by C. M. Newman
CHAPTER TWENTY: TAKE TWO
The sun was long gone by the time Angela awoke from her nap for seemingly no reason other than the fact that she had slept long enough. A few hours, in fact. She cared little about her wrinkled blouse and the marks her jeans had left on her hips. The first thing she did was brush the sleep-induced film off her teeth; then she opened the fridge to look for something to eat. She suddenly panicked and checked her watch, now remembering the evening’s plans.
She groaned and searched for her phone, clearing her throat before dialing Vince’s cell. Her main worry was that he would think she’d blown him off. It was already later than she’d ever stopped by. After that came the disappointment that she’d lost an evening with him. But when he didn’t pick up, a different kind of worry kicked in. A worry she’d experienced the night she’d heard that gunshot and had seen him crumple to the ground. A worry that had twisted her stomach into knots while she’d sat in the waiting room of the hospital, waiting for him to come out of surgery. Of course he wasn’t out in an alley chasing criminals right now, but her imagination haunted her with images of him passed out or worse on his apartment floor from a slip and fall, or maybe an accidental overdose or misuse of his drugs.
Not even wearing a coat, she walked briskly into Vince’s apartment building in half the amount of time it usually took her to get there, her heart pounding its hardest when she reached the third floor by running up the stairs instead of waiting for the ancient elevator. She knocked rapidly on his door, and loudly, uncaring of any neighbors who might be turning in early. With no answer, she kept knocking. “Vince? It’s Angela.”
Three painful nicks after Vince had started his drastic transformation, he still had half a head of shaving cream left. When he heard the first couple of knocks, his heart skipped one very long beat. He immediately knew that whoever was at the door would see him in this state, unless he was rude and ignored his visitor or told him or her to wait.
When Angela identified herself after knocking, he wasn’t sure whether to be scared or relieved. His first thought was that she was the last person he wanted to see him like this, but when he thought again, maybe she was the one person in the world who wouldn’t stare at him like he was some alien life form. Knowing that he had little choice in the matter, he unlocked the door and opened up.
“Thank goodness you’re okay…I was worried something had happened to you when you didn’t pick up,” Angela said, walking in before she even processed what her eyes had seen. She was too busy staring at the floor and shaking her head at her useless worrying. “I’m sorry. I took a catnap earlier—well, it was supposed to be a—oh my goodness…” Finally, she glanced up and gave Vince some real attention. She zipped her lips immediately, not wanting him to feel like a spectacle.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear my phone ring. I must’ve left it in my room. It was probably still on vibrate from chemo. And I was…busy, obviously,” Vince said, never having felt as foolish as he did right now. What exactly had led him to believe that answering the door in this state would be wise?
“Wow, so you’re finally going for it?” Angela said breathily as she took in the left half of Vince’s head that was already bare. She had never realized he’d had such a big head.
“Finally?” Vince said with a raised eyebrow. “Should I have done this sooner?”
Hastily, Angela shook her head. “That’s not what I meant, you know that.”
“I take it you noticed my disappearing hair, though.”
“Well, yeah, the hat was kind of a dead giveaway, but I didn’t want to say anything.”
“Did Harry and Sophie notice when they came over the other night?” Vince asked, rather curious.
Angela shrugged. “I have no idea. Neither one of them said anything to me. Anyway, I’m sorry about tonight. I didn’t mean to sleep that long.”
Vince shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I figured you had better plans pop up. Apparently I was right,” he said with an ephemeral grin.
“Well, you’re clearly busy now, and it’s a little late, I guess, so I’ll take off. I just had to check and make sure everything was all right since you didn’t answer. You know me.”
He did. “You don’t have to go. You drove all this way…and you’ve seen me with half a head of shaving cream. Mind sticking around and giving me an honest opinion when I’m done?”
Angela couldn’t begin to describe how little she minded. She nodded with well-masked eagerness, following Vince back to the master bathroom. Not surprisingly, his bedclothes were plain and meticulously arranged, his sheets probably made with hospital corners. Not a thing looked out of place except for her. His bathroom was equally tidy, save for the evidence of what he’d been up to before she’d arrived.
