Every Little Thing Page 23

  “Shit.”

  “Goner. Looked empty anyway?”

  Sizing up the situation. “No. I can crawl under there. I think.”

  “I—I saw one-ninety-nine written on the package. If you’re that hard up for two dollars, I have a pocketful of change here. Really.”He jingled his pocketful of change.

  “The comic on it. Remember? I wanted to show you. It’s really cute. I think you’d get it.” She was already on her knees, palms against the floor, peering under the shelf like a cat stalking a mouse. “It’s, ah, it’s pretty dark under there. But I think I can see it.” She made a move to crawl under, but hesitated. Cohen blinked and she was on her way under. The board was not quite three feet off the ground. She looked like a mechanic under a car, except she was on her belly instead of her back.

  And then her feet kicking in the air, like maybe a spider had bitten her “Help! ”

  “What?”He bent down instinctively.

  “My hair! My hair is snagged in something!” He saw her try to roll over and then she screamed out in pain. Loudly. “I can’t…my arms. There’s no room! Help me for God’s sake, man!” And she started laughing a little in between the moans of pain.

  He got down and looked under. It was dim, but he saw her there, flat on her belly, one hand planted on the ground, the other triumphantly clutching the pack of seeds. Her hair was caught in a split in the plywood. He crawled under, but once he was under, it was even darker, and the limited space had him feeling claustrophobic, straightjacketed. His limbs awkward and useless.

  “I need to get my right shoulder flat against the ground, in order to roll over and get your hair out.”

  “Then do that!”

  “I can’t. That’s the problem. Unless. I lay my arm flat along the ground, under your chin maybe?”He flapped a hand around to make things more clear.

  She shouted “Why are you yelling?” and laughed at herself. “Here.” She lifted her head up off the ground. She put her face back down on his arm, nestling it in the crook of his elbow. Her soft cheek and chin radiating heat into his arm. Her breathing like the brush of a ghost. There, not there, there, not there: condensing on his bicep. He’d shift, and her lips would kiss his arms involuntarily. The poor lighting had him relying on his hands as much as his eyes. He had to lay a leg over her legs to get a little flatter. He had to spoon her.

  “Sure. Make yourself cozy.” A joke to peel back a layer of imposed intimacy. Skin clinging to skin and the feel of two bodies breathing in unison; rising and falling together. Her lips were still pressing into his bicep whenever he made a movement, and then peeling away softly, like a Post-It note grip. The back of her hand at his crotch.

  “I got it! Don’t move at all!”

  His eyes were adjusting to the light. He looked at Allie, and her eyes were in his like arrows. A look he knew. A look like quicksand. He unhooked her hair and got out from under the board.

  He helped her up after she’d shimmied out. He let go of her hand, but she kept hers clasped to his. They were standing toe to toe, face to face. Breath on breath. “Just. Kiss me.” She put her hands on his shoulders, and she walked him to the wall behind her. “Just kiss me until we’re thirty years old again.”She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall: an offering. Her hands grabbed fistfuls of his shirt. “Not on my lips. I can’t kiss you back. Just, kiss me.” And he did. Lingering on her neck, her pulse feral against his teeth. He kissed her along her jaw and tried for her mouth, but she’d turned away. He kissed the backs of her fingers; a frightened butterfly at his mouth. He slid a hand up her dress, his fingers sensing heat as he knelt, and she snared his hand with hers.

  “I have to get back to work.”She never let go of his hand as she walked away. His arm going up and up and up until their fingers snapped apart.

  THE NEXT NIGHT, Cohen heard a series of thuds end in smashing glass. He ran to Lee’s room—skidding on the hardwood floor—and swung the door open without knocking. Lee was sat up in his bed; his hands full of balled-up blanket.

  He was shivering, staring at Cohen, taking long, slow breaths.

  “Are you...okay? Lee?”

  Cohen looked from Lee to the dresser and saw broken glass on top of it, by the TV. There was a dent in the wall. Little bits of white powder from a split in the gyproc. A few drops of water trickling down the wall.

  “What happened?”

  “I woke up. I was really thirsty. But the goddamn glass was empty.”He pointed to its shattered remains.

