In Short Measures

by Michael Ruhlman

  “Yes, so if you need to talk, climb down and come up, room 201.”

  “That seems altogether too easy. Where’s the fun—”

  And with that, Emerson tipped over the edge of the branch as fast as if he’d been on a log in water—he just rolled right off. She heard branches, followed by a sickening thud. She called his name, first out of shock, then again in worry. By standing on her mattress, she could attain an angle to see the ground below her window, enough of it to see the boy’s legs spread and unmoving. He’d landed on his back.

  “Emerson!” she called again. Nothing, no movement or sound. She wore only a short cotton nightshirt, the evenings still being so warm and humid. She hurried to find something to put on in the dark. She still hadn’t unpacked completely but found her jeans in a clump in the closet. She put them on with increasing panic that he was badly hurt.

  She flung open the door to the always lighted hallway and hustled in bare feet to the stairway, down a single flight, and out the heavy door, looking for the spot, but he was nowhere. Was she dreaming this? No, she saw the blue T-shirt, pale in the night’s light, floating toward the archway, slowly, delicately.

  “Emerson, hey!” she stage-whispered. He stopped at the archway, put his hand out on it, propping himself up. She flew to him, recognizing he was hurt.

  He spoke haltingly, struggling even to moan. “Wind. Just.” He rasped in another gulp of air. “Getting. My breath.”

  “You could be hurt.”

  “I’m.” He continued to struggle. “Dandy.”

  “Come to my room. I need to see in the light that you’re all right. People die from falls lower than that.”

  “If I can walk I’m okay.”

  “You can walk up to my room so I can look at you. At least give you some aspirin. You’re going to need it.”

  He surely would. He was walking so gingerly she took his arm and put it over her shoulder, led him to the door. She was right to do this; he truly could have injured something, internal bleeding, concussion. The alcohol would dull dangerous pain. He grunted, taking the first step, squinting in the harsh hall light when she got him inside.

  “I definitely did something. Ribs.”

  He walked more easily and breathed calmly by the time they got to her door. They entered and she seated him at her desk, turning just the desk lamp on.

  “Well that’s one way to sober up,” he said.

  “Let me get you some water.” The bathroom was down the hall; when she returned with a glass of tap water, his head was back and his eyes were closed.

  “Here, drink.”

  He opened his eyes, took the glass along with three aspirin. She watched him down the whole pint.

  “That was good.”

  She clawed her fingers through his hair, looked into his eyes, which were a little glassy and dazed. “Who am I, what’s my name?”

  He squinted, “Nancy Reagan.”

  “I’m serious. I need to know you’re not hurt. Tell me your home phone number.”

  “Only if you’re calling to ask me for a date.”

  “Please just say it,” she implored.

  He recited a number and said, “I’m okay, Grimsley. Ribs hurt.”

  “Let me see.”

  He stood, but winced when he moved to take off his shirt, so she took hold of the hem and pulled it up and over his arms. She examined his left side, gently stroked the abrasion, just pink, no blood, a bruise beginning.

  “I hit a branch on the way down.”

  “Likely saved you. You could have broken your neck.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  She’d taken her hand off his skin, but he’d reached for her hand and returned it to his side. It was then that what she saw registered in a new way—the tautness of his skin, the firm chest.

  “It wasn’t exactly elegant, but it worked.”

  “What worked?”

  “I am where I intended to be.” And he put his hand on her where hers was on him. They held each other’s gaze, and with an ease that in retrospect she would find disconcerting, he leaned down and kissed her.

