Still Me

"What's she like?"

  "She's not Donna," he said, "but she's okay. Least she seems to know what she's doing."

  He had met Donna for coffee the week previously. Her father was not responding to chemotherapy, but she had disguised her sadness under sarcasm and jokes, as Donna always did. "I wanted to tell her she didn't have to," he said. "She knows what I went through with my sister. But"--he looked at me sideways--"we all cope with these things in our own ways."

  Jake, he told me, was doing well at college. He sent his love. His dad, Sam's brother-in-law, had dropped out of grief therapy, saying it wasn't for him, even though it had stopped his compulsive bedding of strange women. "He's eating his way through his feelings now. Put on a stone since you left."

  "And you?"

  "Ah. I'm coping."

  He said it simply, but it caused something in my heart to crack a little.

  "It's not forever," I said, as we stopped.

  "I know."

  "And we're going to do loads of fun stuff while you're here."

  "What have you got planned?"

  "Um, basically it's You Getting Naked. Followed by supper. Followed by more You Getting Naked. Maybe a walk around Central Park, some corny tourist stuff, like the Staten Island ferry and Times Square, and some shopping in the East Village and some really good food with added You Getting Naked."

  He grinned. "Do I get You Getting Naked too?"

  "Oh, yes, it's a two-for-one deal." I leaned my head against him. "Seriously, though, I'd love you to come and see where I work. Maybe meet Nathan and Ashok and all the people I go on about. Mr. and Mrs. Gopnik will be out of town so you probably won't meet them but you'll at least get an idea of it all in your head."

  He stopped and turned me to face him. "Lou. I don't really care what we do as long as we're together." He colored a little as he said it, as if the words had surprised even him.

  "That's quite romantic, Mr. Fielding."

  "I tell you what, though. I need to eat something pretty fast if I'm going to fulfill this Getting Naked bit. Where can we get some food?"

  We were walking past Radio City, surrounded by huge office buildings. "There's a coffee shop," I said.

  "Oh, no," he said, clapping his hands together. "There's my boy. A genuine New York food truck!" He pointed toward one of the ever-present food trucks, this one advertising "stacked burritos": "We make 'em any way you like 'em." I followed him and waited while he ordered something that appeared to be the size of his forearm and smelled of hot cheese and unidentified fatty meat. "We didn't have plans to eat out tonight, right?" He wedged the end into his mouth.

  I couldn't help but laugh. "Whatever keeps you awake. Though I suspect that's going to put you in a food coma."

  "Oh, God, this is so good. Want some?"

  I did, actually. But I was wearing really nice underwear and I didn't want bits of me hanging over the top. So I waited until he had finished it, noisily licking his fingers, then tossing his napkin into the bin. He sighed with deep satisfaction. "Right," he said, taking my arm, and everything felt suddenly, blissfully normal. "About this naked thing."

  --

  We walked back to our hotel in silence. I no longer felt awkward, as if the time apart had created some unexpected distance between us. I didn't want to talk any more. I just wanted to feel his skin against mine. I wanted to be completely his again, enfolded, possessed. We headed down Sixth Avenue, past Rockefeller Center, and I no longer noticed the tourists who stood in our way. I felt locked into an invisible bubble, all my senses trained on the warm hand that had closed around mine, the arm that crept around my shoulders. His every movement felt heavy with intent. I was almost breathless with it. I could live with the absences, I thought, if the times we spent together felt as delicious as this.

  We were barely in the lift when he turned and pulled me to him. We kissed, and I melted, lost myself in the feel of him against me, my blood pulsing in my ears so that I barely heard the lift doors open. We staggered out.

  "Door thing," he said, patting his pockets with some urgency. "Door thing! Where did I put it?"

  "I've got it," I said, wrestling it out of my back pocket.

  "Thank God," he said, as he kicked the door shut behind us, his voice low in my ear. "You have no idea how long I've been thinking about this."

  --

  Two minutes later I was lying on the Burgundy Bedspread of Doom, sweat cooling on my skin, wondering whether it would be really bad if I reached down to get my knickers. Despite the bedbug checks, there was still something about this cover that made me want a barrier between it and any part of my bare body.