  “So you threw it at the wall?”

  “It’s ah-ah big production...to get up. This hour of the night. I can’t see a goddamn thing! It’s like the light switches move every night. I can’t find them no more!”

  “You could have called out to me!”

  “I’m feeling strange. Like something’s wrong.” Lee looked to the window, like he was ashamed to look at Cohen or he was scared someone was out there, looking in.

  “Healthwise, you mean? A headache? ...Did you...Did you have a bad dream?” Cohen stepped further into the room, concerned.

  “The Japanese are in my dreams now. And I don’t want Keith coming around here anymore!”

  “What’d you dream about, Lee?”

  “I didn’t dream about anything! It was real. Like memories. They’d fill the ends of bamboo sticks with sand and crack us with them. They’d make this gesture, asking for cigarettes. They’d put two closed-together fingers to their mouths, and they’d make a sucking noise.” Lee demonstrated, with exaggeration, smacking himself in the lips with two fingers and inhaling fake cigarette smoke. “It was sign language, for cigarettes. If we didn’t have any, they’d crack us over the knee. Or whack us on the back. Or a hand. Remember? Those sand-filled sticks stung as much as a whip. Hit as hard as a baseball bat. That sound and the way the men would howl. No pride or courage left in them.”Lee snarled; a flash of angry white teeth.

  Cohen leaned into the doorframe, crossed his arms. He wanted to say, What? He wanted to say,Was that dream? But whenever he or Allie talked to Lee like a child, he’d get more confrontational, irrational.

  “Where’s Allie?”

  “She’s not here. Are you talking about the Philippines, the camps you were in, after the war?”

  “Yeah, well, she’s never fucking here, is she? Keith’s got her turned against us!”

  “That’s not fair and you know it. She has to work, Lee, and she doesn’t live here. And when she comes, you’re never kind or welcoming. You tell her to go away. You jam her hands in doorframes. Ring a bell?”

  Lee clawed a hand through the air like an angry bear. Whatever. “He is! He’s...tainting her. He’ll turn her on me. Like he turned her on you.”

  “That was years ago,Lee. And not as simple as him turning her on me.”

  “Don’t mock me! You’ll see!”

  Cohen turned on a floor lamp and saw that Lee was sweating, maybe even crying. He threw the blankets off himself. White, thin boxers clung to him from the sweat. He was wearing a black tank top three sizes too big. Something about that made him look sad. Sadder. His sparse, thin hair was sweat-dampened too; the perspiration doing the job of gel in his hair.

  He looked at Cohen, his eyes googly and magnified by his glasses. “She’s after my house, and Keith is putting it in her head.”

  “No one is after your house, Lee. Allie has her own. Nobody even needs your house. But I do want to hear your story, your stories, from your time in the Philippines. Let’s get back to that?”

  “I don’t give a fuck about World War Two! I don’t. That’s not what I’m talking about!”

  “I’m gonna go get a broom and clean this up. Do you want a glass of water?”

  “Narcissco taught me how to find food in the jungle. He knew about ten words in English, but he also knew I was a scared kid. A hungry one. His weapon jammed that night they got us. They stuck him like a pig, with a bayonet, and kept running past him. I played dead and tried to plug up his stab holes with my fin
gers. But he still died. In my hands.”Lee held his hands in the air like they were a bloody mess.

  Cohen waited for more, searched for context, didn’t know if that was the start or an end to a story. Lee simply held two hands out to Cohen, like they were holding a tray. He tucked them back under his thighs and said, “That’s who I want to give my house to. Not Keith. Narcissco!”

  “I—I’m sorry, Lee, but I think Narcissco...I think you just said—He died, didn’t he?”

  “I’m just trying to explain something. So you’ll understand.”

  “Understand what, though?”

  “So you’ll understand that I saw a man’s eye pop out. That I’m not shocked by anything. I’m not afraid.”

  “Of what, Lee? You’re not afraid of what?”

  Lee stopped talking. Stared at his toes. Wiggled them. Closed his eyes. Kept them closed.

  “Do you want that glass of water?”

  “I’m trying to tell you something. I made it out of that place and never did anything worth a damn.”

