by Anne Calhoun
“It’s food.”
“It’s just food. If I put a hot dog on a big white plate in a fancy restaurant in Midtown and said it was pork gently separated from the bone combined with a hygroscopic humectant and an extract of paprika to give it a striking flavor, resting in an airy bread brushed with egg wash and precision-toasted, people would pay twenty dollars for fifty cents of bread and meat. All the time, attention, and fancy words don’t change the fact that your body turns it into fuel.”
He’d caught her in mid-sip of water, and it almost came out her nose when she laughed. She cleared her throat, narrowed her eyes at him, and said, “Hmmm. So, by your logic, sex is just sex. All women are the same, just a compilation of breasts and legs and hair.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You know it’s not the same. It’s a human being versus a hot dog.”
“So take the hot dog out of the equation,” she said. “It’s a human being versus a soup simmered for hours, blending the spices, tenderizing the meat, thickening the broth just right. It’s a symbowl, or what a symbowl will be like when I get those darned sauces right.”
He gave a disgusted grunt and picked up his menu. “Let’s eat. Later we can try for the sex so good I’ll resolve to never have it again.”
She laughed out loud. “You can’t give it up any more than you can give up eating,” she pointed out.
“I didn’t say I’d give it up,” he said, then leaned forward to kiss her. “It’s a challenge, darlin’.”
Sparks skittered along her nerves. “You’re ridiculous. You’ve got stitches on your forehead from an accident that happened when your trainee braked to avoid hitting a dog, you’re sprawled in that chair like a daddy longlegs in a dollhouse, and you have the absolute worst pickup lines I’ve ever heard in my life.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re here.”
“Despite—or perhaps because of—the cranky resistance to savoring the moment, I like you,” she said. “It’s a gorgeous night in the city, I’m about to try food that smells delicious, and I’m laughing. I don’t want much more.”
He stared at her. “How about a beer?”
“Yes, please,” she said fervently.
They ordered several plates of Dominican food, sampling a variety of the menu. Tim had two beers to Sarah’s one. “You sure?” he asked when she declined a second. “Neither of us is driving.”
Good point. Nothing went with good Mexican food like cold beer. This night was outside their challenges, and felt almost like a date. That wasn’t a bad way to describe what was happening between them. Almost a date. Almost a friendship. Maybe even almost a relationship. Before Aunt Joan died she would have been content to let it stay in the undefined territory of almost something more. She had all the time in the world, and no sense of urgency. But loss had left her with a desire for strong flavors, and “almost something” tasted like skim milk when she wanted rich, thick cream. She wanted to fully savor the bitter and sweet of what was happening between her and Tim, and to do that, she needed her wits about her.
“I’m sure,” she said, and smiled at him.
The creases in his cheeks deepened, spreading ever so slightly to the fine lines around his eyes. “Soda? Lemonade?”
“Water is fine, thanks.”
He signaled the waiter. “Dessert?” he asked.
“Always,” she said, “but I’d rather let my dinner settle for a bit.”
“Do you mind walking?”
“These shoes are made for walking,” she said, and let her clog dangle from her foot. “I’m used to being on my feet, and the best way to learn a city is to walk it.”
“It’s thirty blocks to the place I have in mind.”
“It’s a gorgeous spring night.”
He paid, then followed her out into the twilight. “Why did you change stations?” she asked as they set off.
“Change of pace,” he said. “Closer to home.”
“Have you always lived here?”
“Grew up working class in the Lower East Side,” he said. “Back when working-class folks could afford Manhattan. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
“Why?”
“It’s the greatest city in the world.”
“If you haven’t lived anywhere else, how do you know that?”
He shot her a look, amused and sardonic all at once. The classic New Yorker look, pitying those condemned to live out their lives in lesser places. “You feel the same way about San Francisco.”
“I’ve lived other places. I’m therefore qualified to judge.”
“Where?”
“London for a semester. Paris for a year.”
“Your data is flawed,” he said. “You’ve never lived here.” The lights at 96th Street changed, halting their forward progress. Tim checked the street signs, then led her along the street toward Second Avenue. “We have everything you can get anywhere else in the world, so why go anywhere else in the world?”
“Really?” she said. “I bet you can’t find something in Manhattan that I haven’t seen somewhere else.”
“Doesn’t exist somewhere else, or you haven’t seen?”
“I’ll make it easy for you. Just something I haven’t seen.”
“What’s on the table?”
She thought about that for a block as they transitioned from Spanish Harlem to Yorkville. “Sex wherever it is.”
He laughed. “You’re that confident I can’t do this.”
“I am,” she said.
“I’ll take that bet,” he said.
“London. Paris. San Francisco,” she ticked off on her fingers.
In full view of the foot traffic at 86th and Second Avenue, he stopped, pulled her close, and bent to her ear. “None of them are Manhattan,” he said. “Prepare to lose again.”
“But not tonight,” she said.
He smiled at her. “Tonight we’ve declared an amnesty in this personal war of ours.”
“Good. Now. Dessert?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
They crossed 86th Street. Three storefronts from the intersection was a narrow shop, the window decorated in red gingham and roosters and a white picket fence. “Two Little Red Hens,” she read. “That sounds familiar.”
