Chapters Thirty-Six to Forty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

That night I brought Carrie roses. She met me at the door all done up and ready to go out.

“Flowers, how thoughtful,” she said. “I guess this makes up for your being twenty minutes late. I was going to give you a half a blow job to titillate you during dinner, but it’s going to have to wait, I made reservations at Max’s Oyster House.”

“I canceled them,” I said.

“What. I brought some oysters to you instead.” I showed her the bag of seafood I had.
“Fresh from City Fish. I’m the chef tonight, and you will eat what I’m dishing out.”

“But I really wanted to go out.”

“I’ve got everything. Wine -- your favorite kind -- A California Pinot Noir. I’ve got lobster, oysters, jumbo shrimp with your favorite cocktail sauce, crabmeat, its raw bar city. And for later, I have candles, body lotion, cinnamon flavored, chocolate covered strawberries, and a special gift, all for you.”

She was touched I could tell. She didn’t know what to say. Which was rare.

“Here’s how it’s going to go,” I said. “I’m going to open a bottle of wine for you. You go sit in the other room, I’m going to dim the lights, light a candle. I bought a CD for you. Joan Osbourne’s latest. I know you’ve wanted it, and you sit there and smell the candle and sip the wine and listen to the music, maybe loosen a button of your blouse there, and give me a little time in the kitchen to set this all up, and I will come out and join you in a seafood feast and major league love-in all for you because you are so special.”

She looked at me like she wasn’t certain I was serious, but I could see she guessed, she hoped and maybe even thought I was, and maybe if I thought that, maybe she was special. I know I wasn’t the only guy she was doing, I rarely had ever been, but the reason I hung around was she saw I treated her better than any of the rest, and it was sinking in.

I walked her into the living room, dimmed the lights, lit a candle, set the CD in the player, opened the wine, poured her a glass, let her take a sip, and then had her sit back. “A little something to hold you while I labor in the kitchen,” and I unbuttoned her shirt, released her bra, and slowly sucked on her breasts, then laid her down, and unspread her legs apart, and pulled off her dress and panties off and kneeling, took care of her in the way she liked to be taken care of. And I didn’t just bring her around once. I stayed and did it twice, and then a third time till she was all tingling and exhausted. And then I kissed her on the cheek and whispered her in ear, “I love you, you sexy, gorgeous woman.” I left her there sprawled on the sofa and returned to the kitchen to prepare the feast.

I wet some of her plates, and then put them in the freezer to give them a cold frosting. I spread ice cubes in a large serving tray and draped on top of them the cooked lobster, shrimp, crab and smoked trout I had purchased. I opened oysters and clams, and laid them on the tray. She loved raw bar and I had learned to love it as well. She said it was an aphrodisiac. That maybe true I thought, but I had another ace in the hole in that department as well on this evening.

Earlier we had gone to the apartment of a diabetic, whose landlord had found him in a coma due to low blood sugar. We had been there before on many occasions. It was a routine call. Tom would check his sugar, confirm that it was low, then put in an IV, and give him an amp of dextrose. He’d wake up and refuse to go to the hospital. We’d clear after he signed the refusal and Tom rechecked his blood sugar to make certain it was back to normal.

On this day, while Tom pushed the Dextrose. It took awhile because it was thick and syrupy and the man had small veins. I went into the bathroom to take a leak, and while I was doing that I opened the medicine cabinet. The last time we were there, I’d discovered the man was on Viagra. He didn’t have a girlfriend, just a stack of porno magazines he kept by the bed. I had been thinking about it ever since. Now I had no problems in the hard department, but I heard Fred talking about it. And he swore, even if you were a lead pipe, Viagra would turn you titanium. If you really wanted to impress a girl, he said, get yourself a little blue pill. It wasn’t medicinal, it was promotional. Your dick would thank you, and your girlfriend would be your love slave.

I popped the pill I had stolen and tossed it down with my beer. Fred said it took about thirty minutes to an hour. I figured after eating, then with a little back rub, I’d be hitting it just at the right time.

When I went back in the living room, carrying the ice tray of seafood, she was curled on the sofa, her huge breasts looking glorious to me. I refilled her wine and hand fed her the seafood.

“This is so decadent,” she said.

“Eat up. My pretty,” I said. “It’s all for you.”

For every bite I had, she had four. I dipped the lobster in hot butter, I held the oysters and listened as she slurped them down. She’d slurp an oyster, then put her tongue and the oyster in my mouth and we would kiss and share the taste. I had removed my pants and was serving her in just my underwear when she reached down and felt me. “My God, you’re excited,” she said.

“Always with you,” I said.

“It feels like you have a baseball bat down there. What’s got into you?”

“Oysters, raw seafood, and a dazzling sexy beauty.” I kissed her neck, and so much for the backrub portion of the evening. She pulled me to her and we were going at it.

My God Fred was right. I felt like my sword was Excalibur. Carrie was breathless. She liked it when I pounded her and I pounded her till she was panting. She’d catch her breath for a moment, and we’d go again. She’d groan and cry out and clutch me tight. It was quite simply the best sex we had ever had. It was to another level – an eleven. She looked at me and I felt a change. Instead of Carrie who was the dominant lover, it was now me. She cowered before my strength. I felt her submit. I exhausted her.

She liked to talk dirty when we made love, and if I had had a tape recorder, and wanted to go into the recorded porno line business with it, I would have won a porno Grammy with that recording -- such language she used. .

