Every Little Thing (19 page)

She grabbed her purse and dashed off, he'd assumed, to the washroom to be alone. He swallowed the rest of his beer and walked across the bar. He leaned against a wall to perch somewhere he could see both the washroom door and their booth.

He waited there, for twenty-one minutes, and she did not come back to the booth.

She did not come out of the washroom.

He waited another minute before walking into the female washroom, and he apologized to three shocked women applying makeup or drying their hands. “Emergency, sorry. I'm looking for someone.”

He peered under all the stall doors, at shins and shoes, and not one combination was Allie's.

No black and red shoes.

He ran back out and looked over to the booth they'd been in, and she wasn't there. Three fat men in matching baseball jerseys were there instead. Boisterous. Laughing. Almost drowning out Josh's music. Slapping their hands off the table so that their beer bottles wobbled. They'd pushed his and Allie's pitcher of beer to the edge of the table.

He combed the bar, quickly, thoroughly, and went outside. Looked up and down the sidewalk. He saw a woman on a park bench in the distance, and he wanted it to be Allie, even though this woman was taller and wore a white coat. She in no way resembled Allie, and yet he stared, squinted, to bend her shape.

He called her.

No answer.

He called her back. Nothing. Her voicemail. “Hi, you have
not
reached Allie Crosbie. Better luck next time.”

He was there when she'd recorded that message and laughed at herself. She was painting her toenails,on the corner of their bed, and called him into the room. She said,
Listen to this, my new voice mail message!
, and she threw him her phone, laughing at herself.

He walked along the outside of the bar. It was attached to other pubs and shops and restaurants, so he walked the whole block. He walked up and down every little alley between the buildings, dialling her phone number over and over. Each time she didn't answer was a separate panic.

He tried calling their hotel room,and she didn't answer there either. She wouldn't do that to him. Disappear like that. She would at least answer his call and then hang up on him.

She liked the Public Gardens, at the end of Spring Garden Road. So he went there, poking his head into every pub along the way that looked like a place Allie might have been drawn into for a drink and a dark corner. She was in none of them, and she was not in the Public Gardens. He had not randomly seen her, on a staircase outside of a hotel or shopping plaza or walking aimlessly along a sidewalk.

He went back to their hotel room,and she was not there. And had not been there. There were no signs of her: her purse wasn't on the bed,no half-drunk glass of water on a dresser. Her suitcase had not been hastily packed and taken out of the room.

Hours had passed. Too many hours. He peered through his hotel window—forehead flat against the cold glass—eyeing Halifax like a hawk; waiting for the red dot of Allie's jacket.

He knew she wasn't okay. She wouldn't do this to him. She was rightfully in need of space, but she would've called to say she was okay, after storming off like that. Hours ago. It was who she was to do so. Naturally paranoid, always checking in, empathetic. And she would have reacted by now, said her piece, expressed herself. She couldn't keep emotions to herself. She'd need to express the words in real time; articulate the frustration while it was still fresh enough to word well.

Prying himself from the window pane, it had occurred to him that she was probably two floors up with Keith. Keith, not Leslie. Leslie had flown back home that morning.

Allie had used Cohen's cellphone earlier that week to call Keith. She'd left hers back at the hotel room. So she asked to use Cohen's phone at lunch one day, to tell Keith she might be ten minutes late for a meeting. A meeting she hadn't seen the need of attending, but Keith had wanted her there.
Yeah, to stare at
,Cohen said.
Probably
, she confessed.

He grabbed his phone and searched through sent calls until he found the only number he didn't recognize. He assumed it was Keith's and dialled it.

Keith answered. He sounded groggy and a little pissed off, “H-hello?”

He didn't want Keith to have been the place she ran to that night, and yet he desperately wanted him to say yes. “Keith, it's Cohen. Davies. Is Allie…there?With you?”

“Um, no.”

But there was a long pause before Keith had said no. Like maybe he was lying. Maybe she was there, waving her arms like a traffic director saying,
No no no!

