Sliding Past Vertical

by Laurie Boris

  “This time of night? All by yourself?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s a good neighborhood.”

  He straightened himself taller. “I forbid you to do this again.”

  She stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  He backed down. “I forbid you...” he trailed off, voice softening.

  “Is this what it would have been like if I married you? You going around forbidding me to do things?”

  “No of course not. I just don’t want to be worrying every time—”

  “You don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

  “But I would like to...after tonight—” He gestured to the bedroom. “After this...I would like to take care of you.”

  His borrowed baby-chick expression made Sarah cringe. “I don’t need tending, thank you. I’m not a potted plant.”

  He blinked in confusion and cast his eyes downward. “If I was less of a disappointment, I don’t believe you’d be saying these things to me.”

  Sarah sucked in a steadying breath. “For the last time, you weren’t—”

  “It isn’t necessary to lie, Sarah. I know it wasn’t pleasurable for you. Don’t forget I was in the next room when you were with Emerson, I know what that should sound like.”

  She stared at him, blood rushing into her cheeks as her anger grew—with him for pretending not to know, at herself for being so naive to think that he didn’t.

  “Please let me try again,” he said. “I will be better. I can learn to be good at this like him.”

  “I don’t think it would be a good idea,” Sarah said. “I’m sorry, but maybe you should just go home now.”

  His expression sagged. “But...but I thought you wanted—like you said. To be more than friends.”

  “Well, like you said. You’re marrying someone else.”

  He made brave reattempts at a smile. “If that’s the only obstacle, it could be changed. We could take some time, get to know each other better, and perhaps by then you will be ready to get married.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  A bead of sweat slid between Sarah’s shoulder blades. “Because I just can’t.”

  “Then it is because of this.” He again pointed to the bedroom. “You think it will always be horrible for you, and you are being too polite to tell me.”

  “No! That’s not it!”

  “Then what?”

  “Because I’m in love with Emerson, that’s what.”

  He went as dead as a statue. Sarah squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t wanted to tell him this. Never wanted to tell him. But he just couldn’t leave it alone.

  For a long, horrible moment, all she could hear was her own heartbeat until finally, he spoke. “And not me?”

  She shook her head, waiting for him to yell. Beg. Even cry. But he remained calm.

  “Then I will be going home now.”

  She cataloged the sequence of noises. Putting on his shoes. Picking up his keys. Crossing to the door. She waited for the rest of it: the door closing, footsteps on the stairs, car starting up and driving away.

  But the knob turned, the door opened, and then everything stopped.

  “Tell me, Sarah.” His voice was scratchy around the edges. “Did this mean anything to you? Or did you just get impatient, waiting for him to change his mind?”

  Startled, Sarah stared at him, at his unwrinkled shirt and polished shoes, at his hurt, hopeful eyes. As if he were still willing to trust her again if she said the right words.

  A million responses went through her mind, a million ways to lie.

  “No,” Rashid said. “Don’t answer. I don’t think I care to know.”

  Chapter 43

  Normally, Emerson didn’t mind the overnights. It could be a little lonely with the patients asleep, no Charlie to razz him or beat him at checkers, no ladies to fetch and carry for. It was slow, mindless work: push the mop, write in his head, and daydream.

  But that night he couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah. He continued to berate himself for being too much of a coward to fight for her. It was little comfort, and a difficult sell, trying to convince himself that sending her home had taken even greater courage. Like Bogie in Casablanca, stoically letting Ingrid Bergman fly away.

  It seemed a lot easier in the movies.

  He imagined Sarah arriving at her apartment, unable to tell Rashid it had been a mistake. Backing down, afraid to hurt him, probably letting him make love to her again.

  Five times stirred counterclockwise.

  He couldn’t see the appeal. Rashid was a nice guy, decent looking, but Emerson knew enough about Sarah to believe she didn’t love him, and it couldn’t be for the sex. Sarah was passionate and spontaneous, and this anachronism, this scientist, this almost-boy almost-man pajama-ironer was a twenty-four-year-old virgin.

