Fire Pole

A cuntmobile, the man says. A cuntmobile; the word echoed in his mind, banishing sleep.

Sean Snowcroft got up quietly. His driver was asleep and the cool air of the summer night flowed over his bed from his open window to the crack under the door. He swung his legs high and dropped them into the boots standing there, stood up low, snagged the loops of the braces and straightened, pulling them over his shoulders. Instant trousers.

The old door was solid and heavy, all oak, but the hinges Snowcroft kept oiled. The ambulance went out much more often in the night than the fire crews. The less noise the ambulance crew made leaving, the better the rest of the crew could sleep.

He hugged the brass pole and stepped into the gaping circular hole in the floor. Downstairs, a few red exit lights gleamed and the windows let squares of streetlamp strike the floor and the rigs. But Snowcroft navigated the building in the dark quite a bit; he needed nothing more. He stepped off the pad and clumped toward the street side.

The only other person awake was the dispatcher in his booth. He was talking to someone over there-- a woman. She's been out dancing, speculated Sean. Wow, look at the outfit.

"I can't get over it, you made that asshole a captain." she was saying. Her voice was a little shrill and had a sliding timbre, as if perhaps she had been drinking.

Don shifted in his chair at the switchboard and leaned back. "There's a story there-- Sean! Meet Nancy! Nancy, this is Sean Snowcroft, you want him if you're ever hurt, Sean's a crackerjack ambulance man."

"I know you! Judy went down on the floor that time at Del's, and you kept people from-- well! Nancy Beaulieu," she said, taking the hand Sean had offered.

"Sean Snowcroft. I remember the call at Del's. I took you once, too, but you don't remember it, I bet."

"What happened at Del's?" Don asked. You have all night to kill on the booth, and Nancy's legs were better to look at than the dark windows across the street. Keep her talking, he thought.

"Judy just fell off the stool and had a seizure," Nancy told him. "Everybody wanted to stuff things in her mouth, it was just foolish."

"I got bite blocks in the rig, too, but you have to be right there when they start in, to use 'em for anything." He turned to Don. "Got her out of there, away from all the help, and she was okay. We let her come back a little, took vitals. She said she didn't want to go, in the end."

"You were gentle and real nice to her." Nancy looked at him, speculating. "What did I do, pass out?"

"Not quite, but you were pretty far gone. Not just drinking, either."

"Oh Jesus! About a month ago?"

"Six weeks, maybe. From an apartment on Second Street, a biker place."

"Oh, God. I woke up in the fuckin hospital."

"Lucky you weren't really hurt. You were right out of control. Anyone could've done anything to you. You ought to take more care."

"You must be somebody's dad."

"I got a daughter. That doesn't mean I'm wrong about you, though."

"I was mumzo. You know what mumzo is?"

"Not too far from gonzo, if that was you, that night."

"Yup!" All three of them laughed.

It wasn't true to say, as people did, that anybody could come in off the street to the dispatch booth. Anybody wouldn't have been up that late. There were a few different classes of night owl, but they didn't amount to a cross section of the whole population.

It was the underbelly, maybe, Snowcroft thought. Not the same world as the daylight.

"Look, I got to talk to that asshole Parker," Nancy said.

"They're all asleep up there, aren't they, Sean?"

"Yeah, just you and me, that's it. What could anyone need Mongo for?"

"Mongo?"

"Yeah, you seen his head, haven't you? Mongo is short for Mongoloid." Sean didn't mind turning Parker in to the woman; Parker was a useless incompetent. As a fire captain, he was an active threat. Hell, somebody might have had to actually do one of the things he told them to do! And if they did, they'd be hurt. Or at the very least the ventilation would be screwed and everyone would be there a lot longer, working in smoke.

"If you won't call him down, I'll get him! Hey, Lloyd! Mongo! Mongo Lloyd!" Nancy stepped out onto the ramp and was heading toward the base of the big staircase, hollering into the dark, yawning old building. "Hey, Parker!"

Sean and Don looked at one another with glee. This was going to be a good story later. She moved a little to the right, yelling straight upward.

"Watch it in front of you!" Don warned.

Nancy reached toward the gleam she now saw dead ahead. Her hand clanged. Her ring had hit something; it felt like a metal pipe, very smooth. "What the hell is this?"

"Pole." Don said.

"Fire pole, you slide down 'em, just like in the children's books," Sean put in.

"There's something on the floor here."

