YELLOWJACKET

FEBRUARY

With a wobbling clunk, I set the water bucket onto the concrete floor of the bay and started scrubbing down the rig. The bright overhead lights of the bay made it obvious just how badly the truck was due for a deep clean, even moreso when contrasted against the darkness of the oncoming nighttime outside.

Out of everyone on my crew, I was the only one that cared much to clean the apparatus properly to keep the paint free of scuffs and chips: as far as Heather was concerned, hosing it off was enough of a job well done, and the guys, of course, were more than happy to let me take on dirty work if it meant they didn’t have to do it. Cormorant, however, was simply considered far too above such a task.

Just as I’d wrung out the water from my towel, the sound of boots came stampeding into the bay. When I turned to see who it was, Garrett stood before me, looking both lost and flustered with wide eyes and pink cheeks.

“Yo,” I said, craning my neck towards him. “You okay? Need something?”

“Yeah, actually…” Garrett came closer, his voice dropping to a hushed whisper. “Do you know where we keep the, uh, water hammer? I can’t find it anywhere— Rob said I could call one of the other stations to borrow one if I had to, but I don’t want to bother them just ‘cause I don’t know where everything is yet… you think you can help me?”

“The water hammer…” It took a moment for it to click, but once it did, I snorted. “Oh— ain’t no such thing, man, he’s just playin’ with you. Next he’s gonna have you looking around for a hose puller or some shit.”

Smacking his forehead, Garrett put on a self-deprecating smile. “Of course! I should know that, jeez…”

“Eh, don’t sweat it, it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. But since you got all this free time to go on bullshit errands…” As I stood up from my squat, I pointed to the buckets at my feet. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and help me finish cleaning the rig instead?”

Sheepishly, he blinked, looking from my face to the bucket. “Oh— um, yeah, I can do that.”

“Good. All you need to know is this bucket’s for clean water and this one’s for dirty. Simple stuff.” For emphasis, I pointed to him directly. “And you best be gentle with the paint— if I catch you scuffin’ shit, I’ll whoop your ass myself.”

“Wow, the way you said that sounded just like my dad,” Garrett laughed, taking the cloth from my hands. “Trust me, if I know anything, I know how to wash a car. I remember the minute I turned eight, I had to wash his car every Saturday morning if I wanted my allowance… sometimes if he didn’t like how I did it, he’d make me do it all over again. Can you believe that?”

“Yeah, sounds like he was a real slave driver,” I replied sarcastically. “But hey, at least you can look back on it and laugh, right?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “That’s one way of looking at it, sure.”

With nothing else to be said, a silence fell over us in the apparatus bay; once Garrett saw how I worked, he didn’t need to ask a single question - he simply followed my lead. Now that there were two of us, the cleaning went by much faster, and when we were finished we basked in the glow of a job well done.

“Alright, that’s it,” I said, nodding in Garrett’s direction. “You’re free to go.”

“Cool, cool.” He leaned his shoulder against the now-shining side of the rig, looking down at his hands before tucking them into his pockets. “So… what now?”

“What do you mean, ‘what now’?” I asked in return.

“Well… what do you do around here when you’re not doing stuff like…” He motioned outward with his arm. “Like this?”

“Looking for ways to goof off already? That was fast.” I smiled. “Surely you got enough chores to keep the devil from playin’ with those idle hands.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, I mean…” He paused thoughtfully before returning his gaze to mine. “I see the other guys doing stuff together all the time between calls, but I was thinking about it as we were fixing up the rig that I don’t really know what you get up to. Sorta feels like I only ever see you on calls or when we eat.”

With my thumbnail, I scraped at a stubborn little spot of dirt on one of the side mirrors. “Sometimes if the rec room’s empty, I’ll put on a movie or a show. I don’t really like watching shit with the crew ‘cause they talk through everything and I hate having to use subtitles. It’s easier to wait ‘til everyone else is busy.”

“Yeah?” Garrett brightened. “What kind of movies do you like? You like superhero movies?”

