“My dad wasn’t an honest man,” Sailor told Ace as they toweled off the next morning. “He wasn’t a good man. He looked at me like I was a fucking product. If he had someone over to the house, he’d call me out, me and Marina, and make us stand there and turn around. He’d tell us if our hair was out of place or our clothes needed ironing, or tell his friends about whatever bad grades we had just got. One time he said that Marina got all the calls from boys and I never got any. In front of his friends! And Mom just laughed like the drunken hyena she was. We weren’t supposed to talk. We didn’t have enough social skill to talk to his friends. It was like, ‘look, I made these things with the power of my sperm.’”
“It was okay with your mom?” Ace asked.
“Give her a Tom Collins and she was in pig heaven.”
Ace sighed.
Sailor continued, “You’re an honest man. You’re a good man. I may not be smart with people, but I know that. That’s why…”
Should she finish that sentence? It was deadly for the woman to say it first if the man didn’t say it back. She had never said those words to a man.
“Thank you,” Ace said. “For the best night of my life. And I do try to be honest. It’s not just the sex that made it special. I think we really have something here.”
“Look, Ace. I tried to say it before, what I see. You’ve spent your life taking care of people, and that’s who you are, and I love you for it.” Whew, she’d sneaked it in. If he didn’t react badly, she could say the words the other way in a moment.
He was looking at her earnestly, a little doe-eyed, ready for her to continue.
“You can’t stop being that guy, Ace, but you need balance. You need someone to take care of you, too. And if you stay, I will. I want to. Because…”
Ace pulled his t-shirt down over his broad chest. “I guess I should go home and change before we meet the rabbi.”
“Yeah, of course. But do you get what I was trying to say?”
“Yeah, I do. And I guess it’s my turn. One of us has got to say it first, and I will. I’m in love with you, Sailor. I never wanted anyone to take care of me before, because you’re right, I’m the one who does that. But with you, it’s different. I’m right there with you.”
“It’s not just afterglow, right? Because we were stressed out, and the sex was great.”
He shook his head. “I’ve known for weeks already. I didn’t know I had a chance, but like I said, I never met anyone like you before, and that’s why.”
He was trembling a little, but overall, the sturdy man she had fallen for was still there.
“If I say it – it won’t bother you? You won’t get scared, or decide it’s too much, or whatever?”
He shook his head.
“I love you, Ace Montgomery.”
“I love you, Sailor Kingston.”
They stared into each other’s eyes, then shared a laugh. How could those words be so cheesy and so right at the same time?
“Is this a dream? I never thought something like this would ever happen to me,” Sailor said.
“Same here. But let’s get practical. We have the meeting in a few hours. Let’s get ready for that. Tonight, we’ll have even more to celebrate.”
With the stress of the lawsuits in the background, the weirdness of the two Chasidic bruisers in the barroom a constant reminder of the bar’s troubles, and the meeting with Chaim Rabinowicz coming up, both of their nervous systems were in excessively high gear. If Sailor brought her anxiety with her, things probably wouldn’t go well.
“Let’s go into the city first,” Sailor said. “We’ll spend a couple of hours in Manhattan before it’s time for the meeting. I know you haven’t been yet.”
Ace yawned, shifted. There was that little twist of pain in his face that she both loved, because it was part of him, and dreaded, because she didn’t want him to hurt anywhere. “Sure, sounds great, Sailor.”
“What do you want to see? The Empire State Building? I could get you a new suit, I know a place by there. We could go The Met and see the Egyptian temple.”
“You know, Sailor, actually… The place that’s really special to first responders is the 9/11 Memorial. Some of my brothers in arms back in Bowling Green came up to see it. I’ve been thinking about going.”
A few train changes later, and they got off the R at Cortland Street. The memorial was only two blocks away. Sailor walked him north on Church Street instead of taking the most direct route. There was something else she wanted to show him first. That early, the street was quiet, wet from an earlier rain. The natural ups and downs of the cobblestone streets blended with the looming dark glass buildings to create a strange geometry. The fumes from trucks blended with the distant stink of the harbor. Here and there a blue-jumpsuited Doe Fund street cleaner or umbrella-wielding businessman could be seen. The silvery 4 WTC tower hung on their left as she guided Ace toward the huge bird-winged street entrance to the Oculus.
“This is one of Manhattan’s newer attractions. It’s really a PATH train and subway station, but the architecture is breathtaking.”
After some walking along a shopping concourse – nothing was open yet – they came out into a massive atrium of curving overhead beams that looked like the rib cage of a giant creature. It was flooded with light.
“Santiago Calatrava is a great visionary,” Sailor told Ace.
“Who’s he?”
“The architect. This design reminds me in a lot of ways of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. I see the influence of Gaudi in the way he uses light.”
Ace looked at her and gave a slight smile. “I like the light.”
“I hope I wasn’t talking too much.”
“No, never.”
They went back out to the street and walked about two blocks. The roar of falling water soon masked all other sounds as they approached the Memorial.
Two massive man-made waterfalls, their sides lit in orange, poured clear water into a black bottom, at the center of which was another dark descent. The two giant pools, located just over the foundations of the Twin Towers, were only the distance of a small plaza apart. They stood together at the glass and steel barricade on the side of one of the pools. Sailor saw that Ace was clutching the metal railing. His chin was lowered to his chest.
Should she ask? Or try to comfort him? She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. Not much that could be said in this situation. She had been a small child when 9/11 took place and didn’t remember much; he was six years older, a young teenager.
“Do you remember?” she asked him.
“We watched on TV. The whole family got together at Granny’s house in the evening and watched the news. I remember I said to my dad that I felt like I should have been there. We should have been there. We could have done something. We could have helped. People have to help each other.”
Sailor saw the pain in his eyes, reached to touch his cheek. “We do. I understand that. You’re so right. I wish my parents had raised me like that. All I got from them was lessons on self-preservation and trying to be better than other people.”
“But you…” He took her hand from his cheek and held it in his. “You’re nothing like that.”
“Well. I’m not, no. I don’t want to be. But I’m not like you, either. At least, I never was. But I want to be. You should be proud, I mean, not for what you have or what you accomplished, but how you treated other people.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Ace let go her hand and propped himself on the railing. “And you try, and you try, and for everyone you help, there are more you couldn’t. And you live with that. You harbor it. You know you shouldn’t, but it stays with you.”
They watched the waterfall for a while, then headed for the main entrance to the museum. Sailor had already purchased and printed out their tickets, so after the security screening, they made for the escalators. A battered girder hung over the steep descent.
Ace’s grip on her hand tightened the further down they went.