The Last Haul

Sienna called me at seven in the morning, after we'd both been up all night on a shift.

"Hey, Leroy. You doing anything today?"

"I'm doing the couch. The couch and a sandwich."

"My couch too, actually. I need a second pair of hands to move it. And a bed. And about forty boxes."

I looked at my ceiling. I thought about my bed, which was going to have to wait.

"You're moving today?" I said. "You picked the day after a night shift?"

"I picked the day the truck was free. Big difference. Please?"

Sienna had been at the station five years. Paramedic, good at the job, kept to herself mostly. We'd shared coffee at three in the morning more times than I could count. She'd never asked me for anything before.

"Yeah, all right," I said. "Give me two hours to sleep and an address."

She gave me the address and hung up before I could change my mind. I didn't sleep great. I never do after nights. I lay there running through a list of excuses and then felt stupid about it, because there weren't any. She asked, I said yes. Done.

* * *

Her old place was on the third floor of a building with no elevator. Of course it was. The new place was across town, second floor, closer to the station. She'd picked it for that reason and told anybody who'd listen.

She opened the door in sweatpants and an old station t-shirt, hair tied up. Forty years old and still looked like she could carry a stretcher down two flights, because she could. She'd done it on calls.

"You look terrible," she said.

"You look great, considering."

"Considering what?"

"Considering you also got off a night shift and decided to spend the day hauling furniture."

"I'm running on spite and cold pizza. You want some? I've got cold pizza."

"I've got a truck and a dolly. We're even."

She stepped aside and let me in. The place was half gone already. Boxes stacked along one wall, marked in her handwriting. KITCHEN. BOOKS. MISC, which is a lie nobody believes. The couch was still against the wall. The bed frame leaned in the corner like it was thinking about it.

"This doesn't look so bad," I said.

"That's the half I did. The half I didn't do is in the bedroom."

"Show me the worst of it. I like to know what I'm in for."

She led me to the bedroom and gestured. Closet full of boxes. Boxes under the bed. A rolled-up rug standing in the corner like a sentry.

"Okay," I said. "That's worse."

"Told you."

We started with the small stuff. I carried boxes down, she stacked them by the door and marked off a list on her phone. Somewhere around the third trip we found the rhythm. I'd come up, she'd have two more ready, I'd take them, she'd mark something off, I'd go down. Nobody had to talk about it. Five years of working calls together does that. You learn how a person moves.

"Katz," she said, on my fourth trip up. "Why are you still single?"

"That's a hell of a question for a box-hauling session."

"I've known you five years. You never talk about anybody. I'm asking while I've got you trapped in a stairwell."

"I'm not trapped. I could leave any time."

"You could, but you won't, because you're too polite and you already carried the boxes down."

I set the box down where she pointed. "Nobody stuck, that's all. Had a thing with a woman named Denise a few years back. It ran out. What about you?"

"Same answer, different details. Never married. Dated a guy named Adam about eight years ago. It ran out."

"We're a couple of running-outs."

"We are."

She handed me two more boxes. "Don't drop my books."

"What's in these, bricks?"

"Textbooks. I keep meaning to sell them. I keep not doing it."

The couch was the real fight. Third floor, narrow stairwell, a turn at the landing that no couch should survive. We stood over it like generals.

"Vertical or horizontal?" she said.

"Vertical. Feet first. You take the bottom, I'll take the top, and when I say pivot, you pivot."

"When you say pivot, I'm gonna say a word you can't say on shift."

"Fair."

It took us twenty minutes and it took years off both our lives. At the landing, the couch jammed, and she laughed, actually laughed, this big unguarded thing I'd maybe heard twice at the station Christmas party.

"You're stuck," she said. "You're the one who's stuck."

"I'm adjusting. I'm a strategist."

"You're wedged in a stairwell with a loveseat."

I got us unstuck. We got it down to the truck and strapped it in, and we both stood there breathing hard in the sun.

"Okay," she said. "Bed frame next. Then the rug. Then we drive."

"You're the boss."

"That's the first time anyone at work has said that to me and meant it."

The bed frame came apart easier than it went together, she said, because whoever put it together last time had done it wrong, and it had been wrong for six years, and she'd slept on it wrong for six years and never known. We got it down in pieces. The rug we carried between us, rolled, like a big clumsy log, and she kept talking through it because her mouth was free.

"You know what I like about moving?" she said, walking backwards down the stairs ahead of me with her end.

"What."

"You find out what you actually own. I own eleven mugs. Why do I own eleven mugs?"

"Promotional mugs. Fire department fundraiser mugs?"

"Some. Some I just acquired. Mugs happen to you."

"Mugs happen to you," I said. "That's going on a shirt."

By one in the afternoon the truck was loaded and we were both gross with sweat and she was grinning like the whole thing was already done. She closed her apartment door, tested the handle, and looked at it for a second longer than she needed to.

"Six years in that place," she said.

"You all right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's just a door. Come on, new apartment, I'll buy you lunch. There's a sandwich place two blocks from the new building."

"Two blocks. Fancy."

"They know my order. The place was chosen for that reason alone. Rent was a factor. The sandwiches were the factor."

We drove across town, her car and my truck, and she waved me into the loading spot out front like she'd been practicing the gesture. The new place was good. Big windows, second floor, the boxes she'd moved already stacked in the living room. She'd put the kettle somewhere sensible. That was the only unpacking done, and she admitted it.

"Kettle first. Everything else can wait."

