6. Mack
CHAPTER SIX
mack
The shift had been what the job sometimes was
a lot of nothing punctuated by one call that wasn’t nothing.
Early afternoon, back of Roxbury. Gas leak in a triple-decker, elderly woman on the second floor who hadn’t been able to smell it for two days.
Routine containment, no fire, no hospital.
The kind of call that looks like nothing on the report and is everything in practice because of what it could have been if she’d lit the stove.
We aired the building, got her to her daughter’s, and were back at the station by three.
The part Coop couldn’t let go of was the woman’s cat, which had apparently known something was wrong and spent the last forty-eight hours sitting in front of the front door refusing to let anyone past. Coop had spent the entire drive back treating this like a significant philosophical development.
“The cat knew,” he says, for the third time, dropping into a chair at the kitchen table.
“Animals have better instincts,” Marco says, not looking up from whatever he was reading.
“That’s not the point. The point is the cat stayed at the door. It didn’t hide. It—”
“It held the line.”
“Exactly.”
“Cooper.” I don’t look up from the maintenance log.
“I’m just saying. That’s a good cat.”
“Write it a commendation,” Tyler says.
“Mock me now. That cat prevented a structure fire.”
“It also tried to bite Marco.”
Marco turns a page.
“I stand by my assessment.”
Coop points across the table.
“That’s because you threatened him.”
“I carried him out of a gas leak.”
“You violated his personal boundaries.”
Tyler snorts into his coffee while Coop looks at me for backup.
“The cat did a better size-up than the homeowner,” I say.
The table goes quiet for half a second. Then Coop points at me.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. The cat’s still reckless.”
“The cat saved lives.”
“The cat ignored evacuation orders.”
Tyler laughs.
The kitchen phone starts ringing somewhere behind us, but nobody makes a move toward it. At this point half the station assumes somebody else is going to answer first.
Marco finally glances up from his book.
“Fire Prevention finally catch up?”
“Probably.”
Tyler leans back in his chair, balancing it on two legs.
“You send the report already?”
“It was done before dinner.”
Coop drops his head into one hand.
“See, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“What?”
“You make the rest of us look bad.”
“I think you accomplish that on your own.”
I catch the smile Marco hides behind his coffee.
The phone gives up before any of us do.
By nine the board has gone quiet, and the house has settled into its overnight rhythm, the kind that only shows up when nobody’s waiting on the next call.
The kitchen smells like whatever Tyler had put together for dinner—something with garlic and enough protein to justify the portion sizes—and the table has that post-meal looseness, chairs pushed back, nobody in a hurry.
Trick is at the end of the table, turning his phone over in his hand the way he does when something was sitting with him.
I notice, but I keep my mouth shut. With Trick, saying something is usually the fastest way to make sure he never tells you. You waited, or you didn’t find out.
Coop, naturally, has no such instincts.
“Alright, what’s with the face?”
“I don’t have a face.”
“You’ve had the face since about six o’clock.”
Trick rolls the phone once more across his knuckles.
“Andrew’s moving in with his boyfriend.”
I glance up.
“Thought that wasn’t until April.”
Trick’s eyes flick toward me.
“It got moved up.”
Tyler doesn’t even react.
Coop frowns.
“How’d you know that?”
“He told me.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
Trick points at the table.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Making me feel less insane.”
Marco turns a page.
“He remembers everything.”
“And?” Tyler says.
“And the lease is up end of the month.”
“And?”
“And I need somewhere to be.”
The smile never quite leaves his face, which is how you know he’s hoping nobody notices this is actually a problem.
Coop straightens up.
“Hold on.”
“Don’t do it,” Marco chimes in.
“I have a spare room.”
“Coop—” I say.
“Kieran moves out in three weeks. Room’s sitting there.”
Trick studies him for a moment, clearly aware he’s holding all the leverage and enjoying it.
“You leave dishes in the sink.”
“Sometimes—”
Trick barks back.
“You play music at six in the morning—”
“It’s motivational,” he rears his head back.
“You tried to brew beer in the bathtub.”
Coop shoots back.
“Excuse me for trying to find a side hustle.”
“You flooded the bathroom.”
“The entrepreneurial journey is rarely linear.”
Marco finally looks up from his book.
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve ever said.”
Trick looks at the ceiling for a minute, then back at Coop.
“We’ll talk.”
Coop looks like he’d just won the lottery. Marco, to his credit, says nothing, though the corner of his mouth moves.
