The Firefighter and the Virgin Princess (3 page)

"I want to. It was our fault."

"It's really not necessary."

"But we should. I should. That's a nice
coat. Expensive, huh?" Christ, why was he burbling like a teenager?
And he'd just made the monumental mistake of reaching out to touch
her sleeve. He couldn't stop himself.

"Don't touch me!" She drew back at once,
avoiding his fingers.

Of course he was sweating and grimy. He'd
just come from a call where he had to run up eight flights in full
gear, through smoke. Princess Blue Eyes must know nothing about
hard work.

Before she could move away, he spurted, "I'm
Joe. Joe Rossini. Lieutenant." He stuck out his hand again after
wiping it on his bunker coat. She looked horrified, as if he'd spat
on it first. In the next second she'd ducked around him and walked
on, merging into the crowd.

"If you change your mind you can find me at
engine six," he shouted. "C shift!" She didn't look back. The way
she moved was elegant, smooth, her long dark hair flowing in a
ponytail behind her, gleaming with rain. He felt like grabbing that
hair and tugging her back.

But he stood there, staring after her until
she disappeared around the corner.

Gradually he became aware of his crew
hollering and laughing. Oh, they'd love this.

"Doing your bit for public relations, eh,
Joe?" one of them exclaimed as he leapt back up into the cab of the
fire truck and slammed the door.

"You runnin' for Mayor, Joey?"

"Saw-ry about your coat, ma'am," another
teased. "Aw shucks, ma'am, let me pay."

"She was drenched, okay?" he muttered. "And
she looked kinda sad."

"Like every other motherfucker in the city.
Only the drunks and the junkies are happy."

Joe looked out of the window as they pulled
away from the curb. Her eyes were so blue, it felt like they were
imprinted on his mind. But they were filled with tears.

He couldn't forget that face. It reminded
him of one of those Egyptian statues in a museum. All noble and
haughty and mysterious. Nefertiti. Yeah, like
Nefer-fucking-titi.

* * * *

"Hey, Mike, your brother got off his leash
today and went roaming after a prissy bitch."

"Chased a long-legged, snobby chick down the
street."

"Offered the lady some laundry services, if
ya know what I mean."

Joe good-naturedly let the laughter and
teasing continue. It would be a mistake to act like it bothered
him, for then they'd never stop. As it was, they'd soon find
something else to laugh about. There was plenty of material on a
twenty-four hour shift in the firehouse.

His brother dropped to the bench beside
him.

"Cute girl, huh?"

"Yeah, she was okay."

Don't touch
me
, she'd exclaimed, looking at his hands
as if they had blood and brain-matter on them.

The men around the table began shoveling
food into their mouths.

"About time you got back in the saddle,
bro," Mike muttered. "What's it been? Six months?"

"Four and a half."

"Time enough then. Gotta get Donna out of
your system. She's moved on, right?"

Like he needed that rubbed in. He and Donna
had been off and on for two years, but when he didn't buy her an
engagement ring exactly when she thought he should, she called it
quits. Apparently she'd already found someone else, because she'd
been shouting her mouth off about the new love of her life at the
hair salon where Mike's wife worked.

"I'm not really looking for anyone right
now," Joe replied, reaching for a can of soda and popping it. "I
could do with a break."

"Sure, but it does no harm to look."

He shrugged. "Maybe."
Princess Blue Eyes probably had a boyfriend. Girls who looked like
that didn't usually lack for male company. And she hadn't even
given him her name so she wasn't interested in
him
. Why would she be— a waspy,
Upper East Side, good-looking girl like that? Christ, her legs went
on for days in those tight, black pant-thingys. And she smelled
real good.

Grabbing another hunk of bread he mopped up
some sauce and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing fast.

Yeah, she was hot. But in a cool way.
Nothing like the girls he usually went with— all lipstick, push-up
bras and Godzilla fingernails. She was different. Too cool for
him.

