We're in Trouble

by Christopher Coake

  I love you, too, she’d say, each time. Or sometimes she’d just kiss him, hard, putting her fingers in his hair.

  Bryan would make love to her.

  Jimmy would have fucked her. He’d have no trouble using the word.

  Dana remembered: she hadn’t thrown away Jimmy’s card.

  Without looking at her hands, she felt her purse, making sure the clasp was closed. She rubbed sweat off her palms and into the wool of her coat. The slick reflections of streetlights shone on the pavement. Bryan drove slowly, hunched over the wheel, hands at ten and two. The heater roared, and he muttered at the idiots who wouldn’t slow down, who couldn’t see it was for Crissakes snowing.

  AT THE TIME of the accident, Dana had been dating Bryan for two months. They were both students at the University of Colorado. They’d met in a statistics class. The professor was Japanese and had trouble with names, and so kept a seating chart; Bryan was Macarthur, and Dana was McKinnon. They’d started talking before class, then during the walk out of the room. Soon they were trading notes. She spent a long time looking at Bryan’s hands as he wrote—his handwriting was beautiful and looping, like a woman’s. He had long, delicate fingers. When she finally held them, during a movie, she found they were delightfully soft. A few nights later she took him to bed.

  The ski trip was a surprise; Bryan called her on a Friday morning and asked if she wanted to go away for the weekend. They drove up to Breckenridge with two of Bryan’s friends from the business program, tanned fraternity boys with perfect white teeth, who talked openly and excitedly about the snow bunnies they hoped to lay before the weekend was over. Dana thought she and Bryan were along only because Bryan drove a Cherokee that still smelled new.

  But in their fake Swiss chalet, after sex by the fireplace, Bryan told her he loved her, and Dana saw the weekend differently, as Bryan must have planned it: as a romantic getaway. A chance for fireside declarations.

  Dana wasn’t sure then what exactly she felt for him. She liked him fine—but love? She was charmed by his niceness—everyone who knew him was. But when she thought about him, he added up only to an outline of a man. He wasn’t handsome, though he was far from ugly. He was athletic, and liked to hike and run. He liked sitting under a blanket with her and watching television. He read a lot of science fiction. He was capable of talking for hours about banking or economic theory, and how he wanted to reform this or that. Sometimes he wrote letters to the school newspaper, about how, for instance, Democrats could never understand fiscal responsibility. When she talked about her homework, or her student teaching, he listened attentively—but he asked her questions in a way that always made her suspect he had rehearsed them. An entry in his Day Runner: Things to ask Dana.

  Bryan’s family had money, but he was generous. He treated her to the weekend in Breckenridge, and offered in a way that didn’t make her feel embarrassed, poor. He was nice, attentive to her, unfailingly polite.

  But the truth was, when they weren’t in bed, Dana was often bored. That boredom made her feel horribly petty—but she couldn’t rid herself of it, no matter how hard she tried. And on the ride up to Breckenridge, listening to his buddies pretend to laugh at his jokes, she understood she could never last with him.

  She kept quiet as they settled into their room. But there, despite herself, she began having a good time. Bryan was cheerful and hyperactive, almost clownish. She liked the kitschy chalet with the big fireplace. She liked the enormous bed, and the snowy domes of the mountains just outside their balcony. And she liked what she felt most guilty about—the sex with Bryan, on the bed, on the pile carpet in front of the fireplace.

  Dana didn’t want to be the sort of woman who would stay with a man because he was good in bed—which Bryan, to her shock and surprise, was, and had been from the very start. His long, knobby body fit hers, somehow. In bed his earnestness, his willingness to please her, had definite advantages. And he was so overjoyed to be with her that, for the first time since she’d lost her virginity, she felt she was good at sex. She enjoyed telling Bryan to hold still, to lie back and let her take care of things. She liked the look he got on his face, stunned and worshipful.