"That's the foam pad you land on," Sean said. "Shake the pole a little."

Nancy did that, and the upper end clanked and rang satisfactorily. She shook it and banged on it like a gong with her rings. "Mongo! Captain Ass Face Parker! Get down here! Hey Lloyd!!"

Lights were showing upstairs. The Assistant Chief's face and white shirt could be seen at the top of the pole. "Get away from the pole, ma'am, I'm coming down," he said, and his legs wrapped it.

Nancy stepped away and the man appeared at the bottom of the pole, smooth and easy. He moved off the pad immediately, out of long and prudent habit. Other men were walking around up there, and a few coming down on the poles or on the stairs. He identified himself and tried to extract a reason from Nancy for wakening the station.

She explained only that she had come to talk to that asshole Frank Parker, and she wasn't going to be put off.

The whole crew got into position to see the next phase of the little drama. Some resented it, but most were grinning, happy to have a little diversion. Especially at Parker's expense, and most especially when the diversion was a decent looking thirtyish woman dressed for the dance floor in heels and mini, bangles, rings and decolletage. A sideshow, and only Parker to take the blame.

Parker appeared from behind the assistant chief's shoulder, his comb-over all rucked up like a rooster comb, looking a little panicked.

"So you came down!" Nancy snarled it. The A.C. turned, and Parker ducked his head.

"You gonna deal with this, Frank?" he asked laconically.

"Yeah. Sorry."

"You better be, you asshole!" Nancy put in.

"C'mon over here out of the way a little, Nancy," wheedled Frank.

"Good." The A.C. took in the men on the stairs and leaning on walls and trucks. "I'm going back to bed," he said pointedly. Some of the men decided the rest of it didn't interest them, and Parker lost some of his audience. Scott was a good A.C. As he went up the broad stairs, a lot of the men did the same.

Sean had faded into the booth. Don asked him to take the dispatch so he could hit the bathroom, so he sat in the swivel chair. Parker walked over to the Short Street corner of the building behind the nose of the ladder and received a short torrent of name-calling and accusations. He came back defensive and apologetic all at once, but their words were too easily lost in the hum of the electronics and fluorescent lights in the booth for Sean to catch very much.

He found Nancy had become less appealing, anyhow. Knowing she'd been slimed by association with Frank Parker brought her lower in his esteem. The night she'd been mumzo he'd been quite protective and sympathetic, and his ears had perked up to see her again, even with more clothes than before. But Parker made sleazy everything he touched.

Once he'd given up trying to overhear them and gotten over grumbling about Nancy's poor judgement, he returned to his train of thought. Marty had said the ambulance could easily be a cuntmobile. It took you everywhere, and with nobody but your driver to witness what went down. The idea had kept him awake in the room. His wife was the problem, he thought.

He just wanted too much of it, Gail had told him one day. "Nobody can keep up with you, and I'm not going to try any more," she'd said. They only got together when she felt good and ready for it, these days.

And once Gail had come, she got hypersensitive; she pushed him away and didn't even tolerate a cuddle. He wanted languorous extended sessions again, like they'd had briefly as newlyweds, and far, far more frequently before they were married. You can't get that by paying for it, a pro wants you in and out right now. He'd have needed a real love affair to have that, but his only romantic love was for his wife. Well, and Toni Newman, but Toni wouldn't play so long as he was married.

The continuing shortfall of sex was slowly convincing him to take what he could get, though. The whole cuntmobile idea-- it was betrayal of the patients and family no less than of Gail, though.

Parker slunk by, giving him a guilty eye, and vanished up the stairway into the darkness. Sean peered out into the apparatus floor, toward Short Street, thinking, "Who wants to be like that dick?" and resolving to forget the whole foolish idea. Nancy was sitting on the park bench talking with Don. Sean grumbled again and sat back down. That had been his plan, but Don had finessed him.

His thoughts returned to Gail. Now she was angry if she found any porn; she saw it as unfaithfulness, a mortal threat of some kind. Even that outlet was denied.

Gail was unreasonable. She had rejected an essential part of him, she just wanted it to die. It was like demanding that he act as if he had no left arm for the rest of his life. Only his own loyalty kept him from straying, any more. That, and inertia. These things can be overcome.

He went through an inventory of the steps needed to get out of the marriage entirely. "God, we've been married eleven years," he thought. "Everything is held jointly. It's impossible to be equitable in every detail. It's just too complex." And their daughter was nearly ten. She'd be affected, innocently. How important is your left arm?

