Sliding Past Vertical (13 page)

“No, it’s—”

What Sarah’s plan hadn’t
covered was her half-naked, soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend bursting through the door,
slinging her over his shoulder like a Neanderthal, and taking her back to bed. By
the time she’d stopped bitching the guy out for being such an ass, Emerson had
left.

An ache spread across Sarah’s
stomach as other incidents came back to her, all the times she’d hurt him. It
had never been intentional, merely a result of his wanting to remain in her
life in any capacity. He’d been a Good Samaritan caught in the line of fire. Of
course he loved her; of course he wanted more than her body, if he was still
willing to take the bullet.

She thought he’d gotten over
it. He’d told her he’d gotten over it.

But he hadn’t. He was still
waiting, always waiting, just for her to shoot him again.

This time, at closer range.

Emerson
still loves me
,
Sarah thought, just to hear in her mind how it sounded.

It was too frightening to
repeat and much easier to stay angry. How dare he think she’d come back to
Syracuse for him?

But hadn’t she, really?
Because she could always count on him for comfort and knew he would take care
of her. How many years could that go on before he felt he deserved something
more than “thank you” in return?

Maybe that’s what she let go
too far.

Sarah heard the scratch of a
lighter and opened her eyes. Gwendolyn was firing up a joint. She took a drag
and then handed it to Sarah.

She stared at it a moment, the
tidy roll-job dangling in between Gwendolyn’s lugubrious fingernails.

Then thought,
what the hell.

The smoke was hot and burned
her lungs. Sarah held her breath for as long as she could and exhaled slowly,
trying not to cough. As she and Gwendolyn passed the joint back and forth, Sarah
began to feel smoother. Emerson became a cloud of warm fuzz around her heart
and slid to the back of her thoughts.

Then Izzy returned with a
kind of dreamy, sleepwalking expression, a look of possibility.

“Just tell me you’re not in
love with him,” Gwendolyn said.

Izzy had been happily
lighting a second joint, but with her bubble poked, her lower lip trembled with
defiance. “I could be. If I wanted.”

Gwendolyn shook her head
slowly at Sarah: a conspiratorial gesture between two older women who knew
better about life and love than some dumb, untested freshman.

Only Sarah didn’t know
better, or didn’t want to.

She wanted to believe what Rashid
had said about his arranged marriage. That in time you could fall in love with
whomever the circumstances of your life had chosen for you.

Then she’d never have to hurt
Emerson again.

Chapter 21

Sarah dreamed of Emerson
falling.

He stood on a diving board
set out an open window. “You don’t love me,” he said. Aching with sadness, she reached
for him, wanting to tell him it wasn’t true. But her arms weren’t long enough,
and the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. Then he stepped off. He floated
to earth, an oak leaf carried on the wind. She watched him grow smaller and
smaller until he was nothing but a swirl of wheat-colored hair. She leaped out
after him but didn’t float. She plummeted. The wind rushed at her face, whipped
her hair, and tore at her clothing.

Seconds before landing, she woke
in a sweat, staring at the springs of the top bunk. Her heart pounded. As she
tried to catch her breath, she began to remember what happened the night before.

How many joints did they
smoke? How long did she cry?

Izzy came in wearing a
bathrobe, a thick green towel slung around her shoulders. “Hi,” she said,
smiling.

This
is the difference between eighteen and almost thirty,
Sarah thought. After smoking
pot until all hours, Izzy was dewy and beautiful, while Sarah felt like
something that had crawled out from beneath a junked car.

Izzy rubbed at her wet hair
with the towel. “I’m way late for bio. But take your time. The door will lock
behind you. Just kind of don’t call too much attention to yourself, ’cause
we’re really not supposed to leave guests unsupervised.”

Sarah nodded. No problem
there. She was clumsy, she broke things, and people, but with a past full of
questionable boyfriends and bad decisions, she was an old hand at sneaking out.

“You have somewhere else to
crash, don’t you?” Izzy’s eyes flowed with compassion. “I mean, it would be so
cool if you could stay here, but...”

