Chapter Text
She had had sex with him so often. There had been so, so much sex, so much love-making, too (because that was different), that she could still feel the weight of his flesh in her hands, taste the tang of his skin on her lips, feel the dips and angles of his body beneath her fingers, smell his alluring fragrance. Sometimes she would wake from a dream believing her cheek pressed against his chest with its fine hair tickling her nose. But it was never him, instead her daughter who had snuck into her warm bed late in the night to snuggle up close to her mother. And sometimes, she would reluctantly admit to herself feeling disappointed at finding the child there instead of the man.
The man. There had been a time when she’d wanted nothing to do with him, had blamed him for every bad thing in her life. Some of it he deserved, much of it he didn’t. But then Tom had left to pursue his past, to make sense of who he was, and she had understood that need, had lived it herself. And despite all that understanding and commitment to each other and their child, the relationship soon became tenuous. The more Christopher Hargrave he became, the more she missed her schoolteacher husband Tom Keen, and the more she realized that what she wanted was the fantasy he had shown her in their early years together, as untrue and unreal as anything ever could be. She didn’t love him, not really, not anymore. But she – they – loved the little girl, and for that reason, they remained as kind to one another as any divorced couple could (including those that weren’t quite remarried in the first place).
There had been a hole then, after Tom. A void. Work couldn’t fill it. Agnes alone couldn’t either. Even her friends didn’t do the trick. Red, however, … well, Red was another story.
In those months after Tom left, she did a lot of thinking, soul searching, if you will. She tried like hell to grow up, because all that aloneness revealed to her an uncomfortable truth – she often behaved like a petulant child. Still. Years after Sam’s death, parentless and a mother no less, she still found herself lashing out and blaming others for her own inadequacies and pain. Late one night, as she watched Agnes sleep, she decided she’d had enough. The next morning she called Red, who had become surprisingly elusive of late, and set up a meeting.
She wanted to make amends, she’d said over coffee. She wanted him to know how she felt, that she was sorry – for so many things – and could they try to move forward in a kinder, gentler way, meaning would he let her try.
“Of course,” was all he said. He didn’t elaborate, he didn’t ask her “Why now?” or “What’s changed?” He didn’t berate her for her past behavior. The crinkling around his eyes told her he was pleased, his fingers brushing gently across the brim of his hat told her he was curious and slightly anxious, and the pat to her hand as he stood told her the ball was now in her court.
Sam, for all his maleness and distain for anything resembling gentle society, had taught his daughter the art of conversation, the art of the volley. “When someone starts a conversation with you, Butterball, it is your responsibility to talk back. It’s like a tennis match – they talk, then you talk. They talk, then you talk. Someone asks you a question, you answer and ask them a question. Someone hits the ball to you, and you hit it back to them. They invite you over for a sleepover, then you invite them. You see how it works?” His young daughter nodded. She understood. But in the last few years, and with Red in particular, she’d lost her game. She wanted to get it back.
So, she invited him over – to have dinner, to have a look at Agnes’ cuckoo clock, to talk. He accepted without hesitation. And after dinner, when her little girl was asleep, before Red had swallowed the last savored bite of his chocolate cake, she did something rash. Something not in any playbook of Sam’s, certainly. She stood from her chair at the table and approached him. He looked up in surprise, but before he could question her, she had bent forward and kissed his lips. His reaction, if you could call it that, was one of stunned bewilderment. He didn’t move or speak. His eyes shone bright, but she could read that any number of ways.
She decided not to wait for his volley, and kissed him again, tasting the cake she’d baked just for him. She placed her hands on either side of his face and with intent kissed him a third time, and finally, finally, he responded by breaking off the kiss, exhaling “Lizzie.” It wasn’t the response she wanted, but it was the one she expected. He was confused, caught off guard, uncertain of her intentions. She knew that, and she wanted to reassure him.
“I’m sorry. About so many things, I’m sorry, and I wanted to show you … but, I shouldn’t have done that … I just … I wanted to know, too, … what it was like. I wanted to see what it was like,” she admitted sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Red.”
“And?”
“And,” she echoed, lost in the movement of his mouth, afraid to look in his eyes.
“What was it like?” His deep voice. It was evocative, sultry. In that moment it both thrilled and scared her.
She couldn’t look at his eyes now. Her own would betray her, so she kept her gaze at his mouth when she answered: “It was nice.”
“Hmmm,” he groaned disapprovingly, and his lips poked out in a pout. After a moment, his composure reclaimed, he took his finger to her chin and tilted it up.
“Thank you for dinner, Elizabeth. It was truly magnificent.” Searching her eyes, he licked his lips. “The dessert especially.”
Her hands still on his face she could only stare back and nod. What had she done? It had been an overwhelming compulsion to kiss him, to demonstrate to him – something. Finally, coming to her senses she let go of him and stood. “I’m glad you liked it,” she said, backing away, knocking her hip painfully into the table’s edge. “I’m going to clean up. Would you mind checking on Agnes for me?”
He watched her unsteady movements as she picked up first her empty dessert plate then his. She walked the remnants of their meal into the kitchen and settled the dinnerware into the sink before he moved to check on the baby.
Something was happening. A shift had begun, and she had started it.
It was with hesitation that he left her apartment that night. She could see his hands fidgeting, his tongue working inside of his mouth; there was something he wanted to say; she was sure of it. Instead, as he stood at her front door to go, he looked beyond her into the dim recesses of her apartment, blinking in that way of his.
