“You should send me pictures of that too.”
“Just in case my house calls you?” I tease. I swing my arms to loosen up and be ready for the jarring impact when I grab onto her balcony railing. I don’t want my real leg to crumple under the weight so it makes more sense to leap and grab for the iron railing.
“Well, you have seen my place.” Then she adds quietly, “and me.”
“You’re beautiful,” I respond. There’s a small hint of vulnerability there, which shouldn’t surprise me but does. With her bombshell curves and long, light brown hair contrasting with all the pale, ivory skin, she’d stop traffic if she was walking down the sidewalk. “In fact, you’re probably doing the men of New York a service by staying inside.”
“How’s that?” she snorts.
“Fewer accidents. They’d be staring at you and not paying attention to where they were going. Bikers would crash into fire hydrants, and cars would rear end other cars.”
“Ha, ha,” she says, but I can tell she’s smiling. I can hear the pleasure in her voice.
“Be prepared. You’re going to hear a thud.”
“Do you have safety equipment—like a harness or something? You know, the type of thing that window washers use.”
“No.” I laugh. “I don’t have anything like that.”
“But you might fall. It’s three stories up and you could really hurt yourself.” She pauses. “Or wait, do you have some super-duper type of spring action in your leg?”
She never fails to make me smile. “No, I have my regular prosthetic. My super-duper prosthetic is the one I use for running and climbing.”
“I think this qualifies.” She’s sounding slightly indignant, which I find adorable. Can’t be mad at a woman for caring about your safety. “How are you going to do this?”
“I have good balance, and your apartments are closer than you think.”
“I can’t believe you’re jumping!”
“Believe it.”
I climb onto the railing and make the leap. Surprisingly, I clear the railing and land right on Natalie’s balcony. The small space, no greater than five feet by ten feet, holds a small table and one rickety chair, which I don’t think has ever been sat on.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
There’s almost an echo and I realize she must be standing just inside the door. Even so, I keep the headset in to hold her voice in my ear.
“Perfect.”
“You’re the crazy one,” she sighs and I sense, rather than hear, her put her head against the curtain-covered glass of her French door. I wish I hadn’t told her to keep those curtains shut, but I don’t press her. Being this close is good enough for me tonight.
“I’m going to put the sensors up, which, by the way, you shouldn’t mention to anybody. That’s between you and me and the security firm.”
“When you say anybody, are you talking about Oliver?”
“Anybody. Oliver, Dr. Terrance. Chris the doorman. You’ll be safest if you are the only person that knows about your security measures. I’m not saying Oliver’s not trustworthy, but he might tell his agent or his business partner, who might let it slip to someone else, and pretty soon everyone knows and there’s no use to having the security system.”
She mulls that over. “That makes sense, although I’m sure Oliver has nondisclosures with his people.”
“Better safe and all that. You won’t share, right?” I press. I want her assurance. It’s for her safety as much as it is for my peace of mind.
“I won’t share,” she repeats.
“Good, now let me tell you what I’m doing so you can visualize it.” I draw the bag over my head and start to pull out the sensors. “I’m placing these proximity sensors at the edges of the railing where they meet the brick of your building. There will be one on each side and two above your doors. These aren’t cameras, but ultrasonic sensors that detect objects based on the reflection of sound waves. They’re set to emit an alarm if waves reflected back create a significant mass. It won’t alert us if a feather or leaf drops in front of it, but a large rock or a body would set it off.”
“I sense a disturbance in the force, Luke,” she quotes.
I chuckle. “Yes, something like that. Although we have to use sensors instead of our Jedi powers.”
“The technology is basically making us Jedi-lite.”
I trowel on the adhesive to the back of the sensor as I respond, “I suppose, although Luke had more function in his prosthetic hand than anyone has currently.”
“How so?”
I affix the first camera with industrial-grade brick cement. It will take a chisel to dislodge. If she moves, I’ll come back and repair the exterior. “The signals that you can send from your brain to your prosthetic currently are only digital, not analog, meaning I can tell my hand to grip or release but not release more slowly. Think of a clock. Analog clock hands wind continuously around the face, whereas a digital clock simply flips the numbers. Those gradients can’t be achieved yet, which is why it’s hard to do fine motor tasks like draw, write, or even crack an egg. I can open a can of beer or unlock your car door or slip the token into the subway or apply adhesive cement to affix a sensor, but it’s harder to do things that require a fine or a delicate touch.”
She’s quiet, real quiet and I wonder if I’ve shared too much . . . if the idea of my prosthetic hand is too strange for her. I’ve dated women who were intellectually fine with the fact I had two stumps and two fake limbs, but at times when I touched them with one of my prosthetics, they’d recoil. It might be subtle, but it was there. Hard to get excited with a woman who didn’t want you to touch her a certain way.
I run a hand up my left arm, currently covered in the long sleeve of my knit shirt, and feel the industrial plastic underneath. Should I have waited to share with her? No. I walk determinedly to the other side. She either accepts me as I am or I’ll move on. I quickly finish installing the three other sensors.
