Fanning The Fire Marshal's Flame

Are They Lips?

“Della, not Abigail,” Diarmid saw the smirk on his friend’s face and knew he’d been screwing with him. “It didn’t work out.”

“Why? Couldn’t get the fire hot enough?” He made a loud bark of laughter at his weird joke.

“She was always hot.” Diarmid rubbed the back of her neck and puffed his cheeks as he exhaled. “Couldn’t get her off me most of the time and it became a problem.”

“How is it a problem?”

“It wasn’t until I realized the reason, she was always wanting s*x was because she tossed her birth control. Thought a baby would make me put a ring on it.”

“Shit.”

“Almost did too.”

“She’s pregnant?”

“Swore up and down she was. I went with her to an ultrasound appointment her doctor set up for her and the screen was blank. She tried to argue it was too early to see it and then argued it was faulty equipment, so the tech brought in a different machine. Eventually she started sobbing she was scared I was going to make her move out and leave her. She then went nutsy, and they had to call in a doctor and a security guard because she was freaking out so bad. She admitted in front of everyone she used a friend from work’s urine for the pregnancy tests.”

Conor opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again.

Diarmid kicked his legs under the table, “I packed my s**t and moved into a hotel. Stayed there the last month and then my boss offered for me to take this post in New York and work the serial case and I was gone. I don’t care my condo here won’t be ready for another two weeks or the office I’m taking over is being occupied until the other guy leaves. I’ll sleep on a park bench to not be in Boston.”

“She went crazy.”

“Six times hotel security removed her. I switched hotels twice, Conor. Twice. She showed up at the office. Even to my physical exam I had to take to get this job. How the hell she had my calendar for my physical is beyond me, but she popped in just when the doctor was ready to make me cough.”

“Oh f**k,” Conor was trying not to laugh but it bubbled from his chest. “Sorry man. I’m sorry. It’s not funny.”

“A year from now I might laugh. Right now, I’m thinking the woman I lived with for the last year and a half fooled me and fooled me bad. I’m not trusting anyone again, anytime soon.”

“What was the end game? Eventually she would have to admit she wasn’t pregnant. Was she going to steal a baby? Use a doll and make you think it was real?”

“According to Della, she was going to get pregnant for real. She hadn’t taken her birth control in months and though I’m a good boy scout and always prepared and wrapped my d**k, she was hoping it would fall off and then admitted in the room with the technician right there, she had tampered with the new box I had just bought before she faked the first test. Put needle holes in all of them.”

“She’d have been months off the due date.”

“Right?” he gave a sad smile, “I liked her man. She was funny and wild and could bend like one of those circus girls but just because all of her girlfriends were pregnant and getting married and I said I wasn’t ready for either of those things, she faked it all like a crazy psycho b***h. I will never trust another woman as long as I live.” He stared at Conor who was laughing, “she’s a lawyer Conor. She’s not just a bimbo with no education. She is smart and how I missed the clues to her insanity is beyond me.” He gave a bitter laugh, “she used her friends piss, Conor, her friend’s piss to fool a doctor!”

“So now what?”

“I had been wanting to move back home for a while. My folks are now in the retirement home here. My brother and his wife just had a kid. I was staying in Boston because I was comfortable there, but I wanted to come home. I was just waiting for an opportunity to present itself. It was fine with Della, but I wasn’t ready to marry her and make it forever.”

“You were living with her,” Conor mocked his friend. “You were shacked up. What’s the difference?”

“She’s in my condo.” He scratched his head. “She spent the night one night and never left. A month later she sold her place, and I hadn’t even known it was on the market and she stayed. I couldn’t throw her onto the street so I told her she could stay there for now, but I told her before I left Boston, I was putting it on the market next month, so she needed to find a place and soon.”

“With your luck she’ll follow you here.” Conor teased him.

“I didn’t even tell her I was leaving the city. Just told her I was taking a new job and so I was selling the condo and getting a different place in the city. I just didn’t tell her what city.”

“The broad chased you out of Boston.”

“Nah, she just reaffirmed my decision to come back to New York.”

“Well, the city is glad to have you back. I’m glad to have you back.”

“What do fifty-something year old retirees do in New York on a Saturday afternoon? What’s on your agenda today?”

“I might be retired from being a chief, but I have a job.”

“Since when? How do I not know you have a job?” Diarmid watched his friend shift uncomfortably, “you’re not a stripper or something?”

Conor gave him a dirty look, “no. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Diarmid followed his friend through the house he used to hang out in almost every other night with fond memories. They used to build little bonfires, even in the winter and drink beer around it wrapped in blankets and tell stories. Once they got into the back yard though he froze as he looked around at the very changed landscape.

“What the hell is this?” The entire garden was full of erotic stone statues in various degrees of nudity and risqué postures. His friend was standing with his hands behind his back as if nervous of his reaction. He swallowed and looked at the man he’d considered as close as a brother and better than a best friend incredulously. “Conor?”

“I started sculpting. One of the counsellors I went to see told me to get a hobby. I picked up this little kit from a craft store where you carve soapstone. It escalated from there. I started doing them in the shed. Lita found out and encouraged me to make bigger ones. One day she posted them on an online auction site and one of pieces went for two grand. Turns out, people like it. Everything you see around you right now are sold pieces.” He pointed to a large sculpture, four feet in height of a man with a huge d**k, holding it aloft, frowning angrily at his hand which was, in a strange display, shaped like a pair of lips. “I called this one ‘if only I could’ and it sold for ten grand.”

