Chapter Text
Sunday, May 29, 1983 – 8:58 p.m.
Stairwell, descending from the rooftop – A different kind of gravity
They slip out without a word.
The stairwell is cooler, shadowed, steeped in the silence of a building caught between night and summer. The air still carries smoke from the grill, the faintest smell of citronella from one of Muriel’s vigilantly placed bug-repellent candles.
Christine goes first.
Mary Beth follows, one hand lightly grazing the rail, the other brushing the back of Christine’s shirt once, twice, before falling to her side again. The echo of their footsteps is the only sound.
They make it to the fifth-floor landing before either speaks.
Christine pauses on the top step, turns to face her.
Mary Beth is one step above her, so they’re eye to eye. The candlelight from above casts a soft glow down the wall, just enough to make her curls shimmer and her pupils dilate.
Christine’s voice is low. “I don’t want to push.”
Mary Beth leans in, close but not touching. “You’re not.”
“I’ve been good,” Christine says, smiling faintly, “but I’m very drunk, and I’m starting to fantasize about the locked laundry room.”
Mary Beth huffs a laugh. “We’ve done stairwells. We’re not doing a utility closet.”
Christine’s hand finds her waist, warm and steady. “Then let me in.”
Mary Beth’s smile softens, her breath catching. “In the apartment?”
Christine leans closer. “Where else?”
Mary Beth hesitates. Her brain is humming with gin and hunger, but she’s not thoughtless.
Harv is still outside. The boys aren’t home yet.
But her bed, her room—it’s hers too. And for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, it can belong to someone who sees her.
She nods.
Christine kisses her—once, quick and sharp.
And they descend the last flight together, not rushing. But definitely not dawdling.
Sunday, May 29, 1983 – 9:02 p.m.
333 86th Street, Apartment 5B – Front door, dim hallway, unlocked worlds
Mary Beth opens the door quietly.
They step inside with care, like a library whisper.
The apartment is quiet—truly quiet for once. The fan hums faintly in the living room, and the windows are cracked just enough to let in the sound of passing cars and the occasional voice on the street. The TV is off. Harv’s beer is still on the kitchen table. The house holds the shape of a family, but no one is home.
Mary Beth closes the door behind them. The lock clicks.
Christine stands just inside, not reaching, not presuming.
Mary Beth steps up behind her and gently tugs the hem of Christine’s shirt. “Come with me.”
She leads her through the short hallway, past the bathroom, past the boys’ closed door. Every step feels amplified—like the floor might remember this later. Like the walls might gossip.
In the bedroom, the bed is made, the comforter smoothed and tucked from this morning’s return to routine. A few folded clothes rest on the dresser. The hamper still holds the shadow of her chip-stashing mission.
Christine looks around, quiet. She’s never been in this room before.
It feels intimate. Domestic. Dangerous.
Mary Beth turns and kisses her. Not hard. Not frantic. Just real.
Christine breathes her in, lets herself be kissed, lets herself be held for a moment before her hands find Mary Beth’s waist and pull her close. She can feel it—how much Mary Beth needs this. How much she does.
“I don’t have long,” Mary Beth murmurs, forehead pressed to hers.
“I know,” Christine says. “But I have you.”
Mary Beth reaches back, pulls the bedroom door shut.
It doesn’t latch all the way, but it closes.
They undress in pieces—Christine’s shirt, Mary Beth’s bra, Christine’s jeans—kisses between each step, not rushed, but with the urgency of borrowed time. Mary Beth pushes her back onto the bed and climbs over her like she owns the air between them.
Christine exhales, wrecked already. “This is going to ruin me.”
Mary Beth kisses her, deep. “Good.”
Christine’s fingers clutch at the comforter as Mary Beth slides down her body, lips and hands everywhere. And Christine keeps whispering her name like a secret, like a spell, like something she doesn’t get to say out loud nearly enough.
It’s fast—but not cheap. It’s needed.
Christine comes with a shudder she tries not to make loud, biting her own wrist as Mary Beth holds her down and kisses her ribs, her hip, her shoulder.
Afterward, Mary Beth lies beside her, one hand over Christine’s heart, counting the beats like they’re numbered.
Christine finally whispers, “I love you.”
Mary Beth answers without hesitation. “I love you more.”
They don’t say anything else for a minute.
Then Mary Beth shifts, pressing one last kiss to her jaw.
“You gotta go.”
Christine nods, and smiles through the ache. “Yeah. But I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Sunday, May 29, 1983 – 9:34 p.m.
Christine’s walk home – Queens dusk, restless heart
She descends the stairs like someone slipping back into a dream they didn’t want to leave.
Outside, the air is cooler than it was, full of grills being scraped and the distant pop of firecrackers someone set off early. The neighborhood is quieter than earlier, but not still. Never still. A car radio blasts The Cars somewhere up the block, “Touch and Go.”
Christine walks fast for the first two blocks. Not because she’s worried, just because her body is wired—still warm from Mary Beth’s skin, still tasting her on her lips, still hearing her voice in that lowest register when she came apart in her own bed.
She gets to the train stop and waits in the hum of the platform lights, surrounded by the ghosts of other riders. It’s late enough for quiet but early enough that the city hasn’t tipped all the way into sleep.
The E train pulls up. She boards. She sits.
And then it hits her. She won’t see her tomorrow. Not at all.
Not in the hallway by the locker room. Not in the car during a stakeout. Not over coffee in the break room where they pretend they’re just colleagues.
She’s used to weekends being hard. But this? A holiday?
Christine exhales, long and low.
She leans her head back against the window, the vibration of the train humming through her spine.
She lets herself think about how Mary Beth looked in the glow of those hurricane candles. About how her voice changed when she told her to come inside. About how it felt to be wanted in that house, even for ten minutes. Even in secret.
And how she left smelling like Mary Beth’s soap.
Christine reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out the pen she keeps there. No index card this time. Just a receipt from the beer store, crumpled but blank on one side.
She scribbles with half-frozen fingers:
You said “I love you” with my name still in your mouth.
If I never get another day like that again—
…I’ll still be the luckiest woman alive.
She folds the scrap and slips it into her wallet.
It’s not enough. But it’s something to carry.
The train rumbles south, toward her loft, toward the solitude that waits.
But tonight, she’s not lonely.
She’s loved.