Cemetery Street

"Does he think he's fooling anyone?" Shannie quipped during break. "Like I didn't notice he's going bald."

"Male pattern baldness is traumatic," I said.

"How old is your sister," Sergeant asked.

"You a pervert?" I snapped.

"I think she's cute."

"My sister is eight years old and has spina bifida. Stay the fuck away from her!"

"No. No," Sergeant Slaughter laughed. He leaned against the outside wall of the office and took a long drag off a cigarette. "The cute blonde inside." Chris, his buddy - a Fifty-ish looking man with graying hair and the beginning of a pot belly rolled his eyes. "You have to excuse him," Chris said after lunch. "He's high strung."

"She's taken. Her boyfriend is a mean motherfucker," I told him.

"I eat mean motherfuckers for breakfast."

"The Sergeant is on the prowl," I warned Shannie.

Never one to back down, Shannie asked Sergeant and Chris if we could join them for lunch. "I hear you have a boyfriend," Sergeant said. We shared a booth at the greasy spoon next to the airport.

"I see you have a wife," Shannie pointed out Sergeant's wedding band.

"She died. Cancer, a few years ago."

"The jackass isn't even original. Stern's been saying that for years." Shannie fumed after lunch.

"Why do you still wear it?" she asked him.

"It reminds me of our good times."

"Maybe we have something in common," Shannie glared. "I like wearing tampons all the time - they remind me of the good times me and my menses share." I laughed. "Assholes understand flatulence," she told me later.

As the afternoon progressed, so did Shannie's flirtatiousness. "Look at those big black boots. Big hands, big feet, makes a girl wonder." she winked. Sergeant kept a poker face. He even scolded Shannie that this was not the time, this was a matter of "life and death."

"Give me your home number," Shannie teased.

"Okay guys," Pete Condra lisped. "You think you are ready to do it?" The knot in my stomach tightened.

"You remembered them, right?" I asked Shannie.

"Geezus Pete, for the hundred and fifty-second time; they're on the shelf in the rigging room."

"You sure?"

Shannie rolled her eyes.

"Let's do it," Pete announced. Shannie placed her arm around me and whispered, "Beetle rigged Sergeant's chute to open lazy, very lazy."