Singe Read online

  “Thanks,” he says, once he’s downed two of them—he’s thirsty all of a sudden, a combination of the booze and the heat and the sex.

  Addie’s keeping up with him gulp for gulp. She’s leaning against the counter with her bare ankles crossed, T-shirt so old and worn Eli can see the outline of her nipples right through it, just below the cracked lettering reading Saint Bonaventure’s 18th Annual Italian Festival, July 7-14, 2005. The neck’s stretched out across her collarbones, oddly elegant. Everything about her body makes Eli want to bite and suck.

  “Was that a particularly good year for the Italian Festival?” he asks when she catches him staring, taking a long gulp from his third glass of water. It tastes faintly metallic, like maybe the plumbing in this apartment is not to be trusted. “2005?”

  Clearly, Addie is not fooled. “It was, as a matter of fact,” she says anyway, ducking away teasingly as he moves to box her in against the counter and heading for the coffeemaker, which is beeping its mechanical readiness. “My dad did the dunk tank, my grandma caught my cousin Jenn making out with a girl behind the life-size Stations of the Cross statues, and I ate a dozen and a half zeppole and yakked.” She stands on her tiptoes to get mugs out of the cupboard, tight calves and that T-shirt riding all the way up; Eli barely catches himself before he reaches out and squeezes one more time. “What do you take in this, anything?”

  “Black’s fine.” Their fingers brush as she passes over the mug. Eli thinks it should feel more awkward than it does. There’re pictures of her family all over the apartment, he notices now that she mentions them, Christmases and vacations and one of those print-your-own calendars on the bulletin board with a bunch of little kids mugging in a swimming pool. It occurs to Eli that there are no photos in his new place at all. “Making out at the Stations of the Cross, huh?” he asks finally.

  Addie shrugs. “Jenn’s not subtle. She was seventeen, she got kicked out and went to live at her girlfriend’s. Which was actually pretty great, because her parents let us drink wine.” She shuffles over to the fridge and loads up her own mug with creamer, right to the top. “She had blue hair,” Addie adds after sipping. “The Stations of the Cross girl. Still my favorite out of Jenn’s girlfriends, not that I’d tell her fiancée.”

  That explains the nonchalance about living above a gay nightclub, Eli guesses. He’s never been entirely sure how Catholic Addie is, that crucifix and her genuflecting at the church earlier today like an old pro, the sign of the cross after every prayer. He supposes he could always ask. “You got a big family?” he opts for instead.

  “Mm-hmm.” Addie finger-combs through her hair, leaning against the counter. “Huge.”

  They finish up the coffee in relative silence, both of them concentrating on mainlining caffeine. Eli puts his pants and undershirt back on, shrugs into his damp shirt reluctantly. He should have hung it over the AC unit. “All right,” he says when he can’t stall anymore, slinging his jacket over his arm. “I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

  Addie opens her mouth, but Eli mimes zipping his lips before she can speak. “I know, I know, mum’s the word.” In truth, this seems dumber and dumber the further removed he gets from it, all the doubts from the bathroom coming flooding back. But when he looks at Addie’s hugely pretty face, he finds he doesn’t care at all. “Do I get a goodbye kiss?”

  That wins a smirk. “I don’t know,” Addie says, brassy. “Do you?”

  This girl. “Uh-huh,” Eli decides, backing her up against the front door of the apartment and having the pleasure of feeling her body contract as she inhales. Her eyes are wide and interested, a smidge of copper in them now that he looks more closely. “I think I do.” He palms the back of her curly head and kisses her hard and deep so she’ll remember. Her tongue is coffee-bitter and wet.

  “See you tomorrow, princess,” he says when it’s over, then winks at her as an afterthought. Her loud, incredulous laugh chases him all the way down the narrow stairs.

  His car’s still in the lot of the Pint where he left it, an Outback he and Chelsea got when they were newlyweds and Hester was still a puppy, extra room so the dog could ride in the trunk when they drove up to go camping with Eli’s in-laws. Chelsea was crazy for camping. She came from one of those families with their own tents and the sub-zero sleeping bags, all of them the same combination of book nerd and nature lover. Her dad used to read Walden aloud after dinner. In the end, Chelsea got the house and the sleeping bags and the dog. Eli got the emptied-out truck, the boot still full of Hester’s hair.

