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  For the first time Sarah envied the nameless, faceless Indian woman Rashid was going to marry. She ached because Emerson didn’t want her, and she’d probably never get another nice guy again, yet this woman would be handed one simply for being born into the right family.

  “Yes, you are,” she said softly. “You’re kind and sweet and you have a good heart, and you don’t know how lucky your wife is to be getting you.”

  “If my heart is so pure then why would I ask you to be my friend only until I leave in order to get married?” Rashid said. “That’s not right. It looks like...it looks like...”

  “Like you’re looking to be more than friends?”

  He swallowed and said nothing, but she knew by the fear in his eyes that it was true.

  Don’t be afraid, she thought, smiling gently at him. She wanted to show him that there was nothing to fear; she wanted to give him this gift to take back to India. That way when he was sitting across a breakfast table from a woman he didn’t love, he’d have something to remember.

  He’d always remember her.

  Her hand was still on his cheek and she leaned over and kissed him lightly on the mouth. As she pulled away, not wanting to scare him by going too quickly, he clutched her back to him and plopped his lips on hers, a slobbery, beer-flavored kiss with too much tongue and teeth. Unable to breathe, she eased him off. He gave her a wounded look.

  “Like this,” she said, touching a finger to his mouth. “Relax. Think soft.”

  “Soft,” he repeated.

  It was the only word he would get out for a long time.

  * * * * *

  Emerson’s main job responsibility, in his opinion, was to see to the health and welfare of his charges. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily according to the rules, which sometimes got him into trouble.

  “Some of these people are never going home,” he’d told his supervisors. “If they’re not hurting the other patients, why shouldn’t they be able to enjoy what little time they have left?”

  Many times, to his surprise, he won.

  Charlie was one of those patients. Which was why Emerson took him out to the duck pond at ten o’clock. A wink to the night nurse, and she didn’t see a thing. She had the same philosophy; she gave Emerson free rein as long as it didn’t make extra work for her.

  The night had cooled and Emerson hoped Charlie was warm enough with the wool blankets he’d put around his legs and shoulders. He peered over to make sure the blankets hadn’t slipped or weren’t in danger of getting caught in his wheels, and there was Charlie, pulling out a pack of Lucky Strikes and a lighter.

  “Charlie...” Emerson began, and then realized the folly of scolding him.

  “I can quit any time I wanna,” Charlie said, pausing as he set up one of his favorite jokes. “I just don’t wanna.”

  Emerson couldn’t resist. “You know you only have one lung.”

  Charlie thumped his skinny chest with a fist. “Works pretty damned good, too.”

  Emerson knew better. But try telling an eighty-five-year-old cancer-riddled man in a wheelchair that you want to deny him one of his last earthly pleasures.

  He pushed Charlie to the short concrete barricade at the perimeter of the pond, erected so patients couldn’t accidentally toddle or wheel themselves in and drown in the shallow, dirty water. One patient, a woman in the final stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease, had asked Emerson to take her out of her wheelchair, lower her in, and hold her down. He hated to see patients suffer, but this Emerson had refused. Comfort, he would give. An ear to complain into about family members who had turned their backs, a shoulder to cry on about the indignities of their failing bodies, rules bent and extra privileges granted, but he would take no part in the end of someone’s life.

  * * * * *

  Sarah took Rashid into her bedroom. She pulled off her sweater and jeans and climbed onto the bed in just her bra and panties. He stared at her body. Still drunk on Kingfishers, his desire for her, and all that soft, sloppy kissing, she leaned back against the pillows.

  He didn’t move. “You’re allowed to be naked, too, you know.” She figured a gentle tease might break the tension. It didn’t. So she unhooked her bra and tossed it at him. Flustered by suddenly naked breasts, he fumbled for the garment as if it were a hot potato, and it fell to the floor.

  Rashid turned out the bedroom light but left the one in the hall. He labored over undressing, careful with the buttons on his shirt, and neatly set each item over the chair next to her bed. He looked pudgier out of his clothes than in them. A small, fine whorl of black hair spiraled on his chest like the top of a baby’s head. His undershorts looked blindingly white against caramel skin. He slunk in beside her and she took off his glasses. He looked so young and trusting without them, his unfocused eyes searching for hers. His hands hovered over her as if he didn’t know where he should, or would be allowed, to put them. She settled one on her hip and one on her breast and hoped he’d get the hint. There was a lot of fumbling and more sloppy kissing. He was slow to learn what she taught him but that could not be blamed on lack of enthusiasm.

  Then Sarah’s beer buzz began to wear off, and the first sliver of regret cracked through. But it was too late to back out. He’d think he’d done something wrong; he’d be too angry and embarrassed to ever look at her or think about her again.

  All Sarah could hope for was that it wouldn’t last long, and from all the breathing and fumbling, it probably wouldn’t.

  Still in his shorts, he climbed on top of her, his erection pressing into her thigh. “May I...” he breathed against the side of her neck.

  “Sure, hon.” She imagined this was how old whores must feel. “Go ahead.”