She could honestly say she’d never watched a man shave his head before. But now she was in Vince’s bathroom, leaning against the door frame, for no other purpose, apparently, than to watch him get rid of the rest of his hair and await the result. Neither spoke while Vince focused somewhat on the task of finishing shaving nick-free. The remainder of his mental resources involved trying to reason with himself. He’d just resolved to live life like he meant it from now on, to be unafraid of the new and uncertain, to pursue Angela in earnest if he sensed she would be receptive. Did this mean he should make a move? That depended. Did her panic over him not answering his phone mean anything? She was always concerned about him in one way or another. Had her constant but usually subtler worrying over him ever meant anything? Was she studying him right now in deep thought over what could be, or was she merely watching in awe as he gave himself perhaps one of the most dramatic makeovers she’d ever seen?
Vince had let his mind wander too far. Distracted, he wasn’t careful enough with the unfamiliar terrain on the back of his head and cut himself badly enough to elicit a hiss and force him to clench his eyes shut.
Angela immediately pulled a tissue from the box nearby and handed it over. He thanked her and pressed it firmly to his skin to ward off the stinging and bleeding, wondering if his other nicks had started to scab over already. “I don’t think I’ve nicked myself this much since I was fifteen,” he said in a dark tone.
“Well, you’re almost done,” Angela said, her throat parched. There was something completely foreign about Vince without hair, especially when he sported a burgeoning beard that he had never let grow at work. As she was thinking about how handsome she found his facial hair, she realized how silly she was being.
Vince was looking at himself in the mirror, seeing a man he’d never seen before, and she was seeing it, too. No matter what came to pass between the two of them, this was a moment to cherish. To get herself more in tune with him, she wondered what she herself would look like bald and wondered what Vince was thinking of his new look, almost complete. She couldn’t imagine being as direct and fearless as he was being right now. To shave her own head without warning anyone, without begging for reassurance, and to let someone watch as if it were nothing, seemed unthinkable.
“Did I get it all?” Vince asked, trying to angle the medicine cabinet’s mirrors to catch a glimpse of the back of his head.
Angela moved further into the bathroom and motioned for Vince to turn away from her. “You missed in and around the little indentation where your head meets your neck,” she said.
“Might want to get more tissue, then,” Vince muttered.
Angela laughed, but just barely. “Want some help?” she offered before thinking.
Vince swallowed. “Are you sure?”
“I have the world’s knobbiest knees. I’m a pro.” Angela sat herself on the counter after making sure it was dry, then took the razor he held out. “Wow, you’re actually letting me?”
“I’d rather accept help than have you watch me bleed to death.”
A giggle from Angela got them both smiling, though the tension wasn’t completely lifted—it only grew heavier as she laid her palm on the back of Vince’s head and nudged it down to flatten out the s
kin at the base of his skull, making it more accessible.
“How does it look so far?” Vince asked, feeling like he was making small talk with his barber, but knowing this conversation was already far deeper than the recent subzero temperatures or Super Bowl contenders.
“Looks like you let Charlie shave your head,” Angela said with a chuckle and getting one from Vince as well. She was unable to voice the truth, which was that Vince still looked unsettlingly different to her. She knew it was merely because it was a sudden and extreme change, not because she didn’t find it attractive. Given time, maybe even just a few minutes, she knew she would grow to like it, even if it was only due to her admiration of his confidence and strength in such a personally trying time. As she used short strokes of the razor to clear the base of his neck as well as some other areas he had missed, she could feel every bump and imperfection under her palm. She could hear Vince’s shallow, somewhat erratic breathing as well as her own. The scent of the shaving cream permeated the air, masking even Angela’s own perfume. “All done,” she said with one last rinse of the razor.
Vince reached with an unsteady hand for that morning’s towel, draping it over his head and pressing it against his skin.
Even though they had watched the exposure of Vince’s scalp bit by bit already, something about the big reveal was still nerve-wracking for both of them.
So this is me for the rest of my life, Vince thought as he turned to examine himself in the mirror, knowing that as he deteriorated, as every bit of fat found its way off his body, as he grew weaker and weaker, he would look back on this moment with longing.
Losing his thick head of hair made his forehead seem much bigger, pronouncing its creases and his overpowering brow. The foreignness of it all was too much for him, so he looked away from the mirror and got to cleaning up the mess he’d made, wondering all the while what Angela was thinking. He didn’t look at her, though, so he didn’t see her chest rising and falling now with deeper breaths. He didn’t see the rims of her eyelids glinting with tears she hadn’t let fall. And he didn’t ask her again for her opinion. If the sight of himself robbed him of so much self-assurance, he surely didn’t want to know what Angela thought. He didn’t want to hear her honest opinion, which had to be that he was different, at the very least—or more realistically, he feared, that he was hideous.
