In the months following Tim’s death, Sarah dreams. When a mysterious book with a strange dedication and an even stranger plot arrives at her home, her dreams turn to nightmares. Sarah no longer knows how to differentiate dreams from reality. Finding the truth will make the difference between a frightening end or a new beginning. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Heart Flesh” follows a grieving widow on her disturbing journey of self-discovery through the fear and despair of devastating loss.
“Heart Flesh” by USA Today bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch is free on this website for one week only. The story’s available for $2.99 from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Omnilit, and in other ebookstores.
Heart Flesh
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
IN THOSE WEEKS, I had trouble getting out of bed. Sleep brought me dreams of Tim—laughing, taking my hand, his fingers firm and warm in mine. Sometimes he would kiss me and I would relish those dreams more than others. Then I would wake and lie there on the faded sheets, sheets I didn’t wash until three weeks after the funeral, hoping to preserve Tim’s scent as long as possible.
But dreams were dreams, memories were memories, and Tim was dead at thirty-four. He had a brain aneurism while driving to the grocery store at three a.m. on 18 August, 1992. He lost consciousness at thirty miles per hour and the car drifted straight, even after the road turned, hitting an electric pole and knocking out the power to half the city. At three-thirty, I knew something was wrong. By four, I was pacing. At five, the police officer arrived, hat in hand, to take me to the hospital.
After that, everything blurred into a jumble of noise and images. Occasional unattributed sentences stuck in my memory: You’re lucky he died, Sarah. If he lived, he would have been a vegetable. At least it was quick. Now you have to get on with your life. Clichés, maybe, but clichés and dreams were all I had.
I cherished the dreams. I thought Tim lived in them. I wished I did.
By December, things appeared normal. I cleaned my place again, showed up on time for work, and bought cats to keep the apartment from being so lonely. By December, I realized that the heaviness in my chest would slowly ease, and an hour could go by without thinking about Tim.
December. The dark month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The month the dreams changed. The month he arrived.
I reached across the table and grabbed the bill. Paul pulled the slip away from me. “Nope,” he said. Behind him, the jukebox rattled to Buddy Holly’s stammering love for P-P-Peggy Soo-o-ooo. Dishes clattered in the kitchen and the diner smelled of eggs and bacon. “I love having someone to bounce offagain, instead of another voice dutifully reading the news before getting off the air.”
“And for that you’re buying me breakfast?”
“Brunch, my dear,” he said in his stentorian I-am-performing voice. “Every day we eat this meal, and every day I remind you that it is too late for breakfast, too early for lunch, hence, brrrrunch.”
I laughed and settled back in the booth. “Tim would have—I stopped the thought. Tim wouldn’t have done anything. Tim never accompanied us on these jaunts. This was the morning crew’s daily ritual. On air at six, off by ten with clean-up and tomorrow’s prep, and then food. The morning drive-time team had the highest listenership of any radio period, and rapport with each other and with the audience was essential. Somehow the morning meal added to our feeling of camaraderie. Without this group, I probably wouldn’t have made it through the fall.
“All right,” I said. “If you let me buy tomorrow.”
“No deal.” Paul glanced up. Hank, the engineer, and Eve, the receptionist, waited at the cash register. “I was serious. I’m glad you’re back, Sarah.”
“I never left,” I said. My tone might have been a little sullen. I didn’t want any more reminders of the way things had been.
“No,” he said, “but you faded out for a while.” He grabbed my hand, squeezed it, and slid out of the booth. The heaviness had returned to my chest. I took a deep breath, and let the pain subside a little before standing. Faded out, like a microphone manipulated by a half-crazed engineer. A person could keep talking, voice fading, until nothing went over the airwaves. I felt like that without Tim: a woman sitting alone in a sound-proofed room, speaking into a microphone that someone had shut off a long, long time ago.
“Coming?” Paul called.
I turned. I had left my car at the station. I had to ride back with these folks. I grabbed my coat, slung it over my shoulder, and followed the crew out the door.
The winter chill hit like the blast of an air conditioner. An outside speaker positioned above the door made the Big Bopper sound small and scratchy. I pulled my coat closed.
The street was empty and slush-covered. An icicle beside me dripped water to the pavement below, pavement the diner kept liberally sprinkled with salt. The crew had already gone around the corner of the building to the parking lot. Eve’s laugher filtered through the morning air.
