Every Little Thing (2 page)

He asked her questions, but he doesn't remember her answers.

The officers had reduced everything to guilty or not guilty. They weren't concerned with the context of the three-way argument they'd walked into, just, simply, which of the three had crossed a line and broken a law. There were cracks and pops of walkie-talkies going off like gunfire, making far too big a deal of things. All that guilt caught in Allie's throat, stretching it, until her voice was a wheezy, punctured balloon. Every time she nodded her head to the police that night, it was another dull blow, until Cohen's whole body felt like a thumb struck by a hammer. Theymade Allie clip the
but
off of every
yes but
, until she panicked at how simple they'd made it all sound.
Yes or no, ma'am: Did Cohen Davies enter your home without your consent?

They dragged him down over her staircase, gripping his arms so tightly he could barely turn and face her. The male officer's grip was firm and contemptuous: his fingers pinched deep between Cohen's bi- and triceps. The female officer's grip had been less judgmental. Four thin fingers and a dry thumb, like a butterfly at his elbow.

There were no sirens going off as they walked him to the car, but the lights were flashing and it seemed so needless, such an exaggeration. The red and white lights poked him in the eyes as they tucked his head into the car. He sat in his seat, watching the lights bang off the trees in the yard: brown bark to red bark, to white bark, to brown. He looked up to Allie's window and she was staring down at him. Her eyes in his,
I'm so fucking sorry
. And that's what kept him up at night. That she really was sorry and had so much to be sorry about.

Every night, he'd lie in that prison bed, restless, running a finger around the puck-sized metal implant above his heart. His idle hand was drawn to the rough feel where the metal pushed, from the inside out, against his flesh. Raising it, just a little. It felt like a big bottlecap sewn under his skin. He'd gotten used to having that chunk of metal in his chest,
mentally
, but his body never did. It throbbed, wanting Cohen's hands to pluck it out like a splinter.

The first time Allie took his shirt off, it was dark and she never saw the thumb-sized scar below his collarbone. Surgical, but with a vicious edge. They were both on their knees, in the centre of her bed; his hands tucking her hair behind her ear, to kiss her neck. The soft mattress was bending under their weight, so they were leaning into each other; her hard nipples soft scrapes against his chest. She slid a hand up his thigh, past his hips, over his ribs, and when she felt it there, she went still as a statue. Took a deep breath with a cutting noise.

“Cohen! You've got a...it's a lump or something!” Her eyes so wide he could see their whiteness in the dark.

He laughed, “I...was born with a broken heart.”

She shrugged both shoulders, “So, it's a pacemaker or something?”

“Something like that.”

She reached out to touch it, hesitantly, like it was a button she shouldn't press. “Can I?” she nodded to her fingers, an inch or two from his chest.

He nodded back.

She rubbed her middle finger over it, like she was applying a cream, to feel the outline of it under his skin. She brushed another finger, her forefinger, along the glossy scar, once, and looked him in the eye. “Tell me about your broken heart.”

“There was this girl I loved, and she left me for a man with money.”

She shoved him, hard, her palms clapping off his shoulders, and she bounced back like she just shoved a wall. They tumbled onto opposite sides of the bed, laughing. “I'm serious!”

“You know those paddles doctors shock peoples' hearts with in the hospital?”He waited for her to nod. “I have one in my chest.”

“
Fuck off!
” She covered her mouth like the words were a sneeze. “Really?”

He shrugged his shoulders. His eyes looking where his hands wanted to be. She was sitting there, crossed-legged in bright orange underwear, topless. Gorgeous.

“I dunno, I'll be out shovelling, or something like that, and it can feel like my heart is a bird trapped in a space too small to flap its wings. But it's trying anyway. That's what this implant thing is for. To shock my heart out of a, I dunno, a bad rhythm.”

She reached up and touched it again. The backs of her fingers this time. Gently. He'd never seen that look on her face before. But she read his body language. That he didn't want her that far away. Or that look in her eye. Like he was a movie and things were going wrong.

