Roy DeSoto pulled his little yellow sports car up to the entrance to the LACFD Headquarters parking lot.

There were no itty bitty white vehicles visible in the lot, so he knew he had beaten Miss Ferrel there.

________________________________________________

Fifteen minutes of waiting later, the little white car appeared.

Roy followed it onto the lot and pulled his Porshe in right beside it. He got out and stepped up to the girl’s open car window.

Miss Ferrel glared icily up at him. “Did he send you here?” she inquired, sounding every bit as icy as her glare.

“No. In fact, he must never know that I came here.”

“You’re wasting your breath. I do NOT want to talk about John Gage.”

“Why not?”

“Why don’t you go ask his girlfriend?”

“I thought I was.”

“His OTHER girlfriend!”

“Some of his friends are girls. But he only had one girlfriend. You.”

Stacey rolled her eyes. The poor paramedic was apparently clueless. “Look, I don’t wish to discuss this any furth—”

“—Just tell me why you won’t talk to him. He can’t under—”

“—No! Now, will you please step back and let me out?”

“Then he’s right. You’ve never felt anything but pity for him. You never really cared.”

Stacy’s clenched jaw quivered and tears began streaming silently down her cheeks. “He thinks I never really cared?! He thinks I never really cared?!” she shouted, loud enough to turn a few other heads in the lot. “Do all of his ‘female friends’ get a key to his apartment? Or just the ones that ‘put out’?!”

“Who has a key to his apartment?”

“I didn’t hang around long enough to get acquainted!”

Besides his landlady, there was only one other female with a key to—. Suddenly, all the puzzling pieces began falling into place. “You went over to John’s apartment the other day and a woman answered the door. Right?”

“In her nightie!”

“Right. In her nightie…It’s a shame you ‘didn’t hang around long enough to get acquainted’. Her name is Julie Ann…Julie Ann GAGE. She’s Johnny’s older sister.”

Stacey was glad she was sitting down because she was certain all the blood had just rushed out of her head. She recalled seeing the name Julie Ann Gage listed as next of kin in John’s file. ‘Oh…Gawd…What have I done?’

“She’s a stewardess for TWA and, whenever she gets a flight into LAX, she crashes at his place. It’s his idea. He says it’s the only chance they have to see each other these days. The two of them are pretty close.”

Stacey draped her folded arms over the steering wheel, buried her face into them and began sobbing—uncontrollably. “I really blew it!” she exclaimed between sniffles. “I could live with it as long as it was HIS fault! He’ll never speak to me again! I really hurt him, didn’t I!” She aimed her blurry gaze up at John’s best friend, saw his sad nod and began bawling all over again. “I only hurt him because he hurt me—because I THOUGHT he was hurting me! Ohhhh…” she groaned between sobs, “Bonnie was right again! I never should have listened to all that gossip! I…I—”

“—Feel like a fool?” Roy volunteered.

The girl nodded and continued to sob her heart out. “I ruined everything! He must really hate me now! And it’s all MY fault!”

“Hey, if he hates you, he should be glad you won’t see him anymore. Right? He should be glad to be rid of you.”

She glanced blurrily up at him, looking thoughtful.

“I’ve never seen him more miserable.”

“Really?!” she queried hopefully, but then began sobbing harder than ever. “Ohhhhh…I made him miserable! I am sooooooo sorry!”

“Maybe you should tell him that.”

“Do you really think he’d listen, after the horrible way I treated him?”

“He’ll listen, all right. We just need to figure out a way to make him listen. It’s for his own good.”

She sniffled and managed a bittersweet smile. “John is very fortunate to have a friend like you.”

Roy returned the girl’s sad smile. “Yeah. I know. I’m constantly reminding him of that. Look, I gotta run. My wife’s probably wondering what happened to me. Give me a call later on.” He didn’t bother to give the young woman his phone number. After all she did work in the personnel department.

“Thanks, Mr. DeSoto!”

“It’s Roy. And, you’re welcome. Remember, I was never here and we never had this little conversation.”

Miss Ferrel nodded. She watched the paramedic leave the lot. Then she buried her tear-streaked face back into her arms and started crying all over again.

_________________________________________________________

Twenty minutes later…

Roy had just finished explaining his late arrival and the whole Johnny/Stacey fiasco to his wife.

“So, you see? It was all just a terrible misunderstanding. And, I’d like to invite the two of them here to see if they can sort things out.”

“You can’t be serious! After what that woman just put Johnny through? You actually expect me to welcome her into our home? I don’t care how terrible the misunderstanding was, there’s NO excuse for the rotten way she treated him!”

Her husband batted his big blue eyes a few times and flashed her his most persuasive grin.

Joann had to purse her lips to keep from smiling. “All I can say is, she’d better keep her distance. Cuz, if she comes within reach, I swear I’ll be sorely tempted to slap that woman silly!”

Roy was amused to no end. ‘Johnny had Smokey Bear and Mama Bear in his corner.’

Wait…Did that make him Papa Bear? Guess that would make Gage their cub.

As if on cue, the kitchen’s wall phone began to ring.

‘And that must be Goldilocks,’ Roy bemusedly reasoned. The fireman gave his feisty wife a grateful hug and headed off to see if he could set some sort of a reconciliation in motion.

__________________________________________________________

Following Stacey’s Uncle’s visit, Johnny had been unable to get back to sleep.

So he got up and stumbled into his bathroom. He stared at his mustached reflection in the medicine chest’s mirror for a few moments. Every time he looked at his hairy upper lip, he was reminded of Stacey.

‘Make sure that no embers are exposed and still smoldering.’

He opened the little cabinet and removed his razor.

_______________________________________________

Following his close shave, John showered and dressed and then set about removing the last vestiges of the young lady’s memory from his apartment.

‘Bury the embers.’

The developed photos he’d taken of her, as well as all the negatives, were pitched into the trash—along with the notebook containing the other poems he’d written for her.

The trash was then hauled out to the dumpster.

________________________________________

Immediately after breakfast, the off-duty for four days fireman began loading his camping gear into the back of his Rover.

‘Drown ALL embers, not just the glowing ones.’

He was gonna head for the ‘tall and uncut’—the extremely tall and uncut.

The photographer was hoping to add some Giant Redwood silhouette shots to his collection and he knew the perfect spot to capture his photos—the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

He left a note, telling Roy where he was gonna be and when he expected to be back, and then headed due east on his 255 mile and 2 hour and 45 minute drive to Paradise, leaving all the stress, and the noise and air pollution, far behind him.

Chapter 12