May 2016

"Are you one of them?"

Rhonda lay stretched on the bed, her head cradled on her right arm as she gazed through the window at the street below. A year of doubt and worry. She barely was able to utter those five words—and she couldn't look at Tommy when she did.

Yet the calm of her own voice, which was just above a whisper, had surprised her. Could it be that easy?

At first, she hoped it might. Tommy made a noise as if he hadn't understood, sort of a muted meh, but that sound was followed by a pause that seemed to go on too long. Finally, after a dozen beats of her heart, his warm form slide into bed behind her, spooning her as he always did. His lips took their familiar perch just atop her left ear, and his gentle left hand settled above the curve of her hip. She loved his touch. Even after six years together, it sometimes left her breathless.

But he hadn't answered her question, which was unlike him. She paused, took strength from his proximity, and, after a few minutes, pressed on, her voice now betraying the faintest tremor of emotion. "Are you Gifted?"

He rose on an elbow and turned her toward him, looking into her eyes with the love that he so often did. His voice was calm and soft. "The only gift I've ever had worth having is the gift I have for loving you."

And she knew

Her man often was gentle and loving, but he had that sense of humor, sometimes corny, sometimes so wicked Rhonda thought her sides might split.

She knew him.

He should have laughed at such a silly notion. He should have made a wisecrack about his being the "gift of flatulence." He should have tickled her. He should have slapped her backside and told her to get her lazy ass out of bed.

Instead, he'd held her and pledged his love with more sincerity than he ever had. She knew, and tears pooled in her eyes.

Tommy didn't say a word. He just regarded her with love and concern, but with a hint of mistiness in his eyes that she'd never seen before.

After a few seconds, she rested her head on his chest, took four heavy breaths, and wiped her tears on his shirt. Then she rose and moved to the bathroom to prepare for work. Her shift at the Kensington Hospital ER started in an hour, and she didn't want to be late.

"Asshole," she said flatly.

The word was such a common refrain between them that it broke the spell, and the tension lifted. From the corner of her eye, she could see him move off to prepare her things.

In the bathroom, Rhonda pulled the door closed and stood there some minutes, catching her breath.

"How could it have gone any other way?" she whispered to herself.

She knew she looked good for a woman of 43. Her black hair had begun to fleck gray here and there, but her skin, smooth and dark, might have been that of a woman a dozen years younger, with the merest suggestion of smile lines and crows' feet. And though no one had ever called her beautiful—the best she'd ever garnered was "pretty," and that only when she was years younger—she still had that figure men had always admired.

And here you are, shacking up with a white man half your age, she thought.

And that was the tender spot, the first hint that something was wrong. No, not wrong, just not quite—.

Her relationship with Tommy had always been, well ... different. She'd met him at work, when he'd dragged in a sad old wino who he'd found passed out in a March snowbank.

The poor rummy lost four fingers and a toe, and Tommy thereafter had made himself a regular presence at the ER whenever she was on shift. At the time, she'd presumed he was, at the most, in his early twenties. And as flattered as she'd felt by his attention, she'd just assumed that he was some frat boy with a touch of the jungle fever. She'd even told him as much.

Four months later, they'd moved in together.

Six years later, Rhonda had those crows' feet and flecks of gray. Tommy still looked like he was 20.

You're going to be late for work, she scolded herself.

Mercifully, she'd showered and done her hair before her nap, so getting ready consisted of nothing more than giving her face a good wash, putting on some clear lip gloss, and slipping into her uniform. She found her favorite white walking shoes hiding in the bedroom and slid them on before going into the living room, where Tommy waited with the small backpack that she used to carry her snacks. Across his broad chest was the logo of her least-favorite of his t-shirts, and she inwardly grimaced.

She walked over, looked into his eyes, and placed her right hand along his jaw. Neither said a word, and she hoped he couldn't sense her awkwardness. Either way, they stood for a brief few moments and then exchanged a kiss before Tommy led her to the foyer. Along the way, she snatched a long-sleeved work shirt from the back of a chair and handed it to him. He slipped it on without a word, concealing the offending t-shirt.

She was in love with Tommy. And, yes, it was crazy love—crazy love of the official variety.

I'm an idiot, she thought.

The two walked down the three flights to the street and turned in the direction of the hospital. Rhonda's worked the night shift, from 6:00 to 6:00, four or five days a week. On those rare days that he didn't walk her to work and back, Tommy always made sure she had cab fare. Murray Hill wasn't the most dangerous place in the City, but it was in the City.

Three steps outside the building's main door, he took her hand, as he always did. The gesture almost wrenched a cooing sound from her, and she hoped he didn't notice her slight trembling.

After a few paces, she again fell into thought.

No one else had seemed to notice that she had an ageless boyfriend—at least no one had said anything. It was an observation that Rhonda had made only a year before. But with that realization, other things had become evident, things about the man she loved, that didn't make sense.

What is it in him that women find so attractive? she'd so often asked herself. She took a quick glance at the man to her right.

It was a mystery.