“Miss Dobson?”
I whirled. A man stood beside me. His voice was as deep as Paul’s, only without the professional edge. The man had large dark eyes covered by wire-rim glasses, and he wore his hair past his shoulders, making no attempt to hide the bald spot on the back of his skull. He was at least forty, small and solid in a heavy winter jacket.
I swallowed. People often recognized me by my voice. Perhaps he had been listening inside the diner. “Yes?”
He shook his head, as if rejecting sentences before he actually spoke. “I just wanted to meet you. I’ve enjoyed your show for a long time.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate hearing that.”
He smiled a little and I got the sense he wanted to say more. Instead, he leaned back toward the warmth of the diner door.
“Hey, Sarah! Are you coming?” Paul’s voice boomed across the parking lot.
“My ride,” I said by way of apology and hurried away.
The others were already in the car. I opened the door and climbed in, settling next to Hank on the plush seats. The heater whistled as it blasted cold air inside the small space. Paul pulled out. I glanced at the diner door. The serious little man was gone.
The day I met Tim, I wore a navy blue suit and a blouse with a Peter Pan collar. I had my long hair conservatively bound in a topknot, with little wisps framing my face. I looked young, and cute, and harmless, just like I intended. I was out to become the next Woodward and Bernstein all by myself, and I figured the way to do it was to hide my toughness behind a soft voice and a little-girl façade.
I was sitting in the offices at Hutchinson, Anderson, McGillicudy and Quick, making final notes on the interview I had just finished. Old Man Hutchinson had purpled and almost destroyed client confidentiality in addition to his political career before he threw me out. I planned to write the interview out for the monthly city magazine as well as broadcast Hutchinson’s damning words over the air. I checked the recorder, heard his voice and mine, then proceeded to make notes about the wood-lined walls. The pretty secretary sitting behind the large oak desk, the phone that rang incessantly. I was career-making at twenty-one, visions of National Public Radio and the Washington Post dancing in my head. Then he walked into the room.
At first, I thought he was an attorney or a legal assistant. He wore expensive gray pants, a white shirt and a topcoat draped casually over his shoulders. His hair was an inch too long, curling slightly over his collar, and his gray eyes sparkled with intelligence. He stopped at the receptionist’s desk and placed his hands on the oak surface.
“I’m Tim Reston,” he said. “I’m here to fix your copier.”
I did a double take. Expensive clothes, nicely tailored. Cavalier attitude of a man who believed in himself. And he fixed copiers?
“Good,” the receptionist said. “Let me clear everything out of the copy room and then you can have a go at it.”
She got up and walked down the hall. He watched her swish; and then he turned to me.
“You don’t look like a man who repairs copiers.”
He grinned. His smile carved a line in his left cheek. “And you don’t look like a girl who can run all that equipment.”
I glanced at my air-quality portable cassette recorder, and the heavy microphone. I had yet to detach from it. I couldn’t tell if he wanted me to be defensive or if he wanted me to bat my eyelashes at him. I did neither. “People aren’t always what they seem.”
“Ah,” he said and this time I heard the sarcasm. “A truism.”
“So?”
“Would-be reporters should never use clichés.”
“Rules.” I wrapped the mike cord around the steel base. “I bet you can’t talk for ten minutes without using a cliché.”
“I’m not a would-be reporter.”
“No, you’re an overdressed man who fixes copiers.”
He laughed then, and the sound had a warmth that made the wood paneling seem chill. “Tell you what. This job will only take me about half an hour, if they were right about the problem. I’ll meet you in the café across the street when I’m done.”
He didn’t wait for my answer. The receptionist had come back and he turned to her. I picked up my equipment, filed my notebook in my oversized purse, and left the office.
I hesitated before going into the café. Then I decided I could use a cup of tea and a little more time to expand my notes. Forty minutes later, Tim joined me, and we stayed together until the day he died.
I let myself into the apartment and found three cats waiting by the door. Usually, they stared at me from various sleep spots around the living-room. This time, something had awakened them.
I took off my coat and hung it in the small hallway. Then I kicked off my boots and let them rest on the mat in front of the door. The apartment was warm in the mid-afternoon sun. The furniture that Tim and I had purchased, the long floral couch, the easy chair and the rocker, seemed more mine now that they were covered with cat fur and newspapers. I had never been comfortable in a place that looked as if it were about to be photographed for Home Beautiful.