“Are you
sure
?”

“What the fuck,man? It's…three a. m. What's going on? I've got shit to do in the morning, man.”

“She's…missing. We fought. She ran off. It's been five hours, and she's not answering her phone. I don't know—”

“Have you called the hospitals?

A long pause. Keith said the word
hospital
and a storm of visuals silenced Cohen. He shut his eyes. “I. No. I can't do it, man.

I—”

“What room are you again?”

“Three-o-two.”

“Look, I-I'll be right down, and we'll start calling some hospitals and police stations.”

“No, look, listen. You have my number in your phone now. Let me know if you find something out.”

“It only makes sense we stay—”

Cohen hung up the phone. Irrational. He took off to the nearest hospital.

No one here by that name, sir.

And the police hadn't heard the name either.

A young cop, younger than Cohen, only said, “We can't do much until it's been a little while longer, bud. But I'll take your name and call you if, God forbid, anything comes up about...,” he squinted at Cohen's desperate scribbling on the back of a business card, “Nellie Crosbie.”

“Allie.” He took the card back. Fixed his writing. “Allie Crosbie. Something's wrong. We're not even from here!”

It was five a.m. The city was still asleep and so quiet he could hear himself breathing. There was a lack of bustling city activity around him, to drown out his panic, and that amplified his anxiety. He'd dial her number every couple of minutes, and it would ring until he hung up. He was sitting on the bench he and Allie had picnicked on earlier that week. Slices of smoked gouda and a tub of pecans and prosciutto. Red wine in coffee cups. That memory like a ghost there beside him.

KEITH CALLED. “WE'RE at the QEII Hospital.” And Cohen's cab driver wouldn't drive fast enough.

When he finally got Cohen to the hospital, Cohen handed the man too many bills, rushed to the sliding doors, frustrated at how slow they were to open. Keith was waiting in the lobby, and then he was shaking his head, trying to hold Cohen back.

“Wait, man.
Wait!
—”

“For what, Keith?Where is she?What happened?”

A family in the foyer was staring.

“She's been hurt. Mugged from what I can tell. But something's not lining up. I'll take you to her. Just calm down. She's saying something about kids in a bar you two were at tonight?”

Cohen took off down the hall, with Keith trailing behind him. “You're going the wrong way! Calm down.”A tug at his elbow.

Keith took him down the right corridor, “Right here,”he said, “but I don't think you can go in yet. The police are—”

He burst in through the door. Her left eye was swollen shut. It was black; apple-red where the lids were fastened together. She shot up in her bed and shrieked that they take Cohen out of there. And they did. They grabbed him and walked him backwards out of the room. Her reaction was disorienting, shocking, and he never fought against them. He was too tired for that, too scared, hurt. Two police officers and a male nurse engulfed him like a net, and gently, respectably, dragged him out of the room and onto a bench across the hall.

“I need to know what happened. You don't understand. I'm her partner. She's just...shocked. We had a fight, and then...
this
happened. What is this?” he pointed to her room, perplexed.

The two officers looked at each other, unsure which should do the talking. “Sir, you need to understand she was not distressed until you came into the room. She was relatively calm. I understand you two had had a quarrel, before she ran off. I understand the grave nature of your quarrel. I understand you're shocked at seeing Allie here. But you need to understand that Officer Rose is not done taking a statement from Allie, and it's important that her statement is not interrupted. She's trying to help us catch her offenders. You don't want to impede that, do you? By distressing her?

He waited for Cohen's response, like Cohen was a dumb kid and the man needed to know he was being clear. Cohen nodded yes.

“She's banged up, yes, but not in a critical way. There's no concerning medical issues to worry yourself with.”

“Where?”

“Sir?”

“Did this,” he pointed to Allie's room, “happen?”

“She was headed back her hotel room. Three intoxicated males confronted her. She feels they were the three males you had a confrontation with, in the bar, earlier tonight—”

“Confrontation?”He was still drunk and the word had come out as
con-fron-ta-ta-tion
. “Those guys. They sent her drinks. I implied they should cast their attention elsewhere. That was all!”

