Sliding Past Vertical (9 page)

Sarah received a letter from
Emerson.

For a long time Sarah sat on
the stairs, absentmindedly flipping through the fashion magazine’s glossy
spreads on giant shoulder pads and Madonna’s latest styles. Evidence of the
life Dee Dee had made for herself in Boston lay scattered all around her. The
professional associations, the friends, the mailing lists she was on.

Even the bills were in Dee
Dee’s name.

Maybe Sarah was never meant
to stay there. Maybe that was why none of the attachments she’d made had stuck.
She heard her old high school diving coach’s voice in her head, after she’d
over-rotated and blown a critical entry.
Wind
the dive backward to the point where you made your error and figure out why you
did it
.

It just seemed too daunting,
too much damage done. With a sigh, she finally read Emerson’s letter. He’d
already told her what was in it. Summaries of movies he’d seen, what was going
on at the nursing home. Old news. But at the end, he’d written about a deal
he’d made with the landlord to rent an additional room for a while, so he could
spread out, maybe use the space for writing, and even have a place for guests.

Good
for him,
Sarah thought.
Even Emerson is making a
life. Instead of letting it happen to him.

“Sarah?” Emerson called from
the top of the stairs. “Oh, there you are. Dee Dee just called. She’s staying
over at her boyfriend’s again. So you’ve got a bed for the night. Maybe
tomorrow we can go shopping for one.”

She decided in an instant. To
make a new life, she had to go back and figure out where she’d screwed up her
old one.

“Why bother?” she said. “I’ll
only have to move it.”

“Move it?”

She blinked at him. “To
Syracuse.”

He blinked back.

“You’ve got a problem with
that?” she said.

She didn’t think he would.

Chapter 14

That night, Emerson dreamed
about Dirk Blade. He, not Emerson, sat beside Sarah on the wicker sofa in the
rain. Her head rested on Dirk’s chest, not his. He said all the things she wanted
to hear. Magic words. Open Sesame. Her hand drifted to his thigh. Then Dirk became
Emerson and he and Sarah were making love, half on the wicker sofa, half on the
soft little rug in front of it. Rain whispered against the screens. There were
no neighbors, no streetlights, only stands of evergreens and a pond, like on
his grandmother’s farm, surrounded by hundreds of acres of green, rolling hills
and Sarah’s big brown eyes.

Her hair fell all over him,
and her body was as beautiful and limber as he remembered, except riper with
age and with distance from her athletic past. She felt fuller. Softer. She told
him he was good and he believed her. She said the other men had existed just to
make Emerson look better, because none of them would have waited this long for
her, so long that he’d thought about everything they would do together, if only
fate gave him another chance. Each thought was a forbidden sweet melting on his
tongue, but they had hollow centers and were gone too quickly.

Then ejaculation wrenched him
from his dream. He woke in a panic in Sarah’s living room, gasping for breath,
damp with cold sweat and hot stickiness, the sleeping bag clammy beneath him. His
fists were full of the sheet he’d been using as a blanket, which had slipped
off his body, exposing him.

After a quick detour to the
bathroom to clean up and attempt to regain his composure, Dirk still needled at
him, so he took his notebook and a glass of milk to the wicker sofa on the
porch. Over the years, Emerson had found that the fastest way to exorcise Dirk
Blade out of his system was to exhaust him. But instead of writing about chocolate
syrup and handcuffs, he found himself trying to capture in words the feel of
Sarah dozing in his arms, the rhythm of her breathing, and the smell of her
hair. His imagination filled in the gaps, but he didn’t know if it was from earlier
that day or years ago, if his observations were truly authentic or flavored by
the mellowed sweetness of first love.

He stopped for a while, to
gather up his thoughts. The air sat thick and cool and smelled like wet metal.
Streetlights twinkled through the trees. The city wasn’t so bad, at night, when
it was quiet, when everyone else was sleeping.

He wouldn’t have minded
sleeping, too, but didn’t dare, not until Dirk was spent. Then he’d leave
Emerson alone, at least for that night.

What would be visited upon
him when Sarah was living just across the hall, he couldn’t afford to think
about.

* * * * *

Dee Dee didn’t take the news
as well as Emerson had. When she came home Sunday morning to find Sarah packing
boxes—Emerson and Rashid had gone to rent a van—she blew up and
then sulked like a jilted lover. She sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee
and killing the rest of her Marlboros.

