Sliding Past Vertical (16 page)

PART 3:
Syracuse, November 1987-May 1988

Chapter 26

The temp job that Sarah
almost enjoyed was offered to her full time, and after some deliberation, she took
it. Clerical work at a public relations firm was not what she thought she’d be
doing at this point in her life, but it satisfied her current needs. She’d get
a decent check every week, computer training, health insurance, and access to
people who might one day offer her something better.

Technically she was a
research assistant. She coordinated focus group interviews and helped process
the data afterward. Which meant advertising agencies hired them to get a bunch
of people in a room and make them talk about men’s shirts, salad dressing,
newspapers, or whatever else the agency was trying to sell. Sarah typed the
transcripts, which were used by people with longer titles and nicer offices to
determine how the agencies could sell more shirts, salad dressing, or
newspapers.

It was pretty dry stuff, most
of the time. But sometimes the group went off on a tangent, and that was when
it got interesting.

When something particularly
strange came up, she copied that section of the transcript and put it in her
desk drawer for Emerson. Maybe he could use it in a story. Every Friday she
slipped the collected pages into her purse, took them home, and put them in a
manila folder on the chance that this would be the weekend he’d come by to see
her apartment. She could give him the transcripts, and they could talk.

The folder was beginning to
bulge.

She hadn’t given up on him,
though. Every day she got off the bus, rounded the corner of Euclid and
Lancaster and strode up her walk with fresh eagerness, hoping for a sign—a
message on her answering machine, a note on the door, a card in the mailbox.
But there was nothing. Then she’d kick off her shoes and pour herself a shot of
Amaretto, fall into the second-hand flowered armchair she bought with her first
paycheck, and tell herself he would never talk to her again.

And how she deserved it,
every silent moment.

“It’s a shame you and Emerson
had this disagreement and can’t be friends,” Rashid said over slices of pizza
at the place on Westcott they used to go to with Emerson. “But perhaps right
now it is for the best. He has been a pisspot of the most excruciating degree.”

“So you don’t think I should
call?”

“I don’t think he’ll speak
with you. Every time your name comes up he leaves the room. He says the only
way he can handle this is to go cold duck.”

She winced at the unfortunate
idiom and from knowing what Rashid really meant.

“I have said it wrong?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Her
shoulders slumped forward. The right words wouldn’t change the fact that
Emerson didn’t want anything to do with her.

“But I will still be your
friend,” Rashid said brightly. “Would you like another beer?”

Chapter 27

Among Emerson’s
responsibilities as an orderly was, upon request, to assist the families in
packing their loved one’s belongings when the infirmary’s services were no
longer needed.

He didn’t mind doing this if
the patient was going home—if the broken hip had healed, if the stroke
had stabilized, if the diabetes had improved. He’d get cards and homemade
cookies, offers of introductions to unattached granddaughters, and occasional
updates on the conditions of “his ladies,” as he sometimes referred to them.
But when one of them died, and almost always by fate’s thumb in the eye this
was someone he’d grown especially fond of, it was like losing a member of his
own family.

This time, a cold, raw day in
November, two of them had passed on, one after the other. Packing up after
these two ladies had been especially hard. Mrs. Nickerson’s family, who rarely
visited, had insisted on handling the job themselves, convinced that the
infirmary staff was not to be trusted, and had left Emerson only the tasks of
mopping the floor, pulling up sheets, and scrubbing the toilet. He’d been
flattered to be asked to help with Mrs. Fanelli’s things, since he’d grown
close to her daughter and son-in-law, who visited often and somehow had discovered
his weakness for chocolate donuts. But he’d been completely undone when in Mrs.
Fanelli’s dresser drawer her daughter found a package wrapped in Christmas
paper and tagged with Emerson’s name. He would have waited the six weeks until
the holiday, being a big believer in traditions, but they’d encouraged him to
open it immediately. Inside he had found a muffler hand-knitted in wool dyed
the pale blue of his eyes. This had astounded all three of them because Mrs.
Fanelli had been three-quarters blind.