Her soft voice breaks into my thoughts. “Is it really gauche of me to say I find that fascinating?”
No. Fuck no. I want to reject the feeling of relief, but it’s there. I like to think that I don’t give a fuck how people respond to me, because there’s nothing out there that I used to do in the past that I can’t do now, including bringing a woman to orgasm. Repeatedly. My dick’s not broken and I’ve got a damn strong tongue. But what Natalie thinks matters more than it should.
“Nope,” I answer, trying to keep my tone even and light.
“I think my brain works in digital too. Like I have problems opening the door when I don’t know who is on the other side, but when Chris or Jason, our doormen, let me know it’s them, I’m not afraid. As if they’ve cleared out the hallway of the infestation of people and all that is left is my food or package.”
“Sure. It’s the unknown that scares you. If you knew exactly what would happen, every minute of the future, then there’d be nothing to fear.” I finish up the install and continue explaining, “Now I’m placing the battery pack underneath your chair out here. The battery is the main power source, but if it’s turned off for any reason, the sensors have small solar panels and there will be enough residual juice to emit an alarm. The battery pack should be moved inside. The best thing that you could do, if possible, is to open your door after I leave and take the battery pack inside your house. Place it just to the left or right of your door and it should work perfectly.”
“I think that’s amazing. I think you’re amazing, and I’m trying really hard not to cry right now. I think crying is verboten on dates, right?”
“It can put a damper on things,” I reply dryly.
Inside, I hear her doorbell ring. “It’s Chris. He says he has a bag of something that smells awesome.”
“I left your food with him. Go get it.”
While she answers the door, I settle gingerly into the small chair. Thankfully, it holds my weight. From my bag, I pull out my own dinner. Three chicken breasts an
d plenty of veggies, courtesy of my sister. I pop off the plastic lid and dig in. It’s late and I’m hungry. I guess one of the advantages of not eating face-to-face is that she can’t see when I’m being rude. Even I know that starting to eat before the other person does isn’t well-mannered. Mom likes to say that I use being in the army as an excuse to forget everything she’s ever taught me. She’s only half wrong.
A long, loud screeching noise has me rising from the table and knocking on the glass door. “You okay in there?”
“Yes,” she says, slightly out of breath. “I was just pulling my coffee table over. I didn’t realize how heavy glass is.”
“Shit, you should have asked me, I’d have helped you move it.” My voice dies off at the end. That’d only happen if she could open the door. “Never mind.”
“I want to open the door. I really do.” Her voice catches on the last word.
I clench my jaw. “It’s nothing, sweetheart. Have a seat. Let’s enjoy our dinner.”
“This is bizarre.”
“Only if you want it to be.” I tear off a hunk of the chicken and shove it in my mouth. There are benefits to being out here. I don’t have to watch my manners and I can eat with my hands.
I hear the clink of a plate on the glass-topped table she has and then silence. I imagine she’s dumping her food out.
“God, this food smells great. Where did you get it?”
Bizarre or not, we’re having dinner. I smile with satisfaction and swallow another piece of chicken before answering.
“There’s a tiny little hole-in-the-wall near my place, with great Chinese food, reasonably priced. I think everyone in the four-block radius who knows about them keeps quiet so we can get in and out real fast.”
“Well, it’s delicious.”
“What’re you eating?” I told her, I’m a visual guy.
“My egg roll. Do you like them?”
“Don’t eat a lot of fried foods,” I admit.
“Everything tastes better when it’s fried,” she says. “I saw this one episode on television where they tested out all these different animals to see if they tasted like chicken. At first they fried all the stuff and admitted that the test wasn’t very challenging because everything that’s fried tastes good, even lizard. I suspect even poo would taste good fried.”
I nearly spit my chicken out when she says that. Laughing, I pause and take a long drink of water before I can catch my breath enough to answer. “Let’s just agree to assume, because I’m not willing to test it out.”
She chuckles. “What are you eating? Same Chinese?”
“A few chicken breasts. Some broccoli.”
“What? Why? Did being in the army kill your taste buds?” She sounds aghast. I hear her shift on the floor, the sound of fabric rubbing against wood as she finds a comfortable place for her ass on the big floor pillow I spotted sitting near the French doors.
“At the risk of sounding like a ’roided meathead, I’m pretty careful about what I eat. It’s harder for me to build muscle in certain areas of my body, so since I was discharged, I’ve stuck to a diet of mostly lean meats and vegetables. I’ll splurge now and then, but not tonight.”
“Now I’m feeling guilty, but not so guilty I’m not enjoying the crap out of this lo mein.” Her gusty sigh of appreciation is followed by a moment of silence, for eating, most likely. I polish off the rest of my chicken and lean back to enjoy the cool spring air.
While she eats, I talk.
“When I was first in, the meals were terrible. We lived on a diet of caffeine, tobacco, and stimulants. The latter are banned, but we used them anyway and the officers turned the other cheek. They weren’t going to deny us Ephedra when they were asking us to carry out twenty-four-hour shifts at a time. The food we ate was basically a bunch of calories in a bag. There was mystery meat in chunks and we’d heat it up using this weird-ass chemical that would cause cold water to boil immediately. There was a ton of junk food—cake, snack foods, candy. The supply of MREs varied over the course of our time over there. Sometimes we had too many of them. Later, in the middle of the deployment, there’d be too few. All the good stuff, we’d save, and then distribute when we got low.”
