The kitchen counter took most of his weight when he came in. He set the keys down on it, took his bearings, and started a list.
Leo didn't have many minutes left before the kids were going to be at his front door. Springfield really took a toll on him these past days.
The stairs at the back of the kitchen creaked.
Manjula came down in the white nightgown, with the paperback she had been reading still in one hand, walked three steps into the kitchen, and stopped completely when she saw him.
"Oh — Leo."
He had not yet had a chance to look at himself in a mirror but he could tell from her face that she was seeing more than he had been planning on her seeing. The shirt he had on was the one he had on when hit.
There was a long rip up the right side seam. A second smaller tear sat at the hem on the left. His left pant leg was scuffed from the knee to the ankle in a long pale streak. He was holding most of his weight on his right leg without thinking about it, and he could feel his left knee not wanting to bend the way knees usually bend.
He waved with minimal effort.
"It looks worse than it actually is. I'm okay." He tried to play it off.
"Your shirt — Leo, your shirt is torn. There. And there. And your leg, you are not standing on your—"
"I know."
"What has happened to you. Tell me what has happened to you." She demanded in her Indian accent.
"I will… but I have a client meeting in a few minutes. The second it's over I will tell you everything. I promise. You know the drill. Stay upstairs while they're here. I'm sorry for making you worry."
"Leo —"
"I know. I know. I'm sorry."
"I am asking you a question, Leo, and you are giving me a meeting in return."
"I know."
He stepped in. He let the limp go because his ribs were going to make him pay for what he was about to do anyway, and he wrapped both arms around her and slid both hands down to her ass, one palm on each cheek, cupping the full weight of her over the cotton of the nightgown.
The cheeks under his hands were warm and heavy and soft through the cotton. He could feel the curve of each one fitting into his hand. The flesh spread out around his fingers when he tightened his grip. Her whole sentence stopped in the back of her throat.
"…Leo."
"Yeah."
"That is not —"
He squeezed both cheeks at once, slow and firm, his fingers sinking until she felt it through her whole body. She made a small sound against the front of his shirt that was halfway between a complaint and a laugh and entirely not a sentence.
"I will tell you everything after the meeting. Promise."
"You think you can just —"
He squeezed once more, harder this time, and she gave up the rest of the sentence.
"Fine." She had to clear her throat to get the word out. "Fine, Leo. Then I am cooking a special dish for you after you finish. You will sit at this table afterward and you will eat all of it and you will tell me what has happened. Do you understand."
"I understand."
She tipped her face up.
He brought his right hand up the line of her back to the side of her neck, slid his fingers into the loose black hair at the neck, and kissed her. He kissed her properly. His mouth opened against hers and his tongue went into her mouth on the second pass, slow and sure, and she made a soft sound against his lips and let him in. His left hand stayed on her ass. He squeezed it once more during the kiss just to keep her there. She made the small sound again, deeper this time, and her tongue pushed back against his and her hand came up and rested flat against the front of his torn shirt, careful of the side she had pointed at, and the kiss went another long second before either of them slowed it down.
When he finally pulled back her mouth followed his for a half-inch before she caught herself.
He let out a slow breath against her lips.
She breathed one back.
"After the meeting," she said quietly.
"After the meeting."
She stepped back.
She picked the paperback back up off the counter and went up the stairs without saying anything else.
After she left, he took a fast shower.
…
The doorbell went off while he was finishing getting dressed. He hurried his way to the door.
He opened up.
Bart and Lisa were on the porch alone. No Marge between them.
Bart opened his mouth first.
"Hey, Le — whoa." Leo realized that this was actually his first seeing inside his house.
Bart was past him into the entry before the greeting had even finished, head swinging around the entrance hallway with his mouth wide open amazement.
Lisa came in behind him with the small automatic apologetic look she did on her brother's behalf, her bag over her shoulder, her flashcards once again in hand.
"Hi, Mr. Leo. Mom said she'll come over once she's done with Maggie. There was a… situation. With a diaper."
