Rogue Acts

by Molly O'Keefe

  She gave him a mischievous smile when she said nakedly—or maybe the grin was meant to go with the ambitious. His dick wasn’t up to parsing her words.

  All he knew as he followed her with his eyes was that she did stop to take a very small slice of his pie—and he was suddenly glad she would taste it.

  3

  Monroe hadn’t seen Annie for days—three days, to be precise. He knew because he expected to see her now, and he had been disappointed for three whole days that he hadn’t caught a glimpse of her scurrying to the subway stop with a canvas bag on each shoulder or rounding the corner past the late summer roses on a path in Marcus Garvey. He was irritated with his expectation, with his realization that she somehow had come to anchor his day, give it a reality and excitement that he hadn’t felt in a long time. It didn’t help that all of the sensible explanations he gave himself for her absence also irritated him, too. She could be on vacation. She could be with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

  She could be avoiding him.

  As if reading his mind, a young man—one of the people who Annie associated with at the library, came up to him. “Annie—you’re her neighbor?”

  Without waiting for a reply, the man said, “She said she’d been sick, couldn’t meet me here. Now she isn’t answering my texts. I thought maybe someone could knock on her door, make sure she’s okay.”

  “Someone being me.”

  Monroe spoke sharply, partly because he was startled that the subject of his thoughts was the subject of someone else’s. Who was this kid to Annie? He was handsome, sure, with gleaming dark skin and huge soulful eyes. But it was entirely inappropriate. Monroe himself, on the other hand—

  Luckily for Monroe, the young man interrupted his thoughts again. “Annie’s been helping me with forms and to study for the citizenship exam. She saw you here once or twice. She said you lived in the same building. I don’t want to bother her, but she’s alone.”

  “She’s helping you with citizenship?”

  “She did it a lot in her old neighborhood, she said. So she volunteered to do it here. But she postponed our last meeting and today she canceled. She’s been sick for a few days and I’m worried. I was wondering if you’d looked in on her or heard from her. She’s your neighbor.”

  Monroe was her neighbor. That’s what he told himself on the short walk home after he’d gotten the young man’s—Kwesi’s—number. Checking in was what neighbors did.

  More than neighbors, Monroe realized as he got back and stood to face her door. He had been wanting more.

  This time, Annie knew she looked even more terrible than usual. She was glassy-eyed and disheveled. She hadn’t changed her t-shirt in days. And as a special bonus, she probably smelled bad. And right outside her door, looking cool in a light-weight suit, stood Monroe Webb.

  She blinked through her peephole once or twice to make sure that she wasn’t hallucinating. But he stood there patiently because he knew—he knew she was there because she couldn’t control her coughing.

  “Fuck it,” she said, hauling the door open.

  And she stood there blinking at him, not saying a word, just letting her eyes rest on him as he seemed to do the same with her.

  She was having another moment with him—or maybe she was feeling faint. It was hard to tell what exactly was causing her heart to race and her face to flush right now. So she asked the first thing that popped into her mind. “Is it true that you made millions of dollars for being in a rock and roll band?”

  Surprisingly, he laughed, and the sound was warm enough to trickle through her feverish, muzzy head and make her toes curl. “Is that what people say about me? My son, Calvin, is the musician. He lives in Boston—well, he’s in China now on a fellowship. He’s a scholar, too—specializes in jazz and popular American music. So no, I was not part of a band. My buddy was and I gave him the idea for the title of the song. I read him something like, We represent peace, harmony, love, human sympathy, human rights and human justice, and that is why we fight so much. It became ‘That Is Why We Fight.’ It got on the Billboard top 100. He gave me a co-writer credit. R. M. Webb, that’s me. He’s still knocking around in the music business.”

  As he talked, he advanced into her apartment. He glanced around at the clutter of envelopes on the coffee table, worn rug and comfy couch, and then back at her. “You really are sick.”

