Redemption of a Sex Offender

After a little fumbling, he pulled on the robe – it was big enough for his shoulders, which meant it had to swamp her, or else she had a regular visitor his size. That bothered him as he knotted the belt. In fact, the idea of Erica with someone else bothered him a lot. He picked up the cat.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on here?” he asked it, “Because I sure don’t.” The cat responded by purring at him, so he scratched its chin and walked out to her kitchen.

She was bustling around making cooking noises. He leaned against the doorway, still petting the cat, and watched. “Erica,” he said after a couple of minutes, “why do you have a bathrobe big enough to fit me?”

Her hands stilled on the broiler. “My brother left it,” she replied, “when he visited last year.” Of course, her five-foot-eleven, skinny-as-a-rail brother was the owner of the bathrobe she kept in the master bedroom. She turned to look at him and saw the cat. “I see you’ve met Emerald.”

Emerald started kneading his chest; he carefully moved its paws over onto the thick terrycloth, since there were claws. He approved of claws on cats, ever since he’d seen the procedure for removing them.

“We hadn’t been formally introduced,” he said. He looked down at the cat’s eyes and saw that they were, indeed, the color of emeralds. “A pleasure, my dear,” he told it, then picked up one paw and kissed it. “I’m Edward Hilliard, but you may call me mroaow.” Emerald trilled at him.

“She likes you.” Erica sounded surprised.

“I’m good with animals since I learned to stop hating them,” he responded, and put Emerald down next to her food dish. “You want to tell me the truth about the bathrobe now?”

Erica sighed. “It was a Christmas present for someone. After I bought it, I . . . stopped seeing him.” She put the steaks on the broiler and shoved it into the oven. “Christmas before last, as a matter of fact.”

“Why did you stop seeing him?” he asked, ignoring the rush of possessive jealousy. He’d only met her in August, for God’s sake. She put frozen vegetables into a bowl and added butter before she put them in the microwave and turned it on.

“Lots of reasons,” she replied, leaning back against the counter and folding her arms. “There was the woman he got pregnant in Arizona, and the fact that he was never around when I needed him anyway because he was a rodeo cowboy. Oh, and did I mention he dumped me on Christmas Eve because I’m frigid?” She was clearly blocking out a lot of pain with the bland recital, and he felt the jealousy rise again and morph into fury. Some men were just pricks, that’s all there was to it, and one of them had hurt Erica.

“Of course,” he agreed just as blandly. “Frigid women have multiple orgasms all the time. Everybody knows that.” He waited a couple of minutes for her to laugh, then walked the few feet to where she was standing and pulled her into his arms when she just continued to look tense. “I’m sorry he hurt you,” he murmured gently, “but I can personally attest that you are definitely not frigid. And I’ll have the scars to prove it.” Finally, she giggled into his chest, then looked up at him with those enormous liquid eyes that made his bones go a little soft.

“I’m really sorry about that,” she said. “I don’t know why I did that. I just, well, I’ve never . . . it’s never been . . . like that before.”

“It’s okay, you can use four-letter words with me. I’ve heard them before,” he told her. “I’ve never fucked like that before, either. It’s been good, but never mind-blowing like it was with you.”

She smiled up at him, looking relieved and . . . almost like she was about to start crying. Then the microwave let out a prolonged beep. She pushed away from him and picked up a large two-tined fork.

“How do you like your steak?” she asked as she opened the oven door. “Rare?”

“A little on the rare side of medium,” he responded. “I don’t have to prove how macho I am by eating raw meat.” That made her laugh again as she sprinkled spices onto the meat and he savored the sound. He hadn’t heard her laugh nearly enough in the months since he’d met her on the first day of school.

She shoved the broiler back into the oven, then pulled open a drawer and handed him a corkscrew. “I put the wine in the freezer to chill a little,” she said, then opened one of the overhead cupboards and took out plates. The oversized tunic she was wearing rode up as she reached, showing a decadent amount of thigh and some hip through the side slit. He took a moment to enjoy the view before opening the freezer and pulling out a bottle of . . . good grief. It was a Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, worth over a hundred dollars.

“Are you sure you want to drink this now?” he asked. Erica looked up from setting the table.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Is it really bad?”

“No, it’s really good,” he responded. “Really, really good.” He looked at the bottle again. “Like save-until-you-pay-off-the-farm good.”

She raked a hand through her hair and regarded him somberly. “I can’t think of a single person I’d rather share it with, in that case,” she said. “Go ahead. I don’t know anything about wine, anyway. Maybe you can teach me.”

He busied himself with the corkscrew as he answered. “There’s not that much to know. You just taste a bunch of stuff until you figure out what you like, then get that, if you can afford it.” He pulled out the cork and set it on the counter, then carried the bottle out to the table as she went back to the kitchen to put the steaks on a platter and pull the vegetables out of the microwave.

It had been a long time since he’d eaten dinner alone with a woman. He’d never eaten dinner alone with a woman in a bathrobe just after he’d had incredible sex with her; he wasn’t sure how to act. That usually meant it was better to be himself than to put on a face.

