I'd been up since five-thirty without the alarm going off. Hartsdale's gray had river in it. Queens' gray had the highway, and I'd already learned the difference.
I made the coffee. I drank it standing at the counter. There was no dog on the kitchen tile and no second pour for anyone, and the knowing didn't fix it.
I put the mug in the sink. I put my boots on. I walked the four blocks to 295.
I'd walked into the bay at 295 a thousand times. Twice as a probie. More times than I could count when I'd been on the line. The smell hit me first: diesel and old coffee, the fluorescent buzz over the apparatus floor, the wet shine on the rig from somebody's morning wash. My body remembered it before my head did.
Two and a half years. I'd been away from the smell of this house for two and a half years.
Walker's locker was at the end of the second row. Mine, now. Somebody had put a piece of masking tape across the front with FORD written on it in the same Sharpie that had been in the kitchen drawer eight years ago. I knew because Walker's name was still under it, slightly visible through the tape.
"Ford."
I looked up.
Brian Torres was halfway across the bay with his gear bag over his shoulder and a grin coming up on his face that wasn't going to be denied. He was on the back end of A-shift. He should have been heading home. He wasn't. He was crossing the bay to me.
I dropped my bag.
"Torres."
He hit me at the lockers with the brief firehouse hug men used at firehouses, two-fisted at the back. He stepped back and looked me over.
"Look who finally remembered the way."
"How you been, brother?"
"I've been good. When'd you get in?"
"Tuesday."
"Tuesday. And you didn't call?"
"I was gonna call."
"Were you, though?"
He was watching my face the way a man who'd known me a long time watched my face when I'd been gone too long. He clocked something. He didn't push.
"How was Hartsdale at the end?"
"Closed her up clean."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Mhm."
That was as far as he was going to take it. He shifted the gear bag on his shoulder.
"Ava's been on me all week about Sunday. Lasagna. Bring nothin'."
"Brian."
"Don't say no. You haven't seen Sofia in two and a half years. She's nine. She has the vocabulary of a federal prosecutor. Last week, she told me my argument lacked merit. She was correct."
I laughed before I meant to. The Queens came up in it, the way it did when I was off-guard. Brian caught it, too. His grin widened.
