A/N: Light-hearted nonsense (aka, Shits and Giggles, which was almost its title) triggered by the start of the summer season, where vacations often involve car rides for hours on end with family and/or friends and where control of the radio (broadcast or satellite), CD, iPod or USB drive is occasionally a point of contention.
ONE
"I cannot believe you are making me listen to this song," he complained. Again. "As if it's not bad enough this van smells like my high school boys locker room." He shot a pointed look in the direction of the driver's seat. "Like sweat socks and jock straps and maybe like someone's been taking matters into his own hand or somethin'…"
"They were funky China men from funky Chinatown…" sang the AM radio through the one working speaker in the dash. "They were chopping them up and they were chopping them down…"
Sadly the only working speaker in the van was on the passenger side and the volume knob was twisted all the way to the right to overcome the shrieks of the lumbering transmission and creaks of the van's chassis.
"Hey, man, I'm not the program director at the radio station," Kelly answered. "Why don't you call him up and tell him that he shouldn't use a Top 40 playlist; it's not like these songs are popular or anything. They're only the songs that everybody wants to hear." He paused, for two rotating thuds of the tires. "Everyone except you, that is."
"It's an ancient Chinese art and everybody knew their part," the radio agreed. "From a feint into a slip, and kicking from the hip …"
He sighed heavily and drew up the massive reserves of patience that he usually didn't have to tap until midway through a bad shift. He felt it in his bones that this one was just not starting out well at all, and it was all the fault of that clown behind the wheel.
"Look, just is it too much to ask to take my feelings and musical tastes into consideration? Ya know, I'm in this van too…. How come you get to pick the radio station and I don't get a say?"
Kelly snapped a quick glance to his right and then back again, squinting against the morning rays bouncing off his rearview mirror as he turned onto West Manville.
"I'll tell you what, Gage. You ever get that English piece of crap up and running again, you can pick whatever radio station you want when you drive to work it to work in the morning. And if and when I need a ride to work, assuming that I'd ever be desperate enough to call you, I won't complain when you play the music you want to hear, whatever that might be. Deal?"
"Those cats were fast as lightning … In fact it was a little bit frightening…"
Gage's eyes narrowed in consideration of the offer. You never really knew with Chet. He could mean exactly what he was saying or maybe he was just countering, setting Johnny up for the next thrust or parry – he was never really sure which came first – in their age-old battle. In a way, the two of them were a fearsome duo, riffing off each other like Abbott and Costello, or Laurel and Hardy, and of course, if they were choosing up roles, Chet would have to be the fat one, which made him the smart one because the tall, skinny guy was always the smart one in those duos, right?
He squinted out the window and in the cracked sideview mirror, his eyes practically disappeared as his face contorted in confusion and his cheekbones practically met his eyebrows. Was Laurel the tall skinny guy or was that Hardy, and which was the kinda dim one?
"…make sure you have expert timing … Kung-fu fighting, had to be fast as lightning…"
He sighed and counted the blocks until they hit the station. He'd prefer that Chet didn't actually hit the station; he hadn't really hit it that one time, just came a little too close to clipping the kitchen door that opened out onto the side driveway at the exact same time that Dietrich from C Shift was walking through it. Dee was usually a pretty funny guy for an Engineer but he wasn't in anything like a joking mood after almost getting nailed by "that f'ing psychedelic van" while trying to take out the trash.
And it wasn't the song so much as that weird horn sound of what was probably supposed to sound Asian but whatever it was just grated against his ears, and okay, the lyrics were pretty stupid too, but what really got him was the sheer lack of consideration for whether or not he liked the music. Was it so hard to consider that he might have different musical taste than Chet? He just didn't get how Chet could drive on, completely ignoring the aural agony he was inflicting, ignoring the reasonable objections, as if Gage's opinion was irrelevant, as if he wasn't even sitting there, right next to him, in the front seat of a piece of crap VW camper van.