  Although thanks to Sarah, the latter descriptive could be crossed off the list.

  Emerson took it out on the poor mop, scrubbing until open-heart surgery could have been performed on the sunroom floor.

  Then he came to a decision.

  If Sarah didn’t walk away from Rashid, Emerson would walk away from her. For good. No love. No friendship. Nothing.

  Maybe it was harsh and spiteful. But he was getting too old to settle for half a relationship. It wounded him too deeply to wait until Sarah finished with this latest boyfriend du jour. No matter who he was. He would take himself off the roster as second-string guy, shoulder to whine on, and dispenser of brotherly, unheeded advice.

  He deserved better.

  He deserved someone who would love him back.

  So it wouldn’t be Daisy or any of her other teenage sisters of mercy. But it could be Sarah. He’d never fully given up on the idea that one day they’d get it right and be together, and her sometimes-uninhibited affection the last couple of times he’d seen her only fueled that pathetic fire. Sarah’s embrace on the lawn burrowed deeper under his skin than lust ever had. There was a sense of completion he hadn’t noticed before. Coming from her or from him or something they created together, he didn’t know, and it felt beyond him to decipher.

  Maybe that was the word he’d been searching for, when he couldn’t describe the difference in their relationship. Because before it had been missing, word and deed.

  Completion.

  Done with the sunroom, he washed the mop and bucket, filled out a supply order, and checked tomorrow’s physical therapy schedule.

  Every time he passed a phone he wanted to call her.

  “Did you feel it before?” he’d ask. “Did you feel that word?”

  She’d think he’d lost his mind. Or, with his luck, Rashid would answer.

  Finally, at seven thirty, certain she was already awake, he called her.

  But as she picked up the phone, he realized it was Saturday.

  “H’lo?” she breathed.

  “Sarah...”

  “Em...” His name was a sigh of relief and a distress call all at once and it made him shiver. “It was awful! I was awful! But I did it, I told him...what I had to tell him. I felt like some kind of monster.”

  “It’s never easy,” Emerson said softly. He listened while Sarah gave him details, probably sanitized for his protection.

  His heart thumped as he realized this meant he didn’t have to throw her away, leave her on some rainy runway in Africa, albeit in a very fetching trench coat.

  But then an old ache stirred in his ribs for Rashid.

  “I’m so worried about him,” Sarah said, echoing his thoughts. “He was just too calm. You know?”

  “But he’s always like that.”

  “This was different. This was really scary.”

  He let out a long breath as he imagined Rashid sucking up a fresh kick to the groin and trying to be gentlemanly about it. The poor guy. Stiff upper lip or not, Emerson knew firsthand how clumsy Sarah could be.

  And he was the one who had encouraged her to do this, to be the
first to break Rashid’s heart.

  “Look, I’m just about to clock out,” Emerson said. “I’ll go check on him.”

  She hesitated.

  “You don’t want me to?”

  “Maybe...” Her voice quavered. “Maybe you’re not the person he wants to see right now.”

  After they’d hung up, Emerson realized that he understood Sarah’s hesitation. The two men hadn’t been particularly chummy since Emerson let Rashid’s lust for Sarah chew his insides out. But two years of friendship meant something to Emerson, no matter how badly it had unraveled.

  He might have been left over and left behind by the dozen or so foreign students who had come and gone, but Emerson McCann couldn’t bear to let anyone go away angry because of something he had done.

  By the time he arrived home, Rashid’s sedan and the Jordanians’ sports car were both missing from the driveway. Inside, Emerson found nothing out of the ordinary, upstairs or down. The room next to Sarah’s was its usual monument to the Indian mother who’d raised her son to make no extra work for the servants or his future wife. In the kitchen, his wet mug gleamed in the dish drainer, the teabag rest beside it. A note in his painfully tidy handwriting read that he was sorry to have used the last of the sugar.