A promise to mail her a
month’s expenses didn’t help.

“You don’t have any money.”

“I’ll get some,” Sarah said.

Dee Dee lit another
cigarette. “If it’s from Jay’s coke deal, I don’t want it.”

“I told you I didn’t take it.
I’m borrowing some from Emerson. Until I find a job.”

“Hope for his sake you work a
little harder at it than you did here.”

Sarah let out her breath. Her
head pounded. She just wanted to get on the road and go. Start her new life.
Figure out the details later. “I don’t need this crap right now.”

“And I do? You’re the one who
got us into this. You’re the one going off with loverboy and leaving me with
all the fucking bills.”

“He’s not—” She wasn’t
having that fight again. “You’ll find another roommate. It’s a good location,
the rent—”

Dee Dee sneered. “I’m not
staying here. Are you kidding? After those guys...touched everything?”

“They didn’t come for you. It
was my fault. I told you. And they didn’t even touch your room...well, except
for Petie.”

“Frankie.”

“Wasn’t it Petie, before?”

“I forget. I’m still not
staying. And I really liked this place, too. Thanks a whole fucking lot for
ruining my life.”

“I didn’t—”
Forget it,
Sarah thought.
Nothing I can do about that now.

Dee Dee sucked so hard on her
cigarette that she must have been drawing whimpers from men in a one-block
radius. She’d probably killed her boyfriend. Maybe that was why she’d come home
so early on a Sunday. “God, Jay must have gone apeshit when you told him you
flushed it.”

Sarah didn’t answer.

Dee Dee’s eyes widened. “You
didn’t tell him?”

“I couldn’t.”

“So he thinks they stole it.”

Sarah nodded.

“And they think you still
have it.”

“Or that I sold it. Or gave
it back to Jay. I really don’t give a rat’s ass what they think, to tell you
the truth.”

“Jeez...Sarah...you know he
could be in a lot of trouble.”

Sarah had considered that and
didn’t like being reminded of it. “He can take care of himself.”

What was probably a rental
van squealed to a stop outside the house. Doors clunked, and she heard Emerson’s
and Rashid’s voices. She ought to hop to on the packing. Rashid had an early
morning at the lab the next day, and she was already putting them behind
schedule. She rinsed her coffee cup (one of Dee Dee’s; hers were already
packed) and left it in the sink.

“So what am I supposed to
tell him?” Dee Dee said. “You know he’s going to be back here, wondering where
you went.”

Like
he doesn’t have a gaggle of women waiting to comfort him.
“Tell him whatever the hell
you want. Tell him—” She needed something that would make Jay insane with
jealousy. “Tell him Emerson’s got writer’s block and I’ve gone to give him inspiration.”

* * * * *

Rashid waddled up to the van,
struggling with two of Sarah’s milk crates.

She hopped into the back and showed
him where they went, how best to distribute the weight around what the three of
them had already loaded—mostly books, records, clothes, her stereo, and a
piece of furniture or two her parents had given her over the years, which would
be stored in Emerson’s basement. Rashid set the crates down with a grunt and wiped
his hands on his shirt.

“We are almost done?”

She smiled at him. Emerson was
accustomed to the physical labor of lifting patients and moving beds and tables
for mopping. Rashid, by his own admission, tried never to pick up anything
heavier than his briefcase. But he’d carried down more than his share of boxes.

“Almost.”

“Then soon we will be going.”

It had already been decided.
Sarah would ride with Emerson in the van, and Rashid would follow in his car. She
started to feel guilty about the arrangement, which would result in making him
drive almost six hours alone.

“You want to borrow some
tapes?” Sarah asked.

“I have plenty,” he sighed.

“Maybe halfway I’ll switch
and ride with you?”

The idea seemed to cheer him.
For a second. “But only if Emerson is agreeable to this. I don’t want to steal
you from him.”

She laughed. “I’m not his
property
.”

He said nothing.

She was not used to people
being so polite. “Look. It’s a long trip. You came all the way up here to help
me. Why should you have to drive all the way back by yourself?”

After a moment, he grinned
and then said, “Yes, why should I?”

