Lying alone in the bed in his hotel room, Robert was unable to sleep. The early morning light filtered in through the curtains, but since his eyes were closed, it couldn't be the light that was keeping him awake.
He didn't feel guilty, just strange, like the whole world had changed without him having noticed.
So he tried to find in his mind the last moment when he felt clear, sure….
He was lying in her bed with the same sort of morning light glowing through onto the bed. Bright enough so that he could see his own fingers twined through her dark shining curls, the contrast of her dark, curling eyelashes against her milky cheek, the juicy red of her small, soft mouth with its plump, plummy lips. That sweet, sleeping face, heart-shaped, shaped exactly to fit his heart.
"Annie," he sighed now, and smiled, opening his eyes to rollover and look at the clock. Too early to call her, he thought, as he nonetheless felt his need for her growing, aroused by the memory of her body, soft and warm against his, of her low, loving voice, of her gentle, open smile.
Just after Elizabeth had left Washington, he had met her. Well, he had met her three months before that, but he hadn't really noticed. Then one day, after a staff meeting he looked up and she was still in the conference room, framed by the doorway. "Want to get some lunch?" she'd asked. Robert had been caught off guard. "Ummm, why?" he answered flatly, assuming she had some agenda although not knowing what it would be. Getting a new sound system into the budget, maybe a live band for her dance classes. Robert still had trouble considering the foxtrot a therapy that could really treat his patients, although he did have fun showing off during the classes.
"Because I'm hungry," she laughed in response. "Oh yeah, and because I'd like to talk to you about your rhumba."
"My…oh, yeah, well, in that case…" he smiled, still unsure, but willing to see what she had in mind. She led him to her car, an old, open top jeep, and they took off, without too many words, just exchanging another smile, albeit a wary one from him.
She took him to a hole in the wall, a pizza place across from a school yard where kids were running and screaming during their own lunchtime. After they settled at a hightop table just outside the door, she explained, "Chicago-style. In case you were homesick."
"Not too much," he replied as he bit into the thick slice. He looked across to the playground.
"Nice school," he snarked.
'I think so," she replied, "I teach there."
"Oh," he answered, a bit embarrassed but not too much since he wasn't really concerned about making an impression on her. He let the conversation languish, chewing on his pizza, alternating sips of coke through his straw.
"You dance well for a doctor," she slipped in, looking at him from the corner of her eye as she sipped her own coke.
"What? And doctors can't be dancers? Did you know that Fred Astaire was a podiatrist before he met Ginger," he attempted.
She laughed. A laugh that included everyone around her. He noticed her eyes when she did. Huge and warm and deep.
She quieted then, thoughtful for a moment, "I just didn't think surgeons came to their patients' dance lessons. You care about them more than I'd expected."
"I'm not a surgeon," he said softly.
"I'm not a therapist," she answered, "but we manage to help them anyway," with that she got up and tossed her plate in the trash, reached back and grabbed his, too. She turned to him a second time and then walked back over, leaning toward him against the tabletop. "I actually have to get back to work," she said softly nodding toward the school. "Will you be able to find your way back on the metro?" she asked with more concern than necessary in her voice.
He nodded, smiled as if to dispel the sudden dark mood that had fallen back over him, clouding the bright day. "It's a tough town, but I'll be alright."
She nodded as he stood and they walked toward the street corner together. "Thanks for lunch," he finished, although they had each paid for their own.
"Don't mention it," she joked looking back at the grubby little pizza place. She was about to cross the street when she stopped and looked up at him with those big, soft eyes. "Do you have, well, a rule, about dating people you work with?" she asked quickly and softly, sincere and just a little breathless.
Robert felt the irony but in a painful way as if fate were teasing him, reminding him of his bad luck with the ladies. Even before he'd lost his job and his arm, he had obviously been considered a poor jerk, a loser whom Elizabeth had lied to to avoid his advances. Had she and Peter laughed about him after? Was this woman laughing at him now?
In the long silence, her face had turned pink, flushed with the heat of the warm April day and with the discomfort of the sticky situation she'd gotten herself into.
"Well, I should get to work. You know those kids…Can't wait to waltz…" she joked awkwardly, pressing the button to change the traffic light, hoping, praying that it would turn red so she could run.
As it did, at the last minute he caught her hand. "Nnno," he mumbled looking at her hand in his and avoiding her eyes. "No rules like that."
She squeezed his hand back, wiggled her fingers out of his and took off across the street. When she'd crossed, she looked back, smile, waved. "See you Thursday then," she called gaily, the scarf in her hair floating in the breeze. Thursday was her class at the hospital. He'd been attending for weeks without noticing her, slipping in and out, just to cheer up a few of his patients with a quick whirl about the room. He smiled and nodded as she turned back to go. Then he watched her scarf trail behind her like a blue breeze as she went through the door, through the metal detector, to work.
They had drinks that week and dinner twice. She invited him to her place the second time where he met her son. A good-looking kid, a young teenager, confined to a wheelchair as a result of a car accident.
After dinner, when Charlie had excused himself with the excuse of math homework ("Calling his girlfriend," Annie had whispered to Robert so as not to embarrass her kid), they took coffee to the couch. "He's terribly dutiful. Calls her every night after dinner. Ah! Young love!" she laughed.
Robert didn't respond, uncomfortable at the obvious issue of this paralyzed boy's romantic prospects. Wondering now whether this woman's interest in him came from some obligation to show her son that a normal woman could be with a disabled man.
"Robert," she questioned, touching his arm gently. She was looking at him, that concern in her eyes that was so different from pity. It was instead a searching, a look that said tell me, tell me everything so that I can understand.
He shook his head and tried to pick up from where she'd left off, "Do you think he loves her?" he asked nonchalantly.
