His shoulders shrug again. What the fuck. Sergeant Ferolito is standing before the formation, his feet wide and arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes staring Joe down. It feels as if the eyes of every officer are on Joe, even though Joe knows the only officers actually looking at him are Sergeant Ferolito and the guy directly behind Joe.
He can’t imagine what’s causing these bizarre muscle spasms. He hasn’t been lifting weights or furniture or exerting himself in any way out of the ordinary. He mostly stands on his feet, sits in his cruiser, sits in the living room chair, or sleeps.
Maybe he didn’t do anything to cause it. Joe sometimes gets spasms in his toes, especially the two next to his big toe. Without warning or instigation, they’ll pinch together in an unnatural, rigid position, out of line from the rest of his foot, and stay there in a gnarled pose, impervious to any attempt at relaxing them, for several agonizing minutes. But these shrugs feel more like hiccups than toe cramps. Sudden, involuntary, exaggerated bursts of movement. Shoulder hiccups. He’s never heard of such a thing. And what’s up with his antsy feet?
Maybe he’s getting too old for this shit. He’s one of the oldest officers here. He’s forty-three and feels every year of it lately. Never a slender man to begin with, Joe’s probably carrying an extra twenty pounds around his middle, his protruding gut the likely cause of his chronically aching back. He makes unattractive old-man noises, grunting and groaning when he gets out of bed in the morning and whenever he goes to stand after sitting for too long. He’d like to think he could still do twenty consecutive pull-ups and beat JJ in an arm wrestle, but he wouldn’t put money on it.
Most of the guys here are in their twenties or thirties. This job is for the young. But Tommy isn’t having a problem. Jonesie and Quaranto are older. Who is he kidding? This can’t be about age or strength. He’s being ordered to keep the fuck still, not to do twenty pull-ups. Then what is it?
He shrugs.
“Jesus Christ, OB,” someone mutters.
The acoustics in this cavernous hangar are awful, distorting pitch and amplitude, causing every sound to echo, but he’s pretty sure that was Tommy. This has to stop. Joe tries to take a deep breath through his mouth, but his chest is a concrete wall, his lungs a couple of bricks. He’s breathing like a panicked gerbil. Sweat is pouring off his nose. His head is baking beneath his helmet. That fuckin’ tag.
He shrugs.
Joe declares war on himself. He clenches his hands so hard that he can actually feel the length of his veins straining in his forearms. He clamps his jaw, flexes his ass and his quads, tightens his stomach, and envisions a fifty-pound sandbag sitting atop each shoulder. His heart races, his head is boiling in sweat, and he doesn’t breathe.
His shoulders shrug. He jostles against the guys on either side of him.
Mother of God. Joe closes his eyes. He can hear his heartbeat throbbing in his red-hot ears. The guy breathing behind him. Cars whizzing by outside. Pigeons cooing in the rafters. Joe unclamps his teeth. He listens to the manic rhythm of his heartbeat in his ears and coaxes it to slow down. He relaxes his face, softens his stomach, his back, his legs. He sips in a breath of air and then another. He listens and breathes and waits. His shoulders stay put. His feet remain planted. He listens and breathes and waits. His shoulders stay. They stay. Please stay. Stay.
Sergeant Ferolito calls the next drill.