My mail sat on the coffee table. Louisa, my landlady, usually brought the mail in when it arrived, about nine a.m. I didn’t mind. It gave the cats an extra visitor during the day, and saved me from wrestling with the post office box in the lobby of the building.
I shoved a newspaper aside and sat on the couch, ignoring my own exhaustion. I slept during the day so that I had my nights free until I started work at five a.m. I had gotten into the habit when Tim was alive, and had seen no need to change it.
The cats crowded beside me, purring and butting their heads on my arms. I set aside a small package, obviously a book, and opened the letter. It was from my friend Brenda at National Public Radio. Brenda and I got our start in radio together nearly ten years ago. She went on to the national news when I got married.
The letter was chatty, filled with gossip and the news of a position opening in the production department. Low-level, sure, but a foot in the door at NPR was better than nothing. I set the letter down. Sweetheart, my big gray tom, rubbed his face against my chin. I ran my hands along his soft fur. A job in D.C. meant moving. It meant leaving everything that Tim and I had built here, slowly, over seven years. It meant leaving the morning team and brrrunches at the diner.
I didn’t want to think about it. Not yet. I picked up the package and hefted it. My name was written in block letters across the brown bag surface. I saw no return address, but I had been right. The package felt like a book.
I ripped off the wrapping, and found myself holding a collection of short stories. A note, written in the same block letters, had been paper-clipped to the dust jacket: PLEASE SEE PAGE 15. No signature. No dedication on the inside flyleaf. I turned the book over in my hands. I usually got things like this at work, not at home. Time to remind the station receptionists yet again not to give out my real last name. Either that, or go unlisted in the phone book.
I leaned back and opened the book to page fifteen. Across the top of the page, above the story, someone had written FOR SARAH, WITH THANKS. Again, no signature. The cats cuddled next to me, convinced that I would not sleep yet. The book itself was a collection of fantasy stories by various authors, some of whom I had heard of, others I hadn’t. I hadn’t heard of the author of the story I was to read. The piece was short, only ten pages, and I read quickly.
The story told of a woman whose husband had died suddenly. He had been an organ donor, as Tim had, and another man, an executive, had received the husband’s heart. The executive found himself obsessed with the woman. He followed her around, spied on her, and fell in love with her. Gradually they both realized that because he had her husband’s heart, he was becoming her husband. They all lived happily ever after.
I slammed the book closed and tossed it across the room. Sweetheart chased the book, then when it landed, lay down beside it because he couldn’t play with it. My hands were shaking. What a sick, sick thing to do to me. And the wacko knew where I lived.
I got up, closed the blinds and double-checked the lock on the door. Then I turned on my answering machine. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not if someone would do this so soon after Tim died.
In the next three days, I dreamed of Tim.
He sat at our kitchen table, staring out the window at the snow. The cats’ bowls were empty—silly detail because we had had no cats then—and I clutched Brenda’s letter in my left hand. What will I do in Washington? He asked. Why can’t we stay here? The words echoed through my memory to the first year of our marriage, snuggling on the couch, watching old movies in the dark of a Sunday afternoon. All we need is each other, Sarah, he would whisper. You don’t know how much I love you. Then he sat up, unzipped his chest, and removed his heart. It’s yours, forever. I took the heart. It was soft and moist, and felt as if I squeezed too hard, it would burst. I didn’t want it, I didn’t want the responsibility, but when I turned to tell him, he was gone. Only his heart remained, thudding softly against my palms.
The mall was filled with harried shoppers. I clutched three bags to my chest, already tired and I had only been at it for a half an hour. Children lined the walkway between stores, waiting to sit in the sleigh with a too-skinny Santa. Muzak Christmas carols coming from various stores warred each other for ascendancy. I was wondering if I really wanted to fight the crowd in one of the shoe stores to find a pair of pumps to match my new holiday dress, or if I wanted to go in the knick-knack shop to look for something for my great-aunt, when the kid ran in front of me.
I saw it all in slow motion: the small child cutting across foot traffic, hand on his crotch, probably following a minor emergency of his own. My legs collided with his, and we both went sprawling. The floor was white tile, covered with scuff marks, and I had been lying on it for nearly thirty seconds before I realized that I had scuff marks too and they burned. My packages had scattered, the child was screaming, and all I wanted to do was join him.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and eased me into a sitting position. “You okay, Miss Dobson?”
