Firefighter's Virgin

She walked into the room, a smile on her face. She didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable, and I felt my skin start to crawl as she went over to his wheelchair. My instinct was to shield her from him, but what was he going to do? He couldn’t get up; he couldn’t even speak.

“Very nice to meet you,” she said, taking a seat across from him. “I’m Daisy. That was one of the first things I learned about Ian, that he had a stepfather that he came and still visited, which I thought was really great of him to do.”

Oh, Jesus. She continued to talk, and I tried to keep a straight face. It wasn’t that I was tempted to burst out laughing or anything—it was more like I wanted to cringe. Most people would have been somewhat uncomfortable at having to have a conversation with someone who couldn’t actually respond to what they were saying, but Daisy didn’t seem the list bit bothered. It would appear as though she had missed her calling as a nurse, or maybe a preschool teacher.

I sat down in the other chair and watched Pete watch her. It was clearly a mistake to bring her here, as this was no doubt the highlight of his day, perhaps the highlight of his entire life. A young beautiful woman, focusing all of her attention on him. His eyes shifted over to me for a second, and I just stared at him, hoping he’d get the clue that this wasn’t some sort of kindness on my part. My phone started to vibrate in my pocket, but I ignored it. Daisy kept talking with Pete, talking with him as though he were a participant in the conversation.

“They said it’s probably going to be very humid tomorrow, so you’re lucky you have air conditioning in here,” she said. She looked around the room. “This is a very nice place.”

My phone buzzed again, and I pulled it out of my pocket to peek at the screen. Dan. The clock on my phone said that we’d already been here for almost half an hour longer than I usually stayed, so I stood up, touching Daisy’s shoulder. “We better get going,” I said. “I need to take this call from Dan.”

“Why don’t you do that and I’ll sit with Pete a little bit longer,” Daisy said.

“Sure, fine,” I said. “I’ll just be out in the hallway.”

I stepped out into the hall and called Dan back. He answered on the first ring.

“We’ve got a problem.” He did not sound happy.

“What’s up?” I said.

“I’ve been calling and calling. I haven’t been able to get a hold of you or Jonathan! Where the hell have you been?”

“What’s going on?” I could hear a lot of commotion in the background. “Are you on the boat?”

“No, I’m not on the boat because it’s a fuckin mob scene down here.”

“Mob scene? What are you talking about?”

“There’s a shitload of people down here! People that aren’t supposed to be here, I can tell you that much. Martin is furious; I think he wants to call the whole thing off. At the very least, he wants to see you.”

“Well, where are they? Did they get on the boat?”

“No, they went back to his house. So you should probably head over there.”

I groaned. All those people down there, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood celebrities. How had word gotten out about it? This was bullshit.

“If they’re all back at Martin’s house, why the hell is there still a huge crowd there?”

“It’s dispersed a bit; half of them tried to follow the cars back to Martin’s, so we sent some guys with them, but a bunch of them stayed because they’re convinced that they’re going to come back to board the boat. This is a huge fucking mess.”

“I’ll handle it,” I said, hanging up the phone and stuffing it back into my pocket. I gritted my teeth as I went back into the room to get Daisy. FUCK.

I didn’t get into all the details with Daisy, but I told her I needed to drop her off because there was a crisis of sorts at work that I needed to deal with. Thankfully, she didn’t ask too many questions. Jonathan called as I was driving over to Martin’s South End brownstone.

“I’m heading over there right now,” I said.

“Good luck with that,” Jonathan said, sounding grim. “He sounded pissed when I talked to him.”

“He is! His whole fucking dream cruise trip was almost ruined. Granted, it wasn’t, so maybe he should get over it, but either way, it doesn’t look good. I don’t know how it got out about that happening, but it must’ve been someone from his end. Maybe it was his daughter, for Christ’s sake. Teenagers are always going gaga for famous actors and shit.”

“That seems the most likely.”

“Parents are always turning a blind eye to the shit their kids do,” I said.

“Yeah. He definitely wanted to put the blame somewhere else.”

“Well, now I have to go deal with it.”