by Marie Turner
He stops mid swipe and looks up. “Yeah?”
“Would you mind helping me a minute?” With two eyebrows turned into one, he strides toward me. I show him my back and point, “I can’t get this damned thing off. There’re straps back there or something. Could you?”
I feel forceful hands tugging.
“You know,” he says, “all the times I envisioned doing this, you were never wearing a bulletproof vest.” And I think I would smile at his comment if I weren’t presently so disgusting.
Soon enough, I’m free. The vest opens, revealing my bare back to Robert.
When I turn around, I can’t help but notice the commotion and concern in his eyes.
“You going to tell me what happened tonight?” he asks again.
“I just need to shower,” I say. “It’s been a long day.” A long, terrible day. I edge myself back inside the bathroom and close the door. I can’t wait to be de-fished.
While showering, I notice the long scrapes on my legs and arms from the chandelier and the nick of the knife blade on my sternum, which has fortunately stopped bleeding. My stitches look freshly scabbed but intact. So attractive, I think, as I step out of the shower and eye my beaten up form in the mirror. With three new bandages, I soon cover my stitches and the knife-wound. I no longer smell like fish, thank god, but my clothes are ruined, and my limbs feel unhinged. On the counter, my sweater is dog-eared, and the shirt and jeans are a total loss.
With only a towel around me and a ball of koi-smelling clothes in hand, I exit the bathroom. Before I make a swift dash to the guest bedroom to find my clothes, I look both ways down the hall as if crossing a street. No Robert. I make quick effort to the bedroom to dress. After switching on the light, I set my clothes on a chair and look for fresh clothes in my bag. But I find only another t-shirt and pajama bottoms. Great. Ted may not be the best bag-packer. As I turn around to close the door and dress myself, I see Robert standing in the doorway.
“You’re not planning to leave, are you?” he asks.
“Do you want me to?”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I want you to stay,” he states, walking over to me and squeezing his arms around me. My face rests against his t-shirt while one of his hands clutches my hair. His back feels like a wall of muscled tension while he kisses my temple. “So you’re not arrested?” he asks with cautious excitement.
“Free as a wanton woman.”
I look up at him while he smiles uncertainly. Perhaps he feels as I do—hope might be dangerous.
“So you can stay?” he wants to know, a dark-haired, blue-eyed deity in a white t-shirt and jeans, bare feet.
“Uh-huh.” A tremble glides up my spine.
“You hungry?” he asks.
“No. Thanks.”
“Thirsty? Something to drink?”
I shake my head.
While I lean up to kiss him, my heart feels wrecked and I’m a caravan of raw nerves. Of course, he kisses me thoroughly, as if feeling liberation that he couldn’t before and making sounds that suggest he’s putting the world in its rightful place. His hands touch my towel in ways that would’ve most certainly gotten him fired before, but with purgative force requiring total commitment. One of my hands finds his hair while he foregoes etiquette and touches me in new places. Perhaps it’s the events of the day, but my whole life before this moment seems suddenly blue and frigid and dimmed to black as a draft blown in straight from India warms in the room.
With a familiar force, he stops kissing me and then takes my hand and leads me across the hallway, his pace toward his bedroom usually hasty. Frowning as he goes, he looks anxious that someone will break the door down and stop us mid-fornication. Meanwhile, I wonder how many women have taken this same walk, have partaken in the nopal fruit of Robert’s bedroom. The thought makes gunpowder swirl in my head.
In his room, the grey light of the neighborhood through the high window illuminates his king-size bed, which is covered in a grey and black striped comforter and pillows. On either side of the textured headboard is a pair of abstract paintings that look like white clouds in a black sky. Against the far wall is a side table under the windows, a few books on it. If I were clothed, I’d walk over and inspect them. The room is neat, orderly, tasteful, as if everything has been put in position with thought and interest. I don’t know what I would’ve expected. A dungeon, catacombs, a passageway into hell? This seems far more reasonable.
Avoiding formality, Robert turns quarterwise and kisses me again. Unlike before, this kiss promises something. It’s not a confused, frantic surrender in some elevator. It’s not a kiss sitting behind his desk while trying to prove something. It’s a kiss that he means to finish. It includes moans and hair-touching and the raising of my towel.
When he pulls away, his beautiful face suggests he’s enjoying some joke as he tells me, “You have no idea how often I’ve wanted this, how often I wanted to buzz you into my office and take you over my desk like some perverted lawyer.”
“A very attractive perverted lawyer,” I say, the floor beneath me made of quicksand suddenly.
I lift his t-shirt over his head while he raises his arms to ease my efforts. This task upturns parts of his hair and gives him a look that would make snow melt. He seems perpetually fresh, as though he’s always just showered. It’s a curse, really. A Robert curse. Fortunately my towel doesn’t fall with the action.
He’s so tall standing in front of me, or maybe I’m so used to his ordering me around while he sits behind his desk that I can’t help but feel small. In all the times I saw him in his suit at the office, I had briefly wondered what the man looked like beneath, but I’d always pictured the scales of a sharp-toothed dragon. The sight of the real man is a pleasant surprise.