It wasn't as if he'd chosen to have the Rover break down. His buddy at the foreign auto parts store had tried to get him the replacement brake shoes before this shift but the distributor didn't include them in the weekly shipment which meant it'd be another week of grabbing rides or taking the bus. The bus wasn't all that reliable for getting him here before the previous shift went off duty and Captain Stanley was a stickler for relieving the outgoing shift, which was reasonable, he guessed…. He was thisclose to actually screaming in frustration when the radio station's deejay finally started talking and then switched to the jangling music from the some local used car dealer's commercial.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah….
He ignored Kelly's mumbled quip about how he should consider thinking about checking out that used car dealer's lot and his body weight shifted as he sagged against the seat back. He stretched his legs out as far as was possible inside the cramped cab of the snubnosed front of the van, praying that the next song wouldn't be something as bad as everything that had been played so far. He went so far as holding his breath and crossing his right middle finger over his index finger as the deejay cued up the next song.
"Lovin' you …. is easy cause you're beautiful…"
Great. It was the dog whistle song, the one that drove all canines and Firefighter Paramedics with exceptionally sensitive ears absolutely insane within a few shrill notes. His chin slumped down onto his chest and he sent a sidelong glare at an obvious Chet Kelly who'd started singing along under his breath. This was going to be an awful shift.
A/N: Song 1 = 'Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas. It was #14 on the Billboard Magazine's Top Hot 100 songs of 1975.
Song 2 = "Lovin' You" by Minnie Riperton, #13 on the same list.
TWO
Roy was humming. Roy almost never hummed while he was driving so Gage wasn't sure if his partner was just screwing with him after that morning's ride in the Chetmobile or whether that meant…. He squinted his eyes and surreptitiously sent an assessing glance to his left.
"What?" DeSoto demanded, eyes still on the road as they navigated a busy intersection, a long line of cars stacked up on the other side with turn signals flashing and drivers gesturing.
"Whadda you mean, what?" he said, silently cursing his failure in stealthy observation. It was still early in the shift, only one "Child trapped" call for a hide and seek game that went awry when the closet door swelled shut, and two code inspections to count against the day's tally sheet.
"Okay," DeSoto said, followed by a small sigh that signaled he was invoking patience.
Gage hated when his partner did that, as if Roy needed some kind of special supply of patience to deal with the simplest of matters. You'd think a guy who dealt with the public each and every day, in some of the stupidest, most hair brained situations would find normal everyday conversation to be a simple thing.
"Are you staring at me for a reason?"
He realized he was: staring, still staring even though Roy'd stopped humming.
"You were humming," he said, somewhat accusatively. It wasn't normal for Roy to hum. Neither of them had started the shift in the greatest of moods so it looked as if Roy and Joanne had not had a little private special time this morning, which was how Roy alluded to his twice-weekly very good moods at shift start. Not that Gage was keeping track or anything. It's just a good thing to know when your partner might be….
"Oh," DeSoto said. "Sorry about that. Just something that was playing on the radio this morning."
Oh. Right. When Joanne had driven Roy to work because Roy's pride and joy Porsche was getting some kind of transmission overhaul that was beyond Roy's usual pretty comprehensive automotive skills. Also one of the reasons why he'd called Chet for a ride instead of Roy after Butch had called to tell him that the parts for the Rover hadn't come in again.
And then Roy started humming again and Johnny exhaled a lot louder than he'd intended. Kind of more like a big sigh. Of exasperation.
"Is that the Carpenters? Man, I know that you've got some years on me, but I didn't think you were into easy listening. Next you're gonna tell me that you and Joanne cuddle up in front of Lawrence Welk or somethin'."
And that was apparently the wrong thing to say because Roy's shoulders came up and he kinda shifted in the driver's seat, like a small animal puffing up to look bigger.
