Authors: C. K. Kelly Martin
However,
diplomatic co-star Fitzgerald offered this statement to the press: “Most of the
things that have been said in the media about Liam aren’t really anyone’s
business. I just want to wish him well with his upcoming production and I look
forward to working with him on Six West in the future.”
The compulsion
to delve into the numerous other search results and trawl through the seediest
dirt available on Liam ripples through me, but I throw my moral fiber into
resisting. So far the only things I know that Liam himself didn’t share with me
are the names of the people involved. If I stop snooping now I won’t have to
feel guilty for knowing too much about his secrets if I ever happen to see him
again.
It must be
difficult to withstand being betrayed in public like Liam was by his fiancée
(his subsequent relationships just sound like a steaming mess of rebounds), and
I feel sorry for him as I shut down my laptop and sorry that I, too, was a
rebound girl. Obviously he was partly responsible for what happened on Sunday
night, but there’s no denying the idea was mine. He wanted dinner and
conversation. I wanted those things too but they weren’t enough; I wanted him.
Maybe he’s not
disappointed about the way things turned out, but I suddenly feel like I owe
him some kind of explanation, and when I get home I impulsively rip a page out
of my notebook and write:
Liam,
I’m sorry that I left so abruptly the other night. I
want you to know that didn’t have anything to do with you, just what I’ve been
going through myself. I know you’ve gone though some complicated things too
lately and I didn’t mean to make things worse (I hope I didn’t). I really did
enjoy talking to you over dinner and I should have left things alone. I hope
the play has a very successful run and I want to wish you all the best.
Leah
Since I don’t
remember his apartment number I can’t stick the note in the mail, but I know
I’d be able to find my way to his suite again, and so just before I go to work
I shove the note into an envelope, take a detour over to the square and loiter
around outside Liam’s building, pretending to look for my keys. Three minutes
later a stylish forty-something blond teeters by on spiky heels and swipes her
way into the building.
I follow her
through the front door and into the elevator where she presses four and I press
three. Then I wind my way around the third floor hallway and stop at the door
that I’m at least eighty percent sure is Liam’s. Apartment 306. I don’t want to
run into him so I have to be quick. I shove the envelope into the space between
the door and its frame. Its conspicuous appearance makes me frown but there’s a
wooden lip attached to the bottom of the door that prevents even the thinnest
of envelopes from being shoved underneath. I flee the area, leaving the
conspicuous note jutting out of the doorframe, not sure why I feel like a
junior high kid with an awkward crush when the note seemed like a perfectly
mature idea when I wrote it.
But my shift at
O’Keefe’s soon distracts me. The regulars are beginning to like me, I think.
I’ve been trying to watch British TV shows whenever I stumble across them.
Mostly
Coronation Street
, but also
Robin Hood
and an old
seventies show called
Rising Damp
that airs in the middle of the night.
This afternoon Simon and Louise bring in a collection of their own DVDs to lend
me—
A Touch of Frost
,
Spooks
,
Life on Mars
(which Simon
assures me is the much superior original British version),
As Time Goes By
,
Cracker
and
Little Britain
. It won’t be long until I’m a bona
fide expert on British and Irish sensibilities. I’ve been buying chocolates and
crisps now and then too, although I don’t really have a sweet tooth and often
can’t finish the chocolate bars.
When I return
home at the end of the day I decide it’s time to sample the Bourbon creams Liam
bought me weeks ago. My mouth doesn’t feel entirely back to normal yet, and I
still have to make that crown appointment, so I dip the cookie in milk and then
chew, carefully, on the other side of my mouth. The taste is notably chocolaty,
but there’s something more to it that I can’t pinpoint and reading the list of
ingredients doesn’t help. I polish off another two cookies while watching Simon
and Louise’s copy of
Spooks
, a series about British secret agents. The
show’s intelligent and riveting, a bit like
24
but with more interesting
accents and a London backdrop. I watch four and a half episodes before I begin
to nod off on the couch and decide to take myself up to bed and save Armstrong
from a night of wheel obsessing.