“A year ago,” I say, hooking my fingers in his jeans. “if someone had told me I’d be in your bedroom taking off your shirt, I would’ve thought them insane.’”
He smiles madly at this comment and then touches the scrapes on my arm. “Does anything hurt?”
I shake my head. It’s a lie. Everything aches right now.
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” Especially while he stands shirtless in front of me.
Lifting his brows, he looks at me as if I’m made of sugar and says, “You know that night when you kissed me in the elevator?”
I nod.
“After I drove you home, and you fell asleep on the couch, I was so torn. I wanted to take you in your room and sleep with you there, just to make sure you’d be alright. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you alone.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I figured you’d drunk too much, but that you’d sleep it off. You’d wake up in the morning and see me lying next to you and scream.”
We both smile.
“I’ve wanted you such a very long time. Like a beggar in a madhouse.” His eyes have an air of abandonment while he speaks. “While we’re on the topic, you know I’m a horrible person. You’ll likely regret this someday.” I want to ask him why, but he answers my thought. “Because I’m demanding, and I’ll expect you to do all kinds of things for me.”
I’m too afraid to ask what he means. Don’t want to spoil the grand moment with a dumb question. Is he talking about sex or timesheets? I have no idea. The man is still an ambiguity. He’s like those Chinese boxes that once you open, a smaller box sits inside, and you have to keep opening them, one after the other, until you find the last one.
“My whole life, I’ve never known anyone like you. I’ve wanted to tell you how I felt, but I failed miserably at delivery,” he says, swiping my wet hair behind my shoulder. He removes my towel, and his blue eyes lower. He shakes his head at the new bandage and my many scrapes.
Then Robert tosses the comforter and extra pillows of the bed as if preparing for some sacred ritual, leaving the floor of the dim room looking pillaged around us. Being his former assistant, I have this instant instinct to tidy, but instead, w
hat transpires next is better than any hospital morphine, enough to make me forget the villainy of the day.
Still wearing his jeans, he holds my bare hips with both hands as if I’m a threshold he’s not supposed to cross and eases me onto the bed until I’m lying on my back feeling like the recipient of some great reward after a long battle. And Robert, my boss—the man I hated and feared for two long years, the man I used to fantasize about being burned at the stake by dancing natives, the man I got fired, the person who caused me to retreat to the office bathroom while making simpering cow noises and having panic attacks at the mere thought of his anger—hovers over me shirtless, ready to do god knows what. Briefly, I wish I still had the towel.
The sheets feel cool, and I shiver as he says, “Now’s your chance to back out.” He looks like a beautiful, wicked man.
“I’m sure,” I reply, sounding like my own witness, insecure as a naked person can get while waiting for the great unveiling that is Robert de-clothed. He then does me a service by standing and undoing his jeans. I doubt I’d be very graceful at the monumental task. I almost laugh as I think that music should accompany the moment. And then he’s there, on top of me, and to describe him naked would be to defile the sinful splendor itself, to deface the complete faultlessness that is bare Robert.
While we kiss, I think about the fact that love and hate are so very similar, two devils of the same family, both of which can do anything. They can choose to find the meanness in the least or greatest of gestures or do their best not to. I think about all the times I wanted Robert to feel pain and how at this moment I’d rather be homeless, cold and alone, than let him suffer at all. My scraped and beat-up body is a testament to this fact. The revelation of these thoughts almost scares me.
In his bed I feel small and his chest feels colossal and the sheets feel now like warmth. The sky outside the high window seems dim and remote, as if seen from a great distance, as if the whole city were unconscious or unclaimed by any life form, a fact that seems only to add to our abandonment.
At first, he’s slow and cautious as though treading on the edge of a cliff, but at my urging his body becomes an implement of primitive frenzy, concentrated and intense. He makes love just as he does everything else, as if the act has genuine significance by itself. He’s careful not to lean on my bandages, but at moments he forgets. He tells me he loves me and he’s sorry. He says that now makes up for before, and that the past cannot be changed but the future can, that we don’t need to remember those years when we can remember these moments. And I think that change is the secret to life. Right now I’m alive, my body is intact, and his body is a marvel. And the sounds he makes are so unlike his office formalities, so unchecked, that I’m reminded at strange intervals that he was very recently my mean, daunting boss, a confliction that multiplies the feelings of exhilaration. Locked in this conflagration, the tumult becomes meteors travelling through my body and vanishing in amazing wakes. All night long, we’re gluttonous like this, with only brief intervals of collapse before the next, and he doesn’t tire until the dark sky out his widow promises sun. By then, I’m too exhausted to think about being hungry, even while my stomach emptily aches.
Lying next to me with closed eyes, he looks as though the world were pleasing to him alone. The sheets partially cover us, and against me I feel his leg, warm and strong and covered in soft hair.
“I’d take you again if I had the energy,” he jests after a few unmoving minutes, as if he were a much older man. “But you’re awfully demanding. I’ll need to break for sustenance if we’re to continue.” He smiles at his own comment. Before I have a chance to respond, he teases, “Did you?”