Most white people couldn’t see through the faces, but the friends he’d eventually made in the pueblo had laughed at him when he’d retreated behind culturally appropriate masks. And Erica had already seen him at his worst, anyway.

He poured wine into the two stems just as she brought the food out, carrying the platter over her shoulder and the bowl in her other hand.

“How long did you work as a waitress?” he asked as she slid them both expertly onto the table.

“Five years, starting as a high school senior and all the way through college,” she said. “Very perceptive, Mr. Hilliard.”

“Thank you, Ms. Johnson,” he replied politely as he pulled out a chair for her. She sat primly, like a lady, but the effect was spoiled a little by the way the tunic gapped over her legs again. The memory of the feel of her body underneath him tried to take over his mind for a moment, and he put it aside to enjoy later, when he was alone, sliding into the other chair as she put the larger steak on his plate.

They talked as they ate, trading childhood stories and discussing problem students, and Erica laughed more. It was a perfect meal. When they finished, he helped her carry the dishes into the kitchen before they ended up in the living room with the last of the wine, talking more. Finally, she leaned forward and fixed him with a sharp gaze.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” she asked, and he felt all the relaxation vanish as he nodded. She was going to ask about the arrest record that he’d made her read after Atchison had sent it from Ohio. “How did you get that hair past the hiring committee?”

The relief was like a drug. “You mean after the prison record and the lack of recent teaching experience?” he countered. “I told them I was growing it for a charity.”

She sat back. “What?” she asked, obviously lost.

“It’s true, too,” he explained. “I found out about it when I was in prison. It’s called Locks of Love. They take donated human hair and make wigs for children in chemotherapy or suffering from alopecia. Hair has to be at least 13 inches long and not dyed or permed.”

He stared into his wine glass for a moment, then finished. “I thought it was a great idea. I was stuck inside for at least another year before I could get out on parole, and growing hair was something I’d be doing anyway, so I stopped getting it cut off. By the time I got out my whole cell block was into it, even the skinheads were asking if they’d take beard hair if it was long enough.”

“That’s amazing,” she commented.

“I think it’s what made them decide to hire me,” he confessed. “I mean, anybody who can convince a hundred hardened cons to go in together on a project for juvenile chemo patients can’t be all bad, right? A great motivator of people.”

“I see,” she said and took another gulp of the wine. She was starting to slur her words just a little, which meant she wasn’t used to drinking, and he probably had a sixty more pounds of mass to absorb the alcohol than she did. At least she’d be able to sleep.

“It’s almost ready to harvest,” he commented, pulling some of it over his shoulder and frowning speculatively. “Thank God. About the only way I can stand it is if I can keep the front part out of my face. I had to get somebody in the pueblo to teach me how to braid it.”

“That explains the beads and feathers,” she said in a languid voice that made him look at her again. She looked like she was about to nod off on the sofa and spill the wine on the beige carpeting. Not that cabernet red wouldn’t be an improvement on beige carpet, but Erica needed to get to sleep. That meant he couldn’t put it off any longer.

“Look, just tell me where you put my clothes and I’ll go,” he tried. He sounded nice and reasonable. “You’re okay, Tanner’s under arrest, and everything’s going to be fine.”

Erica came back too life.

“You’re not leaving,” she said. Stubborn woman. He liked that.

“We’ve had this conversation already, Erica. You need to get some sleep.” She smiled, a cat-full-of-canary smile, and stood up.

“You’re right. We have had this conversation. You lost.” She took his wineglass from him and set both of them on the coffee table. “I can clean up in the morning. Let’s go to bed.”

He stood, too. “I told you –” he tried one last time, fighting her stubbornness and his own desire, and she cut him off.

“It’s late, and I’ve had a very long, very weird day. Come on.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him back into the bedroom, turning out lights as she went. He stood there staring at the bed in the darkness as she pulled the tunic off over her head and climbed into it, naked. After a couple of moments, he untied the robe and left it on the floor as well, sliding into the cool sheets beside her as he told himself he wasn’t going to touch her again. He turned his back to her and tried to get comfortable; the scratches protested just a little.

“Ward?” she said quietly. It was nice, how she never called him Eddie. Eddie Hilliard was somebody else, a bad memory, and Erica seemed to understand that.

He turned over to try to look at her in the darkness. “What is it?” he asked.

“Happy Valentine’s Day.” She moved; he felt her hand on his cheek. “And thank you for everything.” It felt like she was holding something back, trying not to say it. He had a strange feeling he knew what it was, but she was right; it was way too soon. He pulled her into his arms and settled her there, determined that she would feel safe at least for one night, and to Hell with not touching her again.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Erica,” he breathed into her hair. “And you’re entirely welcome.”I love you, too. He closed his eyes and felt it, the peace and absolute contentment he’d only caught glimpses of in the desert. This time, though, it flooded his entire being and settled in like it was going to stay for a while. No man could ask for any more than that.