Not that Joe Rossini didn't have his charms,
but he was just a regular guy and Blue Eyes was clearly out of his
league. Staten Island Joe knew his hunting ground and it didn't
include Park Avenue. That would be setting himself up for a whole
set of troubles and heartache. His idea of Friday night fun — when
he wasn't on shift—was a few beers down at his local and a game of
poker. She didn't look the sort to fit in down at Lucky Lou's where
the hot wings were half price on a Friday before six and "ladies"
got their first drink free.

Blue Eyes would call it "complimentary", he
thought with a sniff.

No doubt she spent her Friday nights at art
gallery openings, eating stuff that tasted like cat food, wiped on
thin toast triangles.

Everything about her was neat, composed.
Except for the mud stain. She wouldn't want a guy like him around,
making things untidy and grubby.

Joe used to be a lot bolder when it came to
women, much more devil-may-care, but nothing mattered so much back
then. These days he was cautious. At thirty-one he was finally
getting around to straightening out his life and thought he'd
outgrown the tendency to make impulsive mistakes with his cock.
According to Donna, he should get a life like his brother's— a
good, steady life with a wife to keep him in line, two or three
kids. Simple, sweet. Just a regular guy's life. That's what he
should want.

Yeah, Princess Blue Eyes
was way out of his league. They both knew it, that's why she'd
looked at him the way she did. But it was also the reason why he'd
watched her go with more than a hint of wistfulness in his heart,
because sometimes what Joe
should
want — the things that were expected for a man
like him—didn't quite match up to what he really wanted. That
something special that was just out of his reach.

* * * *

She stretched slowly, legs out at 180
degrees, arms on the floor, torso lowered flat to the boards. Every
day it felt as if it took longer to get her muscles warm enough,
but ironically her hip didn't feel too bad today. Or she was in
denial?

Raising her head, she watched Tiffany and
Peter going through their combination under the watchful eye of the
choreographer. This was a modern peace, all angles and terrifying,
gravity-defying lifts. They'd been working on it for a week, and
Lily was understudying the female lead. It was good part for her,
but far from the first time she'd understudied for Tiffany and that
job involved more cheerleading and tear-wiping than it did actual
dancing.

Just as she was appointed mother hen for the
girls in the corps, Lily appeared to have become Tiffany Weltzer's
unofficial caretaker. To make matters worse for doe-eyed Tiffany,
this choreographer was young, full of ideas, and kept changing his
mind about what he wanted. This did nothing for the nervous
dancer's self-confidence or anyone else's patience with it.

But stretching at the side of the studio,
Lily was enjoying the choreographer's bursts of inspiration. She
loved the creative process, seeing it come together, being a part
of a new ballet from the ground up. She may be reserved and
withdrawn outside dancing, but in the studio she wasn't afraid to
experiment.

This was to be a modern piece with very
basic sets and plain costumes, everything pared down to concentrate
on the lines and shapes made by the dancers' bodies. It was a
welcome breather from filly tutus and tiaras.

As Tiffany struggled to pull herself out of
an upside down spiral, Lily suddenly found her mind wandering back
to the fireman who'd run after her on the street that afternoon.
Odd that he should creep back into her thoughts when she ought to
be completely absorbed in marking Tiffany.

There was something interesting about him
though. He was very...real.

It was the best word she could come up with
to describe it.

He had planted himself
before her in those big, heavy fireman boots and stuck out his
hand, which was so hot she could feel the heat coming off it. The
heat coming off
him
. He was all churning, moving life. And noise. His voice was
loud— the sort used to bellowing just to be heard above the
never-ending sounds of the city. But it wasn't harsh. It was deep
and warm. No doubt everyone would always know when he entered a
room.

Lily was a people watcher and loved to
analyze the way a person sat, ate a donut, or read a magazine on
the subway. She could watch someone for fifteen minutes and make up
the entire history of their life from the way they held a pen or
scratched their chin.