  She lowered her gaze. She couldn’t calm her breathing. She grew self-conscious. Her nipples were practically poking holes through her old cotton nightshirt. His hand accepted their beckon, cupping one, and she drew a deep breath. She kept a hand on his waist and put the other on his chest. They kissed again. He seemed so at ease, and this put her at ease. He broke from the kiss, and slowly, slowly enough for her to object if she’d wanted—but she did not want to—he lifted her cotton shirt over her and let it fall to the floor. He stared unashamedly at her torso and said, “Oh,” in a way that was almost musical. He fell to his knees, kissing her flesh, unfastening her jeans, tugging them loose but not down, kissed her just above the line where her underpants would have been had she been wearing them. And he stood, lingering on each perfect breast for pleasing moments and then to her neck and back to her mouth as she tugged his belt free. And when it was undone, she drew the pants down, helping each foot out, then working her way up, taking in with her eyes his entire form, which was as ready for sex as any seventeen-year-old boy could be. They kissed.

  She would look back on this moment, grateful that she had so quickly given in because never again would she feel so at home with another body, feel that her contours fit his contours in so perfect and natural a way that they might have been carved from the same block of soapstone. And so would the sensual contours of their sex that first time seem as inevitable and unstoppable as the tide. Their fertile, healthy bodies so hungry for one another there was no thought or meditation in any of their actions, only hot, hungry feasting till the end.

  And they squeezed together in her narrow bed, she against the wall, he so near the edge he kept one leg on the floor for support, both panting from exertion and soaked in the humid night. He said, “Ooooooh!” And he grinned. “Oooooh, my ribs!”

  And she laughed and kissed him. She scooted down the sheets and caressed his side where a sickeningly bad bruise had emerged, and she kissed it and kissed it again, willing it to heal.

  When she inched back up, she could see he was falling into sleep, allowing her to regard this beautiful boy and his perfect form, his strong chest, a light coat of gold fur making a T across his chest and down his flat belly, his still full but beached cock, his long slender legs. She must have stared for five minutes before nestling into him. Shouldn’t we get some warning when we wake, she thought giddily, some small divine preparation that the person who you are this morning will not be who you are the next, that your life will pivot today?

  Grimsley slept so lightly, so happily, that the first birds woke her. And she stroked her new and perfect lover, until he couldn’t possibly sleep. “Grimsley,” he mumbled, “what are you doing?”

  She said nothing. She moved his hips to the center of the bed, mounted him and worked alone, happily until his obvious conclusion, a single thrust and smile. His eyes opened, regarded her; she, pleased and proud to be watched this way in the lovely dawn light, the cool air.

  “Oh my God, thank you,” he said.

  She lifted herself off him, lay beside him, completely and absolutely content, listening to the sweet calming birdsong.

  “Grimsley,” he said. She nestled closer, but didn’t speak. “I think I’m really going to like college.”

  She put a knuckle gently into his ribs, but the pain left quickly and he laughed.

  Four

  What I can’t figure out,” he said matter-of-factly, “is how in the hell I was able to reach your window.”

  I looked back at him, squinting to fathom the male mind. Here I was recalling a whole big night and all Em was doing was working out an engineering issue.

  “I mean, where’s the branch?”

  “Well, obviously the one that’s now up near that dormer.”

  “Wow, you think?”

  Maybe the smart girls were right after all.

  “Hm,” he said and bent to pick u
p his jacket.

  I felt the anger rising up in me again.

  “Tell me you remember the rest of that night,” I said. “Tell me you weren’t actually drunker than you seemed.”

  I faced him full on and he faced me directly now, because of my tone.

  We stood on the grass an arm’s length apart. He lifted his right hand, as if a Bible were under the other, and I did think he meant to swear, but his hand was cupped. Was it in reference to that night, his touch, cupping my young breast? I don’t know. Did my forty-five-year-old chest heave out toward that hand as I inhaled with anticipation? I’m afraid it did. But he did not reach out. He made a fist instead and held it to his heart, or maybe just his chest. I do have a tendency to overread a situation.

  “I remember every moment,” he said.

  I honestly didn’t know if this was a lie, and he could see this on my hard face.

  “Grimsley, how could I forget?! You still look the same, you still smell the same, my God. My second night on this campus. How could I possibly forget?” He grinned and gave me a friendly squeeze on the shoulder.

  I could have slapped him.

  “Hey,” he said. “You’re the one who didn’t recognize me. In the chapel? Don’t get mad at me.”

