“Does it not need to be washed?” He pulls up the bottom of his shirt to wipe his brow.
She bends, plunging her hand into the bucket, and pulls out the putty knife. She wipes the blade on her thigh before holding it out to him. When he takes it, she raises a finger to point at the ceiling.
He looks up and groans. “Now?”
“It’s easier to blend if the mud on the walls hasn’t set.” She props her hands on her hips and takes stock of the room. “I know you can reach the ceiling, but you’re gonna kill your back if you don’t get up a little higher. Can you handle the stepladder?”
“A stepladder is not going to save my back.”
“You wanna be out for a day or two or a month?” She shrugs. “Your choice.”
As it turns out, the steps on the ladder offer a convenient place to lean his bulk—but mudding overhead is an entirely different animal. Two swipes and he gets an eyeful. “Fuck!”
She laughs. “Don’t work directly overhead. Go left or right.”
“That would have been helpful advice to have before I went blind.” He drops the knife. “God damn it.”
“Here. Here. Hold on.” Aluminum rattles as she comes down from her taller ladder, and then one of her hands is on his arm. The other pats his ass. “Left foot. Down. No, not the—yeah, right there. Okay? You got it.”
Once grounded, he stoops, fumbling for her bucket, and uses his hands to splash his eyes, muttering profanities at the sting.
“Good thing I just changed out that water. You all right?”
“Oh, yeah, just peachy.” He straightens, using his shirt to wipe his face again, though that accomplishes little more than smearing mud around. “Like you give a fuck.”
“I did, remember?” She tugs the purple paisley kerchief off her head, stooping briefly to dunk it in the bucket and wring it out. When he takes it, she catches his hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. “I’d give a lot more, if you let me.”
He tugs his hand away and wipes his cheeks and brow.
“I’m saying I’d have sex with you again. In case that wasn’t clear.”
“Jesus. Would you stop?” He balls up the handkerchief and chucks it into the bucket. It lands with a wet plop. “Who do you think you’re fooling, here? With this—” He gestures at her, vaguely. “Whatever this is?”
She shrugs. “I dunno, I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“I can’t even—” He dusts off his sweatpants, for all the good it does, and heads for the stairs. “Two weeks ago, at least I could pretend you were better than this.”
“Better than... wanting to have sex with you?” She laughs. “You know you’re insane? And I don’t mean that, like, hyperbolically. I mean you are genuinely mentally ill, and you need therapy and probably medication.”
He stops. Turns, and stares her down, humorlessly, until her smile stiffens and fades. And then he speaks, slowly and deliberately, so there can be no room for misunderstanding: “I like you less for loving me.”
“That’s assuming I do actually love you, which I don’t, even though I think I do. Did I get that right? God, your mental gymnastics are exhausting.”
“Whatever. I’m done.”
He’s just reached the stairwell when something hits his back with a splat. At first he thinks it’s her handkerchief, but when he reaches over one shoulder he comes away with a handful of mud. He turns to look at her in disbelief.
She cocks an eyebrow. “We’re not done until I say we’re done.”
“You fucking—” He flings the glob back at her, hard.
She lifts her hands—palms out, fingers splayed—to block her eyes. It mostly works, but there are flecks of gray on her face, and, when she touches it gingerly, her hair. Her mouth opens in voiceless outrage. “Oh—oh, you did not just fuck with my hair—”
And then, faster than he can react, she grabs the taping knife from the tray on the floor and flicks her wrist, slinging a fist-sized clump of mud directly at his chest.
The entire bucket of mud sits open in the corner opposite the ladder. He lunges toward it, filling both hands. He fires, one-two, but she ducks and both projectiles miss, spattering the ladder and the wall.
“Cyril!” she wails. “No!”
But then she’s running away from him, shrieking with laughter, and he is lurching after her, and there is no way he can catch up except that she slips and catches herself against the wall and she still tries to beat him to the stairs but he catches her shirt in one muddy fist and stuffs a handful down the back of her neck and then they are stumbling down the stairwell, grunting and shrieking and panting as they smear mud on each other’s hair and faces and arms and clothes.
