Afternoon Delight (10 page)

He shook his head. “My appetite's not that big. Get a fork.”

His back to the wall, she curled up next to him. “Big hands are useful,” she said when he steadied the bowl to keep it from tipping as she gathered a forkful of meat and rice. “Want me to stay?”

“You don't have to.” He shifted, like his skin was two sizes too small, hating being seen so vulnerable, but he couldn't bring himself to be rude, either. She wasn't fussing. She was just there, quiet and certain and still, right down to the marrow of her bones. He wondered where she'd learned to handle injuries with a professional's calm, but maybe she was one of the naturally compassionate types. But asking that question would take this even further out of the realm of their agreed-upon challenge, into the past. Talking about pasts paved the way for thinking about futures. If he was really on his game, he'd find a way to make this about sex, but God help him, the last thing he wanted right now was sex.

“I know that,” she said patiently. “I didn't have to bring you lunch or clean you up or watch you sleep, but I did, because I wanted to. Do you want me to stay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But I'll be up early for my shift.”

“You're going to work tomorrow?”

He opened one eye and squinted at her. “Hell, yes, I'm going to work. Why wouldn't I go to work?”

She shook her head. “Because you just got stitches in your . . . Never mind.”

The dentist's freebie toothbrush he'd given her last time still hung in the holder screwed to his wall. He found her a T-shirt to sleep in. She crouched down by the bed to mess with her phone. “I'll meet Trish at the park tomorrow. She's getting used to bringing me clean clothes,” she said, flashing him a smile. “I change in the back of the truck.”

“Very bohemian of you,” he said, relieved she wasn't dropping hints about him clearing some space in the dresser. She didn't seem to notice, just tucked her wild hair behind her ear and finished her text.

“I turned off my ringer but set my alarm,” she said as she climbed into bed.

***

“Wake up,” he said.

She burrowed into the pillow and mumbled something that sounded like
I don't have a concussion
.

“Smart ass. I'm leaving,” he said. “Just pull the door shut tight when you leave.”

“Okay,” she said.

As he walked to work he tried to figure out exactly how he felt about leaving her asleep in his apartment. He didn't think she'd go through his drawers, and he had nothing to hide. But it was the first time in a very long time he'd spent the night with a woman without sex.

It was an even longer time since he'd let a woman take care of him. He was a grown man. Short of a spurting stab wound or being hit by the crosstown bus, he didn't need anyone to take care of him. Not for six stitches and a headache.

But she'd been there, with food and a gentle touch. The pace was what threw him. She didn't make a big fuss, coo or cluck or demand Casey's head on a platter for incompetence. She just sat with him, stroked his hair, watched some singing competition on TV. The world felt a little slower, a little less blurry when Sarah was around.

Tim shouldered his way through the shift change crowd to open his locker. He spun the combination without thinking about the numbers, hauled open the door, and found himself face-to-face with a gigantic furry ass. It was pale brown and sporting a stubby semicircle of a tail in a lighter brown fur.

Snickers rose from the group clustered behind him.

He reached up and extracted whatever was crammed into the space between his uniform jacket and the top shelf. It was a teddy bear, wearing a floppy pink ribbon, sad eyes, and a sappy, soggy-faced grin. The sign clutched between his front paws read
GET WELL SOON
.

“Nice,” he said, and palmed his lock. It wasn't tampered with, so someone figured out the combination and got into his locker.

More snickers and shuffling.

He yanked the bear from his locker and snagged his jacket. “I don't rate flowers?”

“For flowers you need to get Race Car Ralph here to knock your head off your shoulders.”

“Naw, remember that guy whose wife took the fire ax from the lobby to him? Brains. You want flowers, we gotta see brains.”

He turned around and saw Casey, red-faced, hands in his pockets, his shoulders near his ears. From the look on his face Tim could tell the teasing had been merciless and continuous, but in the guys' defense, knocking the LT unconscious and splitting his head open while braking for a dog was a truly spectacular event. If he made it through his probie year, and through the couple decades of work after that, they'd be talking about this at his retirement party.

He jammed his arms into his jacket, tucked the bear under his arm, and surveyed the crowd in the tiny locker room. “Not much going on today?” he asked mildly. “Lots of downtime?”

