Every Little Thing (21 page)

“His name Keith?”

“Yes, but that's not the point of my call. Remember, you need to make an excuse to meet with her, to see her in person. That's all I can say. Or she'll cut my tongue out and turn on me.” Cohen dismissed it.

CENTRIPETAL

FOUR MONTHS HE'D been in that prison. Four. And he was supposed to be used to the place now. Or the days weren't supposed to be passing slower. And slower. And slower.

Four months had been long enough for him to watch some of the familiar faces get released. Releases happened on Tuesdays and Fridays at eleven in the morning. He could watch Friday's releases from the yard because Friday at eleven was part of his Yard Time. He'd be sitting in his hack squat machine. Pushing himself up and down, pushing his body to burn, feel alive, ache, but he'd stop to watch when someone got released. Got greeted by their family. Bear hugs. A kiss. A kid clinging to someone's leg. He'd wonder about those kinds of families. The ones who brought their kids to greet Daddy on release day. But they were always so goddamn thrilled to see each other that Cohen longed to be in someone else's shoes. Longed to be elsewhere, over that fence, in another life.

He'd realized, in prison, after all those days breezed by him, indifferent and undifferentiated, that, in the years since Allie first left him, his days needed something he wasn't giving them. There were shots at women he never took, an opening for a promotion, vacation time he did not spend in the places he'd always wanted to go. Nothing significant had punctuated the years as they rolled by. Just a leak to fix in the attic, some dishes to wash, a movie that sounded good.

His friends were all married now, and on nights out, he'd hear the clink of their wedding rings against beer bottles. It was the sound of missed opportunities. He was nearing thirty-five, and something had gotten away from him.

He met Julie Reid on a day life made him look up. Two dimples and pure sincerity whenever she smiled. They'd shaken hands and introduced themselves, and her smile never really went away. She had electric blue eyes, like if he touched her face, he might get a shock.

The lease was up on his car, and he went into the dealership to buy it out, and it was Julie's first week on the job. She had a cellphone in one hand and an office phone in the other, and her hair was a cartoon drawing of a flustered and overworked employee. He could almost see the radiating waves of anxiety a cartoonist would've drawn, beaming from her head.

“I'm very sorry,” she said, and she meant it. “I've never done this process before, this paperwork. But bear with me. I have notes.” She had two sheets of paper in front of her with red stickers hanging off the sides of them. There were little arrows drawn on the red stickers as if the stickers weren't enough.

He laughed. “Sure. Take your time. I'm not in a rush. Honestly. Take your time.”

As he reclined into his chair, she looked up at him. Those electric blue eyes. She could taser someone with those things. “It's my first week, and one of the managers left,
quit
, before my training was over. And this place is a
madhouse
of people coming and going without appointments. I like appointments. I
love
appointments. I like daily planners and punctuality and schedules, you know? Marking things on a calendar.” She etched a big X in the air with an invisible marker. There was a scribble-filled calendar on her wall.
Twelve Months of Monet.

“Yes. Organization. Keeps life on the rails.”

“Anyway, sorry. Back on track here. I need the exact kilometre count on your odometer and your insurance policy number.”She was looking through what he'd provided her. “I, um, do you have it on you?”

“I can run out to the car and get both.”

“Thanks so much!”

She pulled a pen out from behind her ear to hand it to him. Then she looked at it like,
Is it weird to give you a pen from behind my ear?
He took the pen, and she rooted around her desk for a piece of scrap paper he could write his kilometre count on: her hand like a foraging mouse, searching under forms and prodding through drawers.

“My God. Sorry. I'm just, I'm so. Ah! You know? Here.”She pulled a balled-up receipt out of her pant pocket. “Write it on the back of this for me?”

He looked at the front of her receipt on his way out to his car. Some movie rentals. A sucker for romantic comedies where everything works out okay.