“That was soo good,” she said. “That was the best, the best I’ve ever had.”

We went all night. “It’s my love, my love for you,” I whispered. “It’s inexhaustible, and it’s all for you.”

“Oh, F-me!,” she cried.

What a night! I was a god.

I awoke a four in the morning, and instead of seeing her asleep next to me snoring, I saw her looking at me. It was like she was thinking, always reassessing me.

“What?” I said.

“Did you mean what you said?”

“What’s that?’

“That you loved me?”

“I did,” I said.

I felt her hand rubbing against me as she looked at me.

I stirred.

She put me back in her and rode me, slow and steady, looking at me the whole time, like she was trying to figure out if I was real or if I was just another fraud.

Yeah, I was a fraud. But as frauds go, on that night I was a Triple Crown winning stallion of frauds.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I had sworn that I would never steal again, that I would follow the straight and narrow, but leave some cash on a dresser and it would end up in my pocket. Patients thought I was the nicest, sweetest young man because I’d see that their soiled clothing was removed and they were tucked into fresh warm sheets, all the while, I’d be casing the joint. It got so I was afraid to work during thunderstorms, afraid there was a bolt of lighting being manufactured by one of the blacksmiths up in heaven that had my name on it. I imagined God holding the thunderbolt in his hand, feeling the grip, admiring its heft and balance. Yes, my blacksmith, good work, this one will smoke that little shit’s ass for good. I imagined being pinned to the wall just as my hand reached out to lift a fiver off a kitchen table. I imagined a bolt of lighting going right through my heart, and winging me right through the earth, till I broke through into hell, and slammed against a giant dartboard in Satan’s chamber. Stapled on my chest would be a note. “Yo, Satan, Here’s another little weenie for your barbeque, your pal, G.”

Tom and I went back to the diabetic’s apartment, but this time we were too late. He lay cold and stiff on his bed, a Jugs magazine spread out next to him. “He probably used up all his sugar jerking off,” Tom said. “Or else just had the big one. Look at him. Coming and going at the same time.”

I went into the bathroom, found his bottle of Viagra, which to my delight had just been refilled. A twenty count bottle, probably 18 of 19 pills in there. I figured seeing Carrie twice a week, my superstudom would last two and half months – plenty of time to find another mark. I emptied the pills into my shirt pocket. I thought about leaving a few in the bottle, then realized if any one checked the refill date it might pose a question, so I just took the whole bottle. Besides rigored as he was, he had no use for Viagra any more.

Yes, I was a fraud.

“Maybe you could come over another night a week,” Carrie suggested. “I think we’re ready for another stage of intimacy, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said, quickly calculating that would reduce my supply to a month. “Yeah, I could do that.” I wasn’t too worried about running out immediately. I had a foreboding that I wasn’t going to last the month anyway. Someone was going to catch me. I was too brazen. Inside, like they say about some crooks, maybe I even wanted to be caught.

“Something wrong with you,” Tom asked one morning, after I’d spent my third night at Carrie’s. “You look exhausted and you’re limping around like your dick hurts.”

“Let’s just say I’m a little raw this morning.”

He looked at me almost with approval. “You horny little dog,” he said.

“That’s me.”

A dog anyway.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“You heard from Fred at all?” the supervisor asked me when I came to work that afternoon.

“We were drinking at The Brickyard last night.”

“Was he so shit-faced he wouldn’t be able to make it out of bed for his noon shift?”

“No, he wasn’t that bad.”

“Well, he’s on the schedule and he’s not answering his phone. Can you and Tom swing by there and shake his ass out of bed?”

I couldn’t say it wasn’t like Fred to sleep past his shift. He’d done it many times in the past. When it came to drinking, he didn’t have the shutoff valve that most of us had. Me, I’d reach a point my body would signal my brain, wooow, partner, one more and you will have a nasty hangover in the morning, one more past that and you will puking, that’s for certain, so shut it down now. Three sips max and you are done. That is not to say there weren’t occasions where I overrode that voice, when I said, dude, I know, but in my own lack of self esteem way, I desire both the hangover and the puking to punish my no good puny self, and if you get hurt in the barrage, well, I’m sorry, that’s just collateral damage.

“You go in and check on him,” Tom said, holding his cell phone away from his mouth for a moment. He was talking to another one of his girlfriends.. He was trying to explain to her why he didn’t see her last night like he had promised, but was hoping to see her tonight. This after just talking to another girlfriend telling her what a great night he had last night, but how he couldn’t see her tonight like he had promised.

Fred lived in a room over the garage of his grandmother’s house. His parents had divorced when he was ten and neither of them wanted him or his brother. His grandmother had her own business selling insurance and had at first worked out of her house. By the time Fred was in high school, her business had really picked up and she had her own office on Main Street, and wasn’t around much, but she had always been nice to me.

Fred’s car was in the drive. I walked up the outside stairs, and knocked on the door. When no one came, I looked in the window. I could see him sitting on the couch, his head in his hands. I knocked again. He didn’t move. The TV was on. “Fred, hey open up! It’s me. You’re on the schedule. Open up. What’s going on?” I was gripped briefly by panic. I tried the door. It was unlocked. “Fred! Fred?”

The room was trashed. The wall punched in in several places, the stereo speakers toppled. A broken chair, a smashed mirror. There was a large bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him, but it had hardly been opened. A shot glass was full in front of him.

“Fred, are you okay? What happened man?”

