JOKESTER

~)51(~

Johnny meandered through a thin crowd of hospital staff and patients to the nurse's station at Rampart to find Dixie there with paperwork in hand and phone tucked between her shoulder and ear. "Hi, Johnny! You just missed Nakee."

"Oh? She's been here already?" he asked as he helped himself to the coffee pot.

There was no immediate answer as Dixie finished her phone conversation. Once she dumped the receiver back into the cradle she grinned to the paramedic. "I helped her finish her paper work, and I bet she's just getting out of the parking lot now." Dixie's brows rose. "She makes really good coffee. Joe and Kel were talking about having it analyzed to see if she puts some secret ingredient in it."

Johnny chuckled as he sipped the coffee in his cup and grinned. "Oh yeah that's the stuff." He set the cup down quickly and looked left and right. "Hey, uh, Dix." He smiled and clutched her upper arm gently to be sure he had her full attention. "Think you can keep her a secret from my partner?" Dixie's expression begged for an explanation, and he answered, "He doesn't know about her. A-and I really wanna introduce them to each other in person. I asked everyone at the station already to not let him know who she is."

"What in the world are you up to Johnny Gage?" Dixie demanded.

"I just wanna see the look on his face when I introduce her that's all. I mean-to me she's not even a girl; she's just a pest. But I still have eyes in my head."

Dixie patted his chest reassuringly and nodded. "My lips are sealed."

"Great. Thanks Dix." He resumed his coffee, but Dixie's demure expression peaked Johnny's curiosity and made him smile as he asked, "What?"

The nurse motioned with her chin in the direction of a pair of white clad orderlies who were chatting while they cleaned the waiting area. "She's got a lot of admirers already."

Johnny shrugged. "What can I say? She is related to a handsome guy like myself!" He grinned broadly, but the smile fell quickly as he glared at the two orderlies. One of the men made a rude gesture that made Johnny glower in their direction. He knew they were talking about his sister, "Not sure if I should be proud, or if I should go get a shotgun, or just mind my business."

Dixie's head titled as she made eye contact with someone behind Johnny. He turned to see Roy wearing a quizzical expression as he pointed out, "Minding your business isn't like you!"

"I know when to not butt into other people's business!" Johnny very nearly yelped out. "When do I stick my nose into other people's business?"

"At least once a day since I've known you!" Roy smirked at the anxious reaction as he put down the drug box and biophone and poured himself a cup of coffee and firmly ignored his partner's lengthy outburst. He knew his comment would make his partner rant like a nut, and Johnny was doing just that. Roy sipped the coffee and exchanged a very unsurprised but humored expression with Dixie. But then he did a double take. There was no missing his partner's coffee, and this was better than usual. Roy thought that he could not have been there long enough to have made a fresh pot. He looked at his watch, wondering how long he'd been in the treatment room with the patient.

Dixie watched amused as Johnny still whined about how he knew when to mind his own business. Roy rolled his eyes and tried to ignore him long enough to enjoy a bit more of the coffee. It was impossible to enjoy it though with Johnny almost wailing at him that he was not a busy body. "All right! All right!" Roy gave in. "You don't stick yer nose in other people's business! I heard you the first nine times! Now shut up!"

"Shut up?" Johnny asked in a shrill voice. "Are you saying I talk to much?" Johnny looked at Dixie. "He's saying I talk to much."

Silently, Dixie watched the interchange between the two. Roy wrinkled his nose while he knit his brows together. "Not that I'm arguing with you about talking too much, but that's not what I said! I told you to shut up!"

"Oh." Johnny stopped very suddenly. His angry expression melted away into a neutral grin and said, "Okay. I can live with that."

Roy now remembered he'd wanted to ask, "How'd you manage to make that coffee that fast?"

"Thought you wanted me to shut up? Now you're asking me questions?"

"I just wanna know how you did that so fast!"

"I didn't make the coffee!"

Roy laughed at this joke. "Funny guy. Won't admit to having made a pot of coffee cause he knows it'll drive me nuts."

Dixie grinned at this. "He didn't make the coffee."

Roy's jaw dropped. "Huh?"

"Can we go?" Johnny picked up the handy-talkie and the biophone and headed off. "Catch ya later, Dix."

She waved at him.

Roy was shocked and asked Dixie, "He didn't? But...?" He looked at Johnny's back as he stalked off and then back at Dixie's little grin. "Oh, you're joking! Everyone knows only he makes coffee taste like this. And this is better than he usually makes it."

Dixie just grinned though and waved.

"Roy, you coming?" Johnny demanded nearly out the door.

"Yeah, I'm coming." He grabbed the drug box and followed after his partner. "Later Dix."

"Bye," Dixie stared after the two for a second, laughed and then went back to her papers.
.

Roy turned the squad out of Rampart's parking lot and down the road. He noted his silent partner in the passenger seat, looking out the window. "Are you going to tell me who that girl was?"

"What girl?" he actually looked confused and Roy knew his passenger honestly didn't know who he was talking about.

Roy's face contorted into disgust. "The girl with the long black hair! The stunning beauty that was at the station this morning! The one that drove away in your car!"

"Oh her!" Johnny seemed to remember now and his brows went down in a scowl, and he said matter-of-factly, "She's not a girl."

This response played itself over and over in Roy's head like a broken record and he felt his face contort from one expression to another. He drove and watched the road, feeling it might be better to leave the subject alone. But he couldn't stand it. He needed to know about the girl and why she was so familiar to him. "Could have fooled me," Roy wondered what game his partner was playing. "I suppose she was some other species of human, so that the females of her species are not called 'girls' but something else?"