He came back into her office, handed her the insurance card and odometer reading, and her stomach roared. “
God!
” She clutched her stomach. “I'm sorry. But I'm
starving!
” She lowered her voice and looked around to make sure no one was in earshot. “Third day on the job and I haven't taken a lunch break yet because no one here seems to stop and eat.”Then she shook her head,
Why am I saying all this to a customer.
“Anyway, sorry. Back on track. Can I see your license and registration?”

“I, ah. I already gave it to you—”

“Right.”Quick shakes of her head while she looked around her desk for it.

It's always what he fell for: someone a little off kilter with a dozen endearing traits to fall for, one at a time. Like the way she got all animated when she was rattled. Her two-finger typing on the keyboard.

He read her nametag. “Julie, hey?”

She looked down at her name tag and back up at him and then back at her computer screen. “Um, yeah. Julie Reid. And that makes you the first person, ever, to have validated the use of nametags.”

“If you could have anything to eat right now, what would it be?”

“Oh, a chicken Caesar salad. Easily.
Mmm
, right?”

“I can go buy you one. If you want?”

She wasn't taken off guard, and he liked that. He liked that kind of girl. “If what? If I accidentally write in that you owe us four grand instead of six?”

All that chemistry crackling there between them. Her eyes like a net she'd thrown at him.

“If nothing. I hide a chicken Caser in my manbag here,” he tapped it, “and sneak back into your office and everyone thinks you are selling me a new minivan or something. You've got to eat. I know how awkward a first week at a new job can be. Settling in. Skipping lunch. All that stuff. Do you want a chicken Caesar or not? I'm not being boldly and awkwardly flirtatious here. I'm just offering some lunch to a hungry woman. Because I'm that kind of man.”

She eyed him playfully, but said nothing.

“Just let me buy you a chicken Caesar and sneak it in to you. Like a customer, turned delivery boy. Just one, I won't even join you. I'm a very important person as you've probably gathered in looking at me. And I have some very important places to be.”

“Are you being funny or arrogant?”

“Funny.”

“Then you need to work on your schtick.” She laughed and said, “You know what I like as much as the thought of eating? Talking to you about something other than two-doors and four-doors and licences and registrations and gas mileage and minivans with TVs on the backs of headrests for the kids on the long drives to the cabin. I'm hungry. I could cry just
thinking
of the tang of Caesar dressing on my tongue. I'm mentally crunching croutons right now.”

The crook of her arm and the M of her top lip and the wet vivacious gloss in her eyes. The little things. They added up to everything that had left his life, along with Allie Crosbie, two years ago.

Before long there were dinners and movies and he'd seen the vicious scar on her right shoulder blade—white around the edges and cotton-candy pink near the centre—from when a hunter,
a poacher
, had accidentally shot her when she was a kid, camping on Labour Day weekend. She'd missed the first week of grade twelve because of it. The scar was the shape of an upturned beer cap. It was raised as if the bullet had shot out of her. He'd asked her about it, after the first night they made love. And she'd asked him about his scar, the one above his heart.

She made pancakes for lunch sometimes, but never for breakfast, and she was big on pepper. Especially on her eggs. He liked the taste of her lips. Whether it was natural or some product she smeared on, it was like biting into an apple. He liked the husky they'd had, for two years, before it fell over a landing, down a staircase, and had to be put down.

But in the end she needed too much. She'd beg for more sex after he'd come and going down on her wasn't enough. She wanted to be out five nights a week, but once a month was enough for him. He was always up for a hike, but she'd pack the tent because they
may as well make a night of it
. He'd have to assist in making a fresh meal every night even if he was dead tired, on a Monday night, and a frozen pizza in the oven would have done the trick for him. Yoga, jogs, lame TV shows: she couldn't do these things alone.

One year into their relationship, he didn't know why he was trying to keep up with her. And then he stayed with her for two more. Because it wasn't all bad—knowing when she'd laugh at a movie and how, three years into a relationship, she still kissed him like she meant it. Intimacy, sharing the mundane details of his day with someone. This he liked. To be connected to someone made him feel connected to life. Alive. Even if she felt like a substitute for something, or someone, that had already happened. Or was yet to happen.