  Five times stirred counterclockwise.

  Emerson called Sarah. “He’s not even here. I think he went to the lab.”

  “Yeah,” she said, sounding miles away. “Probably.”

  That was what Emerson would have done. What he had done. When Sarah had torn him up at a tender eighteen, he’d signed up for as many shifts in the dining hall as legally allowed, working until his feet and back ached, until he had steam burns up and down his arms. After his mother had brought him home, it had taken weeks to get the smell of cooking grease out of his hair.

  Rashid was probably doing the equivalent, up to his elbows in platelets and glass slides. Sarah might have unwittingly inspired a cure for cancer. It would certainly be a nobler gift to the world than what Emerson had offered following his heartbreak: clean dishes for a bunch of ungrateful college students, and Dirk Blade.

  “Maybe I should let him be for a while,” Emerson said.

  “Yeah,” Sarah replied. “Maybe that’s a good idea.”

  His stomach complained. The last time he’d eaten was a bag of potato chips from the vending machine about four hours ago. And he really wanted to see Sarah, partially to reassure himself he was no longer eighteen and it had been someone else she’d just dumped, not him.

  “Can I buy you breakfast?”

  She accepted, but he told her he wanted to shower first. They agreed on a time and place to meet. He washed his hair (thinking he could still smell the cooking grease), shaved, and soaped away the antiseptic aroma of an overnight shift.

  As he was getting out the telephone rang.

  “Can someone get that?” Then remembered there was no one home. He contemplated letting it go, but it might be Sarah, changing their plans, so he padded dripping and towel-wrapped into the hall.

  For his trouble he got a jumble of incomprehensible words in his ear. He’d heard enough of the languages currently spoken in his house to be able to identify them, but the speech was too rapid. He could only glean that the speaker was male, fairly young, and very excited about something.

  “Wait, slow down.” Emerson couldn’t remember the Hindi or Arabic words for either of these requests. The man took a wheezing breath and began again. Eventually Emerson recognized a couple of words.

  “You want to speak with Rashid?”

  “No. Rashid won’t listen to me,” the man said, in slow, careful English. “I need Emerson.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Please. It’s very, very important. You must come now to the laboratory.”

  Chapter 44

  Emerson yanked the previous night’s clothes over his still-damp skin. He tried to reach Sarah but got her machine and left a rushed message telling her he’d be late. Two traffic lights and several stop signs later, his Honda rattled over the paving stones at the quad’s south gate. He parked illegally next to Rashid’s sedan in the permit-only lot adjacent to the biology lab.

  A rangy figure in a white smock galloped out to meet him. Emerson figured this was his caller and tagged him as the doltish Indian student Rashid had regretted agreeing to sponsor.

  “You are Emerson?”

  He nodded.

  “Jagadhish,” the lad said.

  “Where is he, what’s—?” From the continued upward darting of the young man’s rabbit-like eyes, Emerson drew his own conclusions and cursed under his breath. “The roof?”

  “On the other side. He tells me go away, he is there to be jumping off. Come down, I tell him, don’t be foolish, you will make your mother cry, but he will not move. You are his friend, you must help.”

  Emerson looked up. Seven stories, crowned with a marble ledge. He swallowed, growing dizzy and rubbery in the knees. “Show me how to get there.”

  * * * * *

  “Today he is different,” the student huffed over his shoulder as they ran up the stairs. He seemed only slightly calmer with Emerson on the scene, his English comprehensible, in context. “Doesn’t say ‘good morning’ or teach me new American words. Then tells me there is something he must do but I am to take care of the laboratory. He gives me a paper, very, very important, it is for Emerson but for later. Soon I have a question about platelets and I go to find him, maybe he went for a coffee and I see him up there and he will not come down and then I call for security and no one is home—”

  Jagadhish was getting flustered again, English peppered with Hindi and whatever local dialect they spoke in his goat-farming homeland. Emerson stopped the lad before he could hyperventilate. “You have this paper?”