And then she’s shoving her tongue down his throat and it’s chalky and bitter and he stumbles into the dining table and falls hard, taking her with him, and she lands half on top of him and instead of pulling away she straddles his belly and kisses him again, and when she pulls back to breathe her hands crawl up inside his shirt and she whispers, “Fuck me, Cyril, fuck me now.”
This—
When they are lying half-naked on the dining room floor and she says, “don’t make me wait so long next time” and he wants to offer a pithy retort but can’t, because he’s still trying to catch his breath—
When she springs to her feet and stands over him, hands propped on hips, and says, “I’m gonna go up and fix the wall,” and he closes his eyes and nods—
When her footsteps fade and he hears the ladder judder across the floor overhead and it’s his turn to roll onto his side and begin the process of getting himself to his feet and, in the echoey emptiness of the upstairs bedroom, she begins to whistle a wandering rendition of Rubylove—
When, finally, he stumbles to the bathroom and struggles out of his shirt before sitting down on the granite shower bench with a grunt, and his hand reaches to crank the water on and his mind attempts, as always, to construct a highly convincing rationale for her actions which do not involve actual feelings for him—
This—not the first, but the second time—is when it becomes real.
Because no matter how he twists and turns that Rubik’s cube, this is what it comes to: she only needed to fuck him once. If she secretly found him disgusting and this were all a trick, a ploy to lure him into a vulnerable position before stabbing him in the back, once was enough. If she were crazy, or deluded enough to think she loved him, or hoping to make herself love him in spite of all evidence to the contrary—once would have been enough to dispel that fantasy.
Pinpoints of scalding water hit his face, and a wave of euphoria crashes over him, so intense he must will himself to breathe. She loves him. She loves him? Somehow, she loves him. And then, the inevitable undertow: No. He is trash. No. He cannot let her. No. This cannot be.
The shower door opens, and she joins him, lifting her face to the shower-head. Rivulets of water carry streaks of gray-white down over her body. He watches the dirty water circle the drain.
“Hey. Scoot over.” She squeezes in next to him. “You okay?”
“No.” He expects something acerbic to follow, but nothing does. He is drowning.
She looks at him, then presses her lips to his bare shoulder. “Talk to me.”
“No,” he says, knowing full well he is going to talk all the same. “I just—” He exhales a growl and shakes his head. Reaches for the washcloth hanging on the door handle and uses it to scrub his face. He cannot speak—or even acknowledge—the sinkhole of self-loathing. “I can think of plenty of reasons why you’d fuck me once. Not good ones, but—I can think of them. But I don’t—there’s just no rational reason why you’d do it again.”
“Oh, gosh, Cyril, I dunno.” She takes the washcloth from him, wrings it out, and begins to wipe the mud off his neck and back. “Could it be because I wanted to?”
He has tried so many ways to convince her not to care for him, but, in the end, it’s just one more way he’s failed. He looks down at his hands. “I never wante
d to love you.” He thought it would pass. It was just supposed to be a joke. He was doing it for Tavis. And then—
“I know.”
He has spent half his life running from this thing. Denying it, stuffing it down as far as it will go—and now it has overtaken him. She has gotten inside. Peeled back his skin and stripped him clean to the bone. Whether or not he can accept it, he must admit defeat. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You have, and you will.” She stands, lifting the shower-head from its holder, and rotates the dial to a gentler stream. She holds it over his head, running one hand through his hair, and then rinses his shoulders and back and belly. “I don’t know if you can hear this, Cyril,” she says, slotting the shower head back in place. “But I’m gonna say it anyway. I don’t love you in spite of what you did, or because I don’t have time to move on. I love you now because you are the one I have loved all along.”
She is right. He cannot hear it. Maybe someday, but not today. “Chica,” he says, “you are very committed to this shitty tattoo.”