  Sam's voice floated into the air beside me. "Sorry," he murmured. "I knew I was pleased to see you, but not that pleased."

  "It's fine," I said, turning to face him. He had this way of pulling me into him, like he was gathering me up, so that I was totally enclosed. I had never understood women who said a man made them feel safe--but that was how I felt with Sam. His eyes were drooping, battling sleep. I calculated it was around three in the morning for him now. He dropped a kiss on my nose. "Give me twenty minutes and I'll be good to go."

  I ran my finger lightly along his face, tracing his lips, and shifted so that he could pull the covers over us. I placed my leg over his, so that there was almost no part of me not touching him. Even that movement caused something in me to ignite. I don't know what it was about Sam that made me unlike myself--without inhibition, full of hunger. I was not sure I could touch his skin without feeling that reflexive internal heat. I could glance over at his shoulders, the heft of his forearms, the baby soft dark hairs where his neck became his hairline, and I would feel almost incandescent with lust.

  "I love you, Louisa Clark," he said softly.

  "Twenty minutes, hmm?" I said, smiling, and hooked him in tighter.

  But he dropped into sleep like someone stepping off a cliff. I watched him for a while, wondering whether it would be possible to wake him, and what means I might employ to do it, but then I remembered how disoriented and exhausted I had been when I'd arrived. And then I thought of how he had just done a week of twelve-hour shifts. And that it was only a few hours into our whole three days together. With a sigh I released him and flopped onto my back. It was dark outside now, the sounds of the distant traffic floating up to us. I felt a million things and I was disconcerted to find that one was disappointment.

  Stop, I told myself firmly. My expectations for this weekend had simply risen, like a souffle, too high for sustained contact with the atmosphere. He was here, and we were together, and in a few hours we would be awake again. Go to sleep, Clark, I told myself. I pulled his arm over me, inhaling the scent of his warm skin. And closed my eyes.

  --

  An hour and a half later, I was lying on the far side of the bed, scrolling through Facebook on my phone, marveling at Mum's apparently infinite appetite for motivational quotes and photographs of Thom in his school uniform. It was half past ten, and sleep was uninterested in stopping by. I climbed out of bed and used the bathroom, leaving the light off so that Sam wouldn't be woken by the screeching fan. I hesitated before climbing back in. The sagging mattress meant that Sam had tipped gently into the middle, leaving me a few inches on the edge unless I pretty much lay on top of him. I wondered idly if an hour and a half's sleep was enough. And then I climbed in, slid my body against his warm one and, after a moment's hesitation, I kissed him.

  Sam's body came to before he did. His arm pulled me in, his big hand sliding the length of my body, and he kissed me back, slow, sleep-filled kisses that were tender and soft and made my body arch against his. I shifted so that his weight was on me, my hand seeking his, my fingers linking with his, a sigh of pleasure escaping me. He wanted me. He opened his eyes in the dim light and I looked into them, heavy with longing, noting with surprise that he had already broken into a sweat.

  He gazed at me for a moment.

  "Hello, handsome," I whispered.

  He made as if to speak
but nothing came out.

  He looked off to the side. And then suddenly he clambered off me.

  "What?" I said. "What did I say?"

  "Sorry," he said. "Hold on."

  He bolted for the bathroom, hurling it shut behind him. I heard an "Oh, God," and then sounds that, for once, I was grateful that the screeching extractor fan largely obscured.

  I sat there, frozen, then climbed out of bed, pulling on a T-shirt. "Sam?"

  I leaned into the door, pressing my ear against it, then backed away. Intimacy, I observed, could only survive so much in the way of sound effects.

  "Sam? Are you okay?"

  "Fine," came his muffled voice.

  He was not fine.

  "What's going on?"

  A long gap. The sound of flushing.

  "I--uh--I think I may have food poisoning."

  "Seriously? Can I do anything?"

  "No. Just--just don't come in. Okay?" This was followed by more retching and soft cursing. "Don't come in."

  --

  We spent almost two hours like that: him locked in some awful battle with his internal organs on one side of the door, me sitting anxiously in my T-shirt on the other. He refused to let me check on him--his pride, I think, forbade it.