"It's all good." He told her.
Bart had stopped halfway across the hallway. He had locked onto the katana mounted on the wall above a bookshelf. The previous owner had left it there when he sold the house.
"Whoa. Is that a real sword?"
"I would hope so."
'Otherwise what's the point of putting it on display?' Leo questioned.
"Can I —"
"No."
Bart was already up on the second shelf of the bookshelf, one foot wedged on a row of paperbacks, his other hand braced on the wall beside the lower mount. It seemed like "no" was not in his vocabulary.
'Why am I not surprised.' Leo shook his head. He didn't try to stop him.
"I'm just lookin'!"
Bart's hand closed around the handle of the katana. He pulled.
The sword did not move.
Leo started laughing.
He laughed leaning in the doorway with one hand braced on the frame because his ribs did not want him doing it, the other one pressed to his side. Bart turned his head on the bookshelf to stare at him.
"Why are you laughing."
"No reason."
"Stop laughing."
He did not stop.
Bart turned back to the sword and pulled harder. Still nothing.
"Why won't it —" he pulled harder. "It's stuck or something —"
He braced his foot harder against the bookshelf and pulled with both hands. His face went red with the effort. The sword did not move.
"Almost — got it —"
"You are going to pull the bookshelf over before you pull that sword out of the wall."
"One — more —"
The sword still did not move.
Bart finally let go and dropped back to the floor.
"Probably bolted in or something."
Bart's mind went to his dad's garage. Homer had that big socket wrench thing in the garage. He also had the crowbar that lived next to the lawn mower, the one he probably used once ever. And the WD-40 on the shelf above the workbench. If Bart could just sneak back into Mr. Leo's house later, when nobody was looking, he could spray the wall behind the mount, work the crowbar in under the lower bracket, and pop the whole thing off in one piece. He could carry the sword home under his shirt. Mr. Leo would never know. Or he would know. But Bart would have the sword.
"Probably you're just weak." Leo's voice came from the doorway.
Bart quickly got defensive.
"I am not weak."
"Seems like you struggled a lot."
"It's bolted in."
"It is not bolted in."
"Then how come it didn't —"
"Because you're weak."
"I am extremely strong." He looks for reinforcement. "Lisa. Tell him."
"I am not getting involved in this."
"Lisa."
Leo was already heading toward the kitchen.
"Kitchen. Come on, children. We're doing fractions."
Bart looked down at his right arm. He pulled his sleeve up to the shoulder and flexed. It wasn't that impressive. He turned his arm at a slightly different angle and tried again. Same result. He flexed both arms together and held the pose for two seconds before letting it drop.
'Maybe I should work out. Just a little. Maybe Leo has a gym in this huge house I can't steal too.'
But then he shook his head. He muttered "I am not weak" all the way to the kitchen and slid into the chair without making eye contact.
The two of them came through. The kitchen table was empty. Bart slid into a chair muttering something about how he could too pull a sword off a wall if he wanted to.
Lisa took the seat across from Leo, opened her flashcards, looked up at him for a second longer than was casual, and then looked back down at her notebook.
"Are you okay today, Mr. Leo?"
It seemed like Lisa was very observant and noticed something was wrong with Leo's walk.
She did not look up while she asked it. 'Am I being too nosey?'
Leo answered before she continued to overthink.
"Work accident when I was visiting the nuclear plant this morning."
"Oh."
"You went there for take-your-child-to-work day, right?"
"Yeah."
"So you shouldn't be surprised."
She let out a small dry breath that was almost a laugh.
"No, you're right. I'm not really surprised if that's what it was. Especially with how bad everything there is."
"It's worse than you remember."
"I don't doubt it."
She was already opening her notebook to her variance practice from Tuesday before he had finished the sentence.
He moved through Bart's session.
…
It still took him close to twenty five minutes before he finished with him.
"Go." He finally told Bart.
"Wait, can I see the sword on the way out?"
"No."
"One more pull."
"Fine. It's not like you're strong enough to pull it out."
