Chapter 16

'Berto

After the first three whirlwind days, Roberto found his life with Toni settling into a routine. They got up, they went to work, they came home. They cooked and ate and slept, and they enjoyed each other thoroughly. Over the course of the first week he moved almost everything from the apartment to the house – books, clothes, music, his sound system. The only thing he left behind was the alcohol – beer in the fridge, bottles of whisky and vodka and tequila scattered wherever he'd left them, some opened and some not. He'd thought about throwing it all out, but had decided not to. If they were still there when his lease ran out, he just might leave them for the management. The furniture was rented month-to-month, and he had the place he'd gotten it from pick it back up – he didn't need it anymore.

Yes, things were routine now. He and Toni had learned each other's major habits, how they liked to sleep, how they liked their coffee or their eggs. There was now an established "his side" and "her side" of the bed, though he had realized almost immediately that his side had never been her territory – though he had no idea why that was so. There was a "his end" and a "her end" of the sofa. They were comfortable around each other, ready to spend an evening reading – for both had resumed that habit – or talking or just sitting together. They especially liked to sit at opposite ends of the sofa, stretching their legs out, and twining around each other until neither could be sure which leg or foot was whose.

Toni

Toni had kept her discovery to herself. It would serve no purpose to tell 'Berto she loved him. He was young, and life was ahead of him, and she wasn't going to tie him to her. If he chose to stay, that would be her greatest joy, but she wouldn't bind him if he eventually wanted to leave. She'd bear the pain if she had to, rather than lay a burden on his shoulders. Besides, she didn't have a right to love him, much less to imply, by professing her love, that he ought to love her back. She was a wicked, fallen, ruined woman, who had forfeited any rights to lasting happiness. She'd turned her back on God, on morality, and she wasn't going to pretend that she was anything but the lowest thing on earth. And she wasn't going to inflict that on 'Berto either.

'Berto

Roberto, on the other hand, found himself bouncing back and forth between turmoil and the greatest happiness he'd ever known. He'd look at Toni and feel his heart leap within him, and his guts clench in a spasm of ... of what? That was what caused the turmoil. He knew that he felt something for Toni, but he had no idea what to call it. He found himself chewing on the question day after day. He'd catch himself at work thinking of what his relationship with Toni was, rather than the pallet he had on the forks. He found himself walking every day, spending the two hours between the time he got home and the time Toni returned thrashing things out in his head. And day after day nothing came clear; it was all as muddled as ever.

And so they came to the day when Toni had promised to tell Roberto her age.

Toni

'Berto was already up, Toni realized, when she woke. It was Sunday, and she'd expected they'd both sleep in – but it was only their third Sunday together, and that first one 'Berto had been still recovering from drink. He'd not been drunk that Saturday when she met him, but he had been drinking before he arrived at her house, and perhaps it had caused him to sleep later the following morning. Whatever the cause, he was up – though when she felt his side of the bed, it seemed just slightly warm.

Toni slipped out of bed and padded out into the living room, and found 'Berto there with some toast and a book. He'd put butter and jelly on the toast – grape, it looked like. It was one of the areas where they weren't compatible, their taste in jelly. Toni couldn't stand grape, while 'Berto loved it.

She bent over him from behind and kissed the top of his head. "What are you reading, 'Berto?" she asked.

"A Question of Blood, still."

"You like your Rebus mysteries, don't you?"

"You know it, palomita morena. And you love your romances and your literary stuff."

"I do indeed. I'll take a good romance, or a Hemingway novel, or Of Human Bondage or Pride and Prejudice, over anything you like."

"Hemingway's not bad," he told her. "But you're the only woman I've ever met who liked him."

She shrugged. "I'm the only one woman who ever was me."

"And that's a good thing, Toni – more than one of you would be too much of a wonderful thing, like putting sugar on See's candy."

"Speaking of which..." She trailed off, and went into the kitchen. She had a little hidey hole where she periodically stashed a little bit of money. She'd found it accidentally one day while cleaning out the cabinets – a place where the drywall at the back of the cabinet was broken and she could set things on the beam, or cross member, or whatever the name was, that ran behind it at that point. The broken drywall hung on its paper facing, and she caught it with her fingernails and pulled. She stuck her other hand into the hole, feeling in the semi-darkness for what she'd put there beside the little box – it had originally contained checks – where she stored her "secret savings." Even 'Berto didn't know about the money there, though she'd tell him eventually; if anything happened to her, it would be his.

She pulled out the thing she'd stashed there, and went back into the living room. "It's our two week anniversary, 'Berto," she said. "Actually that was yesterday, but I've decided to count from Sunday, since we really didn't commit ourselves to each other until then." And she handed him what she held in her hand.

He looked at it, and then up at her, a smile on his face and – she would swear – tears in his eyes. "Thank you, Toni. This is perfect." It was a little box of See's chocolates.

"There's another thing I want to give you," Toni said as she sat on the coffee table, tucking her nightgown around her. "I promised you that today I'd tell you how old I am if you still wanted to know."

"That's right, you did." He set the box of candy down on the sofa beside him and leaned forward. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, and she placed her palms on his hands and returned it passionately. "But you don't have to if you don't want to."

"No, I want to. I originally stipulated two weeks because I wanted to tease you, but I've been forcing myself for a week to stick to that schedule."