Every Little Thing (18 page)

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 his 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...”

If she asked his opinion, it would be the difference between lying to her and withholding the truth. A fine line, but one he'd never cross. It would make his actions twice as unforgivable.

“…I'm parked there, car idling, sitting on the hood of my car. Wondering why I'm even there…” She was doing all the talking, but he'd need words, soon. “...all these months have gone by, yet I felt like his truck should've still been down there, for some reason. Like, the world couldn't possibly have moved on from that moment...”

He owed her a perfect sentence. But he was nowhere near it. He was feeling sloppy from the shots and the beer.

“…are you even listening to me?”

He felt caught, arrested, the cops at the door.

“
Cohen?
”

He nodded,
Yes, go on
. To buy time. He wanted a distraction, a glass to smash in the distance, a fight. He wanted a drunk kid causing a scene.

“…I got off my car and sat on the guardrail and I just stared down at the sea for a while. There were cars passing by and staring at me. One woman stopped and asked me if I was all right, like I was going to jump or something. I need you to tell me that it's okay I did that. That I stood there that day and wondered.”

“It's…sort of beautiful, in a way. It's okay, yes, of course it is. It makes sense. It's what graveyards are for.”

He knew his response was disconnected and gauche, but she hadn't really heard him over the music, and kept going. “Thing is. Like I said. You'd have to see the guardrail to know what I mean. I want to show you someday. So you can tell me I'm being crazy. That it doesn't make sense.”

He couldn't say,
Really?
He couldn't say,
Matt fell asleep, Allie, so the car did whatever it wanted.
He couldn't lie to her the way the police report did. Shifty, eyes in his beer, the truth rattling around inside him. Trying to find the best way out. “A-Allie?”

“What?What's
wrong
with you?”

Cowardice, hesitation, a lie: “I have to run to the washroom again.”

Her heart sank, like,
You fucking bastard
. She was visibly hurt that that had been his response to her confession. It was in her voice and the subconscious shake of her head. “I'm coming too. Those shooter kids at the bar are staring and creeping me out. Wait outside the bathroom doors for me?”

He nodded and they left their booth for the washrooms. He went into a stall, put the cover down, and sat with his legs shaking back and forth in wide, anxious swings. He stabbed an elbow into each knee and laid his chin on the knuckles of his hands.

He couldn't stand the idea of her, parked at that guardrail, questioning the physics of her father's death. Him not there to hold her. This day was inevitable, but the timing was all wrong because he was drunk, and they weren't home, and that meant a taxi to the airport and a plane ride with this news throbbing between them. She'd need some distance, some personal space, that the hotel room couldn't provide.

The harder he searched for the right words, the less sense it made he'd never told her the truth until now. Because Lee had reassured him there was no use, but what did Lee know?
Your father's idea. I was dragged into it. I was betrayed, to my face.
He wanted to offer that as an excuse. For sticking with Matt's plan A and the suicide he was duped into being a part of.

There was a kid throwing up in the stall next to him. Allie was probably outside the bathroom door already, waiting for him, watching over her shoulder for those kids at the bar. She worried easily.

He should have been putting those few sentences together— the truth, well-worded—but an anger at Matt kept rising to the surface. He'd want her to know Lee knew too. To share the resentment, spread it over two people. He felt callous for thinking that way. And it wouldn't work to tell her Matt had threatened him,
If you tell her, there'll be a war between us, understand?

He'd been in that stall way too long. He thought of Allie out there waiting for him. Looking over her shoulders at the guys at the bar. He got up off the toilet. Went out to meet her. They walked back to the booth without saying anything to each other, until sitting in the booth. She asked him again, “What's
wrong
with you? Are you okay? You look pale, and you took forever in the washroom.”

“Lineups. At the urinals.”

“No there wasn't! I could see in. Every time somebody walked out of the washroom, I peeked in, because I thought maybe you'd come out and I missed you. There were no lineups at the urinals. There was no one at the urinals. Why are you acting so weird? Do you want to leave? Did the shots make you sick?”

“Allie. Your father.”

“What?What about him?
Say
something. Jesus Christ!”

“A—”He clenched his jaw. Took a sip of beer. Looked away from her to the stage.

“Cohen, what the fuck?”

“A month before he died, he went to Lee's house.” Cohen stopped, wanting to, but not needing to drag Lee into this. She was still as a statue, waiting for his words. “A few weeks before your father died, he called me to come over. When I got there. Something wasn't okay.” He looked up at her and quickly looked away. She had a face like a beating heart. “When I got there, something was wrong. He wasn't okay. He was drunk. He—He had cancer,Allie. Terminal,
definitely
terminal cancer. He told me all about it. His esophagus, his stomach, it was bad. He only had months. And didn't want to die that way, in a hospital bed. He was talking suicide. So I...”

Allie deflated slowly. Her arms tucked into her body, her stomach concaving, her tailbone sliding into the groove between the seat and the back of the booth. She clutched her big white purse with two hands and held it like a shield to the words. She motioned like she might get up and run away. But fell back into her chair.

“...He didn't want you to see him, go through it, like—like you had to with your mother. I told him that wasn't okay. I—I did. I tried to stop him. And he fucking lied to me. He looked me in the eyes and promised, with his hands on my shoulders, that he'd tell you at the cabin that weekend or later that week. I had no idea, but he thought he knew what was best for you. He didn't want you going through it with him, day after day, like you had with your mother. He wanted to spare you that, and himself too, I guess. He—He. He made me part of his plan.”

“He
made
you?” She'd howled it so loud that the bartender's head turned to their booth. “You sat there, in the car with me, by the guardrail, and you fucking knew? And you bit your tongue?”

“I was shocked. Crushed. Hurt. I did
not
know he was going to do that.”

“Then how do you know it wasn't an accident!”

“Because he told me. The night he told me he had cancer. He told me. How. He'd...do it.”

Her face was swan white; her eyes pinched half shut. There was a thick tear in one eye that had to be blurring her vision. She slammed her eyes shut to block it all out, and one tear ran quickly and then stopped altogether on her cheek. She let out a moan that sounded out of context. She was supposed to cry, to yell, but the moan was un-gaugeable and unexpected. A whimper really. A slight trembling in her lips and then her hands.

She put one hand straight out in front of her—an open palm at first, and then a closed fist—and slammed it down on the table. Unwritten sign language.