~ Five ~
There were some days Sam hated her job; positively loathed it. But not for the reasons that most people tended to hate their jobs. She hated how much it made her feel. How helpless it made her feel.
The problems people asked the firm to help solve—by providing access and messaging to legislators—were real problems, suffered by real people. And none of it was small stuff, either. The issues she worked on were the kinds of things that could keep a person up at night, lamenting the state of the world, and how little they could do about it.
The position paper Sam had tried and failed to finish over the weekend, and which was due to her boss by Wednesday was supposed to convince at least ten recalcitrant congressmen that it would be inhumane to send children who had been brought to the United States and trafficked as cheap labor in the underground economy back to their native countries unaccompanied. Many of these children worked sixteen-hour days in factories in major American cities to bring nice middle-class families their nice clothes.
It would have shocked the average American to learn that this was a common practice. Sweatshops didn’t just exist in Asia. They were also in places like New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and even Washington DC. Children from impoverished nations were routinely smuggled into the United States to work, and they weren’t on anyone’s list at child welfare agencies, or schools, or on any official list for that matter.
They were invisible, until they ran away, or someone tipped the authorities off. Or, in the worst-case scenarios, they wound up dead and dumped somewhere, a nameless, Jane or John Doe Juvenile that no one bothered to claim. As for the ones that survived being trafficked, once identified, they were often placed in detention centers as though they were the criminals, and later, at a hearing where they had no rights to representation by an attorney, they were often shipped back to their country of origin.
Some children, because they had no support structures back in their native country, were trafficked several times, shipped around the globe like cargo, and put to work by people who were no better than slavers. Current immigration policy cared little for the fate of these children once they were sent back. It was not the United States’ problem; at least, so went the argument.
Sam’s job was to write something compelling, arguing for a more liberal approach to granting these children asylum. But ‘compelling’ in the lobbying game was a fine line to walk. You had to motivate lawmakers without guilting them. You had to paint a bleak enough picture to spur action, without casting blame. And you had to subtly hint that even if they pretended to be motivated by altruism, there would be somewhere, somehow, something in it for them.
Reaching for her coffee mug, Sam tossed it back and exhaled sharply when she realized it was already empty. That had been her third of the day. If she wanted to get to sleep that night, she could not have a fourth.
She clicked her mouse, and the cursor on her computer screen blinked reproachfully from an almost empty page.
She cared about this issue. She cared about it deeply. So, why the hell would the words not come?
Shoving herself back from her desk, she went to look out the window and down onto K Street. To think this had once been her dream job; and that she’d actually thought she could ‘make a difference.’ It was laughable now.
Lobbying was about sleight of hand, that was all. If you could come up with a clever, catchy, sound-bite-able phrase that an ambitious congressperson or senator could picture him- or herself delivering with gravitas to their constituents, or on television, then you’d have a winner. No one won on the merits of an argument, just on how well it was packaged.
The buzz of her cellphone turned her focus away from the cityscape and she grabbed it up from her desk, so relieved to have a distraction, she didn’t even check to see who it might be.
“What’s up, lady bug?”
Sam smiled. “Hey.”
“You hungry?”
“It’s lunchtime,” she said. “I guess I could eat. Why? Where are you?”
“In your lobby,” Colt said. “Come down.”
Sam was grabbing her purse and heading for the door before he even finished his sentence.
Colt waited at the reception desk in the lobby, tapping on its surface and occasionally returning the smile of the female guard who couldn’t seem to stop smiling at him. He wasn’t planning to drop in on Sam at work, but he’d been in the neighborhood, signing papers at his lawyer’s office when she crossed his mind.
Not that Sam needed to ‘cross’ his mind. She was always there. Almost from the time they had first begun to recognize themselves as sentient beings, they had recognized each other as a ‘significant’ other. Not in the way that most people meant that phrase, but yeah, Sam had always been the ‘significant’ one, who remained in the forefront of his mind.
His mother, and hers, when they got together liked to talk about how when they were toddlers, they had greeted each other with a bear-hug and little lip-kisses. The story, so often recounted, used to embarrass Colt a little.
On Friday night, there was nothing little about their kisses. Those were grown-ass. And aside from the kisses … there was Sam, naked on her bed, open and welcoming him into her bed, into her body. That he had gotten out of that room without there being some serious fucking was nothing short of a miracle.
Colt shook his head, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, chasing the images from his mind.
But there was no putting that genie back in the bottle.
Saturday evening after the plumbing work was done, all day Sunday, and yesterday he had avoided Sam entirely. Not calling like he normally would have, not texting. Total air silence. It had been difficult enough being in the small space of her powder room, with her literally breathing down his neck as he worked.