“No, sir,” Gutierrez said from the front row. “Pretty quiet so far.”

“Sounds like a great time to do a complete inventory.”

As if on cue, the speakers blared to life, a call a few blocks away, elderly male in distress, caller agitated. Tim processed the address subconsciously, as did every other person in the room. Captain Jones caught his eye.

“LT, we did inventory a couple of weeks ago,” Gutierrez said as he gathered up Casey and headed for the bus.

“We took how many calls in the last sixteen days?” Tim called over his shoulder. “You're telling me every single piece of equipment in this station is in its place?”

“Yeah!”

“Then the inventory won't take you long!”

Casey fell into step behind him. “It's okay, LT. I can take it.”

Tim shoved the bear face-first between the dash and the windshield. “Shut up and drive. That call was for the Cohens.”

***

They arrived at the building to find Mrs. Cohen standing on the landing, wearing slacks and a sweater and slippers that bore a strong resemblance to the bear smashed into the windshield. She waved at them. “Up here, up here!”

“We're coming, Mrs. Cohen,” Tim said as he shouldered the equipment bag and took the stairs two at a time. Casey puffed hard on his heels.

He looked around the apartment, automatically taking stock. Clean, tidy, the stacks of magazines reshuffled by date, going back nearly a decade in some cases. “Where's Mr. Cohen?”

She massaged her swollen knuckles and frowned. “He wouldn't want you to see him like this,” she fretted. “But I can't get him up!”

Tim's heart nearly stopped. God help them all if she couldn't get her husband out of the tub and he'd slipped under the water while she was on the phone or the landing. “He's in the bathroom?”

“Yes, but . . . Oh, he really won't like this.”

He braced his hand on the bathroom door frame and for the first time in his life gave thanks to find an elderly patient stuck between the toilet and the vanity.

“I tried,” Mrs. Cohen said from behind him. “I couldn't get him up.”

Tim stood back and let Casey do the assessment while he looked around the bathroom. A glass of juice with a straw in it sat on the vanity, along with a piece of toast cut into bite-sized pieces.

“How're you feeling today, Mr. Cohen?” Casey asked as he pulled on gloves and hunkered down on his heels in front of the elderly man, carefully tugging down the faded blue pajama top to preserve some modesty, as the matching pants down around his knobby ankles.

It seemed like a stupid question, but they'd diagnose Mr. Cohen's mental state from his response, or lack of response. His eyes were dazed, and without his dentures, Tim couldn't understand what he was saying, but the bewildered tone came through loud and clear. This wasn't Tim's strength, the calls where the future was staring him right in the face, a long, drawn-out slide into a twilight world, not quite alive, not dead yet. But Casey was watching, learning from him with every call they caught, and he had to do something, show him the right way to handle this.

“Mrs. Cohen,” Tim said, watching Casey as he spoke, “please don't try to get him up. Call us. You'll hurt your back, or slip and hit your head, and then you'll both end up in the nursing home.”

“LT,” Casey said quietly as he eased Mr. Cohen back onto the toilet. He pointed at the indentations in the old man's shoulder, where a nasty bruise spread over the paper-thin skin.

Tim looked at Mrs. Cohen. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “He slipped just after five,” she said. “Your shift starts at seven.”

That explained the juice and toast. He drew a deep breath. “Mrs. Cohen.”

“You're nicer than the others.”

“Mrs. Cohen, all of the EMTs and paramedics are very nice.”

“I hear them when they walk down the stairs.”

Tim felt his jaw set. Along with a deep sense of loyalty to the communities they served, most EMTs and paramedics had a wicked, dark sense of humor to help them deal with the daily tragedies they faced. But you waited until you were out of the patients' or families' earshots. Joking around was part of the job, but patient dignity was non-negotiable.

“I'll talk to them,” he said. “Can you find him some clean pajamas?”

Between them, they got Mr. Cohen cleaned up, into another set of pajamas, and sitting in his recliner. Tim pulled on fresh gloves as he sat back on his heels, then did another assessment. “How's he been?” he asked as he listened to Mr. Cohen's heart rate and respiration.