He looked up at me then. His eyes were red. He looked like he’d been through the ringer and back again. On his face was a look of complete devastation.

“Fred, what happened? What’s wrong?”

He didn’t say anything. He just sobbed.

I finally got the story out of him. He’d found out last night when he’d come home. His brother had been badly injured when his Humvee was blown up by a roadside bomb, and then they come under attack by small arms fire. His brother was still alive, but in a coma. He’d lost both his legs, and was being evacuated to a medical hospital in Germany.

I called dispatch and had them take us off-line for awhile, and then I helped Fred get a hold of his grandmother in New Orleans where she was at a convention, and then got him a plane ticket to Germany. I promised I’d come back in a few hours and take him to the airport

When I came back out, Tom was still on the phone to a girlfriend. “I suppose you wiped his butt up too?” he said.

“Fuck you,” I said. “We’re heading in.”

I wouldn’t tell him why. We got back to the base, I talked to the supervisor, then punched out. I picked Fred up, drove him to the airport and waited with him until he went though the gate.

All I will say is he was shellshocked.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“463, 270 Capen Street for the fall, possibly lift assist, the back door should be open.”

“Your old girlfriend,” Tom said. “Though I suppose with the way you’re hobbling, you won’t have any leftover for her.”

“Very funny. You’re a funny man.”

“I was thinking. I think I’ve got your angle. You’re buttering her up in hopes that when she kicks, she’s going leave her fortune to you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You’ll inherit some old records, a pile of old newspapers, and some stained pajamas.”

“You’re a funny man.”

“Why are you so defensive? There must be something there.”

“Please.”

We pulled up in front of the house. I just brought in a refusal. Tom stayed in the car.

I found her as normal beside her bed, but the room was much dirtier than normal, and she looked like she hadn’t bathed in a few days. .

“What took you so long?” she asked.

“Are you hurt at all?” I asked her.

“No, no, I just can’t get up.”

“Have you aides been coming in?”

“I sent Hattie on an errand so we could have some privacy.”

”Okay...” I said, looking at her strangely.

I got her in bed, got her water and crackers, and then sat by her side while I slowly wrote my refusal.

“How much longer are you going to work for your boss?” she asked. “When are you going to strike out on your own?”

“What?”

“You know what my father said. You have to show you can support me. I told him you had ambition.”

“I like this job just fine,” I said. “for now.”

“But you’ll need a better position. A girl’s father has to know his daughter will be taken care of.”

There was a haze in her eyes.

I reached over and touched her forehead. She didn’t have a fever.

“I’ve been waiting patiently.”

“I know you have,” I said.

“Patiently…” she said again.

I didn’t know what to say to her. I finished writing the run form and brought it over for her to sign. She wrapped her hand around mine and together we wrote her signature, an then she looked up at me, and I confess to you for a moment I thought she was seeing her long lost lover’s face in mine and it freaked me out, although, for a moment I wondered what she would do if I leaned down and gave her a big kiss. In my perverted way I might have, but her breath was really bad tonight.

“Impress my father,” she said, “He wants me to be taken care of.”

“I will,” I said. I pulled the cover up to her neck.

“Turn the light off, will you on your way out.”

“I will, but tell me your aide is coming in tomorrow.”

“Hurry, before Hattie returns. Steal away,” she said.

“Yes, mame.” I hit the light off by the door and made my way down the creaky stairs, and let myself out the back door.

I was disturbed by what had transpired and wondered if I should have tried to get her to go to the hospital or if maybe I should check back there in the morning to make certain her aide came in. She was clearly starting to lose her mind, and it made me sad and sort of sick. I felt like I might have an obligation where I didn’t want one.

“Was she good?” Tom asked.

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Why are you so hostile?”

“Don’t go there.”

“Psycho.”

I just looked out the window.

Sometimes this job was more than I wanted to deal with.

Chapter 40

The headline in the paper had the President’s popularity dropping with the war going so badly. His opponent was ripping him every night on the news, but the opponent was getting attacked in turn for being a two-faced coward. I didn’t like either of them. Fred was over there with his brother for nearly a month. He called me one night drunk and crying and babbling about how he ought to just kill his brother he was so fucked up. I wondered how many other brothers were going through what he was and how many more would have too. The newspaper said the war was costing billions of dollars everyday and despite that the cost of gas was still going up, which I thought was the secret reason we had gone to war in the first place. You had to wonder if maybe the whole think hadn’t been a mistake. America couldn’t seem to win, but we couldn’t retreat either. How did they say it? We had to stay the course? There would one day be light at the end of the tunnel? It was like with me and Carrie, too. Things were often miserable, but I guess you just had to keep plowing ahead and hope the sky didn’t fall in on you.

I had my problems. I could tell myself all I wanted that I would go straight, that I was done stealing, but nothing seemed to stop me -- not ghosts of patients, not high fevers, not even my own panging conscience. The bottom line was the money was there for the taking, and I took it. I took it because I felt I needed it. I never stole from the poor that I could tell, never stole from those who needed it directly that I could tell. So I was making excuses. Lay the money before me, and as soon as heads were turned, it was in my pocket. I had obligations. I had to keep Carrie happy. I knew she wasn’t good for me, but like the President, I didn’t see any retreat. I had to kick some money to my mom for her casino trips. I needed to save for the future, and now I needed to buy Viagra. If patients had it, they were more careful hiding it than they were with their cash. I looked everywhere, under mattresses, inside towel bowl lids, even in cookie jars. I couldn’t find any. One of the EMTs was running a market in it, selling pills at $20 a piece, claiming his supplier paid $10, although I worked with him one day on overtime and saw his lift some sample packets from a doctor’s office supply closet when we had been sent there for a patient with diarrhea. When I went back to the doctor’s office the next week for an asthma patient, I checked the cabinet, but there were now a lock on it. $20 was a lot for one pill, the truth is I would have paid $50. It kept Carrie satisfied, kept her from feeding her desires elsewhere – or at least I hoped it did.