Sarah tried to think. She had
time. Her temp assignment didn’t start until the next morning. Emerson was on
double shift again. Rashid would be busy in the lab. She had all day to figure
out what she should do. “I’ll find a place,” she said.

Again Izzy burst into a
smile. “I might know one! Wait right here!”

She raced out the door, came
back what seemed like seconds later, and handed Sarah a piece of paper.

“Here. Call this number. A
friend of Gwennie’s is giving up her apartment off campus, ’cause her roommate
left school and she can’t handle the rent by herself. She wants to move in with
her boyfriend, anyway, and Gwennie doesn’t think the landlady’s found anyone to
take over the lease yet. Since you have, like, a job, you might be able to
afford it.”

Sarah’s head spun. All she heard
of the garble was “apartment” and that she might be able to afford it.
“Thanks.”

Izzy started flinging on
clothes. “I hope it works out for you.”

“You, too,” Sarah said.

* * * * *

It was a long walk, up all
those stairs to the quad, made longer by the Indian summer heat. Sarah took off
her cardigan and tied it around her waist. She climbed so slowly that students,
perky and bright like Izzy, wove around her. Flashbacks hounded her, of sneaking
out of Emerson’s dorm room, other dorm rooms after that, and a variety of men’s
apartments. Whatever past indignities crawling home ungroomed had entailed, at
least a mountainside of stairs hadn’t been involved.

When she reached the bricked
terrace of the new law building at the top, she needed to stop and rest. She
kept her back to the dormitories, to Van Buren Street, to Onondaga Lake, unable
to bear turning around and getting smacked with one last reminder of how horrible
she’d been to Emerson, whose only transgression, she’d realized the previous
night somewhere between the third and fourth joint, was wanting to love her. And
if that wasn’t available to him, just to be her friend.

She felt suddenly lightheaded
and queasy. Hunching over, she kept her head down, hands on the tops of her
thighs, like a spent runner. Students streamed by, giving her odd looks.
Eventually one might ask if she needed help. Low blood sugar, she’d say, but
she didn’t want any more pathos from strangers.

Sticky, tired, and smelling
like an ashtray, Sarah finally dragged herself to Hendricks Chapel, hoping they
still had a coffeehouse in the basement lounge. More than anything, she wanted
to huddle into one of their big, overstuffed chairs and be gloriously ignored,
get a coffee and something to eat and just sit for a while until she felt well
enough to move on.

Two students holding little
white takeout bags exited the side door of the chapel and she wanted to hug
them. She went in and asked for a large coffee and a giant bran muffin. It was
no surprise that things were more expensive than she remembered, and the
workers had suddenly become very young. But the bigger insult was that all the
comfortable furniture had disappeared, replaced with charmless armless plastic
chairs and long, institutional tables.

She sighed, too tired to let
it bother her. As uninviting as the lounge had become, at least it was still a
place to sit and be left alone. She parked in a vacant corner, wolfed down the
muffin and savored the coffee, closing her eyes between sips.

With a clear—or at least
clearing—head, she decided to call the number Izzy had given her. Maybe
she could look at the apartment on the way home. One thing she was certain of: she
shouldn’t be living in Emerson’s house anymore. Her anger had ebbed, and she
was willing to admit that she might have led him on. A little. Just enough.

But given how he felt about
her, it still wasn’t a good idea to stay. There would be too many potential
awkward moments. Sharing a bathroom. Late night donut breaks. Dirk Blade in the
laundry room, fondling her panties.

For a crazy second Sarah
considered moving back to Boston. She could find another job, another roommate.
Hopefully she wouldn’t run into Jay, Dee Dee, or anyone else she knew before.

Don’t
look back,
she told herself.

So
what am I doing here?

She opened her eyes to find
the hole in the lid of her coffee and then looked past it to the line at the
cash register. From out of a crew of gangly boys, all elbows and shins and the
latest styles, Sarah’s gaze landed on a man: dark-haired, pleasantly pudgy, a
head shorter than most. His tailored dress shorts ended just below the knee,
exposing nice, honey-brown calves. Not until he thanked the cashier for his
change did it register in Sarah’s mucky brain that the man was Rashid.