“He had a wonderful day yesterday,” Mrs. Cohen said. She was in the kitchen, slicing bread and making coffee. “We did puzzles and looked at pictures from when the boys were babies. He remembered the stories. He did.”

Fifty-plus years of married life reduced to that, to puzzles and pictures and stories. Who the hell committed to a future with someone when that was at the end of it? Tim looked at the old man, at his bewildered eyes. “I'm sure he did,” he said, then pulled Casey aside and lowered his voice. “Heart rate and respiration normal. Color good. No broken bones. Aside from the bruising, no signs of distress. Do we take him in?”

“No?” Casey said.

“No,” Tim said more firmly. That's the future they were fighting today. It was inevitable—watching two sets of grandparents transition from happy and healthy to bedridden had taught him that—but they could fight it a little longer. “If he goes in, he won't come back out.”

“I think he'll be fine,” Tim said when Mrs. Cohen emerged from the kitchen, cups of coffee in both hands. “Thank you,” he said. Casey followed his lead, sipping gently to avoid having his esophagus seared. “Call your home health aide company and ask them to send someone over today to check on him.”

“I will,” Mrs. Cohen said, obviously relieved. “What on earth happened to your head?”

“A minor accident,” he said, leaving Casey out of it entirely. “I'm fine.”

“Are you sure? That looks awful.”

“I'm
fine
,” he said more firmly. He was the paramedic here. He took care of people, not the other way around.

“Let me get you something,” she said.

Despite his protestations she pressed half a loaf of banana bread into Tim's hand. He stuffed it in his cargo pants pocket, shouldered his bag, and extricated them both from the apartment.

***

He split the banana bread with Casey between calls. “You think he'll be okay?” Casey asked around a mouthful, then wiped his fingers on his pants.

Tim shrugged.

“It's sad. I pictured this job as car crashes and heart attacks and gunshot wounds. Not that.”

“It's all part of the job. You don't get to pick your calls. You just take what comes, deal with it, and move on to the next thing. Think about it too much and you'll lose your nerve,” he said, and tossed the Saran wrap in the nearest trash can. His phone chirped. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at it.

Help.

Sarah. No exclamation points.

Bleeding out help or sex help?

Are those my only two options?

With him, yeah. The next text arrived before he composed an answer.

Are you up for a culinary adventure?

Tim lifted his eyebrows.
Outside my area of expertise.

You were stationed in Yorkville, right?

Yes.

Any good dives up there? Street food? Local places run by someone's mama?

I can think of at least six.

Names?

He could just see her wandering the streets in her red clogs with her iPhone in hand, bebopping into La Taqueria or Mama Shark's. He wasn't sure he wanted to get drawn in to her wide-eyed exploration of the city, into her love affair with food, but chivalry compelled him to ask a question rather than answer hers.

When do you want to go?

You don't have to go with me.

And she didn't have to come over and clean his head wound and bring him dinner. This was just keeping things even.

Saturday night. Meet me at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station at six.

See you then.

He wasn't about to lose his nerve. A night with Sarah would anchor him firmly in the here and now, erase all thoughts of the future from his mind.

Sarah hurried onto the northbound platform at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall and looked around for Tim. He was easy to spot, his blond head towering over the rest of the Saturday night crowd.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi yourself.” He looked her over appreciatively, the heat in his gaze ending any worries she had about his head injury. She was glad she'd worn a pair of slim jeans and a pale brown shirt that gathered under her breasts but floated loose around her waist and hips. Her hair was loose but pulled back from her temples with crossed bobby pins. She'd done her best to tame the flyaway curls, but clearly, beating the city's humidity wasn't a challenge she would win.

An uptown express train rumbled into the station, the noise and clatter postponing any more serious conversation. It was mostly empty, so they found seats at the end of the car. Even with his knees bent, Tim's legs extended ridiculously into the aisle. Sarah tucked herself in next to him and held her bag on her lap.

“How's your head?” she asked when the automated, perky male voice reminded passengers to stand clear of the closing doors.

His fingers hovered near the stitches, but didn't actually touch them. “Seems fine,” he said.

“No more headache?”

