Afternoon Delight (15 page)

“Doing okay, LT?” Casey called from the other side of the free throw line. “Your head bothering you?”

“My head's fine, Casey,” he muttered. His heart, not so much. This was speed and indifference led him to, feeling sick at heart from what he'd done. He started driving toward the hoop. Jonesy held his ground. He was six inches shorter than Tim, but a bulldog when it came to defending his territory, and Tim ran the risk of fouling him.

Jonesy would take her seriously. He was quiet, committed, hardworking, perfect for a woman who'd walked through hell and come out the other side. He'd appreciate Sarah for who she was, know exactly what he had, cherish it.

Tim bumped Jonesy's chest with his shoulder, nudging, nudging, dribbling while he forced Jonesy to concede territory. In his peripheral vision, Casey and Gutierrez jockeyed for position under the basket.

He spun on one foot, shifted his weight to the other, and went for the easy jump shot, but his timing was off and Jonesy knew his moves. He went up at the same time Tim did and smacked the ball backward, out of bounds. Hoots and whistles arose from the observers as a neighborhood kid waiting for the court gathered the ball in one hand and spun it up on a finger.

Jonesy beckoned for the ball. “You're off your game today,” he said, breathing hard.

That's what futures did to you in the moment. They threw you off your game. He was thinking about the future, what could be, if he could figure out how to make it happen, what he'd lose if he didn't. He could wait for a moment like hers, a searing grief, to change his outlook, or he could learn from his own mistakes and her losses and admit he was wrong. Totally dead wrong. Speed didn't stop the pain. It just numbed it. In the aftermath of the let's-be-friends speech, he understood one thing: A future where he was friends with Sarah Naylor was a future he didn't want.

“Earth to Cannon.” Jonesy snapped his fingers in front of Tim's face. “Sir? Do you know your name?”

He finally realized . . . the game had changed.

***

Tim pulled on a sweatshirt against the cooling May evening air, then fell into step next to Jonesy. He knew he hadn't taken Sarah out yet, because no one gossiped like first responders. If the captain had a date, the whole station would know. “Have you gone out with Sarah yet?”
“We had a date last weekend, but she had to cancel. She had a long day at work and she didn't feel up to it. We're rescheduled for this weekend,” Jonesy said noncommittally.

Thank you, Jesus. Tim's heart expanded in his chest. Maybe she'd put off Jonesy because she needed time, or maybe she really was too tired. Either way, he had a second chance at the first really good grovel of his life. “Remember when I said I didn't care if you asked Sarah out?”

“Yeah,” Jonesy said, eyebrows halfway up his forehead.

“I changed my mind.”

Jonesy's brows lowered into a pissed-off frown. “You said—”

Tim cut him off. “I know. I do care.”

“So you are dating her?”

“It's complicated,” Tim said.

“Meaning you fucked it up,” Jonesy said, exasperated, because he knew Tim all too well. They stopped for the light, Jonesy scanning for a break in traffic to jaywalk. “Give me one good reason why I should do the right thing and clear out of your way.”

“Because you always do the right thing,” Tim said. He waited until Jonesy looked at him. “Because I like her. I really like her.”

“Shit.” The word dripped disgust.

“Yeah.” The more steps he took in the future, the firmer the ground felt under his feet. It was still scary, but right. Really right. Okay. He could do this. Slower. Careful. Care-full. Sure, high velocity was appropriate in emergency situations, but the rest of the time? Care-full. He'd make it his new motto.

“It's gonna cost you.”

No problem. “I'll clean out the back of your bus for a month.”

“That's a start,” Jonesy said grumpily.

“Thanks,” Tim said. “I mean it. Thanks.”

“Asshole.”

“I know,” Tim said, taking it in stride. If Jonesy were really mad at him, or really set on dating Sarah, he wouldn't have given up so easily.

The next question was, where did he go from here?

***

Not quite sure where to start, he went home, showered, changed into jeans and a T-shirt, then went for a walk. He had a place in mind: a rent-controlled apartment in a six-floor walkup housing a couple married for over fifty years. He stopped and bought flowers, then rang the bell.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Cohen, it's Tim Cannon. Can I come up?”