  “Yes, yes!” He stopped, fumbled in his pockets, and pulled out a folded note, in the same excruciatingly perfect handwriting as the one about the sugar.

  Tell Sarah I’m sorry and this is not her fault.

  Jagadhish read over Emerson’s shoulder. “I do not understand.”

  “I do,” Emerson said. “Keep going.”

  * * * * *

  The door creaked open onto a plane of pebbled roof. Jagadhish pointed to a familiar profile in the distance. Emerson froze, one hand worrying rust off the cold metal, the other on the younger man’s shoulder. Rashid, oblivious to his surroundings and his audience or pretending to be, stood on the far side of a short railing, on what Emerson assumed was the marble cornice he had seen from below. His hands were clasped in front of his belly, brown tweed jacket over beige sport shirt and neat brown slacks, like he’d just stepped out of the cabin of his yacht for a breath of fresh air.

  Rashid was separated from the two of them by a shallow-pitched, tiled gable. With a nod, Emerson left the student behind. Eyes averted from the edge of the roof only a few feet away, he inched up one pitch of the gable and down the other, only to find more pebbles, a recessed walkway, and then the marble outcropping.

  Afraid of startling him, Emerson stayed on his side of the gap and came no closer. He brushed wet, windswept hair out of his eyes and willed his legs to stop shaking as he fought off the nausea of knowing what lay mere inches beyond Rashid’s perfect brown loafers. Nothing. Then seven stories down to a brick patio.

  He waited.

  But only Jagadhish, cringing on the other side of the gable, got passing notice.

  “He shouldn’t be here.” Rashid’s voice was as mild as always.

  “He’s worried about you,” Emerson said.

  “He should be more worried about leaving our experiments unattended. They could be ruined or someone could get hurt.”

  Emerson beckoned the young man to the other side of the gable. “I call security again?” Jagadhish whispered. “Maybe someone will be home now?”

  “We don’t need them.” Ten years ago, a university security officer had “helped” Emerson out of his dormitory window, threatened to arrest him, and generally
blustered around making everything worse. Nobody needed that kind of help. “Just go back to the lab and sit tight, okay?”

  The boy disappeared down the staircase.

  “He’s going to watch over things downstairs,” Emerson told Rashid.

  “I don’t trust him to do even that unsupervised.”

  “He gave me your note,” Emerson said.

  Rashid frowned. “He was supposed to have waited.”

  Until the body was found. A chill shot through Emerson. He folded his arms across his chest. Looking toward Rashid and the drop below made him nauseated and dizzy, so he focused on his own feet. He curled his toes into the pebbles, digging them into the worn soles of his sneakers. In his haste to dress he’d forgotten his socks. The stiff breeze needled his legs in the spots where his jeans were still wet from the shower.

  Rashid didn’t have as much as a scuff on his shoe.

  How could he look so completely fucking normal, Emerson thought. Like he was running off to teach his class. Did I look like that when I took all those pills? A study in preternatural calm?

  “She’s not worth it,” Emerson said finally, needing something to say. “No woman is worth it.”

  The slightest look of sarcasm flicked across Rashid’s face. “Is that what they told you? When you were hanging from the window? When they were pumping out your stomach?”

  Emerson remembered the feel of the tube in his throat, the guilt, and the pain on Sarah’s face. “They didn’t have to tell me. I figured it out myself.”

  “Maybe I am not that smart.”

  “But you will be! You’ll get through this.”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “Yes, you will. There will be other women, and you’ll forget about Sarah.”

  It was the first thing he’d said that brought measurable emotion into Rashid’s voice. “But I don’t want—”

  Abruptly the younger man turned toward Emerson. His shoe caught on the railing.

  Emerson’s stomach lurched, but Rashid found his balance and stood still, the calm returning. “I don’t want to forget about Sarah!”