Unfortunately,
there’s nothing I can do about the four-legged sex fiend that shrieks outside
my window for the third night in a row. When the noise dies down and then stops
altogether, I wonder if it’s because the cat’s owner has taken pity on the rest
of the neighborhood and hauled it inside or whether it was lucky enough to find
some carnal satisfaction out there in the dark.
I think of
Deirdre and Marta lying awake next door, all of us hoping the fresh silence
will last. They have a wedding out of town tomorrow and are leaving early,
which means I have to be in work at eleven to cover for Marta. It’s only a
couple of extra hours so I don’t mind—the extra pay will cover the expense of
my unexpected trip to the pharmacy at the beginning of the week.
I fall back to
sleep for a couple of hours and later in the morning I enjoy the slow bit of
the day when the shop is mine alone. I take my time Windexing both sides of the
front door and then setting up the display table on the sidewalk. Kevin comes
in to help man the shop at one-thirty. His wrist has healed and his left arm’s
now bandage free. I’m happy to see him but he keeps yawning and hogging the
stool because apparently he was up until four o’clock playing videogames online
and then his neighbor woke him up at the crack of dawn with his leaf blower.
“There’s a cat
in heat prowling around my neighborhood waking me up lately,” I complain as I
glance outside to make sure no one’s run off with the contents of the display
table. “It’s driving me crazy.”
“How long have
you been hearing it for?” Kevin asks as he yawns for the eighteenth time.
“A few days, I
guess.”
“You know they
stay in heat for, like, a week to ten days. You better buy some earplugs—or a
shotgun.”
I roll my eyes
at the thought of another week of awakening to horny cat noises. “Who doesn’t
get their cat spayed anyway? It’s ridiculous.”
Kevin shrugs.
“Somebody who wants kittens. Or maybe it’s a feral cat.”
Someone’s walked
through the front door in the middle of our conversation and I turn my head to
make eye contact with the customer. The sight of Liam sauntering into O’Keefe’s
gives me a sinking feeling that drops all the way down to my toes. I thought my
note could smooth things over, but now I know I can’t handle this. I’ve only
slept with one person aside from Bastien in my whole life and now he’s standing
across the room. So much for forgetting. The second my brain registers Liam’s
presence I’m dumbstruck.
I instinctively
flick my gaze away from him, but of course he’s heading straight for me. “Hi,
Leah,” he says slowly. “Can I steal you for a minute?”
I glance
nervously at Kevin, whose eyes widen as he seems to pick up on my unease. “Um,
do you think you’d be okay here on your own for a minute?” I ask, my head
swirling with theories about why Liam wants to talk to me.
Kevin cracks his
knuckles as he leans down to rest his arms on the counter. “I got it under
control, yo.”
Liam steps back
out the door as Kevin, next to me with his eyes still ultra-alert, says, “Is
that your boyfriend or something?”
“No. Why would
you say that?”
“There was
like”—Kevin makes a rolling motion with his hands—“a weird, edgy tension vibe.”
“Okay,” I say
sarcastically, “now you’re imagining things. You seriously have to catch up on
your sleep tonight.”
Kevin nods like
this is entirely possible, but he’s squinting like he doesn’t believe me. I
edge past him, away from the counter and out the front door, where Liam is
staring down at the McVitie’s Digestives and Marks and Spencer Ginger Snaps I
laid out on the display table this morning. His leather coat’s zipped up to his
neck and Kevin was right about the tension; I can see it stiffening Liam’s jaw
and radiating out towards his cheekbones.
“You didn’t put
on your coat,” Liam notes as he raises his gaze to look at me. “I thought we
could go across to the square and talk for a couple of minutes.”
It’s indeed too
chilly to stay out here comfortably for more than half a minute, and I excuse
myself to snatch my coat from O’Keefe’s backroom. Kevin’s sporting the same
doubtful look as when I left fifteen seconds ago and for the second time in two
days I feel like I’ve been transported back to junior high. “Back soon,” I tell
him as I swing past the counter tugging my coat on.