  “You had a good life,Lee. I know you did. I saw it happen.”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I just don’t. I don’t understand. I don’t really understand what it is we’re talking about? Let’s try and be a little more clear. What is it I’ll see?”

  “Why are you asking me that? Is Keith here now?”

  He didn’t know what else to say. “Do you want that glass of water?”

  “You’re going to tell Keith everything I’m saying, aren’t you? Is he here right now? He is, isn’t he?”Lee got up, put hands out like a blind mummy, and pushed past Cohen. He searched the house.

  Cohen went to the nearest phone. Dialled Allie.

  “My God, it’s late what’s wrong! Is he okay? Is everything all right?” She had a concerned but muted tone, afraid Keith would catch her on the phone with him.

  “No, he’s not. I’m spooked, for the first time. I actually don’t know what to do here. He’s tearing up the house, looking for Keith. I can’t make sense of what he’s saying, and it’s plain fucking scary. He’s all over the place here.”

  “Is it just a bad night?”

  “I’ll let you go, but in the morning,Allie, one of us needs to start looking for a place for him to live.”

  Lee was screaming muffled slurs, directed at Cohen as much as Keith. Something about the both of them failing her.

  “Is that him?” she said. Her attention regained.

  Cohen heard the cutlery drawer rattle. Walked into the kitchen. Said, “Jesus Christ, he’s got a knife”and threw the phone on the table to put his hands up. To look innocent and harmless.

  “It’s Cohen, Lee, I’m Cohen.”

  “Who’s that on the phone? I caught you!Was it Keith?”He was pointing the chef ’s knife like he’d use it.

  “It was Allie.”

  “Put your hands down, this knife’s not for you!”

  “Lee. The knife, Lee. Let’s just—” Cohen could hear Allie shouting through the phone, but the words weren’t clear.

  “I don’t want to see Keith in this house ever again. Are we clear?” And Lee threw the knife in the sink. It broke a plate.

  He walked back to his bedroom. Turned the TV on. Cohen picked the phone up and Allie was hysterical.

  “Did he just threaten you with a knife?”

  “I don’t know. I think he might have.”

  COHEN COULDN’T SLEEP that night. He wanted to leave, sleep in his car. He hadn’t been truly scared like that since he was a kid watching horror movies. Lee was a mystery now and capable of anything. Cohen was lying on the couch, with his eyes closed, imagining a blade sliding into his guts. Two hands around his throat. There was a lock on Lee’s old bedroom door. The room he and Allie had moved Lee’s stuff from, to relocate him to the den. He slept in there that night. On the floor, behind a locked door, in an old sleeping bag he’d plucked, quietly, from the hall closet. It smelled like moth balls and wet tents. And it was where he slept the rest of the week.

  But Lee had been fine that week. The best he’d been in a while. And the fact he could act normal, after low points like that, was eerie. Proof he wasn’t there anymore. Gone.

  There was one morning, that week, when he and Cohen were eating cereal and Lee cracked a joke or two.

  “Why did Mozart sell his chickens?”He was grinning.

  Cohen didn’t know what to say, what Lee was thinking. “Um...”

  Lee dropped his spoon into his cereal like, C’mon. “It’s a joke!Why did Mozart sell his chickens?”

  “I dunno. Why?”

  “Because they kept saying Bach Bach.” He laughed. “What did the Alzheimer’s patient forget to buy at the pharmacy?”

  “I dunno. What?”

  “Her Alzheimer’s medication.”Lee laughed again.

  Cohen wanted to call Allie to come over, but she was at work. Lee was smiling and everything. “What are you, working on a stand-up act, Lee?”

  Lee pointed his spoon across the kitchen at the TV in his bedroom. “I was watching open mic comedy before you called me for breakfast. Why’d the chicken cross the clothing store?”

  But Cohen knew that one. “To get to the other size!” And Lee went sour that Cohen had answered it right. Smacked the side of his cereal bowl. And the bit of milk that was left in it— along with the spoon—landed on the table. Lee went back into his bedroom and shut the door. Cohen cleaned up the milk.

