Page 7 of Deep Cover

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"Iwas afraid you'd be gone when I got home," Mark said.

We were making dinner together, one of us using her most-prized culinary skills (me: I was boiling water for spaghetti) and Mark using the skills of a surgeon to chop up onions and garlic and tomatoes and throw them into olive oil to sauté before adding tomato sauce and paste along with bay leaves, fresh basil, oregano, red and black pepper freshly ground, and salt.

"I expected to be." Not that I could tell him my main squeeze biker had told me to take some time because he was afraid for my life. Or that I might let slip something he needed kept secret. "It's nice to be home."

"I checked on your dad," he said, sliding a tray of garlic bread into the broiler.

I managed to splash water all over the stove dropping in the spaghetti. "You did?" I was afraid to ask anything else because Mark would understand the odds and the medical jargon. Of the things he didn't understand about me, he knew me too well to pull punches.

"He looks good."

I jerked my head up to stare at him.

He nodded, like he understood the hope and didn't want to encourage it. "I mean, for someone in his condition, he's at the higher end of the odds for making it."

I toyed with my food. "Why don't his doctors say so?"

Mark snorted. "So they won't get sued. Eat that."

I did.

For the first time, I felt a little bit of hope. And later when I had my hands in the soapy water and Mark came up behind me, naked from the shower, and wrapped himself around me, his hands on my breasts, his face ghostly in the dark window over the sink, right beside mine, I shut off the water and turned within his arms.

He lifted me effortlessly onto the counter, and stepped between my legs. I was wearing one of his long shirts, nothing else, and he slid into me easily, his erection filling me up. All of Mark is just right. He didn't make me ache, but he touched everything that needed touching.

I bit his neck. He stilled, as if considering, and I tried to remember if I'd ever done that before. I wanted him to rip the shirt away, to have his teeth find my nipples, to wrap my legs around him and have him carry me.

But instead he helped me down from the sink and put his arms around me, the two of us moving through the kitchen in a series of bumps into appliances and chairs and, impossibly, each other. e reached the bedroom and he knelt before me, pulling my legs to his shoulders and burying his mouth between my legs. He sucked and licked and swirled his tongue and I bucked and arched but didn't cum. Not until he climbed up on the bed, sliding his erection between my legs and not even then.

Not until I spun him unceremoniously and got on top. That surprised him. His hands went to my breasts and I leaned back, gently fingering his balls, which made him start and stare at me, more aware behind his eyes than I thought he should be.

A satisfactory time was had by all.

But only that.

Over the next two weeks, my father got stronger, got weaker, got pneumonia, got well, and got scheduled for his procedure.

Over the next two weeks my phone rang with messages from Jesse, once, and then not anymore because he'd told me when to come back and it was a long time off and I couldn't promise but I wanted to.

Because I had work to do. That's why I wanted to.

During those two weeks, three more middle school children OD'd on China white.

During those two weeks, my mother got into an accident and totaled her car and my sisters took turns driving her to the hospital, leaving me out of the rotation.

During those two weeks, Mark made love to me and I continued to surprise and confuse him until I stopped accepting his offers. Too tired. Too worried.

During those two weeks, my father, who was fighting for his life, was brought up on charges that were just waiting for him to be released. My mother raged, my mother who can barely bring herself to talk back to someone who’d just done something totally egregious, called dad's captain a motherfucker.

During those two weeks, Jesse was shot and killed.

The white powder bubbled down to an injectable. It was child's play getting the needle.

For the first time in two weeks, my heart stopped racing and my breath stopped coming in like I was asthmatic or slowly being strangled.

The afternoon passed in a drifty unreality that didn't hurt like other days.

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