"A person with priorities."

We ate sandwiches on the floor because there was no table yet and no chairs, just a clean stretch of hardwood and boxes. She sat cross-legged with her back against a stack marked BOOKS, and I sat against the wall opposite, and it was quiet in a good way. Shift-quiet. The kind where nobody has to fill anything.

"This is weird," she said, around the last of her sandwich.

"What is."

"You, in my apartment. Five years and I've never seen you outside the station or a call. Now you're eating a sandwich on my floor."

"You invited me."

"I did." She looked at her sandwich wrapper. Folded it. Looked up. "I've been meaning to ask you stuff for a while, if you want to know the truth. Never found a way that didn't sound like something."

"Like what?"

"Doesn't matter. We've got a bed to build. You good for the mattress? It's heavy."

"I'm good for the mattress."

She got up and pulled a box cutter out of her jacket pocket and I realized she'd had it there the whole time, planned, like a call she'd been waiting to run. I didn't say anything about it. I got up too and picked the directions off the top of a box marked BED FRAME SCREWDRIVER DO NOT LOSE.

"Which piece is A," I said.

"That one. The long one. Don't drop my books."

I have to say, whoever she was before this, the woman handing me bed frame bolts with a sandwich wrapper folded neat on the floor next to her, she was easier to be around than I'd expected. Easier in a way I noticed, and noticed that I noticed, and put in the box with the other things I'd deal with later. We had a bed to build and a rug to unroll and a couch to get up one more flight of stairs. There was time. That afternoon there was plenty of time.

The bed frame went together right this time. I checked the directions twice because I wasn't going to be the guy who did it wrong for another six years. Sienna sat on the mattress once it was on and bounced a little.

"Solid," she said. "Better than the old one."

"You slept crooked for six years. Anything's better."

"Fair."

I started on the box marked KITCHEN, MISC and she worked through a box of pictures and desk stuff she'd never gotten around to unpacking at the old place. It was quiet for a while. The good kind again. Then she made a noise.

"Oh no. Oh, Leroy, come look at this."

I went over. She was holding a photo, and I knew it before I saw it clearly. Station holiday party, must have been four years back. Everybody crammed onto the couch in the rec room. I was in the middle holding a paper cup and laughing at something. Sienna was on the arm of the couch next to me, and next to her was Ortiz mid-yell, and behind everybody was the old fake tree somebody's wife had donated.

"Look at your face," she said. "You look like you're being arrested."

"I look happy."

"You look scared and happy. Both."

"That was the year Ortiz tried to make punch."

"Oh god. The punch. With the candy canes in it."

"Peppermint. In a drink. For forty people."

"And we all drank it. Because we were raised to respect our elders." She was laughing now, sitting right down on a box to keep looking at it. "God, I look young here."

"You look the same."

"I do not. I look like somebody who hadn't worked a hundred bad calls yet." She went quiet a second, thumb over the corner of the picture. Then she tucked it into her back pocket. "That's going up somewhere. First thing on a wall."

"I'm in it. You sure?"

"Part of the deal. You come with the photo."

"Six years from now that'll be a weird thing on your wall."

"Six years from now I'll have eleven mugs and this photo and a bed that's put together right. I'm building a life here, Katz. Small one."

I went back to the kitchen box. Plates, wrapped in newspaper. I did a few minutes of wrapping and unwrapping before I said anything, because it was on its way out anyway.

"I never got married," I said. "In case that's one of the things you were asking about."

She didn't turn around fast. She turned around at the speed of somebody being casual about it.

"Okay," she said.

"You weren't asking."

"Maybe I was asking."

"I came close once. Different city, different department. It didn't happen. She didn't want the hours and I didn't blame her. Nobody wants this schedule. You come home smelling like a bonfire at three in the morning." I set a plate down. "That was a long time ago. Then there was Denise, few years back. That ran its course. Nothing wrong with it. Just ran out."

"You ever look for it again? After?"

"Some. Not hard. The job fills up the day and then some, and you get to where the empty part doesn't yell at you. It just sits there. Like a box you never open."

"That's a very firefighter way to describe loneliness."

"I'm a very firefighter guy."

She got up and came over and stood in the doorway of the kitchen box situation, arms crossed, looking at me.

"I haven't dated since Adam," she said. "Eight years ago. He was fine. It ended fine. Nothing to report. And since then, nothing. Not because of anything. I just kept working. You get to forty and you look up and it's been eight years and you're really good at your job and that's kind of it, that's the whole report."

She stopped. Blink.

"Wow. That's how people feel, huh. Saying it out loud."

"It's fine," I said.

"It's fine. It is fine. I just never said it to anybody at work, is all. There's a rule in my head about it."

"What rule?"

"Don't hand people at work anything they can look at differently on a bad day."

"Yeah," I said. "That rule's earned."

We looked at each other for a second and then she broke it, clapped her hands once.

"Okay. Wine. I have wine and there's a takeout place that delivers, I checked, I checked before I even signed the lease. Sit down. That's an order. I'm off shift so technically it's not an order."

"It's an order."

* * *

The wine was okay. The takeout was good. We ate off the one set of plates that had been unpacked, sitting on the floor against the couch, which had made it up the stairs and was pushed against the wall where it would apparently live forever, because neither of us was moving it again.

"So the couch stays there," I said.

"The couch stays there. It has chosen its home."

"Very spiritual of it."

"So." She turned on the floor to face me, cross-legged