The man from the diner. His brown eyes were creased with worry, and his hair had fallen forward against his face. Not a bad face either, I thought. Rather quiet, and shy.
He grabbed my packages, then helped me to my feet. Someone had moved the child, and the traffic continued as if the accident had never happened.
“Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” he said. “You look a little shaken.”
I was shaken. I let him lead me into the coffee shop next to J.C. Penney’s. We sat at a booth near the window, and he ordered coffee and Danish for both of us.
“I seem to be seeing you a lot lately,” I said.
He shrugged. “The only mall in town is not such an unusual place to be on a Saturday.”
I felt a twinge of guilt. Ever since that book arrived, I had been feeling suspicious of everyone. So suspicious, in fact, that I had called the hospital to find out what organs Tim had donated. The woman I spoke to said such information made things hard for the survivors, so the hospital never gave it out.
“You’re being very kind,” I said to him.
“It’s not often I get to sit with a celebrity.” His smile softened his words, and added a certain fey charm to his face.
“I’m not a celebrity,” I said.
“Locally, a little. But I bet you could be big if you tried.”
The waitress set the coffees down. I put my hands around the steaming cup. The china felt hot against my skin, warming me all the way through. “I think it’s too late for that.”
He shook his head. “It’s never too late to do what you want.”
“And what do you do when you’re not rescuing women in malls? Ghost for Ann Landers?”
He chuckled. The sound resonated through him and I wondered how long it would take me to teach him to speak before a mike. “No. I teach school. High school kids. Some of them think it’s too late too.”
“Jesus.” I took a sip of my coffee. It was bitter and potent, the way I liked it. “You know, we haven’t been formally introduced.”
“Ooops.” He extended his hand. “Gregory Fenner. Greg.”
“I’m Sarah.”
We smiled at each other idiotically, as if we had just signed a joint agreement to rid the world of nuclear weapons. I decided then that I liked him.
“So,” I said, as I cut the Danish in half. “Out shopping for the wife and kids?”
“Parents and grandparents. Wife and kids never materialized.”
“Never?”
He shook his head. “First I got too busy trying to stop a stupid war. Then, somehow, I got socialized. And now I try to socialize others.”
“And they let you teach with such long hair?”
“If I tie it back.” He took a sip of his own coffee. “This is the strangest conversation. I feel as if I’ve known you forever, and you don’t know anything about me.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I said. “Most of the stuff that goes over the air is superficial and some of it is just lies.”
“Your husband did die, though.” His quiet words were a statement, not a question. “Your personality disappeared through the entire fall.”
“I didn’t realize that people listened that closely.”
“Some of us do,” he said.
Three times in the next week, we met for unbuttered popcorn, Coke, and the latest season blockbuster. We sat next to each other in the theater, gabbed during the trailers, watched in silence, and shredded the movie while standing in the lobby. Then we went to our separate cars and drove home.
I learned that Greg liked teaching, although he had been on an “enforced sabbatical” this last semester, and that he was an incisive and witty critic. I think he learned as little about me.
It was after the third movie he asked for a real date. “You know,” he said. “Dinner, wine, the works.”
My smile was faint. “I’ve been married for seven years. I’m not so sure I’m ready for the works.”
A slow flush crept across his cheeks. “That wasn’t really what I meant. I just meant I would wine and dine you, do something special.”
“I would like that, “ I said.
And I did. He took me to a Mexican restaurant on State Street. We ate, and laughed, and talked. By the time he was ready to take me home, I had decided that the works might be rather fun.
“Would you like to come up?” I asked when his car stopped in front of my apartment building. The look on his face was part surprise, part longing and part something else.
He shut off the ignition and took my hand. “I’d love to,” he said.
We walked through the door, past Louisa’s apartment, and went up the stairs. Greg studied the brown décor as if he had never seen late-seventies clone apartments before. When I unlocked the apartment door, Sweetheart was there, waiting for us.
“A cat?” Greg laughed. “Let me guess. How many others? Three?”
I smiled. “Two. When Tim died, I sort of went overboard. I didn’t want to be lonely and I didn’t want my cat to be lonely, so I got three, figuring that at least two of them would be together at all times.”