He opened the door to let out a woman with a dog, a stroller, and a cake box. The sweet smell of yeast and sugar and cinnamon rolled out with her. “They started in Brooklyn. I used to come here for desserts when I worked up here.”
They got in line. Sarah studied the case full of cupcakes, small cakes, full-size cakes, the cake stands piled high with cookies and individually wrapped bars, the clear jars containing even more cookies behind the counter. Four apron-clad service staff worked the long line, one making lattes and coffees, and each of the four two-top tables had someone sitting at it. “I can’t possibly choose,” she said. “Recommendations?”
“Brooklyn Blackout. You have to try that.”
“What else?”
“What do you like?”
“Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting.”
“Done. What else?”
“That’s enough dessert for two people,” she protested.
“Love in the Clouds,” he said.
“What?”
He pointed at a jar one-third full of dark chocolate cookies sandwiched around white filling. They looked like Oreos, if Oreos were made by talented bakery elves bristling with magic. “Love in the Clouds,” she read from the hand-printed label on the jar. “What does that mean?”
“It means fucking awesome.”
“We should hire you to write Symbowl’s advertising copy.”
“My praise is limited to good, awesome, and fucking awesome.”
“Best stick to saving lives, then.”
“Grab that table,” he said, nodding toward a spot outside the front window. “Coffee?”
“Decaf cappuccino,” she said, and scurried for the door.
Fortunately she didn’t have to cage match�
�wrestle anyone for the table. She slid into the chair closest to the picket fence enclosing the tiny seating area and watched Tim point at various calorie-laden bakery items. He emerged a couple of minutes later with a white paper sack, two plates in one hand, and two coffees palmed in the other. She reached for them both.
“Mine’s straight coffee,” he said.
She swapped the cups and scooted back to make room for him. “How do you fit into the places you have to go?”
“It’s not easy,” he admitted as they finally found room for her legs, his legs, and the feet supporting the table.
She opened the bag. “We can split this, right? Some now, some later?”
“Sure,” he said, and sat back to watch her put half a cookie on each plate. The Brooklyn Blackout cupcake she cut in half, then in quarters, and lifted a quarter onto each plate. She studied the remaining cake, then said, “I’m being ridiculous.”
That got her a rare, honest, fully creased smile and a set of lifted eyebrows. “You said it, not me.”
“Fuck it,” she said, and added the rest of the Brooklyn Blackout to his plate.
“You’re going to regret not keeping your share.”
“We’ll see.”
She tried the cupcake first. It was perfect, the cake light and not grainy, the frosting walking a fine line between dark and milky chocolate. A sip of cappuccino and the Love in the Clouds was next. “Oh, my,” she said. Cinnamon, cocoa, and a white cream center. “That’s so good.”
“Where’d you get the good hand with a head wound?”
A quick glance at his face showed they were both surprised by the question. As she gathered her thoughts, she toyed with what was left of her Love in the Clouds. Aunt Joan hadn’t been gone long, and while her death was very much expected, it still wasn’t easy to talk about it. “I was extrapolating,” she said finally. “I took care of my aunt through her battle with ovarian cancer. She died a few months ago. I’d always been pretty carefree, working when I felt like it, saving money to travel, taking off to work in London or France without thinking about anything other than a work visa. I was the person without what my family calls ‘a real career,’ and I loved her like a mother, so quitting the restaurant to look after her was an easy choice.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Easy?”
“I couldn’t do anything else,” she said. “When it was close to the end, I promised her I’d go back to being that person, the one who took on a challenge without fear. She was sad I’d given up two years to watch her die, but that’s not what happened. That’s not what I did. Being with her through that taught me how to live.”
He was staring at her, cake forgotten, and this had taken a turn into the depressing. The whole thing was way too serious for a spring fling. She recrossed her legs and sat back with a smile. “It’s all on the blog, if you want to read about it.”
A couple with two kids under the age of five paused in the doorway to negotiate a balloon tied to a double stroller, the little girl pushing a doll stroller, an even younger boy clutching a stuffed stegosaurus, and two hot coffees. Sarah swallowed the lump in her throat and finished off her cookie.
Tim lowered his voice and leaned in. “You eat like you have sex,” he murmured. “Full attention. Slow. Absorbing it all.”
Heat trickled along her nerves, like hot coffee and the cooling spring air, hot blood and cooled skin. Relieved, she said, “I thought you were going to make a joke about watching me lick frosting off a fork.”
“I’m watching you do that,” he admitted. A hint of heat suffused his cheekbones. “But that’s not what does it for me. It’s thinking about you taking that kind of time with me later.”
She whisked what was left of the Brooklyn Blackout off his plate.
“Hey,” he protested.
“We’re saving that for later.”
“The hell we are. You gave up your share, and I’m eating it now.”
She covered the plate with her hands. “I bet I can earn it back.”
“I’ve been down that road before. No bet. What have I done to make you think I’m a nice guy? I mean, I am, but we’re talking a Brooklyn Blackout. I don’t do delayed gratification.”
“You did last week,” she said with a grin.
