Part 5 (1/2)

”Look, Iz, you don't have to explain it to me.” He pulled my beer toward him. ”I'm going to sit here and finish the rest of your beer and then I'm going home.”

”And you're not going to call Lucy.”

”Right,” he said. Then, again, ”right,” as if he needed to convince himself.

I put Mayburn out of my mind when I saw Theo turn onto Eugenie Street, a tall figure, solid and dark with the streetlights behind him. I could see the outline of his muscled shoulders, the rounded dip and curl of his biceps. I pushed my sundress between my legs and closed them.

I waited until he was standing before me-looking down, his chin-length hair falling forward onto his face- then I said h.e.l.lo. I put my water down. He held out a hand and pulled me to my feet. He wrapped his arms around me and I thawed, curving myself around his abdomen, his chest, hugging him tight, surprised at the relief. The feeling was quickly followed by desire-shots of it, stinging through me, hitting my brain, my body.

Theo looked up at the building above us. ”Are your neighbors home?”

I looked up with him. The lights were on in all three condos. ”Yeah.”

”Think they'll come downstairs?”

”Why?”

”You think they'll come downstairs?”

”No. My neighbors usually have to be up early. They both work.” Unlike me.

Theo reached an arm out and pushed the front door, which I'd propped open with a rock. He kicked the rock away and pulled me into the stairwell, a place constantly too dark, a complaint I'd made more than once to the management company. But now, with the door shutting behind us, Theo pus.h.i.+ng me against the wall, kissing me deeply, I didn't mind that the stairwell was shadowy and hot.

Desire turned into frantic craving. I kissed him back hard, threading my hands through his hair, hearing myself pant, gasp.

He lifted me up, legs around him, then pushed me back against the wall. I kissed him deeper, gulping at his mouth. I felt my body temp soar, my mind open.

”Should we go upstairs?” His words were m.u.f.fled by his mouth on my throat, my collarbone.

”No. No way.” I yanked at the skirt of my sundress, pulling it up, and I wrapped my legs around him tighter.

7.

T he next morning, Theo was up by six and ready to leave ten minutes later, kissing me on my closed eyes, his soft hair brus.h.i.+ng over my face.

”I've got to get to work,” he said. ”Bunch of meetings today.” Theo had founded a Web design software company while he was in high school. He went to Stanford on a full-ride scholars.h.i.+p, but dropped out after a year. I'd been told he was making millions and millions now. We didn't much talk about work. Truly, we didn't talk much at all.

I pulled him toward me and kissed him, then we murmured our goodbyes. When he was gone, I lay in bed, eyes still closed, replaying the night. My bedroom felt thick with heat from the memories.

I fell back to sleep, and when I woke up at eight, my mind drifted to my dad. Or, should I say, to that man in the stairwell.

I called my brother. ”How are you?”

”Nervous. I have to go into the radio station today to fill out paperwork and meet with the head producer.”

”Don't be nervous. Everyone loves you.”

He laughed. ”Thanks, Iz, but c'mon, everyone loves me at a party. Everyone loves me at a bar. This is a job.”

”It's so weird to hear you say the J word. You want to do this, right?”

”I do. I really do. I was up all night thinking about it.”

”You were?” I couldn't hide the surprise in my voice. Charlie never stayed up all night-not to party, not to be bothered about girls, not to fret about anything. If Chicago were in the grips of a natural disaster, the city being swept into Lake Michigan by a violent, ma.s.sive tornado, Charlie would land in the lake, find something to use as a raft and lie down for the night, happy to let the jostling waves put him to sleep.

”You'll be fine,” I said. I told him what I used to look for when I was searching for a new a.s.sistant. As I thought of working at the law firm and how I'd eventually hired my amazing a.s.sistant, Q, I felt rather misty-eyed about those days in a way I hadn't when going through them.

Then I asked Charlie about the book, the one our dad used to read to us. ”Do you have it?” That book was one of the few objects that reminded me sharply of my dad and made me feel close to him, or the man he used to be. After the other night, I wanted that.

”I think I left it at Mom's house with a bunch of other books the last time I moved.”

”Perfect.” My mother had other books of my father's, too. Maybe looking at them would give me some sense of him, tell me something about him.

A pause. ”Iz, be careful with all this.”

”All what?” I threw back my sheets and stood up. The image that greeted me in the mirror over my dresser was comical. My long red hair was stringy in parts, extra curly in others, springing from my head and falling around my shoulders in crazed coils. My neck was splotchy from being kissed so many times. I tugged down a corner of the T-s.h.i.+rt I slept in. There was a red spot-a bite mark-on the top of my left breast. I'm scarred, I thought. And I was not unhappy about it.

”You know Dad is dead, Iz,” Charlie said. ”Has been for a long time.”

”There was no body.”

”When you crash a helicopter into a huge lake, there's a good chance the body won't be recovered. Seriously, Iz, don't let being out of work and away from Sam make you nuts.”

”I'm not nuts.” I looked at that bite mark. ”And right now I'm okay about Sam.”

”I know. But, hey, learn from your brother. Use the time you have when you're out of work. Go have a gla.s.s of wine.”

”It's 9 a.m.”

”Exactly. You're already an hour late.”

We hung up, and I walked to the kitchen, opened my fridge. I thought of Charlie's words and considered a half-full bottle of pinot grigio. The thought made me nauseous. Charlie and I were simply different. We'd always known that. No reason to take my unemployment and turn it into alcohol dependency.

An hour later, I was at my mom's. It was one of my mother's greatest pleasures to give or loan her children something, even something mundane, because it meant she was a part of our lives; it meant she was needed.

If I was, for example, on the phone with my mother and casually mentioned I needed lightbulbs, my mother would inevitably say, in a quick voice, which counted as excited for her, ”I've got lightbulbs. What kind do you need? What wattage?” I would tell her that the hardware store was closer than her house, that I would get them there, and inevitably she would be disappointed.

So that morning, I called and asked if I could borrow a pair of earrings I liked and maybe a book.

”Of course!” she said quickly, before giving me a summary of the three books she'd finished in the last week.