“What’s the good stuff?” she asks, as if there couldn’t be anything good, which is probably a fair assumption after what I’ve shared.
I wonder how long she’ll let me stay out here. I should’ve brought a blanket and I could’ve bunked down, although my six-foot-plus frame would have a hard time being comfortable. “Instant coffee, cocoa powder, grape Kool-Aid. Skittles. Loved the Skittles. The Charm candies, though, we’d get rid of. They’ve been considered bad luck since they first appeared in World War II rations. If you’re caught carrying them or eating them out on patrol, you’re likely to get shot and killed, so most platoons will throw them out or give them to the Iraqi kids.”
“Is it true?” she asks tentatively. “Did anyone get hurt while they had Charms in their packs?”
“People got killed all the time. Sometimes with the Charms and sometimes without. It’s like the poo assumption, though, no one really wanted to test it out. Better to be superstitious and get rid of them.”
“Jake.” A ripple works its way down my back when she says my name. I haven’t heard it often. Or maybe I just haven’t heard it enough.
“Yes?”
“Can I ask a stupid question? I know it’s stupid and I shouldn’t ask, but I want to ask it anyway so please forgive me in advance.”
Her earnestness takes away the sting of anything she could ask. “Go ahead.”
“Did you lose someone you cared about?”
I look up at the sky and think of Staff Sergeant Matthew Dalton and Captain Brian McKenna. The stars wink back at me. Maybe those two are operating those stars. “You know, there were always people that you liked that you heard about dying. Guys you might have stayed with at a forward operating base or trained with out of Fort Benning, but my small unit came through the first deployment unscathed. The saddest part is that a couple of the losses happened after guys got out. That’s the thing that people don’t like to talk about. But so many casualties happen after the war, because you can’t let it go.”
“I’m not one of those people, you know,” she says. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“I didn’t think you had.”
“I just wanted you to know.” She clears her throat. “I’m sorry you lost your friends.”
“I know you are.” I could hear real regret.
“How’d you get over it?” There’s more to her question than how I got over the war. It’s a question of how I recovered from my injuries, how I managed not to let the anxiety overtake me, how I was able to move forward. It’s that question she wants answered for herself. I pick my words with care, remembering Isaiah’s words.
“I didn’t do anything special. I went to counseling because I had to go to counseling. That was part of my treatment to get my prosthetics. Unlike a lot of other guys, I had the means to get other care, but I was in Bethesda for a time and when you’re there, you learn quickly to be grateful for your circumstances because there are always people who have it worse than you.
“I had a very loving family and a good support network, and I knew that if I had died I would’ve been mad as hell if someone like me didn’t get off his ass and start living. So I focused on all the things I could be grateful for. I could kiss my mom and hug my sisters. I could shake my dad’s hand. None of those feelings happened overnight—I’m still a work in progress. I’m not always comfortable with my prosthetics. When I go out, a good part of me wants to shove my stump in other people’s faces, and another good part just wants to be ignored. Most the time I’m just grateful to be alive, functioning. But I have my moments.”
This is the most I’ve shared with anyone outside the confines of a hospital or therapy room, but I felt that not only did I need to share it with Natalie, she needed to hear it.
We are silent for a good long
time. I don’t know if she’s eating or thinking or both. I’m just enjoying the company. Natalie doesn’t realize it yet and I’m not ready to share it with her, but we’re a match. I know it like I knew when those planes crashed into the World Trade Center that I had to go enlist. The war wasn’t what I thought it was about, though I’m not sorry I served. Just like I’m not sorry I met her. I’m not sorry she’s got a bad case of agoraphobia. I’m not sorry that I might have to have a hundred dinners with her on one side of the glass and me on the other.
I’m going to sit out here on her balcony until she’s ready to come out. For as long as it takes—deep down, I know she’s worth it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NATALIE
The food he brought sticks in my throat as he talks. The things he says, the intimate, private thoughts that tumble from his lips are so moving, so real. I don’t know why this man has walked into my life, but I treasure him.
And he compels me to reach deep and tell him what I don’t enjoy admitting.
“I’m tired of being afraid. Tired of being tied up in knots over it and”—I take a deep breath and jump off the deep end—“I’m afraid I’m never going to get better. That this apartment will be the only thing I’ll ever know.”
“When you’re ready, it will happen,” he responds in his pragmatic way.
“How do you know?”
“Because you made it out before and you’ll do it again.”
He’s so confident that I start to believe. I exhale, closing my eyes. I imagine what it would be like to sit next to him and stare into his eyes as he says these tender, sweet things. My heart balloons until I fear my chest might explode with all the feeling. I lay my hands over my chest, not to keep the feeling inside but to hold it close. I don’t know what he feels toward me; but he’s here sitting on my balcony when he could be anywhere, with any woman.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Jake.”
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