Page 21 of It’s Me They Follow
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T he twelve wounded writers moped their way from the classroom to the elevator.
They were breaking up. The Shopkeeper was the first to go.
As usual, she walked everyone to the elevator but refused to ride with the others; instead, she waved goodbye and took the stairs.
On the ride down, under the murmur of useless conversation, Rose invited Lil Charlie to her home for tea.
“Mint, lavender, Earl Grey, rose hip...” They both laughed.
He hesitated to say yes, but when they were about to go their separate ways for good, he decided that “tea would be nice.”
Lil Charlie looked around at her books as she boiled water in the kitchen.
Opened a copy of Under a Soprano Sky and asked her about it.
“I got that from a book talk in the eighties. That thing is probably older than you.” He put it back.
He pulled a copy of Love Poems . Big Charlie had gotten it for her.
Inside, Sonia Sanchez had inscribed a note, but he couldn’t read it.
It wasn’t meant for him. He put that one back as well.
While Rose was shuffling back and forth between the kitchen and the parlor, getting him a napkin and then a bigger spoon and then more rose hip tea, she couldn’t help but notice Lil Charlie’s resemblance to the army portrait of Big Charlie that hung on the wall behind him.
“Oh, stop it,” she said to the photo, as if it were jealous.
This was her and Big Charlie’s book room, two desks facing opposite sides and a velvet love seat under a bay window between them.
It was a parlor they’d converted to a study.
They’d hung every shelf and painted it together.
She and Big Charlie had spent most of their time here and mostly studied each other.
“I want to sit...” She was happy for company, especially someone from the writers’ group who wouldn’t ask her how she was holding up.
“But I’m...” Her dress wore the day. The rose in her hair hung limp.
“I need a shower... and a different”—she pointed at herself—“dress.” Plus, she’d never sat in the study with anyone besides Big Charlie before.
A shower sounds nice , Lil Charlie thought.
“I’ll make it quick.” She disappeared up the stairs.
Lil Charlie liked the way she walked around her home, barefoot and free. Different from her prim and proper perfection in class. Here, she was loose and airy.
He sat on Big Charlie’s side of the room in Big Charlie’s chair.
It was way too big and uncomfortable. He got up.
He needed his own chair. He took the love seat for now.
Pulled his notebook out of his book bag to sketch Rose when she came back, but he couldn’t find a pen.
He checked the top drawer of Rose’s desk and found a barrage of photos.
He could see his resemblance to her late husband: similar height, similar build, similar weight.
Big Charlie was much younger in the photos; Rose had been much younger then too.
Her smile wide as her hips. She wore high heels and looked light on her toes.
He put the photos back and continued looking around until he found a pen.
He started sketching the photo of the happy couple, starting with the lines of Big Charlie’s fingers on Rose’s waist. He wasn’t trying to take Big Charlie’s place, he explained to Big Charlie’s photo on the wall.
He wanted his own place. He promised himself no more seasoned women after the incident with The Good Doctor.
He hadn’t planned on getting this close to Rose.
She was delicate and kept it all together, even when she did not—she lived in this big house alone.
She was a woman worth worshipping. She wrote love letters; he wrote haikus.
He felt drawn to her. It was probably how Big Charlie had felt too.
He looked around at the happy couple’s life and wondered how he could ever fill such massive shoes.
“Charlie,” Rose called from upstairs.
“Yes, Rose?” He thought she’d caught him snooping.
“I’m not trying to be...” The ending trailed off. “But can you come a min—”
Charlie did not hesitate. “Coming,” he said on his way up the stairs.
He felt comfortable in the twists and turns of the old Victorian twin.
... He had been raised by his grandmother in a house just like it.
He liked that Rose needed him for something.
“What did you need?” He was secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of her outline through the shower curtain.
“I’m not feeling well,” she said from her bedroom. She was frail when he walked in. She had on just a towel; she’d left the shower running. Her skin was moist, the room steamy. “I’m hot.” She shivered. “And cold.” She asked him to close the door, turn off the water, and come in.
She needed body heat. Big Charlie had done it whenever she’d felt sick.
Cradled her like a bear. But she couldn’t expect Lil Charlie to get into her bed that way.
Especially with everyone around them getting sick.
She wanted Big Charlie, but she wanted Lil Charlie too—he was here; Big Charlie had left her.
“Please help me, Charlie,” she pleaded. She needed a blanket and to be made warm, but she also needed to be needed. She wanted big hands on her waist and warmth on her neck.
“Feel my chest,” she said.
“Burning up,” he joked, but she was indeed burning up.
“I’ll rub some salve on your neck.” She let the towel slip.
She trusted he’d be gentle—anyone who writes haikus has a soft way with their hands.
Her skin was like dough, warm and pliable.
She felt familiar to him, like he already knew her.
After the salve soaked into her back, Lil Charlie put blanket after blanket on top of Rose, tucked her in tight.
