I can’t think of much to say, so I offer, “Good hunting.”
Rhonda says thanks and glances at the door. “So your friend, the jumper, do you figure he’s nutso?”
It takes effort to stand, concentration to keep my balance. Every step drives a small nail into my left kneecap. I stumble over and lean into the bars. The cool metal feels good on my swollen hand. I look at Rhonda through the gate and shake my head. “I figure Winston just believed too much.”
“That’s dangerous,” she says. “But so is not believing enough.”
From the way she’s fixing me with that green stare, I know this statement is supposed to be some grand revelation for me. I roll it over in my head for a few seconds, then shrug and look back at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Now she grips the bars, brings her face in so we’re in kissing range. “It means your life is in danger. I had a vision yesterday morning. A not-good vision. There is a confrontation. A gun is aimed at you. Blood is shed. I see you falling from a great height.”
I picture the Salvation Station. Snipers with laser scopes and cops with billy clubs. “Yeah, I think I got through that OK. But thanks.”
Rhonda frowns. “I’m not talking about a beating. I’m talking about death. The vision is foggy so it’s not a certainty, but understand this, your life is in danger. That’s why I kept calling you.”
The prospect of my looming death fails to unsettle me. I’m a long way from where Paul was on River Road. “And you’re telling me this happens—that I might die—because I don’t believe enough. In what? Space aliens? Healing crystals? The American dream?”
She pulls her face back, lets go of the bars, and turns away. “I’m not here to tell you you’ve got to believe in anything. But it’s like you told me in the rain—why can’t you see it?”
With her back to me, she sniffles. I feel weak with the need to tell her I believe in everything, that doubt has fled my heart forever and I’ll live the rest of my life sustained only by perfect faith. But I can’t. I take a deep breath and say, “Tell me what to believe.”
She turns suddenly and reaches one hand through the bars, slender fingers stretching. Her hand cradles the curve of my bruised jaw, and her palm is warm. “Seamus. Believe that I care about you. Believe that you are in jeopardy. Believe that sometimes things can change. Sometimes life gets better.”
I nod my head into her hand and lean my cheek into the cool of the bars.
Looking down the hallway, Rhonda says, “I should go. Right now, Alix is posting bail for you. You’ll be out of this cell in fifteen minutes.”
Instantly, I believe her prediction. I say, “That’s quite a gift you have.” But Rhonda shakes her head. “I saw Alix filling out paperwork when I walked in. She looks not so happy.”
Rhonda grants me a thin smile, then heads down the hallway. When she mentioned Alix, she didn’t seem angry. I want to try and explain to Rhonda that though I still love my wife, something in her green eyes stirs me. To the red curtain of her hair, I ask, “Will I see you again?”
She stops at the open door. Without turning, she shrugs. “The tree of tomorrow is ripe with possibilities,” she says. And then I’m alone again.
I don’t have a watch and there’s no clock, but it feels like fifteen minutes has just passed when the guard arrives to lead me out. I follow him through the door and Alix crosses her arms and looks at the high ceiling. She is silent as I struggle left-handed to sign a form I don’t read. She is silent as the guard empties a manila envelope onto the table. Out pours my wallet and Brook’s vsaji. I push them into the pockets of my stained jeans. The guard explains that if I leave the city limits without notifying the department in writing or if I fail to make my appointed court appearance, I will be subject to immediate incarceration. He also reads a note from the ER doctor stating that because of blunt force trauma and pain medication, I shouldn’t operate heavy machinery for twenty-four hours. When he’s finished, I glance at Alix. She turns and strides across the tile floor, shoves the big doors open, and steps into the sunlight. The guard says, “You want me to call you a taxi, Bub? Looks pretty bad.”
“I know,” I say. “And it’s worse than it looks.” Still, I decline the taxi.
The brightness of the day closes my good eye. My left knee aches, my wounded shoulder feels frozen stiff, my face is a living bruise, and the purple-black skin of my right hand is swelled so tight I fear it may burst. If I had a bell tower I could easily pass for Quasimodo. From the position of the sun, I’d figure it for late morning, almost noon. I stumble down the steps and into the parking lot. The Lincoln’s engine roars and then I see it rounding a bend. As Alix approaches, the big front grille seems to me very much like an open mouth. At this moment I would be completely unsurprised if she ran me down. Instead she pulls alongside me, and the electronic lock on the passenger door hops up. I open the door with my left hand and slide in without looking at her. Without speaking, Alix guides us onto 3rd Street.