  And then, too—after sex with Bryan she felt differently about everything. She liked the smell of his skin. She’d laze in bed with him, her head in the crook of his shoulder, and feel what she could only call contentment. She understood what she had always made fun of her girlfriends for insisting: that a man could make her feel safe. Lying next to Bryan, naked and drained, she was able to think about her grades, about paying her bills, about her coming job search, and not feel overwhelmed.

  Whenever she thought she had to be done with him, that she couldn’t listen to him talk about the Fed for another minute, her mind would circle back to one of those tranquil, still moments, and she would wonder: Is that what love is?

  And so, after he told her he loved her, Dana could only reply, I don’t know, Bryan. I’ve never been in love before. I don’t want to say it if I don’t mean it.

  Okay, he said, looking down. That’s okay, Dana.

  And there—she hurt for him. He turned away from her, naked and suddenly not so glad about it, and she wanted to hold him.

  But not to tell him.

  She said, Just give me time, okay?

  He nodded and put his face against her shoulder.

  When they were dressed he said, Let’s go to dinner. The two of us alone.

  Sure, she said, brightly. That’ll be nice.

  He drove her up and over Fremont Pass, to a little place in Leadville—he had, it turned out, made reservations for them earlier in the day. He’d never doubted she’d say she loved him, too. They had expensive steaks. Dana drank a lot of beer. Bryan, when he said anything, spoke with an edge of panic.

  Halfway through dinner snow started coming down hard, and the proprietor—a small, sideburned man with a belt buckle shaped like a buffalo—came over to their table and said that if they wanted to get back to Breckenridge tonight, they’d better get a move on.

  Outside snowflakes pricked at Dana’s cheeks. The sun had set during dinner, and the wind cut and hissed out of almost total darkness; the storm clouds blocked even the glow of the moon. She looked at the highway, already whitened, and felt a twist in her stomach.

  Farther up the pass the highway was thickly covered, but Bryan’s Cherokee did all right, grumbling along in low gear. They saw only one other car, taking the switchbacks about a half a mile ahead and upslope, its taillights blinking on and off through the trees. Bryan’s lips were tight. She felt awful for him—but that wasn’t the same as loving him, was it? She wondered whether or not she should sleep with him when they got back to the chalet. What that would make her, if she did, or didn’t.

  At the crest of the pass the winds rocked the Jeep; the back wheels started to shimmy. The snow seemed to jump out of the dark at the windshield. And then, slowing to ease around a sharp hairpin, Bryan said, Shit. Oh shit.

  What? she asked. He was going to say they were through; she knew it, tensed for it.

  Bryan pulled the Cherokee over to the side of the road. The other car, he said. I’ve been following its tracks. Look.

  In front of the Cherokee’s headlights Dana could barely see the tracks the other car had left, approaching the hairpin. They led straight ahead—too straight. She understood: the car hadn’t turned. Ahead on the bank was a broken section of guardrail, and above it, just visible, was a black window where the pine branches had been shaken naked of snow.

  Then the wind picked up, and the whole road was lost in whiteout. Bryan might not have seen that curve either.

  The Cherokee rolled to a stop, where it sat unevenly on a plow drift. Call 911, Bryan told her, handing her his car phone. Then he opened his door. Dana dialed as he stumbled through the snow. She told the operator where they were.

  We’re sending someone, the operator said. Is anyone hurt?

  I don’t know. My boyfriend is trying to get to the car.


  Bryan looked over the edge of the road, then turned back to her, stricken.

  When Dana hung up she climbed out of the Cherokee and tried to follow Bryan’s tracks to the edge. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees, and the snow hit her face like flung sand. Dana could just hear a noise over the wind, though: a scream—a woman’s—harsh and scraping.

  In high school Dana had worked as a lifeguard. She tried to recall her CPR training—but now she couldn’t think of what to do, only of how nervous she’d been on the job. What would she do, if anyone really needed help? If someone down below in the water stopped moving? If someone started screaming? Dana had never seen anything truly awful in her life that was not on television. She paused in the snow. This was it: this was the emergency. Someone wouldn’t scream like that unless she was in agony. This was going to be blood and bone.

  Hurry! Bryan shouted, and dropped off the edge of the road.