“This is gonna be fun.”
Ty claps Trick on the shoulder.
“This is going to be wicked.”
Coop grins.
“Same thing,” I say looking at him from under my brows.
Trick points at me.
“What’s the verdict?”
After enough years, everyone at this table knows I’ll tell them the truth whether they like it or not. I lean back in my chair.
“Coop’s place is clean enough. You’re housebroken enough. You’ll survive.”
Coop points immediately.
“See?”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I know.”
Which somehow makes him happier.
Trick nods once.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m not stopping it.”
Coop’s apartment is clean enough when he’s the only one living there, and close enough to the station that none of us can pretend it’s a bad option. Trick could do worse and we all know it. That doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend it’s a great idea when it’s just the least bad one.
Coop gets up to refill his coffee before dropping back into his chair with the look of a man who hasn’t run out of things to say.
“Speaking of living situations…”
The look on Coop’s face tells me exactly where this is headed.
Here we go.
Unfortunately, Trick notices it too.
“Oh, this should be good.”
“About the third floor,” Coop says, eyebrows halfway up his forehead.
Tyler groans.
“The apartment rented?” Trick asks.
“Three weeks ago,” I say.
“Oh, it’s rented,” Coop says it like he’s about to deliver a TED talk. “Tell him how.”
Tyler already looks tired.
“Tell him what?”
“Tell him how you rented an apartment.”
“I showed her the place.”
“And then?”
“She liked it.”
“And then?”
Tyler shrugs.
“I gave her the keys.”
Trick blinks.
“That’s the story?”
“Pretty much.”
Coop smirks with menacing delight.
“He gave her the keys the same day. No references, no credit check, no background check…”
He bobs his head back and forth as he lists out my brother’s lack of oversight.
“She seemed normal,” Ty says defensively.
I close my eyes.
Trick looks at Tyler with a raised eyebrow, then at me.
“And you allowed this?”
“I didn’t allow this. I found out after the lease was signed.”
“He wasn’t happy,” Tyler adds.
“Rightfully so.” I toss back.
“It’s fine.”
“It could have been a disaster.”
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye.
“It wasn’t.”
“Not yet.”
I cock my head.
Trick studies Tyler for a second, clearly intrigued.
“What’s she like?”
He’s asking Tyler instead of me, which was either instinct or wisdom.
“Funny. Smart. Seems like she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Moved herself up from Pennsylvania. Packed everything she owned into an SUV and drove six hours by herself.”
Tyler had been coming back to that part since the day she rented the apartment. Now again.
Not what she looked like. The move.
I don’t think Tyler realizes he’s doing it.
Coop motions across the table.
“That’s your answer?”
“It’s part of the answer,” Ty says. “She doesn’t seem like the type to wait around for somebody else to solve her problems.”
The table goes quiet for half a beat. Tyler has somehow managed to learn more about this chick in three weeks than most people learn in three months.
“You like her,” Marco says.
Tyler snorts.
“I barely know her.”
“Sounds like you know more than most landlords would,” Coop teases.
A laugh works its way around the table.
Tyler flips him off.
I take my cup to the sink, rinse it out, and make the mistake of looking in Coop’s direction on the way back to the table.
He’s already watching me.
The grin should’ve been enough warning that he’s still not finished.
“What.”
“Nothing.”
“Coop.”
“I’m just saying.”
Tyler laughs.
Coop ignores him.
“You still haven’t met her.”
I flip open the maintenance log.
“I’ve been on shift.”
“You’ve also had days off.”
“Remarkable. You can read a calendar.”
“It’s your building.”
“I know it’s my building.”
“And the drain on three—”
“I know about the drain.”
“Do you?”
I look up.
“Yes, Coop.”
He’s enjoying himself now.
The drain’s been on my list for four weeks. Long enough that Tyler’s mentioned it. Long enough that I could’ve dealt with it. The problem with working with the same people for years is they start noticing the difference.
“Ty’s been up there…twice? Now,” Coop says.
“Twice,” Tyler confirms helpfully.
Traitor.
“All I’m saying—”
“No,” I cut in. “That’s not all you’re saying.”
The grin gets wider. For a second nobody says anything.
Then Trick looks between us.
“Oh, he’s doing it on purpose.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Happy to help,” Coop says.
“You think I’m avoiding my own tenant?”
“I think you’ve had three weeks to introduce yourself.”
“She’s aware I exist.”
“Is she?”
“She signed paperwork with my name on it.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“It counted for the bank.”