  Back at his apartment he drinks some more water and eats a sandwich standing over the sink, cold cuts on bone-dry rye. There’s mold on the edge of one of the bread slices, more on the loaf when he looks closer. Eli sighs, dumping the whole thing into the garbage. All these months alone and he still isn’t used to shopping for one person, is forever buying mesh bags of avocados at half-off and losing a third of them to the trash. Every time he comes back from a multi-night shift at the firehouse, it’s to a basket full of moldy bread and a fridge full of spoiled produce.

  “You can’t keep the dog anyway, Eli,” Chelsea said matter-of-factly, both of them picking through the massive bookshelves in the den, the last room they’d needed to divide up. Hardly any of the books were his, Eli remembers noticing. It was too late to ask if that was part of why she was leaving him. “You’re never home.”

  It was too late to ask if that was part of why she was leaving him too. Eli did though. Eli asked all that and more, begged for another chance, tried to force her to hash everything out again there in the middle of the den he never used, in the house that was so wholly Chelsea’s it made perfect sense he was the one getting kicked out. But she just turned her sharp blue eyes on him and said it wasn’t working. She looked so profoundly sad.

  So. He let her keep Hester.

  When Eli unpacked the boxes later, he found she’d sent him away with One Hundred Years of Solitude and Frankenstein, neither of which had been his originally. He still isn’t sure what she meant by it. He’s about fifty pages into One Hundred Years, but he keeps forgetting the plot and having to start over. All the characters have the same name.

  Now he decides on a banana that’s only moderately overripe and heads into the living room to watch reruns, settling himself in the center of the uncomfortable fake leather couch that came with the rental. The whole apartment was fully furnished by the management company, one of the reasons why Eli picked this complex to begin with, how he didn’t want to deal with shopping for end tables or a new bed. He figured he’d pick shit up as he saw it, and if that hasn’t actually happened so far, well, it’s not like a bit of minimalism is the worst thing in the world. It’s kind of Zen. He definitely wouldn’t want to live in a place as jam-packed and chaotic as Addie’s, fourteen different rooms of furniture crammed into a studio apartment. He thinks again of the pictures on her walls, all that family. Eli doesn’t even know who he’d hang photos of.

  Thinking of her house makes him wonder what she’s doing, if she had plans to go out or she went to bed early or she’s watching a movie with her ugly stray cat. If afterwards she showered him off. It’s weird, knowing he’ll see her again tomorrow, that she’ll be at work just like always. Ever since Chelsea, he’s pretty much picked his sexual partners for, among other reasons, the unlikelihood of running into them again. The weirdest part is how he’s kind of glad Addie’ll be around.

  The problem with turning in early for the night: now there’s nothing to stop him from thinking about the arson, about Drew and everything else. Maybe he should call his mom. Next month is the anniversary of his brother Will’s death, eighteen years.

  There’s whiskey in the kitchen.

  Eli stays firmly where he is. Flips past the Food Network while he’s surfing through the channels, hesitates for just a second. Clicks on CSI and falls asleep.

  Chapter Four

  Addie’s hangover isn’t too bad the next morning, thank all things holy. The chug al
l the water you possibly can until your insides slosh trick is Jenn’s, and it usually works. Addie wrestles her hair into a braid, fighting the humidity that makes her curls take on a life of their own. Her face looks a little puffy, not terrible. Last night the club downstairs was churning out nineties’ pop hits late into the a.m., but Addie’s learned to sleep with the noise.

  She feeds Chicken Cat before she leaves, topping up the bowl until it’s practically overflowing. Today’s shift is a double, forty-eight hours straight through to the weekend, a break for dinner tonight and out in time for church. Addie’s been fitting her work schedule around church since she was fourteen years old and spent her summer nannying the demon Papaleo triplets down the block.

  “You probably aren’t even going to eat this,” she tells the cat now. He flattens his ears and slinks under the dresser, meowing suspiciously. Last week, he laid a dead bird across her welcome mat like an offering.

  Addie hums to herself as she bangs down the stairs, surprisingly energetic. She feels good, honestly. Maybe this is what people mean by afterglow.

  Still, she hopes Eli means it about being discreet at work, mum’s the word and his nice guy schtick. She’s not afraid to rip him a new one if he doesn’t. One thing about being David Manzella’s only daughter—not to mention one of exactly two lady firefighters in this company—is you learn how to stick up for yourself pretty good.

