by Anne Calhoun
“Shh,” he said. More helpfully, his big hand covered her mouth, fingertips at one ear, his thumb at the other, loose enough to let her breath but stifling the noises she could no longer control. He cupped her sex, grinding the heel of his hand against her clit as he thrust between the V of his fingers, picking up the pace and intensity until she braced her forearms against the wall and pushed back into him. Her blood pumped hot and thick in her veins, each beat of her heart massive and distinct. Her head dropped back, and for one crazy, calm second she thought she might die.
Instead, she came. Big beating swoops of pleasure pulsing out from her core, through her skin. A low, heated “fuck” rolled into her ear to blend with the heated thundering of her pulse, and she became aware of the distinct pulses of his release.
Her vision spangled back out of the black, followed closely by hearing. His breath whooshed into her hair with each heave of his chest against her back. Her legs were trembling from being folded under her for so long.
“Cramp,” she said as her left calf spasmed in warning. “Cramp coming.”
He pulled out with alacrity and turned to the side to give her room. She flopped on her belly and sighed with relief. “Okay. I’m okay.”
“You sure?” he asked, hands running over her calves and thighs.
“I’m sure.” His fingers kneaded her buttocks. “Now you’re just feeling me up,” she said into her folded arms.
“Hard not to with your ass right here,” he said, thumbs brushing the dimples at the base of her spine. He patted her gently, smoothed down her skirt, then swung one leg off the bed and paused.
“Can’t walk?”
“Sure I can. Just give me a second.”
“Take all the time you need,” she said, already drifting.
She heard joints popping as he got to his feet and straightened. Then she heard water running. Then she heard nothing at all.
***
When she woke up it was dark. A sheet covered her to her hips, and Tim was sprawled beside her, watching TV. She lifted her head and wiped drool from her cheek. Nice. “What happened to you?” she said. The skin was punctured and bruised for a hand’s breadth at his elbow.
“I let my inexperienced partner practice inserting an IV on me,” he said without looking away from the screen.
She trailed her finger over the injection sites. “Why?”
“The only way to learn how to find a vein is to find lots and lots of veins. Intravenous drug addicts, for example, are experts at finding veins. Casey’s new. He needs the practice.”
She thought about this for a moment. “Who did you practice on?”
“My grandparents,” he said shortly. “I was an EMT studying for my paramedic certification when they started getting sick. I was handy, and they trusted me. I learned to do it fast and well when someone I loved was on the receiving end of the needle. Gently, if I could. Toward the end it gets harder and harder to find veins in the elderly. That’s why so many of them end up with central catheters.”
After caring for Aunt Joan she knew all about PICC lines and the difficulty finding veins, but she doubted very much that he wanted to have a good chat about providing either emergency or long-term care for people. For her it had been a short-term situation. For him, it was a lifestyle, and suddenly the focus on speed made sense. It made him feel useful, and tenderness came with a not-inconsiderable price.
She peered over her shoulder at the screen. One of the Matrix movies. “What time is it?” she said.
“Almost eleven.”
She’d slept for nearly four hours, and she could roll over and go back to sleep. Most of the time she was so busy with the food truck, she ran on five hours of sleep, but every so often the sadness of losing Joan and the stress of moving across the continent and starting a new business caught up with her and she crashed. Apparently brilliant sex shut her down. “I should go.”
“It’s almost eleven,” he said again, as if she hadn’t heard him.
“The trains are still running, right?” The BART shut down in the middle of the night, but she knew the subway here ran all night.
“Of course they’re still running, just less frequently. You can wait half an hour on a platform. I don’t want you standing on the East Broadway platform at midnight.”
“Is it unsafe?”
“No, it’s fine,” he said, then shoved his hand through his hair. “Look, just stay. I’ve got an extra toothbrush.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“You don’t want to impose?” He squinted at her. In her peripheral vision, Keanu Reeves was suspended in midair, arms and knees cocked. “If you don’t want to stay, that’s fine, but I’m putting you in a cab.”
She was too tired to argue with him. She found her phone on the floor and texted Trish. “I’ll leave when you go to work.”
“That’s the crack of dawn,” he warned.
“Whatever,” she said, and curled up on her side.
***
The alarm woke her from a dream that she was flying over the bay, swooping between the towering pillars suspending the Golden Gate Bridge. Tim swiped his phone. “You want to shower first?”
“Sure.”
The water beat down on her head and shoulders. She felt rested for the first time in over a week, and used his basic drug store shampoo without a care for what it, or the lack of a blow dryer, would do to her hair. A folded towel waited on the sink when she slid back the curtain. Tim stepped past her, under the spray.
She was dressed and searching through her bag for a hair elastic or a clip or something to confine what would rapidly become a truly shocking penumbra of hair if she didn’t get it under control. He dressed efficiently, styled his hair by smoothing it forward, and slid wallet, keys, phone, mini flashlight, protein bars, and a utility knife into his pants pockets. She watched, fascinated.
Her stomach growled. Mortified, she clapped her hand to it, but Tim just looked amused. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll get breakfast EMS-style.”
