Beckett
January 18th
Roy came over that Saturday for our monthly parole visit. Zelda had gone out to brunch with some friends from Annabelle’s and probably wouldn’t be back before I had to leave for Giovanni’s.
Roy searched the bathroom and under the bed while I made coffee. The fact he was now rooting through Zelda’s belongings too, took a little shine off of me. Another reminder she’d be affected by the decisions I made for at least another two years, if not longer.
Roy must’ve sensed my discomfort because he made it quick, and after only a few minutes we sat together, him on the couch, me on the chair sipping coffee.
“You’re looking good, Beckett,” Roy said, smiling into his mug. “How’s the leg?”
“It’s fine. Healed up.”
“Got a birthday coming up too, don’t you? The big two-five?”
I shrugged. “Happens once a year.”
He laughed. “And you and Zelda…?”
“Yeah, me and Zelda,” I said.
Roy’s grin widened and he slapped his hand on his knee. “Fantastic,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier.”
“Oh yeah? What’s so great about it?” I asked. I knew how fucking wonderful Zelda was, but I figured it wouldn’t suck to hear it from someone else.
Roy obliged. “She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s got a sense of humor.” He waggled his eyebrows. “She’s got no priors.”
“Yeah, she’s the whole package,” I said. The teasing tone fell out of my voice. “I just hope I can do right by her, Roy.”
“What makes you think you can’t?”
I shot him a look. “Says my parole officer.”
“You’ve hidden nothing from her,” Roy said. “She knows the score.”
“She doesn’t know all of it,” I said. “I don’t know all of it. I don’t know what it’s going to do to my future. What I can or can’t do.” I set my mug on the table. “Any word from Mrs. J?”
“No,” Roy said. “But I’m wondering, Beckett, if maybe it’s time you let that go.”
“There’s nothing to let go of, Roy,” I said. “I carry it with me in my bones. I can’t set it down. I have to learn to live with it. But if maybe she would talk to me…” I shook my head. “Fuck it, never mind. She doesn’t owe me anything.”
Roy looked like he had a thousand more things to say about the subject, but instead asked, “How’s Darlene?”
“Thanks to you, she’s great. You saved her life, to be honest.”
Roy waved his hand as if to dispel the notion entirely. “I just said a few words to Carl.”
“Those few words kept her out of jail. Which saved her life. I don’t think she could’ve handled more time.”
Roy’s smile told me he was touched. “Mary says hi,” he said suddenly. “She’s clamoring for another dinner. Your birthday, maybe? Or Valentine’s Day is coming up in a few weeks. I know you young folks would love nothing more than to double-date with a couple of old fogeys like us.”
I laughed. “I’ll run it by Zelda.”
We shot the shit for a few minutes more, then Roy got up to go. At the door he stopped, and rubbed his chin in the way that he did right before he said something he knew I wasn’t going to like.
“Beckett,” he said slowly. “About Mrs. J…”
“Oh, Christ, I knew I couldn’t get off that easy.”
“She’s moving to Australia.”
I froze. “Okay,” I said slowly. “When? Or am I not allowed to know?”
“In the next few weeks.”
“So you’ve had contact with her.”
“She called me not long after I mailed your last letter.”
I nodded and looked away, ran a hand through my hair. “Okay, so what does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why she contacted me. She wouldn’t say anything more than that she was moving.”
“Did she give you her new address? In Australia?”
Roy’s face told me the answer before he said the word. “No.”
I nodded again, and tried to ignore how my stomach clenched. “Okay, well thanks for the meeting, Roy. I’ll see you soon.”
Roy smiled and I thought he was going to pat my cheek like usual, but he knew better this time. I shut the door after him and locked it, processing this information.
She contacted Roy shortly after my last letter.
She’s leaving the country.
She’s not leaving a forwarding address.
The message was clear: she didn’t want any more of my letters. Whether she read them or not, she was done with them. And with me.
“Okay, good,” I said. “That’s good.”
