Sliding Past Vertical Read online

  He let out his breath and flopped onto the wooden chair next to the bed. “You want me to stop.”

  She perched on the edge of the bureau while putting a speech together in her head. Her voice was small, her words safe and carefully chosen. “Well...if you had something to prove to yourself about your writing, I think you’ve already proved it by being published so many times. I just don’t understand why you keep writing...him.”

  “You know why,” he grumbled.

  “But there are other ways you can make money writing. Other magazines.”

  “I have contracts, Sarah. Deadlines. Readers expect him.”

  She toyed with her lipstick container, heart pounding.

  Emerson watched her, not like he usually did, with moist expectation, but the way Jay used to, waiting for her to talk him out of doing coke. It seemed like he was waiting for her to talk him out of being Dirk Blade.

  If she said nothing, Emerson might think she was giving up. Giving in.

  Too many times with Jay she’d given in. Every time, except the last, and that was only because he’d given her a good flying push.

  “I’m just afraid people are going to think...” Her voice came out stronger, but her words still fluttered. “Especially now...that it’s about us...”

  He flew out of the chair, hands stretched toward her. “But it’s not about us! Besides, I don’t use my real name. Nobody knows I write it. Not even Rashid!”

  She looked away. “I know you write it.”

  His face went melty and he tried to hug her, but Sarah stopped him with a glare. “She looked like me, Em. The girl on the Slurpee machine. Is that what you really think about me? What you used to think about me? Back when you hated my guts for breaking up with you? Is that why you made Dirk?”

  “Sarah...honey...” He reached for her again, his expression tender with concern as he looked deep into her eyes. “Yeah, I was pissed, but I’ve been over that for a long time.” He touched her face. “Things are different now.”

  His warmth and sincerity mollified her somewhat, and her words softened. “But why’d you have to make her look like me?”

  “The editor wanted a brunette with brown eyes.”

  “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.”

&
nbsp; 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?”

  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.