This wasn’t how he imagined things unfolding. He didn’t want to be her other Charlie.
He went downstairs to make her more tea.
The portrait of Big Charlie stared at him as he passed the library.
“I’ll take good care of her,” he pledged.
He wouldn’t hurt her, he promised. He wondered if his classmates would say he’d taken advantage of a sweet wealthy old lady.
Or would they say she took advantage of him, a sweet young hippie?
He was young enough to be her son. He was the less fortunate one.
He returned with her tea, helped her take a few sips, and then sat by her bed reading passages from Conversations with Harri ett until she fell asleep.
“‘You hear those whispers? Those are the ancient voices. Speaking prophesy in our third eye. We’re moving mountains with our tongues.’” He read to her, but assumed she dreamed of Big Charlie, and the thought made his stomach turn for all three of them.
“Lie with me.” Her voice quivered as she drifted in and out of sleep. “Charlie.” She reached for him. “Please.” He kissed her icy hand and tucked it back beneath the blankets. He wasn’t ready.
“How about I sketch you?” he rebutted, running to get his notebook and more tea. He drew her closed eyes, her thick brows, her long lashes. She slept for a few minutes but woke up begging.
“Charlie, please.” He didn’t know if she was calling out for him or the Charlie in her dreams. He kept sketching the bridge of her nose, the plump of her cheeks, the fullness of her lips.
“You thinking of him?” she asked lucidly, not opening her eyes.
“Thinking of a lot of things.” He rubbed her feet through the blankets and then kept drawing. She was withering, and he wanted to care for her the way she cared for everyone else—partly out of desire, partly out of obligation, partly because he couldn’t think of anything else he’d rather do.
“I need it...” she insisted. “Maybe you need it too.”
“I do, Rose...” He felt he was betraying Big Charlie, even though they’d never met.
He was betraying himself with another man’s wife.
He was making more secrets. What if Big Charlie wanted them together?
What if he was orchestrating all this from behind the scenes?
He couldn’t blame Big Charlie for wanting someone to care for Rose.
She wasn’t asking for much, he rationalized—just a warm body next to hers.
But she was asking much too fast. He’d promised himself that his time with The Good Doctor was the last time he’d play the third wheel, and then he shook the random thought out of his head.
He got up to leave but caught a glimpse of Rose staring at him through the mirror.
They made eye contact like that day in class and stayed that way for almost an entire minute.
He was who he was. She was who she was. Their bodies longed for each other.
And in that moment, they both accepted it.
“I’ll shower,” he agreed. He stayed in the bathroom far too long, playing in Big Charlie’s soaps, aftershaves, and colognes.
All the scents made him think of his first time with The Good Doctor, how she’d been so bold and worn men’s cologne.
She’d taken off her uniform and been comfortable telling stories with him rubbing her feet.
They’d promised to stop after the first time.
How much she had been risking being so intimate with her student.
Getting caught in front of her son. Not to mention the damage it had done when she’d told him no more and stopped speaking to him in class.
Before they could make amends, she had died.
He would never tell Rose, he thought. Some memories are best kept as secrets.
He smelled like her husband when he slipped into bed behind her.
He’s not Big Charlie , Rose reminded herself as he put his oversized arm around her silky waist and tucked his hand beneath her.
It was what Big Charlie would have done.
He’s not Big Charlie , she told herself again.
She folded into the familiar. But why would he be here if they were not meant to be?
All desire came from the same place. She stopped fighting it.
Let it be , she thought she heard Big Charlie singing in her ear. Speaking words of wisdom. Let it be.
Lil Charlie held her tight. He stopped her from shivering. “Roses,” she whispered, half asleep. “Remember, I told you the story of how roses unfold?”
She had not. She was mixing him up with Big Charlie, maybe.
“They are there, doing nothing in a garden, when one day, more than any other day, they begin to warm up. And it hurts because they get warmed from the inside out. From the heart.” She took a deep breath in.
“When it hurts to stay in a bud, it feels better to expand. That is the story of how a rose unfolds. Remember?”
“I’m not him,” Lil Charlie reminded her. “I may never warm you the way he did.”
“I know,” she whispered, wiggling her hips against his. “I know who you are. A rose warms itself.”
They nestled together under the weight of warm blankets. He held her until they couldn’t comfortably cuddle any longer. It ached between them, even though she was hot with fever. Her back sweat against his chest.
The copy of The Shopkeeper’s book stared at them from the nightstand beside Rose’s bed. They’d read it together for weeks, but tonight it made sense. “It’s where this started.” Rose dry coughed. “With the...”
“The Shopkeeper,” whispered Lil Charlie into Rose’s ear. “You think she did this to us?” he asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Rose said.
“Like a spell?”
“Like an incantation.”
As the night progressed, The Shopkeeper became someone they knew they could believe in and someone they could both blame. But after what she’d done for them, they committed to helping her the way she’d helped them someday.