Every Little Thing (30 page)

“Exactly.”

IT WASN'T LONG before she'd started coming over for no good reason—no more excuses—and lingering longer. Keith spent half his time travelling and the other half at the office. And she never liked being alone.

Cohen got out of the shower one day and came down over the stairs, pulling his shirt on, to find Allie in the kitchen. “There you are!” she said, as if she'd been combing the whole city for him. She was holding a tomato, pointing to it, “What's
this
?”

He screwed up his face, perplexed, “What do you mean? It's…half of a tomato.”

“No,” she said, peeling a sticker off of the tomato. “This?”

He looked at her like she'd lost her mind, and she said, as if he'd cheated her out of something, “This is
grocery store
tomato.” She shook her head and grabbed the handle of the back door. “Go get your shoes. Get mine too? Lee's got this
amazing
heated greenhouse.”

Walking through the yard she filled him in. “He'd let his greenhouse go to hell, but I cleaned it up two summers ago. I got it all in order, heaters and everything. Spiders and sticky tape so it's pesticide free. It's rigged so that I can get red, ripe tomatoes by
June
.”
June!
she'd said, raising her eyebrows like,
Holy shit, right?

“Those tomatoes from the grocery store, I mean, they're so sour or tasteless or rotten because they're shipped here all the way from…Mexico, sometimes.”

They got to the greenhouse and she tugged open the bulky wooden door. It caught and skipped on the ground. She had to wrestle with it as it dug into the grass. It seemed rehearsed and habitual, the way she got the door opened, just enough to get in behind it, and shoulder butt it the rest of the way open.

There were glass shelves covered in pots, stray soil, and white balls of fertilizer, and potted plants hanging from the ceiling. There were little strips of masking tape on all the pots with Allie's handwriting scribbled on them. Looping Ls, Os no bigger than periods. The dot on her
i
in dill was more like a sideways line than dots. Dill, zucchini, tomato, grapes (Please Grow!), mint, garlic.

She said, “Isn't this place amazing?” as if they were standing in the middle of a picturesque jungle and Tarzan might just come leaping out from behind her tomato plants. She grabbed a small and rickety wooden chair. The chair had been painted army green—at least ten years ago, judging from the state the paint job was in—and climbed up on it. She had a serious, goal-oriented look of concentration on her face as she reached for the tomatoes, tugging them off a vine and lobbing them down to Cohen. Her tongue poking out past her lips sometimes. A little rustle of leaves every now and then. There was a herbaceous smell on the plump tomatoes in his hand, like cut grass and mortared parsley.

Allie climbed down off the chair, handed Cohen a Tupperware container to lay the tomatoes in, and got to looking around for something. He had no idea what, but she couldn't find it and wouldn't give up. She was poking around like a burglar in a rush. He'd seen her look in the same place twice. Move things around. And then she smirked a little.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What are you looking for?”

“The package the tomato seeds came in. It had a funny comic on it. I wanted to show you. They're called
Alicante
tomatoes. Get it?
Allie
Can-tay. Me and Lee, we were pretty excited about our tomato operation, the first year we got it up and running. So we started calling them Allie Can't Say tomatoes or Allie Can't Stays. All sorts of lunch-time puns. I'd say,
Sorry, Lee, I gotta go
and he'd say,
Allie Can't Stay
? Before, you know, he changed.”

She took a tomato out of the Tupperware and held it like it was a baseball. She brought it to his mouth. “Here. Taste this. You won't believe it!” She got impatient when he didn't bite into it. She stamped on one of his feet. “Take a bite!”

“It's a tomato. You're acting like it's an apple. I can't just bite into it. It'll...squirt everywhere.”

She stomped his toes again, out of impatience, and moved the tomato closer to his mouth: the skin just shy of his face. He tilted his head left and right and back and forth, contemplating the best way to sink his teeth in, and he did. A spray into his mouth, a burst of flavour. Pale red liquid dribbling over her hand, and she licked it off the backs of her fingers, saying, “See!

Amazing right?”

And it was.

“Holy shit.” Chewing it, “Best tomato ever. Honestly.”