“Ten grand?” Diarmid’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “Ten grand for a guy who wants to suck his own d**k with his lip hands?”

Conor shrugged, his cheeks and ears burning bright red in the morning sunlight, “don’t look at me. I just give the people what they want.”

Diarmid blinked rapidly, “holy s**t, this is why Lita’s friend is all over you. She thinks you’re a perv.”

“Lita thinks I do all this because I need to get laid. I don’t need to get laid. I get out. This is me being inspired.” He pointed to the lip hands, “was with a girl and I swear Diarmid, I’d have carried her around tucked in my pants she was so good on her knees. I created the rough outline of this one in a month.”

Diarmid threw his head back and laughed, “no way. You don’t still see her?” His friend was full of surprises today. He realized he’d stayed away too long.

“Unfortunately, she had the worst voice and laugh, and she found everything funny. Everything. Took her for a steak dinner and she laughed at the steak, the fork, the shape of the wine glass. I’m convinced the only reason she was so good at sucking d**k is because every man she had ever been with, kept her mouth full.”

“Conor!” Diarmid scolded him as he tried to keep his lips from curling upward. “Your ultra-feminist daughter would kick your ass.”

“I’m just saying, it’s possible for me to get a girl. I just can’t find one I enjoy talking to and sleeping with.”

“What about Corry?”

“She’s Lita’s friend and those girls all talk. All of them. I do not need my daughter to know my favorite s****l position or how many times I made her best friend get off.” He gave a shudder, “not to mention she’s thirty. Twenty-five years younger than me. I’m not ready to admit to my mid-life crisis being this bad.”

Diarmid laughed, “show me around some more. I need to know the story behind these.”

As Diarmid followed his old friend and mentor around his yard and workshop he realized he had forgotten how much he used to laugh with his friends. Being in Boston, working hard all the time and rarely time to just relax had made him forget about living. Maybe with a little luck, work would allow him to have a bit of fun too.

“Conor, do you ever miss being a battalion chief?”

“I missed the guys a lot at first. The ones who would pop into my office and the ones who had been around a long time but when I took the voluntary retirement because my kid embarrassed Reardon’s family by reporting he r***d her, most of the guys I thought were friends f****d off.”

Diarmid was quiet, “me included?”

“No. You were different Diarmid. You were already making your way to Boston before the whole thing went down. I was happy for you. We’ve kept in touch, and I know, deep down, had you stayed in New York, you would still have been right here every other night drinking beer with me, watching the bonfire and helping me with Lita.”

“I felt guilty,” Diarmid spoke quietly as he looked around the workshop as Conor moved things around so they could sit on a couple of stools. “I almost refused the job and came back. My brother Aaron, he said there was nothing I could do since what was done was done but Conor, I felt like I abandoned my family, you, your mom, Lita when you needed friends the most.”

“Well, you know mom didn’t last a year after what happened. In her day if a situation like this happened, women just shut their mouths and moved on. She found it hard to watch Lita, as she called it, wallowing. She hated how I catered to her every whim and desire and told me she would never toughen up and get over it unless I made her put it in the past. My mom was from hardy Irish stock, Diarmid but f**k we fought a lot the year before she died.”

“I was on a training course in England when she passed. I didn’t even know she was gone until I got back.” He ran his hand over his head chagrined, “I should have been here for it too. I let you down Conor.”

“No, you didn’t. Your life didn’t have to stop because ours was stalled for a bit. I’m proud of you. You’ve done well for yourself. You’ve made a name for yourself. You have your s**t sorted, well, except for the girl thing. Good luck with that shit.” Conor grinned at him. “You may want to start a hobby like carving. You’re going to need an outlet.”

“The only outlet I need is my work. I can solve the cases. Whether there are eight linked cases or eight separate cases, they are now mine to deal with.” He said resolutely, “the only one I’d rather wasn’t on my desk is Reardon’s but even then, curiosity is getting to me. I want to know who set the fucker up. I might buy them a beer.”

The two men laughed and then Conor reached out and surprised him by hugging him tight.

“I’m glad you’re home Diarmid.”

“Me too,” he hugged his friend back. “Now let go of me before that Corry girl comes back in here with the flag, she thinks you need.”

Conor chuckled and slapped his shoulder, “eight years of therapy has told me I’m allowed to be in touch with my emotional side. Doesn’t make me less of a man. Girls like it too.”

As he poked around the workshop, he found a photo of Lita which had to have been taken recently and lifted it up and shook his head. In all white leather and sitting on a dirt bike with her hair in a pony she was muddy, smiling and he acknowledged all grown up. He was having a hard time reconciling the nervous chatty girl he’d once known to the cold woman he’d met today in the kitchen. He let himself think again about the way she had froze when he’d walked in and how she’d shut him out hard and fast. He wasn’t sure what he had done to make her hate him, but she hated him as surely as his friend could carve a p***s with panache. He gave a nod to himself. He didn’t now why it was bothering him but his curiosity as an investigator wanted him to get to the root of it.

He set the photo down and listened more as Conor explained the inspiration behind a giant n***d mermaid hanging off a fishing line and decided if he got Lita alone, he’d simply ask her straight up. They were old family friends. It didn’t make sense to have animosity and her green eyes had been full of them. He’d get to the bottom of it. One way or another.