"For your information," DeSoto said, with a bit of an edge to his voice, "that was not The Carpenters, it was Midnight Blue. I happen to like Melissa Manchester, and I don't consider her music easy listening, not that there's anything wrong with a lot of the music that you might consider easy listening." He stopped to draw a breath and just about when Johnny was about to defend himself because Melissa Manchester was pretty easy on the eyes so she got a free pass out of the easy listening category, Roy continued. "As a matter of fact, I like the Carpenters too, and I distinctly recall you mentioning that you thought Karen Carpenter was kind of cute."
Wow. Didn't take much to get Roy riled up today. Maybe he'd had the opposite of private special time with his wife this morning, which honestly wasn't something Gage even wanted to think about.
"Okay, okay," he placated, wincing at the thought of what Roy had gone through that morning. Assuming that's why he was so grumpy. "I was just askin' 'cause you were over there humming and I guess I'm just a little sensitive because Chet bombarded me all the way in with the worst kinda pop music. You know, the kinda stuff only Chet likes and he doesn't necessarily care that I was stuck there too. It wasn't as if I couldn't not listen."
He saw Roy mouthing words slowly, as if reasoning out something, so he gave his partner time to catch up with where his train of thought was going because it was obviously moving faster than his partner's brain was firing. Which after the morning Roy probably had, he could understand.
"I mean," he said, warming to his subject, "you'd think that if you have another guy in the car, or a girl for that matter, you might ask him what type of music he likes to listen to, or try to find a radio station that you both like. It's just basic common courtesy, dontcha think?"
He noticed that Roy was staring straight ahead through the windshield so he turned his attention to the road, wondering what had his partner so entranced. Nothing. Nothing but cars and trucks, brake lights coming on and off as they navigated E. 223rd Street, which was its normal mix of cars and commercial vehicles, in a hurry to get wherever it was that they were going.
"Well," Roy said, pausing as if that was the preamble to some great thoughts, "I think since Chet was doing you a favor, driving all the way out almost to Hermosa Beach to give you a ride in this morning…"
"I was in Carmelitos," he interrupted. He cleared his throat. "You know that chick, Lucinda….?"
"Ah," Roy said and then his face scrunched up in thought. "Is she the one with the…?"
"No," Gage said hurriedly. "That was Bettina. She lives out in Sutter. Lucinda is the one…" his hands sketched only a slightly exaggerated shape in the cramped air of the Squad's cab. "You know, with the great…." He searched for the right word. "Proportions," he announced, with deep satisfaction at nailing it.
"Okay…." Roy said. They sat in an otherwise silent Squad, only the click-click-click of the left turn signal filling the space as they waited for a break in traffic to back into Station 51's bay. "Still, he was doing you a favor, Johnny. He didn't have to swing by Lucinda's place to give you a ride this morning, and it's not that long a drive in from Carmelitos. How bad could it be?"
Gage turned betrayed eyes on his partner.
"How bad?" he demanded, incredulous with his partner's lack of support. "I'll tell you how bad." He cleared his throat, again, and tried to pitch his voice into a highest, squeakiest register it could hit. "My eyes adored you…." he screeched. As his voice cracked, he noticed that Roy's shoulders were shaking, and his face was turned away. "Though I never laid a hand on you, my eyes adored ya…. Like a million miles away from me you couldn't see how I adored ya…."
DeSoto was outright laughing now. In between snorts, he turned his head towards Gage. "Johnny, you lay a hand on me like that and I promise that a million miles won't be far enough."
A/N: Roy was humming "Midnight Blue" by Melissa Manchester, which was #54 on the Billboard Magazine's Top Hot 100 songs of 1975.
Johnny sang "My Eyes Adored You" by Frankie Valli, which was #5 on the list.
THREE
"Driver gets to pick," Stoker said, unblinkingly, without even a glance up from the journal he was reading at the kitchen table. "Everyone knows that. My car, my radio, my radio station."