She took a bite out of the other side and more liquid squirted out. Some of it dribbling out of the corner of her mouth. He saw her throat drinking the juice down; another burst of red gushing out of the bite he'd taken from the other side. Her sucking her fingers clean.

“Oh, there it is!”And they both looked to the pack of seeds resting against the wall. Flecks of dried soil caked onto it. She laid the half-eaten tomato back in the Tupperware container.

She shook her hand dry and Cohen saw a seed fly off behind her. She reached for the packet, but a makeshift shelf at her shins forced her to lean forward, lunge, and miss. Her fingertips had knocked it into the gap between the shelf and the wall. It fell to the ground, in behind that clunky wooden shelf at her shins.

“Shit.”

“Goner. Looked empty anyway?”

Sizing up the situation. “No. I can crawl under there. I think.”

“I—I saw one-ninety-nine written on the package. If you're that hard up for two dollars, I have a pocketful of change here. Really.”He jingled his pocketful of change.

“The comic on it. Remember? I wanted to show you. It's really cute. I think you'd get it.” She was already on her knees, palms against the floor, peering under the shelf like a cat stalking a mouse. “It's, ah, it's pretty dark under there. But I think I can see it.” She made a move to crawl under, but hesitated. Cohen blinked and she was on her way under. The board was not quite three feet off the ground. She looked like a mechanic under a car, except she was on her belly instead of her back.

And then her feet kicking in the air, like maybe a spider had bitten her “
Help!
”

“What?”He bent down instinctively.

“My hair! My hair is snagged in something!” He saw her try to roll over and then she screamed out in pain. Loudly. “I can't…my arms. There's no room! Help me for God's sake, man!” And she started laughing a little in between the moans of pain.

He got down and looked under. It was dim, but he saw her there, flat on her belly, one hand planted on the ground, the other triumphantly clutching the pack of seeds. Her hair was caught in a split in the plywood. He crawled under, but once he was under, it was even darker, and the limited space had him feeling claustrophobic, straightjacketed. His limbs awkward and useless.

“I need to get my right shoulder flat against the ground, in order to roll over and get your hair out.”

“Then do that!”

“I can't. That's the problem. Unless. I lay my arm flat along the ground, under your chin maybe?”He flapped a hand around to make things more clear.

She shouted “
Why are you yelling?
” and laughed at herself. “Here.” She lifted her head up off the ground. She put her face back down on his arm, nestling it in the crook of his elbow. Her soft cheek and chin radiating heat into his arm. Her breathing like the brush of a ghost. There, not there, there, not there: condensing on his bicep. He'd shift, and her lips would kiss his arms involuntarily. The poor lighting had him relying on his hands as much as his eyes. He had to lay a leg over her legs to get a little flatter. He had to spoon her.

“Sure. Make yourself cozy.” A joke to peel back a layer of imposed intimacy. Skin clinging to skin and the feel of two bodies breathing in unison; rising and falling together. Her lips were still pressing into his bicep whenever he made a movement, and then peeling away softly, like a Post-It note grip. The back of her hand at his crotch.

“I got it! Don't move at all!”

His eyes were adjusting to the light. He looked at Allie, and her eyes were in his like arrows. A look he knew. A look like quicksand. He unhooked her hair and got out from under the board.

He helped her up after she'd shimmied out. He let go of her hand, but she kept hers clasped to his. They were standing toe to toe, face to face. Breath on breath. “Just. Kiss me.” She put her hands on his shoulders, and she walked him to the wall behind her. “Just kiss me until we're thirty years old again.”She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall: an offering. Her hands grabbed fistfuls of his shirt. “Not on my lips. I can't kiss you back. Just, kiss me.” And he did. Lingering on her neck, her pulse feral against his teeth. He kissed her along her jaw and tried for her mouth, but she'd turned away. He kissed the backs of her fingers; a frightened butterfly at his mouth. He slid a hand up her dress, his fingers sensing heat as he knelt, and she snared his hand with hers.

“I have to get back to work.”She never let go of his hand as she walked away. His arm going up and up and up until their fingers snapped apart.