'Why was bullying a little kid so much fun?' Leo was amused.
"Hmph, I bet I can get it now that I'm warmed up."
He ran out.
Lisa slid into the seat without waiting for permission, flashcards lined up, her review already partially in front of her.
She worked.
The session ran. She moved through her flashcards. He gave her small follow-ups between cards. He let her do most of the talking. He was still in pain.
…
Somewhere into her second-to-last review problem the doorbell went off again.
Lisa looked up.
"That must be my mom."
Leo stood. His ribs let him know about the stand. He went anyway.
He opened the door.
Marge was on the porch in the strapless green dress with Maggie balanced on her hip and a small folded portable crib tucked under her other arm. The dress was doing what the dress always did. Leo could never get tired of the sight.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"Sorry, sorry — Maggie was a whole thing — and Homer probably is going to stop by at Moe's before coming home, I didn't want to leave her with Bart, and I didn't have anywhere else to put her, so I — I hope you don't mind, I brought the travel crib —"
Leo's whole body had shivered with the mention of Moe's. He did his best to shrug it off.
"Don't you worry. Come in."
"Are you sure? I don't want her to be —"
"Marge. It's fine."
She came in.
"Where can I —"
"Room off the kitchen, the small one with the chair in it. There's space."
She walked through. He followed her with the folded crib tucked under his own arm and stayed in the doorway while she set up. She was practiced at it. The crib unfolded in two motions. Maggie went in. A thin blanket came up to her chest.
Maggie did not close her eyes.
In the crib she took in her surroundings, slowly, around the small room. She looked at the chair. She looked at the lamp. She looked at the corner of the curtain. She looked at the door. She looked at her mother. She looked at Leo.
"She's a very observant baby."
Marge looked over at him.
"She really is. She doesn't really cry, she just kind of… watches. Homer says it's spooky. I think it's nice."
"Smart eyes."
"Mm-hmm. She's been like that since she was born."
She bent down over the crib and tucked the blanket a little higher on Maggie's chest, and the sentence came out softer, almost to the baby, almost to herself.
"You stay right here for Mommy, okay? I'll be back so soon. Just a little nap for Mommy's little watcher. Mommy is going to be busy."
She straightened up, smoothed the front of the dress, and stepped past him out of the doorway. He pulled the door of the small room mostly closed behind her, leaving it cracked an inch the way Marge would have wanted it cracked, and followed her back into the kitchen.
She caught him watching her on the way through. No comment was made.
Lisa was already finishing the last problem on her sheet, the second-to-last problem visibly checked off, the pencil moving across the final answer.
"Hey, Mom."
"Hey, sweetie. How'd it go."
"Mr. Leo says I'm getting better at variance. And I'm beginning to understand standard deviation"
"I don't know what that is, but good."
Lisa set the pencil down. She zipped her bag. She paused at the table with one hand on the strap and looked between her mother and Leo.
"Mr. Leo, is Mom carpooling with you to where you guys work?"
He looked at her, then at Marge, then back at her.
"Yeah. We can save some gas."
"How far is the workplace?"
He had not lined this one up.
"Hmmm. About twenty-five minutes outside town. We have a little office space. But we might do some paperwork here for a little bit before going."
Marge's right hand came up to the front of the green dress and smoothed it once. Then again. Her left hand went to the silver earring she had not been wearing on Tuesday and turned it a quarter rotation.
"Twenty-five minutes," Lisa repeated.
"Give or take. Which makes carpooling a better option. You believe in global warming, right?"
She looked up.
"…I do. Everyone should."
"Yeah. Same. Everyone here is young. I want to be able to live."
She nodded a little, pleased with the answer.
Leo thought about the increasing temperatures. The pain made it so his side thoughts come out more easily.
"Probably need some astrophage at this point."
"…Some what?"
"Sorry. Own thoughts. Project Hail Mary. I read it recently. They're basically little space organisms that eat the energy off the sun's surface."
"I haven't read it."
