Alice Sharpe - Undercover Babies

As she held his hands for support and stepped out of her pants, he wondered again. Who was she? A coed gone astray? A working girl whose favorite john indulged his fantasies by dressing her in fancy lingerie and then pummeling her?

Awkwardly, he pulled the robe over her arms and tied the sash around her waist, studiously trying to ignore the feel of her cold but petal-soft skin. The ripe smell of the alley helped squash amorous thoughts. Supporting half her weight, they shuffled inside the apartment. He closed and locked the door behind them, still babbling like a demented man, covering his own apprehension with the sound of his voice.

“I can’t keep thinking of you as ‘the girl,’” he said. “It’s politically incorrect and after our recent familiarity, a little silly.”

No rise from her. No flicker of an eyebrow or curl of a lip. No indignant sneer, no anger. Nothing.

“How about I call you Grace?”

She stared at him, wrinkling her brow as though trying to think.

“Is that name okay with you?” he said, trying his best to force her to speak, concerned that she still could.

She mumbled something that sounded like yes and he let it be. Within minutes, he had her in the shower, underwear and all. He could almost see the hot spray coax her back to life. When she grabbed the soap from his hand, he knew it was time to step away and leave her alone.

“There’s shampoo on the shelf in there,” he told her.

She answered by handing him her underwear, which she’d wrung out.

As he dropped it in the sink, he heard a strangled cry coming from the shower, then another. Without thinking, he threw back the curtain.

“What is it…Grace? What’s wrong?”

Stark naked, she stared at him with wide eyes. Her mouth formed a perfect little O.

Even as he tried to reassure her that she was okay, that he’d leave the room or call for help, whatever she wanted, he couldn’t help but absorb the details of her body. And wow, what a body she had. Nipples like pink rose buds. Curvaceous waist and hips. Long, shapely legs. Lots of tanned skin, discreet areas of lily white.

The unexpected heat of desire knocked him on his heels. Good to know his ex-wife’s betrayal hadn’t killed every impulse in his body, but talk about poor timing. He tried to turn away, but the woman—Grace—ran shaky hands across her flat tummy and a new fear crystallized in his head. Was she going to throw up?

And then he finally understood her distress.

Across her belly, vertical lines, so faint they were all but invisible.

The lines a woman’s abdomen acquires as her body stretches to accommodate a pregnancy.

His gaze met hers. Tears streamed down her face.

She was somebody’s mother.

Grace managed to gather enough wits to wash her hair and towel dry herself. The man didn’t leave the room, though she could feel his intense desire to do so. If he stayed, it must be because she looked as awful as she felt.

A pregnancy. She had a child.

She wiped the tears from her face with shaky fingers.

A baby.

Or not. Maybe the pregnancy hadn’t ended well. Maybe that was the tragedy that had propelled her into a lifestyle that ultimately led her to find herself in a stranger’s bathroom, needle marks on her arm, covered with bruises, her mind little more than a foggy cliff edged with perilous drops into nothingness.

The man handed her a tissue which she took gratefully and blew her nose.

Competing for attention with an exhaustion so acute it ate away at her joints was a growing sense of anxiety. There was someplace she needed to be, someone she needed to see, something she needed to do.

But what?

“Here, put this on,” the man said.

She stared at the blue garment and realized she’d been standing there with the towel clutched to her chest, the rest of her body stark naked. She knew what he offered was a robe, she knew he wanted her to put it on, to cover herself. She even knew, in some remote part of her mind, that he felt disconcerted by her nudity. She reached for the robe, but everything seemed to happen in slow motion. At last, she got it around her. She could feel the man’s relief.

What kind of woman is so unconcerned about a strange man seeing her naked?

She didn’t even want to contemplate the possibilities. She was too tired to ponder such a troubling question.

“Thank you,” she mumbled.

He shrugged broad shoulders still encased in a gray suit jacket now stained with shower water. As she watched, he took off his jacket and draped it over a towel bar, then rolled up the sleeves of a white shirt. He had nice forearms, strong looking, dusted with fine, dark hair.

But what she’d noticed first about him still dominated his looks and those were his eyes. They were green or maybe blue, it was hard to tell, and framed with dark lashes and brows. All sorts of things seemed to swirl in them: compassion, challenge, distaste, self-awareness, humor, trouble, danger. She’d seen all those things and while some had dismayed her, others had warmed her and given her courage.

She stared at the rest of him as he dug in a wall cabinet. He was tall and powerfully built. When he’d carried her up the outside stairs, she’d felt like a feather floating on the wind, like no burden at all. He had a habit of rubbing the back of his head, ruffling the short brown hair, stretching as though there was so much going on inside his head that it put a strain on his neck.

She suspected that she herself was the cause of his current tension.

He produced a box of Band-Aids and a tube of ointment. “Sit down on the edge of the tub,” he told her, and she did as he said. Was she always this wishy-washy, this easy to control?

No. She knew she wasn’t.

Kneeling in front of her, he treated and bandaged her knee. She made herself rally to ask him a few questions. First, his name.

“Travis MacBeth,” he said, gazing up at her. “People call me Mac.”

The nun at the shelter had called him Mac. Now she remembered. The next question was harder. “Who is Jake?”

“An acquaintance.” When she stared, he added, “A homeless boozer.”

“And my clothes…they’re his?”

“I assume so. Seems kind of unlikely there are two identical coats running around the back streets of Billington. Plus, this is the first night in two months that Jake wasn’t waiting for me at the mouth of that alley and the first night you were.” He paused for a second and added, “Grace? Why did you run out of that alley the way you did?”

She wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

“Were you running from something or someone?” he persisted.

She was running. Toward the light? Away from the light. Away from Jake?

Maybe her face reflected the unease the hazy memory of that alley engendered because Mac patted her arm and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Do you think…do you suppose…I hurt Jake? To get his coat, I mean. Was that why I was running?”

He stared at her and then smiled. Was it the first time he’d done that or had he smiled before and she’d forgotten? At any rate, he had a good smile, the kind a person could find themselves working to see again. The kind that took years and cares off a man’s face and gave a glimpse of what lay hidden in his heart. He said, “No. I don’t think so. We looked for Jake, remember?”

They’d walked through the alley. She could recall the clanging of empty bottles and the look of disgust in Mac’s eyes as he asked if they were hers. “How old do you think I am?” she asked.

Again he stared at her. “Early twenties, maybe.”

“And I’ve had a baby.”

“You’ve apparently had a pregnancy. And a husband.”