“463, Shooting Edgewood and Homestead, on a 1.”

“Whoo—hoo!” Tom said, as I lit up the ambulance.

“Whoo-hoo!” I echoed.

He was excited because he was a spark at heart and loved trauma, loved the chance to be quick on the scene, and get the patient to the trauma room, tubed and with two lines to the acclaim of the trauma team, and the nurses who doted on him.

I was excited because drug dealers were my bread and butter. One too-bad homeboy a month kept me in Carrie’s bed, and our relationship in style, flowers, nice dinner, some wine and some of the old in-out with my titanium dick.

I spotted a body lying on the street corner. People were still running every which way. A cop car was ahead of us, and the officer was out gun drawn looking in several directions. I thought I heard more shots fired and the cop ducked down behind his car. A lone body was good – it meant no one had had time to roll him before I got to him.

“There’re still fucking shooting,” Tom said.

“Hi, ho silver,” I said, “Let’s get him loaded and get him out of here.”

I spun the ambulance up on the curb between the direction the cop was pointing his gun and where the body lay.

“You’re a crazy motherfucker,” Tom said. He was on the exposed side.

“Crawl out this way,” I said, rolling out the driver door. He followed me. I had the stretcher pulled, and yanked out a board. Tom was already tubing the guy, using his perfected digital style. He always carried a number 8.0 ET tube he kept in his side pant leg pocket. It was the quickest way to intubate someone, open their mouth and using your fingers, manipulate the tube down and shove in between the chords by lifting up the epiglottis at the same time, you used your middle finger to give the tube an upward shove.

The tube in, we rolled the patient on the board, lifted up on the stretcher, heard a few more rounds, then slammed into the back. I hopped in the back, made certain to cut his jacket off, then while Tom popped in an IV, I bounced into the driver’s seat, slammed the ambulance hard into reverse, spun the back around, and then floored back up Homestead. In and out in two minutes.

The guy didn’t make it, but we had an awesome scene time, and I scored over two grand – my biggest payday in three months.

“You are a crazy motherfucker,” Tom said again after he’d finished writing his form.

“What are bullets when you have a job to?” I said, “When you have a living to make.”

He looked at me like I was crazier than even he thought.

All I was thinking about was Carrie smothering me with her love.

I was a hopeless pathetic addict.

Chapter Forty

The headline in the paper had the President’s popularity dropping with the war going so badly. His opponent was ripping him every night on the news, but the opponent was getting attacked in turn for being a two-faced coward. I didn’t like either of them. Fred was over there with his brother for nearly a month. He called me one night drunk and crying and babbling about how he ought to just kill his brother he was so fucked up. I wondered how many other brothers were going through what he was and how many more would have too. The newspaper said the war was costing billions of dollars everyday and despite that the cost of gas was still going up, which I thought was the secret reason we had gone to war in the first place. You had to wonder if maybe the whole think hadn’t been a mistake. America couldn’t seem to win, but we couldn’t retreat either. How did they say it? We had to stay the course? There would one day be light at the end of the tunnel? It was like with me and Carrie, too. Things were often miserable, but I guess you just had to keep plowing ahead and hope the sky didn’t fall in on you.

I had my problems. I could tell myself all I wanted that I would go straight, that I was done stealing, but nothing seemed to stop me -- not ghosts of patients, not high fevers, not even my own panging conscience. The bottom line was the money was there for the taking, and I took it. I took it because I felt I needed it. I never stole from the poor that I could tell, never stole from those who needed it directly that I could tell. So I was making excuses. Lay the money before me, and as soon as heads were turned, it was in my pocket. I had obligations. I had to keep Carrie happy. I knew she wasn’t good for me, but like the President, I didn’t see any retreat. I had to kick some money to my mom for her casino trips. I needed to save for the future, and now I needed to buy Viagra. If patients had it, they were more careful hiding it than they were with their cash. I looked everywhere, under mattresses, inside towel bowl lids, even in cookie jars. I couldn’t find any. One of the EMTs was running a market in it, selling pills at $20 a piece, claiming his supplier paid $10, although I worked with him one day on overtime and saw his lift some sample packets from a doctor’s office supply closet when we had been sent there for a patient with diarrhea. When I went back to the doctor’s office the next week for an asthma patient, I checked the cabinet, but there were now a lock on it. $20 was a lot for one pill, the truth is I would have paid $50. It kept Carrie satisfied, kept her from feeding her desires elsewhere – or at least I hoped it did.

“463, Shooting Edgewood and Homestead, on a 1.”

“Whoo—hoo!” Tom said, as I lit up the ambulance.

“Whoo-hoo!” I echoed.

He was excited because he was a spark at heart and loved trauma, loved the chance to be quick on the scene, and get the patient to the trauma room, tubed and with two lines to the acclaim of the trauma team, and the nurses who doted on him.