  She shut the door and her hands dropped down to her sides. She’d felt tired and defeated even before she became ill and now it didn’t even matter what she looked like in front of him.

  She took the few steps to her living room and sank into the sofa and closed her eyes.

  “Doctor says it’s walking pneumonia. I’m pretty contagious, so don’t, you know, touch me. Not that you were planning to. I’ll aim my coughs away from you.”

  “Pneumonia.”

  But the man actually came closer—he almost did almost touch her. And she almost let him.

  Instead, she turned away and coughed. “Yes, it sounds awful and it feels awful, but the walking part means that it isn’t terrible enough for me to go to the hospital. I’m just more like a zombie. Like the Walking Dead. Walking Dead Pneumonia.”

  She was also a little feverish. Maybe this whole thing was an illness-induced nightmare.

  “Where is your daughter? Does she know?”

  “She just started law school in Michigan. I am not about to bother her now. And I’m obviously still alive and talking—too much. As usual.” She coughed again. “Why are you here? Planning to kick me out of the building while I’m too weak to fight?”

  “No, I’m here because Kwesi was worried—and I missed seeing you around every corner.” A pause. “I was worried about you.”

  Definitely hallucinating.

  He continued, “Plus Ms. Hernandez asked after you. And a few runners in the park—I don’t even know their names. I’d call them skinny white guy in khakis and Grandma Flash?”

  She laughed suddenly and promptly started wheezing. She knew exactly who they were.

  “Runners are their own kind of community,” she said, finally.

  He’d gone to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water for her. “Yes, you seem good at making yourself a part of them.”

  Was it admiration? She closed her eyes and drank what he offered her even though she knew it wouldn’t help. But it was from him, and he didn’t make empty gestures.

  “I was going to train for that 10K—and then think about a half marathon. I don’t think I can do it now. I’m going to be out for a couple of weeks, maybe longer. I’ve run out of steam. I can’t do anything. I don’t know what I’m going to do about Kwesi. Not that he really needs me to help him study. He has a memory like—” she snapped her fingers—”but it’s always better to have someone quiz you, or to have an extra set of eyes on those forms.”

  He sat carefully on the couch beside her. “I’ll help him study. I’ll help him with paperwork.”

  She coughed again. “It’s okay, you don’t have to pick up my slack. I’ve been helping people—like my parents and relatives—with stuff like this since I was a kid. Plus, I work with the city. I’m good at forms. It’s my one talent—the one thing I’m good for these days.”

  “Well, not to steal your thunder but I work for a museum. I have a lot of experience filling out applications. If we have any questions, I’ll text you.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I have time.”

  “Since when do you have time? Since when do any of us?”

  “You need to take better care of yourself,” he said, and his voice was so gentle that she wanted to fall into its depths.

  He had no right to be this nice to her. She wasn’t supposed to like him. He didn’t like her—he’d been against her—and she wasn’t in the business of proving she was likable. But the worst thing was that she had feelings for him. A lot of feelings.

  She screwed up her eyes and turned away from him. Suddenly it was all too much. “I
thought I was doing okay. All right, so I’ve been waking up with a sense of dread every morning for the past year. Then last week, I got up and it was like something was sitting on my chest—like I couldn’t breathe. Living here, having a fresh start here, was so good for me for a while. I was carving out a place. I know—I know I’m not changing the world—God knows, I really am not changing it. But I thought that if I just kept doing what I’d always been doing, but more—more immigration counseling, more writing letters and donating and marching, just more—that somehow all that of my cumulative love and energy and would lead to something. Some—some tangible change that I could point to and say, This is one thing that got better. But it’s not getting better. I’m just an ordinary person. What I gave was too small.”

  He made a noise.

  She added, “And now I’m disappointing Kwesi and lying to my daughter about how well I’m coping with her gone, and everything seems to be falling apart in this country.”