Giving up on the elastic, she looped her messenger bag across her body, scuffed into her clogs, and followed him down the stairs onto the street. At six thirty in the morning the city felt sleepy, the gray buildings gilded with the pink light filtering through low clouds on the eastern horizon. Tim strode down the street, toward Canal, and turned right. Halfway down he opened the door to a local coffee shop. She didn’t even have to duck, just walked under his arm with six inches to spare.
“Yes, miss?”
She ordered an egg and cheese bagel and an orange juice. The sandwich came cut in half and wrapped in wax paper, the heat of the egg softening the bagel. The juice, to her surprise, was relatively fresh. The sitting area was nearly empty, the tabletops wiped clean, the floor grimy at best. A new experience, breakfast in Manhattan’s early spring dawn.
Tim eased his long frame into a chair, set down a large cup of coffee, and unwrapped a sandwich like hers but with sausage. A second bagel with cream cheese went straight from the bag to one of his cargo pockets. A midmorning snack, she deduced.
“You must eat here often,” she said. The man behind the counter hadn’t asked Tim for his order.
“Every morning,” he said after swallowing an enormous bite from the breakfast sandwich. At that rate he’d have his breakfast down in less than two minutes. He swiped his mouth with a napkin. “First rule of working in EMS is that you won’t get a call until you’ve ordered food. If we didn’t eat, we’d never get called. You learn to get food to go, and to stick to things that survive a couple of hours in your pocket or in the bus.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“We laugh at competitive eating contests,” he said. “Amateurs who don’t have to keep down spaghetti when you get called to a stabbing.”
“You’re plenty competitive without the contests,” she said.
“You hold your own,” he said. “Have you always been like this?”
“Most of my life,” she said, but refrai
ned from saying anything more. While this morning-after conversation was going well, he didn’t need all the details about Aunt Joan before he started his shift. “I was off my game for the last couple of years. My aunt said I should try a new challenge, so here I am. How am I doing?”
“You’re a fighter,” he said easily.
“Does last night count as one half of your double-or-nothing, or both?”
“Both,” he said, and crumpled up the wax paper. “But I let you off easy.”
“I wouldn’t call last night getting off easy,” she said.
His grin quirked up one corner of his mouth. The sunlight glinted off his gold stubble. “I like watching you work for it. I hate to run, but I’m due on shift.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“You can find your way to the park?”
She waggled her phone at him. “I’ll be fine.”
He left, pushing through the door in a single stride, then disappeared down the sidewalk.
She finished her breakfast at a leisurely pace, watching the traffic move through the restaurant. They checked their phones, waited in line, ordered, waited a bit longer, accepted a paper bag containing their bagel or oatmeal or breakfast sandwich, paid, and headed out. It was a good setup, the line not blocking the coolers with bottled drinks, staffing levels more than adequate to keep people moving. Efficient.
Shaking off the chef, she tucked her phone in her bag, cleared her tray, and set off down the street. The morning held a hint of chill, but a latte cleared that right up, allowing her to stroll rather than hustle to stay warm. She found herself on a street lined with cafés and restaurants, and engaged in her favorite pastime of reading menus and taking pictures of things that inspired her. Window boxes filled with geraniums lining the windows of a restaurant on a corner. The art on a chalkboard outside a coffee shop. Virtual presence was a must, but the actual physical experience of eating mattered so much more, and every detail counted. A sleepy New York charmed her, like waking up with someone who needed a cup of coffee and the paper to get going.
Her phone rang while she was paging through the pictures she’d taken.
“What’s up, Trish?”
“We got our first review. It’s just a blog run by some anonymous guy calling himself NYFoodie, but he wasn’t impressed.”
“Link?” Sarah asked. A moment later a link appeared in her text stream. She clicked it, scanned through. “He didn’t say anything we didn’t know. The idea has promise, but the sauces need work.”
“He said it publicly. On the Internet. We said it in the privacy of my apartment.”
“It happens,” Sarah said. “Don’t worry about it. Tell me something positive.”
“We picked up thirty new followers, including one AnonEMT.”
“That’s good.”
“We lost eight.”
“Okay, net of twenty-two.”
“I think we pick them up when we offer promotions and lose them when—”
“Makes sense,” Sarah said when Trish’s voice cut off. “Hello? Did I lose you?”
“Is Tim AnonEMT?”
“Is he what?”
“AnonEMT on Twitter. He tweets safety tips and things people say on calls. He’s funny, he has eighteen thousand followers, and he followed us.”
“We’re next to the largest station in New York, right? There must be hundreds of emergency personnel working out of that station. I can’t see Tim taking the time to tweet jokes or funny stories.”
“I’m going to follow him back.”
“Good.”
“And ignore the review. I was an analyst specializing in distressed assets for the third largest investment bank in the world,” Trish said, her voice resolutely optimistic. “I’ve been screamed at by traders on four continents. This is nothing.”
Sarah recognized a pep talk when she heard it. “It’s confirmation of what we knew,” she agreed, “and we’re in the process of fixing it. Tweet that we’re working on new sauces, tasting event coming soon, blah blah blah.”
