Page 31 of Christmas with Three Firemen

I just don’t know yet what it’s going to cost to prove it.

Chapter eight

Chapter Eight: Mateo

The power goes at nine forty-three. One second, the oven clock is glowing, the next it’s a blank black rectangle. The mixer dies mid-rotation. The overhead fluorescents cut out. Half the station drops into a dim, amber-tinted quiet that feels almost respectful, like the building itself is taking a breath.

I stand at the counter for a moment, flour on my hands, and listen to the station adjust.

The emergency strips kick in along the baseboards, casting everything in low, warm light. Somewhere down the hall, Rico shouts something dramatic and unintelligible. A door opens, then closes.

Boots on the staircase. The usual percussion of twenty people recalibrating to an unexpected change in their environment.

I wipe my hands on a dish towel and look out the kitchen window.

The brownstones across the street are fully lit. Windows glowing amber and gold, Christmas lights still running along stoops and window boxes, the whole block quietly radiant despite whatever just happened to our grid. That’s New York for you. The city doesn’t go dark. It just redistributes.

I glance back at the mixer full of half-finished dough and make a pragmatic decision.

Hand stir it is.

I’m rummaging through the third drawer looking for the wooden spoon that is never where it’s supposed to be when I hear footsteps on the stairs. Bare feet, light and quick. I don’t even have to look up to know it isn’t one of the guys.

She stops in the kitchen doorway. I stay where I am behind the open cabinet door and wait.

She doesn’t see me at first. That’s the thing about her. She’s so focused on what she’s doing that the rest of the world genuinely ceases to exist for her.

Right now what she’s doing is crouching in front of the industrial coffee machine with her head tilted sideways, peering at it like it’s a crime scene. The machine is still running, humming quietly on the half of the circuit that didn’t flicker, but the cabinet lights above it are dead and she’s trying to read the display in the dim.

Her hair is down, all that copper and bronze loose around her shoulders. She’s wearing leggings and the Columbia sweatshirt, the one she seems to rotate through every couple of nights, and her feet are bare on the kitchen tile.

The dead string of lights along the top cabinets hangs dark above her head. The whole kitchen smells like cinnamon and brown sugar from what I was baking before the flicker, sweet and warm against the cold seeping in through the window.

I find the spoon. I lean against the counter and wait.

“I know you’re still running,” she tells the machine, in a tone that I would describe as negotiating with a hostage situation. “I can hear you. So whatever you’re doing right now is a personal choice and I need you to reconsider it.”

The coffee machine continues doing exactly what it wants.

I lose the battle with my own face entirely.

The laugh comes out before I can do anything about it, and she spins around so fast she nearly loses her balance on the tile. Her hand shoots out and grabs the counter. Her expression moves through approximately four distinct phases in under two seconds. Startled, embarrassed, irritated, and then something that is trying very hard to be dignity and not quite getting there.

“How long have you been standing there?” she demands.

“Long enough,” I tell her.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Long enough to hear the part about personal choices.”

She straightens up and crosses her arms. The tips of her ears are pink. Whether that’s the cold or the embarrassment I genuinely cannot tell, but either way it’s extremely endearing and I know better than to say so.

“The display is dark,” she says, nodding at the machine. “I can’t tell what setting it’s on.”

“It’s on the same setting it’s always on. Kowalski hasn’t touched it since 2019.”

“That’s not reassuring.”