“No more headache.”

“Great. I can stop coddling you,” she said, patting his thigh.

He smiled. “The guys at the station haven't been coddling me. This damned stuffed bear, a get-well-soon bear, keeps showing up in my locker, the bus, my bag . . .”

“AnonEMT has posted several pictures,” she said. “You don't happen to know who he is, do you?”

“I'm pretty sure I know who it is,” he said.

“But you won't tell.”

“Nope. Everyone's having too much fun guessing, wondering who's going to end up on Twitter. It's good for morale, too. Good, mostly clean fun.”

She smiled. “Ah, the male-dominated work environment.” At his raised eyebrows, she added, “I work in kitchens. Cooks are women, at home. Chefs are men. If you hope to survive in the industry, you'd better develop a thick skin and be able to dish it back out, twice as hard and twice as fast.”

“You're a ringer,” he said.

She laughed, because she was. With her flyaway hair and her soft body and her easy smile, she fooled people into thinking she was as soft inside, easy to boss around, easy to sway. “Underestimate me, please,” she said, watching the signs for the next stop.

“Never again,” he said.

She flicked him a glance. The fluorescent lights glinted off his neatly trimmed beard. The look in his eyes reminded her she still owed him a night, and tonight might just be that night. “Where are we going?”

“Spanish Harlem,” he said. “I was stationed at the Yorkville location for a while, so I know some interesting local places. I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but it's New York.”

“Perfect,” she said. They got off and he led her across the platform to the local train. The car was packed, so he gripped the overhead bar and tucked her into his body.

The train rocked and swayed through several stops before stopping at East 110th Street. Without hesitating, Tim led her up the stairs. They emerged into a world completely different from the downtown neighborhoods she'd explored so far, and even less like gentrified, hipster-filled Brooklyn where she and Trish lived. Signs were in Spanish, Latin music poured from open doorways. Young mothers pushed strollers and held children's hands, making their way to the playground for a last chance to burn off energy before bedtime. Sarah took Tim's hand, but when he tried to hustle her past a restaurant that smelled particularly intriguing, she dug in her clogs.

“Slow down a little,” she said.

“Sorry. Long legs and I'm usually in a rush.” He peered in the window, then up at the sign. “What exactly are you after? What's our goal?”

“Well, mostly to eat good food and enjoy a nice spring evening. But if you need a purpose, the sauces still aren't quite right. When I came from San Francisco, I brought some recipes and ideas I had from living and working all my life on the West Coast. I'm not sure they're right for what Trish wants for her food truck, though. Things taste different here. The air is different—”

“Polluted.”

“—the soil is different, the water is different—”

“Also polluted.”

“—the meat raised differently on different feeds and grains and grass. What I've constructed so far is fine. It's good. It's not right.”

“Okay,” he said dubiously.

She gave him a wry smile. “I know. Only another foodie gets the fact that a baguette eaten in Paris, baked in a Parisian kitchen, will taste different from a baguette baked at an authentic French café in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Most people taste bread. I know one man who went to France when he was twenty-two and has spent the last ten years trying to find a baguette that tastes like the one he ate on his first night in Paris.”

“Everyone needs a hobby,” he said as he crossed Third Avenue on the diagonal, ignoring pedestrian crossing signs and honks from several irate cabbies.

“He won't find it,” she said. “Eating is the consummate sensory experience, made up not just of the food but the company, your state of mind, the wine you drink with it, the season, the location.”

Tim hauled open the door to a restaurant, setting the bells dangling from the handle jingling. “My approach to food is much more efficient, and a hell of a lot less trouble.”

She looked around. The space was long and narrow, a bar occupying one wall, tables in the floor space, the kitchen through a swinging door at the end. The place smelled fantastic, and while the décor was obviously worn, the restaurant was pin-neat and occupied by families. She waited until they were seated at a wooden table near the front of the restaurant. “Would you stop having sex if you had the best sex of your life?”

He leaned back, one elbow draped over the back of the chair, the other hand on the table. “No way in hell.”

“Why bother? You've had lots of it.”

He looked at her like he was explaining the obvious to a dimwit. “It's
sex
.”

“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?”