A laugh rolls around the table. I push back from the table and stand, deciding I’ve had enough of being interrogated for one night.
“That’s enough out of all of you.”
“Hey, running away doesn’t count as winning,” Trick chuckles.
“Good thing I’m not trying to win.”
I head for the apparatus bay.
“Mack,” Tyler says.
I don’t turn around.
“You can’t stay away forever!” Coop shouts at my back.
That earns a bigger laugh than it should.
I flip him off over my shoulder and keep walking.
Ryan stops by the station house a little before midnight.
Off duty, which means something’s on his mind he doesn’t want to sit with alone.
I know it before he says a word. His suit jacket’s still on, tie loosened, and he has that look he gets when he’s been turning the same problem over for hours without getting any closer to an answer.
He drops into the chair across from me and sets his phone on the table.
A few fires he thinks might be connected.
Nothing concrete yet. If there was, he wouldn’t be sitting in the station kitchen talking it through with me. But there’s enough there to make him suspicious, and Ryan’s never been the type to ignore his instincts when something feels off.
Ryan pulls up the photos and slides the phone across the table. An hour later we’re still sitting there turning it over from every angle looking for the thing that doesn’t fit.
Most people think good decisions happen because somebody has the answer. In my experience, they usually happen because two stubborn people sit with a problem long enough to figure out which parts matter and which parts don’t.
After a while, he leans back in his chair.
“You hear anything yet?”
I already know he means the chauffeur position.
“Results come out next month.”
“You’ll get it.”
“Maybe.”
Ryan huffs a laugh.
It’s the same reaction I’ve gotten from just about everybody lately.
Dad called last week pretending he was checking in about the house before dancing around the subject for twenty minutes.
My grandfather was less subtle. He left a voicemail that started with congratulations and ended with a story about the first time he backed Engine 7 into the bay without taking out a traffic cone.
Tyler’s abandoned subtlety altogether and now just works it into conversation whenever there’s a lull long enough for him to fit it in.
The promotion isn’t even official yet and somehow half the people in my life are already acting like it is.
Ryan watches me for a second.
“You want it.”
“I do,” I answer honestly.
The funny thing is most people assume I want it because of my family.
They’re not totally off base. You don’t grow up around firehouses without imagining yourself in one eventually, and I spent enough afternoons at the station as a kid to know the place almost as well as my childhood home.
Dad would finish reports while I wandered around the bay pretending I wasn’t waiting on him.
I must’ve been no more than six years old the first time I climbed into the chauffeur seat.
I remember wrapping my hands around the wheel and being surprised by how big it felt. Dad caught me sitting there and laughed before climbing up beside me.
“Everybody thinks this job is about driving,” he’d said.
Then he pointed through the windshield toward the bay doors. I don’t remember exactly what I expected him to say after that. Something about the truck, maybe. Instead he told me the driver gets everybody there and gets everybody home.
At six, that sounded simple.
Now at thirty-two, I understand it too well.
Somewhere along the way, chauffeur stopped feeling like my father’s job and started feeling like something I wanted for myself.
Ryan turns his mug slowly between his hands.
“You’ll be good at it.”
Maybe.
I nod.
The seat isn’t new to me, but the title would be. I’ve spent enough shifts behind the wheel to know exactly what the job looks like, which is also part of the reason I want it. The truth is,
Chauffeur feels different than most things.
Most responsibilities don’t announce themselves. They just sort of appear one day and then keep showing up until you stop noticing they’re there.
Growing up, Tyler and I could walk into the exact same situation and somehow walk out of it with completely different jobs.
Tyler got to be young in a way I don’t think I ever really considered for myself.
He’d spend an entire day outside, come home muddy and starving, and launch into whatever story he’d been collecting since breakfast while the rest of us listened.
At some point during that same afternoon, I’d usually find myself helping my grandfather with something, unloading a truck with Dad, or finishing whatever needed doing before dinner.
By the time I noticed the pattern, it already felt normal.
The thing is, I don’t remember resenting it. If anything, I liked knowing where I stood. There was something reassuring about people looking at a situation and assuming you’d handle it—not because they couldn’t, but because they already believed you would.
This is one of the few things I can remember wanting before it belonged to me. Ryan thumbs the screen that’s gone dark.
“You’ll find him,” I say.
He exhales.
“Always do.”
A corner of his mouth lifts before he pushes back from the table. At the door he pauses, expression more serious this time.
“Take care of your people, Mack.”
Always do.