  The man who finally came out shortly before one o'clock was the color of putty, with a Vaseline glaze. I scrambled to my feet as the door opened and he staggered slightly, as if surprised to see me still there. I reached out a hand, as if I had any hope of stopping someone his size falling. "What shall I do? Do you need a doctor?"

  "No. Just . . . just got to sit this one out." He flopped onto the bed, panting and clutching his stomach. His eyes were ringed with black shadows, and he stared straight ahead. "Literally."

  "I'll get you some water." I stared at him. "Actually, I'm going to run to a pharmacy and get you some Dioralyte or whatever they have here." He didn't even speak, just toppled onto his side, staring straight ahead, his body still damp with sweat.

  --

  I got the required medication, offering up silent thanks to the City that Didn't Just Not Sleep but Offered Rehydration Powders Too. Sam chugged one down, and then, with an apology, retreated to the bathroom again. Occasionally I would pass a bottle of water through a gap in the door, and in the end I turned on the television.

  "Sorry," he muttered, when he stumbled out again, shortly before four. And then he collapsed onto the Bedspread of Doom and fell into a brief, disjointed sleep.

  I slept for a couple of hours, covered with the hotel robe, and woke to find him still asleep. I showered and got dressed, letting myself out silently so that I could grab a coffee from the machine in the lobby. I felt bleary. At least, I told myself, we still had two days to go.

  But when I walked back into the room Sam was in the bathroom again.

  "Really sorry," he said, when he emerged. I had pulled the curtains and in daylight he looked, if anything, grayer against the hotel sheets. "I'm not sure I'm up to much today."

  "That's fine!" I said.

  "I might be okay by this afternoon," he said.

  "Fine!"

  "Maybe not the ferry trip, though. Think I don't want to be anywhere where . . ."

  ". . . there are communal loos. I get it."

  He sighed. "This is not quite the day I had in mind."

  "It's fine," I said, climbing onto the bed beside him.

  "Will you stop saying it's fine," he said irritably.

  I hesitated a moment, stung, then said icily, "Fine."

  He looked at me from the corner of his eye. "Sorry."

  "Stop apologizing."

  We sat on the bedspread, both looking straight ahead. And then his hand reached across for mine. "Listen," he said eventually. "I'm probably just going to hang here for a couple of hours. Try and get my strength back. Don't feel you have to sit with me. Go shopping or something."

  "But you're only here till Monday. I don't want to do anything without you."

  "I'm good for nothing, Lou."

  He looked like he could have punched a wall, if he'd only had the strength to raise his fist.

  --

  I walked two blocks to a newsstand and bought an armful of newspapers and magazines. I then bought myself a decent coffee and a bran muffin, and a plain white bagel for when he might want to eat something.

  "Supplies," I said, dropping them on my side of the bed. "Might as well just burrow in." And that was how we spent the day. I read every single section of the New York Times, including the baseball reports. I put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, watched him dozing and waited for color to return to his face.

  Maybe he'll feel better in time for us to have a walk in daylight.

  Maybe we could grab a drink in the hotel bar.

  Sitting up would be good.

  Okay, so maybe he'll be better tomorrow.

  At nine forty-five when I turned off the television chat show, pushed all the newspapers off the bed and burrowed down under the duvet, the only part of my body still touching his was my fingers, entwined with his at the tips.

  --

  He woke feeling a little brighter on Sunday. I think by then there was so little in his system that there was nothing left to come out. I bought him some clear soup and he ate it tentatively and pronounced himself well enough to go for a walk. Twenty minutes later we jogged back and he locked himself into the bathroom. He was really angry then. I tried to tell him it was okay but that just seemed to make him angrier. There's not much that's more pathetic than a six-foot-four man-mountain trying to be furious while he can barely lift a glass of water.

  I did leave him for a bit then because my disappointment was starting to show. I needed to walk the streets and remind myself that this wasn't a sign, it didn't mean anything, and that it was easy to lose perspective when you'd had no sleep and had been stuck for forty-eight hours with a gastro-intestinally challenged man and a bathroom with deeply inadequate soundproofing.