"It was fun. You like reading, don't you? You should try it. Movie comes out soon. It's good to do things beside just studying."
'Maybe I can take your mom on a date to go see it.' Leo laughed. Then continued to think.
He had not been on a date in a movie theater in a while. He had gone on a lot of them when he was sixteen and not a lot of them had actually involved much watching of the movie. The dim of the theater, the smell of the popcorn, the seat-arm divider that came up when you wanted it to.
Lisa was looking at him for a second longer than her usual second. Seeing Leo lost in thought was something she hadn't got to see before.
"Mm-hm."
She turned to her mother and gave her a quick hug that Marge bent down to receive.
"Bye, Mom. Bye, Mr. Leo."
"Bye, Lisa."
The kitchen was quiet.
Marge was a foot inside the doorway, both hands smoothing the front of the green dress in the same fast motion she always did. It seemed like it was her comfort motion.
"You told her we were driving twenty-five minutes."
"I did."
"And that we were doing paperwork first."
"Mm-hm."
"Leo, we are walking through the door right there."
"I know."
"Why did you tell her —"
"Wanted to spark her imagination a little. Isn't it nice to have your daughter thinking extra about you and business and careers? Besides, if I said we were gonna be here the whole time she was going to ask to see the space we work in and how would we explain all the cameras?"
She looked at him for a second.
"…Yeah, I didn't think that far."
She smoothed the front of the dress again. Her hand went to the silver earring and turned it another quarter rotation, on its own this time. She was not looking at him while she did it.
The thought she had been carrying since Tuesday afternoon was running again at the back of her head.
'A man who has such foresight and looks so handsome said he liked me.'
The blush moved up her throat for what she was beginning to lose count of.
"Garage?" Marge tried to change her thoughts.
"Garage. Whenever you're ready."
She nodded. She followed him down the short hall toward the door. He went a half step ahead of her, keeping the limp almost non-existent. Lisa had noticed and he didn't want that to happen again with Marge.
The studio was set up the way it always was. Soft white seamless backdrop, two lighting rigs angled low and warm to catch her skin tone, the small dressing room tucked in the far corner of the garage.
He had put his eye the crack in the panels before to watch her. He was not going to do it today. His ribs and his left knee were not going to let him crouch and stand back up without making him pay for it. There would be other shoots. Other opportunities.
He went to the side table and picked up a small unmarked box. The first piece on top of the tissue paper was the one-piece. Deep navy, square neckline, a long line up the side that would do the things to her hourglass figure.
"Same as before. You take whatever time you want in the changing room. Tell me when."
He handed her the box.
She took it through the door.
She set the box down on the bench, lifted the navy one-piece out of the tissue paper, and let the green dress fall down off her hips onto the bench. The fabric of the suit was thicker than she had been expecting, which was a small mercy.
'You did Hooters. You did a spacesuit. This is a one-piece. It's basically the same thing.'
She stepped into it and pulled it up.
She heard him say her name from the other side of the door.
"Marge."
"Yes."
"Whenever."
She inhaled.
The door opened.
She came out in the navy one-piece with one hand still adjusting the strap on her right shoulder and the other already half across her stomach without her meaning it to be there. The neckline did exactly what the brand had wanted it to do. The long shelf of her chest was held high and full inside the navy, the line of cleavage cut clean and deep, her F-cups shaped by the suit into the kind of silhouette catalogs printed in Playboy. The long side line ran from the low part of her hip and made her waist look smaller than it already was.
Leo looked up from the camera.
The look stayed a bit longer on her than the look usually did. His eyes went from her face down the neckline, down to the cinched line of her waist, across the wide curve of her hips where the side pulled up high, down the bare length of her tan thighs. The look came back up to her face. It stopped there.
She watched it go down. She watched it come up. Marge felt like she was perceiving way more than she usually did.
"You look great."
The color was already up her chest.
She walked the four steps to her usual place for posing.
"How do I —"
"Hands at your sides for the first one. Weight on your back foot. Chin a little up. Like you're standing at the edge of a hotel pool watching Lisa do a cannonball."