So she'd already made up the fireman's
story. He had a cheerful girlfriend who wore big earrings and high
heels, but he couldn't stop his eye from wandering. He drank bud—
never the light variety—and the last time he wore a tux was his
senior prom. He didn't go to the theater or any restaurant that
needed a reservation. He worked out— evidently— but didn't have a
gym membership, thought them a waste of money. The last book he
read was an autobiography of some baseball player, ghostwritten.
And he didn't get around to finishing it, because he left it behind
somewhere or lent it to a pal and never got it back. His favorite
food was pizza and the only dancing he knew was a slow,
rhythm-challenged sway, with his hands on some girl's butt.

He was the complete opposite of the boys who
inhabited her world. In fact, he might as well be from another
planet.

And yet he kept sliding back into her
thoughts. It was his hands, she decided. She couldn't get them out
of her mind. They were large with square fingertips. Firm,
powerful, strong hands. The sort that wouldn't drop or fumble, but
could always be relied on.

Men in her world were dancers with
expressive, gracefully tapered fingers. There were non-dancer staff
at the theater too, of course: electricians, prop men and stage
hands. They were the closest she came to "outsiders" and they eyed
her —as they did all the dancers—with amusement, fascination and
confusion. She liked to watch their hands as they worked. It was
one of her dirty secrets, imagining what it might be like to have
those rough hands touching her.

Across the studio Tiffany needed a break.
Sweat was shining on the prominent vein down the side of her
slender throat, and she was pale with fright about that last lift.
The choreographer called Lily over to demonstrate the same move,
which she did, despite the jarring pain in her foot when she came
down on it.

Got to overcome the tenderness. Don't be a
wimp. Don't think about it.

Instead she thought about the fireman again.
As a dancer she had a tendency to look at other people's bodies and
assess them with a critical eye, so she'd taken it all in. He had a
strong frame with wide shoulders. Good hair too — thick and dark,
stuck to his forehead with some perspiration. Maybe she should have
shaken his hand when he offered it, but it felt strange at the
time. Stupidly she'd walked off like a snotty bitch.

He had a nice smile.

"No smiling! No expression, please."

She hastily straightened
her lips, having momentarily forgotten where she was and that this
was a ballet the choreographer called
Behind the Mirror
. It was supposed
to be about what people would really see if the mirror reflected
their character instead of their appearance. She had a feeling the
choreographer was trying to make a statement to an ex-boyfriend or
something, and working out his issues with this piece.

Theirs was a vain world full of shallow
judgments. It didn't matter how hard a person worked, how nice they
were, or how much they wanted something. If they didn't look right
for a part, if they didn't have the perfect "line", a symmetry of
form, they didn't get it. As a result they were all very
self-absorbed, constantly staring into mirrors.

She wondered what that fireman had seen when
he looked at her. Of course he knew nothing about how fast and
balanced her pirouettes were, or how high she could leap in a grand
jete, so he would have judged her in some other way, by another
standard.

Perhaps she should have smiled at the
fireman, said "thank you". It wouldn't have cost her anything. He'd
only tried to help and he could have just driven on, ignoring her
splashed coat. One day, when she couldn't dance anymore, she'd have
to learn to act like a normal person, wouldn't she? She'd have to
interact with "real" people instead of her reflection in the
mirror.

As they left the studio an hour later,
Tiffany's partner bumped her shoulder, "I hear you're up for the
Lilac Fairy this year. Congrats."

"Thanks, Peter. It'll go to Stacey though.
The director loves her. Singles her out a lot lately if he comes
into class."

He shrugged. "Sometimes being the target of
high expectations is not such a great thing. Paradisi pushes her
real hard and she's been out sick a lot. Her bulimia is
raging."

Ah, the B word. Funny how
anorexia and bulimia were always referred to as if they were a
dancer's pet.
She had to dash home and
feed her bulimia
.

Lily felt a spasm of guilt for having
thought about that earlier and seeing it as her way to a part. What
sort of person wished an incapacitating illness on another so she
could snag a role in a ballet? She felt sick suddenly, ashamed of
herself. She did not want to be that sort of person. When had it
happened that she became so cutthroat?