I told myself that as I readied for work at Giovanni’s and all through my shift. It didn’t stick. I felt as if a train were pulling out of the station and no matter how fast I raced to catch it, I’d never make it.
That night, Zelda and I passed the hours in sweaty, intense sex. We filled the apartment with her cries; the headboard banging against the wall made the neighbors bang back. We fell into an exhausted sleep, spent and entwined, keeping the cold away. I reveled in the nearness of this other human being in my space, sharing my breath, my bed, and home.
Sunday was my day off. I slept as late as I wanted, with Zelda wrapped in my arms. Around ten o’clock, she kissed me and said, “I’ll make coffee.”
I watched her get up and throw some clothes on, her hair a sexy, tangled mess from last night’s activities. She stood in the kitchen for a moment, hands on her hips and shook her head.
“You want something else?” she asked. “Maybe a latte? Something nicer than just pot coffee?”
“Zel, it has to be twenty degrees out.”
“You like stronger coffee don’t you? Cappuccinos? And those blueberry muffins from the café around the corner?”
“Yeah, I do but you don’t have to go out into the cold. I’ll go.”
“Stay put,” she said, cutting me off. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched her bundle herself against the weather, putting on boots and a jacket. She blew me a kiss at the door and went out. Twenty minutes later, she returned with muffins and two small cappuccinos.
“Thanks, babe.”
“You’re welcome,” she said and bent down to kiss me. “Isn’t there a football game on today?”
“Playoffs,” I said. “The Falcons are playing the Eagles. That’s your team.”
She shot me a sly smile. “I don’t have a team. Football is barbaric. I’d rather draw pictures of vengeance-seeking women blowing guys away with futuristic laser weapons. But that’s just me.”
She curled herself on the chair at the desk and shuffled through her papers.
“Do you need help today?” I asked
“No, I’m just brainstorming for the ending. Besides, today is your day off. No working for you.”
“I can help if you need me to.”
She gave me a dry look, one I had grown to love. “Day. Off.”
“You’re the boss.” I settled myself on the couch with the remote, and turned the game on. I watched Atlanta destroy the Eagles, then answered a few texts from Wes. I was starting to feel pretty lazy, thinking about nodding off when Zelda closed up her portfolio and came to sit next to me on the couch.
“Not feeling it today,” she said and curled up against my shoulder.
“I like this better,” I said.
“Me too.”
Zelda watched the last of the game with me, but whenever I glanced down at her, her eyes were on anything but the television.
I gave her a squeeze. “You okay?
“I’m fine,” she said. “Really fine, actually,” she added after a moment. Her fingers trailed along my jaw.
“Really, really, fine?” I asked.
“Mmhm.” She crawled onto my lap and kissed me in a such a way that my body responded immediately, as if we hadn’t spent last night bringing each other to one mind-blowing orgasm after another.
“Zel,” I managed, as she ground her hips down on me.
“Beck,” she mimicked, and stripped her shirt off.
I don’t remember much after that.
“You’re going to put me in a sex coma,” I said thirty minutes later, when I’d regained the strength to speak. I lay stretched out on the couch, my legs hanging off the side because it was so damn small. Zelda lay over me, her small, perfect breasts pressed against my chest.
She smacked a kiss on my chest and got up. “I’m going to make us some lunch,” she said, throwing her clothes back on.
I frowned and sat up, drew up my pants. “You don’t have to, babe,” I said. “I think there’s leftover pizza from the other night.”
She acted as if she hadn’t heard me. “You like pastrami right?”
“Like is too weak a word.”
She hardly cracked a smile, but rummaged in the fridge. “I think I have what it takes to make a hot pastrami with melted Swiss on rye, and maybe some vinegar chips? I bought some last week.”
“Um, yeah that sounds fucking amazing. But also a lot of work.”
“I don’t mind.”
I frowned. “Zel, what are you doing?”
“Isn’t there another football game coming up?” she asked. “Aren’t these games kind of like a big deal?”
“Yeah. Playoffs. But—”
“So it’s kind of a special occasion, right?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said.
