Every Little Thing (31 page)

“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 much 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.

He got back into the car and hauled the door shut harder than he'd intended.

“Pretty up here, hey?”She opened the box of Timbits. Laid them on the dashboard where they could both reach.

He saw the ring on her finger. The one Matt had given him to give to her. “Yeah. A real maritime cliché,must say.”

“So. You're leaving Grayton soon.”

“Yeah.”

“You shouldn't.”

“I shouldn't, but I have to. We're all slaves to bills and then we die.”

“Paycheques.”

“What?”

“The saying is,
We're all slaves to paycheques and then we die
.”

“Same thing. I mean, bills are what paycheques are for.”

“No more hanging out,me and you.”

“Maybe not, no.”

Some silence, raised eyebrows. “I'll find a good place for Lee. This week.”

The moonlight caught her ring again and must have folded his face up in disdain. She looked at him, curious. “What?” “That ring. On your finger.”

She looked at it like she did and didn't want to talk about it. “Well, you gave it to Keith to give to me. Remember?”

“I gave it to Lee, to give to Keith, to give to you. There's a big difference. I told your father you'd get the ring. I didn't think I'd ever see it on your finger. Us in a car like this. It's like seeing a pristine forest about to be bulldozed—”

A blast of laughter cut him off, “That's
got
to be the cheesiest thing you've ever said.” She stuck a hand into his face, laughing, pushing him away. She had her hand plastered upside down over his mouth: her pinky over his nose, her thumb into his throat. Her palm was a perfect seal over his mouth. He squirmed until she took her hand away, and then she leaned over and kissed his mouth. No hesitation. One kiss. And then another one, a slower one, to punctuate it.

“You just…”

“Yeah. I did.”

He wanted to say,
Wait
, or
Maybe you shouldn't
, but he didn't say anything as she undid his jeans and slid them down to his knees. Wrestled them down to the floor. He looked around, worried about neighbouring cars. “Allie, Jesus. I mean there's windows!”

“Doesn't seem to be bothering you,” she said, holding the proof in her hand. “Here,” she pulled the lever on his chair so he'd fall out of sight of any cars coming into the parking lot.

She moved her head down there, but she'd hit her head off the steering wheel, laughed, said,
ah
, and Cohen shot up to see if she was okay. “Yes, dammit! This was supposed to be sexy…and you're ruining it!” She slapped a palm into his chest, pushed him back down. She took it in her mouth and he shut up; went weightless. He watched her free hand go up her skirt. It came back with a purple ball of cotton panties. Soft handcuffs around her knees.

She tugged his condom on, then put her eyes in his as she climbed onto him, like she wanted it to mean something. When she tilted her head forward, her hair fell and dangled between them: a tunnel blocking out everything but her face. And he'd missed that. That moment of nothing but her. And then her lips were on his mouth, his neck, his chest.

He grabbed her hips hard as he finished, and she swayed gently to a stop, fell down over him, and they lay there with their eyes closed.

“That was—I could—”

She nuzzled her head into his chest. “Shh.”

“What? I'm just saying, if you want, I could—”

“We're good, champ.”She reached a hand up and squeezed his shoulders and laughed. He could feel her grin against his chest. Like she felt awkward, shy, kind of uncomfortable, in hindsight, with what had just happened. He craned his neck down, trying to get a look at her face, and kissed the top of her head instead. He ran a finger along her jaw and she cocked her head back like a content cat. She was biting a hangnail, pensive or perfectly happy.

“I don't want to move,” she said, sawing her knuckles over his ribs.