* * * * *

Rashid’s car was scrupulously
tidy and more comfortable than the rolling chiropractic adjustment of the
rental van. He played moldy oldies on the cassette deck. It was a riot to hear
all those stupid songs she remembered from high school and college. She wanted
to know the Hindi translation of “Muskrat Love,” and he obliged as if he’d been
waiting forever for someone to ask.

“You like this music then?”
he said. “Because on the way here Emerson asked that I turn it off.”

“That’s just Emerson being a
pisspot,” Sarah said, waving a hand.

Rashid looked puzzled.

“It means sometimes he’s in a
bad mood.”

She’d just endured two and a
half hours of it: long stretches of silence between bouts of forced
conversation.

“Yes, I know this about him,”
Rashid said. “I figured out that he was being this pisspot when earlier he
chewed my head off for nothing. He apologized and said he didn’t sleep very
well last night.”

Emerson had told Sarah this,
too. When they’d started driving, he had been frighteningly quiet. He hated
coffee, so she’d made him get a Coke at the first rest stop. Then he’d been
nicer to her, even joked a little. Still, she turned to check on him.

He stuck like glue. She
waved. He waved back.

Convinced Emerson was sufficiently
alert, she settled into her seat for the remaining three hours of the ride.

Another song came on. Rashid
translated for her. In Hindi. In Arabic. In French. She looked at him with
incredulity. All she knew was her native tongue and enough high school Spanish
to find her way to the ladies’ room in Cancun. Should she ever go there.

He noticed her staring. “My
father works for the government,” he said. “We traveled when I was young.”

“I would have loved that,”
she said with a sigh. She imagined exotic foods and interesting playmates, boys
with pretty accents and girls in wool jumpers and knee socks. Coming home to
the United States sophisticated and elegant. “My father sells insurance and my
mother teaches at the community college. We never went anywhere. God, it would
have been great to see something besides the same stupid, boring town I grew up
in.”

He smiled sadly. “I wouldn’t
have minded a little bit of boring. It would have been easier to make
attachments if I hadn’t been relocated every term.”

“But Emerson told me you have
a fiancée in India. Seems like you stayed somewhere long enough to make
attachments. Or one important one, anyway.”

“Actually,” he said, after a few
beats of silence, “we have yet to meet in person.”

She blinked at him, cocking
her head. “Excuse me?”

He let out a long sigh. “She
is the daughter of a business associate of my father’s. Our parents thought we
would make a good match.”

The tape ended and reversed
itself. “You mean...it’s an arranged marriage? Is that what they do in India?”
Then, as she heard it coming out of her mouth, she was horrified with herself
for sounding so judgmental, so typically American.

He was charitable with her naiveté.
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It’s becoming more popular among families of young
people who are too busy with their studies or their jobs to search for their
own partners.”

She couldn’t contain her
curiosity. “And you don’t mind?”

“I trust in my parents’
judgment. And tell me this, Sarah. How often do you worry about whom you will
someday marry? If any of these
goondas
will be good enough to spend the rest of your life with?”

“Embarrassingly often.”
If I ever get married at all.
She turned
to check on Emerson. He was right behind them.

“This,” he said with a
triumphant tone, “I don’t have to think about.”

Sarah shook her head. “But
what about love?”

He spoke as if from a
prepared script. “Romantic love will grow in time, with building a life and a
home and a family together. I trust my parents have chosen someone compatible.”

“But what if they’re wrong?
They don’t have to live with her, you do. You don’t know anything about her.”

“I know enough. She’s a
suitable girl with good breeding.”

Sarah laughed. “Sounds like a
race horse.”

“Sounds like a wife,” he said.

“But you’re half a world
away! What if she falls in love with someone else? Or you do? Would the
marriage be off, or would you end those relationships and marry each other?”

“You’re asking a lot of
questions, Sarah.”

“I’m sorry. I’m getting too
personal.”

“I don’t mind,” he said.
“It’s just that these are questions I have no answers to. I must have faith
that when I enter this new chapter of my life everything will work out as it
should.”

She sat back in her seat,
watching the leafy Berkshires fly by her window, thinking about what Rashid had
said. She vaguely remembered faith, from a sweet, unspoiled time long ago,
before she learned how cruel people could be to each other. Long before men she
trusted had crapped all over her life. Long before her favorite city had turned
on her. She alternated between wanting to mock his naïve optimism and wanting
to cuddle up to it as if it were a big, fluffy dog.