Carole Buck - Three-Alarm Love

“I—”

A shriek of feedback cut off his response to his companion’s deliberately provocative inquiry. A moment later, music started pouring through the sound system again. This time, the selection was a slow, sultry tune. Implicit in the music was the notion that a man and a woman could have just as much fun going at each other standing up as they could lying down.

Bernadine squealed in delighted recognition, practically flinging herself into Fridge’s arms. He winced slightly as several of her hair beads bounced against his T-shirted chest like BB pellets. It occurred to him that between her nails and her braids, this woman could do a man some serious accidental damage.

“Oooooh, I love this song!” she declared, wiggling to underscore the point. “Come on, baby. Dance with me.”

He could have said no, of course. But he didn’t. He didn’t because he knew that by his mama’s lights, it wouldn’t have been mannerly behavior.

Keezia detached herself from the group of firefighters that had gathered around her a few moments after Fridge’s partner super-glued herself against him. No one seemed to notice her departure. They were all too engrossed in listening to a story about the comeuppance of a local TV reporter who was notorious for sticking his mike in emergency workers’ faces while they were trying to do their jobs and demanding, “Whaddya got? Whaddya got? Gimme something good.”

Word was, this jerk had been his usual obnoxious—even obstructionist—self the previous night at the scene of a multiple-car, multiple-fatality collision on 1-85. Outraged by his behavior, a stressed-to-the-maximum paramedic had shut him up by shoving something ugly into his hands.

Keezia was just approaching the refreshment table when she heard a girlish voice call her name. She turned and saw a pixie-pretty young blonde coming her way. Following in her wake was a tall, sandy-haired man with sun-bronzed skin and brilliant blue eyes.

The man was Jackson Miller, probably Fridge’s closest friend in the department. Maybe his closest friend, period The girl was Jackson’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Lauralee.

“Hey, Keezia!” Lauralee greeted her with a merry wave.

Having been raised in Detroit, Keezia had had a few problems with Dixie-belle accents like Lauralee’s when she’d first arrived in Atlanta. While she still found some “Southern-speak” phony-sounding, she’d warmed to Lauralee’s drawl very quickly. The girl was as sweet as she was smart. She was also one of Keezia’s most ardent fans, regarding her as something of an icon because of her status as a female firefighter and—as she emphatically put it—an independent woman.

To say that Keezia had initially found Lauralee’s attitude toward her difficult to accept was to severely understate the case. She’d still been in the process of piecing herself back together when they’d met nearly three years ago. The idea that anyone—to say nothing of a sheltered little white girl—would consider her a role model had struck her as a sick joke. Gradually, however, the guileless intensity of Lauralee’s admiration had began to get through to her. It had proven a balm for her badly wounded self-esteem.

“Hi, honey.” She smiled at the teen, then nodded at her father. “Jackson.”

“Evening, Keezia.”

“Did y’all hear about the reporter and the paramedic and the chopped-off hand?” Lauralee inquired eagerly.

“Chopped-off hand?” Keezia said frowning. “I thought it was a severed foot.”

“Whatever.” Lauralee made an airy gesture, dismissing the need to be accurate about exactly which body part had been involved. Then her expression grew serious and she demanded, “Can y’all believe people have the nerve to act like that?”

“You mean the EMT?” Keezia used the acronym for “emergency medical technician.”

“Oh, no.” The teen shook her head vehemently. “I think what he did was wonderful! I’m talkin’ about that awful TV newsman—” she spat out the name, her wide, blue eyes fizzing with indignation. “Who does he think he is, anyway? Geraldo Rivera? Pokin’ his microphone at people when they’re tryin’ to save lives. Askin’ ‘em all kinds of insensitive questions. Makes me sick. Why, just a couple weeks ago, he ran his station wagon—you know, that tacky newshound thing they’re always promotin’ like it was the Batmobile or some-thin’? —over a charged-up line at a fire! Now, I believe it’s real important to have freedom of the press. But when a reporter does somethin’ as stupid as runnin’ over a workin’ hose—well, I don’t think he should get one tiny bit of protection from the First Amendment!”

Jackson chuckled and tweaked a lock of his daughter’s flaxen hair. “Spoken like the true child of a firefighter.”

Lauralee turned, clearly nettled by her father’s teasing attitude. “You pretty much said the same thing, Daddy,” she reminded him. “And Fridge, too. Remember? Last Monday? When he came over for dinner? He said he’d’ve liked to take an ax to that dumb old news car and ventilate it, but good.”

“There’s a rumor going around that the reporter is threatening to sue,” Keezia put in, wanting to steer the conversation away from Fridge as quickly as possible. She also knew that Jackson tended to have the inside scoop on departmental doings. No matter that he was only a lieutenant The man was heavily—and highly—connected.

“He can threaten all he wants,” Jackson replied. “But I don’t think he’ll follow through. There’s a videotape of what provoked the paramedic into reacting the way he did, and somebody in the Mayor’s office has a copy of it. If the reporter’s stupid enough to sue, the city’ll release it to all the local stations and CNN. Then the Department of Public Safety will yank his press credentials and cite him for interfering with official business. He might even wind up charged with malicious mischief and reckless endangerment.”

Keezia took a second or two to digest this scenario. Although she’d been spared any personal encounters with the newsman under discussion, his reputation was such that she felt justified in detesting him.

“Sounds good to me,” she declared. “But what about the paramedic?”

Jackson’s mouth twisted. “He’s been ordered to get some counseling. He’ll probably be suspended without pay for a week or so, too.”

“Which is totally unfair,” Lauralee chimed in with great conviction.

“A lot of things in this life aren’t fair, sugar,” her father advised, his words infused with a touch of melancholy. Keezia wondered fleetingly whether he was thinking of the untimely deaths of his wife and father.

“Yeah, but—” the teenager stopped, her gaze snagging on something behind Keezia. After a moment she furrowed her fair-skinned brow and observed, “She’s still dancin’ with him.”

“Who?” Puzzled, Keezia looked over her shoulder.

“That woman,” Lauralee said in an odd tone. “She’s still dancin’ with Fridge.”

“It’s not a one-way proposition, sugar,” Jackson admonished. Something in his voice hinted that this was not new conversational territory. “Fridge is dancing with her, too.”

Oh, he surely was, Keezia concurred sourly. Why, if he and Miss Bust-and-Braids got any closer, they’d be sharing lungs!

Exhaling a disgusted huff, she turned back toward the Millers. She had no reason to react this way, she told herself. She had no claim on Fridge Randall. His private life was none of her business. If he wanted to go about conducting that private life for all the world to see... well, fine! It was no skin off her backside.

“Daddy says he doesn’t know who she is, Keezia,” Lauralee reported. “Do you?”

“I never saw her before.” And if she never saw her again, it would be just hunky-dory.