Under the Surface

by Anne Calhoun

  “He thinks what I feel for him isn’t real.”

  Her brother sat forward, elbows on knees. “Maybe he’s right.”

  The apocalypse must be on its way if Caleb was agreeing with a cop, even a cop who saved two members of his family from certain death. “Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?” she asked.

  “He’s right. It’s not real, Eve, what happened over the last few weeks. It’s a bizarre interlude in your life.”

  “I know that, Caleb, but that doesn’t make the feelings any less real,” she said evenly. “I love him. He feels something too, but he won’t admit it. I think I scare him.”

  “You scare the hell out of me,” her brother said, then the smile disappeared. “Oh, Eve.”

  Hot tears trickled into the bandage on her cheek, and her sinuses swelled and throbbed under her bruised cheek. “It hurts when I cry,” she said shakily.

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “You’ve got one hell of a shiner. The doctor said you’re lucky you don’t have a fractured eye socket.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said, and reached for the box of tissues on the nightstand.

  Caleb shut his mouth, shifted onto the bed, and held her while she cried.

  * * *

  Matt stood in the basement, sunlight filtering through the dirty casement windows onto the dusty pile of stereo equipment. He had a decision to make. To do that he had to get very clear about who he was and what he wanted. Boxing no longer brought clarity, and only a fool continued to use ineffective tactics. So the first step was to bring speakers, tuner, and disc changer up from the basement.

  It took two trips, but eventually the relics from an archeological dig into the late twentieth century sat on the floor in the corner by the entertainment center. The cables were still attached to the components. He plugged them in, pushed the main power button, inserted a disc at random, and pressed play. Nothing. He pulled all the cords out and licked them—a trick he’d learned wiring radios on patrol—plugged them in again. The slow guitar chords from Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” blasted out into the living room. Matt put his hands on his hips and let the music wash over muscle and bone held too tight for too long. When the song ended and the disc spun to the Violent Femmes he opened his laptop, grabbed a CD at random from the shelves behind the television, and inserted it into the disc drive to import. It would take a while, but he had time. He was on desk duty until the department cleared his role in the shooting death of Lyle Murphy, and he’d used the time wisely. A new AC unit would go in next week.

  He was sitting with his back to the wall, watching the sun set and listening to Pearl Jam’s “Given to Fly” when he saw Luke roll up the ramp. His brother opened the door and braked to a stop by the recliner, a pile of mail on his lap.

  “I heard music when I pulled into the driveway and thought I had the wrong house,” Luke said, looking around at the controlled chaos spread over the living and dining rooms. “Damn, Matt. I haven’t seen you like this since you were in high school and Dad was riding your ass, and you’d shut yourself in your room for hours. Remember?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. Luke had been a scrawny little squirt, eight, maybe nine years old, completely unable to sit still for more than fifteen seconds at a stretch. He’d try to play it cool, study the album artwork or read the lyrics like Matt did, but after a while he’d just wriggle under Matt’s arm and listen. There was no physical affection in the house; his father said it would weaken the boys, and his mother never disobeyed his father. Matt learned not to care, but Luke was wired differently. He’d been starving for cuddles, hugs, anything. Luke soaked up the simple comfort of sitting on the floor together as much as he’d soaked up Matt’s taste in music.

  “Yeah,” Matt said. “You’d come in and we’d share the headphones. You’d pick a song, then I’d pick a song.” Luke always picked songs he knew Matt liked.

  “You always picked songs you knew I liked,” Luke said, echoing Matt’s thoughts. They’d been so close as kids, despite their age difference. “Those were my best memories from childhood. I’ve missed that, you know. You’ve been here every day, doing the right thing, but I’ve missed my brother.”

  At Luke’s words, a boulder swelled in his rib cage, crushing heart, lungs, forcing rock into his throat. He breathed against it, waited it out, and slowly the weight rolled back.

  Jesus. He’d survived eighteen months in a war zone and two shootouts in two weeks, and the intensity of the emotion swamping him might kill him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can see how you’d feel that way.” He’d been so focused on being strong for everyone around him he’d never given people what they needed most. Emotion. Affection. Love.