“What?” She whispered standing before him, turning her head to see what had his attention. There was nothing out of the ordinary. She turned her gaze back to him. “What is it?”
He shook his head and grimaced. “I can do better.”
“Better? I don’t understand.” She took a step closer, uncertainty coloring her statement.
“You will.” With that, he turned toward the door, seeking its handle. She saw the rise of his shoulders as he took a deep breath before exiting her apartment.
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To think back on the beginning of their “something” made her whole body tingle. It had been unexpected, blindingly intense, consuming, cathartic and beautiful in its way. He would always come to her. For two years, he would come to her – late at night, when all was quiet and dark. He’d make his way into her home, into her bed, and she would never turn him away. No matter what had happened that day at work, no matter what lingering anger she might have at him, no matter how vehemently she’d oppose him in front of others, alone, at night, she welcomed him.
“It’s strange that this is how we can find peace with one another,” she said one night, lying against him in her rumpled bed. “Everything you do here is perfect. We are, in every way, aligned.”
She felt the chuckle building in his belly before she heard it, deep and resonant. “Indeed.”
“You know what I mean. But did you know, did you suspect, we would be this way,” she asked, rising up to look at him.
“I never allowed myself to ever think about such things,” he admitted, sobering up, all traces of laughter gone. “That wouldn’t have served us well.”
“But, Red, we are good together.”
“Here, Lizzie. We are good together here. Not everywhere. We have Agnes to think about, to protect.”
“I know that. I understand that.”
He searched her eyes then. “Do you, my dear?”
“I do.”
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After the dinner where she had kissed him, Lizzie didn’t see Red for weeks. Through Dembe she learned Red had business in Hong Kong.
“He told me to let you know,” Dembe explained. She’d found him standing at her apartment door when she returned from work one evening.
“Come in, Dembe. Let me get Agnes settled, and we can talk,” she said, gesturing for him to enter the apartment.
He complied, and in minutes, she asked him the one question neither of them could answer: “Why aren’t you with him?”
“He is not himself, but I don’t know what it is. Business is good, he is safe, you are safe. He wanted to be alone. That’s all he said. I am concerned, Elizabeth.”
She sighed and sat down heavily on her sofa. “Dembe, sit,” she insisted. When he took his place in a chair across from her, she began, her head bowed and her hands clasped between her knees: “I … umm … I am afraid I did something to upset him.”
For all his steadiness, Dembe couldn’t hide his alarm at her statement. “He said nothing to me. What has happened?”
She laughed nervously and spread her hands helplessly in front of her. She raised her head to look at him. “I kissed him. On the mouth. Several times. It was … more than friendly.”
Dembe’s head jerked back and a crease formed between his eyes.
“Oh, God,” she continued. “I know. I’m an idiot. He reacted just like you are. When he asked, I told him the kiss was nice. That was a stupid answer.”
She closed her eyes at the memory. To put her embarrassment on display was painful. To know she had upset Red enough to make him go away and leave Dembe behind was excruciating.
When she opened her eyes, it was to Dembe’s grin and subsequent chuckle. He stood before she could ask, before she could comprehend the swift change in his demeanor. “I understand now, Elizabeth. Thank you.”
She caught up to him as he was walking through her front door. “Wait. I don’t understand. What …”
“He’s fine. And, he’ll be back. Have a good evening, Elizabeth.”
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“Tom knows, Lizzie. He knows something. He and his henchmen are sniffing around. And if they don’t know about us yet, they will soon enough. I can’t have that. You and Agnes can’t have that,” Red stressed pulling on his shirt and beginning to button it up.
“It’s four in the morning. Where are you going?” She sat up in bed and turned on the bedside lamp.
“Agnes is nearly three, Elizabeth. Soon she’ll retain all that happens.”
“She never sees you here at night, Red. Your visits with her are as they’ve always been. Nothing’s changed there. And I doubt Tom knows anything. Hell, I barely know when you’re here. Well, not until I feel you pressed against me. You are very stealthy,” she said with a wink.
“It’s getting dangerous, Lizzie. It’s time to reevaluate our situation. Agnes has begun waking up at night; you go to her, but soon she will begin walking in here to you. She cannot find me here.” He found his vest and tie and put them both over his arm as he searched for his shoes.
“It’s a phase she’s going through, Red. She’s fine. And, she loves you,” Lizzie rose from the bed and moved to stand in front of the door, blocking his way.
“What’s really going on here, Raymond?”
“In all of this time, I have never strayed from you or my conviction that this could only work here, in this room. You have agreed with that assessment. Now the world is pushing its way in, Elizabeth, and I think we need to find a new way forward. This arrangement doesn’t work anymore,” he reached around her for the door. She grabbed his arms, gripping his biceps tightly in her hands.
“I don’t accept what you’re saying, because it sounds like you’re saying we’re done, that this is all over. And, I don’t accept that. I won’t.”
Red brushed his thumb across her cheek, his eyes full of untamed affection. “I’m right about Tom. And I’m right about this,” he said, gesturing to the room behind him. “I’m going to miss this room … and you – for now. Take this time and think about things, Lizzie. I’ll see you at the Post Office in a few hours. I’m not disappearing.”
“Oh, really? It certainly sounds like it to me,” she said, her petulance showing.
He pressed against her and leaning forward kissed her lips, humming his approval, before moving on to her neck. “You are divine,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you soon.”
Just as she was about to protest, Agnes called out for her. Lizzie could only watch him walk away as she went to console her daughter, all the while wondering what was next, wondering how it was that he could walk away from her so easily, so casually. What did she really mean to him?