Janet Tillman ("Tiller" to her friends) sat quietly in the shotgun seat of Engine 69, her red captain's New Yorker propped back from her sweat and soot-stained brow. GOD I need a shower, she thought as she stared out the door's window at the new Hooter's restaurant that had opened a month ago. A sagging, tattered banner stretched between two light poles in the eatery's parking lot still proclaimed "Grand Opening Tonight! All You Can Eat (Buffet)!" Tiller turned to her left and caught the engineer's wanton glance upon her braless tee-shirt clad chest. She had removed her bunker coat when the apparatus stopped at the light.
"What?" the Captain said, with a disguised wanton look of her own.
"Huh?" the young firefighter said, snapping back to reality.
"What are you looking at?" Tiller barked, pretending to sound irritated that the light was green and Engine 69 wasn't moving yet.
"Uh... nothing' Cap," Pete Phillips offered, noticing finally that the light was yellow, and feeling his face blush as red as the truck's glossy paint. The truck lurched forward just as the yellow light turned red.
"Careful Probie!" Tiller snapped. "Your driving test ain't done yet!"
Watching his sudden sullen expression as he concentrated on driving the 10-year-old FMC through slowing traffic, she couldn't help but feel proud of this young man. Probies generally don't drive on an actual call, but since they were 10-9 and heading back, Tiller gambled that it would be a good time to finish Pete's qualification exam. She had driven to the scene--one of those annoying dumpster fires behind the Giant Eagle, again--and had turned Pete loose on the pumper's control panel when they got there. He had performed flawlessly for his first "real" fire; after months of drill and classes, she wouldn't have expected any less out of him. He's good, she thought. Damn good. And I taught him everything he knows!
"Good job today, Pete," Tiller said to her prodigy, and touched his arm lightly, wanting him to know that she really wasn't upset with his jack-rabbit start. "And you, too!" she said when she turned to the pair of probies in the rear of the cab.
"Thanks Cap!" Debbie Brown ("Saddle" to her friends, because she owned horses, and maybe for other reasons that only her friends knew about) mumbled through her face mask.
"Saddle, Honey, you can go off air now... we're done playing with the fire," Tiller said, remembering how cute this one had looked all bundled up in bunker gear struggling to don the MSA pack and finally getting it just right just as Kathy Jackson ("Caress" to her friends, for reasons that only her friends knew) easily extinguished the dumpster's blaze.
"That was a good advance on that, Caress," Tiller said to the other back seat rider who seemed lost in her own daydream beyond the side window.
"Huh?" Caress asked, returning from wherever her mind had been.
"I said, nice hose handling," the Captain repeated, and flashed a sincere thumbs up sign.
"I've had lots of practice," Caress smiled, then stretched the wad of grape Bubble-Yum past her lips, stealing a wanton look of her own toward the hunka-hunka-burning-stud in the driver's seat.
"Yeah!" Saddle howled, her face mask now hanging from its strap around her neck. "But nothin' that big, eh Caress?"
"Shut up!" Caress laughed, slapping Saddle's padded thigh.