Greg put an arm around my shoulder. I leaned into the hug. It felt good to have someone hold me. “You must have loved Tim a lot.”
“I don’t know.” I pulled out of his arms and turned on a table lamp. The other two cats were glaring at us from the couch. I closed the blinds and turned on another lamp. “Six months ago, I would have said yes. Now I’m beginning to realize how free I feel without him.”
Greg said nothing. I turned. He was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the strange book. “Free?” he asked, his voice oddly hollow.
“Last week, I sent a résumé and demo to National Public Radio. I never could have done that with Tim.”
Greg looked up at me. “He didn’t want you to?”
“He never said that. It was the things he didn’t say. So I never tried before. I didn’t want to lose him. I used to call that love. But I’m beginning to wonder if it was just fear.”
I cleared the newspapers off the couch and sat down. One of the cats jumped onto the coffee table. Greg sat down beside me and picked up the strange book.
“Have you read this?” he asked.
“Just the second story,” I said. “Someone sent it to me as a prank. It’s about—”
“I’ve read it,” Greg said. He leaned over, put a hand on my shoulder and kissed me. His kiss was soft, exploring my mouth instead of possessing it. When he pulled away, he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and kissed my earlobe. “You’re beautiful, Sarah.”
He got up, walked around the coffee table, and let himself out the door. I sat on the couch for a moment. I thought he was going to come back. Finally, I got up and went to the stairway in time to see his car pulling away from the curb.
That morning, I dreamed that I held a heart in both hands. I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until the heart burst. Warm blood and flesh spattered me, the walls, the cats and the sofa. I knew that I should glue that heart back together, but there were too many pieces. Someone else had to do it, not me. I didn’t want the responsibility anymore.
A ringing echoed in the room, making the heart-flesh quiver. I concentrated until I realized I heard the phone beside my bed. I opened my eyes and reached, clearing my throat so that I sounded awake when I answered.
I was glad I did. On the other end, a woman from National Public Radio asked me to interview three days before Christmas.
I called Greg and asked him to an early dinner. We met at the Blue Iris, a trendy Cajun restaurant that seated fifty on a good day. Flower paintings covered the walls, and a stained-glass blue iris decorated the front door. I liked the décor, the friendly ease of the wait staff, and the short walk from my apartment building across the street.
Greg arrived, hair pulled back, cheeks flushed with cold. I was sipping poor California chardonnay with an acidic aftertaste. He looked at the glass with longing.
“Sorry,” he said as he sat at the table and pulled off his jacket. “Meeting. I might go back for the second half of the year.”
I pushed the glass aside. “You don’t look too pleased about it.”
He shrugged. “I guess I’ve gotten used to the slower days. It would be nice to be paid for doing nothing, don’t you think?”
“No, I like working.”
A waitress came by and set a plate of hot bread on the table. She handed Greg a menu, and left.
He smiled. “I suspected that of you. It comes through over the air. You love the news. You have a passion for it.”
“You must have a passion for something.”
The flush hadn’t left his cheeks. He looked at the door, at the iris with its ripply blue petals. “Sometimes, when a person has too much time on his hands, he makes things up. You know?”
I didn’t understand the segue. “I thought you liked the free time.”
“Now.” He pushed his menu aside, then clasped his hands and leaned toward me. “People make up their own superstitions, most of them about death and exchange of souls. As a boy, I used to think that people shared dreams—that if I dreamed about you, you were also dreaming about me. I never believed that people had their own dreams separate from mine.”
His words made me shiver. They were too close to the feelings I had had shortly after Tim died. I grabbed a piece of bread. It burned my fingers. “I don’t understand, Greg.”
The waitress glanced at us, but didn’t come by. She seemed to sense we were in deep conversation. Greg’s knuckles had turned white. “You don’t have to understand.What I’m talking about isn’t rational. It’s like that story in the book—the story that upset you so badly. What if people actually believed that? What if part of a person’s body carried his soul?”
I buttered the bread on my plate, not looking at Greg. “That story really frightened me.”
“Because you believed it could be true?”
I shook my head. “Because someone knew enough about me to send it to me, to send it to my home.”
Greg let out a small sigh. “Harassment?”
“Of the most bizarre kind.” I willed my fingers to stop shaking, and popped a piece of bread into my mouth. “What does this have to do with passion?”