I was excited because drug dealers were my bread and butter. One too-bad homeboy a month kept me in Carrie’s bed, and our relationship in style, flowers, nice dinner, some wine and some of the old in-out with my titanium dick.

I spotted a body lying on the street corner. People were still running every which way. A cop car was ahead of us, and the officer was out gun drawn looking in several directions. I thought I heard more shots fired and the cop ducked down behind his car. A lone body was good – it meant no one had had time to roll him before I got to him.

“There’re still fucking shooting,” Tom said.

“Hi, ho silver,” I said, “Let’s get him loaded and get him out of here.”

I spun the ambulance up on the curb between the direction the cop was pointing his gun and where the body lay.

“You’re a crazy motherfucker,” Tom said. He was on the exposed side.

“Crawl out this way,” I said, rolling out the driver door. He followed me. I had the stretcher pulled, and yanked out a board. Tom was already tubing the guy, using his perfected digital style. He always carried a number 8.0 ET tube he kept in his side pant leg pocket. It was the quickest way to intubate someone, open their mouth and using your fingers, manipulate the tube down and shove in between the chords by lifting up the epiglottis at the same time, you used your middle finger to give the tube an upward shove.

The tube in, we rolled the patient on the board, lifted up on the stretcher, heard a few more rounds, then slammed into the back. I hopped in the back, made certain to cut his jacket off, then while Tom popped in an IV, I bounced into the driver’s seat, slammed the ambulance hard into reverse, spun the back around, and then floored back up Homestead. In and out in two minutes.

The guy didn’t make it, but we had an awesome scene time, and I scored over two grand – my biggest payday in three months.

“You are a crazy motherfucker,” Tom said again after he’d finished writing his form.

“What are bullets when you have a job to?” I said, “When you have a living to make.”

He looked at me like I was crazier than even he thought.

All I was thinking about was Carrie smothering me with her love.

I was a hopeless pathetic addict.

Chapter 41

After we’d cleaned up, dispatch gave us a transfer, an old woman being discharged from the Saint Francis ER, going out to Alexandria Manor in Bloomfield after having her clogged G-tube repaired. It was a strictly basic transfer, but since we needed to go back and resupply some items after the shooting -- it was all right. There was little chance of having to use the needed gear on a transfer. Dispatch said if we did the transfer, then we could grab some dinner, come in and resupply. By then some more evening cars would be on and there would be little chance of getting whacked with another call.

As we were exiting the nursing home, we saw in the lobby they were selling roses for $3 each with the money benefiting the resident’s arts and crafts fund. I guess I was in a good mood imaging the love Carrie was going to shower down on me. I saw us going back to Boston. We’d have a nice lobster dinner at Legal Sea Food, go to the Comedy Club at Fannuel Hall, and then come back to our suite at the Ritz-Carlton and rock the joint. Oh, yeah, baby.

I bought her a rose. “On our way back,” I said to Tom. “I want to stop by her place, and pop in and leave her the rose. She goes nuts for romantic stuff like that. I figured since we were in the area.”

“You just want to pop in and bang her?”

“Well, she grabs me by the neck and pulls me in, I guess it will be hard to say no.”

“You sure you don’t want to call her first, give a little heads up?”

“Now, she’s just right around the corner. I want to be spontaneous.”

“Spontaneous is great, but you should call.” He nodded to the pay phone by the door.

“I don’t have a quarter,” I said.

I was smelling the rose, smelling good times, thinking of nothing but the brownie points I was going to be making.

I directed Tom to her apartment complex. I could see the light was on in her apartment.
“Here, take the radio,” Tom said, “Just don’t be too long, and don’t let her wrap her legs around your head so tight you can’t hear dispatch calling.“

I looked at him and smiled, thinking he had no idea that in fact when she wrapped her legs around my head, I doubted I could even hear an atom bomb going off. All my senses would be geared toward hoping my head didn’t explode and my eye balls pop out in her vice like grip of ecstasy.

“If I don’t come out when they call, hit the air horn.”

“You dog.”

“It’s not like I haven’t had to side outside certain apartment complexes in the half the towns we cover while you’ve run in and had extended lunches.”

“You got me on that. I still think you should call first, give her a few minutes to freshen up.”

I figured the first thing she did when she came home was shower, so she probably was good to go. With my luck – and I was feeling lucky – she’d answer the door in her bathroom, with her hair up in a towel, smelling of special shampoo.

I heard the sound as my hand my moving forward to rap on the door. I heard it too late to slow the downslope of my hand on the brassknocker. It was unmistakable. Her cries of love, her rhythmic groans. I stood there in terror. I could hear her swear, and then I heard her say, “Hey, I’m not getting the door. Its probably just the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Avon calling. Keep going.” From the sound I knew she was in the living room, probably against the ottoman, not twenty feet from the front door. I stood there frozen in pain. What a fool I was. What a fool. I listened to her grunt. Maybe I liked to suffer. Maybe that was why I hadn’t called. Why I set myself up. She had never explicitly said we were exclusive since we’d gotten back together this time. I had my three nights a week, up from two. Things were going well. I was number one on her list I was sure, number one because I cared about her, took her out, but that didn’t mean I was the only one. She just had an appetite. That was who she was, but that fact didn’t make me any happier, standing there like an idiot on her front step, holding a three dollar rose.

I was pale, lifeless when I walked back to the ambulance. “Dude, I’m sorry,” Tom said. “But I told you, you should have called first. Always call. Particularly her.”