  “What brought this on?” Luke said, idly rubbing his shoulder.

  “After what happened, I thought it would help,” he said. This was true. Music was a way to express emotion, desire, and maybe if he let the music do his feeling for him, he’d find a way through the persistent, unrelenting ache in his heart.

  The process was still somewhat automatic, his hands pulling out a CD he hadn’t listened to in years, only to find that some song, even a phrase in a song, a guitar riff, something about the singer’s breathing on a live recording, even, would ease some of the tightness in his chest.

  He missed Eve. He’d counted on the memories associated with her receding by now, but instead he saw her everywhere, in the kitchen, on the sofa, at the dining room table.

  In his bed.

  “You mean the shootout?” Luke asked. His voice was tentative, flashing Matt back to childhood. Luke was using the same tone of voice they used with their father, hesitant, probing for the signs of a good day, a good conversation, a chance to be a normal family. Luke was using that voice on him.

  “Among other things,” Matt hedged. Early morning shadows on the pillows became a black spill of hair. The breeze in the trees in his peripheral vision transformed shifting contours into a soft, slender body, tantalizingly just out of sight. He no longer had to layer identities when he woke up, but now he would swear he felt her right beside him, heat and softness, breathing deep.

  The music helped deal with the day-to-day strain of the job, but the wild creature still lurked inside the prison of his rib cage. Sometimes he put in a two-hour workout to wear out the frantic thing, but at least now he knew what he was fighting.

  He was fighting loneliness. But the weakness of feeling lonely only jeopardized him. All the risk was his. No one else got hurt.

  “Just get off work?” Matt asked absently, ejecting Paul Simon’s Graceland and sliding in They Might Be Giants. The disc spun, giving off a high-pitched whir as the tracks began to import.

  “Yeah. My last day. I gave them my notice and told them to give my scheduled hours to the other tech.” Matt must have looked completely sandbagged because Luke couldn’t keep a smile from spreading across his face. “My chemistry professor left teaching at the end of the year for fulltime research with Genedac Pharmaceuticals. He needed a research assistant and asked me if I wanted the job. I did.”

  “In Chicago?” Matt asked.

  “Their R&D facility in Austin. The pay’s good. Really good. Good benefits and the temperature rarely drops below forty in Austin. After I get settled I’m going to help pay off the medical bills.”

  “No, you’re not,” Matt said automatically. “The accident wasn’t your fault. There’s no reason for you to pay off those bills.”

  “It wasn’t your fault either, but you’re paying them.”

  He looked at his brother. Really looked at him, for the first time in a very long time. “Fine. Send me a check every month.”

  “As they say, my brother didn’t raise no fool. I’d do that if you deposited any of the checks I’ve written you up to this point. No, sir. I’m sending checks straight to the med center’s billing department. Besides, you don’t get a new AC unit in this house and Eve’s never going to want to spen
d the night,” Luke said.

  “That’s over.”

  “Let me get this straight. You had a relationship with her when it probably violated whole sections of the department’s code of conduct, but when it’s all over and you can be with her, you walk away?”

  “I lied to her. She pretended to be my girlfriend so we could trap a drug dealer, who then kidnapped and nearly killed her. None of it bears any resemblance to real life,” he finished.

  “Dad took us out to look at Christmas lights and a five-time DUI offender takes the curve on the Thirty-Sixth Street on-ramp too fast for the conditions and Mom and Dad die and I’m in this chair. That’s life. It’s unpredictable. Uncontrollable. You took a shower. She answered the door for the UPS guy. That’s what people do, Matt. Shitstorms happen. It’s what you do after the storm ends that matters.” Luke waited a minute. “That’s your specialty, so I thought you knew that.”

  “She doesn’t need me. She’s surrounded by family and friends and all the people who love Eye Candy. Her brother’s got a mediator waiting in the wings when she’s ready to date again.”

  “Let’s think about that for a second,” Luke said.

  Let’s not. “She doesn’t need me to clean up after this.”

