Page 2 of Penalty Box
It was even louder when I pulled out one of my buds. The smoke detector chirped like crazy, deeply offended by my masterful repair work. I reached for the valve to turn off my torch, but it was a great idea about five seconds too late.
The fire alarm went nuclear, its ear-splitting siren ricocheting off the walls like crazy. It settled in the pit of my stomach.
Double shit.
I turned off the torch, heart thudding hard enough to drown out Joan and the blaring wails echoing through the arena. The whole arena.
“No, no, no, no.”
The smoke curled thick and white, far worse than it seemed when my visor was down. Jacket in one hand, greasy towel in the other, I sent my arms into a manic windmill to try and clear the air.
All it did was make things worse.
I swiped the bracket from the bench, scalding even through my gloves, and launched it—dead-on—into the smoke detector. The cover split into little pieces that flew in all directions. The beeping remained. Somehow, angrier than before.
“Yeah? Well, screw you too.”
I darted into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind me as if that would help. But it was too late. Boots pounded. Voices rose. A faint radio crackle drew close to the door I’d pushed through less than an hour ago, and I knew I was toast.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Chief Ortega was very happy to see me. Behind him, a line of fire fighters shared his sentiment. He waved them into the maintenance room to “Turn that damn thing off” and fixed me with a cold stare.
My smile wavered somewhere between guilt and remorse. “Heeeeey, Chief.”
“Don’t ‘Hey, Chief,’ me.”
Inside, the sound of his men calling out to each other, some scraping, knocking, and then the beeping stopped. The fire alarm died two seconds after.
“Like I keep saying, all of this can easily be avoided if they increase the alert period between the smoke detectors and alarm.”
“Third time in two months, McAvoy.”
”Or if they give me actual air filtration down here,” I continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “I mean, it’s not like I can stop doing my job, Chief. Smoke is a direct waste product of ninety-percent of what I—”
“We evacuated the lobby.” He leveled me with a look. “One of my guys pulled a hamstring vaulting over the popcorn cart. If a call comes through to the station, my emergency crew will be five fighters short.”
I winced through a nervous chuckle. “Luckily it’s not fire season.”
“I was told to report the next one to the board,” he said, his expression as unamused as the concrete wall at his back.
Panic spiked. If it got to the board, it would get to my dad, and if that happened…
“Okay, I’m sorry. For real. I’ll— I’ll get them to sign-off on a new extractor today.” My tone was devoid of any and all snark. It was time to play nice. “No more welding until the workshop’s up to code. I promise.”
Ortega didn’t seem moved by my efforts to sweep this whole thing under the rug. He folded his arms, and said, “You want to know how many false alarms my station got before you started working here?”
I could’ve guessed zero. But that was only because the last maintenance guy failed to maintain anything.
I didn’t say this out loud, of course. Just because I often walked around with my foot in my mouth, didn’t mean I went out of my way to put it there.
“Zero,” he said, predictably. “In fact, the big one of ‘87 was the o—”
“—only time your men were needed,” I finish, adding a solemn nod to show just how on his side I was. “Except the time Lance Oberman got stuck in the equipment cage and you used the Jaws of Life to get him out.”
I was aiming for a laugh. Would’ve settled for a half-hearted one, even. But as this drew on, it became more and more obvious that I’d pissed off the chief one too many times.
“Another preventable accident brought on by reckless behavior.” And he looked at me as though I shared a brain cell with Oberman, who hadn’t walked the halls in ten years.
I could take him giving me a hard time for another unnecessary call-out. Understood that he was pissed off. But lumping me in with that guy?