She buzzed him in and had the door open when he got to the top of the stairs. The climb went a little faster when he wasn't carrying fifteen pounds of equipment and a stretcher. “Come in, come in,” she exclaimed. “Arthur, look who's here to see us! I'm sorry, but it's his dinnertime. I make meals according to his medications now,” she said, and sat back down at the table.

Mr. Cohen turned to look at Tim. He had a tea towel tied around his neck, but his eyes were calm and curious. On the table in front of him sat a bowl of soup. The stock pot simmered on the ancient gas stove.

“I'm sorry to interrupt your meal,” he said.

“Sit down,” she urged. “Have you eaten?”

“No, ma'am,” he said.

“Would you like to join us? I have plenty. I got in the habit of doubling the recipe when the boys were little and never got out of it. It freezes nicely, and sometimes I take some down to Mary in 4C.”

“I'll get it,” he said hastily.

In between spooning bites of soup into Mr. Cohen's mouth she directed him to the bowls, the silverware, the juice glasses. Feeling a little out of place, he ladled out a bowlful of soup and took a slice of bread from the plate on the table. Mrs. Cohen surveyed his meal and nodded her approval.

After he blew on the soup to cool it, he sipped. “It's good,” he said.

“It's my grandmother's recipe,” she confided, then dabbed at Mr. Cohen's chin. “Beef and barley. When we were first married I made it nearly every week because it was cheap. Then we had the boys and I made it every week because we could stretch it with potatoes and vegetables. Now I make it because the smell reminds me of our life together, and it's easy for Arthur to eat.”

She took a bite herself while her husband chewed and swallowed. In the spring sunshine her skin was paper-thin, dotted with age spots, creased and wrinkled around her mouth and eyes.

“Did you make the bread, too?” It was a dark brown bread, a dense, chewy compliment to the soup.

“Yes, dear.”

Tim looked at her hands, gently lifting a piece of buttered bread to her husband's mouth, then lifting a piece to her own. He saw Sarah's hands in fifty years, hands that made the things that made life worth living, good food, cleaned wounds. In that moment, he knew what he wanted to do.

***

“You really didn't have to stay home,” Sarah said. Trish had canceled her weekend in the Hamptons. They'd spent Saturday scrubbing the food truck, then come home to scrub the apartment. Now they were stretched out in the squishy chairs, watching the sun set over Manhattan and drinking wine. “I know how much you like the Hamptons.”

“After your date canceled, I thought you might need a friend. Plus, we got all the cleaning done. Keeping busy helps.” She sipped her wine. “Tim hasn't called? Texted?”

“Nope,” she said, trying for lighthearted. “It's all right. I was already getting more emotionally involved than he was. The signs were all there, even before Captain Jones asked me out. I did the right thing. It's just . . . not what I would have done in the past.”

“What would you have done in the past?”

“Honestly? Probably gone out with both of them at once. I mean, not at the same time, but dated both of them . . . gone out at different times . . . Oh, hell, just pour me some more wine.”

“It's a sunk cost,” Trish said as she poured out the rest of the bottle into Sarah's glass.

“It's a what?”

“A sunk cost. You've already spent the time. You can't get it back, but continuing to invest in it doesn't make sense, either. You cut your losses and walk away.”

Sarah considered this as the setting sun drenched the Manhattan skyline in shades of orange and gold. She still wasn't sure how she felt about the city. It was growing on her. Maybe. If she were being reasonable, she couldn't hold the whole of New York City responsible for her dinged heart. “How do you know if a sunk cost is truly sunk or a project that just takes a little more time to develop?”

“In my old job the answer would be inside information masked as intuition,” Trish said, scrolling through Twitter on her phone. “Which is, under no circumstances, to be mistaken for wishful thinking.”

“I liked him,” Sarah said after a while, to no one in particular. “He loved New York. He loved this city. Worked hard to take care of it. I liked that about him.”

Trish tossed her phone on the coffee table and finished her wine. “I'm meeting some friends in Tribeca tonight. Want to come?”

“After all that cleaning? You've got more energy than I do. I'm going to stay home and nurse the sunk cost with wine and binging on
The Tudors
.”