  “Yeah,” his brother said, the sarcasm of youth dripping from his words. “A woman that involved in East Side community activism doesn’t need to watch her back. Lightning won’t strike twice in the same place. Probably she’ll never get kidnapped or shot at again, but she’ll be making waves until the day she dies—”

  “Ninety years from now, in her bed, from extreme old age.”

  “—so there’s no good reason for her to get involved with a cop. Except maybe she likes you. You can be likeable enough when you come out of that I’m-in-control-of-everything armor.” His brother heaved a disgusted sigh. “Matt, has it ever occurred to you that maybe it’s not only freaking annoying but unhealthy to frame every relationship in the context of service and duty? That was good for the Army and the department, but not for you?”

  Matt kept his focus on the stacks of CDs.

  “That maybe the people who love you want to take care of you as much as you want to take care of them? That maybe you hurt us a little more every day when you treat us like your responsibilities, but won’t let us help you?”

  Direct hit to the sternum. Breath and pulse halted as he locked eyes with Luke. Again, Matt broke first, looked away from the perceptiveness in his younger brother’s eyes.

  “You want her. You need her. And that spooks you.”

  He didn’t just need her. He loved her. He didn’t have a choice in the matter. He loved her. Going back to the way he used to be wasn’t going to happen. Going forward terrified him. He balanced on the edge of a bottomless chasm, the gulf yawning at his feet, the ground crumbling behind him and no bridge in sight.

  He gave a half-shrug, pretended to check on the import progress.

  “What are you going to do once you’ve got all that on your computer?” Luke asked. “Which, for the record, is going to take days.”

  “Transfer it to my phone. Yes, I do know how to use iTunes,” he said, when Luke opened his mouth.

  “Mail call,” Luke said, and handed him an envelope.

  The envelope was postmarked in Lancaster. The return address was Eye Candy’s. He slit the top of the package with his pocketknife and opened the envelope. Wrapped inside a sheet of stationery was a folded piece of paper, a CD case, and a section of newsprint.

  He picked up the newsprint first. It was a column from the Metro section of the paper announcing the decision to go ahead with the redevelopment project, and Mobile Media’s commitment to the new business park. The sidebar announced the demolition of the building across the alley from Eve and welcomed the community to a demolition party to view the redevelopment plans and meet some of the business owners, politicians, and executives involved.

  The picture of Eve showed a fading bruise on her cheekbone and a serious glint in her eye. Also pictured for the story were the East Side’s city councilwoman, the deputy mayor, Eve’s father, and the CEO of Mobile Media.

  The city’s sexiest cocktail waitress was gone, and in her place was a squared-up, dead-serious community activist.

  “Let me see,” Luke said.

  He handed the clipping to his brother, and picked up the plastic case. The CD inside was neatly labeled PREP PLAYLIST.

  “How did she know?” he muttered.

  “Magic,” Luke said knowingly.

  Matt unfolded the sheets of paper, then scanned them, trying to make sense of the ads, the bar code, the name Maud Ward.

  “They’re concert tickets, doofus,” Luke said.

  “And backstage passes,” Matt replied, still not believing his eyes. Two tickets to the upcoming Maud Ward concert. The sold-out homecoming concert. On the floor, six rows from the stage. He’d be close enough to watch her change chords.

  “No fucking way,” Luke said, leaning forward to snatch the paper from Matt’s hand.

  “Easy with that,” Matt said, handing it over hastily.

  “How did she get backstage passes to Maud Ward’s homecoming concert?” Luke marveled, scanning every inch of the page.

  “Eve knows her,” Matt said casually, like it was no big deal. Like Eve’s way of living, doing favors, big heart, paying it forward, wasn’t everything he was missing, everything he’d ever wanted, and thought he couldn’t have. “She got Maud some local gigs when she was just starting out.”

  “Dude. Two tickets. You have to take her.”

  “She’s not like that. She wouldn’t give me tickets in the hopes I’d take her. Besides, she can get her own tickets.”

  Luke just looked at him until Matt had to break eye contact. He opened the folded sheet of stationery last.

