Every Little Thing Page 13

  She hit the brakes. Right in the middle of the road. The car behind them slammed on their horn. She pulled up along a sidewalk. “Maybe you shouldn’t come tonight?”

  But he did. They walked into the restaurant rented out for Keith’s birthday, and there were hors d’oeuvres on all the tables with descriptions in front of them like nametags. Votive candles in red glass holders made the place glow the colour of exit signs, and flicker importance.

  Allie handed Cohen her jacket—like he was a bellboy—and walked towards Keith,waving and smiling. Keith opened his arms, clearly belligerent and drunk, and she hugged him back. He held her too long. Rocking her back and forth with his chin on her shoulder and his eyes in Cohen’s. Like salt. Allie’s arms went limp and dropped away from Keith’s body to signal, Enough, and he let her go. She walked to the bar and after Keith had peeled his eyes off her, she cast Cohen a look, like, What was that all about? Her eyebrows raised like she was surprised he’d held her that long.

  Keith made his way towards Cohen at a coat rack as Allie stood at the bar waiting for the bartender’s attention.

  “So, you’re Cohen, right?”

  “Yes.”They’d met before. Three or four times.

  “I’m Keith. Allie’s boss. She tells me you play with birds for a living. That must be…something? An adult playing with animals for a living?”

  A dozen confrontational responses piled up on Cohen’s tongue, but as he cycled through them for the best hit, he saw Allie eyeing him from the bar. Please, you’re better than him.

  Keith drained the glass of whiskey in his hand. Crunching ice cubes, “Did she tell you I’m tryin’ to jack her salary up another dozen grand?” He widened his eyes like Cohen should be impressed. Thankful.

  “Yes. Yeah, great news.”

  “She’ll probably be making more than you then, hey?”

  “About thirty grand more, actually. Imagine that, a woman making more than her man. If this was the seventeenth century, I guess I’d have to be ashamed of myself?”

  He gave Cohen a strange look, and said, “She’s worth it.”

  Keith turned and looked at her. Too long. She looked great in that black dress and green malachite bracelet and he didn’t like sharing the view. Keith turned back to him. “Yeah. All those nights on the road, away from her man. Gotta be rough on a relationship, hey? Deserves a raise?”

  He tipped the empty glass to his mouth again—something black where gums met teeth—and said, “We take my car when we go out to lunch. She says her car doesn’t even have air conditioning.”

  “Yeah, well, point A to point B, right?”

  Keith sized Cohen up, another mouthful of ice cubes as he did so. He said, walking away from him, “There are two kinds of men, Cohen. I’m one and you’re the other.”

  Keith and Allie crossed paths as Keith walked away from Cohen. Keith turned, sharply, like his shirt had gotten hitched on her, and took her in as she walked by. So that Cohen would see. He tipped his empty glass to him. Allie came over, stuck a glass of red wine in his hand, and said, “I’m sorry. He seems really drunk and idiotic. It’s just the way some people get with liquor in them.”

  “Allie—” He shook his head. “It’s the way he gets, not some people. Saying some people forgives the guy for being a fucking idiot.”

  “Look. The way he is with you, it’s not really him—”

  “Do you know what you sound like right now? One of those abuse victims, Oh, I know he doesn’t really mean it when he hits me and calls me a dumb bitch—”

  “Wow. That’s.” She shook her head. “I’ve got to work with this man, okay! Can you try and deal with that for me? You take it all so personally.” Her left eye was glossing over with a tear. So he shut his mouth.

  “Look, I’m being a bit extreme. I know you’re just trying to get along—”

  “No! No, you don’t know. And you don’t understand. It’s my fault he’s a prick to you. I never told you this, but I confided in him, that you were strangely distant when Dad died. So, he… he has the wrong idea about you. You as a partner, I mean. About your...character or our relationship or something. I don’t know. But it’s my fault he’s an asshole to you.”

  THEY STAYED LATE that night anyway. And the drunker Keith got, the less he could defend himself when Cohen turned his jabs and insults around on him. They played a game of pool, to keep the conversation to themselves, and make Allie think they were getting along. Allie sat on the opposite side of the bar with Leslie and some other women Cohen didn’t know. Laughing louder than anyone, and a drink or two ahead of them.