"Less important than my daughter, that's for sure." Don sighed at his own lack of resolve.

"I spend more and more time ramming into these same walls. I've said this shit to myself over and over. Where the fuck is Don?" He looked over toward the park bench again. And there he was.

Her shoes lay on the floor, her pantyhose were gone, and her mini was folded up her belly. She stood on tensed legs in front of the dispatcher, one hand holding the little skirt up and one on Don's shoulder. Don was bent forward, his face in her pussy! She was snarling up at the ceiling, panting, clenching her ass to hold herself against his mouth.

Don's hands grabbed her ass, his head went lower, and then he threw his knees forward and knelt between her legs with the bench at his back, driving upward into her wet depths. Her hand moved to the top of his head, and Sean heard a mew from her open mouth. She followed it with some exclamations he couldn't catch. - - - Nancy tightened her fist in Don's hair and ground her pussy into his face. "Eat me, you old bastard," she whispered. "Lick like a fuckin dog!"

Don's efforts redoubled. He slid fingers in and curled them forward, bringing a more frantic cry from Nancy's throat. He shifted to the clit and rubbed inside.

"That's it!" she hissed. The old guy hit the G-spot! He knows it too, she thought. "Oh, Jesus, Don! JesusJesusJesus..."

Standing, smelling the concrete, the dust, the sourness of old smoke in the old station she felt the twinge of orgasm under Don's lips and fingers, like the iris valve in a camera shutter. The sensation closed in from the periphery quickly to the center, to the focus of her pussy, then opened out, leaving a numb tingle in her nose and lips, her toes and fingers, and a sweet hot unbearable tickle in her clit. He was still going! The flushed feeling came again, and the shutter closed in once more-- snap! Back out again! Two little ones just like that. "Oh, yes," she breathed. She hauled him away from her by his hair and bent down.

"Kiss!" she said. Their lips and mouths met and mingled. "Now get those pants off. You're getting fucked tonight."

Before Sean's fascinated eyes, Don reefed his pants to his knees and sat on the edge of the bench while Nancy grabbed his cock and guided it in, sitting astride. She wanted it, she was going for it. Don could only hang onto her waist. The bench made screeches of the metal legs against the concrete floor. She bounced and plunged, thrusted and twisted!

"Don't you come, either, you motherfucker, don't you dare fuckin come, I wanna suck it, understand?"

Don held on, biting his lip. Then she came, rubbing her clit against him and leaning on his shoulder. It was a dozen times more intense, it left her a little faint. The feeling had swept into and down her belly and exploded back out. Her breath came raggedly in shallow gasps, her pussy tingled and held his hard cock in a velvet grip. Don managed to hold himself back, but she smelled like pussy and beer and she'd clamped onto him with her pelvic muscles when she'd come!

"Good. Good. Okay, let go," she said. He released the grip on his other hand and let her loose.

She stood, tossed her head and then knelt straddling his legs. She rubbed his pantleg with her pussy and sucked like a pro. Don was nearly there, anyway, and soon the tickle began deep below. The end of his cock flared, the first twitch came, it was exquisite! The next, and then she caught the first harsh jet. With each little spasm he shot again, filling her mouth with hot sperm. He sent out his breath in diminishing little grunts.

His body loosened, he drew in air. The sensation ramped down to a manageable hot glow. She licked her lips and purred, "There, wasn't that nice?"

"Fuckin A," gasped the old man, "That was incredible!"

"Not really! But it was god damn nice, Don, you give good head for an old guy." She glanced at the booth. "He's been watching. He's all right, isn't he?"

"Made of gold. I don't worry about Sean." The two of them were matter-of-factly getting dressed again. He stood and waited for her, then embraced her a while. "I gotta get back there."

"I'll come along. You can call a cab for me in a bit." - - - The two of them returned to Don's booth. Sean didn't trust himself to say anything. He acknowledged the dispatcher with a grunt and ceded the chair to him. He looked into Nancy's smiling face for a beat, then broke into a grin of his own. He turned away.

She told him, "Don't go. You don't have to go; stay and talk a little more."

"Fine; no sense trying to sleep, anyway. I was... well!" He couldn't suppress the grin. "I hope you kicked Parker's ass for him, he's an asshole."

Don laughed. He was in a sunny mood for some reason!

"How'd he get to be a captain?" she demanded. "Is he queer for the chief?"