  Dear Matt,

  Music matters too much to do without it. I’ve gotten you started with the prep playlist, but as we both know, live music is the best. It’s going to be an amazing concert. I hope you enjoy it.

  Love, Eve

  Sometimes you reap more than you sow. Sometimes, despite all efforts to the contrary, you reap love.

  He’d walked away from her, believing it was the right thing for her, for him, for them. And she’d still sat down at her computer and made him an old-fashioned mix CD of all the songs they’d listened to while he’d fallen in love with the woman he thought he couldn’t have. He ejected They Might Be Giants, inserted the CD into the drive, and watched the list of artists appear in iTunes. Blanket, Damien Rice, Anjulie, Maud Ward, 3 Doors Down, Alexi Murdoch.

  Even now, weeks after he’d walked away from her at the warehouse, she was thinking about him. Giving him the joyful things in life—concerts, music, a chance to share good times with friends. A life of duty and honor was empty without music and laughter and love.

  “Earth to Matt,” Luke said.

  A flash of black shifted at the edge of his vision. Intellectually he knew it was the wind in the big oak in the backyard dappling the shadows across the counters. Deep inside, he knew it was Eve.

  And he knew what he had to do.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “That’s it for me,” Hannah Rafferty said, closing her reporter’s notes for a softer, follow-up piece on Eve and community leaders seizing the momentum to redevelop the East Side. She shut off the recorder on her phone, and looked at the photographer. “Got what you need?”

  “The light’s better over there,” he said, gesturing to the setting sunlight pouring through the storeroom’s open doorway. Eve straightened her suit jacket, then braced a shoulder against the doorframe and folded her arms, going for “determined” and “resourceful” despite Caleb hovering on the sidelines. He wore his best lawyer face, poker serious, protective. Eve found herself mirroring his look as the photographer took a few shots of her gazing at the camera, then a couple more from another angle that captured Eve studying the dust rising from the rubble behind Eye Candy. “Great. We’re good
now,” he said, scanning through the images on his camera.

  “Thanks so much for the interview,” Eve said.

  Hannah shouldered her bag. “It’s important work,” she answered.

  “Where will this run?” Eve asked. “The last time you did a feature on me it was for the Arts and Culture section.”

  Hannah smiled. “Depends on the space available. If we have the inches, it’ll run as a feature on the front page, more likely the Metro section due to the community activist angle. If not, you’ll be back in Arts and Culture.”

  “Right,” Eve said, trying to be grateful for any coverage at all. Despite being unable to reveal significant details thanks to the ongoing investigation, the sordid elements of guns, drugs, and two police shootings meant the basics of the story made the front page of the Lancaster Times-Herald for several days. Determined to milk the last possible drop of beneficial coverage from the incident, the politicians showed up for the photo op and spouted community-oriented quotes they hoped would be worked into the coverage.

  “We’ve got to run,” Hannah said. “Deadline’s in two hours.”

  “Thanks again,” Eve said, and showed them to the front door. When she returned to the storeroom, Caleb stood feet braced and hands in his pockets, admiring the ruins.

  “When’s all this cleared out?” he asked idly.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. Tomorrow the remains of the building would be hauled away, and in the spring, her dream of a patio would become a reality.

  It was amazing what could happen when a community mobilized around a common goal. Her parents had attended the demolition ceremony, along with Caleb and Quinn, representatives from a number of community organizations, the VP of Community Engagement for Mobile Media, board members from the SCC, the East Side’s city councilwoman, and the community relations liaison from the police department. An East Side landscaping company offered to do the brick patio at a steep discount in exchange for a tasteful banner mentioning their work and a few mentions on social networking sites. The city’s last remaining ironwork shop offered the same deal for the railing. As word spread on Twitter and Facebook, every known band in the city contacted her for a gig next summer. Maud Ward agreed to open the summer concert series to kick off the tour for her new album. Eve’s mother had not only volunteered to put her master gardener skills to use at Eye Candy to design and maintain the oversized flowering pots that would line the wrought iron fence, she also put together a team from the Lancaster Garden Club to mentor East Side teens and families interested in caring for a series of planters lining Thirteenth Street.