“I’m not answering that.”
He chuckles. “How many times?”
“Not saying.”
“Why?” he demands.
“Because it’s weird to have that conversation with you.”
More frown.
“You’re my boss,” I explain.
“Technically I’m not your boss. I’m unemployed.” There’s a pout hiding somewhere beneath the stern, beautiful face.
“I’m so sorry.” I squeeze his hand and bring it to my mouth to kiss, feeling like a criminal still. “If only I could turn back time.”
“It’s not your fault. I did an excellent job of making you certain I hated you, which couldn’t have been further from reality.”
I hear morning birds and cars coming to life outside as the dawn makes its way into the room.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too.”
“I do have something to tell you though,” he confesses.
I turn and look at him, trying not to worry about what he’s about to tell me. A mountain of ideas moves through my brain, but his thick-lashed blue eyes are enough to make saints cry and make my fears vanish.
“What?” I ask.
“You know that hamburger place over on the wharf?”
I wonder if he wants to go eat. My stomach likes this idea.“The one with the overcooked burgers and stale bread?” I remember I’d gone there once after the opening hype and sat down at a table to eat a burger alone just as Robert walked through the door. He’d taken his food and strode out looking majestic in his suit. Just before he crossed the street, I noticed his eyes rebuking me. Now I wonder what his thoughts must’ve been.
“Yeah, that one. It went out of business, and I rented the location. I’m opening my own practice there. With a little remodeling, it’ll be a fine office space with a view of the bay, perfect for clients.”
We lie there silently while his toes touch my own. I worry that my hair must be a wild, tangled mess at this point. I’m afraid to go check.
“So I interviewed some people to be my assistant,” he continues.
“You did?” I hide my concern. “And?”
“They were all very qualified candidates.”
“Really?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t lose my timesheets, and they could all spell definitely. I checked.” He smirks.
I smack him on the stomach, which feels like stone. He looks at me severely.
“So what do you think?” he asks.
“About what?”
“Being my assistant.”
I frown, not sure what to make of his question. “Would you make me wear that stupid office uniform every day?”
“As long as you live here with me, you can wear whatever you want to the office.”
While seconds pass, the weightiness of his suggestion forms like fireworks in my brain.
“Live with you? Like move in?”
“Uh-huh. You could be my assistant at the office and at home. We’ve practically lived together for two years anyway. What’s the difference? I’ll just get to see you at night, too.”
An unpleasant vision of doing all his laundry and dishes and grocery shopping works in my brain. And boxing all his shirts. Jesus, the shirts. I frown.
“What do you mean?”
“I need a lot of help around the house. All that wanton desire must be quenched.”
Somehow I think he’s gotten plenty of quenching. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good, but you’ll definitely come work for me, right?”
Seeing that I’m unemployed and have no prospects of a job, I answer, “Yeah, I’ll work for you, as long as you promise not to be mean.”
“I can’t promise that,” he says scowling. “I’m cruel and terrible. I’m a lawyer, you know.” He kisses my temple. It feels weird to think about working for him now, after all we’ve just done, weird in a climactic kind of way. “You going to tell me about this business with the bulletproof vest, the torn clothes, the missing shoe? I’m afraid to ask, but I must know.”
“The men who picked me up were FBI. They’ve been tracking a child prostitution ring. They needed me to act as bait at Collin’s house,” I confess.
His eyes look as though he’d like to mangle someone. “You didn’t?”
“I did. What else could I do? It was the only way to get probation.”
“I could’ve gotten you probation. You have no criminal record. You didn’t even steal anything.” He shakes his head slightly. “What happened?”
“I hung around Collin’s house for a couple hours, waiting. Nothing happened. Then Todd showed up.”
“Todd?”
I explain to Robert all that happened as he lies there listening and looking post-coitally glorious, his hair equally wild, his hand over his forehead as if soothing his brain. Afterwards, I ask, “What do you think will happen to Todd and Collin?”
“My guess is they’ll turn on each other, and one will confess. Either way, they’ll spend a good portion of their lives in jail. Child prostitution is not taken lightly in the criminal justice system.” After a minute he groans. “I can’t believe you did all that.”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised. I did lots of things for you. I broke into homes … I wore stupid uniforms … I got your boxed shirts.”
And then he’s on top of me. “Mmmm, you did,” he says, and I think that I could live in a room full of boxed shirts and timesheets and Robert frowns as long as he took off his clothes and made those sounds and kissed as he does.
“Don’t ever do anything like that again,” he orders.
“You’re not my boss anymore. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Technically, I am. You just agreed.”
“Still.”
“Well don’t anyway.”
“I don’t intend to,” I say. “Why would I?”
There’s a moment of tension while he hovers over me looking ready to become a beastly dragon. Perhaps this will be our first real fight.
“Now that I have you, I can’t be without,” he explains. “I can never go back to being angry and frustrated and alone again.”
And the fireball inside me returns.