One more night of regrets and nursing her wounded pride, and then she'd move on.

***

She got up the next morning to an incipient red wine headache that demanded water or coffee or both, stat. The shower was running, so she stumbled toward the scent of strong, fresh coffee. A guy wearing boxer shorts and a Ramones T-shirt sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and skimming something on his phone.

“Morning,” he said. “I made coffee.”

“Bless you,” she said. “Want me to find you
the Economist
?”

“Is that the preferred reading material for strange men you find at your kitchen table?”

He had kind eyes and a smile she liked. “Maybe,” she said. “The guy who was reading
the Post
didn't get asked back.”

“
Wall Street Journal
?” he asked, waggling his phone. “I'm good, thanks.”

She poured the rest of the coffee into a cup and started a fresh batch.

“Are you Sarah?”

“I am.”

“I followed-slash-liked-slash-friended Symbowl's social media after I met Trish last night. Quite a few people have signed on for the new sauce tasting event.”

She shoved her hair out of her face, took the proffered phone, and scrolled through posts and tweets. “Huh,” she said. AnonEMT had tweeted
Can't wait to try something spicier than Infinite Heat
. Tim swore he wasn't behind the tweets, and she believed him. Still, the support was nice, and went a long way toward making her feel even more at home in the city.

“Trish said you've only been here a couple of months. Where are you from?”

“San Francisco,” she said, and sipped the coffee.

“Not bad,” he said, reclaiming his phone. “But there's the earthquakes. Major fault zone. The eastern half of California is going to crash into the ocean in the next hundred years or so. New York is better.”

“For the hurricanes and the howling winter storms,” she agreed.

“Earthquakes come without warning,” he said. “You can plan for hurricanes and blizzards.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you do?”

“Risk management for a commodities brokerage.”

Suddenly the focus on natural disasters made sense. “If this is what you're like after coffee, I hate to see you before.”

“It's all cowls and scythes and long bony fingers of death,” he agreed.

Trish padded in dressed in yoga pants, a camisole, and a big smile. She toweled her wet hair. “Sarah, this is Brandon. Brandon, Sarah.”

He had a name. A very good sign indeed. “If someone goes out for the ingredients for mimosas and French toast, I'll make brunch,” Sarah said.

“Deal,” Brandon said, and tried to slide his phone into his pocket. It clattered to the floor.

“Pants,” Trish said. “You had pants last night, right?”

“Pretty sure,” Brandon said.

“Don't forget powdered sugar,” Sarah said. A few minutes later the door closed behind them. She gave herself a few minutes to be grateful for friends, old and new, who would take care of her as she'd taken care of Aunt Joan, and to regret that keeping her promise to her aunt meant moving on from Tim. Then she got up to start scrambling eggs and heating the pan.

***

Sarah's recipe for split pea soup on his phone's screen, Tim stopped in the grocery store's sliding doors, scanned the recipe again, then opted for a cart rather than his usual basket. The vegetables were easy enough to find, carrots, onions, celery all up front. When he asked for a ham bone, the guy in the meat department looked at him like he was crazy, but produced one. Split peas, where the hell were the split peas if they weren't in the frozen section? A taciturn clerk informed him were in a bag in the dried section (who the fuck knew?). He found the garlic, bagged his own groceries to speed this along, and headed home to make something from scratch for the first time in . . . well, in forever. Back in his apartment everything went into the stock pot he had only because when he made pasta he made too much to fit into a regular pot. Then he let it simmer while he started on the brown bread.

What did Sarah like about this? He paid attention to learn. It was an investment in the present, and in the future, he decided as he measured flour and water. Cooking occupied the immediate moment: cutting vegetables, waiting for soup to simmer, adding spices at the right time to create a particular flavor. It rewarded patient attention with savory smells as carrots softened and the soup took on the sweetness of the onions. As the dough rose, his whole apartment smelled like yeast, a smell he hadn't taken in since his grandmother died several years earlier. The sticky dough clung to his hands until he worked in enough dry flour to absorb the moisture, and he ended up with flour all over the floor, but the smell of rising bread more than made up for the mess. This time he was cleaning up the mess of life, not the mess of sickness or death.