The Glass Inferno

CHAPTER 22

“What are you thinking about?”

Mario Infantino stirred in the darkness, savoring the lassitude that comes after sex. He felt Doris stroking his head, her nails lightly touching his scalp and tousling his hair, and for a moment his thoughts seemed completely disassociated from his, body. It was like drifting down some quiet river with the occasional wave laving his hand when he let it trail in the water.

“Of how much I love you.”

Soft laughter in the darkness. “I mean really, Mario.

She shifted slightly on the bed so she was on her side and facing him.

“Of Quantrell,. I suppose. He could hurt me, Doris.

Badly.” He hadn’t wanted to say it but she should know; the weeks ahead might be very difficult ones, for her as well as for him.

“I guessed he could,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure how, yet.”

He put his arm around her, his hand caressing the light strands of her hair. “Too much exposure, Doris, I’m too much in the public eye.

I’m the youngest first assistant chief in the city’s history and there’s resentment, some jealousy, too, I suppose. Quantrell makes it look like I’m a publicity seeker.”

“And Chief Fuchs?”

The thought of Fuchs made him feel uneasy. “We have differences of opinion.”

“He could make you keep quiet any time, couldn’t he?”

He kissed her shoulder. “It’s a paramilitary organization …

I take orders like everybody else. So far he hasn’t said anything, but I don’t think he likes it. Hell, I don’t like it. But Fuchs is in a bind; if he tells me to shut up, then Quantrell would accuse him of having me muzzled.” He. hesitated. “That’s going to happen anyway; I won’t be giving Quantrell any more interviews. But you saw what happened when I wouldn’t talk to him on the phone. Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.” She was thoughtful for a long moment.

“You said you and Chief Fuchs disagreed. How?”

“We don’t really disagree, Doris. It comes down to the budget and how it’s spent. We could probably get all the heavy, new, modern equipment we wanted to fight high-rise fires-the people who own those buildings have power and influence, they’d want the finest-but salaries, equipment to fight brush fires or house fires, that sort of thing would probably be hard to get then. City Hall would look at the over-all budget and say that we had enough. It’s a question of balance.”

She stirred uneasily. “I’m not sure I follow where you and Chief Fuchs disagree.”

“Fuchs has been fighting for higher salaries-the department’s beginning to lose men. But we also need newer and more modern equipment: lighter respirators, more two-way walky-talkies, reflective fire clothing, high pressure pump units … equipment that’s specifically designed for fighting fires in tall buildings. Fuchs is afraid that if we go hat in hand and get the equipment, when he goes back for salaries, he’ll get turned down on the grounds that the department was already over budget.”

He hesitated a moment. “I feel for the old man,” he said slowly.

“He’d like both if he thought he could have them; so would any chief engineer I guess. And the fact remains that far more people are killed in home fires, far more property lost in brush fires.”

“He can’t compromise?”

He let a hand trail down her back until it was cupping one of her buttocks. “He’s getting old, set in his ways, I guess. He’s been fighting his fight too long; he can’t see anybody else’s viewpoint.

When he made. me first assistant chief, he assigned the problem of tall buildings to me.

I guess I’m like him in some respects; I see my argument more clearly than his. I would rather see a few men leave the department for greener fields than lose them later … for other reasons. He set me up as his technological expert but now he doesn’t want to listen to what I have to say.” Her warmth was intoxicating to him and he pulled her closer. “Someday we’ll have a fire,” he murmured, “and it’ll Turn out to be the daddy of them all, and we won’t be able to fight it, we’ll just have to stand there and let it burn. I have nightmares about that.

. .

Someday Fuchs would order him to shut up, he thought, and he wondered what he would do, then. Would he be a good soldier and follow orders, worry about his position in the department, his pension? He wasn’t sure, but he knew that a clash was coming. Fuchs was becoming almost less than civil in their meetings, although he could probably blame Quantrell for a lot of that.

“The children,” Doris said quietly.

He glanced at the clock on the night stand. There was less than half an hour to go of their favorite program and then they would be back upstairs, raiding the icebox and looking for him to roughhouse with. He shivered slightly; the draft from the open window was turning colder; the weather was closing in rapidly. But there was still almost half an hour yet….

Doris stirred again and he cupped her full-breast and glanced down in the half light to admire the gentle swell of her belly and below that the intense black of the triangle of her pubic hair. There was so much life in her, he thought, and he lived too close to danger and sudden death. He moved his hands gently over her body and she arched her back and turned slightly, touching him along the full length of his body. He was aware of her pressing against his hairy thighs, of her small toes tracing chills against his calves, of the touch of her gently rounded belly against his own muscular one.

He had hiked himself up on one elbow and was turning into her when the phone on the night stand began to ring. He was scarcely aware of it, a part of him waiting for it to stop. Only it continued to ring, gradually interrupting his thought and physical concentration.

He reached for it and Doris caught his hand. “No,” she whispered fiercely. “Not now.”

But there was something insistent about it and he felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to rise. A vague premonition insisted he should answer and he sensed that Doris felt it, too. He pulled slowly away and she said softly, “Oh.”

He kissed her deeply and then reached for the phone.