“I saw The Punisher once, but that was years ago.” After a few seconds of vigorous scrubbing, I finally got that mark on the mirror to disappear. “And I think I saw the first Spider-Man when it came out in theaters, but it was on a date, so I didn’t really pay attention to it.”

“What?! That’s my favorite one!” He beamed. “Okay, not my favorite-favorite, but it’s in the top five. Batman Forever is my number one, if I had to pick.”

“Ain’t that the one where they put nipples on Batman?” I gestured to my chest. “Did they ever explain why the fuck they did that, or was everyone supposed to just pretend not to see them?”

Garrett laughed, but before he could give me an actual answer, Rob and DeShawn appeared in the doorway. When his eyes landed on Garrett, Rob leaned an arm against the doorway, his other hand on his hip.

“Hey! Güero!” Rob called out. “I asked for that water hammer thirty minutes ago— what’s the hold up?”

Hesitantly, Garrett turned to me, then back to Rob, as if caught between a rock and a hard place. “Um…”

“Déjalo ya, Rob— nobody’s falling for that,” I said, waving my hand at him. “Since you seemed to think Garrett had enough time to play games with you, I thought I’d put him to work doing something actually useful. Is that a problem?”

From behind Rob, DeShawn frowned. “Aw, Manny, we were just messing around. Why you gotta be such a buzzkill?”

“Yeah!” said Rob, frowning as well. “You’re gonna take all the fun out of having a probie!”

“Okay, so why’s this gotta be your idea of fun?” I crossed my arms. “Calling up the other stations? It just makes him look like a dumbass to the other crews.”

“Who are we talking about looking like a dumbass?” Liam chimed in, appearing out of nowhere from the opposite side of the hallway. He took a peek in and snorted. “Oh— Manny. Should’ve known we were talking about this walking Zoloft ad.”

Out of all of them, only Garrett was polite enough not to crack a smile, but I was used to being subjected to Liam’s bullshit comedy routine so it didn’t bother me. Rather than acknowledge what he’d said, I looked back at Garrett, who straightened his posture immediately at my attention.

“Hey, you were just talking about those Batman movies, right?” I asked. “Why don’t you go see if they’re on Netflix or Hulu? Maybe instead of pulling pranks on each other, we could settle in for a movie night.”

Given what I’d just said about movies only moments before, Garrett swallowed, eyes darting back to the guys standing in the doorway. “Um— well, I mean… I’m game if you guys are…?”

“Sure, why not?” Rob brightened at the suggestion. “You guys think we got enough popcorn for all of us?”

“Well, I won’t be having any,” Liam replied. “Last time I had popcorn, I had a kernel stuck ‘tween my teeth for fuckin’— I dunno, two weeks?”

“Think that’s a you problem, man,” said DeShawn. “Like, since you got those tiny little Chicklet teeth…”

As Liam and DeShawn continued their banter down the hallway, Rob trailed off along with them, leaving me and Garrett to ourselves in the bay. From the corner of his eye, Garrett gave me an unexpectedly smug little smile.

“I thought you said you didn’t like watching movies with other people,” he said, lips quirking a little bit further.

“I don’t, but it got them off your back, didn’t it?” I countered. “Now you can see for yourself firsthand why I keep a low profile around here.”

“Yeah, but, like… are you actually gonna join us?” His tone seemed almost hopeful. “Or was that some sort of decoy thing you just did there?”

“Oh, no, you made a great case for yourself,” I replied. “In fact, it was so great that I wanna see the guys’ faces when you’re telling them that Nipple Batman is the best Batman of all time.”

“It’s got nothing to do with the nipples!” He exclaimed, hopping up the steps to the doorway. “First of all, the cast is amazing: Jim Carrey’s great as the Riddler, and I think Val Kilmer’s the best of all the Batmans…”

Garrett didn’t seem to notice when I’d started tuning him out - or if he did, he didn’t call any attention to it. By the time we made it to the rec room, the rest of the guys were ready to go with two bowls of popcorn and fresh Cokes for everyone, and we all settled in to watch the movie together.

And out of every seat in the rec room, Garrett chose the seat next to mine.