“Social media isn’t your favorite thing, is it?”
“Not by a long shot,” Sarah said. “Look, just chuck everything in the back of the truck and head into Manhattan. Let’s do a trial run of the chipotle sauce. I’ll finish prep while you handle the Internet.”
“Done.”
***
Despite the relentless optimism, the sunny day, and a new social media push, foot traffic was slow. Sarah tripped over a stray box and spilled an entire container of sauce on the street, they ran out of change and Sarah had to dash for the bank in the middle of the rush, someone pulled on one napkin and sent the entire container fluttering into the park, and Trish was certain she saw the food critic for Time Out New York in the line, and then again, dumping his half-eaten bowl into a garbage can at the park’s exit. At three o’clock they rolled up the awning and looked at the leftovers.
“No DMs, no at-replies, three retweets. Not good.”
“What’s the correlation between social media and actual foot traffic?” Sarah mused.
“No one knows. It’s something you have to do, like sacrificing a goat to keep the gods happy. If your village survives the earthquake, then the gods liked your goat. So far the gods reject our goat.”
They drove home and cleaned up the truck. Sarah prepped ahead for the next day while Trish cross-checked inventory. Then they caught the bus to the apartment, where Trish immediately opened a bottle of wine.
“Fuck me,” she said.
“Sideways,” Sarah said in reply, and poured two glasses.
“It’s not supposed to be like this,” Trish said as she grabbed a glass.
“What’s not supposed to be like what?”
Trish swallowed half her wine. “Following your bliss.”
“Easy there, girlfriend,” Sarah said. “That’s a really nice Bordeaux.”
Trish swirled the remaining liquid in her glass, inhaled it, and sipped more slowly. “It is quite nice.”
Sarah slumped in the big armchair and stretched her feet out on the ottoman. Some days not even red patent leather clogs kept her feet from aching. “You’re following your bliss?”
“That’s why I opened the food truck. I’d been at Cooper Bensonhurst for four years. Promotions, bonuses, all the perks, everything a Harvard MBA is supposed to have. And want.”
“Okay,” Sarah said.
“I got my bonus two years ago. It was over two million dollars and it wasn’t enough. I pitched a fit in my boss’s office, then called my mom to complain. We’d never talked amounts before, and when I told her it wasn’t enough, she lit into me like the Fourth of July. But I know the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Around the same time a friend of mine had her first baby, quit trading, and opened a shop specializing in fine leather goods. Her grandfather immigrated from Italy and made shoes and bags in Georgia. He taught her the business when she was a girl. She makes less money, but she’s blissfully happy. That’s how she puts it: ‘blissfully happy.’ I want to be blissfully happy.”
Sarah digested the relentless focus that turned even bliss into an achievement, then moved on. “So you decided your bliss was opening a food truck.”
“I decided my bliss was being an entrepreneur. I’m competitive. I wanted to learn how to cook. I wanted to make it in a really competitive industry. I didn’t want to deal with the investment in bricks and mortar, but for that to be a possible avenue down the road.”
Sarah felt her eyebrows shoot in the direction of her hairline. “So you chose your bliss based on the highest bar possible?”
“Why go for anything lower? You’re supposed to have a childhood element in your bliss. I read books and talked to a personal coach. I liked cooking with my grandmother when I was a little girl,” Trish said, a touch defensively. “This seemed like a good fit.”
Sarah didn’t know what to say to that, so she topped off
the wineglasses and rolled her feet on her ankles. Maybe Trish was right. Maybe watching Joan die had changed her perspective on competitions. What that would mean for her running challenge with Tim, however, remained to be seen.
“It takes time,” she said finally. “You change. Life happens. Roll with it and see what happens.”
“Isn’t cooking your bliss?”
“Cooking is . . . I don’t know. It’s what I do. It’s the way I see the world,” she said. “Maybe, more accurately, it’s the way I filter the world. It’s what I think about when I wake up in the morning, and what I dream about at night. I don’t know if it’s my bliss. It’s just . . . who I am: a San Francisco girl who cooks. But I left that behind for a couple of years to take care of Aunt Joan. I’m trying to find it again. Maybe I’m a Manhattan girl who cooks. I don’t know any more than you do right now.”
“You know how to cook what we serve to the point where you can experiment, not just make the bowl ingredients.”
“And you’re learning,” Sarah countered. The sun penetrated the west-facing windows of Trish’s apartment, making her feel quite lazy with two glasses of wine in her stomach and a bad day behind her. “It’s getting hot,” Sarah commented.
“Just wait until July. You should do the share with me. People drop out at the last minute all the time.”
“I can’t afford it. Moving across the country wiped me out.”
“I can’t afford not to do the share,” Trish said. “You’ve never been in New York during the worst of the heat. This isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessary maintenance expense.”
One Sarah would do without. “I’ve added my dinner party dates to the calendar. Two this week, two next, three the week after.”
“When can you fit in a tasting party for Symbowl?”
“I need some time to come up with ideas. We should try them out on friends before we launch them to the public. They’re customers, not guinea pigs. I know you want to fix it right away, but give us a few weeks.”
