CHAPTER 15 #3
She comes. She turns her face up to mine.
Her hand finds the front of my shirt at the placket.
The medallion is at her sternum and the silver picks up the last of the light.
I cup her jaw at the angle she has been showing me for a week — the hinge under the ear, the place where the small bone is — and I bring my mouth to hers, slowly, as I bring a needle to a vessel, as the Moscow surgeon brought his last needle to my heart when I was thirteen.
She gives the kiss to me as she gives a chart to an attending, full-handed, without an apology.
Her hand comes up to the cord at my wrist for the first time and her fingers settle on the leather.
She holds. Simply holds — no pulling, no shifting, only the settled weight of her grip.
The pad of her index finger is against my pulse and my pulse is the only number I am counting.
We kiss for a long time. Fully clothed. My hand stays at her jaw.
My other hand stays flat on the linen between us.
She moves a quarter of an inch closer; I move a quarter of an inch closer; the architecture is the small inches.
The P?rt is over; the room is quiet; the chopper does not come a third time.
At nine — I check; my watch is at nine-oh-two — she takes my hand from her jaw and brings it down to her waist. Her fingers settle my palm flat against the soft cotton of the shift just above the band of her own scrub bottoms underneath, which she is wearing under the shift today, because she has not been ready to dress all the way out of the suite. I feel the waistband under my thumb.
I stop my hand.
I keep it at the band of cotton, exactly there.
"Doll. We will not. Tonight is the conversation. Tomorrow is the other thing."
She holds steady. She takes her time. She sets her forehead against mine and breathes out a long four-count.
"Tomorrow," she says.
"Tomorrow, doll. I am not going to take anything tonight that I will not be able to give back.
Tonight you have given me the day. I have given you the books.
The kit is open between us. I would like to sleep beside you here for an hour, fully clothed, and then I would like to take you back to the suite at the end of the night.
The brownstone is for the named night. Today is not the named night.
Today is the lesson. Tomorrow is the named night. "
"All right."
"Are you with me, doll."
"I'm right here, doll."
I bring the cashmere cardigan from the iron hook.
I lay it over her shoulders. The daybed is wide.
I lie down at her back; she lies on her right side; my left arm goes under the ticking pillow and the cord at my wrist comes to rest against her shoulder blade.
She breathes. I breathe. The four-beat steadies us both.
The glass roof above us is dark now; the streetlights of the cross street put a soft column of white-blue through the iron mullions onto the linen at our feet.
She sleeps in less than nine minutes. I listen.
I stay awake.
I lie behind her at the angle I have been waiting to lie behind a woman at, and I listen for hers as I was taught to listen for mine, and her heartbeat is at sixty-two and mine is at seventy-four and the fourth beat of hers is the one I am listening for, and the fourth beat is coming.
At ten she wakes. I make her toast. We sit at the kitchen island and do not say much.
At ten-forty I take the Henley off the chair. I hold it out.
"Take this. The car is cold. The suite is cold. The cotton is soft from being washed; it will not chafe against the medallion. If you would, sleep in it tonight."
"I will."
She puts it on over the shift; she has the cardigan on top; the layers are wrong for any room except the one she is going to. The medallion is at her sternum. The pencil is in the knot. She steps into the boots. I bring her bag. I hold the door.
Kostya is at the curb at eleven-fifteen.
He has the charcoal kid gloves on. He keeps his eyes on the street through the rearview, past her.
He says, low, Pakhan says the suite is ready, doctor, and I say, Good.
Thank you, Kostya. The Mercedes pulls south down the avenue.
I watch the taillights for one block. I am standing at the door of the building with my coat in my hand and the cord at my wrist still warm.
I go up.
The apartment is the apartment again. The daybed is empty and warm where she was. The pillow at the south end keeps the print of her head a long time; linen holds shape. The orchids are in the dark. The P?rt sleeve is back. The kit is closed on the iron shelf.
I cross to the daybed. I sit at her end. I lay my left palm flat on the linen where her shoulder was. The cord moves under my thumb. The four-beat is in the room. The fourth beat tells me the count will hold.
I touch the cord one more time. I say her name, soft, the syllables I have been thinking with all day, in the cadence I am going to keep —
Doll.
The streetlight through the iron mullions puts a column of white-blue across the daybed. The chopper stays grounded for the rest of the night.
Four beats first.