“It has to do with dreams. I sit at home, and I read, and I write a little, and I listen to the radio, and I prepare for my classes next spring. But at night, Sarah, I dream about you.”
I started. The piece of bread caught in my throat, and I had to swallow twice. “And you want to know if I dream about you?”
He smiled. The expression warmed his face. “I obsess about it.”
I pushed my plate aside. “I dream about Tim, but I think about you. I wonder what your skin feels like, or if your hair is as soft as it looks.”
“Really?” This time, his cheeks were not flushed with cold but with pleasure.
“Really.” I took his hand. His eyes were shining. “I’m not hungry, are you?”
He shook his head. We stood together, and I left money on the table for the wine and bread. We held hands as we walked past the iris to the cold, the chill unable to dampen the warmth between us. The dash across the street into my apartment took less than a minute, but felt like an hour. Once inside, Greg pushed my hair from my face and kissed me.
The kiss was tentative, gentle, not insistent but full of desire. His arms held me loosely. I knew I could pull away at any minute, and he wouldn’t stop me. He would wait until I was ready.
I had never been kissed like that. No one had ever given me permission to change my mind once I had already said yes. No one had ever respected me that much.
I slipped his jacket off him, and then unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt. He took my hands and kissed them, studying my face. Then he set my hands free, and I continued to undo the buttons. Then I pushed his shirt back and kissed him.
His skin was as soft as I had imagined—not hard and muscled as Tim’s had been. I teased his right nipple, then slid to the left. My fingers brushed against a ridge of flesh that shouldn’t have been there and I pulled back.
A scar ran along his chest, red and garish, shiny with newness. Greg watched me, eyes bright, strands of hair loose from his ponytail. Heart. They had operated on his heart. That’s why he wasn’t working. Because he couldn’t.
I took a step back.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said. “That’s what I started to say at dinner.”
“You sent that book.” The terror of that morning was back. Shudders ran through my entire body. I had been touching him. I had been making love to him. “You sent me that book.”
“Yes,” he said. “But not for the reason you think. I had the surgery at midnight on 17 August, and the nurses were talking about you being in the hospital that night, and how sad it was and then when I met you—”
I picked up his jacket. The heavy material repelled me. “Get out.”
He didn’t move. I flung his jacket at him. “Get out.”
“Sarah, it’s not like that—”
“Get out, or I’ll call the police.”
He clasped his jacket to his chest, bowed his head, and let himself out the door. I turned all the locks and leaned against the frame, listening as his steps disappeared out the front. Then I picked up the book and slowly, mechanically, tore it apart.
I didn’t dream after that, until the night before my interview in D.C. Tim sat at the edge of the oak dresser, next to the hotel’s fancy television. He stared at the king-sized bed. We slept in a double on our honeymoon, he said.
I pushed a pillow behind me, and leaned against it. He looked perfect there, as if the plush décor suited him. We were young then. We couldn’t afford much.
Still can’t on my salary, he said. Then he opened his shirt. His chest gaped open, and his heart was missing. I sold it for you, Sarah. So you can have everything you want.
So that was what had gone wrong. He never understood. I got up and took his hand. His fingers were cold. I don’t want money, I told him. I just want someone to love me. Me, Tim. Not some perfect wife.
You’ll never be a perfect wife. His voice sounded sad.
No, I told him. I won’t.
On 24 December, a taxi dropped me off at my apartment. The building looked quiet. Most of the residents were gone for the holidays and Louisa always went to Hawaii until New Year’s.
The trip had gone well, but I was tired. I passed the production tests and the interview seemed positive. Brenda was convinced I would get the job, but I wasn’t. I was ten years older than most of their production assistants and had, according to one of the engineers, learned some bad habits. Everyone I spoke to wanted to know why it had taken so long for a woman with my credentials to follow her dreams. Fear? Low self-esteem?
Marriage, I had told them, and they had all nodded as if they understood. But I wondered if they weren’t right. In my dreams I had held a heart. But I had always assumed the heart was Tim’s. What if it were mine? And what if I had been afraid to let it go?
The hall smelled of pine trees and Christmas. I trudged up the stairs, my leather duffel heavy against my back. I had planned so hard for the interview that I had forgotten the holiday. My first without Tim—and I was going to spend it alone.