  Her car’s about a thousand degrees inside, an ancient silver Jetta called Gertie that Addie’s been driving since her senior year of high school, old iced coffee cups jammed in the center console and camo-print seat covers her brother got her as a joke. The cheap fabric burns the backs of her thighs through her jeans. She rolls down the windows and cranks the AC even though Gertie can barely take it. It’s a quick drive through town over to the firehouse anyway, summer sun baking the blacktop and gleaming off the plate-glass windows of the shops on Market Street. God, work is going to be brutal.

  Sharpie and Parker are sitting in lawn chairs outside the garage doors when Addie pulls up to the house, both of them sprawled in undershirts and basketball shorts down past their knees. They’re all supposed to be in their station uniforms, crisp blue pants and shirts, but sometimes it’s just too hot. “Working on your tans?” Addie yells through the open car window. Sharpie, whose real name is Robbie Sharp and who makes a chicken cacciatore that rivals Addie’s mom’s, tips his Sox cap in her direction and grins.

  “I mean, I am,” he calls, good-natured. “Parker here’s fair, he just burns.”

  Parker shrugs, all blond hair and freckles. His wife just had twins in the spring. “Irish mother,” he chimes in, like what can you do. “Sensitive skin.”

  Inside, Addie drops her stuff in her locker and heads out to the sink to fill her water bottle in her rolled-up jeans and T-shirt, one of Jenn’s designs with a deep V-neck and a line-drawing of the Boston skyline, the Prudential building and the Citgo sign. Eli’s standing in the kitchen eating last shift’s leftovers out of the fridge.

  “Hey,” he says, twirling his fork through the spaghetti. He looks tired, long shorts like Sharpie and Parker and bare feet even though they hardly ever wash the floor in here. His toes are bony and pale. “Do you feel as shitty as I do?”

  From his voice, you’d never know they got up to anything at all last night besides tequila shots. Addie doesn’t know why that annoys her, seeing as how it’s exactly what she wanted. Just like that, her good mood evaporates.

  “Gimme some of that,” she says sourly, reaching into the Tupperware and snagging a meatball. Their candidate made them, this skinny blond kid named Gaarder who’s a wizard with Italian food. “Been better,” she tells Eli after she finishes sucking her fingers. Probably she should go find a plate.

  He’s watching her now, dark, interested eyes. Addie wonders if she meant him to, crowding right up into his personal space the way she did. Her fingers are wet with spit.

  “Have another,” Eli says finally. “Garlic: it’s good for what ails you.” He waggles his eyebrows.

  “And what’s ailing me?” Addie demands, snatching herself and her water bottle away and going to sit at the table. Even to her own ears, her voice sounds bitchy. He probably does this all the time, casual morning afters. It’s probably not weird for him at all.

  “Now there’s a question.” Eli grins at her, unruffled. Addie wonders if anything ever bothers him at all. “Easy, princess.” He crosses the kitchen and sets the Tupperware down on the table in front of her, fork and all. “Finish that,” he advises. Then, after cocking his head to the side and looking at her for a minute, he reaches out and swipes his thumb over the corner of Addie’s mouth, confident and easy. Addie’s so surprised she doesn’t move.

  “You had a little sauce,” Eli informs her, licking it off before strolling right out of the kitchen.

  Jerk.

  Still, she eats the spaghetti.

  She’s just finishing up when the alarm goes off, loud and urgent. Addie leaves the bowl on the table and jogs down to the garage to get into her turnout gear: her trousers and the silly red suspenders, her jacket and her big heavy boots. Their uniforms are made of high-tech PBI mixed with Kevlar, which won’t melt even if you pour gasoline right on it and light a match. It’s also hot as all fucking get-out.

  “Triple decker on James Street,” Parker tells her, plunking his helmet on and handing Addie hers off the equipment shelf. Sharpie’s already up in the pumper, keying the address into the tablet computer they use to run the dispatch software. “Gas grill on a wooden deck, they’re saying.”

  “Beautiful,” Addie mutters, hopping up onto the engine just a moment before Eli does, still shrugging into his jacket. They get a lot of calls like this in the summer months, people getting drunk and using their barbecues for the first time in a year. Temperature climbs above eighty and suddenly everyone in Western Mass is a grill master. “Just beautiful.”