He dreamt of Matt a lot, still, in those years he spent with Julie. All of them together again. Glimpses of Allie and the way she looked back then. In his dreams of Allie, they were always about to get married, but Allie herself was seldom in the dream. It was always Matt, and there was
talk
of the wedding. But never a wedding.

One night he'd dreamt that he was lying in his bed with his eyes closed, knowing that if he opened them he'd see Matt standing in the corner of his room and staring at him. Shivering, blue with cold. Panting, in a tattered suit, with beads of water dripping off of him. Like he'd just climbed out of that upturned truck in the ocean. Ragged purplish skin. Cohen shot up in the bed when he woke that night, and Julie jumped awake too. She whispered tiredly, rubbing at her eyes, “Nightmare?”

And it was that night he realized there was so much about him she never knew. Toomuch, for a woman he'd spent three years with. She knew he had a dead brother, but she'd have to struggle to recall his name was Ryan. Julie was with a
version
of him. She was occupying select roles of a partner, but was never the whole package.

AN INVITATION HAD shown up in his and Julie's mailbox one day.
Longing: An exhibition of contemporary photography by local artists Allie Crosbie and Cynthia Nash. Saltscapes Gallery. Tuesday, May the 13th.

It wasn't Allie reaching out. It was a flyer everyone on that street had received, maybe everyone in that town or on that gallery's mailing list. But he thought,maybe Allie
had
tracked him down. His address. Gotten it off Lee or something. He and Lee still kept in touch a little over the years. Phone calls during the Christmas holidays and quick visits on birthdays, but not much beyond that sort of thing. There was a night or two, in the years since they'd broken up, that Lee'd called him and said, “We were just doing some reminiscing, and I thought you two should say hello to each other. For old time's sake.”And he'd hand the phone to Allie. Awkward
Heys,
awkward
Hellos
, awkward
How are things?

But the sound of her voice had always reset something in him. He'd hear the way her voice snagged on Cs. The little things he'd forgotten about. Then he'd hang up the phone and remember a whole lot more about her.

He hadn't seen her in years, and then the invitation. He always took his mail into the kitchen with him and stood over the recycling bin with it, throwing out envelopes and then their contents after reading them. But he took the invitation upstairs with him and sat on the corner of his bed with it. She had shorter hair now. At least she did in the artist photo on the invitation. A smile like someone had told her to smile. Say cheese. She was all pose and no glow.

May 12th, midnight, the night before her show, his phone rang and it was Allie and she was drunk. “Maybe...maybe you shouldn't come tomorrow night? I don't know.”

“Are you...okay?”

“Yes. Drunk is all.”

“Are you talking about your show, at the gallery?”

“Of course, what do you mean?”

“I, ah. I dunno why...you'd think I was going.”

“Well, Je-
sus
, mister. Sorry I invited you!”He laughed, but kind of shocked by his answer.

“No, no. I assumed it was a flyer, not an invite!”

“Hah! When was the last time an art gallery sent out invitations for a show? You've always been really supportive of my photography. Or you were. You seemed let down I got out of it. When I stopped taking photos. I started getting back into it recently. Got my first show. Put some thought into who to invite. You know? It's.”

She said nothing after saying it's. Cohen waited a few seconds. “It's what?”

“Sorry. I'm drunk. In the bad way. Rum and wine and pints, and all of it mixed up in me. Gross. It is. Gross. I feel...gross. The bed's spinning like I'm a teenager. Remember that ride we were on, that time in Toronto? And the lady in the bucket in front of us threw up, and it sprayed back and slapped all over our bucket? It got on my shoes. You bought bottles of water to wash it off, and I couldn't even watch—”

And then he heard Keith's voice enter the room. The phone muffled, like she'd put a hand over the receiver or hid the phone under a pillow. After five minutes, he decided it was the latter, even though he felt someone in their thirties needn't hide a phone call to their ex,
an old friend
, about an art exhibition. He waited out ten minutes of white noise, until the phone clicked off.