Jaywalking across East 20th Street, she definitely heard footfalls matching hers, and when she stopped, they did, too. She pivoted, but the sidewalk was empty. It crossed her mind to lose the rug, but with her building coming in sight on the opposite side of the square, Nikki pushed it to a jog, double-timing west along the spiked wrought iron that fenced in Gramercy Park.
The notion of an ambush occurred to her. If this guy had an accomplice staking out her front stairs, she might be racing right into the jaws of a trap. She began to calculate one-on-one as better odds, especially if she surprised him with an impromptu reversal. At the corner of the park, the fence didn’t cut a sharp angle but curved. As soon as Heat rounded it, she stopped and dropped.
Squatting in a crouch, Nikki waited and listened. Sure enough, the jogging footsteps approached but halted fifteen yards off. Her view was blocked by the park shrubbery hiding both of them, but she heard panting. And a man softly clearing his throat. Resting a palm flat on the flagstone sidewalk, she leaned to her left and found his distorted reflection in the restaurant window across the street. He was only a dark shape in the soft lighting of the park, but she made out his hooded sweatshirt and ball cap. She lost him when he moved forward, resuming his pursuit. Heat got ready.
He came around the corner of the sidewalk at a trot. When he did, Nikki thrust herself upward, ready to bat his face with the three-foot roll of Turkish wool. Then she recognized her pursuer as Rook.
Heat just managed to pull her swing and missed hitting him, but he startled, shouting “Whoa, no, no!” flailing his arms up defensively and losing his balance. He pitched forward, bent over in a stoop, desperately fighting gravity and losing. Rook crash landed with an “oof!” on the slate flagstones, managing, at least, to shield his face, putting his forearm between it and the sidewalk as he dropped.
“God, Rook, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Protecting you,” came his muffled voice spoken into the sleeve under him. He turned over and sat up. Blood streamed from both nostrils.
When they came into her apartment, she said, “Please don’t bleed on the floor, I just cleaned it.”
“Love the compassion. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
She sat him down on a bar stool with a box of tissues and washed him up with the remaining towelettes Lauren Parry had given her the night before. While she dabbed the dried blood from his upper lip and nose, she said, “Rook, think back over the past year. Haven’t you learned yet not to shadow me?”
“Clearly, not. Ow.”
“Sorry.”
“And clearly, you haven’t learned that, if you’re being shadowed, it just might be the cavalry. Meaning me.”
“I.”
“No grammar police, OK?” He pulled a wad of tissue away from his nose to examine for fresh blood. Satisfied, he lobbed it into the trash can. “What’s wrong with us, Nikki? Why can’t we be like a Woody Allen movie? Two old lovers with unfinished business running into each other on a New York sidewalk?”
“You mean,” she said, “instead of running into a sidewalk?”
“Is my nose broken?”
“Let’s see.” She reached her fingers for it, but he pulled back.
“No. Enough pain.” He got up and checked his face in the teakettle. “Reflection’s too distorted to tell.” He shrugged. “Well, if it is broken, it’ll give me character. I’ll be even more rugged in my rugged handsomeness.”
“Until people find out how you did it.” That made him check himself out in the kettle again. While he turned away, bending to assess the damage, she said, “Thank you for trying to protect me.” Then she added, “Guess you can’t be that angry.”
He rose upright and faced her. “Wanna bet?” But his look told her he had, at least, downgraded to a simmer.
“And I don’t blame you. I know you felt blindsided.”
“Why? Because you ditched me, and a couple of hours later, I find a naked dead man in your apartment? And when I dare to ask, you think you can get away with saying it’s complicated and giving me the boot?”
“OK, so I guess you may still be angry.”
“What if roles were reversed? What if you had come into my place and found a naked Tam Svejda with her brains on the floor? All right, maybe not so much the brains, but you get the idea.”
A stillness charged by unseen toxic particles settled in the chasm between them. Nikki knew that it fell to her to break the silence, or not to. She recognized a tipping point when she saw one and waded in. “You may not agree,” she began, “because of the… indignity of your nose injury, but tonight’s unexpected encounter is sort of good timing. Today my shrink suggested I make contact with you.”
“This is sounding more like Woody Allen, after all. You saw a shrink?” And then for emphasis, he added, “You?”
“Mandated. Long story involving Captain Irons, but it did get me to a session with a department therapist.” Nikki drew a breath that hitched in her chest. Compartmentalization always got her through, so this was scary territory. Vulnerability meant exposure, but she opened herself to him, unarmed and unprotected. “I’m willing to explain, if you’re willing to listen.”
That’s when the part of him she considered his essence, the part she most connected to, the part that jumped in front of bullets to protect her, softened him another degree. Yielding to his innate compassion, he held out his hand to her and said, “We’d probably be more comfortable on the couch.”
As with most great fears, including imagined monsters behind a door, hers became merely life-sized once she confronted it and opened up. Rook’s willingness to listen instead of interrupting her to judge, get defensive-or even to wisecrack-helped her immensely in telling him the saga of Don. After she informed him of their sexual hiatus after she had met Rook the summer before, he nodded, accepting that as fact. He even had the elegance not to ask her if they had slept together the night before. When she finished, he said one thing, and it was the best thing he ever could have.
“This must be absolute hell for you to face alone.”
Nikki’s tears erupted, and she threw herself from where she sat into his arms, shaking with sobs, allowing herself the unguarded emotional display without restraint. Her weeping rose from a deep, seemingly bottomless source that dredged up not just the raw hurt of the past twenty-four hours, but a decade of suppressed feelings of loss, hurt, anger, frustration, loneliness, and fear, which-until that moment-had been neatly boxed and locked away. He embraced her, cradling her into his shoulder, seeming to know that his caring silence was their strength, and that his encirclement of her with his arms signaled hope and unwavering friendship amid her catharsis.
When, after a time, Nikki was cried out, she drew herself away and they stared at each other, their gaze speaking volumes about trust and the bond they shared. They kissed lightly and parted, smiling, holding each other’s gaze some more. Just as they had never declared their exclusivity, they also had never shared the love words. Right then, basking in the intimacy of some new sanctuary they had just forged, that would have been the time to say them. But neither would know if it had crossed the other’s mind then in that tender, vulnerable moment. The time for voicing that came and then passed, banked for another day, if ever.