She tried to will herself
invisible. He pocketed his wallet, tucked a newspaper under his arm, and picked
up a cardboard cup of coffee and his briefcase.

And of course spied her
immediately.
 

He looked crisp in the heat,
his pale yellow shirt a pleasing complement to the warm tone of his skin.

“I have a few minutes before
my next class.” His gaze drifted toward his perfectly broken-in Docksiders and
back to her face. “May I join you?”

She shrugged.

He parked in the chair next
to hers and spread the
New York Times
on the table. Then went to work on his coffee. He poured in a packet of sugar
and stirred five times, counterclockwise, with a wooden stick.

“When did you come home last
night?” he asked.

Rashid was normally asleep by
ten and up by six. Apparently he’d left too early that morning, or too quickly,
to notice she hadn’t been home.

“Pretty late.” It was too
hard to explain: the old dorm, black fingernails, a lovesick youth, a kiss in
an elevator, a taste like burnt rubber in her mouth.

And Emerson. Maybe Rashid
could say it right in Hindi. Or Arabic or French. Because there weren’t enough
words in the English language to explain her memories away or apologize to
Emerson for the way she had mistreated him.

“Before I went to bed I left
him a note so he shouldn’t worry.” Rashid still looked at the paper as if they were
two spies who didn’t want to appear to be conversing. “I said you ran into an
old lady professor, and the two of you went out for drinks and to catch up. You
see, even though I’m not a writer I can be creative when necessary.”

It was sensitive of him to
make the professor female. “You’re a good friend.” She sighed. “I’m sorry I was
such a bitch last night. It wasn’t your fault.”

Startled eyes lifted to meet
hers. “But it was! What I told you was not my business to tell.”

She looked away, noticing the
peeling wallpaper at the edge of the floor, the ratty carpet, and Rashid’s
smooth brown leg with its wisps of dark hair, which ended abruptly just above
his sockless ankle.

“Maybe I already knew,” she said.

His tone grew impatient. “If
you already knew, then why did you chew my head off and run away?”

“Because I didn’t want to
know that I knew.” She smiled sadly when she realized how that must have
sounded to him. “Is that completely insane or what?”

His expression softened and
his gaze drifted even with hers. “No, it is not so insane. There are things I
know that I wish I didn’t. Truths I’m very well aware of that I’d prefer not to
be reminded about.”

Sarah bit her lower lip. His
response sounded suspiciously like the preamble to a confession. “You didn’t
tell him what you said last night, did you?”

“Excuse me?” Rashid appeared
to be reeling his focus back in. “Oh. No. I didn’t. How could I, we have not
seen each other since yesterday at breakfast.”

“But you won’t tell him...?”

Rashid was watching her with
his entire face. “Of course not. That, and all of this we have said just now,
we will keep between us. Yes?”

He put out his hand. His palm
was warm and soft. Like in Boston, he was not quick to let go. Sarah felt a
sinking in her stomach. More secrets, more lies. She thought she’d left that
behind when she started her new life.

He added another packet of
sugar to his coffee and stirred again, only four times.

Chapter 22

The apartment became the only
bright spot in Sarah’s day so far. It was furnished, unexpectedly sunny and
well maintained, but it wouldn’t be vacant until the weekend. With a fifty-dollar
check, a quick detour to the pharmacy for emergency grooming supplies, and the
good luck not to be a college student, Sarah talked the landlady into holding
the place for her until the end of the week. She wanted to make sure Rashid had
been serious about loaning her the money and that her temp prospects looked
good enough to meet the monthly payments.

By the time she returned to
Emerson’s house, she longed for a shower, clean clothes, and a nap. That would
still leave her a few hours to figure out how she could manage to stay there
until the apartment was available, how she could pretend nothing had changed,
and how she was going to leave.

Figuring out how to stay would
be the easy part. Rashid practically lived in the lab lately. Emerson was still
on double shifts. The Jordanians rarely inserted themselves into the other
residents’ lives. She’d never see much of anyone.

And if she did, hell, she’d
pretended before.