THE NEXT NIGHT, Cohen heard a series of thuds end in smashing glass. He ran to Lee's room—skidding on the hardwood floor—and swung the door open without knocking. Lee was sat up in his bed; his hands full of balled-up blanket.

He was shivering, staring at Cohen, taking long, slow breaths.

“Are you...okay? Lee?”

Cohen looked from Lee to the dresser and saw broken glass on top of it, by the TV. There was a dent in the wall. Little bits of white powder from a split in the gyproc. A few drops of water trickling down the wall.

“What happened?”

“I woke up. I was really thirsty. But the goddamn glass was empty.”He pointed to its shattered remains.

“So you threw it at the wall?”

“It's ah-ah big production...to get up. This hour of the night. I can't see a goddamn thing! It's like the light switches move every night. I can't find them no more!”

“You could have called out to me!”

“I'm feeling strange. Like something's wrong.” Lee looked to the window, like he was ashamed to look at Cohen or he was scared someone was out there, looking in.

“Healthwise, you mean? A headache? ...Did you...Did you have a bad dream?” Cohen stepped further into the room, concerned.

“The Japanese are in my dreams now. And I don't want Keith coming around here anymore!”

“What'd you dream about, Lee?”

“I didn't
dream about
anything! It was real. Like memories. They'd fill the ends of bamboo sticks with sand and crack us with them. They'd make this gesture, asking for cigarettes. They'd put two closed-together fingers to their mouths, and they'd make a sucking noise.” Lee demonstrated, with exaggeration, smacking himself in the lips with two fingers and inhaling fake cigarette smoke. “It was sign language, for cigarettes. If we didn't have any, they'd crack us over the knee. Or whack us on the back. Or a hand. Remember? Those sand-filled sticks stung as much as a whip. Hit as hard as a baseball bat. That sound and the way the men would howl. No pride or courage left in them.”Lee snarled; a flash of angry white teeth.

Cohen leaned into the doorframe, crossed his arms. He wanted to say,
What?
He wanted to say,
Was that dream?
But whenever he or Allie talked to Lee like a child, he'd get more confrontational, irrational.

“Where's Allie?”

“She's not here. Are you talking about the Philippines, the camps you were in, after the war?”

“Yeah, well, she's never fucking here, is she? Keith's got her turned against us!”

“That's not fair and you know it. She has to work, Lee, and she doesn't live here. And when she comes, you're never kind or welcoming. You tell her to go away. You jam her hands in doorframes. Ring a bell?”

Lee clawed a hand through the air like an angry bear.
Whatever
. “He is! He's...
tainting
her. He'll turn her on me. Like he turned her on you.”

“That was years ago,Lee. And not as simple as him
turning her
on me.”

“Don't mock me! You'll see!”

Cohen turned on a floor lamp and saw that Lee was sweating, maybe even crying. He threw the blankets off himself. White, thin boxers clung to him from the sweat. He was wearing a black tank top three sizes too big. Something about that made him look sad. Sadder. His sparse, thin hair was sweat-dampened too; the perspiration doing the job of gel in his hair.

He looked at Cohen, his eyes googly and magnified by his glasses. “She's after my house, and Keith is putting it in her head.”

“No one is
after your house
, Lee. Allie has her own. Nobody even
needs
your house. But I do want to hear your story, your stories, from your time in the Philippines. Let's get back to that?”

“I don't give a fuck about World War Two! I don't. That's not what I'm talking about!”

“I'm gonna go get a broom and clean this up. Do you want a glass of water?”

“Narcissco taught me how to find food in the jungle. He knew about ten words in English, but he also knew I was a scared kid. A hungry one. His weapon jammed that night they got us. They stuck him like a pig, with a bayonet, and kept running past him. I played dead and tried to plug up his stab holes with my fingers. But he still died. In my hands.”Lee held his hands in the air like they were a bloody mess.

Cohen waited for more, searched for context, didn't know if that was the start or an end to a story. Lee simply held two hands out to Cohen, like they were holding a tray. He tucked them back under his thighs and said, “
That's
who I want to give my house to. Not Keith. Narcissco!”