  From eleven to midnight there’d been a raunchy standup comedian cracking dirty jokes about his latest European adventure—pitching Speedo tents on nude beaches, feeling self-conscious “with reason” in no-clothes spas in Denmark, and his unforgettably educational cunninglingus session, with a “demon-possessed Parisian, who knew exactly what she wanted, and how I was failing her...barking orders like that mean boss you’ll never forget, except here, I wasn’t allowed to quit! Here, I was in the clutches of a demon who wanted the best orgasm of her life.”

  They left after the comedian because Allie was tipsy enough to feel too tipsy to be at a staff function. They left their car and hailed a cab. Halfway home, she laid her head on Cohen’s shoulder, and he liked the idea of her napping there. The comfort, familiarity. He had that much over Keith.

  She kissed him that night in bed like she meant it. Hands on his face, legs wrapping around him. Something at the party had lit a spark in her—and even though she hated the impersonal nature of it, he screwed her from behind that night. Her face in a pillow. His hard thrusts throwing an echo into her panting. She had her eyes closed, her breathing disconnected from his. He was about to come when she twisted around and kicked him off her with a foot to his chest and ran to the bathroom. He flicked on a lamp, and there were wet streaks on her pillow that might have been tears.

  ROUNDTABLE

  KEITH, ALLIE, AND Leslie had a convention to attend in Halifax. They were going to capitalize on their time there, to meet with and loot new clients for their company. Allie had suggested Cohen come along: it was a long weekend, and if he took that Tuesday off as a vacation day, they could make a mini-trip out of it. So he did. And Cohen was happy Keith wasn’t on his flight. But they checked into their hotel, and Allie looked delighted when the woman at the front desk said, “AMr. Keith Stone upgraded you to our beautiful penthouse suite.”

  “Oh, very well, thank you, Madame.” She was trying to act debonair, but the clerk never caught her sense of humour. Allie turned to Cohen. “Be sure to thank him.”

  They had tickets for a Josh Ritter concert that Saturday night, but she was out to supper with Keith, Leslie, and a client, and he was starting to think she wouldn’t make it back in time. But his phone buzzed, jangling the keys and coins on the bedside table. A text message: Almost done here, Sexy Face, see you in 15! ;) Josh Ritter! He’d just released his album The Animal Years and it was all that played in their house since it came out.

  Cohen had been sprawled up against the headboard of the hotel’s king sized bed, the most comfortable bed he’d ever been in, finishing the last few pages of the best novel he’d ever read. He was reading the last page with a glass of pinot noir when he heard a splash of laughter from the hall. Allie’s delicate laugh, tucked under, and overwhelmed by Keith’s obnoxious, hear-me-roar laugh. Keith sounded like a choking horse when he laughed. Like a man demanding a room’s undivided attention.

  He tucked a bookmark into his book because he didn’t want to ruin or rush through those last few paragraphs. He’d savour them, later, undisturbed. But sitting on the bed, idle, he felt like he was eavesdropping on them. They were talking. Too long. Her hand on the door handle. The door handle rattling, but not opening. Two minutes. Three. Muffled conversation. Four minutes. Keith’s jackal laugh. And then the click of the keycard in the door.

  She came into the room with a phosphorescent smile, h
er face flushed the way it gets after a few glasses of red wine and a big meal—eyes like sun-struck jewels; Kool-Aid red cheeks.

  She threw her jacket across a chair and dove onto the bed with him. Dove like it was the sea. She swam over and curled into him. They’d been together so long that it was effortless for their bodies to comfortably interlock, without thinking about the physics of their embrace. She was more drunk than he’d thought. Her body loose and clumsy. Warm.

  “Ready for the show?” She looked at her watch. “We should leave in like, fifteen minutes?” But she caught sight of his face. “What’s wrong?” But she’d said it like,What’s wrong this time?

  “Just,wondering,what’s gonna happen to a girl, between the elevator and her room in a five-star hotel, that Keith felt the need to walk you to the door? It’s like he thinks that was a date you were just on. Not a work function.”He paused. “And that fucking laugh. Like he owns the world.”