She did it. She did it well. She had earned that confidence on the second shoot and she had not lost it.
She kept her eyes on him while she did it.
The first six frames came from where he was standing.
She watched the camera come up to his face. She watched the way his shoulder set a little when the frame composed. She watched the small twitch at the corner of his mouth on the third frame and again on the fifth.
'He liked the third one. He liked the fifth one.'
Now that she knew Leo liked her as a woman, it felt like he was liking not just the photo herself, but her in the photo too. Or maybe she was just overthinking it.
The blush moved up another step.
What Marge did not know, was that these photos were not going anywhere. Leo did not want to share these photos. These were for him only. The actual companies would only ever get fully clothed pictures of Marge.
Leo stepped in.
He stopped a foot in front of her. His right hand came up, slow, to the strap on her left shoulder where it had twisted a quarter turn. She watched his hand come up. She watched his face.
"This one's twisted," he said, and turned the strap straight against the seam with his thumb and forefinger, the side of his knuckle brushing the warm bare skin of her shoulder for a half-second on the way out. "There."
She kept watching his face.
"Oh —"
"Other one too. Sorry."
He moved to the right strap. He did the same thing. The back of his finger touched the bare skin between her collarbone and her shoulder for the same half-second. His eyes flicked down the line of her chest for a half-second on the way out and came back up.
The blush moved up another quarter inch.
He stepped back and took two more frames.
"Hand on the hip for the next one. Other arm relaxed."
She did it. He stepped back in, held the camera in his left hand against his side, and brought his right hand to the side of her waist, just at the long line of the suit where it ran up under her arm.
"There's a fold here. The line breaks. Hold on."
His thumb ran along the edge of the navy fabric where it met the bare skin of her side, smoothing the suit flat against her body. The pad of his thumb went the full length of her ribs from her hip up to where the suit cut high under her arm. His other fingers were spread flat against the side of her hip, holding her steady.
She kept her eyes on his face.
His jaw set a little when the thumb went up.
She flinched.
It was small. It was a quarter-inch of her body coming back in toward itself. She caught it before it could become a full reaction and a laugh came out of her instead, breathy and surprised.
"Sorry — that tickles —"
"You're fine."
"Sorry."
"Stay still for a second. The line is — there. Got it."
He stepped back. Three more photos.
He moved in again.
"Last one. Hand on your stomach. Flat. Yeah, like that. Now mine, just to straighten the line."
His palm laid flat against her lower stomach over the navy fabric, just below the navel, where the long side line of the suit pulled the fabric tight across her abdomen. He held it there. He pressed lightly with the heel of his hand, then with the flat of his fingers, then ran his thumb sideways.
Her stomach moved under his hand. She was breathing through her nose and the breath was not quite even.
She kept her eyes on his face the entire time.
His eyes were not on her face. His eyes were on his own hand on her stomach.
'He has his hand on my stomach.'
The blush moved further up her throat into her cheeks. She was very aware of the warmth of his palm through the fabric. She was very aware of her own breathing.
'He said I was beautiful.'
"Look at me."
She looked at him. Three seconds. She broke first.
The color was all the way up her throat into her cheeks and the laugh was right there at the back of it now, that same flinch-and-laugh, cued up and ready to come out the moment he stepped back and gave her the half-second of room she would need to release it.
'He's touching me a lot today.'
She caught the thought and held it for a second.
'Or maybe he always has. Maybe he has been touching me this much through the last two shoots and I am only noticing now because I know what he thinks of me. The words he said on Tuesday are sitting in the back of my head while his hands are on me, and they are making me read a hand that has always been there as something different than the hand it has always been.'
She expanded her thoughts, placating her mind.
'It is professional guidance only. He needs the line right. He needs the fold flat. The hand on the stomach is the angle the company probably asked for. That is all this is.'
He stepped back.
"Hold there," he said.
He raised the camera.
It was time to ramp things up once this last photo was taken.
…
…
…
[A/N]: Who loves children?????