Sliding Past Vertical (15 page)

“Like me.”

“A lot of women are brunette
with brown eyes.”

“And wear short skirts and
keep dropping things.”

“It wasn’t you! I was trying
to show that she was flirting with him. She dropped stuff on purpose. Leaning
over to pick it up...it was kind of an invitation...”

“...to get bent over a hunk
of cold metal...”

“I don’t pretend to call it
romantic. I call it money for a new car battery.”

“So it’s not some vicarious
thing I should worry about?”

“Sarah,” he groaned. “For
God’s sake. It’s just something I make up. It’s not me, and it’s not you, and
it’s not us.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m four.”

“Sometimes it’s the only way
to get you to pay attention to me.”

“I don’t pay attention to
you?” She gestured to the bed. “What was that? Casual disregard?”

“No.” The moist look bled
through. “But if you’d been paying attention over the last five days we’ve been
having,” he smiled shyly, “casual disregard...you’d notice—or I’d hope
you’d notice—that I’m nothing like him.”

She huffed out a breath. He
was right. Once again she had overreacted. It was just a character, an easy way
to supplement a meager county paycheck. And even if Dirk Blade did have
something to do with the bent edges of Emerson’s psyche, everyone had a dark
side and there were sicker ways of expressing it.
I should just shut up and celebrate my good fortune at being with a man
who treats me like gold.

She looped her arms around his
waist and tipped her chin up to whisper into his ear, “You sure you wouldn’t
want to do me over a Slurpee machine?”

 
“Mmm.” He nuzzled her exposed throat.
“Tempting, but probably not very comfortable. However, I’m willing to entertain
other suggestions. I’m getting out early tonight. Let me take you to dinner and
we’ll make a list.”

They kissed, two smiles
meeting. Sarah was the one to end it. Any longer and surely she’d be back on
that bed, and let go from the one temp assignment she almost enjoyed.

Chapter 25

Later, Emerson would blame it
on the weather. It was a sparkling autumn day, the sun winking from behind a
drift of roly-poly clouds.

Just the kind of day he
normally would dread.

But driving home from the
infirmary that afternoon, he didn’t give anything outside his own skin more
than a moment’s reflection. Despite stern self-warnings to the contrary, he was
drunk on Sarah—the touch and taste of her, the anticipation of being with
her again that shook his body like a fever, this time without the wrenching
disappointment of having to button her up and send her on her way.

He smiled.

Something’s
different this time.

He hadn’t yet dared put words
to it, but that phrase, that feeling, kept coming back to him while tending to
his patients, while mopping the sunroom floor, while doing the reams of
paperwork Medicare required. Even while he and Sarah were arguing about Dirk. There
was more talk of “us” and less of “you” and “me.”

He felt something about the
two of them together that wasn’t there in college.

They were older and more
experienced, but it was a feeling beyond that.

As he drove, he thought of
words and rejected them for their imprecision. Tenderness. Respect. Security.
Connection. Love. He paused on that one.

Commitment. Paused even
longer.

Maybe Sarah had changed and was
capable of the kind of relationship he’d fantasized about having with her, where
he could tell her he loved her, confident she’d say it back to him. Where every
time she asked to meet him he wouldn’t automatically think it was because she
planned to trample the tender shoots of what they’d started.

Of whatever it was they’d
started.

Every time he even thought of
bringing it up, the discussion of what those new buds were going to blossom
into, or if she even wanted a damned garden in the first place, she diverted
his attention with her body.

As if she knew he was going
to ask and knew the tactic would work.

It worked, but wouldn’t for
long.

Was
it different this time?

He felt himself losing hope.
The sensation still existed, but he couldn’t make any of his carefully
considered words fit, and as a writer he knew that at least on paper, emotions
weakened without concrete words to give them shape and make them real.

He sighed as he flipped on
his blinker and turned onto Westcott.
Maybe
I’m just deluding myself. Maybe making it different is the only way I can trick
myself into thinking it’s going to last.

Finally Emerson pulled into
the driveway, which was empty except for the Jordanians’ red sports car. He sat
behind the wheel, waiting for the new U2 song he liked to finish on the radio.

While Bono sang, he tried to
convince himself that he was being too hard on Sarah. Maybe he should just go
inside, make dinner reservations, and spend some time attempting to see her
with new eyes.

Not Dirk’s.

Not Charlie’s.

Not those of the quivering
eighteen-year-old boy whose heart he allowed her to treat with such
recklessness.

But his own, as a grown man,
older and more secure. And after dinner, after dessert, after making love for
two or three hours, they could curl up together and talk about anything he was
still insecure about.

Just talk. Honest talk. Like
adults, like friends.

Because
it
was
different this time
.

He sailed through the
door—in a better mood thanks to his pep talk and thoughts of him and
Sarah together later—to find the younger Jordanian struggling with
someone on the telephone.

“Say this please again?”
Frustration spilled into his still-fledgling English. “No. No here.”

At the sound of footsteps so
obviously not made by his cousin’s sharp leather shoes, he turned. His eyes washed
with relief when he saw Emerson: passed by, left behind, always older,
sometimes wiser, and most of the time, the only native English speaker in the
house.

Emerson pointed to his own
chest.

The lad shook his head. “For
Sah-rah,” he said, rolling the “r” and accent on the second syllable, and pushed
the receiver at Emerson with both hands. “Please? You take message. I don’t
understand.”

Emerson set his knapsack on
the chair by the phone. Inside was a paperback novel, something he’d been
writing for Sarah, and his lunch. He hadn’t gotten around to eating that day.

“Can I help you?

“Are
you
Sarah Cohen?” said a peevish female voice.

“No. I’m...a friend.”

She suddenly turned sweet.
“Ohh. That friend. The one with the money.”