“It looks good,” Angela said, her voice much more distant than her mind, which was very much here and in the moment. She wasn’t picturing Vince on his deathbed, or him wasting away, or his coffin being carried by their friends, as she sometimes imagined when she really felt like punishing herself. She was simply gripped by the poignant image of Vince completing his transition into an existence so different from what either of them had known just a month ago.
When Vince had no choice but to face himself in the mirror again, as his only other choice was to face her, Angela felt as if she were witnessing a very private moment, one far more private than Vince had anticipated when he’d asked her to watch. Even given their ability to open up to one another, Angela had the sinking feeling that Vince didn’t want her here. But for her to get up and leave the room might say she didn’t want to be there with him—for him—and nothing could have been further from the truth.
Vince had been focusing on the strange combination of bald head, beard, and thick eyebrows, but once he chanced a glance at Angela, she was all his eyes could see. The tears still hadn’t fallen, but they were still there, her cheeks were tinted pink, and her lips had all but disappeared into her mouth. “Is it that bad?” he deadpanned, knowing of nothing else to say.
A sad smile broke across Angela’s face and she shook her head. “No, it’s not bad at all. It’s different, but…I mean it. It looks good. I like it.” She wouldn’t insult Vince by embellishing her opinion and saying she loved it just yet. He would catch on and her comment would be invalidated.
“Yeah?” Vince asked, knowing that, had those words come from any other person, he would have doubted them.
“Yeah.”
Remembering his promise to himself from such a short time ago, Vince swallowed and licked his lips. He didn’t know how to use his words, so he used his actions, standing right in front of Angela and covering her hand.
Angela had sensed what was coming before Vince had even moved. She’d thought she was merely imagining the shift in Vince’s attitude until he touched her other hand, the blue in his eyes clearer than ever when he closed in.
Angela knew exactly what she wanted, and she knew now that she was about to get it, but she also knew what she didn’t want—a repeat of last time, when Vince had chalked up his behavior to poor judgment. She wasn’t sure she could handle that sort of rejection again. She already felt the heat of his breath on her lips and saw his eyes drifting shut when she stammered, “Wait—stop.”
Vince froze, his heart sinking like a rock. “Sorry.”
“No, no, it’s—it’s okay.” Angela didn’t remember giving her fingers permission to lift Vince’s dejectedly drooped chin. They just did. His eyes were robbed of most of their hope by the time they met hers again. As a further motion to reassure Vince that she wanted exactly what he did, Angela moved her other hand to his face, brushing her thumb along his taut cheek. “I just…want to make sure that you’re sure this time. I can’t back out again. I can’t…pretend it didn’t happen. In fact, I never really got over—”
As Vince’s lips pressed against Angela’s much more firmly than they had the first time a few weeks ago, he hoped she took it as a sign of passion, not inconsideration of her or lack of interest in what she had to say. Vince knew exactly the point she was trying to get across, and when she grasped his shoulder to keep from falling backwards when her muscles simply liquefied, he was certain that she trusted his understanding. She wasted no more time on doubt, for now, anyway.
Angela was absolutely right. There was no turning back from this, no convincing themselves or each other that it had been an unwise decision or that it had never happened. Vince was still not convinced that their first kiss had been a smart move, if he was honest with himself, but this one followed much more careful thought on his part, and on hers as well. His senses were overwhelmed at the taste of spearmint on her breath and the feel of her arms slowly wrapping around his shoulders.
Stars danced behind Angela’s eyelids as their mouths met again and again. Vince’s beard scratched against her skin, but it was already soft enough not to hurt. Breaths were strained from the fervor of the kiss, compelling both of them to tame things in order to keep the lightheadedness at bay, to keep their judgment sound. The dizzy, weightless feeling was nothing short of delightful, but a slower pace was welcome, too. Their lips merely brushed against lips for a moment immeasurable in duration.
Angela felt grounded again. Almost too much so. She wanted to go back to that place where it was too hard to think straight, but before she did, she needed to make sure one more time. “This—is what—you want?” she hummed, scattering kisses around his face between words.
Vince’s nod was minute. “I’m positive,” he vowed, drawing just far enough away from Angela to focus on her hazy eyes before he pulled her into his miraculously sturdy arms.
