I try not to drive that way. It makes me feel a little weird.
But a lot of the downtown looks the same as it always did. The high school jackets look the same on the guys walking around. The buildings are the same. A lot of the businesses are the same. People try to keep it exactly as it always was, and I like that. Other towns are not so lucky around here. Sometimes they knock down a whole block just to put up a Walmart or something.
Pete is in a crappy mood today, but I kind of like it. When Pete is in a bad mood, we really get a lot of stuff done. He starts barking out orders, and we follow them. It’s like hard work that solves a problem, and the problem is Pete’s bad mood.
First thing in the morning, he started kicking my bed. That sucked, honestly. I was having a really nice dream about this chick I used to know in high school, who used to say that she had to stay a virgin until she was married, so all she could do was suck my cock.
Great girlfriend. She could get her lips all the way around the head of my cock until they were stretched and shiny, but not a lot deeper. She tried, though, and that was enough to get me off. She just got married last year and moved to Milwaukee.
So, I woke up because Pete was kicking my bed and yelling. Usually he’s not like that. Usually I can sleep until eight or something. Stephan likes to get into the shower first. That’s fine by me.
But anyway, now we get to drive around town and do the permits. This is cool. Usually we don’t get to see anybody. We hang out in the fire station, cleaning the engine, cleaning windows, working on the yard, rebuilding all the crap that falls down all the time. We work all the time. Literally. It’s like being back on the farm.
But since we are always in the station, we don’t see anybody. When there’s a fire, we still don’t see anybody. We just get in there and do our jobs. It’s all very confusing and intense. Not a lot of time for conversation.
Today is different.
First thing, we went to the grocery store on Third Street to take a look at their ovens in their bakery. Pete went in with his clipboard, dressed in his official St. Charles Fire Department T-shirt tucked into his work pants, with me and Stephan following right behind.
The ladies love us.
The old lady who runs the bakery liked Pete a lot. I could tell. She kept touching her throat with her hand, holding herself around the middle. Pete just pointed at the sprinkler system, waving his clipboard around, basically yelling at her in a nice way and she did not seem to mind. She was nodding and smiling, agreeing to everything.
While Pete talked to her, all the moms with their little kids in strollers hung out in the cramped café area, slowly feeding Cheerios to their kids from little plastic bowls. They couldn’t keep their eyes off us. Maybe it’s the T-shirts.
So what I’m saying is, it feels good to get out. Pete is acting like this is some kind of punishment, but if this is punishment, bring it on. I might just get a new girlfriend out of this.
Stephan might get a new girlfriend first. He likes to talk a lot. I never really know what to say. Stephan is better with the words right away. He just walks up to people and starts acting like he is Pete in training. That used to annoy me, but now I don’t really care anymore.
My grandfather worked in this fire station, way back when, so my parents thought I would be chief one day. But if I am not ever chief, that is a-okay. Being chief doesn’t seem to make Bubba very happy, and Pete is the next one in line and he doesn’t seem very happy either.
I think Stephan had a girlfriend a couple of years ago. Her name was Denise. She came to the station a bunch of times, even hung out with us for dinner and on Saturday afternoons in the back garden.
Short, dark, curly hair. She had big brown eyes and freckles on her cheeks. Even Pete liked her, liked having her around.
I liked her too. She would watch football with us. She was a dental hygienist. That is how they met. Stephan used to joke that she was “really into oral,” which is funny. Stephan and I like a lot of the same things.
The thing is, any girl is going to be pretty annoyed by the fire station. We can’t just leave. We are on call all the time. There are only a couple of days a week where we have official time off. And of course, she can’t be at the fire station all the time.