Lopez nodded as he stirred the savory navy bean soup he was heating up for their lunch. "He's right, my friend." He tapped the wooden spoon on the edge of the pot and opened his mouth to continue.
"My Eight Track too, for that matter," Stoker interjected as he turned the page of the already well-thumbed current issue of Fire Engineering.
Gage swiveled on one foot, eyes wide. "You have an Eight Track player in your truck?" he asked, trying and failing to keep the astonished jealousy out of his voice.
"Damn straight," Stoker said, never taking his gaze off the page he was reading.
"I need to get one of those installed in the Rover," Gage said, calculating the cost for the unit on top of the parts that were backordered.
"The driver is doing all the work, paying for the gas, and the wear and tear on the car," Lopez said, continuing as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Whoever controls the steering wheel controls the radio knob."
"Well, that's just a lack of consideration," Gage huffed. "It completely ignores that there's another person, heck, maybe more than one, sitting in that car too, and that person, or people, might have different musical tastes than the driver does. Why does the driver get to inflict his musical taste without any respect for other people? That's just… just, just," he sputtered. "Well, I'll tell you, that's just selfish."
Lopez shrugged. "So next time, take the bus and you can listen to thirty people talking over each other instead." His mustache twitched. "And screaming babies."
"Or you could get your car fixed so we don't have to listen to you complain about other people's musical tastes all shift," Stoker muttered.
Gage opened the refrigerator with dim hopes of finding anything other than the leftovers from C-shift. The interior light bounced off the scantly populated shelves holding a couple of quarts of milk, a flat bottle of ginger ale from when some guy on B shift had an upset stomach nearly a month ago, a tub of margarine, some actual butter, a plastic wrap-covered plate of sandwiches prepared for lunch and a shelf full of half-empty condiment jars and bottles. He sighed at being right again, and shut the door. His stomach growled, quietly he'd thought until Lopez sent an amused look in his direction.
"Twenty minutes until lunch."
Gage sighed, and opened the crisper drawer looking for some celery or something that would tide him over. No luck.
"Anything new?" he asked the head-in the-journal-pages-Stoker.
"Not really," Stoker replied, without glancing up. "There's the usual stuff about when to go for exterior knockback on an initial attack versus direct handline entry, of course but there is an interesting article on…." He flipped back a few pages and angled the journal so that Gage could read it. "Bigger Pumps in Smaller Packages."
"Don't let Chet hear that one," Lopez said with a snicker.
Stoker sighed and put the magazine down. "As in smaller pump boxes that can provide the same gpm, while freeing up space on the rig for more equipment or storage."
"Mike," Lopez said, eyes gleaming with mischief even as his voice was heavy with patience, "you know that as soon as you or Cap start talking about suction pumps, half the crew reverts to puberty."
"More than half," Stoker admitted dolefully, and returned to his journal.
Gage was trying to fight a grin off his face, both embarrassed and distracted when his stomach rumbled again. He looked plaintively in Lopez's direction.
"Okay, maybe fifteen minutes," Lopez said. "Sandwiches are made but the soup's still heating up."
He craned his head around and frowned. "It's awfully quiet …"
Two heads swiveled in his direction and twin glares slammed into him with the force of 150-psi of water flowing through 200 feet of hose. Those were some mean and hungry looking glares.
"I just meant…" He raised his hands in apology. "I just realized that I haven't seen, or heard, hide nor curly hair of one Chester B. Kelly since we got back from that last run. That's the kinda quiet I was talking about."
Stoker sighed and flipped a page in his journal with a little less care than usual.
"Chet fell ass over teakettle into a muddy culvert when we were checking those hydrants up on Acarus," Stoker explained.
"Less fell, more sucked into it, like a sinkhole. He's getting cleaned up," Lopez added. "Probably still in the shower."
A wobbly tenor drifted across the bay, sliding under the door from the locker room and winding around the apparatus.
"Why should I keep loving you…"
Gage, wide-eyed, turned a look onto the other two men.