  Annie covered her face and coughed. “I have been trying to do the right things my whole life, even when people told me I didn’t belong in this country, and I was afraid they might be right. But I’ve been fighting this fight for so long, and lately, it all seems to get worse. What’s worse for me this time—this time, right now—is that I feel so sick and angry and alone.”

  The last words were probably not coherent. She kept running out of breath halfway through all the things she needed to get off her chest. The sentences came out strangled. She couldn’t look up at him. She’d thrown up her stupid mess on him, and she felt ashamed.

  But this time, he did reach out to touch her shoulder. His fingers were warm.

  “You aren’t alone. Woman, you’ve lived here for less than a year and you are the least alone person I’ve ever seen. Another day and you’d have people wanting to break down the doors of this building to see if you are all right. We were all starting to worry. That is not nothing—don’t disrespect us by saying it’s an empty feeling.”

  She tried to catch her breath—but maybe it wasn’t her illness this time. She risked a glance at him and found him looking at her, his eyes filled with concern and affection—more than affection.

  “Annie, I know you feel bad now, but you are going to get better, and when you do you’re going to come out on my long runs with me, so you don’t keep startling me on the paths. We’re going to sit together at community meetings and poke each other when we’re about to fall asleep.”

  She gulped and laughed. “That is a shit way to ask someone out, Monroe.”

  He laughed, too, but this time he let it ring out loud through the apartment. “OK Annie Wu, how about this? I can’t stop thinking about you. I picture how you’ll giggle at something I heard at work. I wonder what you’re doing when I’m in my apartment and you are in yours. I save up stories to tell you. I was worried when I met you that you seemed to find ways to mix me up. But it’s not that I’m mixed up when I’m around you—it’s that I’m happy. I imagine ways to make you laugh, or sigh, or smile. I think about you not just because we see each other all over, but because now I look for you everywhere—no, I look forward to you. You’re like hope, Annie.”

  Her breath caught. He was watching her intently—and what he saw made him fiercely glad, as glad as he’d made her. His hand came up to cup her face.

  “I’m infectious. You’re going to get sick,” Annie whispered.

  Instead of moving away, Monroe kept his hand where it was.

  “That’s a shit way to tell me you like me, too,” he whispered back.

  She laughed, a brief sound that ended with a cough. He gave her more water and added. “Besides, I don’t get sick.”

  “Of course you don’t, Mr. Perfect,” she said in a normal voice, her eyes dropping.

  But he gathered her into his arms and held her.

  “I am very good,” he said, “but I’m not perfect.”

  He slid a careful hand up her back and up between her shoulder blades, tracing the fine wing of her bone, moving up to the neckband of her t-shirt, to the more solid knob of her shoulder and down her arm.

  She sighed again, and it was precious, something he would never have heard had he not been so close. His other hand slid over her wrist, her warm, soft, slightly damp palm, coming up gently to brush over the full mound at the base of her thumb and stretch her hand slightly to accommodate his fingers so that they were interlaced.

  Then he pulled her hand up slowly, making sure her eyes followed his. He held their joined hands between them, and he kissed every joint of her knuckle, pausing for a minute to smell the faint scent of her soap.

  She wasn’t breathing. Neither was he. Maybe she had gotten him sick already. He didn’t care.

  But he pulled her up gently and moved toward her bedroom. He already knew where it was because his apartment was the mirror opposite. She came slowly. She never looked away from their hands. He helped her into the bed and finally let go.

  She lay down quietly, so he knew she was tired. He pulled the cover over her and caressed it as if she would feel his touch through the layers, down, down into the heart of her.

  He hadn’t known he cared that much. This woman made him surprise himself.

  He checked her air conditioner and adjusted the blinds. He brought a fresh glass of water and a new box of tissues to the nightstand. He straightened the books. And finally, reluctantly, he turned to leave.

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  Her eyes blinked once, twice. And she slept.

