Mercy

I’m happy to share.

But no, that wasn’t what happened. Dr. Rob looked over the x-rays and assured me it was only an acute sprain. He was so kind and businesslike, and seemed so trustworthy, I almost asked him for help with my other burgeoning aches and pains. But in the end I stayed silent and just nodded my head and accepted his instructions for resting and healing my leg. He taped up my ankle and gave me some medicine, which Matthew handed back to him.

“This is too powerful,” he said. “She’s too little for this.” The doctor nodded and handed Matthew a weaker prescription, and told him if I had too much pain, to call him back.

“She handles pain pretty well,” he said with a perfectly straight face. I just looked at my feet, flushing hot, and wished he would hold me close again.

After that, he took me back to my apartment. He let me limp for a while, then picked me up.

He carried me up all the stairs, and I thought to myself that there was no elevator. He thought it too, and said I would come and stay at his house. He said it just like that, that I would, not Would you like to? or If you want...

“Just for a while, until your ankle is better. Rob said if you rested well, you’ll be mobile again in a week.”

He’d also told me no dancing for at least two weeks, and then only a limited amount. I felt my entire career slipping away, and my entire life.

I sat and let Matthew pack my things for me, and we left shortly afterward for his place. On the way over, he held my hand and reassured me.

“I just want you to have a safe place to heal. I have no expectations from you.” He was quiet a moment. “Not that I haven’t missed you, Lucy. I’ve missed you a lot.”

“I’ve missed you, too.” I thought he might ask me then why I’d gone away from him. Or maybe he knew. Knew that it was, between us, an issue of truth. Now he was taking me to stay at his house, but not to play. Did I want to play? Oh, God, yes I did. I wanted him to want me, to take me, even broken as I was. But I just said, “Thanks for that doctor, he was really nice.”

“An old college friend. Someone I trust. I think dancers need good doctors for all that wear and tear.”

Oh, you don’t even know, I thought.

Then he asked me point blank, “Are you dancing with pain, Lucy? Every night?” Of course he knew. He knew my body inside and out. I played dumb. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve just noticed at the shows that your dancing is changing.”

“How often are you coming to the shows?”

“Enough to notice a difference. And I’m more than a little worried about you.”

“My dancing looks that bad?”

“To the average person, I’m sure you look fine. I probably study your body more carefully than the average person might.”

It kind of felt good to know that, that he’d missed me so much he’d sat out in the audience to watch me. “I’m fine, Matthew,” I said with fake conviction.

“Tell me the truth please, so I can help you.” Help me how? I wanted to ask. Maybe money truly could buy everything. Maybe he could buy my youth and my body back. If anyone could do it, it was him. “What are your plans for when you’re finished dancing?” He discussed it so easily, the end of my career. I chose sarcasm, because otherwise I’d have burst into tears. “Plans? What are these ‘plans’ you speak of?”

“I’m serious, Lucy. What will you do when you’re finished?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it makes me depressed.”

“It’s something you’re going to have to face eventually.”

“You don’t understand. You don’t know what this feels like. When I have to stop dancing, it’s all over for me!”

“All over? Lucy, how long have you been dancing? Twenty-five years? There’s more to life.

You’re what? Not even thirty years old. And you’re smart and you’re strong and you’re beautiful. I think you should start to make some plans.”

“I don’t want to make plans. Anyway, why do you care?”

“I care, Lucy. You know that I do.”

This is how I spoke to him, the man I loved, the man I was certain loved me, who had roused an old college friend out of bed at ten o’clock at night just to take care of my ankle.

“I’m so sorry, Matthew. I’m so sorry.” I started to weep. I was still weeping when we pulled up to his house, and still weeping as he helped me in the shower, and still weeping when he put one of his soft, luxurious shirts on me to sleep in.

He set me up in a first floor guest room with the help of Mrs. Kemp. She clucked around me with exhalations of Poor dear! and Poor thing! I remembered with a pang of embarrassment how I was the last time she’d seen me, on my knees in the hallway, sucking off Matthew while he told her to burn my dress. Poor thing indeed. Of course that’s how she saw me. And here I was in his house again, as broken as I ever was. When Mrs. Kemp felt I was comfortable enough, she finally left us alone, and I thought, please, please, please. But he seemed reluctant to come anywhere near me. He gave me a chaste kiss on the forehead and a squeeze on my arm. I cried alone long into the night. He was so near and yet so far from me. Why had I left him? It was clear now he wouldn’t be taking me back.

In the morning Mrs. Kemp brought me breakfast, and I didn’t see Matthew at all that day, or for three days after. He’d had a business trip to take. He came to see me when he arrived home on the third day, looking like a million bucks in his power suit and tie. If I could have, I would have crawled to him on my hands and knees and begged for sex. He took off his jacket and tie and loosened his collar, then sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked my calf.

“Have you been resting, Lucy?”

Please fuck me, Matthew. “Yes. I stayed in bed all day.”

“Mrs. Kemp has been helping you out?” His voice was ridiculously tender.

“Yes, she’s been wonderful.” Please, please, please, please.

“Is there anything I can get for you?

Yes, Matthew, you can get me some of those nipple clamps. Get that lube that makes me burn and use it to ease your cock into my ass. You can even get the cane for me if you want.

“I’m fine. Really, I am. My ankle’s almost better.”

“Did you have dinner yet? Will you come and have dinner with me?” He said it slowly, as if he wished he wasn’t saying it.

“Of course. Yes, Matthew,” I said before he could take it back.

We ate that night at his formal table, dined on lamb and asparagus and really good wine. We ate by candlelight, which felt really romantic, but he steered our conversation to practical things.

I told him that Grégoire had been by to visit me, that other dancers were filling in for me for at least two weeks. He told me his orthopedist friend Dr. Rob would want to see me next Monday, and that he would come to the house. He asked me how the painkillers were working, and I told him they worked great and I barely needed them any more. I actually didn’t really need them at all for my ankle, but I kept taking them because they helped so much with all my other pains. I didn’t tell him that though. I didn’t want to discuss again my soon-to-be-over career and lack of plans, especially with someone as successful and confident as Matthew. I know he would have given me anything, any money or help I needed. He would have bought me a house, a car, whatever I desired. But I didn’t want him to think that was why I loved him, the way his wife and last girlfriend had loved him, only for the things his money bought.

I looked up at him constantly from under my lashes, and again and again our needful eyes met. I wondered what would have to happen for him to take me back, to have things be as they were. I still had to be with him, even if he was determined not to love me. I knew that now, that I had to be with him either way. But I didn’t know how to broach that conversation especially when it seemed it was a subject he wanted to avoid.

So instead I said, “You were right.

Byron and Frank came to see me. To ask me to be with them.”

“I know,” he said, his face hard.

“How did you know?”

“Kevin told me.”

“Oh.” Of course, Kevin had been there. Where? Somewhere. Close enough to help, close enough to stop me if I had made the wrong choice. “Was he there every night?”

“Yes. Some nights I was there.”

“I never saw him, or you.”

“You weren’t supposed to.”

He only had to look at me to see how much I wanted him, to see the desire in my eyes. If he had looked at me then, I couldn’t have stopped myself. I would have pushed back my chair and knelt before him and laid my head in his lap like the most abject supplicant.

“I would never have gone with them, Matthew.”

“No, you wouldn’t. It wouldn’t have been a good situation for you.”

“What would be a good situation for me?”

His lips turned down a little at the edges and he chose not to reply. We finished our meal in tense and miserable silence.

If he still loved me, he was really hiding it well.

Chapter Twelve: Pain

That night in bed, I let the tears come. If he wanted space between us, there would be space.