A Special Relationship (27 page)

EIGHTEEN

They entered the large suite of the Hyatt hotel in downtown Jacksonville and Carrie began walking around the room as if she were inspecting it.
 
Her arms were folded, her eyes were darting from the sofa to the chair to the cocktail table to the ottoman to the wet bar.
 
She didn’t even realize a concierge was in the room, or that he and Robert were involved in a protracted conversation, until Robert asked her what was her size.
 
She turned and looked at him with such an angelic, almost peaceful look about her that even the hotel employee’s breath caught.
 

 
“Your clothes,” Robert finally pulled himself to ask.
 
“What size clothes do you wear?”

 
She just stared at him as if he was speaking a foreign language to her.
 

 
“We’ll figure it out, sir,” the concierge said.
  
“She’s small.”

 
Robert nodded, tipped the man handsomely, and closed the door behind him.
 
When he’d gone, Robert exhaled.
 
He knew it was his time to get out too.
 
Carrie seemed to be in her own world.
 
She wasn’t dazed anymore and she didn’t appear devastated.
 
She seemed, in fact, totally at peace, as if she’d turned it over to Jesus and was more than willing to let Him work it out.
 
But somehow, to Robert, it just didn’t feel like that was it.
 
“I’ll come back in the morning, Carrie,” he said to her.
 
“Pick up the phone and call for assistance if you have any problems.
 
Have you eaten yet?
 
Carrie?
 
Do you need me to call room service?”

 
Carrie turned to him, her eyes now filled with tears.
 
The reversal stunned Robert.
 
She walked up to him so swiftly that it appeared as if she was running his way.
 
“Teach me,” she said as she came.

 
Robert swallowed hard.
 
“Teach you what?”

 
“How to be heartless too.”

 
A pang shot through Robert’s entire body, as he remembered what it was like when he lost faith.
 
He grabbed Carrie and crushed her against him in a bear hug that nearly smothered her.
 
She let out a cry so loud that Robert closed his eyes in anguish too.
 
He didn’t want her to go through what he went through.
 
He didn’t want her to become what he’d become.
 
So he prayed.
 
He held her close to him and prayed for her.
 
He remembered what it was like when Gloria and Ashley walked out of his life.
 
The pain was so unbearable that it rendered him numb for weeks.
 
He didn’t cry out to God for mercy the way he should have.
 
He was too hurt to cry.
 
He was too devastated to pray.
 
And that decision he made when he stood in the foyer of his home after all the confusion had left, caused him his life.
 
He was still living physically.
 
He was still taking his nourishments and going about his daily business.
 
But everything about
who
he was and what he was, the very essence of his spirit, died that day in his foyer.
 

 
He lifted Carrie up into his arms as her crying didn’t cease but seemed even more manic.
 
He carried her into the bedroom where he unturned the covers and laid her down.
 
Then he sat on the bed beside her and
smooth
her silky black hair out of her pretty face.
 
She stared at him as she cried, as if in him she was looking for some answer, some word of encouragement, some strength he did not possess.
 
He exhaled.
 
“Pray, Carrie,” he said to her.

 
“I prayed.
 
All the time.
 
I left Georgia praying.
 
I came here to Florida praying.
 
And it didn’t do any good.
 
Nothing’s worked out for me.
 
Nothing, Robert.
 
And now Millie’s dead!”
 
She said this with a pain that pained Robert.
 
“She was a wonderful
person,
you would have really liked her.
 
She used to always say that God is able, that’s what she always said.”

 
“He is able, Carrie, and I don’t want you to ever forget that.”

 
“I’m not forgetting it.
 
Of course I’ll never forget that.
 
But. . .
I thought God would appreciate me more.
 
I thought the sacrifices I’ve made in my life would somehow make me special in His eyes.”

 
“You are special in His eyes.”

 
Carrie immediately began shaking her head.
 
“I’ve failed Him,” she said.

 
“Carrie—”

 
“It’s true.
 
Don’t tell me it’s not true because it is.
 
I should have been more faithful.
 
I should have depended on Him more for my survival, for my companionship.
 