"Do ya see what I mean? He's torturing me."
Lopez shrugged, stirred the soup and replied, "Soup's ready in five to ten minutes, Johnny. You want to get the bowls and plates out?"
"…when I know that you're not true?"
He turned to Stoker, knowing that Mike liked it quiet when he was trying to read.
"I kinda like Freddie Fender," Stoker said, without meeting Gage's eyes.
"And why should I call your name," Chet wailed from clear across station.
Gage dragged a chair away from the kitchen table and dropped his body onto its hard, unforgiving surface, and then slumped face down onto his folded arms atop the table's surface.
At the cooktop, Marco sang, in quiet harmony with his fellow linesman, "…when you're to blame… for making me blue?"
Gage groaned and took refuge by slowly tapping his forehead against the table's surface.
A/N: Chet was singing "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" by Freddy Fender, which was #26 on the Billboard Magazine's Top Hot 100 songs of 1975.
FOUR
He could hear the water bank off the side of the sink in a steady stream, splashing as it was bisected by a pair of large male hands covered in powdered soap, weaving in and out of the stream as each hand took a turn scrubbing the other.
The door hinge squealed as it whipped open, making a whupping sound as it swung back. It creaked again; once, twice, and then a third time, each time softer than the last until it slowed into position.
"You wanted to see me, Cap?"
Gage hunkered down, where he sat, unobserved, uncomfortable at the notion that he was about to hear something that might well have been meant to be a private discussion. He cocked his head and reconsidered. If Captain Stanley had truly wanted to speak to Roy privately, he would've done so in his office, not in the locker room, where any of the crew could wander in or out to fetch something from the lockers or use the latrine.
Not that they could do the latter; that was pretty well occupied.
He shifted, discomfort from the hurriedly wolfed down falafels he and Roy'd grabbed for an on-the-go lunch far exceeding any discomfort from overhearing what was probably only a concern about the Squad's logs not being up-to-date - which was probably his fault, not that Roy would throw him under the bus for it, but he couldn't remember whose turn it was to update the logbook so that meant it was probably his - or maybe it was just a question about a vacation request.
"Yeah, Roy, just give me a sec."
The canister of Boraxo tapped down lightly on the sink ledge. Gage knew it was Boraxo because that was what Cap always used to get embedded grime and oil out of his hands; that and a nailbrush and he'd needed both for sure after that last call.
Take one missing kitten, add a six year old boy determined to find his kitty, mix well with a muddy field, add an old leaky fuel tank, and for fun, mix in a hysterical mother who managed acquire a tib/fib fracture falling down the hill while searching for her stubborn little man. It took the entire crew, two ladders off the Engine, several rope tethers and a stokes basket to extract the boy, his mother and their kitten from a mud puddle the size of the apparatus bay and despite the heroic efforts of his mother to rescue him, the overtired boy had decided he only wanted his Daddy. Which is where Cap came in.
Stoker had hosed Cap off before they'd climbed back into the Engine, of course, but the mixture of mud and oil had seeped through gloves and uniforms and deep into pores.
The faucet squeaked off in time with Gage's stomach reminding him – again - that he would've been better off waiting for Marco's soup and the sandwiches. Even reheated after they'd been toned out with lunch on the table, it would have treated him more kindly than falafel stand had.
"Roy, do me a favor. Check your partner and make sure he's not hiding a head injury."
He gulped and instinctively ran the fingers of one hand, slowly and thoroughly over his skull: no swellings, no tender spots, definitely no depressions or fractures. What the….?
Roy was laughing. Sure, it was kind of a snorting laugh but his partner was laughing at him and if his digestive system wasn't sucking every internal organ in his torso out through his colon at that particular moment, he would've wiped that smirk off his partner's face.
"What makes you think he has a head injury?" Roy asked.
Roy's tone of voice was almost neutral but Gage recognized Roy's version of deadpan and could easily picture a pair of merry blue eyes that were doing all the smiling that didn't make it into his voice.