Emerson was wearing this
muffler as he got into Rashid’s car. The muffler probably didn’t go with his
pea-green army coat. The wool scratched, but it didn’t matter. If someone had cared
enough to make him something to wear, he’d wear it. He thought that somewhere
in what he imagined to be heaven, Mrs. Fanelli was looking down at him and
smiling. Then she told him to sit up straight and get a haircut. He pulled
himself up a little taller in his seat, pushed his hair behind his ears, and
checked the effect in the rearview mirror. Maybe he might do it, for her.
Someday.

“Can we go now, or are you still
making yourself beautiful?” Rashid said, grinning.

Emerson relinquished the
mirror and sank into his usual slouch as Rashid backed out of the driveway. He had
secretly hated that grin for days, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do
about it. Emerson himself had said he didn’t mind if Rashid stayed friendly
with Sarah, if he helped her move into that despicable new apartment or
rearranged her furniture or repotted her philodendrons. The thought of Sarah
with plants was laughable. He hadn’t seen or heard of a single one in her care
that languished into anything more than a desiccated hunk of sticks and soil.
But according to Rashid, they were lush and green, and as proof, he took home
cuttings to root on the shelf over their kitchen sink. There were pieces of
Sarah in salsa jars, Pepsi bottles, chipped beakers he’d rescued from the lab.
If Rashid couldn’t get Emerson to her, he seemed determined to bring her home
to Emerson.

Just for spite, Emerson was
convinced.

That afternoon, he found the
grin especially loathsome. Because in a few hours, Rashid would be making Sarah
dinner: curry and lentil goo and flat bread and the special beer he had to
drive to Manlius to buy. Which was why Rashid wanted to hurry to the mall, find
his fiancée a birthday present, and get back.

Which was why Emerson was
taking his damned sweet time.

* * * * *

Rashid bought a bottle of expensive
perfume, a scarf, a watch, and a pair of pearl earrings. A casual observer
would think he had something to feel guilty about, the way he was spending his
money. Especially when the casual observer was Emerson.

Something inside him began to
burn.

“I need to get a few things,”
he said. “I’ll meet you back at the car.”

He stomped out of the jewelry
store and into the mall, where his senses were assaulted by tinny Christmas
music, the glare of green and red lights, and the whining of children in line
to sit on Santa’s lap. His head throbbed. He walked faster, knowing only that
he had to get away, out of the crush of people and their false cheer. Parents
shielded their children from him as he stormed by. He must have looked
monstrous to them, a modern Frankenstein in his big green coat, blue scarf,
long hair, and winter boots.

Oh,
fuck you,
he
snapped at them in his head. They couldn’t possibly imagine the raw, pulsing
ache inside him, the gaping hole in his body he had created by pushing Sarah
away. He willed a meteorite to fall out of the sky and crush them all—Santa
and the decorations, the bratty, sniveling kids, the speakers, and Rashid and
his American Express card.

It
can take me out, too.

This last thought paralyzed
him with self-pity. He collapsed onto the nearest empty bench and dropped his
head into his hands, hating Christmas and the memories it stirred up, feeling
sorry for himself that he wouldn’t have Sarah this year to make it almost
pleasant for him. He took deep breaths as he tried to gather up the fractured
pieces of his mind and let the cool air and the relative quiet soothe him.

He’d landed in a spur of the
mall, a little-used back entrance between, he noticed for the first time,
Victoria’s Secret and the bookstore. He filed away the irritating coincidence
of where he had wound up, the two stores as metaphors of the disparate parts of
his psyche.

Later, he would find it
amusing. In the moment, it was just pathetic. He wanted to look up his old
college roommate and kick his ass for rescuing him from that window.

Then, out of a general hum of
distant conversation, of sleigh bells, crying babies, and Muzak carols, he thought
he heard his name.

He looked up. No one met his
gaze, no one he knew. Not in the hallway, not in the bookstore. But at
Victoria’s Secret, two pretty salesclerks arranged shimmering green and red
lingerie on a table near the entrance. Like a magpie he was drawn to their
shiny charms: the way they moved in their tight little dresses, the music of
chatter between them.