She laughs. And then she puts one hand on each of his shoulders and bends, touching her forehead to his. “Yes. Yes I am.”
Chapter 29
This asshole lays hardwood like there’s no tomorrow. She works next to him—so close he can smell her—until he’s got the rhythm of laying down the boards, and then she starts on baseboard. He says something stupid. She smiles. Her hand, as she gets to her feet, rests briefly on his thigh.
What he wants to do is touch her. All the time.
Not fuck her, mind you—though he wants that, too. No; he wants to feel her skin beneath his fingers, to know the constant assurance of her steady pulse. His desire for her is so intense, he wants to crawl inside her skin. For the time being, he’ll settle for a staple gun and a good view of her ass.
“Damn it,” she says, from the next room.
He is dripping sweat. “Which finger did you cut off this time?”
She releases a flat ha. “I think—” The window squeaks open. “Yeah. I’m having a hot flash.” She vocalizes disgust. “Of all the things on my bucket list, going through menopause was not one of the things I wanted to do before I die.”
“So. What is on your bucket list?”
She is sitting on the front porch steps, fanning herself with one hand. “I honestly haven’t given it much thought.” She laughs, almost sadly. “You, I guess.”
“Well, check that one off.” He hands down a glass of iced tea.
“Oh—I shouldn’t—”
“It’s decaf.” He’d finally read through the stack of printouts she’d collected every time she saw her doctor or went to the hospital. Removal of her ovaries triggered menopause, which meant hot flashes, exacerbated by heat, stress, alcohol, and caffeine. Most of the medication that would have relieved the symptoms also accelerated the growth of cancer.
She sips, thoughtfully, and then nods upward. “This house, I guess. Though in retrospect, I should have prioritized the AC.” She glances over one shoulder, at the empty porch. “Or a damn bench.” Her laugh is wistful. “There are so many things.”
“Really?” He lowers himself, in careful stages, to the step next to her. Flooring’s hard on the knees. “That’s all you got? The house?”
“I dunno. I mean, none of the things I really want are attainable. Seeing the kids graduate, get married, have—” Her voice catches. She shakes her head. “I dunno. There’s nowhere I want to go. Nothing I want to do, really. I just want to be. Here, with you. With them. For as long as I can.”
“Damn. I was hoping for something actionable.”
“Like parachuting off the Eiffel Tower?” She clutches his arm and flutters her eyelids. “Oh, Cyril, would you do that for me?”
He is not sure how he got from blubbering on her bed to chuckling when she jokes about her impending mortality. But here they are. “Uh, no. Not that. But, you know, something.”
“Such as?”
He shrugs. “Cake?”
She laughs. “Cyril, I will absolutely take cake.”
They make it halfway back up the stairs before Robin stops, hesitates with her hand on the rail, and then shakes her head with a sigh. “Nope. I gotta lay down.”
“Oh.” It’s not the first time. Panic rises like bile in the back of his throat, but he chokes it down and gets her a glass of cold water, pushing the coffee table close to the couch so she can reach it easily. Then he opens the windows and lugs her big industrial floor fan down the stairs and sets it up in the kitchen to speed up air flow.
She requests her clipboard of sketches, and when he brings it, she holds up her phone. “Cooke’s getting his second shot today. That’ll be a big load off Greta’s mind.”
The fuck if he cares. Greta’s husband is fine? Meanwhile Robin’s laying here, happy for him as she spirals into a slow decline. That gimpy little prick will outlive her—how is that fair? “Great,” he mutters, and heads into the kitchen.
He makes sandwiches, but when he brings the food into the living room, he finds her asleep, clipboard face-down on her chest. He sets the tray on the dining table and stands at the end of the couch, eating lunch as he watches her sleep. Memorizing her, because the memories they make now are going to have to last a lot longer than five years. It feels as though he ought to stand here for as long as he can, until she wakes, but after he finishes his sandwich (and hers) his mind begins to wander. He turns back to the kitchen to do what he always does, knowing this is just one more moment he’ll look back on and regret forever.