She had gamely pretended to be paying attention to how to unseat the toilet, replace the wax ring and then put it all together again; but Colt felt a new, buzzing energy between them and knew she felt it too. The strain of not touching each other was palpable, and when her breasts brushed against his shoulder as she leaned in, Colt dug the nails of one hand into his thigh to keep his dick from getting hard.
As soon as the work was done, he’d washed his hands, manufactured some excuse about going over to hang with his pops and then gotten the hell out of Dodge. Sam didn’t protest, nor did she try to revive the conversation they had started in the Lowe’s parking lot. Instead, she nodded, and stood at her front door and saw him off.
That moment, when she waved from the townhouse as he pulled away had been weird. It had an unsettling finality, like maybe he was never going to see her again. Colt had no frame of reference for a life that did not in some fashion include Sam. So, if things had to change between them, maybe the only choice was to lean into it.
The ping of the elevator caused him to look up and stand upright from where he’d been leaning against the reception desk. Sam emerged, wearing a powder-blue suit and cream-colored blouse. Her hair was pulled back with a bandeau, and she was wearing small pearl earrings. At first glance, she looked like someone playing dress-up, because Colt was so unaccustomed to seeing her in her work clothes.
The Sam in his mind belonged in jeans, or a long, loose skirt. She belonged in a tee-shirt, or a flowery blouse.
“Hey,” she said, smiling at him. She got on her toes and kissed him briefly on the cheek.
It was the way they often greeted each other, and so it shouldn’t have thrown him, but it did. Probably because she did it so naturally, as though Friday night was now firmly behind her. She greeted him as though she was ready to resume where they had left off before all the bumping and grinding, kissing and touching had happened.
“What you feel like eating?” he asked, as they exited the building.
“I don’t have a lot of time, so you want to head over to that Chinese place down near 19th?”
Colt shrugged. “Works for me.”
They walked without speaking. Colt ignored the stares, and the occasional looks of curious semi-recognition. Most people didn’t actually recognize him, because though he wasn’t a bencher, neither was he a superstar. They noticed his height, and wondered whether they should recognize him, wondering whether he might be a basketball player in the league. The people who knew his name tended to give audible gasps and try to make eye contact. Today, there was little of that, and he was grateful.
The restaurant, was an old-school Chinese joint, decorated in red and gold, complete with dragon tapestries and long draping tablecloths. It was crowded and noisy, but they were seated right away, near the window, looking out onto K Street and its busy pedestrian traffic. At the table for two, Colt wiped his clammy hands on his thighs, and just after they were handed their menus, excused himself to go to the men’s room.
Once there, he washed his hands, dried them, washed them again, dried them again and stared at himself in the mirror. Taking a deep breath, he went back out.
“I ordered for you,” Sam said as he sat down.
“What’d you get?”
“Your usual.”
She was looking down as she spoke, digging for something inside the large pocketbook that Colt was always teasing her about. She fished out her wallet, a notebook, her phone and finally a glasses case. She opened it and took out a pair of reading glasses, perching it on her face, and then continuing to look through the pocketbook.
Then she pulled out a makeup case, and a novel. And kept digging.
“What in the … what you lookin’ for in there?” Colt asked, laughing.
“Lip balm. My lips are always dry. I don’t think I’m drinking enough water. Either that, or this fancy lipstick is drying them out.”
Colt reached across the table and tipped her chin up. Then, with his napkin, he gently wiped her lips clean of lipstick. Sam looked at him, frozen in place, one hand still in her bag.
“There,” he said quietly. “And here …” He reached into the pocket of his sweatpants and handed her his lip balm, the simple yellow tube of the cocoa butter he got from CVS.
Sam opened it, applying some to her lips and then handing it back.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice equally quiet.
To break their mutual stare, Colt picked up the novel she had placed on the table. “Still reading this, huh?” He flipped it over to the back cover, checking the name of the heroine. “Has Gabby found true happiness yet, or is she still stuck in her rut, caring for her elderly father?”
“She’ll still be stuck in the rut until I get about one-third of the way in. And by halfway, she'll get to have sex with a super-cute guy who she never imagined in a million years would be interested in her.”
One corner of Colt’s mouth twitched. “Oh, for real? Is that the formula?”
Sam nodded. “But he’ll want Gabby just as much as she wants him, and maybe even more. For reasons that will never become completely clear. Things will go really well for Gabby and her hot guy for a little bit. But about three-quarters of the way in, they’ll have a misunderstanding and things will look hopeless, but by the end it’ll be resolved, and they’ll be blissfully in love.”
“So, if you know all this going in, why are you reading it?”
“Because real life is unpredictable enough,” Sam said, her eyes serious. “It’s calming to read something that tells you that even if it’s rough going, you’ll get your happily-ever-after in the end.”