  The slope fell away steeply; Dana remembered from the drive in that the drop was hundreds of feet, down to a twisting riverbed. But in the snow and dark she could barely see anything—except for the headlights of the wrecked car, still shining, maybe fifty feet below. The trees were sparse near the road, and then thickened farther down. The snow on the slope was unbroken. The car must have gone airborne—ramped off the road and then gotten caught in the trees. Now it was turned over on its roof, jammed against three pines grown close together, like a wall.

  Bryan blundered down twenty feet ahead, plowing a trail. Dana followed him. Off the road the wind was a little quieter. But the screams were louder: Dana thought she could see dashboard lights through one of the car’s side windows. She could smell gasoline, exhaust—they stood out, here in the clean, cold air.

  Bryan was sliding down the steepest part now on his hip, and then he was at the wreck. Dana followed, faster, heart thumping in her throat, snow finding its way beneath her clothing, next to her skin. The underside of the car—a sedan—was hissing. Clumps of snow fell onto it from the tree branches overhead and sizzled and smoked. This close, the smell of gas was heavy and moist, like something she could spit whole from her mouth.

  The sedan’s passenger window faced uphill, and was broken; this was where the screams were coming from. Bryan knelt down and looked inside. The wind caught his hair, tufting it. And then—just when he called out, Hello?—the car caught fire.

  The flames bloomed out, black and blue and orange, from the rear of the car, like the petals of a flower opening up. Dana stood transfixed by them—by the shifting colors, the way the insides of her body seemed to move with the flames. For a moment the warmth felt good. But then the fire blazed, hurting her eyes, following lines across the car’s underbelly, toward the people inside. And Bryan.

  The woman screamed louder. Bryan shielded his eyes, sat back on his haunches and made a deep wordless sound, as though he’d been startled awake. The flames were only a few feet from his head. The tree trunks had lines of fire on them now, like glowing vines. Dana flinched back, moving crablike up the slope. The skin on her face tightened. She could barely think. She saw Bryan in outline next to the car, rocking forward and back with his arm flung up, the fire making a noise now, that familiar whoosh and mutter over the howling of the wind, the trees all around gaining outline and shadow and everything moving.

  And Bryan bent forward. Dana wanted to scream, No, but she couldn’t. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled through the narrow broken window until only his legs were visible.

  She should have moved forward. She remembered wanting to—not to save the screaming woman but to save Bryan, to grab his legs and pull him back out. He was going to die, she knew. She was watching a man die. And understanding this was awful—she had never been more frightened of anything in her life. The woods and the flames loomed. She could not feel her body anymore—she was somewhere between herself and Bryan, somewhere up in the air.

  Bryan’s knees twisted and dug into the snow. The fire was inside the sedan—she could see its glow on the dashboard past Bryan’s shadow. The screams intensified; Bryan grunted, then shouted, Pull it! Pull! You have to! The trees were catching, the branches crackling—underneath the snow, the wood was still kindling dry from the past summer’s drought. Sparks fell down over the car in little firework showers.

  And then Bryan wriggled out. He was smoking; his arms were smoking. He ducked as the fire licked over his head, into the front wheel well. Then he knelt again and reached into the car and pulled out the woman. Slowly, slowly.

  The woman was burning. She wore a ski jacket, and it was on fire. Her arms beat at the window frame, at Bryan. Bryan heaved and she came free, legs trailing uselessly. She was shrieking like an animal. Bryan kept dragging her. His face twisted away from the burning woman, his cheekbones glowing a ghastly yellow.

  Bryan’s own jacket caught flame. He gave the woman one last heave, then wrapped her in his arms and rolled both of them into the deep snow.

  Dana! he called, his voice torn, a screech.

  And that moved her. Her limbs came unlocked. Bryan was alive.