One of the women reminded him
of Sarah, by the shape of her body and her long, smooth hair. But something
else was familiar about her. Then he remembered: Mrs. Fanelli’s granddaughter,
Daisy. She’d visited a few times and came to help her parents clean out Mrs.
Fanelli’s room. And with a generous hug, she’d thanked him for taking such good
care of her grandmother.
 

He found himself on his feet,
walking toward them. She turned and blinked quizzically at him for a second, as
if she, too, knew him from somewhere.

Then she smiled, going from
cute to gorgeous. His knees turned to jelly. “Emmett, right, from the
infirmary? I thought that was you over there.”

“Emerson,” he mumbled at his
boots. Good-looking women still intimidated him. He didn’t know how he had ever
gotten up the nerve to talk to Sarah in the first place. Probably because she’d
been in trouble. Sarah in trouble always brought out the best in him.

“Emerson. Right...” She
nodded, her voice trailing off, the way women sometimes did when they tired of
you and wished you would go away. Then she said, “It looks good on you.”

“What?” He looked up and noticed
that the other salesclerk had mysteriously vanished.

“The scarf, dope.”

His hand went to it as if
realizing for the first time there was something hanging around his neck. He
fingered the scratchy wool. “Yeah, I...this really knocked me out. I mean, she
was almost blind, I know you can still knit by feel, count the stitches, but
how did she know what color...that it would be exactly...”

A mischievous look bloomed on
her face. “Because I told her. Nana said she wanted to knit you something for
Christmas and asked me to pick out a good color.” She took a long look into his
eyes as if appraising her choice. “Yep. It works.”

First he was disappointed. He
wanted to believe it had been magic, that nearly blind Mrs. Fanelli knew by
some sort of extrasensory perception, by the sound of his voice or the feel of
his touch what color would be best. But this was better. That a pretty girl had
thought so long about the color of his eyes. It rendered him temporarily
speechless.

A managerial type hovered
near a rack of frilly things on satin hangers. “I should get back to work,”
Daisy said. “Really, thanks so much for taking care of Nana. She was lucky to
have you.”

The words fumbled out of his
mouth before he could stop them. He asked her if she wanted to get together for
coffee sometime. It hadn’t come out that coherently, and he didn’t even drink
coffee, but she understood the general drift. And shook her head. “I’m sorry. I
sort of have a boyfriend. He wouldn’t like it.”

He nodded. Of course she had
a boyfriend. What had he been thinking? “That’s okay,” he said. “I’m sort of
not really over my last relationship. It wouldn’t be any good. I’d be thinking
about her. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

Her face softened. She blinked
moistly at him. “Whoever she is, she’s a total idiot.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Look,” she lowered
her voice, “we’re having a sale. And I get this employee discount? Pick
something out for her for Christmas. I’ll buy it for you and you can pay me
back.”

He smirked. Her logic was
hopelessly adolescent. A gift wouldn’t make Sarah love him. It had never worked
before. Although for the last ten years, his greatest—and many times
only—joy of the season had been shopping for the perfect present for
Sarah.

“Just do it,” Daisy said,
grabbing his elbow. “Come on. I’ll help you. And if it doesn’t work,” the look
on her face reliquefied his knees, “call me.”

* * * * *

It didn’t hit him until
Emerson had returned to Rashid’s car that he’d spent far too much money on a
gift he had no business buying, let alone giving. But the promise in Daisy’s
smile had led his reptilian brain to select emerald green silk pajamas. Not
because he thought it would change anything between him and Sarah, although
this would be the perfect gift if they were still friends, because she should
sleep in something nicer than other people’s T-shirts. It was because he felt
like he had betrayed her by thinking about another woman. Worse, the other
woman looked an awful lot like Sarah. He felt just as guilty as Rashid.

“Something nice for your
mother?” Rashid said, when he noticed the pink bag being tossed onto his back
seat.

“Shut up,” Emerson said.