Johnny gave no answer to this. Roy might not have minded a game of evasion, but he hated it when his jokes went unnoticed and he shouted, "What Is With You?"

Johnny startled out of his reverie, and yelped out, "There's Nothing With Me Today!"

"Yer not listening to me!" Roy said sharply as he drove. "Yer staring out the window in a daze! And you refuse to tell me who that girl is! And you know it's driving me crazy!"

"Why should that drive you crazy?" Johnny's voice came out in high tones he used when he teased people.

"Cause I feel like I should know who she is! Like her name should be on the tip of my tongue!" Johnny's sudden sharp and direct stare threw him off and made him feel he had to continue to explain himself. Roy let his exasperation come out in his voice. "I saw her from a distance while Mike was showing her around the station. The way she moves and laughs just struck me as familiar, like I should know her. I just wanna know where I've seen her before!"

Johnny was looking at him, brows rising. Roy drove a moment, keeping his eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel, but his partner was still staring. "What?" Roy asked explosively.

"You can't have met her before."

"How do you know that?" Roy groaned at the shrug his partner shouldered, and then shouted out, "Why won't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

Roy bit his lip and resisted the urge to let go of the steering wheel while going forty miles an hour to strangle his partner. He could see the headlines now, "ANNOYING PARTNER CAUSES PILEUP" Roy knew Johnny would tell him eventually who that girl was, but he was going to have to nag him to death to get the answer. "Who was that girl at the station this morning?" he stopped his partner with a motion. "And don't start with the thing about her not being a girl."

Johnny picked another route. "I wasn't gonna start that again..."

Roy rolled his eyes, "Course you weren't. You found a different tangent this time around."

"I don't go off on tangents!" Johnny objected loudly.

"Like that," Roy spat, frustrated and listened to his partner ramble pointlessly about how he did not go off on tangents.

.

~)51(~

At station 51, an apron clad Marko was at the stove nursing a pot of chicken soup while Mike was turning an entire loaf of bread into peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Being a kid at heart, he had to cut them into triangle halves as he stacked them on a platter. Jelly was getting all over his hands, and when the phone rang, he looked helplessly at Marko who said, "I'll get it!" he crossed to the phone quickly and snatched the receiver. "Station 51, fireman Mar...Oh! Hi Nakee! No, Johnny's on a run. Anything I can do? Sure, I can do that." He got a pencil and pad and got ready to write.

Mike stopped cutting sandwiches, and was so drawn to listen to the phone conversation that he didn't realize he was dripping jelly off his knife and hands onto the floor. He watched Marko scribble out a note quickly.

"Okay, Nakee." Marko nodded. "Wow, that's a lot of money! You really need that much stuff and they really won't let you...?" Marko listened as he scribbled more. "Yeah, I understand. Don't worry about it, Nakee. If he can't come up with that much, the rest of us will help out."

Jelly dripped off Mike's knife, and hit the floor with a small splat.

"Oh! Don't worry about it; you're not just his little sister anymore now, right? Okay, I'll be sure he gets it. Bye." Marko folded the note in half, wrote John's name on it in bright orange marker and tacked it on the bulletin board. He turned back to look at Mike and laughed. The engineer had his knife in one hand pointing straight up at the ceiling and his other hand dripping jelly on the floor. Marko did not want Mike to know what he was saying to him, so he deliberately chose to comment in Spanish; "Friend you are a perfect example of how love can turn a descent man into a very large idiot."

"Huh?" Mike asked stupidly. Marko only pointed at the plops of jelly on the floor and went to set the table. The confused engineer looked down and then sighed in frustration.

Hank leaned his whiskery head in just in time to see Mike cleaning the last of the jelly mess off the floor. "Marko, can I borrow your shaving cream?"

"Sure, Cap! Help yourself," Marko waved absently toward the locker room and Hank disappeared again.

.

Chet finished up the task of sweeping the bay and put the broom away into the storage cupboard, remembering automatically to lift the right door as he shut it so that it would not get stuck. "Marko, that smells really good!"

The chef replied his gratitude while he worked with Mike to cut vegetables for a big salad. Chet spotted the platter of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all cut into the perfect shape. "Hey, all right! You cut the sandwiches into tri..."

A loud 'BANG' sounded from the bay as a door slammed, and then, "KELLEEEEE!" Captain's voice bellowed across the bay. All three men startled and exchanged frightened glances.

"What'd you do this time, Chet?" Marko asked shaking a wooden spoon at him.

"I didn't do anything!" Chet shot out, but he looked worried.

"Sure." Marko went out into the bay, asking, "Cap?" he trailed off into Spanish mutterings that sounded like prayer as he dashed, frightened, back into the kitchen.

"WHERE IS HE?" Hank roared as he entered. His shadowy stubble was gone, but a distinct beard shaped bright spring green coloring remained on his face.

Chet's jaw dropped and he made a strangled noise. He seemed to be caught between wanting to laugh himself silly and knowing that he should probably run. He tried desperately to stop his giggling, but failed. Mike and Marko stared a moment and then both of them lost their control as well.

Hank shot a miserable glare at the other two, but focused on Chet, "What did you do to the shaving cream, Chet?" Hank growled as he angrily and slowly stalked at the lineman.

"Captain! Sir! Buddy! I swear!" Chet backed up, gasping as he laughed. "It wasn't meant for you!"

Hank lifted the shaving cream can and aimed it at Chet. "You better tell me what you did, Chet! And you better tell me how to get it off!"

Chet's mouth opened and his eyes bugged out of his head and he looked terrified, then squeaked, "I don't know?"

"KELLY!" Hank hollered and lunged at Chet who yelled and laughed and begged for mercy as he was attacked by his shaving cream wielding Captain.

More To Come...