  Dana floundered across the slope to him, threw handfuls of snow on his back and arms. He was trying to take off his jacket, which was smoking, flaming. Dana grabbed hold of one of the sleeves and pulled. A new smell was coming out of the car—like meat cooking. Someone was still inside, was burning, was dying. The smell was coming off of Bryan, too, off of the woman. Parts of Bryan’s jacket had melted and clung in strands to his arm and shoulder. His hair was smoking. Dana felt a horrible searing pain on her own forearm, where his jacket was twisted around her arm. She jammed it deep into the snow until she felt the cold seep into the pain.

  The woman wasn’t screaming anymore. Dana looked at her, even though she would have given anything not to. The woman had blond hair, now streaked with blood, burned away down to the skull on one side. Her face was a mess: rust-red where it wasn’t blackened. She was awake, Dana saw, her mouth opening and closing, panting almost. The woman’s eyes—the whites were shockingly bright against her swollen cheeks—kept rolling from side to side.

  Come on, Bryan said.

  He couldn’t use his right arm. Dana’s own arm hurt, but she put her hands under one of the woman’s arms, and Bryan put his good hand under the other, and they pulled her up the slope, away from the burning car, the blazing stinking white fire of the burning tires, the smell of the man burning inside—her husband. They found this out later. Her husband. They were locals. He’d been drinking and going way too fast.

  He’d died before the fire, Bryan told her that night, in the hospital. He spoke during a brief period of wakefulness, before they medicated him into oblivion. He lay very still, his arm bandaged up to the shoulder.

  Bryan whispered, His neck was broken. I checked.

  As though she was worried he might not have rescued enough people, as though she was angry at him for having failed. Dana was glad the man had been dead. If he’d been alive, Bryan would have gone back in for him, and both of them would be dead now. She knew that.

  Is she all right? Bryan asked. His lips were swollen, cracked.

  She’s in intensive care. They don’t know if she’ll live.

  But the woman had lived. Her back was broken, and she was horribly scarred, but she was still alive, living now with a sister in Colorado Springs. She and Bryan exchanged Christmas cards.

  Bryan had nodded, then closed his eyes.

  Looking back, Dana wasn’t sure when it happened—when the moment that changed everything truly fell. Before the crash she had been ready to leave Bryan. But sitting next to his hospital bed, she felt she’d rather die than lose sight of him again. She felt . . . peaceful: the same sort of peace that had always settled around her after making love to him, as she curled against his long, thin body. But she couldn’t say what had happened to make it so. Bryan had done a wonderful, courageous thing—had done it without thinking. And when he had gone into the car, Dana had lost herself—a part of her had
come unmoored, and waited for Bryan to come out alive before drifting back to her.

  Dana leaned forward. Her insides seemed to pull her down to him. She whispered to Bryan, I love you.

  And saying it to him felt good, true.

  Bryan smiled up at her, even though she knew it must hurt his mouth. His good hand brushed hers. Then the painkillers caught him, and he drifted away.

  NOW, IN THE CAR, Dana dozed, too. She dreamed, as she often did, about the accident. Sometimes she had nightmares—she was the woman trapped in the car, screaming to Bryan, who paced outside in the snow, deciding. But sometimes they didn’t frighten her at all. Tonight she dreamed that she never got out of the Cherokee, that she watched the whole thing on a television, inside, knowing how it was going to turn out.

  Honey, Bryan said, shaking her. We’re home.

  She was all the way into the house before remembering she’d kissed Jimmy.

  Bryan walked with her into their bedroom, his hand on her waist, as though she might fall over. He pulled back the bedcovers and she lay down on the cool sheets, stretching herself. She started to bend her knees, to reach down for a heel, but he stilled her with a hand. She closed her eyes: Bryan was going to undress her. Her blood surged. If he made love to her now she would forget Jimmy. She’d feel the familiar rub of her husband’s stomach, his hip bones—how could she have forgotten that?

  Bryan slipped off one of her heels, then the other. He reached up under her dress to grab the waistband of her hose. She let him lift her hips. His fingers curled under the fabric, next to her skin. The fingers on his left hand were soft, the ones on his right a little rough and bumpy, from the scars. She liked the feel of her hose sliding down her thighs, and off.

  Are you awake? he whispered, leaning over her. Mm-hmm.