  4

  Monroe visited Annie’s apartment every day. Sometimes the visits were short—a quick check-in, a word or two about their day. Sometimes they were longer—lingering. He brought soup and gossip, and later, plantains and pork pernil, or bagels and lox. At some point, she had gotten better. The cough abated. She was back at the library with Kwesi and she was going to work—although as far as Monroe knew, she hadn’t felt up to running yet. But those encounters out of the building felt different now. Her face lit up when she saw him—and then she became shy. She needed time. But he kept dropping in, and neither of them said a word about his presence or her recovery.

  They relaxed on her shabby sofa or at the cluttered kitchen table. He told her about the last time he saw Cal play. She told him about her bosses, her daughter’s latest text message. Or they sat in silence, drinking wine, happy, gazing at each other. It used to be that Monroe’s apartment was an oasis, but going into Annie’s place—where he wore jeans and soft button-down shirts, where he turned off his phone and took off his shoes at the entry—made him breathe easy, too. Until he got to the goodbyes. They were heart-poundingly bad. Or maybe they were the best.

  Monroe never wanted to leave. Annie was fun and funny, and Monroe could not remember laughing this much in years. But when it was time to walk the five feet back to his own silent apartment, he found it more and more difficult. And yet he always looked forward to the end because then he got to touch her—he got to press her palm, feel his skin sliding against hers, feel her tremble.

  After that first time, after she’d broken down and he’d tucked her in, he hadn’t really made physical contact because she was sick, and she insisted that she didn’t want him to catch what she had. And also because she needed to recover—not just her health, but maybe her spirits, too. So he got in the habit of wanting, of holding her hand in his too, too briefly when he said goodnight. And because he didn’t want to push her into that, either, he didn’t kiss her cheek, or her lips, or touch her hair like he wanted to. He held her hand.

  There was something about a woman’s hands after she’d gotten past that first youth—her skin was softer, more settled over the fine bones and tendons. It was easier to trace the strength and frailty, all the things she had been through.

  Eventually, the amount of time they stood holding hands became longer and longer. Until one day, Annie said, “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

  Maybe he said something. It was probably more of a groan as
he bent his head down and touched his lips to her cheek, to her nose, and then her lips. Then her whole body was pressed against his.

  “You can be very kind,” she murmured with a half laugh.

  “Kind. Is that what you’re calling this?”

  She was gratified to hear that his voice sounded a little strangled as she pulled him slowly toward her bedroom. Slow, because she kept getting distracted on the way, pausing to kiss the gray at his temples, to reach up high to his neck and the long, strong line that led to the stark ridge of his shoulder. “I’m calling you kind,” she murmured, “for letting me take some time to recover. I can’t believe you held off for so long, is all I’m saying.”

  “I don’t know that I did hold off—I was here every day.”

  He growled as Annie pressed her hands down low. He continued, “But you don’t have to keep doing exactly that right there—” He huffed. “I mean, I made my feelings clear. But if you don’t want this, I’ll stop.”

  “I want this right now.”

  “Good.”

  Somehow, they managed to get out of the hallway and tumble onto the bed, his knee hitting the inside of her thigh, her back crushing his hand. But they hardly noticed as they moved apart a little to tug off their clothing.

  “Next time,” she said, as she watched him take off his tee, “I’m going to make you wear your three-piece suit and slide every button open as slowly as you can.”

  Her shirt was already off and she lay on the bed, watching him. His body was lean, as she knew it would be, not neat and planed off in perfect lines, just human and beautiful. She ran her hand down the mess of unruly hair that glinted on his chest, down his hip to where his jeans gaped slightly, and rimmed her finger around the waistband, enjoying the warmth and the strength and the life she felt.

  He was watching her enjoying him, watching her fumble with the button of his jeans, seeing her impatience, her shyness, her attempt to be gentle with the zipper. But as she finally slid it down, tooth by tooth, over the swell of him, he slid his own hands under her ass and as her legs opened, he rubbed himself into her, and she caught her breath so quickly that it almost started off another coughing fit—a last remnant from her illness.