Still, she tiptoed in and left
the mail on the hall table. There was nothing for her except an envelope from
Dee Dee, probably another whiny letter asking what she was supposed to do about
Jay, who kept leaving messages on Dee Dee’s answering machine. Sarah didn’t
have the mental space to think about that.

She dragged herself up the
stairs and into her room. Emerson’s spare room. She had to stop thinking of it
as hers. Except for the creak of her footsteps, the place was quiet, too quiet,
so she turned on the radio. She dropped her cardigan on the floor as she pushed
off her sneakers. Outside the meager window, a neighbor raked his yard. So odd,
she thought, the contrast between the autumn leaves and the warm weather. Then,
after closing the yellowed blinds, she yanked off her T-shirt, flung away her
bra, and unzipped her jeans, letting them hang open.

She looked for the last of
her clean towels in the closet that wouldn’t stay closed, a closet that wouldn’t
be hers for much longer.

Finally, she found one.

When she turned around
Emerson was standing in the doorway.

* * * * *

Emerson had closed his eyes
for only a few minutes and woke to the sound of Sarah’s radio. His stomach clenched.
When he’d read Rashid’s note, he’d been desperately afraid the “lady professor”
was Sarah’s version of a lie of kindness and she had met someone new. When she
didn’t come home, he’d been sure of it. His mental self-flagellation kept him
up the rest of the night. Sheer terror kept him home from work.

He had to know the truth but
didn’t dare ask. He convinced himself that if he saw her, he’d know. It would
be written on her somewhere, perhaps, or at least he’d be able to read it in
her eyes.

Her door was open, her back
to him. Her beautiful back. He stared, transfixed and melting inside from the
sight of all that smooth skin, remembering in an instant what it felt like to
touch and taste. As she reached to the upper shelf of her closet, he scanned
the long, soft arc of her, the sweep of her hair, the curve of her left buttock
at the top of unzipped jeans, sliding off her hip.

Nothing
written there,
Dirk told him.
But better go in for a
closer look, just to be sure.

Then she pulled out a towel and
turned.

Her mouth opened in a gasp as
she clutched the towel against her breasts.

* * * * *

 
“There you are,” he said.

To Sarah, he sounded more
frightened than angry. Tentative, as if he thought he had no right to know
where she had been. He looked at her like he was trying not to notice she wore
only a strategically placed towel and the tiniest of panties winking through
open jeans.

Sarah swallowed. She couldn’t
tell him. Not like this, when she hadn’t had time to think of what to say. This
time the words had to be perfect, and she owed him nothing less. If mere words
would even be adequate to make up for the pain she’d caused him. She opened her
mouth, ready to blather out something about too much to drink and crashing at
her lady professor’s house, but it hurt to even consider lying to him. “I’m
sorry,” she said, and it felt good to say at least that much. “I know, I should
have called. But I didn’t want to wake you.”

“You wouldn’t have,” he said.

All at once, she took in his
rumpled state. His clothes looked slept in, his eyes red with shadows
underneath. And he was supposed to be at work, not standing in front of her, looking
at her like someone had almost died. Looking at her like someone who loved her.
A shiver zoomed up her back.

“Em...you were waiting up for
me?”

She moved toward him, still
holding the towel in front of her breasts with one hand, and touched his arm
with the other. She drew his gaze and held it softly, and he gave her the
gentlest of smiles. How could she have been angry with him? Anything he thought
or expected was because he loved her—because he’d always loved her and
had been waiting for her.

Even though she didn’t
deserve him.

Maybe, like Izzy and her
young man, like Rashid and his fiancée, she could fall in love with Emerson.
Stupid
, she told herself.
You’re either in love, or you aren’t.

“I...uh,” he licked his lips,
“got someone to take first shift. In case...you called...needed a ride...or
something...”

From her radio, Santana oozed
slow, Latin beats. The warm smell of fallen leaves drifted through the window.
A soft haze of desire clouded Emerson’s face.
 

He swept back her hair, first
off one side of her face and then the other, his palms so gentle on her skin,
as gentle as in the elevator, and he kissed her, a touch at first so soft it
barely registered to her conscious mind. But her body knew.

The towel fell to her feet.