I looked at him then, eyeing him in a new way.

“Don’t go there,” he said.

And I listened to him this time. She’d done everyone else, why not him, too.

I was a fool.

I let the rose drop out the window.

“Don’t hold it against her too much,” he said. “She is who she is. You’ve always known that. We all are who we are.”

Chapter 42

I found myself that night back at Uncle Frank’s, but I had no interest in the lady’s breasts. I sat at the bar, and had a few beers. Jimmy the bouncer came over and sat next to me. “She broke my heart, too,” he said. “A few months ago I went over there to give her some comfort. I’d heard she’s broken up with Paul. Took me two weeks to get up my nerve to call her. She says sure come on over. The next thing I knew we were all over each other. I told her I loved her and she laughed at me.”

I looked at him for a moment, shocked. Here was this big muscular bouncer who had his pick of any of the dancers, and he goes over to her house and because of the way she makes it with him, he says, “I Love you.”

I thought so I am not the biggest loser.

“Next night I stop over unannounced,” he says. “I bring her flowers and chocolates, and Victoria Secret underwear. I knock. No one comes to the door. Then I hear her. I thought maybe she had taped us and was playing it back because those were the same sounds I heard. I look in the window, and it’s you, your skinny little butt it humping the shit out of here.”

“You were peeking in on us?”

“I’m sorry, dude, it was nothing personal and believe I did not linger beyond the moment of shock at the confirmation of what I was seeing. I went home and took and shower. If I could have washed my eyes with soap, I would have. I apologize, but I can see by the way you look that is why you are here because she broke your heart again.”

I am amazed. I thought I was the only one.

“Dude, that girl has a great big whole in her life that she needs to fill. It made me feel small that I couldn’t satisfy it. Some women they just need. The bad thing was she made me believe. These girls here, they’ll fuck you for a ride home, but they don’t make you feel like you are the one, then blow you off. You know where you stand with them. Let me buy you a beer.” He gestured to the bartender. “A round for my friend.”

I had a few beers with him, and while it didn’t make me feel too much better, it made me feel a little alone, a little less like I was the one who was lacking.

“You want I’ll set you up with Jenny,” he said. He nodded to the girl on the bar now, shaking her breasts in another patrons face. “Just a tip for her.”

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got to be going.”

“Any time you need it, I’m working here, you got one on the house.”

“Okay.”

I left a twenty for the bartender and left.

It was an odd, strange world.

Chapter 43

I was supposed to see Carrie that night, and I thought all day about what I would do. I imagined several scenarios.

In one, when she opens the door, I fan out the five thousand dollars, using both hands like a magician fanning a deck of cards, then as she smiles and reaches for it, I step back and say, “Babe, this could have been yours. A Vacation in the Bahamas, all-inclusive, drinks with umbrellas in them, snorkeling trips, fresh fish cooked on the beach by native chefs, shopping, hot tub Jacuzzi, watching the sun go down on the beach. It could have been New York City riding in a limo with the top open, looking at big buildings, drinking champagne, going through a spin through central park, as I pleasured you till you exploded my head. It could have Paris, London, Roma. It could have been the world, but No! IF three nights a week isn’t enough to satisfy you, and you’ve got to go out and get extra on the side, then I’m taking my $5000 and finding a nice woman who appreciates a hard working man who provides. Sayonara, Hasta La Vista, Chow, Ourvow, Kiss My butt!” And I walk away, as she tries to grab me by the ankle, sobbing. I drag her half way across the parking lot, before she finally loses her grip, and I am a free man at last.

In two, She grabs me at the door, pulls me to her. Her tongue goes deep in my throat. I grab her breast. Her bathrobe comes off. I leave my boots in the foyer, she tears at my shirt and pants. I have her against the ottoman, pounding away, then she forces me out and turns over and I go down as I always do. Just how she likes it, and she arches back and I work it hard, getting her right there, right there where her clitoris is hard and beginning to shake, and its just a little more work, just a touch more till I have her whole body shuddering, then I stop. She says, “Hey what are you doing? What’s going on?” I’m up and putting my clothes back on. “’Sorry’ I say. ‘I forgot I have an appointment with another broad across town.’” That’s when I show her my roll. “We’re going out on the town. Going to spend some dough. Whoo! Hoo!” “Hey!” she says, “Wait, come back!” But I am out the door, out the door so quick I don’t even close it, keeping it open, so she can see me get in my car and peel out, gone for good. See you later. I’m gone.

In three, I don’t show. I call and say I’m going to be a little late. I call again a half hour later and say, I’m still running late, but I hope to be there. I keep on with the calling with the excuses, getting her more and more annoyed. Then her doorbell rings, and by now she’s know whether to belt me or jump me hard, and she opens the door with this big angry look, but its not me, it’s the Pizza guy and he’s got a box of Pizza, but there’s only one slice in it, and that slice has a bit in it, just one big mouth size bit, and there’s a note it, and the note says, “Carrie, I just have too big of an appetite to come over. I’ve eaten so much p--- tonight, I mean pizza, yeah pizza, I just couldn’t finish off any more, and the thought of trying to stuff down the slice of your p---, I mean pizza, I just couldn’t take it. It was enough to make me want to puke. Vomit. Hurl. Sincerely, Tim. P.S. Oh, by the way you and I are done. Through. Kaput. Over and Finished. Good Bye. Good bye to you. P.S.S. Oh also, the pizza guy is gay so you’re shit out of luck tonight.”