HE'DMET ALLIEin hismid-twenties, just after his heart surgery. There were still stitches in his chest. The muscles they cut through in the operation were the same ones that his left arm needed to move. So it felt like someone had swung an axe at him and his left arm was dangling by a thread. There were painkillers and times he'd lift that arm too high in putting on a shirt and he'd wince from the hot stab of pain. He was all right hand for a while. He'd right-hand a cigarette into his mouth, and use his right hand to light it.

The night they met, he'd stepped outside his house for a cigarette. He'd do his smoking in a deep, dark, cement stairwell out back. The house next door had been empty for months with the same mannish, unlucky real estate agent showing it almost daily. Her jacket was two sizes too big and it flapped like a flag in the wind; he'd hear her out there, wooing potential buyers, sounding like a plastic bag caught in a storm. The place had been vacant so long that seeing the lights on had snagged the corner of his eye. He had a cigarette poked between his lips and the lighter in his hand ready to go. He looked up and Allie was leaning into the patio railing, facing him, hidden behind a puff of smoke. Their eyes banged into each other, locked, and seconds passed without either of them speaking.

“So,” she said. “Safe to assume you're my new neighbour? If not...if you're about to burgle that house, I'll keep my mouth shut for the toaster.” Her sly laugh was a soft blade in his gut. “I'm just moving in here,” she said, nodding her head back at the house, as if it wasn't obvious which house, “and I forgot to buy myself a new toaster tonight. I remembered everything but the toaster. I'd much rather a cooked bagel to a raw one in the morning. I mean, butter won't even melt into a cold bagel, you know? Like, real fresh butter.”She flashed a sad face.

He scuffed a foot, a nervous tic. “Sorry, but I'm just the neighbour, not a burglar. Although I do have a toaster. And your pending breakfast tragedy has me willing to lend it to you. Really. It's a good one, it's got a bagel setting and everything. High-end Black and Decker.” He snuffed his cigarette out. “Stainless steel. Digital display. You couldn't get a loan of a better toaster.”

She honked out a laugh and its unrestrained volume took him off guard. “I'm the kind of girl who'd take you up on that, you should know.” She looked at her cigarette, her first cigarette smoked on that patio, and she didn't know what to do with the butt.

Cohen scooped up his mug-as-ashtray and walked up the stairs. He stood beneath her, holding it up like a bouquet of flowers. “Just...try and shoot for the mug and not my head.”

“Well, it would be funny, wouldn't it?” she laughed, “the first time we meet, you make this chivalric ashtray gesture and I set your hair on fire—”

An oversized U-haul truck pulled up in front of her house, loud as an old bus, and cleaved their conversation. Her boyfriend, he imagined. A fuller head of hair. More charm and wittier.

“Well, there's my stuff.” She tossed the butt and it landed in the centre of his mug. There was a soft
sist
of it being extinguished in the collected rainwater. She pumped a fist, said, “Guess who should join the basketball team?” and he liked that. “Nice to meet you...”

“Cohen.”

“Cohen who...Leonard?”

“Davies.”He laughed. “You?”

Her hand was on the sliding patio door now. “Allie Crosbie. And that's Allie as in Allie. It's
not
short for Allison. And you can't call me Al, either.” She laughed; he raised an eyebrow. “Like, the song, you know? Paul Simon?” She started strumming an imaginary guitar, trumpeting the tune with her mouth. “
You Can Call Me Al?
” But he didn't know the song.

She shook her head and disappeared into her house, leaving him all alone with that dumb smile on his face and the filthymug-ashtray in his hand.

But she came back out before he'd finished his cigarette. He heard her patio door slide open. In the quiet of the night, the sound of that door wasn't far off a subway car stopping on rusty rails.

“Hey,Cohen Leonard?”

He turned around. “Davies. I'm Cohen Davies.”He pointed to himself.

She raised an eyebrow, shook her head, almost embarrassed for him. “I'm fooling around, you know,
hah hah
. I'm mocking your name. It's a weird name.”

He had a sense of humour and it was exactly why he was drawn to her, immediately, but there was something about her, like when you shake an Etch-a-Sketch and it all goes blank. She had a look on her face—a smirk—like she knew she had that effect on him.