Liam nods as I
rejoin him outside. We jaywalk across the street, dodging the traffic, and into
the green patch of lawn in the middle of the square adjacent to his apartment
building. Liam’s a step ahead of me and takes a seat on the first unoccupied
bench. I sit next to him, allowing enough room for a whole other person between
us.
“I got your
note,” he says, glancing at me sideways. “Thanks.”
Two little girls
are twirling in the middle of the square, giggling like nothing in the world
could be better than this dizzy moment. Not fifteen feet away from them a
golden retriever sits idly surveying the scene as the man I assume is their
father ogles his Blackberry.
I swing my legs
under the bench, cross my left ankle over my right and try not to fidget. “I
felt bad about rushing off.”
Liam dips one of
his hands into his hair. “Everything that night was pretty abrupt, except
dinner.” I nod in agreement and listen to him continue. “Anyway, I wanted to
make sure everything was okay.” He drops his voice to a decibel barely above a
whisper. “This is something obviously I should have thought to ask you on the
night but…are you on birth control?”
I’m surprised to
hear the question out of his mouth at this late date. I shake my head in
response but keep my focus on the little girls, who are spinning until they
drop. “But I took care of it,” I add. “I went the next day…” I let my words
trail off. Bastien and I could delve into the most personal conversations about
our bodies without breaking a sweat, but it’s awkward to be having this
discussion this with someone I barely know. Liam and I haven’t even seen each
other naked.
Liam doesn’t
look as relieved by my answer as he should. “So, everything’s all right now?”
Under the park
bench my right foot repeatedly taps the concrete. “I’m about ninety-five
percent sure that it is, according to what the pharmacist said.”
Liam’s
cheekbones flare as his hand dives back into his short brown hair. “I’m glad to
hear that, but I wish you’d said something at the time.”
“You didn’t
ask,” I point out, irritation leaking into my tone. I’m not proud of the way I
handled myself last Sunday but he should have known better too.
“I know that.
But I didn’t exactly see it all coming, Leah. After what you said about your
boyfriend I didn’t think—”
I cut him off.
“I’m sorry, okay. It was a surprise to me too. I haven’t been with anyone since
he…” I can’t bring myself to say Bastien’s name. Admitting what I’ve done in
the light of day makes me feel worse. “And I didn’t think I would be.” I’ve
told myself I shouldn’t get upset about this anymore, but now my throat is swelling.
Liam rests his
right arm on the top of the bench, around the invisible person between us, his
hand dangling close to my shoulder. “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m not sorry.
We just should’ve done things a little differently.”
Since this is
already difficult and uncomfortable, I force myself to ask one of the questions
I should have posed on Sunday. “While we’re talking about this, I need to know
if I should be worried about anything else, whether you’re, you know,
one-hundred percent healthy?”
Liam’s arm
retreats back to his own territory. His blue eyes stare straight ahead and then
shift slowly back to me. “You’ll be fine,” he says in a steady voice. “I’m not
usually so careless.”
Maybe not, but I
don’t imagine that he was using condoms with his fiancée and she was sleeping
with someone else on the side. But I can’t figure out a way to bring that
particular issue up without making it seem as though I’m twisting the knife.
“Me neither,” I
murmur.
Liam reaches out
to squeeze my shoulder. He breaks into the kind of smile that never fails to
make we want to smile back. I can’t lie to myself; as heavy as my regret is,
part of me is still glad to be sitting here next to him, and that’s the part of
me that stares into Liam’s eyes and says, “I should probably get back to the
store—I told Kevin I wouldn’t be gone long—but maybe we can get coffee or
something sometime, you know, avoid the part of the night where things got
complicated and just have coffee, talk.”
Liam’s head
tilts back, smile fading on his lips. “I like talking to you but I don’t think
that’s a good idea.”
“Why?” I really
never thought this would be a continuing thing between us—I wasn’t sure I’d
ever even see Liam again—but now it stings to hear him dismiss the idea of even
minimal future contact.
Liam’s eyes lock
on mine. “I think you know why.” I shiver at the implication. It would be so
easy to repeat last Sunday night. I want to lean over and smack my lips against
his until we’re both out of oxygen.