  I walked away, seething. He really thought that I didn’t recognize him. And it didn’t bother him—not in the least.

  I headed toward the archway to leave the quad.

  I heard the quick rasp of his wingtips on the stone, jogging up behind me. I expected he’d grab my elbow and turn me toward him. I had an instant fantasy that that’s what he’d do, that he’d turn me around, stare at me, and kiss me, all Gothic-romance-novel-like. He’d kiss me.

  He slowed beside me instead and said, “If I owe you an apology for anything I’ve said today, or anything I ever did in the past, say so now.”

  I kept walking.

  “Hey,” he said. “You kissed me back there. If you’ll recall. What’s going on here? What do you expect?”

  I kept walking only because I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve always believed that when you don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, you should at least try to make some sort of progress till you know where you are.

  “So, what?” he called out. “You’re just going to keep walking? Nice seein’ ya?”

  I stopped. He was right, of course. I was out of hand and we both knew it. What was I thinking? I stopped, turned. I waited for him to walk to me.

  “I think,” I said, “that I want to be that girl I was when we were together. Which is not possible.” I looked down. “That’s unfair of me.”

  “That’s not what you claimed a few minutes ago.”

  “You always did have a strange effect on me. That hasn’t changed. I should never have kissed you. I’m sorry.”

  He smiled and I knew the nuance of this one, and my heart lifted a little, a wounded bird making a few tentative flaps to right itself. He had enjoyed it, was glad that I had kissed him. I could see it. A glimmer of ego. He’d been flattered by the kiss. A weakness.

  “Grimsley, I’m thoroughly and devotedly married. I couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize something I care so much about.”

  “And I wouldn’t let you. I will do nothing more. Again, I’m sorry.”

  And this time, he came to me. He hugged me. A friendly hug. At first anyway, a chest hug. He is tall, more than six feet, and I am not short but nor am I tall. My nose pressed against the collar and knot of his tie. I got nothing of his scent but cloth. But he smelled my hair (I could hear the deep nasal inhalation) and for a moment our bodies, surely independently of our minds, his mind anyway, simply moved to where there had always been a perfect fit. Our pelvises and upper thighs connected. He released me before any stirrings could happen down there in those stylish slacks of his, before I could know if there would have been any had I worked to maintain the embrace.

  *

  I eventually brought him to the bench where I’d been sitting with Amanda and Sterly when I first saw him. I had gotten him a cup of coffee at the Bryan Center because he said he was tired and still on Los Angeles time, hadn’t slept well. We’d walked slowly and easily. He was inquisitive despite his fatigue, asking about my work, my social life, my love life (sex life, I guess I should say, since I’ve loved only one person, as I now acknowledged). Then I asked about his and he quieted down considerably and changed the subject to what I actually did all day, which is about as interesting as watching someone else not catch any fish on a still lake.

  I live in the books I read, and I thrill in watching this university come to life every fall, the peculiar interactions among my bookish colleagues. Mary, my younger sister, lives in Raleigh, I told him, and I engage in her life, help her with my two nephews (ages ten and twelve now and all joy for me). I let her vent about her well-meaning but lumpish husband, who works for IBM in the Research Triangle but I don’t know exactly what it is he does, though he’s tried to explain it to me at least three times. My youngest sibling, David, is the communications director for the Department of Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill and is a saint. This always makes for an exciting March and a healthy Blue Devils/Tar Heels rivalry as the NCAA basketball season concludes. He has two daughters, ages five and seven, angels so far, but destined to be more complicated than the boys. This is plain to see already though David and Stephanie, his wife, a peach, have no clue what’s headed their way. I help them out when they need to get out of Dodge and have a solo weekend (usually Vegas, Lord knows why).

  And here I am, Grimsley, the only odd name in the bunch—my parents had to use me to figure out that straightforward Christian names were the way to go.

  “Don’t say that,” Em said. “Your name attracted me to you, as I recall.”