  It’s a quick trip over with the lights and sirens roaring, the house visible by the thick smoke pouring out the back of it. The paramedics have already arrived, which makes it the third time this week. Sharpie and Parker keep track.

  “Second story, back deck,” an EMT tells Addie, shoving her red hair out of her face as she hooks her patient up to an O2 mask. She looks massively exasperated. “No grill mat, under an overhang and everything. People are wonderful.”

  Behind Addie, Eli whistles softly. It takes her a minute to realize it’s not at the display of stupidity, but rather the EMT’s hugely pregnant stomach. “Congrats,” he says as they roll out the hose. “When’re you due?”

  The EMT makes a face. “It’s twins, okay? Fuck, everyone thinks I’m about to pop.” Then, to her riding partner, “All right, Nick, we need to take him in.”

  “How do they beat us every time?” Parker asks Addie as they run the supply hose from the hydrant to the pumper engine, jacking up the water pressure. Eli and Sharpie are already inside, clearing the house.

  “What can I say, Parker?” Addie grins even as the sweat trickles down her backbone, arm muscles burning from manhandling the hose. She wanted to be a firefighter ever since she was four years old. “You’re fucking slow.”

  They get the thing under control pretty quickly, all told, no real injuries other than smoke inhalation, and back at the house they sack out in the rec room in front of Judge Judy for the better part of the afternoon. Addie helps Sharpie and Gaarder chop tomatoes and peppers for panzanella. Eli and Parker take the SUV and haul a middle-schooler up out of a hole at a construction site on the far side of town. At five o’clock, Addie catches a quick shower and ducks out to her parents’ house for dinner, promising to bring back leftover cheesecake, if there is any. A lot of times there’s not.

  Phillip’s car is already in the driveway when she gets there, which figures. He’s the golden child, her big brother. He’s always on time. His wife Marina’s already in the kitchen, five months pregnant, washing salad greens out of Addie’s mother’s garden. There ar
e half a dozen aunts and uncles and cousins hanging out in the backyard, Gram holding court in a swivel chair at the picnic table. Diana herself comes up from the cellar a minute later in white slacks and a flowered blouse, two quart jars of sauce in her hands. “You’re late,” she says, then grins and drops a kiss on Addie’s cheek. “Hi.”

  “Hi, Mama.” Addie plunks her purse on a kitchen chair. “Can I help with anything?”

  Diana shakes her head, straightening out the collar of Addie’s T-shirt. Addie knows she recognizes Jenn’s design, but she doesn’t comment. “Stuffed shells are in the oven, cheesecakes are cooling.” Diana always makes two cheesecakes for family dinners, sometimes three if they’ve got a crowd. Phillip can put away a whole one on his own. “Why don’t you head out back? I think they’re talking about the arson.”

  Addie ducks out the sliding glass door, flashing a guilty look at Marina as she goes. The Manzellas are a traditional family, church on Sundays and weddings in white, marriages sanctioned by God and women in the kitchen while the men drink beers in the living room. But Addie became a firefighter like her old man, and she’s been exempt ever since.

  “Adelaide!” he calls now when she steps out onto the back deck. “We were just talking about you. Jim O’Neill said you did very well at the fire earlier this week.”

  Dinner is ready in under an hour, the table set by Marina and little Paulina, who proudly shows Addie the mood ring she won in a bubble gum machine. Her teenage cousins Danielle and Kristine, Jenn’s sisters, complain loudly about their summer jobs scooping ice cream. Phillip and Marina spill the beans that the baby’s going to be a boy. Addie looks at her parents beaming, the way her brother’s got an arm around Marina. She thinks of Eli for one crazy, ridiculous second before she pushes him firmly out of her mind.

  Once the table’s cleared, quiet Aunt Marianne, Jenn and the twins’ mom, slices up the cheesecake, plus vanilla ice cream for Paulina and Dante, who’s four and the baby of the family. “There you go, hon,” she murmurs, setting Addie’s cake down in front of her. Addie mutters a “thank you” in return. Marianne and all three girls moved in with Addie’s grandma after Uncle Mike died in a motorcycle accident back in the nineties, which is why Marianne didn’t have much of a leg to stand on when Gram kicked Jenn out of the house in high school. Still, Addie’s never really forgiven her for being such a enormous wimp.