  The old Lee had only made an appearance long enough for Cohen to question if that could’ve been called a moment of lucidity or just a man mimicking his TV. And that day, the day Lee was cracking jokes, was the very same day Lee slapped Allie. Hard. She came by around five, he stormed out of his room, and he slapped her. I know what you’re up to!

  There wasn’t a handprint on her face, but there was a red splotch: an angry red shape. When Cohen looked at it under the light of the porch, he could feel the little needles of pain there. She took Cohen’s hand away from her face. “I. Just. I wanna get out of this house. Now.” In the background, Lee had been shouting. You don’t even care what I’d do for you! And it was irritating, the tone and senselessness of his shouting. He can keep his hands off my house!

  They got in his car and drove. Bird Rock? she said, and Cohen started the car, nodded, pulled out of the driveway even though the car was still fogged up with condensation. His headlights, like spotlights on the house, shone directly on Lee in the window, still cursing them both.

  Allie propped her elbow up on the door handle and rested her chin on a hand; her eyes following power lines up and down and up and down. Eyelashes blinking slow as butterfly wings. She said, “Keith’s saying you and me are using Lee as an excuse to see each other. He’s saying that I haven’t put Lee in a home because then I’d have no excuse to see you anymore.”

  “I don’t really care what Keith thinks.”

  “You’re right. This is my problem.”A sigh.

  “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean—Do you want to talk about...it?”

  “About what? I mean, what’s going on here, Cohen?”

  She was using the side of a knuckle to etch maze-like designs in the condensation on her window. Her knuckle looked lost in the middle of it. The corner of his eye caught her looking at him. He knew the look. She needed reassurance. About something. About Lee, about how sad that was, that he’d slapped her just now. Or about Keith’s grilling her, his accusations. His being right about what was or wasn’t happening between the two of them. And why Lee wasn’t in a home yet.

  There weren’t any words for that, so he took her hand. Held it. And she didn’t haul hers away. She rubbed her thumb up and down over his,whittling away any unfamiliarity of touch between them. She laid her other hand down on top of their two held hands, like she was hiding something.

  Her phone buzzed at a red light. It was in a cupholder, and they could both read Keith’s text. Home in the morning, Babe. Meetings with Thorne and Sons couldn’t have gone m
uch better!

  “Isn’t that weird? Either you’re both out of town or one of you is.”

  “Isn’t the real question, how come my fiancé is sending texts about business, not...I dunno.”Her thought trailed off. “Don’t ever shack up with a co-worker. The lines get crossed in who you are to each other. Or how you are with each other, if there’s a difference. I love him, yeah, but he’s my co-worker,my boss. It’s weird.”

  “I meant...it seems like he lives on the road then vacations in his office at home.”

  “You get used to it.” She pointed to a Tim Horton’s. “Pull in.” She reached for her purse. “Why is Tim Horton’s the only option for drive-by coffees in this town?”

  Cohen laughed. “Drive-through, you mean. Drive-by coffees would be rollin’ through a hood, tossing hot beverages at some mofos who be steppin’!”

  “What?” She laughed. “Want a coffee?”

  “Two sugars. And a box ofTimbits for the table,”he pointed to the dashboard.

  The road up to Bird Rock was steep enough to press them both back into their seats. He told her, “So the project I’ve been working on. With all the dead bugs. I can’t do it any slower than I’ve been doing it lately, and I’ll be done in three weeks. Maybe less. Likely less. Clarence has been asking what’s taking so long. I’ll have to go back to living at my place, in town, so I can go into the Avian-Dome every day. I’ll have to move out of Lee’s.”

  Sipping her coffee, “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Three weeks or so.”

  “That’s not long.”

  “No.”

  He pulled into the parking lot and it was pretty much empty. He put at least fifteen parking spaces between him and the nearest car and took his keys out of the ignition. The moonlight was a strip of white oil flickering on the black ocean—a line of white fire.

  “Be right back,” and he got out of the car and walked up to the guardrail, braced his shins against it. The ocean was two-hundred feet below him. There was nothing gradual about the slope of the mountain: he could have stood on the guardrail and dove straight into the ocean. There was a lighthouse ahead of him, across the bay. It was close enough to see, but far enough away that its light never illuminated him as it spun around.