Cap sighed. "Besides the fact that he's spent the entire shift whining like a pre-teen girl about pop music, you mean?"
There was a long pause.
"Okay," Stanley said, "I acknowledge that Johnny can get a little…."
"Obsessive?"
"I was going to say focused, but if the shoe fits..."
Gage heard the click of a locker door opening and closing shortly afterward: Cap putting the canister of boraxo and the nailbrush away. It was a little eerie exactly how predictable the rest of his crew could be.
"I just want to rule out any medical reason for this latest…."
"Obsession," Roy said again, in a helpful tone of voice.
Gage growled, quietly and discreetly, lips pressed together to keep from giving himself away.
"…so I can put a stop to plans that I may or may not have overheard regarding some creative re-engineering of Gage's car radio…."
He yelped in outrage at the thought, and then sat stock still, frozen to the seat, even holding his breath so that they wouldn't discern his presence.
"For Pete's sake," Cap complained. "I thought Kelly cleaned the latrines this morning but it smells like that time Stoker made that curry dish. Kelly," he bellowed. "Locker room, now!"
Gage gulped.
The door to the latrine was closed but it didn't lock, so there was nothing really from preventing Cap or Roy or worse, Chet, from opening it and discovering that he'd been sitting there, stinking up the locker room, throughout Roy and Cap's conversation. A conversation about him.
But the more he thought about it, the more he wondered why he should bother hiding. He was the wronged party, after all.
"Um, Cap…." Roy said.
"I'm not saying Gage is wrong about what's played on a lot of the radio stations," Stanley said, his voice fading a little and then rising, as if he was moving around the locker room. "And while I wouldn't think that Kelly would have the same taste in bubblegum pop or that awful dance crap calling itself music that my kids listen to… speaking of which, where the hell is he?"
The door hinge squeaked again, on cue with Chet Kelly's entrance.
"Right here, mon Capitan!"
"Um, Cap…"
"Kelly, I thought you said you cleaned the latrine this morning…."
"….I think…there's someone in there," Roy said, his voice trailing off and dropping into silence.
"Or something," Kelly said, "Pee-yu, that stinks. Smells like that time that Gage tried to make one of Marco's mother's recipes…"
"Don't remind me," Stanley grumbled.
"…and we had to dump an entire gallon of bleach in the toilet bowl just to get it clean."
"Kelly," Stanley said, through audibly gritted teeth. "Do you need your hearing checked? What did I just say?"
"Well, since Stoker and Lopez are hanging hose," Kelly said, "it's got to be Gage in there."
Silence.
He hoped that Roy and Cap were searching their guilty consciences for what they'd said about him, behind his back when they thought he couldn't hear them.
"Hey, Gage," Kelly called out. "When you're on the seat for hours, and it doesn't smell like flowers, Diarrhea! Diarrhea!" he sang.
"Gage, you all right in there?" Stanley said, with an edge of concern in his voice but not nearly as much guilt as Gage had expected. Or had hoped.
"Well, I don't have a head injury if you were wonderin'," he replied, but his snarkiness was ruined by a gurgle in his intestines that was loud enough to be heard throughout the locker room. Possibly throughout the station.
He heard low voices, Cap's and Roy's, conferring, maybe worried and maybe even a little guilty now that they'd assassinated his character while he was suffering just a few feet away.
"Johnny?" Roy said. "Hey, Cap's got some Pepto Bismal in his locker…."
"Can't imagine why he'd need that," Kelly said, in what was probably supposed to be an under his breath comment but was, of course, loud enough to be heard.
"….and I think you should take some. Maybe it'll calm everything down a bit."
"Uh, no, I…." he trailed off and groaned. The thought of drinking that thick and chalky pink fluid was enough to send his stomach churning in the other direction.