Nodding, Colt handed her the book, and she put it back in her pocketbook. He looked down at the table and traced a circle on it with his forefinger.
“Look, Sam …”
Their waiter reappeared and placed a dish with spring rolls in the center of the table, and a bowl of steaming wonton soup in front of Colt.
“Enjoy,” he said, backing away with a little bow.
“Work is killing me,” Sam said. The words came out in a rush.
Colt paused and looked at her with narrowed eyes, momentarily thrown by the abrupt change of subject. Then he saw her hands, nervously replacing all the items she had taken out of her purse. Were they shaking a little?
“Why?” he asked her.
“Why …?”
“Why is work killing you?”
“I’m working on a position paper about juvenile asylees, and …”
“Juvenile what?”
“Asylees. Asylum-seekers.”
“Oh.” He nodded, and reached for a spring roll. “Okay? So why’s that killing you?”
“Well, here’s the thing …”
Colt listened while she talked, her eyes darting around, looking anywhere but at him. He wanted to smile, because she had forgotten how well he knew her, and that this motor-mouth effect was something he was very familiar with.
When they were kids and got busted doing something they had no business doing, talking fast was always her tell. If they were up to no good, Sam was never the best advocate as they tried to argue their way out of it. She didn’t like to do wrong; and Colt truly believed that unlike most people, she got none of the adrenaline rush that often comes from breaking the rules.
“You’ll work it out,” he said, when she was done with her soliloquy.
She sighed. “I hope so. But if I’m going to do that, I’d like to do it by this afternoon. Jason always has tons of revisions and it’s gotta be final by Wednesday COB, and …”
“Sam.” He silenced her with a hand over hers, to still it. “We should talk about Friday.”
She pulled in her lower lip and chewed on it for a moment Colt watched her do it, and remembered sucking on that lip, and how it felt soft and plump between his. There was still the shadow of a bruise on it, reminding him how out of control he’d felt.
He averted his gaze.
“Look,” he began. “Here’s the thing …”
“I think I get ‘the thing’,” Sam said, speaking over him. “So, we don’t have to …”
“What do you get?”
“That you think it was a mistake, and we started something we shouldn’t finish, and …”
“No,” Colt said.
“No?” She looked up.
“No.”
“Then …”
Colt swallowed. “I think we should finish it,” he said.
Sam’s eyes widened slightly.
“Look, I just … it wasn’t right, the way it went down. Like you were some chick I met that night, or I was some dude you picked up for some dick …”
“Some dude I picked up?” One of her eyebrows rose. “For some …”
“You know what I mean. If we go there, we gotta do it right.”
“Do it right, like how?” She looked genuinely perplexed.
Colt swallowed hard, again. “You know … hang out for a while, see how it … then maybe … that’s if you want, then maybe …”
What the fuck? Who the hell was he right now? He was talking to Sam. Sam. And he had a case of dry-mouth like nobody’s business and couldn’t even get his sentences out straight.
“You want to date me?”
The question came out loud enough that people at other tables looked around. Sam sounded incredulous, and a woman nearby tittered.
“If you want to be old-fashioned about it, yeah. I mean. If we …”
Their waiter reappeared, this time with a large tray and a stand for him to set it down while he rearranged plates and put their lunches in front of them. The aroma of kung pao chicken, and Sam’s wor shu duck wafted upward.
When they were alone again, and Sam reached for her chopsticks, Colt stopped her.
“You know me, right?” he said.
Sam nodded.
“So you know that on Friday, when I shut things down, that was the most mature thing I’ve ever done maybe in my entire life.” Sam smothered a smile and Colt grinned back at her, leaning in. “Am I right?”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged.
“I want to do this right,” he said.
Sam said nothing, and just looked at him.
“So?” he prompted. “What do you …”
For a moment, she looked frightened. Colt could relate. In some ways, it would have been easier to just let the sex happen. And then, in the cold light of day, they could have told each other it was a fluke, continued on like before, and tried to forget it.
But this, this was different. This was him, acknowledging to her that if they did this—when they did, because it now felt inevitable—it could not be done lightly. They had to honor what they already had; and in doing so they would be admitting that they wanted to build something even more than that.
“And what if it … what if it doesn’t work out?” she asked, fretting the edge of the tablecloth.
“Don’t make us over in your head, Sam. This is me. This is you. The only thing that’s changed is that now? Every time I see you, I’ma want to …” He didn’t finish his sentence, but leaned in trying to make eye contact with her again. “After Friday night … you jus’ don’ know.”
She blushed, the way only Sam blushed. She dipped her chin even lower, avoiding his gaze.
“So, you want to do this with me, or what?” he asked.
It took her a few moments. A few—it seemed to Colt—almost interminable moments. Finally, she nodded.