine and kept busy—making beds, fixing meals, washing the rig. When the alarm sounded, the adrenaline kicked in. Break a window, cut a hole in a roof, climb a ladder, take a door. As anyone who’s seen combat will tell you, you can pretty much keep going when the shit hits the fan. It was the empty, off-duty hours that were killing him. Even the simplest tasks seemed monumental. He started to toast a bagel one day, then watched with no particular interest as black ribbons of smoke emanated from the toaster. It was Tig—firefighter Jimmy Francesco—who unplugged the toaster and fished the cremated bagel out. All the while Mike just watched, not even sure if he’d really been hungry in the first place. When a firefighter in the engine company mentioned that he was going in the hospital for stomach surgery, Mike found himself daydreaming about the man’s anesthesia. Right now, he’d gladly trade a gut full of staples for a few hours of blankness.

When the insomnia first hit, Mike fought it by driving his car up to his former house—a semi-attached stucco in Woodlawn across from the cemetery. He parked across the street and imagined Gina inside sleeping, wrapped up in one of his old FDNY T-shirts. Except she wasn’t—not one night anyway. She never came home. Then his car got stolen—he’d parked it too far from the firehouse doors. (The guys on duty got first dibs on the “safe” spots.) That ended his evening excursions.