  But the fact that it was now Sunday left me heartbroken. I was back at work tomorrow. And we had done none of the things I'd planned. We hadn't gone to a ballgame or on the Staten Island ferry. We hadn't climbed to the top of the Empire State or walked the High Line arm in arm. That night we sat in bed and he ate some boiled rice I had picked up from a sushi restaurant and I ate a grilled chicken sandwich that tasted of nothing.

  "On the right track now," he murmured, as I pulled the cover over him.

  "Great," I said. And then he was asleep.

  --

  I couldn't face another evening of scrolling through my phone so I got up quietly, left him a note, and headed out. I felt miserable and oddly angry. Why had he eaten something that had given him food poisoning? Why couldn't he make himself better quicker? He was a paramedic after all. Why couldn't he have picked a nicer hotel? I walked down Sixth Avenue, my hands thrust deep into my pockets, the traffic blaring around me, and before long I found myself headed toward home.

  Home.

  With a start, I realized that was how I now thought of it.

  Ashok was under the awning, chatting to another doorman, who moved away as soon as I approached.

  "Hey, Miss Louisa. Aren't you meant to be with that boyfriend of yours?"

  "He's sick," I said. "Food poisoning."

  "You're kidding me. Where is he now?"

  "Sleeping. I just . . . couldn't face sitting in that room for another twelve hours." I felt suddenly, oddly, close to tears. I think Ashok could see it because he motioned me to come in. In his little porter's room he boiled a kettle and made me a mint tea. I sat at his desk and sipped it, while he peered out now and then to make sure Mrs. De Witt wasn't around to accuse him of slacking. "Anyway," I said, "why are you on duty? I thought it was the night guy."

  "He's sick too. My wife is super mad at me right now. She's meant to be at one of her library meetings but we don't have anybody to look after the kids. She says if I spend one more of my days off here she's going to have a word with Mr. Ovitz herself. A
nd nobody wants that." He shook his head. "My wife is a fearsome woman, Miss Louisa. You do not want to upset my wife."

  "I'd offer to help. But I think I'd better go back and check on Sam."

  "Be sweet," he said, as I handed him his mug. "He came a long way to see you. And I can guarantee he is feeling way worse than you are right now."

  --

  When I got back to the room, Sam was awake, propped up on pillows and watching the grainy television. He looked up as I opened the door.

  "I just went for a walk. I--I--"

  "Couldn't face one more minute stuck in here with me."

  I stood in the doorway. His head was sunk into his shoulders. He looked pale and unutterably depressed.

  "Lou--if you knew how hard I'm kicking myself--"

  "It's fi--" I stopped myself just in time. "Really," I said. "We're good."

  I ran him a shower, made him get in and washed his hair, squeezing the last out of the tiny hotel bottle, then watched the suds slide down the huge slope of his shoulders. As I did he reached up, took my hand silently, and kissed the inside of my wrist softly, a kiss of apology. I placed the towel over his shoulders and we made our way out to the bedroom. He lay back on the bed with a sigh. I changed out of my clothes and lay down beside him, wishing I didn't still feel so flat.

  "Tell me something about you that I don't know," he said.

  I turned toward him. "Oh, you know everything. I'm an open book."

  "C'mon. Indulge me." His voice was low against my ear. I couldn't think of anything. I still felt really oddly annoyed about this weekend even though I know that's unfair of me.

  "Okay," he said, when it was clear I wasn't going to speak. "I'll start then. I am never eating anything but white toast again."

  "Funny."

  He studied my face for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was unusually quiet. "And things haven't been easy at home."

  "What do you mean?"

  It took a minute before he spoke again, as if he wasn't sure even then if he should. "It's work. You know, before I got shot I wasn't afraid of anything. I could handle myself. I guess I reckoned I was a bit of a tough guy. Now, though, what happened, it's at the back of my mind all the time."

  I tried not to look startled.

  He rubbed at his face. "Since I've been back I find myself assessing situations as we go in . . . differently, trying to work out exit routes, potential sources of trouble. Even when there's no reason to."