  “Let’s not let this ruin another night okay. Let’s just go to the show? It’s Josh Ritter, your favourite. It’s why you’re here, right?” She slapped his knees playfully to freshen up his sour attitude. She stumbled a little as she stepped down off of the bed, giggling at herself, her slightly intoxicated self, and disappeared into the bathroom.

  He yelled to her from the bed. “It’s too early yet. We should wait another twenty minutes?”No response. He got up off the bed and went to shout at her through the bathroom door. “Allie?”

  “Yes, I heard you. Too early.” She shouted through the door and over the bathroom fan. She opened the bathroom door, topless, her tits pointing right at him, a giddy drunk smile on her face.

  “I’ve got this wild idea!” she said, grabbing at the button on his jeans and falling to the floor with them. Her knees in the puddle of denim around his ankles. He leaned back against the wall, and she did that combination of pace and actions she called The Fast Way, as he clutched the bathroom’s doorframe in one hand and the corner of a wall in another. Breasts against his thighs. Her tiny hand on his hip.

  But her cellphone rang. He could see it on the edge of the table behind her. The digital display flashing Keith Stone, Keith Stone. And he banged his head back against the wall. He almost laughed about it. “What the fuck does he want now?”

  She leaned back away from him, freeing her mouth. Looking up at him playfully, “This!” she said, and they burst into laughter. Her breasts such a sharp angle from that view.

  They walked downhill to the bar holding hands. Their favourite musician. A night in a town not their own. The afterglow of intimacy. They were reading every shop and restaurant sign they walked past, making mental notes of places to check out before they went back home. Allie was a little tipsy, her knees would knock into his whenever he walked too fast. It was May, and mild, but there were cool gusts of wind, and they made a tornado of Allie’s skirt. And a flag of her hair.

  “Maybe I should start looking for another job?” she said.

  He opened the pub door for her, a big black door with massive brass handles. She gave the man on the door their tickets. “I’m not saying quit your job for me. You love it, you earned it. I’m saying, Keith, I don’t like the guy. But I’ll get over it.”

  She shimmied into a booth. “You’ll get over it? Really? Is this one of those situations where you feel obligated to say you’ll get over it, even though you won’t get over it?”

  A woman came over to their booth, offering to fetch them a drink. Cohen didn’t respond until the woman had taken their order—a pitcher of a local microbrew they hadn’t tried before and two glasses of pinot noir—because Cohen didn’t like strangers hearing his conversations. Allie had always found that weird.

  “Maybe the whole situation will get old and normal. I mean we already joke about him. It. The situation. I’ll get over it.”

  The blonde-haired lady came back and laid their order on the table. She had a tight ponytail that was hauling her face back along with her hair. Her features were harsh and time-worn. Her lips were so chapped they looked like shredded computer paper. She had a tattoo of a daisy on her neck, and it didn’t work for her. It didn’t even look like a daisy. She asked for money, and Cohen laid two twenties on the table and got up to go to the washroom.

  On his way back to their table, he saw Allie looking at him and laughing like he’d missed something while he was gone. There was a tray on their table now, with four shots on it. Shooters,bright colours, the kind of stuff kids drink to get drunk.

  “What’s—”

  “Those kids,” she said, still a little surprised and laughing about it as she pointed to them at the bar. “They’re, like, sixteen years old. The bargirl with the intense ponytail said they bought them for me! I looked up, and they were smiling at me like eager little fratboys! Aren’t I a hottie on the town!” she said, flattered.

  “Hottest hottie in the bar, look at you.”

  “I told her to take them back, and she said They’re paid for m’dear. May as well drink em’ and I said I don’t do shots and she said, Then give em’ to yer man.” Allie laughed and echoed it, “Give em’ to yer man, she said!”

  He laughed and waved at the kids. They couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty, still in their first year of legal drinking age: giddy on shots and pints and twirling barstools and live music and beautiful women.

