Chapter 2

He looked at the photograph of the two of us, he looked at me, and he burst out laughing.

The candle shook in his hand and the wax ran over his knuckles.

Janine's hand stayed on the door.

"Marty," he said, when he could talk. He wiped his eyes with his wrist. "Marty, you son of a gun. Five hours! Five hours I'm telling you about you!"

"Vic," Janine said. "What is this?"

"Honey, this is Marty. We've met."

He opened my freezer, took out the ice tray, and cracked it on the edge of my sink.

The ice had been going soft since nine-thirty, but he got two pieces into a glass and poured from the flask, taking his time, the way you do in your own kitchen.

Janine looked at me, and at him, and then past both of us at the counter.

My thermos was standing by the toaster, where she had left it.

"You know what kills me?" Vic said. "Five hours, I never asked. She says you're on the phones. What is that, Ma Bell? What do you do nights, pal?"

Now I have to tell you what I was holding when he asked me that.

In the fourth hour, with the flask almost dry, the flashlight off and his Zippo out of fluid from flicking it all night, he told me how he really made his money.

He said he had sold burial insurance for years, a quarter a week, door to door in the South Bronx, and that was how he got to know the buildings.

"Now I'm in urban renewal," he said.

A landlord had a six-story walk-up worth nothing and a fire policy that said it was worth eighty thousand dollars.

The landlord shut off the heat and the water until the people left, and then he called Vic.

A man in that line of work is called a torch, and he said the word the way a guy tells you he's a plumber.

He said he had never hurt anybody, that he was known for it.

"One time," he said. "One time, a job in March. Six-story on Fox Street. Landlord swore on his mother it was empty. Turns out there's an old man on the top floor nobody knew about."

I heard him take a drink.

"He's got a phone, this old man, in an empty building. So he calls the Fire Department. And here's the funny part, pal. You know what the Fire Department tells him? They tell him stay put. Stay put, Pop, we're on our way."

He laughed so hard I felt it in the floor of the car.

He had another six-story coming up next week on Bathgate Avenue, he said, same landlord.

"Same mother," he said.

I knew what the Fire Department told that old man.

I was the Fire Department.

So that was what I was holding, in my kitchen, at a quarter to three in the morning, with my girlfriend standing there in my shirt.

"I work nights," I said. "I live on nineteen."

It was the first time I had said either one out loud all night.

"I got that part," he said, still laughing. "Doing what?"

"I dispatch the Bronx for the Fire Department." It was the voice I use at work. I couldn't have found another one. "March ninth, Fox Street. His name was Mr. Kaplan. I was on the line with him for nine minutes."

The laughing stopped.

He set the candle down on the counter, carefully, with both hands, and for a moment he looked like a guy on a ledge who has just looked down.

I took it for surprise.

"What's Fox Street?" Janine said. "Marty, what old man?"

Nobody answered her.

It came back slowly, starting in his shoulders.

"Stay put, Pop," he said. "That was you."

He lifted the glass to me, and the whole grin was back, all those teeth in the candlelight.

"So go on. Go tell them. A guy in an elevator told you. What guy? The guy you found with your girl." He shook his head as if he felt bad for me. "Who's going to listen? From now on every word you say is a jealous boyfriend talking."

He took my key out of his pocket, tossed it up, and caught it.

"And I know the way," he said.

I would like to tell you I hit him.

I was twenty-eight, I was in good shape, and I had a three-cell flashlight in my hand.

What I did was walk across my kitchen and pick up my thermos.

It was what I had come for.

I went out my own door and past Car Two, which was sitting there with its light on and its door open, and I took the stairs.

The generator didn't run to the stairwell, so I went down by flashlight with the batteries going yellow.

Four flights down I heard bare feet behind me.

Janine came around the landing with a candle in a saucer, one hand cupped around the flame, and stopped three steps above me.

"What old man?" she said. "What did he mean, stay put?"

It would have taken nine minutes.

I knew it by heart, and I had never told it to anybody, and I wasn't going to start on a landing with her in that shirt.

"Ask him," I said.

That was the kind of thing I said, that year.

She looked at the thermos in my hand, longer than you'd look at a thermos.

A door banged above us and his voice came down the stairwell, big and warm, bouncing off the concrete.

"Janine! Doll! Come on back up, you'll catch cold!"

It was ninety degrees in there.

He was laughing again, and the laugh went on down past us into the dark, all the way to the basement.

She looked down at me, she looked up toward his voice, and she went up.