I had anger toward her obviously. I’d gone and risked everything again by swiping the five grand from the dead drug dealer and was so looking forward to spending it with her and enjoying the bliss of her happiness that I didn’t know what to do now with the money. I just didn’t know.

Then we got dispatched to a home on Magnolia Street in the north end. Eighty eight year old woman lives alone with her retarded sixty-nine year-old daughter, the daughter has Parkinson’s in addition to her retardation. She has fallen and the woman cannot pick her up. She hates to bother us, but she didn’t know what else to do. The apartment is bare. There is a picture of Jesus on the wall next to one of John Kennedy and one of Martin Luther King. We help pick her daughter up and she is blessing us, and thanking us, and I am looking at Jesus and Martin Luther and JFK and at the poor surroundings, and its like all of a sudden I think I am not worthy, not worthy of her thanks and her bless yous and worthy of these men. While Tom gets her to sign the refusal of transport form, and I am getting the med list of the refrigerator door, where it is held by a magnet so I can write it on the paperwork as is required, it comes over me. When I put the med list back up, I take a twenty and stick it under the magnet and tack it up there on the refrigerator. They’ll find it when they come back in the kitchen after we have left, and they’ll wonder how it got there, what spirit blessed them. I repeat to the amazement of myself, I took twenty dollars out of my pocket and put it on the refrigerator. I did not take. I did not steal.

As we left. I crossed myself as I had not done since I was last in church as a small boy when my mother and father still lived together and my mother believed in the church. I crossed myself.

“What the fuck are you doing?" Tom asked.

“Such language.”

“You are getting weirder by the day.”

“Life is full of surprises,” I said.

Chapter 44

I guess my plan was to dump her. It was my plan. Dumping is not a sensitive enough word though, because I felt like things were changing. I was no longer angry. I felt serene, a calmness had come over me. I was feeling almost a holiness, not that I deserved any rewards, rather than I felt had been taken over by a force that made sense, that was righteous and kind, and that kept me from anger and replaced it with kindness and understanding, almost love.

I took Carrie for the person she was, no better no worse. She had goodness to her, as I had to me. We just weren’t meant for each other. I was going to go in there, and say, Carrie, I think we need to part. As much as I love you, yeah, even lust after you, its time to set those lusts aside, and out of love, acknowledge that our relationship has gone astray.

I showered, shaved, brushed my teeth and put in fresh clothes. I looked at the bottle of Viagra by the sink. I thought about it, I did. Suddenly it was like the devil was coming back. Just go on, have one last good hard fuck, then afterwards, you can tell her you love her, but… But I had will-power, and the Viagra remained unopened. I even went so far as to think about dropping the pills in the toilet and flushing them, but that was too much commitment to something I was largely committed too, but not completely convinced entirely of, entirely meaning 100 percent with no room for change of mind. Instead, I tossed the pills in the small waste basket, where they would remain till I returned home, and then I could decide about flushing them or, putting them back on the counter. So I guess you could say I was keeping all my options open, while trying to move toward bliss.

On the way there I made all sorts of fancy speeches in my head, but when I knocked on the door, and she answered all sweet and smelling of shampoo and pulled me to her, I didn’t know what to do. We made out, her tongue in my mouth, and she pulled my hand to her breast, and massaged it when she felt my unexplained, but still slight resistance. “Oh, baby, I’ve missed you,” she said, licking at my face and neck. “I’ve missed you so.”

“Ho ho,” I said. “Whooa.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Let just go in and sit for a minute.”

“You don’t want me? What’s the matter?” She felt my groin. “Where’s Mr. Louisville Slugger.”

And despite my resistance, despite not taking my secret pill, Mr. Louisville Slugger said, “I’m right here, honey. Let’s get it on, Darling!”

“There he is,” she said. “How’s my precious?”

And by now we were on the couch and she was talking to precious up close and personal, and I was doing all I could do gather strength to fend her off. But I couldn’t. I was weak. I lay back and found joy of another kind that what you would call holy.

“You liked that?” she said, when she was done. “I suppose we can alter our pattern every now and then, as long as Big Boy is ready to go again soon, and I know your sweet tongue is never tired. She climbed up on me, but I sat up. “We have to talk,” I said.

“Talk? I just did some talking. Now it’s your turn to talk to me.”

And I did. I was not strong.

I finished her off, her those familiar cries, felt the familiar pressure of her thighs squeezing me like a nutcracker. But where I normally pictured my eyes popping out of my head, I was thinking about someone standing outside the window looking in, and that someone was me, and I started to feel the anger coming back.

“I want you in me,” she said as soon as she shuddered, and she grabbed me, but I was not ready this time.”

“Hey, what’s the matter? What’s wrong with you tonight?’

“Nothing,” I said. “We just need to talk.”

She looked at me and I saw concern in her face, concern like a little girl is afraid she’s going to have something she wants taken away. “About what?”

“About all this. All this sex and where are we going with it?”

“Where do you want to go with it?”

“Its just seems like its just sex and I could be anyone.”

“Are you unhappy with me?”

“No, I just want more?”

“Are you going to ask me to marry you?”

“Huh?”

“A girl wants more too. My mother used to warn me, Men won’t marry the cow when they can get the milk for free. You’ve been sucking on my tits to be figurative for awhile now.”

I almost said, but it hasn’t been for free, when I saw her glance at the clock. It was barely more than imperceptible, but it caught my attention.