  “Not my body?”

  “Well, that, yes, of course. But as I remember it, I was attracted first to the sound of your voice. It’s faded a bit though. Not the contralto lilt but the accent.”

  “Yeah, not as geechie as it used to be. All things fade, and it was really my mom’s voice. Once I lost her, I didn’t want any unnecessary reminders.”

  Just as I was beginning to feel self-conscious at becoming emotional on this point, I felt his hand on my shoulder. He pulled me close in comfort.

  “I’m sorry, Grims. Truly. My dad died three years ago. No one can prepare you for it, and it doesn’t go away.”

  “I remember you were close with your dad.”

  “Something of a moral compass for me. The most important man on Earth.”

  *

  So, really, by the time we’d strolled the long concrete walkways to and from the Bryan Center to emerge again into the main quad, all leafy and old, he with some high-test coffee and I with iced tea, I’d pretty much told him all the main points so that there wasn’t anything in between he couldn’t infer. My life is simple, as I said, and I like to think, as many have noted, that there’s genius in simplicity. But now I knew that we shared at least one new thing we didn’t before: the loss of a vital force in our lives.

  “How’s your time?” I asked.

  Em looked at his watch. “I’ve been invited to a small dinner at 5:30, so I have an hour or so, then a reception at Washington Duke Inn. You? Do you need to be back at work?”

  “No, I’m done for the day. I’d been planning to see a movie with a friend, but—”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Male and a friend, yes. Let’s sit,” I said, nodding to the bench where I’d been sitting that late summer day, just before classes were to begin, in the fall of 1985.

  He stared at the bench. These were big, broad, solid affairs, twelve feet long, elevated, comfortable to sit in, with tall backs, and a beam to push your feet against. Not really a bench so much as a place to congregate, lounge, study, gossip. They were scattered throughout the campus, totems in front of fraternities painted with Greek insignia, plain ones in front of dorms. And the longer he looked, not taking a seat, the older he s
eemed to become. It was almost as though I were watching him age before my eyes, as though the man I’d been seeing was the boy I knew then and, just now, as he gazed upon this bench, the years blew over him like a breeze, and I watched his once smooth skin coarsen and sag, his golden hair dull, and the whites of his eyes take on the yellow-gray cast of old newspaper. Was it me, or was he actually changing? Aging before my eyes. More likely my eyes, fogged as if waking from dreamy sleep, were simply clearing.

  “Interesting choice of benches,” he said, stepping up onto the platform and deflating into it as though defeated. He slid down to make room for me and I sat.

  I couldn’t believe he knew that this was the bench where I’d first seen him. He couldn’t possibly have remembered. When he’d passed me that day, he literally hadn’t known I existed. So this could not be what he was referring to. What then?

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  He looked at me, partly glad, partly disappointed. “Well, then I feel better.”

  “Did something I don’t remember happen here?”

  “It’s where I broke things off between us.”

  “Is it?”

  Now I had to race back in my memory, for I did of course remember exactly what he’d said, the words he’d used: “I asked her.” They don’t seem like much, but they were a dagger at the time. I’d thought it had been in my room, after sex—that’s where it happens in my head (clearly that’s unconscious resentment on my part). And then I’m in the bathroom down the hall from my room retching into a sink.

  “It seems a little more than coincidental, don’t you think?”

  “What?”

  “Directing us to the sight of our first … coupling. And then to the place where we broke up. Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “Such as?”

  “Are you being mean?”

  I truly was surprised by this. If there was any meanness, it was completely unconscious. Mean was the last thing I intended to be to him.

  Untitled

  She saw him approach through the very same archway, though by now his posture and gait were familiar, and always a welcome sight. It was early April, and the willow oaks that lined the quad had their new leaves. The air was finally warm enough for shirts only, but the ground was too cool for bare feet, Em’s preferred footwear. He had on his ragged Top Siders held together with duct tape, jeans, and a white button-down shirt. One of the many things she liked about him—his indifference to clothes and style.