"When your stomach starts a rollin', and you're cleaning out your colon, Diarrhea! Diarrhea!" Chet sang, in a happy, annoyingly perky voice.
God, this really was the worst shift ever.
And then the tones dropped.
Chet was singing "The Diarrhea Song" made popular in the movie "Parenthood" (1989) but minor variations have been recorded by folklorists around the country back to at least the mid-1960s, which means it's probably the 'boys' know this one. I know that I remember it from my childhood.
FIVE
"It's a law, well, not a state or federal law, more a common law, universally acknowledged and in place since the creation of the automobile, or at least the creation of the car radio," Cap said, and the kitchen chair squeaked in agreement as he stretched back in it.
"That's right," Stoker confirmed from his position on Stanley's immediate left. "The passenger only touches the radio when requested to do so or after requesting permission and receiving approval. No exceptions."
"Ahhh," Roy said, wincing.
"Well…." Cap hedged, twisting his head around to face his engineer. "That kind of depends on your marital status there, Stoker…"
Across the table, Roy nodded with grim vigor.
"Which might explain why Mikey isn't married," Chet said, sotto voce to Marco, earning a narrowed steely blue eyed glare.
"Blow it out your nozzle, Chet." Stoker turned back in Gage's direction. "Violators of the law get their hands slapped, and repeat offenders need to find alternate sources of transportation."
"Unless she's muy bonita," Lopez interjected.
"Or it's early on in the relationship," Kelly said, with a nod of support in Marco's direction. "Of course if she's a real babe, the rules are way more flexible." He grinned. "The more flexible the better."
Five pairs of eyes rolled nearly simultaneously.
"Well, I didn't touch the radio," Gage argued.
He was feeling a little closer to human now that the Pepto had kicked in. He'd recovered his internal health and a bit of his dignity while the Engine crew was out handling a small garage fire and his partner slunk around the station, mostly avoiding him except for the delivery of a bottle of bleach, left outside the latrine door.
He looked up from the bowl of chicken and rice soup that sat cooling in front of him. It was bland, it was innocuous and he'd barely manage to stir a spoon through it, much less put it near his mouth. There was a slight film forming on its surface and it smelled….oily
"It also depends on your sex," Lopez said, circling back to his Captain's amendment.
"Gender," Roy said quickly, with a glance towards an about-to-speak Kelly and Gage. "I think you meant gender, Marco."
Marco waved a desultory hand in the air. "Cualquiera. My mother and my sisters are constantly turning the radio dial. No respect whatsoever for the driver. They fight and argue about which is the best station, the best deejay, the best singer, you name it, and it doesn't matter who's driving; one of them'll be leaning over the seat from the back trying to change the station."
"That sounds like my kids," Stanley said in an aside to DeSoto, who nodded and replied, "Mine too."
"So are you saying Gage is essentially a girl?" Stoker asked, looking directly at Lopez.
"I think Cap's saying that Gage is acting like a child," Chet said.
"Maybe Gage is just being thoughtful and respectful and was kinda hoping that others might show the same kinda respect," Gage countered, dragging the soup spoon around what was starting to look like a chemical spill, all yellow tinged oil and debris.
Silence. At least ten full seconds of silence while gazes slid around the room and mouths contorted into expressions that were trying not to smile or laugh aloud.
"You know, Cap," Roy said, finally breaking the pent-up well of unspoken words and fervently spoken glances. "I think you did say that he was whining like a pre-teen girl, so maybe he's both."
Stanley had the grace to look a little sheepish as he met Gage's drooping expression.
"I didn't say you were a pre-teen girl, Gage," he explained, "just that you were whining like one."
As if that made a difference. Gage puffed out a huge sigh and turned his still slightly green-tinged complexion in his partner's direction.
"Thanks a lot, Roy."
DeSoto shrugged. "You should try riding with you for a change, when you're in one of those full on rants."
"That doesn't even make sense. How on earth can I not ride with myself? I'm there, aren't I?"