She stood up from where she was rummaging under the sink and planted her hands on her hips. “You want pastrami or not?”
I laughed and held out my hands. “Okay, okay if you’re willing.”
Zelda cooked and within a few minutes the apartment was filled with the heavenly scents of hot pastrami and Swiss cheese. She brought me a heaping sandwich—the pastrami thick as a deck of cards—cut in half, slices of cheese oozing between layers of pastrami. Pickles and vinegar potato chips on the side. She topped that off by handing me my favorite beer.
“Holy shit,” I said. “This looks epic, Zel.”
“Is it good? I wasn’t sure about the mustard.”
I had to squeeze the sandwich down to take a bite. My eyes rolled back in my head. “Fucking hell,” I said around a mouthful. “This is insane.”
She smiled with satisfaction but still seemed distracted as she sat back against the couch with the salad she’d made for herself. Twice, I caught her watching me, her gaze flickering away.
The third time it happened, I turned to face her. “Okay, what’s going on?”
She shrugged, a jerky little movement. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what’s with you today? The coffee, the epic sex, the epic sandwich…”
She tried for another of her patented Zelda-glares but if fell flat. “I just want…”
“What, baby?”
She picked up our empty plates. “Done? I’ll throw these in the sink.”
I wiped my mouth on the napkin and followed her into the kitchen. Her back was to me, her shoulders were rounded.
“Zelda, talk to me.” I turned her around. “What is it?”
She shook her head, her hair falling to cover her face. “Nothing, okay?”
“Don’t tell me it’s nothing. C’mon.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Just…I care about you, and I want… I want you to…”
I lifted her chin and brushed the hair back from her face. I wiped away the two tears that had slipped down her cheeks. “You want to be nice to me?”
It was a flimsy word and I expected a smartass reply, but her eyes welled up again and she nodded. “I don’t have much practice being a good girlfriend. And I woke up this morning with an overwhelming feeling… I don’t know. I wanted to make you happy. Is that terrible? Am I a traitor to the women’s movement?” Before I could answer, she wiped her eyes dry. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just hormonal or something. Pay no attention.”
“I can’t not pay attention,” I said. “And I get it.”
“Do you?”
I knew she had a feeling in her chest, like a balloon expanding. The kind of feeling you got at the first hill of a rollercoaster, poised in the sky before the fall. The plunge. Terrifying and exhilarating. Lightning fast and slow as hell before gravity catches you.
I once read that you fell in love like how you fell asleep: slowly at first and then all at once.
Neither Zelda nor I were easy at giving a voice to our own feelings. She put them on paper, in pen and ink, and I put them down in words to send away, never to be heard from again. But speaking them out loud…
“I love what you do for me,” I said.
I held Zelda close to me again that night, and felt in her small but powerful body everything she was feeling but couldn’t say. Maybe that’s why I held her so tightly every night too. So that what I felt for her seeped into her skin through some sort of osmosis. I lay awake listening to Zelda’s breath and feeling the soft heat of it against my chest. I thought of Mrs. J moving to Australia, moving half a world away.
As gently as I could, I extracted myself from Zelda and went to the desk. To write one letter. One final letter.
Dear Mrs. J,
Roy told me you’re moving to Australia. Part of me thinks you told him so that he’d tell me. Did you? Otherwise you could’ve just left. You don’t owe him or me any explanation.
I know it’s time to stop writing you. Maybe you’ve read all my letters. Or maybe you’re tired of taking them from a good-natured man like Roy only to throw them in the trash or burn them.
Whatever your reason, I’ll honor it. This will be our last letter. The most important letter.
I’m falling in love with Zelda Rossi and my imperfect heart wants to think she’s falling for me too. I can’t help myself. It’s not a decision to be made, and even if it was, I wouldn’t want to unmake it. I want her. For the rest of my life, if she’ll have me.
And I want your blessing, Mrs. J.
I think I can be a better man for Zelda if I knew some part of you thought so too.
I’m sorry. I will always be sorry.
Beckett Copeland