Rhonda's female friends and co-workers, each and every one, were gaga for him. One friend after another had confided to her how gorgeous they found him, usually in the context of telling Rhonda how lucky she was, but occasionally as a preamble to some lewd invitation. And she'd lost track of the number of complete strangers who'd approached Tommy while the two of them were out in the City. Most were slack-jawed and innocent, but some few would proposition her boyfriend openly, as if she weren't even there. Such wanton displays weren't a daily occurrence, but they were regular.

Seriously? No, really—Seriously?

Rhonda was crazy for the guy, of course, but excepting his gray eyes, which truly were lovely, there was nothing handsome about him. No. His face was a mug. The nose was brutish and crushed, as if it'd been broken more than a few times, the jawline too long, and the chin far too weak. She'd always thought his mouth—well. What could she say about that? And his lips? Ugh.

The overall effect was that Tommy looked more like a young serial killer or a back-alley prizefighter than a guy who made ice cream and sold it from a cart. In a moment of weakness, Rhonda once had shared that estimation with him and had pointed out that he had a face only a mother could love—a blind mother, at that. Tommy had laughed so hard he'd cried.

"I am an idiot," she said aloud.

"I've always found you to be of at least average intelligence," her man replied without missing a beat.

"I'm in reverie."

"Sorry." The apology was sincere.

The two continued walking in silence, and though it was a warm May day, and Tommy was in that long-sleeved shirt, she pulled herself closer. They usually talked as they went, but sometimes they walked in a comfortable silence. Rhonda was glad for that time now.

She went over it all in her head for the umpteenth time.

With a tad of effort, a person could explain away her beau's ageless appearance. Some people just age differently, right? Maybe he's one of those rare white guys who doesn't crack? Wait around. The face will one day grow fleshy? The hair will thin? Sooner or later, a smile line is bound to appear, right?

And it wasn't completely impossible to reason out why women were drawn to him. He had a gorgeous mop of black hair, to which she tended once a week. Those eyes were soulful and lovely. Perhaps there was something in his brutish, untamed appearance that some women found alluring?

Or maybe there was something to the notion of pheromones? Why not? Hadn't Rhonda herself fallen for the guy? And he was tall, nearly a full head taller than Rhonda's 5 foot 7. She had never met a woman not wowed by a long-tall glass of water.

And then there was that body.

Rhonda found herself growing warm from the very thought of Tommy's perfect form. The first time she'd seen her partner naked she'd nearly fainted. He had the shoulders and arms of a blacksmith and the legs and torso of a sprinter. Worse, there was not an ounce of fat on him. He was all corded-steel muscle, skin, and bone. Any woman seeing him could guess what lay beneath his clothes, right?

Absolutely.

But there it is, she thought, the one thing that could not be explained away. She'd known Tommy for just over six years, and they'd lived together for most of that time. She knew his daily schedule as well as she knew her own. The flawless physique that he'd had six years ago was the same that he had today. And in all that time, she had never known him to do so much as a single pushup.

No. Not a single one. No pushups, no pullups, no squats, no dips, and no run. He didn't belong to a gym, own any exercise equipment, or even sally forth into the park to play softball with the beer guts on a weekend. Her man had a body that was a cross somewhere between Usain Bolt and a young Arnold Schwarzenegger—okay, maybe not Ahnuld big, but big—and his exercise regimen consisted of wolfing down gyros, cheeseburgers, deep-dish pizza, Cuban sandwiches, and cheap beer, among his many, many favorites.

It wasn't normal.

"What are you having for dinner, tonight?" she asked on an impulse.

"I think Chinese. Probably Lee's place. Do you want me to bring you something?"

She declined. Rhonda rarely ate dinner before her shift. It made her feel listless. She preferred to take a bag of snacks and eat throughout the night to keep up her energy. Tommy always prepared them, and it was always something she liked.

He was great at keeping her fed. Sometimes in the morning, on the way back from work, the two would stop by a diner for breakfast. If not, he would make her breakfast before she grabbed a few hours of sleep during the day.

They were almost to the hospital, and she stopped.

You are such an idiot, she again scolded herself.

She had spent the last year agonizing over what? This was the guy who had helped glue her back together after the worst years of her life. The guy who cooked for her, cleaned for her, and ran her errands. The guy who gave her the best sex she'd ever had, and who never once had looked at another woman. The guy who'd move heaven and earth if she asked him.

So what if he has a face like God lost a bet? So what if he wears that shitty t-shirt in public? So what if he laughs at odd times? So what if he's ... different?

Rhonda realized that she was stopped in the middle of the sidewalk with a slack look on her face. Tommy stood there, patient and waiting. "I love you Tommy Haas." A feeling of great release came over her.

"I love you Rhonda Pierce. You sure you don't want me to bring you anything from Lee's?"

"No, nothing, really."

"Okay," he said, as they resumed walking. "I'll be in the shop after dinner for most of the evening. Give me a call if you need anything at all."

She smiled her reply. A few minutes later they reached the ER, and Tommy walked her in. There they kissed and said their goodbyes.

After Tommy departed, Rhonda heard a couple of young coworkers giggle. Another made a series of quiet woofing sounds. Agnes, a 60-something colleague, opined gently, "If I had something like that at home, I'd never make it out the front door."

Rhonda smiled again.She didn't care.