"Forget it," DeSoto huffed.
"You too, Kelly," Stanley ordered pre-emptively. "Don't even go there."
"I was just going to make a comment about Schrodinger's Paramedic," Kelly complained to Stoker, who laughed aloud.
"Look, Johnny," Stanley said, settling his voice into kinder, friendlier tones. "Kelly's not a chauffeur, and he's certainly not your chauffeur, so if he was doing you a favor and giving you a lift into work so you could get in on time," his lips quirked as if acknowledging that he couldn't resist getting the reminder in there, "common courtesy kind of demands that you suck it up and listen to his music, no matter how bad it is."
Hey!" Kelly protested.
Stanley ignored him. "It'd be different if the two of you were taking a trip and decided to share a car or something. Then it'd be reasonable to come up with some kind of compromise."
Lopez was nodding steadily as Stanley spoke, and he interjected with a big gleaming smile. "Yeah, like when you and Roy and Chet took that fishing trip in your truck, Johnny!"
Stanley sat back, his expression signaling relief at completing a less than pleasant task. "Now…"
"Yeah," Kelly interrupted. His eyes were squinting and his slightly unfocused eyes were gazing in the direction of the windows until he swung his attention towards DeSoto. "Like that fishing trip. Hey, Roy, remind me what we listened to while we were driving on that fishing trip? It was that plaid group, right?"
DeSoto chewed at his lip, his brow furrowing as he searched his memories. "Something City…."
"No," Stoker said, voice horrified. Wide-eyed he stared at Gage and then back towards Kelly and DeSoto. "Tell me you don't mean The Bay City Rollers?"
"Bye, bye, baby, baby, goodbye," Kelly sang, waving at Gage.
"Plaid?" Lopez sounded alarmed, his eyes wide and glancing around the group.
"Look, I can't control what's on the radio and driving through those hills, we were lucky to get a station at all," Gage argued.
"Some Gordon Lightfoot," Roy said, face still scrunched as if he was physical digging into his memories.
"What's wrong with Gordon Lightfoot?" Stanley asked no one in particular.
"Oh," Kelly said, suddenly excited. "That band with the really hot chicks! You know, the blonde and the brunette in the white puffy costumes!"
"Abba," Stoker, Lopez and Gage said in not quite perfect simultaneity but with a great deal of overlapping and some happy grins.
"Yeah," DeSoto said. "Even I've heard of Abba." He turned to Kelly. "Did we listen to any Abba songs during the fishing trip?"
Kelly shook his head. "No. Would've been nice though. Instead of hot chicks, we got all those single band name groups: Bread, Chicago, America…"
"What do you call a Horse with no name?" DeSoto wondered.
"It was the perfect song for the trip, though," Kelly insisted. "There were plants, and birds, and rocks, and things," he sang. "There was sand and hills and rings…"
"There certainly was plenty of that," DeSoto agreed, beaming.
"It's the radio!" Gage insisted, waving the arm that still held the soup spoon. "I have a lot of bands I like! I have great musical taste, but it's not like I can just play exactly what I want to hear when I want to hear it in the car. You just hafta to wait for it to come on the radio."
He had a moment to wonder, in the pause that followed, exactly why his entire crew was smirking at him.
Chapter A/N: The cover of "Bye, Bye, Baby (Baby Goodbye) by the Bay City Rollers sold a million copies and hit #1 on the UK Singles Chart for six weeks from March 1975. It ended the year as the UK's top selling single.
"A Horse with No Name" was originally recorded by the band America and released in 1972. It was the band's first and most successful single
THE END
Story A/N: Tragically, I was unable to work in Chet (or anyone else) singing 'Mandy," Stoker quoting Pink Floyd or all of the other lovely, fun ideas that flitted through my head.
This was total silliness, pure insanity and a nice break from slightly more angsty plot driven stuff I usually write. I hope you had a good laugh along with the crew.