  Chapter 41

  Emerson parked Charlie’s wheelchair next to the pond and sat on the flat top of the concrete barricade, cold against the seat of his coveralls. He gazed out at the black water, mostly still but ruffled now and then by a breeze. Feathers of fog drifted along the surface. So many times he’d come out to the pond. In warmer weather, with other patients, with Sarah, on his breaks, to throw bits of stale dinner rolls to the ducks. But he’d never visited it at night before.

  Something in the distance howled. Emerson thought of coyotes. That was what a howl in the night meant at his grandmother’s farm. But this was the city and again it had seduced him. The noise was probably a drunken student on his way home or someone from the psych ward agitated by the full moon.

  Charlie tipped his head toward the sound. “Hell of a night for a good howl.”

  The sky was beginning to clear, and for the first time that evening Emerson saw the full face of the moon, ghostly and silvery pale, peek from a whisper of clouds. It painted metallic ripples across the surface of the pond. It helped him explain the silent desperation he felt clawing at the inside of his chest.

  Full moons did that. So did thinking of Sarah with other men.

  “You doing any howling, Emmie? Christ, makes me sick thinking about you wasting your youth in front of a typewriter night after night.”

  “I howl,” Emerson said. “Sometimes.”

  “Good man.” Charlie slapped out toward Emerson with a paper-dry hand. “Good man.”

  After a while, a car pulled into the infirmary’s circular drive, about a hundred feet from the duck pond. Emerson turned toward the squeal of brakes and saw a yellow cab. Cabs at night only meant one thing: relatives flown in from out of town. A family member was about to die. Who now, he thought.

  The door opened; two blue-jeaned legs with black ankle boots swung out. After what he surmised was an exchange of money, a body followed. It was Sarah.

  Emerson felt a stab of pain.

  “Speaking of howling...” Charlie tugged out the Lucky and let loose a phlegmy whistle. “Hey, gorgeous! Over here!”

  “Shut up, Charlie,” Emerson said under his breath.

  She turned, a little timidly, eyes searching, until she found the two of them. A smile fluttered across her f
ace. She slowly walked through the grass toward them with her hands in her pockets and her shoulders slumped forward.

  “What are you guys doing out here so late?”

  A catch in her voice worried Emerson.

  “Causing trouble.” Charlie tapped a finger on his cheek. “Come on, sweet pea. Plant one right here.”

  She looked at him, unsure. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to make any of the other ladies jealous.”

  “You see any of ’em out here?” Charlie said.

  “Thought you wanted to get away from all those hens?” Emerson cocked his head toward the infirmary.

  “Yeah, but this one’s good people. Cop a squat and stay a while.”

  Again she hesitated.

  Emerson nodded, watching her. Something was definitely wrong.

  She perched on the concrete barricade in the space between Emerson and a lamppost, her back against its column, arms tight around bent knees.

  The lamp had been burned out for as long as Emerson could remember, but it didn’t take much light to see that she’d been crying.

  “Everything okay?” Emerson asked.

  She watched something on the other side of the pond. She looked as small as a child and her voice was even smaller. “Yeah. Fine.”

  Charlie yawned. “’Bout time I go take some of them happy pills and hit the sack.”

  Sarah came back from wherever she’d been. “Oh, Charlie, I didn’t mean to chase you off.”

  “Gettin’ a little cold out here anyway,” Charlie said. “Night like this is for you young people, still got some blood in you and can give a good howl.”

  He turned toward Emerson and winked.

  “We’ll be right back,” he said, and after securing Charlie in his room, Emerson told the night nurse he was taking a short break and met Sarah back at the pond. She was pacing, her arms wrapped around her waist.

  “If you’re cold, we can go inside.”

  She bit at her lower lip. “No, I…I don’t want to get you into trouble. Besides, it’s nice out here. With the moon.”

  That damned moon. The pale light did wondrous things to her hair, her troubled eyes, her lips, the hollow of her throat, the pink, clinging sweater visible through her open jacket.

  “I haven’t seen you for a while,” she said.

  He thought it would be best to avoid her, especially these last few days, although he had licked his inability to get angry with Rashid. Every time he thought about the two of them, he wanted to punch something.

  “I’ve been busy,” he said.

  She nodded and looked down at her feet, one toe of her boot shuffling in the grass. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  More silence. He wanted to ask what was wrong and why she’d come to see him, but he feared the answer would be something he didn’t want to hear.

  Her eyes darted to his. “How’s Daisy?”

  “Back with her old boyfriend, thanks for asking.”

  Her mouth softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  He shrugged. “It just happened tonight. I would have told you, but I knew you had company, so, you know, I didn’t.”

  Her silence was maddening. His gaze shifted to the pond. He wished for a nice flat rock and imagined the cool heft of it in his palm. He’d skip it across the water like his grandmother had taught him. He’d skip it all the way to Dewitt.

  “You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?” he said.

  Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away, huddling into the curl of her arms.

  So it was true. The claws of desperation sank stronger, deeper into his chest. He grasped at anything he could think of to keep them from crushing him.

  “He’s going back to India at the end of the semester.” Emerson’s petulant, desperate tone disgusted himself.

