"I…," She hesitated. With jerky motions she reached up and pulled her shirt and bra back down.
"Nina?" I asked gently.
"I got scared." She said miserably. "I've never done anything like this before. I'm sorry Bill."
"Nina, it's okay." I soothed, cursing myself for pushing things too fast. I should have known better!
"You must hate me." She said.
"No." I protested. "It's me that should be sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I didn't mean to push you that fast." I pulled her to me again, hugging her, patting her back.
"You weren't pushing me." She said into my ear. "I wanted to do that. I liked it. I've never felt anything like that before. But it just got kind of… overwhelming. I started to feel like I wasn't in control and it scared me. I'm sorry."
"It's okay." I repeated soothingly. "We'll move at your pace. Whenever we're, uh, doing things you stop whenever you want to. I'll never try to push you. I promise."
She looked up at me. I could see just a hint of moisture in her eyes from the reflected starlight. "Isn't that frustrating for you?" She asked.
"Don't worry about that." I told her. "I love you and I'll move at whatever pace you want."
She kissed my cheek gently. "I love you Bill."
We hugged for a moment and then she sat up. "You suppose we should start heading for home again?" She asked.
"No." I told her. "Let's just sit here like this for awhile."
She planted a kiss on my nose, just a brief peck. "Okay." She whispered, putting her head back on my shoulder.
Another thing that suffered from my new schedule and my relationship with Nina were my study sessions with Mike. This bothered me at first until I realized that Mike didn't really need them anymore. His grades remained near the top of the scale and he had completely caught up with all of the concepts that he'd left behind. When our time was cut down I'd worried that he would slip back into academic purgatory but he held his own just fine, passing his finals with an upper B. Though I was never thanked for this accomplishment I felt immense pride in it. I'd pulled him out of the ranks of the dropouts and into the ranks of future college attendees if that was what he wished. By March of 1984 it would have taken a catastrophic event indeed to push him back into independent study. With only three more months of school left anyway, the allure of that particular thing would no longer be as attractive anyway.
It was the third week of March when Mike showed up at my door at 7:00 in the evening, just after I'd gotten home from work. His visit was unusual and I greeted him warmly. There was always a conflict in my personality when I hung out with Mike. On the one hand I had a genuine need to help him make something of himself, to keep him off of the path that fate had in store for him. But on the other hand he was still an immature seventeen-year-old and his conversation about phony sexual exploits and macho posturing quickly got old.
"Hey dude." He whispered to me at the front door, casting a wary eye upon my Dad, who was sitting in his favorite chair watching television. "Why don't we walk over to the school for a while?"
I knew what he meant by that. Around the corner from my house was an elementary school, the elementary school we'd both attended once. During it's off-hours it had served as a favored locale for smoking pot, drinking beer, or just plain fucking off. By inviting me there I knew that Mike probably had some marijuana in his possession.
"Sounds good." I nodded, figuring, what the hell? I told my Dad I was going to Mike's house, the standard excuse for such an endeavor, and he grunted in reply. Since our talk, Dad never questioned anything that I did. I'm quite sure he knew exactly what I was going to do.
I retrieved my jacket and we walked that way slowly.
"You got some buds?" I asked as we ambled down the sidewalk of the darkening street.
"Yeah." He nodded. "Got a joint of some pretty good green." He said. "Haven't smoked any in a while but I just felt the need today."
I looked at him. "You haven't smoked any in a while?" I asked, wondering if he was putting me on.
He shook his head. "Nope. I've been running a lot lately and it fucks up my lungs if I smoke cigarettes or pot too much. Makes it hard to breathe. I've quit the cigs completely."
"No shit." I said, suppressing a smile of joy. Mike WAS growing up at last.
"I been running three miles a day on the weekdays." He told me. "On the weekends I've been running the stairs over at the library with a back-pack full of bricks. I'm trying to get in shape for the physical agility test for the fire department. You know what they call the agility test?"
"What's that?" I asked, although I knew.
"The combat challenge." He said dramatically. "My captain told me that if I want to pass it I need to really work on my legs and my endurance. He said running should do it."
Yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about. The combat challenge is the standard physical agility exam for most fire departments. It is a test designed to measure a prospective employee's physical ability to do the job of firefighter (and the cynical ones among us might think it is also designed to keep out women). And it is grueling indeed. I had once taken it as a young paramedic with hopes of joining the fire department and acquiring the increased security and pay that went along with it. You start off by putting on a helmet, turnout jacket, and an air tank. You then walk to an engine and pull out a hundred feet of inch and a half hose. It sounds easy but the hose is charged with water and is very heavy, especially as you pull more and more of it out. It is a real workout on the legs. You then walk over to a sled assembly and pick up a sledgehammer which you must use to force a steel beam backward three feet using chopping motions. You then go over to the wooden, three-story structure that is referred to as "the tower". Still wearing the air tank, which weighs about twenty pounds, you climb up the outside of the building to the third story of the tower on a ladder and then back down again. That complete, you pick up a forty pound roll of supply hose and go inside the tower, climbing up the stairs to the third story. Once there you drop the supply hose and hoist up another forty pound roll that is tied to a rope from the ground. You are not allowed to rest your elbows on the windowsill while you do this. You then lower the rope back down again, pick up the roll you carried up the stairs and carry it back down. The grand finale is to drag a one hundred and seventy-pound dummy twenty yards. You are given four minutes in which to do all of this.
I'd fancied myself in pretty good shape when I'd tried it. I was twenty-six, not smoking at that time, and was in the habit of running. The test defeated me easily. My endurance was strained to the limit by the time I got to the top of the tower. Somehow I'd managed to hoist up the rope and put it back down but the exertion of picking up the hose roll again was too much. By that time I had less than a minute left and I knew I wasn't going to make it. My lungs were burning, my heart was hammering in my chest, and my leg muscles were screaming from the abuse. My time expired as I sat there. For a week afterword I was sore. I never applied at the fire department again for fear of feeling the way I had at that moment.
"I've uh, looked into it before." I told Mike. "Your captain is right. Work on the legs and try to get yourself able to go hard for four straight minutes. Try windsprints."
"Yeah." He said dismissively, mildly offended that I was giving him advice. "No sweat. I'll pass it."
"So they're gonna be hiring for sure?" I asked him next.
"Filing starts May 20." He said. "Written test is June 12, combat challenge June 20. Good thing I'll have graduated before then or I wouldn't have been eligible. From there the oral interviews are scheduled. I'm as good as in the captain tells me. By this time next year I'll be out of the academy and assigned to my first station. A year after that I'll be off probation. A year after that I'm eligible to test for engineer. Two years after that I'm eligible to test for captain."