“If I married you, how would I know you wouldn’t get tired of me? I mean the same applies for a man. You’ve been milking me this bull for awhile and what have I got?”

“First off all, bulls don’t produce milk.”

“I know that but.”

“But nothing. I take care of you like you have never been taken care of before. You want more, its going to cost big. You’re going to have to make a bigger commitment because I’m tired of this too.”

She looked at the clock again.

”Maybe you should think it over,” she said. “Maybe you should just leave and not come back until you’ve thought it over.”

“I get it,” I said. “You want to boot me out now, thinking you may still have time to call one of your other boyfriends, so you won’t to be alone.”

“That’s not true.”

“Don’t lie to me. I saw you last night.”

“What? Are you doing your peeping Tom again.”

“No, I stopped by to give you a rose I bought because I thought of you, and I come to the door and oh, my god, the rumbling, I though the same Francisco earthquake was hitting Connecticut.”

“Get out,” she said. “Get out of here now!”

“I’d be glad to,” I said, pulling on my clothes. “I’d be fucking glad too.”

And I was out the door with her yelling at me, calling me a soft cocked weenie.

I blushed as a pretty girl was just at that moment walking toward me from her car, as I walked to mine. She smirked.

A soft cocked weenie. That was cold.

Not that it had gone the way I had planned, but at least I was done with her. Or so I thought.

Chapter 45

“You dumped her or she dumped you?’ Tom asked.

“She dumped me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so.”

“What do you mean, you think so?”

“Yeah, I dumped her. I told her I was tired of her BS.”

“Did you do her first?”

“Huh?”

“Before you dumped her, you had sex, you got it one last time.”

“No,” I lied. “I just went over and said ‘No more.’”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You went over, and she pulled you down on her, and you didn’t have the backbone to dump her till after you did it.”

“Okay, but I meant to dump her first.”

He smiled, and held up a high five for me. “You dog,” He said.

I slapped his hand half-heartedly. Despite everything I did feel for her. I worried about her at home crying her eyes out, but then I thought she was probably with the milkman right at that very moment.

“You’ll be back with her in a week anyway, but sometimes you have to show them who’s boss.”

“Yeah, right.” I said. “She knows I’m the boss.”

“Sure you are. Maybe you’ll be the one crying to her.”

“Not likely.”

Tom could get most any woman he wanted it seemed, and he treated them at first like they were special, then as soon as he was in, he treated them like shit. He said they ate it up, and from the number of times his pager went off, it seemed that way. Me, I wasn’t like that. I could pretend, but it would never be me.

I wanted to be a good person. Still feeling the glow from the twenty I had left on the refrigerator of the old lady on Magnolia Street, I left another twenty on the bed table of an elderly diabetic on Enfield Street. I slipped twenty dollars to a homeless man who’d had a seizure, but refused transport to the hospital. All he needed he said was a drink to get himself under control.

I’m not saying I was a saint, but when they say better to give than to receive, I saw some of their point. I felt a glow an aurora around me.

I felt that each time I gave, I grew as a person. A little of the weak me left and slowly, a stronger foundation was built. I walked a little taller. I told no one about the gifts, never let Tom see my generosity. I probably shouldn’t say generosity because after all the money was stolen in the first place. Still finders keepers, possession is 99% of the law. The money was mine now, and I didn’t have to give it, but I did.

I gave a hundred to a mother with an asthmatic child, a fifty to an elderly woman in a nursing home. There were taking donations at work for a fellow EMT whose husband was dying of cancer. I put two hundred in a blank envelope and dropped in the contribution box. I never told anyone. We transported a baby who needed a heart transplant to Boston, along with his young parents. I put a hundred in the mother’s Bible, when she set it down to sign the transport form for Tom.

Sure, I could have held on to the money, and used it to help hook me up with another woman, get some impressive first date, but I was tired of that game, tired of having to pretend I made money I didn’t. I thought again about going back to school and getting a degree. I went down to the community college and inquired about the nursing program. Maybe if I had a degree I could get someone who didn’t care about how much money I could spend on her.

One day we did a call on Martin Street where some volunteers called Habitat for Humanity were building a house. One of the volunteers -- a pretty twenty-six year old -- smashed her thumb using a hammer. We took her to Saint Francis. All the way there I asked her about the project and she said it was a volunteer thing. It was about helping people afford their own homes. She told me how I could volunteer. When I asked her for her number as I filled out my run form, she looked at me a little funny like I was asking her out. It’s just for the billing department, I said. You don’t have to give it to me. She smiled and gave it to me. I thought about calling her later to see how she made out at the hospital, but thought that might be too forward.

“She was a fox, huh?” Tom said. “I was feeling sorry for you that was the only reason I let you tech it.”

“I appreciate it,” I said.

“You going to call her? Because if you don’t I will.”

“I don’t think so.”

“All right, don’t say I didn’t give you a shot.”

I didn’t call her, but I did take a day off and went down to Martin Street to volunteer to hammer nails for a day. I was hoping she’d be there and we could strike up a conversation again, and then I could ask her out in a better way, but she wasn’t there. I ended up spending most of the time talking to an old retired guy who told me about his sick daughter. I ended up putting a twenty in his jacket pocket.

That Sunday I went to church for the first time in nearly fifteen years. I put another twenty in the collection plate. And when we all stood and sang, I sang along as best I could. I truly wanted to be a decent person.

I did.

Chapters Forty-Six to Fifty-One (End)