“My father,”she said. “He's out front. I think you know him? Any chance you could give us a hand with a bedframe? Just the bedframe, I promise, not everything. It's just that it's oak: an awkward, heavy lift. It needs three people.”

He wanted to say,
Sorry, I'm not supposed to lift anything right now
. He wanted to say,
I can barely get my own shirt on,
and explain about the surgery. And he wanted to know why she'd said,
I think you know him.
But she'd slipped back inside before his tongue came unknotted. He figured he could manage one quick lift, using his right arm, the good arm. If only to spend another minute with her.

He walked around to the front of the house and a man named Matt introduced himself. A bit too enthusiastically. They had something in their DNA, Matt and Allie, and Cohen pictured it as a charge, buzzing at their core, that kept them wired, and 110% alive. “It's Cohen, right? You're Gordon's boy?”

“Yes, yeah, how'd you know?—”

The man grabbed his hand and shook it, hard, the way men of that generation do. It was his left hand and the vigorous shake burned the wound on his chest. A flash of fire along the edges of the cut.

“We're old friends. Your old man and me. He hasn't mentioned us moving in? Kinda weird, since it was him who turned us onto the place. Or your mother did.”They were standing on the front lawn and it was in need of mowing. The grass was so tall it was awkward to stand in as they waited for Allie to reappear. And she did. She burst through the opened front door.

“Told you he wouldn't mind,” she said. “Roped him in.” She posed in a cowgirl stance and swung an invisible lasso.

“I guess...why would Gordon mention it, right? But Allie here, she needed a place by the university. She's doing her PhD. Chemistry of all things.” He patted Allie on the back and she flinched like she's a bit too old for a proud father. Cohen pegged her as pushing thirty: the swagger, the confidence, the effect she had on him. They started walking towards the truck and Matt said, “Your father mentioned the place next door to his son.”Matt tossed a hitchhiker's thumb at Cohen's house.

“And he just bought the thing,” Allie said. “We didn't even come see it. He looked at pictures online, trusted an inspector. Fucking crazy.”

Matt hauled open the back of the truck. “Just this one bed frame, kid, and you're off the hook. We can manage the rest by ourselves.”And that was the point when Cohen was supposed to say,
No, don't be silly
, and offer to help. Or better yet, explain about his arm, the surgery.

They all grabbed the bedframe and lugged it to the front porch. But a third body was one too many. A third body was only in the way when rounding corners, doorways, climbing stairs. “You guys got this,” she said,nodding her head like they should be proud of themselves. She let go of the frame and it felt no heavier in Cohen's hand. “I'm gonna grab a few of my boxes, speed this up.”

She scurried off, leaving them to chat through the awkwardness of not knowing each other. They mounted the stairs and made a turn for one of the bedrooms. “Any reason you're only using the one hand there, tough guy?”He laughed.

“I've...just had surgery. It's fine, I'm fine using just this hand, but—”

“Jesus Christ! Lay it down!” Matt stopped walking as he made the demand, but Cohen wasn't expecting the sudden stop, so he kept walking forward. He'd butted his incision into the bedframe, winced, and laid the oak frame down.

“You had that heart surgery, like your father? The...the
thing
put into your chest?The shocker thing?” Matt looked panicked, repentant. He'd been tapping his own chest, over his heart, while he struggled to find the right word.

“ICD, yeah. Like father like son—”

“Why didn't you say anything, Jesus!” He was definitely concerned but kind of laughing too.

COHEN STEPPED BACK into his house that night, banished by Matt on account of his useless arm, and his phone was ringing, tinny and distant. It rang at least ten times before he'd found it in the cupholder of his treadmill. Ten times it rang, so he knew it was his father. A patient man. The only man Cohen knew who'd let a phone ring until someone answered it or until that blaring
give up!
signal cut in.

“Cohen?”

“Obviously. I live alone. You dialled my number. Were you expecting Oprah?”

“Yes, very funny, ha hah.”

“What's up?”

“Your mother. You know what she's like. She's still processing this ARVC thing. She says the doctors are downplaying it.”

“We're invincible. We're robots now. These ICDs make us immune to heart attacks.”