If I would have I wouldn’t have never went anywhere with Mona.
 
But I was so lonely.”
 
She said this and turned her face away from Robert.
 
Robert inhaled such a deep sigh of anguish that it made his head hurt.
 

 
“But at least I would have been home,” she went on, “when the shooting started.
 
Millie would have been up at my apartment, instead of witnessing to people on the street, which is what I’m sure she was doing, when the shooting started.”

 
“Honey, don’t do that.
 
You can’t change fate.”

 
Carrie turned her back to him.
 
“I could have tried,” she said and that did it.
 
She felt Robert’s hands on her body as he slid her further over in the bed.
 
Then she felt the pressing down of the mattress and suddenly his large body next to hers.
 
She turned around and found herself looking into the most caring eyes she’d ever seen.
 
And as if those eyes were demanding that she cry, she did and fell into Robert’s arms.
 

 
Robert held her tightly and then rolled her on top of him, for an even firmer hold on her.
 
He rubbed her hair and listened to her cry into his chest.
 
She cried, off and on, all night.
 
When she wasn’t crying she was lamenting her life, her decisions, her bitterness over what had happened to such a good soul as Millie Rawlings.
 
That was why Robert was imploring her to pray, to trust God through this, to lean on Him.
 
That bitterness would destroy her.
 
That sense of uselessness would be her undoing.
 
And he himself prayed to God that it would not be so.
 
His prayer life had become practically non-existent before Carrie fell into his life.
 
Now, at this moment in time, it was all he knew to do.
 
He prayed for Carrie, for this sweet young lady he had in his arms.
 
He prayed for Carrie all night long.

***

She woke up early the next morning alone in bed.
 
She felt her hand around the bed for Robert since the last thing she remembered last night was
lying
on top of him, but he wasn’t there.
 
The idea of being alone in some strange hotel room suddenly made her feel panicky and she immediately began kicking the covers off of her and sitting up.
 
With Robert there she felt safe and secure.
 
Now she just felt alone.
 

 
She looked down at her now wrinkled white shorts and the torn green blouse that now was completely parted since the few remaining buttons gave way some time during the night.
 
And looking at those clothes slowed her back down and reminded her of why she was sleeping in a strange hotel room to begin with.
 
Millie was dead.
 
That was why.
 
Mona was heartless.
 
That was why.
 
And Carrie’s own life, this so-called life as she now was beginning to view it, was an unqualified mess.

 
“Slept well?” a male’s voice suddenly said into her thoughts and she quickly jerked her head up and across the room.
 
Robert, putting on the suit coat of what seemed like a brand new black suit with a crisp shirt and tie, was standing across that room staring at her.
 
He looked so tall and handsome in that small room that for a brief few moments she didn’t even realize that her shirt was gaped wide open and her bra was being revealed.
 
All she realized was that she needed comfort last night and Robert gave it to her.
 
He didn’t have to.
 
He could have brought her to the hotel, a kind gesture in and of itself, and left her there to cry alone.
 
But he stayed with her.
 
He listened to her cry, he begged her not to give up on her faith in God, and he held her all night long.
 
He was a good man, was what she was coming to realize.
 
The only one she’d ever met.

 
“I slept better than I thought I would,” she finally said.
 
“Thanks to you.”
 

 
She could tell right away that Robert didn’t care for those last few words.
 
He even seemed to almost wince when she said them.
 
“Glad I could be of help,” he said as he pulled the cuff of his shirt sleeve down underneath his suit coat and began looking down the length of her.

 
Carrie noticed that his eyes seemed to be looking over her body more than they usually did, and it was only then that she realized why.
 
She grabbed her open blouse and slowly pulled it around her.
 
Robert actually smiled as he looked away.
 
She’d been lying on top of him all night with that same blouse opened wider than that without even thinking about it.
 
Now she was embarrassed.
 
He almost shook his head.
 
She was so naive, he thought.
 
So YOUNG.
 
“I’ve got to get to the office,” he said as he walked over by the bed and began picking up his watch, his wallet, and his keys.