“Excuse me?”

“First, last, and security,
doll.” She gave Emerson an amount. “That’s minus the deposit she already gave
me. I’ll take a check if you can prove you’re good for it. She’s still
interested in the apartment, right?”

Emerson felt the punch of
something familiar and ugly just below the ribs. “I...don’t know.”

“Tell her to call me. She
seems like a nice, stable girl, but I gotta have an answer by tomorrow.”

She hung up.

He fumbled to replace the
receiver.

“You are to use this?” The
young Jordanian handed him a message pad and a pencil.

Emerson blinked but didn’t
see him, and wandered toward the kitchen. He felt lightheaded, his throat
parched. He got a glass of water, downed about three-quarters of it in one gulp
and remained at the sink, clutching the glass in his right hand. The kid had
followed him, sensing something wrong or eager for a chance to have Emerson to
himself so he could practice his English.

“I make coffee,” he said.
“You would like?”

“I’m sorry, I have to go.”
Emerson couldn’t give an English lesson at the moment. Couldn’t spend more time
with people who would only leave him. He kept walking, driven by the need to be
alone. Not in his room, where she was, where they were, but through the kitchen
and out the back door. He landed heavily on the old chaise longue, crunching
some leaves the wind had blown onto the cushion.

Like
hell it was different this time.

Nothing had changed. She was
the same old Sarah, looking for a way out, using him to get what she needed.

But she was better at it, so
much better. So good that if not for this phone call, he might not have noticed
anything was amiss until the day he woke up and found her gone, leaving a
vacant room across the hall, a depleted bank account, and an empty heart.

He folded his arms over his
chest. The breeze picked up. The sun peeked from behind a cloud and smiled.

* * * * *

The meeting Sarah had agreed
to help with ran long. Not reaching Emerson at the infirmary, she hurried home.
It was already dark and getting chilly, and it was a long walk from the bus
stop in heels and her too-light jacket. She spied his car, the lone vehicle in
the driveway, and burst into the house, cheeks flaming from the sudden rush of
heat.

“Em?” She ran up the stairs.
“I’m sorry, they kept me late. I’ll just need a minute, and then we can
go—”

He wasn’t in his room or in
hers. She flew back downstairs. Maybe he’d left her a note, but she couldn’t
find one.

She told herself he went around
the corner for more milk, so they wouldn’t have to stop on the way home. Then
put up water for tea. The busyness of something small and domestic, a hot cup
to hold in her hands, always seemed to calm her. She waited. The house creaked;
the wind rattled undropped leaves against the windows.

Just as she turned off the
stove, she heard a sneeze.

The sound had come from the
back porch.

It was dark outside except
for the lights from their neighbors’ houses, but pressing her face to the grimy
little window, Sarah recognized a shape in the old chaise longue.

“Em?” The door was sticky;
she had to push it with her foot at the bottom. “What are you doing out here?
Aren’t we going to—?”

Something was terribly wrong.
One look at his expressionless, downturned mouth, the arms clamped like iron
bars across his chest, and she knew.

Somebody died.

She moved closer, sneaking up
on him, and caught a flash of dark moistness in his eyes before he turned his
head. She reached out a hand to touch his shoulder and attempt to offer the
kind of comfort he’d always been so good at giving her.

“When were you planning to
tell me?”

The hard voice didn’t
recognize her. Her hand froze, millimeters from his jacket, and her stomach
clenched with fear.

She backed away. “I don’t
know what you—”

An even chillier tone stopped
her where she stood. “When were you going to tell me? After you moved out, or
before, so I could help you with your things?”

She felt all the blood drain
into her feet. The apartment! She’d forgotten about the deposit she’d left, the
promise she’d made, and that the woman needed an answer by the end of the week.
The landlady probably called looking for her and got Emerson. “It’s a mistake!”
she blurted.

He leveled a cool gaze at
her. “I’m beginning to think so, too.”

A chill shot through her when
she realized he wasn’t talking about the apartment. “No,” she said. “You can’t
mean that.” She knelt at the side of the chair, grasping at him, vomiting out
words, hoping she eventually might say something in the right combination that would
change his mind.

“…I’m sorry, I looked at an
apartment, I thought about taking it, and I was going to talk to you about it,
I really was, but that was before we—” He wasn’t buying it; she could
tell from his impenetrable eyes, and the words became weak and teary. “…and
then I couldn’t just—and then I forgot to call her to cancel—”

“Sarah, stop.” Calmly he gathered
her desperate hands in both of his and moved them off his body, returning them
to her. “Just...stop.”

He had to understand. He had
to! Even when she herself didn’t understand her behavior, she could always
count on him to forgive her. Or at least ignore it and go on. “Stop what?” She sniffed
back tears. “I’m trying to explain.”

He let out his breath, the
same old, sad sound she’d heard on the telephone so many times over the last
eight years. “I can’t keep doing this to myself. Sure. You’ll explain. I’ll let
it go. Everything will be okay for a while. Then there will be something else
to explain. Don’t you get it? Nothing’s changed between us. I don’t think it
ever will, and I won’t let you hurt me any more.”

She couldn’t speak or move.
He was right. Allow her close enough, and she would hurt him. Maybe she’d held
on to the possibility of the apartment for insurance, a place to go in case she
screwed him up again. And she had, just as she’d feared. Suddenly she was
freezing and feeling very young and very old all at the same time.

Her voice, when she got it to
work, sounded leaden, and for all her attempts at quiet, resigned strength, a
declarative statement of responsibility, it still came out as a question. “I
guess I’ll be taking the apartment?”

He nodded. “We both knew this
arrangement was only temporary.” One side of his mouth made an odd half-smile.
“Didn’t we?”