Something moved in the shadows near my door. I stopped. Greg stood up. He had deep circles under his eyes and his skin was pale.
“What do you want?” I hadn’t thought about Greg—I hadn’t let myself think about Greg—since I last saw him.
“To apologize,” he said. “I went a little crazy.”
“I guess.” I gripped the banister for support. I could push away from it if I needed to run.
“No, you don’t understand.” He stepped into the light. It reflected off the bald spot on the top of his head. He didn’t look like a violent person. He didn’t even look crazy. Just lonely. And sad. “You saved me.”
“When I met you, you were well.”
He shook his head. “Not you, really.” He sighed. “I always do this wrong. First the book, then in the Blue Iris—I know you think I’m weird, but just listen to it all, okay?”
I almost left then, but something in his voice stopped me. I had been attacked by two men during my reporting career, and they never had that calm, pleading, self-effacing tone. Not even the groupies had that. I had liked Greg, respected him, until the last time we saw each other. I owed him a few minutes.
I waited.
He swallowed. The sound echoed in the narrow hall. “I nearly died in August, all by myself in a hospital room. No family. Close friends, but at moments like that, you want someone more. I used to listen to your radio show before—and when the nurses told me you were there for your husband, I pretended you were there for me. And then I heard how he died, and read the obit, and found out about the organ donating, and I figured that I had a new heart and it had to be his. I sent the book as a thank-you. I wasn’t even sure you would understand. I didn’t realize how you would take it—and I didn’t want to marry you. I didn’t know you. I wanted to thank you outside the diner, but I couldn’t without sounding stupid, you know? So I didn’t. I just pretended that I did.”
“So you followed me around, to the mall, and then here?”
He shook his head. “That was an accident. I saw you when the kid hit you. I never planned to see you again. That’s why I left when you told me about the book. I got scared that you would realize it was me and you would hate me—”
“But you tried to tell me at the Blue Iris.”
“Because you were opening up, and I didn’t want any secrets.” He ducked his head—a nervous gesture—and backed away from the stairs. “That’s all. I made a mistake. Then I thought you had left because of me. I pounded on your door the next day, and your landlady told me where you went. I hope I didn’t interfere with the interview. I know how much it meant to you. I never wanted to be in your way.”
I stared at him for a moment. He wasn’t handsome. He was an overweight middle-aged man who wore his loneliness like a shield. He had a gentleness I had never found before, and he made me laugh more than anyone else. He had a vivid imagination, but then so did I. I dreamed about bursting hearts and a man months dead. And I had turned a shy admirer into a villain who wanted to usurp my husband’s place on the basis of an odd gesture.
“You don’t have Tim’s heart,” I said. “He didn’t die until three a.m.”
“I know,” Greg said. “But sometimes, it’s better to hold on to what you believe than to listen to the truth.”
“You think so?” I picked up my duffel and climbed the remaining stairs. “Because if I agreed, I wouldn’t let you inside.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“That’s truth.”
“But not what you believe?”
“Believed.” I unlocked the door. Sweetheart paced in front of it, tail waving. I petted him. “What are you and your friends doing for Christmas?”
“Small turkey, dressing, lots of pie, of which I will eat just one piece.” Greg stood just outside the frame.
“Tonight?”
“Tomorrow. You want to come with me?”
“Maybe.” I held the door open. “Come on in before Sweetheart gets out.”
Greg slipped inside and I let the door click shut. Sweetheart rubbed against my bag, and the other two cats emerged from the bedroom, looking sleepy.
I took Greg’s hand. It was as soft as I remembered. “What happens if I go to Washington?”
He looked startled by the question. “Depends. I’ll drive you to the plane if you want me to. Anything else we can discuss.”
He would let me go. He would let me go no questions asked. My heart gave a little leap. I felt it move for the first time in forever. “Christmas Eve is a night for belief and truth,” I said. “Those are things we have to work out. Would you like to have dinner with me?”
As he smiled, his entire body relaxed. His face took on a kind of beauty I had only seen once before—the night we left the Blue Iris, the night we were going to make love. “Thank you,” he said with a formality his joy belied. “I would like nothing better.”
“Heart Flesh” copyright © 2013 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing
First published in Touch Wood: Narrow Houses Volume Two, edited by Peter Crowther, Little Brown UK, 1993.
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