He frowned at her, his expression mostly teasing, but she liked the teasing, so she played along. Without breaking eye contact she cut off a tiny portion of dark chocolate cake and lifted it to her mouth. Chocolate spread rich and smooth across her tongue, exactly the right amount of overindulgent decadence in that single bite.
“Only for you,” he said grumpily.
They finished their coffee while watching the Upper East Side flow by, until goose bumps rose on her arms.
“We can catch a bus on any downtown street or the train at Eighty-Sixth and Lex,” he said.
“Let’s keep walking,” she said.
“You sure? It’s almost a hundred blocks to my place.”
“Just until we get cold or tired. I’ve never been up here before.”
She collected their trash and took it inside to throw away. Through the front window she watched him step right over the picket fence to the sidewalk, carrying both their coffees as he did. There was something incredibly hot about watching a well-made man move. He was so light on his feet for someone as tall as he was.
They walked along the avenues, following the lights toward Lexington, where they could catch a train if they wanted. She grabbed menus at restaurants, window-shopped, and watched night settle over the city. They made it as far as Midtown before she called uncle.
“Train or bus?”
“Bus. That way I can watch the city go by.”
His arm around her shoulders, he pulled her close. She didn’t bother with keeping her distance; after she tended his head wound, the boundaries were down, and he gave off heat like a furnace. Fortunately an M15 pulled up to the bus stop when they arrived back at Second Avenue. They climbed aboard, paid, and headed for a seat at the back. “Take the window seat,” he said.
“Where are we?” she murmured.
He peered over her shoulder. “Turtle Bay. That’s the UN,” he said, pointing out the opposite window. Occasionally, as the bus lumbered south, he would lean forward and name the neighborhood. “Stuyvesant. Bellevue Hospital is a block over. I’ve spent a lot of time at Bellevue . . . East Village. Lots of NYU students, artists live here . . . Little Italy to your right, the Lower East Side to your left. Generations of immigrants came through the Lower East Side, including my great-grandparents. Most of them dispersed. We just stayed.”
The city was deep in his bones, part of his DNA. “You really can’t imagine living anywhere else, can you?”
He shook his head. “You’ve seen a good stretch of the east side of Manhattan tonight,” he said.
“I’m learning to like this city,” she said, looking at him. “It’s not home, not like San Francisco, but I’m learning to like it. Thanks for the tour.”
“Next time go back up to One-Tenth and do the same trip south, except along Fifth,” he mused. “It would be a completely different trip. Harlem, museums, mansions, Central Park, Fifth Avenue shopping, the library, the Empire State Building, Union Square. It’s tourist central.”
“Sounds like fun. Want to—?”
She stopped, because his smile faltered. Sarah realized he’d been thinking out loud, not offering to play tour guide. Before she could say anything else, he leaned past her and pushed the yellow strip signaling for a stop, saving her from jamming her foot all the way into her mouth. Tim obviously didn’t make plans for tomorrow, let alone next week, or a summer of playing tourist in Manhattan.
The bus jerked to a halt. Tim opened the door without waiting for the bus to finish lowering. Sarah stepped onto the sidewalk, turned to start walking, then did a one-eighty when Tim snagged her arm. “This way, darlin’,” he said, amusement rich in his voice.
He unlocked the door to his building, then the door to his apartment. Sarah s
et the leftover Brooklyn Blackout on the counter and rubbed her bare arms. Tim lowered the Murphy bed. “C’mere.”
Obediently she sat on the end of the bed. Tim paused, as if not quite sure how to proceed without a challenge in front of him. Sarah said nothing, just waited in the moment, curious to see what he’d do.
He kneeled at her feet and slipped off her clogs, one by one. “We walked about four miles,” he said absently, and applied gliding pressure to her arch.
“That feels good,” she said. Her voice drifted into the air, quiet and light and achingly honest. Her other foot rested on his thigh, near enough his cock to register the blood pulsing into his shaft. She leaned back on her hands and watched him rub her feet. It felt out of character for Tim the superhero-paramedic. If the situation called for immediate action, he’d take it and never miss a beat. But being there for a patient or family member who needed a soothing touch or listening ear . . . ?
As if he heard her, he set her foot on his thigh and dropped his hands to rest in his hip creases. He looked down, blew out his breath, and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Okay, darlin’, she thought.
“Ready for the rest of your cake?” she said.
“Yeah.”
She padded over to the counter, found a plate, and arranged the Brooklyn Blackout on it. “Silverware?”
“Drawer to your left.”
When she came back to the bed he was leaning against the wall, the pillows piled at his back, legs stretched nearly to the end of the bed. She knee-walked to him, then straddled his hips. “Small bites,” she said.
Hands resting lightly on her hips, he accepted the morsel. “What’s the challenge?” he said after he swallowed.
“No challenge,” she said, and cut off another section. “It’s all yours.”
“It’s not like you to chicken out of a bet.”
She waited until he had another bite before answering. “That’s the thing about delicious food. You can always make more.”
“You think you could make this?”
“I know I could make this. Right now, I’d rather watch you enjoy it.”
Based on the contemplative look in his eyes, he was chewing over both the cake and her tactic. “Watching me eat is as satisfying as eating something yourself.”