“Confrontation was her word,buddy, notmine. Should I keep going?”

Cohen nodded.

“There was some name-calling and what she believes to have been allusions to you making a show of their gesture, in sending her drinks. They were handsy, rough, and ultimately, wanted her purse and belongings and to rattle her up some. But this story is for Allie to share,Owen.”

“Cohen.”

“I'm sorry?”

“Never mind.”Cohen got up to peer in her window again.

“C'mon, now. Let's, just, sit back down. You also need to consider your actions. Assisting a suicide is a possibly indictable offence in Canada. It's at least grounds for a civil lawsuit. You need to tread lightly.”

“Her eye. What, they punched her? Her jaw, the cut there?”

The cop was being coldly informative, and Cohen wondered if the man had been trained to be sensitive or to be painfully clear when talking to people. “They became physically abusive when she tried to retain her purse. There was a ring leader, goading the others along. When one of them tried to convince them to leave Allie alone, the ring leader also become physically abusive with him. They wore masks, but she's been very intelligent here, very helpful. She's told us one of them had raised moles on his neck. Another one of them stuttered. These are good details. These will help. Mainly, she tailed them to their van. Not a bright bunch. It had a company name on it.”

“What company.”

He eyed Cohen. “That's our job, to worry about such details.”

But the report was right there. On the edge of Allie's bed. When he'd gotten up to peer in the window, he'd seen the yellow pad of paper there, three thirds of a page of details. He'd make a dash for that detail.

He looked at Keith. “She called
you
?”

“No, man, the hospital did. I'm hearing this for the first time too.” Keith peered through the window, shook his head. “I mean, Jesus Christ. Who pounds the face off a woman? Fucking animals. And why'd she fight back?”

Cohen opened the door and made a run for the police report. He stood at the foot of her bed, started a senseless apology, with his head down, so no one would notice what he was really doing: scanning that report for the company name on the vehicle. And he'd found it,
Tulley's
something or other, before another pile of men tore him out of there and escorted him to the nearest exit.

He let the police watch him hail a cab. Told the cab driver,
I've forgotten my briefcase, sorry, don't wait for me
, and hopped back out of the cab.

He went to the cafeteria and texted Keith to let him know where he was. And he sat there, pouring two packets of sugar into a coffee he didn't want. His eyes lost in a maze of rain on a cold window pane.

Keith came to find him. “What the fuck, man. It's best you leave, don't you think?What kind of purpose do you think you're serving here?”

He handed Keith a tub of vanilla yogurt, with chunks of apple and cashews stirred in. Allie's comfort food.

“What's this?”

“It's for Allie. She'll want it.”

Keith took it and stared at it like it was a mystery. “Are you sure. I mean. What's wrong with a muffin or something like that?”

Before Keith had come down, twenty minutes after Cohen texted him, Cohen was cutting up that apple, wondering if Keith would take the time to get to know a woman the way Cohen knew Allie. If he was that kind of guy. If he would go to two different checkouts—one for a tall tub of yogurt and another for an apple— and then go to a vending machine for cashews. Would he find a plastic knife and cut up that apple or would he just get her
a muffin or something like that.

“Bring that to Allie, and come right back?We need to talk.”

“I don't know that we do, not right now.”He looked down at the tub of yogurt in his hand, still perplexed by it.

Cohen was going to ask Keith to come with him. To confront those kids. To get her purse back. He'd found a place called Tulley's using his phone. A locksmith place. A father and son operation. They had a website, and there was a photo on their
About
page. It was labelled,
Three generations of family ownership!
A caption:
Left to Right, Aaron Tully (grandfather), Aaron Jr. (father), and our young apprentice Nathan (son)
. The son of a bitch wasn't even smiling for the camera, the way his father and grandfather were. Nathan was listed in the phone book, halfway across Halifax.