"Well of course he does," Annie retorted in an indignant tone he'd never heard before, moving slightly away from him on the sofa. Then she softened, explaining while looking away across the room at the family photos on the mantel, "Charlie's always had this huge heart. He still loves the father who left when he couldn't handle the time and money and pain of his son's seven surgeries. He loves the brother who moved out because he didn't approve of me having a boyfriend after years of spending every night at home alone with them." She shook her head, tearful, "And he loves me, even if sometimes I'm so stupid, I pretend there's nothing wrong, and that his life is just what I'd always wanted for him." She had lowered her head, shaking it slightly as she spoke, her curls floating, almost distracting Robert from seeing a tear drip off the tip of her nose.
"Annie," he reached out.
'No," she shook her head, objecting only slightly when he put his arms around her. "He doesn't feel sorry for himself," she choked out, "You shouldn't have to feel sorry for me," she whimpered as she nonetheless pressed her cheek against his shoulder and let him rock her gently in his arms.
She finally moved out of his embrace and smiled at him through tear-starred lashes. "You're such a good man," she told him.
Robert shook his head, but she continued, "I've been watching you. For a while now. You heal people. You show them how to be as strong as you are."
He laughed at that. "Oh, I'm probably one of the weakest men you'll ever meet," he laughed, more at himself than at her.
She looked at him for a moment, smiled and then laid her cheek back against his shoulder, closing her eyes, leaning on him as if to prove that he was indeed the strong one.
"Am I going to have to show you how weak I am?" he whispered. She nodded, smiling, her eyes still closed. He bent his neck then, to gently kiss just the top of her head, breathing in her curls, nuzzling her with his lips and nose, kissing her hair again. She looked up finally, eyes gleaming. She slid a hand up to stroke his cheek, gently, then with that same soft, warm hand she brought his face to hers, moved her mouth onto his, kissed him, sweetly, gently.
The world had gone quiet around them, and after they separated, she stayed close, her arms around his neck, her forehead resting against his chin.
"It's late," he finally said.
"Then stay," she answered.
A few months later, he noticed that he was staying with her almost every night. They were lovers but they were also and very importantly friends. He spent the last few hours of each workday distracted, looking forward to meeting her after work to shop and cook together, to eat dinner outside in her backyard, sometimes with Charlie sometimes not. They would share the news of their days and then listen to NPR as they washed dishes, commenting on world news, stopping mid-commentary to kiss over a sinkful of soap bubbles.
They often shared long baths in her tub, sipping glasses of dark red shiraz or a good Argentinian rioja. Then bed, of course. Bed where they loved each other as quietly as possible, although Charlie was far away in his room at the back of the ground floor. Neither of them could quite contain their pleasure though, their satisfaction at the deep and delicate sensations each discovered in the other's body. Robert had never let anyone this close to him before, never trusted so completely a lover, never allowed a woman to know how to unmake him, how to open his soul to her, had never allowed anyone to fill him as completely as she did.
They were happy. He felt stunned at the everyday realization, looking across the table at her in the morning over the front page of the Post as she munched her granola and read the Arts section. She gave him a calm, a peace he'd never known. Although in many ways a fiercely independent spirit, she took care of him in a doting, darling manner, choosing his ties at night, smoothing his lapels in the morning. She let him knot the ties himself though, since he was so expert at it now with his prosthetic. She would sometimes straighten the knot just before he left, but more as an excuse for a last kiss, tiptoeing just slightly to reach his nose with her lips. She made him feel strong, as strong as she believed he was.
But strength, he was coming to see, didn't lie within either of them but rather in the two of them together, in the laughter they shared, in the passion, but also in the compassion they offered each other when one had a hard day at work, a doubt about a patient or a student, a disappointment of any kind. His arm around her as the walked down a dark, Washington street made him feel like her protector. But he was the one who felt truly safe in the home she had made for him in her heart.
He had almost tossed it all away, however, almost given it all up last night with Lizzie, lying next to her on that hospital bed as she curled against him. Her loneliness, her need for him drew him to her. He found her suddenly so gorgeous again with her red hair flying furiously, her eyes red-ringed with tears, her voice a broken whisper. But their embrace was awkward, her body out of proportion to his, her arms all angles against him.
For years, she had fed off of his frustrated adoration, growing more beautiful the longer he loved her without having her. When he had reached for her, of course she had pulled away. That had been their dance. And now when she reached for him, he wanted to be there for her, to offer the comfort to her that she had refused to him. But that was all.
What he now felt for Elizabeth was a sort of loyalty, as if his heart did not want to dishonor the memory of what he had so long considered to be love. But love, he had learned, was not the unrequited anguish he had felt for so long. That aching for her had really been a way to protect himself from being hurt by anyone else. Elizabeth had hurt him, and Annie had healed him. His true loyalty lay, in the end and forever with her.
The evening of his return to Washington, a sticky summer night, he accompanied Annie to a dance recital at the school where she taught ballet to kids who mostly danced to hip hop, who had never before her been taught to see themselves as swans. After the performance in which several students tripped on each other but managed in the end to move gracefully through most of their numbers, Annie beamed. Backstage, where he waited for her, she hugged them all, promising to see them in September, letting proud parents take pictures of their kids in their costumes gathered around their favorite teacher.
'Thanks for putting up with all that," she apologized as they left the school grounds after dark, holding hands as they walked homeward.
Robert smiled even though she couldn't see him in the shadows. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world," he said sincerely, pulling her to him and into a tight embrace.
"Your life is my life," he whispered fervently into her hair.
She pulled back with a smile, and he could see her eyes sparkle in the moonlight. "Then you'll be coming to these recitals every spring until you're dead," she laughed at him.
"I love you," he answered.