  “I kind of wanna try the blue one,”he told her. “Blue alcohol. What’s that all about?”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “If a man sends you a drink in a bar, and you accept it, it suggests you might indeed sleep with him later. That boy is so not your type.” She laughed at herself. Always laughing at herself. The three frat boys were still staring over. At her. He could tell she didn’t like it. So he dragged the tray towards him, bits of liquids sloshing up over the shot glasses, and he shot one after the other. Heat. His whole upper torso on fire. Salty eyes. Fire-filled nostrils. He hid the pain well and raised the last shot glass to them like a toast, to say, Thanks or Fuck off, and they all turned around, pissed off and embarrassed.

  Allie looked appalled. “What was that?What are you, sixteen too?”

  He wanted water. His eyes burned. “I have no idea what that was! I mean...fuck, my chest is still burning!” He rubbed it for dramatic effect, a plea for sympathy, and she laughed. “I thought it was pretty bad-ass though, you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “We’re here trashing Keith for being a macho jackass? And look at you. I hope they’ve roofied you. It’d serve you right.”

  Everyone clapped and the band took to the stage. The show about to start. A sharp cackle of feedback as Josh’s lead plugged his cord into his guitar; the drummer taking a sip of water from a bottle, his two sticks in his other hand.

  She looked away from the stage and back at Cohen. “Dad wouldn’t like this situation with Keith much either. A—he loved you,and B—Keith has become disrespectful.”She still talked about her father a lot, and what he would think about a situation. It fit with her character that she still thought of him to that extent: what he would say to her in certain scenarios. Cohen’s thoughts of Matt had died with him. Except when Allie would say something about her father, positive traces of Matt would spark in Cohen’s mind. He’d think of a soft black sky, a case of beer at their feet,wet with condensation, and a chess board on a patio table with a king left in checkmate. Or he’d think about the lie. The way Matt looked him in the eye, Thanks for talking me out of this.

  After Cohen’s brother had drowned, Allie would encourage Cohen to talk about Ryan still. They were at a record shop one day, and she turned to him and asked what kind of music Ryan had liked. As if he was still alive and she’d like to buy him a gift. It didn’t work that way for Cohen. It felt like thinking of the dead as alive. It was sweet, he envied her for it, but to him it was like digging up peoples’ bones and expecting interaction.

  “Disrespect was criminal in Dad’s eyes. He took it personally that hi
s neighbour’s dog pissed in his flowerbeds.”

  Cohen grinned at the thought of that, of Matt always taking things personally. “There was this time your dad and I were driving back home from the mall.”Cohen had forgotten all about it, so he smiled as the memory came back to him. “A bunch of kids threw snowballs at his car. I mean, they were just kids throwing snowballs at cars and running away, so it could have been any car, but your father had this look on his face, like he took it personally. Why my car? You know? Why me?” Another laugh as he let the memory run through him.

  “That was weird.”

  “What?”

  “You said your dad and me instead of Matt. Like you didn’t know the guy or something.”She sipped her wine, eyeing him. She laid her glass down to clap along with the crowd. The end of a song and the start of a new one. “Why do you have such trouble talking about my father?”

  “I don’t have trouble talking about your father. It’s just…it’s like summoning something. It takes a little effort. Some warming up. I dunno.”He shrugged his shoulders.

  She was peering into her wine like a crystal ball, swirling the glass by its stem. “Sometimes I don’t understand what happened that day. The day Dad went off the road.”

  A kick in his throat.

  She had the stem of the wine glass pinched between two fingers, sliding them up and down. Her eyes searching for something in that pool of red. “I went there last month, to that part of the highway. I was on my way home, from work, and I slowed down. I pulled over. I really took a look at where he went off the road, in behind the guardrail. It doesn’t make sense…”

  Cohen had been holding his breath, tighter, with every word she spoke, until his lungs felt like rocks, and then an avalanche in his chest. The music suddenly quieter or more distant in sound. He was afraid that if he looked at her, she’d see panic in him, but deserve attentiveness.

  “…I assumed he was tired, hungover. That he’d fallen asleep or dozed off. But I took my car onto the shoulder of the road that day, and I would’ve had to steer my car, I mean, I really would’ve had to pull it in around that guardrail. It’s a weird angle. You’d have to see it, to know what I mean. And the cops never questioned that? So I was sitting in my car, wondering if I’m crazy to be thinking that. Noticing that. And it’s not like he was swerving from something. The police report showed no signs of him swerving from a car or an animal or something...”