At the threshold, he stops. He turns to look at her. Then looks through the doorway into the kitchen again.
“Fuck,” he says, and goes upstairs.
The floors were mostly finished anyway. When he comes back down, an hour later, she’s still—somehow, even with all the nailing he’s done—asleep. Her phone, sitting face-up on the coffee table, is flashing with a string of silent text notifications. He picks it up, and when he sees it’s Greta texting about the kids, punches the security code into the lock screen.
He glances up when Robin yawns and stretches, rubbing her eyes with one hand.
“Sorry,” he says. “If I woke you.”
She pushes the clipboard aside—it falls to the floor—and reaches for the glass of water. “Out for two minutes and you’re already in my phone?”
“Try two hours.” He pulls out the piano bench to sit as he taps a reply. “Greta’s taking the kids to the park. She’ll drop them off around dinner time.” He glances up, though he can no longer see her from his seat. “How are you feeling?”
“Ew.” Her head pops up over the back of the piano, nose wrinkled. “Don’t start that.”
“Guess I won’t ask if you want me to get you anything, then.”
“You’re good where you are. But I'll take my phone.”
As he rises slightly to slide it over the top of the piano—her hand flashes up to catch it—his belly brushes the keys, sounding a soft, off-kilter chord. He covers it with a one-handed arpeggio and then, getting comfortable on the bench, begins to play George Fischoff's “Little Ballerina Blue.”
“What?” Robin exclaims, four bars in. She gets up and comes around the end of the piano, standing at his shoulder and watching his hands as he plays to the end. “How did you know—” She shakes her head, dumbfounded. “This was bumper music on the Art Bell show in the eighties. My dad loved it, so my mom tracked down a copy. I used to lay in the sunshine on Saturday mornings while my mom practiced, and she’d always end with that because it was my favorite.”
He hadn’t known, of course; not really. While rooting around in the barn for the cot the night he’d stormed out, he’d unearthed a box full of old sheet music, much of it with penciled annotations in her mother’s handwriting. The sheet with “Little Ballerina Blue” was as thin and yellowed as onion skin. This is how hacking works. A little bit of guess, a little bit of luck.
“That’s... actually impressive,” she says, when
he explains. She nudges his shoulder. “Again.”
“Just like your daughter,” he growls. But he does play it again. The third time around, he lets the bittersweet tune carry him away, segueing into one improvised variation after another until he’s arrived at another place entirely. Before he quite knows what’s happening, he’s playing the race of his heart when she walked into the bedroom and disrobed. Her skin like velvet beneath his hands and the lamp’s soft glow. The shame and desire and apprehension all wrapped into one, and then the act itself, hesitant and awkward and fumbling at first, and then needy and urgent and at last hot and heavy and slow.
Robin’s fingers dig into his shoulder. She shifts, as if to lean against him.
“I’m covered in sweat,” he says, by way of warning.
“A little sweat never bothered me.” Robin’s arms fall around his shoulders from behind. She presses her nose into the hair on the back of his neck. He feels her body tense. “Oh. Wow. You are... really covered in sweat.”
“I told you.”
“What have you been doing?”
“What do you think? Finishing the floors.”
She straightens. “Wait, really?”
“Wasn’t that the fucking deal?”
She meets him at the bathroom door as he’s coming out of the shower, purse slung over one shoulder. “Hug,” she orders, as if it’s her right, and it is. He wraps his arms around her, and she sinks into him. “Floors look good,” she adds, which, when it concerns construction, is about as complimentary as she gets. “Last row’s a little wonky, but it’s an easy fix.”
“Good to know.”
“I’m gonna head over to the park and meet up with Greta and the—” She stops. Sniffs, noisily, at his shirt. “Okay. I have to ask. What is that smell? And no, I don’t mean your B.O. After you shower. You always smell a little bit like my dad, but—”
He lifts his arms, releasing her. “Why the fuck would I smell like your father?”
Cyril in the Flesh Page 33