"He has a pool at his house," answered Sean. "The A.C. on A crew uses the place to bring his girlfriends."

"That isn't the guy tonight...?"

"Nah, different fella; balder, stockier, older," Don put in. "Good A.C., though, and so's the one tonight. Parker will do anything for him, like a dog or something."

"Like a Mongoloid chihuahua," agreed Sean. That drew a laugh. "He's done all kinds of favors. Some of them figure, to get a promotion, that's how you do it. Others are a lot less slimy, but there's a little of that in every officer, I think."

Sean fetched her a chair and the three of them got comfortable and had coffee.

A cop showed up, stayed for twenty minutes, then left on a domestic dispute call, in no big hurry. The emergency rooms at the hospitals, the donut shops, night desks at the hotels, taxi places and the fire dispatch-- only a few places could be counted on to have someone up and awake late at night. Cops were a major part of the underbelly of society which populated the night time hours.

Eventually, Don summoned a cab and she went home. Sean carried a kid with respiratory difficulty and a young couple hurt in a car accident to the ER, but the fire crew did not have a call. The two men talked very late into the night.

In the morning, Sean came home, saw his daughter off to school, and made the call to the number Nancy had given him.

"I take my lunch today about eleven thirty, Sean. That's a wonderful idea!"

Sean thought so too! He rang off with a few cheery words, and drove to Mon Amie to begin his infidelity when the hour came around. "A man can only take so much," he told himself.

He talked to himself, in fact, all the way across town, and all the way up to the door of Nancy's salon. For a moment, at a stop light, he nearly decided to turn back, but what he'd watched between his dispatcher and the hairdresser on the park bench recurred vividly to his mind. In the end he committed himself for good.

A little bell on a coiled spring produced a sound he remembered from the corner store he'd spent his allowance in as a kid. Fireballs and licorice whips had given place to sweeter candy. There she stood, accepting money from a sixtyish woman and giving change with a wide, comfortable smile. The salon smelled of chemicals and perfumes.

Nancy wore a pale green skirt with a white-on-white blouse, and her freshwater pearls. Sean sat in a silly modern chair as nonchalantly as he could. She caught his eye.

"Hi, Sean, be with you in just a second, hon."

"No rush!" he said. "I'll be right here."

The woman with the freshly done hair took the exit, and Nancy turned over the little sign in the door. She'd be closed for a while. Sean stood to meet her as she approached, and he looked damn good, Nancy thought.

He was in very good shape, lived an active life, stood tall and did a hero's job. Twenty-eight is a good age for men, she decided. "And this guy wants me so bad he's pissing steam! Nancy-babe, this is gonna be fun!" she told herself.

"Every time I meet you, you're wearing more clothes," Sean remarked. "You look really splendid."

"That's right, I was naked the first time, wasn't I?" She laughed lightly and stepped right up close to give him her scent. He interrupted a motion of his arms, and she smiled. He was a little hesitant, wasn't he? "Aren't you going to say hello?"

He smelled nice, and his arms slid firmly around behind her. He kissed her, and she felt the tingling in her naughty pussy. It always knew what it wanted. She sank her fingers in under his dark hair. "He has nice red highlights," she noted in the mirrored wall. She closed her eyes then, and kissed him strongly, letting a hand slide down to his firm buns. She gave him a silent wow. He felt good all over.

Sean's eyes were open. He took her without novocain. Nancy was in her thirties. She was no gaunt supermodel, but a woman, imperfect and beautiful. She felt warm and real, very immediate, beneath the cool slippery nylon of the blouse. The line of her spine was indented deeply with her muscles, especially lower down.

He could feel the first rise of her womanly hips under his fingers. It was always that which set him on the path of no return, that slope outward at the small of the back. Her breasts felt full against him, and she kissed very sweetly.

"I've missed this so much," he said to himself.

"Listen, cowboy," said Nancy, suddenly serious. "I have one appointment this afternoon, just one. How much time do you have?"

"I'm due to pick up Katie at three-thirty. Until then I'm here, if you'll have me."

"Let me make a call." Sean released her. He was half-aroused already, and he followed her behind her little glass case with the telephone and appointment book on it. Idly, he read the weird titles of the cosmetics in the case. She flipped through a roller file, and dialed a number from it.

"Stella? Hi, love... yes, well... yes. That's why I called, I have some bad news; I can't take you this afternoon, something came up..."