The Fireman

by Joe Hill

She crouched for a look in the liquor cabinet and found a bottle of thirty-year-old Balvenie that would taste like smoke and fill a person with angel’s breath.

“I think Atelectasis was an early album by Genesis. One of the ones they recorded before Phil Collins took over singing and they turned to middlebrow MTV crap.”

“I am in one hundred percent agreement on the subject of outlines. Any writer who works by outline should be burned at the stake. Possibly with their own outline and notecards used as kindling. That’s what I dislike most about our plan. It’s an outline. Life doesn’t work by outline. If I were writing this scene, I wouldn’t even bother describing our plan, not in any detail. I already know it won’t work out the way we’re hoping. It would just be wasting the reader’s time.” He saw the look on her face and kicked her foot. “Oh, come on. We have candy bars and smokes and booze and evil plans. Don’t get morose on me. What else is in that lunch box of yours?” She took out