  “I know,” she snapped.

  “He’s marrying someone else.”

  “I know that, too.”

  He realized then that his anger with Rashid had been misdirected. His housemate had merely been an innocent bystander. “What the hell were you thinking?” he said. “Was he some kind of challenge for you? Or has it been too long since you destroyed someone?”

  Her voice trembled. “Shut up. Just...shut up.”

  “Or is he just safe? He’s leaving the country, so there’s no way you can get emotionally involved and get hurt?”

  “That’s it,” Sarah said. “I’m going home.”

  She stormed off through the grass. He followed. “Don’t like the truth, do you?”

  “Why do you care who I sleep with?” She spun toward him. “If you don’t want me anymore, why should it matter?”

  Tears sparkled in her lashes. Color flamed into her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell with hard breaths, her lips softly parted from the effort. She’d never looked more beautiful and never had he wanted her more.

  Yet he stood frozen, his synapses a scramble of mixed messages.

  There is no God, he decided. Why would any benevolent deity put a woman in his life who he found so powerfully attractive but could hurt him so deeply?

  Disappointment filled her eyes as she waited for him to answer, to do something.

  As she started to turn away, he imagined a heavy door sliding shut between them. If he let her go, it would clang down and drive them apart forever.

  He grabbed her arm. “Sarah—”

  “What?”

  “Sarah,” he said, softer.

  “What,” she answered, softer, too.

  He repeated her name again, a breath, a whisper. His hands were on her face, in her hair. His lips found hers. A sigh escaped her throat when their mouths touched, and she threw her arms around him. She was heat and softness and everything fit together just where it used to, just where it was supposed to.

  Then she pushed him away.

  “I can’t do this to you,” she gasped.

  “Why not?” His voice came out in a pitiful whimper.

  But she probably had done the right thing. If he came to from this dream and realized she was sleeping with both of them, it would be over. He would walk away for good.

  “I’m too screwed up right now. I don’t want to hurt you again. You’ll end up hating me. If you don’t already.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  She jammed her hands into her pockets. “Not yet.”

  The thing in the distance howled.

  When she spoke again her voice was so small he strained to hear. “I felt like I took something from him tonight. Something that didn’t belong to me. After he...when he... well, he fell asleep and I looked over and just couldn’t stop crying. I got up, tried to wash the whole horrible thing off me. But I could have taken a dozen showers and it wouldn’t have helped.” She sniffed. “You’re right. What was I thinking? The first person he slept with should have been someone who loves him...or his wife...not me.”

  “His first, that was tonight?”

  Sarah nodded without looking at him.

  “Not that time you came over to talk to him?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s when he asked me to marry him.”

  Emerson felt his legs go hollow. “He...proposed to you?”

  “I thought you knew,” Sarah said.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Well, I said no.”

  “Apparently not to everything.”

  She huffed out a breath.

  “He proposed to you?” No wonder Rashid was returning to India. Sarah had turned him down.

  “You find it so hard to believe that a nice guy would want to marry me?”

  “Well, no…” Emerson just wasn’t prepared for it to have happened so soon. And for it not to have been him.

  “I can’t go back there and face him.” Her eyes dampened again. “Can I hang out here for a while? I won’t get you into trouble. I’ll even help out. I can clean...something.”

  “He’s still in your apartment?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Then you should go home.”

>   He couldn’t believe what he heard coming out of his own mouth. That he was sending her back to Rashid once again. He put a hand on each of her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Sarah. You have to fix this. If you don’t want it to be happening, you have to tell him it’s over. Believe me. It’s the kindest thing.”

  * * * * *

  Emerson called a cab for Sarah. He watched until the taillights blended into the darkness, still unsure if letting her go had been the right thing to do. Then he turned back to the pond, knowing for certain it had been an insane move. He wished he had someone who would lower him into the dirty water and hold him down.

  He did the next best thing. He tipped his face up to the moon and howled.

  Chapter 42

  Fully dressed except for his shoes, Rashid waited for Sarah at the top of the stairs. His black socks had gold stitching on the toes. She was glad he wore the kind of socks her father owned. And that he was dressed. If she had to look at his bare, pudgy chest and little white BVDs when she came through the door, there’d be no way she could tell him it was over.

  Then he opened his mouth and made it so much easier.

  “Where have you been?”

  She’d expected worry and concern, but the possessiveness in his tone frosted her. She glared at him. “Out.”

  He followed her into the kitchen, still blustering. “This I could see with my own eyes that you have been out. This I could see when I woke up and found that you were gone.”

  She poked through the cartons of leftover Chinese food in the refrigerator for a beer, hoping it would harden her for what she had to do.

  His voice was smaller, more vulnerable. “I was a disappointment to you. This is why you left.”

  There had to be another beer. She couldn’t face him straight. Couldn’t reconcile what she’d done to him, and then had almost done with Emerson, all in the space of a few hours.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes it is,” he said. “I know it is.”

  She settled for a Coke, took a long gulp, and plopped the bottle on the counter. “No, it’s not. I couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk.”