All this time I’ve tried to keep from looking directly at Alix’s face because it makes me think of hitting her. Not hitting her now—here in this car—but hitting her then, there in the kitchen on Asgard. This thing that I did and that I always will have done and that I can’t undo. This plot twist that permanently screwed up my life.
The stitches on my forehead itch like crazy, but I remain still.
Through the passenger’s side window I see people crowd the sidewalk outside the library, normal everyday people taking an early lunch from their jobs at the bank or city hall. People who will go home at five o’clock and have dinner with Tom Brokaw, then take their coffee while guessing the answers on Jeopardy. These people who have some understanding of who they are and how they’ve come to this place in their lives and maybe even some idea of where they are heading. These people.
Alix just beats the red light as she cranks us left up Market Street, narrowly missing the center island statue of George Davis: Soldier, Patriot, Statesman, Christian.
Making the atmosphere in the car even more tense, Alix isn’t playing any music, so I’m horribly aware of the gears rising and whining. The AC’s cool blast brushes my bruised right eye just as we pass the squirting stone turtles of Keenan Plaza. The air feels nice, and I lean my face forward, into the fan stream. I’m figuring she’ll make this right coming up, pull down my alley and drop me off. But when we get to my turn she plows past it, not even sparing a glance in the direction of my home, where there are ice packs and Vicodin and cold Bud Light. Down the alley I see empty sky where the Salvation Station spire should be. In the snapshot flash, a yellow crane’s mouth drops rubble into a dump truck. The church is history. I worry about the boys. I worry about Winston.
For the first time I look directly at Alix, at the soft roll of this cheek I once blackened. One hand edges into her purse and comes out with the green cell phone Bacchus liberated weeks ago. Her thumb runs the numbers and she cups it to her face. “Hey. I got him. We’re en route. Ten minutes. Yeah, he’s bad. How’s the shoot?”
She listens, nods, and folds the cell shut. Staring straight ahead, she explains, “Trevor wants to see you for himself. He needs to decide what we’ll do.”
When she says what we’ll do, I think for a second she’s talking about us, not the project, and I picture Trevor studying me from his director’s chair on a stage, judging my worth regarding his wife. “Frankly, Allie, I think you should ditch this loser once and for all,” he says in my mind. “Clearly a restraining order might be called for.”
I swallow and taste blood. “Do you know what happened to my friend?”
“They did all that they could,” she says flatly. “It wasn’t enough.”
This line strikes me as remarkably true, about a great many things. I figured Winston wouldn’t survive that fall, but I was hoping to be wrong once again. “He was a fine, good man,” I say. “He just had a hard time coming to terms with the real world.”
The Lincoln veers dangerou
sly close to some students in front of New Hanover High School. The girls sport the same style bellbottoms that Alix wore twenty years ago, when we first met. “I’m over here trying to generate sympathy, Cooper. I really really am. I’m sorry this guy is dead and all. But you’ve been lying to us. Your actions have consequences.”
“What are they shooting?” I ask.
Half a block ahead, the light at 17th switches to red. To our left, a procession of solemn black cars begins its slow roll from Gun-derto’s Funeral Home. Though it’s impossible, I imagine for a moment that the vehicle just entering the intersection is Winston’s hearse. “No fucking way,” Alix says, and she guns the Lincoln’s engine, sends us lurching in front of the huge black hood. Only Alix’s juke into the empty right lane prevents a collision. The swift motion bounces my face against the window.
“The big match, Coop,” Alix laughs. “They’re shooting the grand finale. After you made this executive decision to get the shit beat out of you and not call anybody, Trevor wanted to push things back. But Quinn raised the mother of all stinks. Investors demand results. Hot time window. Expedite. He insisted we press on, even shoot out of sequence. When I left to find you, Hardy was throwing your stunt double around something fierce inside the ring. Just now, they’re working through the assassin’s attack. Trevor’s hoping we might still salvage this nightmare.” She studies me for a moment, examines my battered face at close range. I try a smile but my split lip stings. My good eye blinks once, but she’s looking at the other, squeezed mostly shut by a plum above and below it.
“Jesus,” she says. “I hope this was worth it.”
If I had saved Winston, I think, it would have been worth it. I add his name to the list of those I’ve failed. We fly past the strip mall parking lot where the Subaru died six years ago. And there’s the pay phone Alix called me from, needing my help.
“Maybe the folks in makeup could do something with the swelling,” I say. She doesn’t even waste a sigh.
At 23rd, where a green sign with a white plane shows the way to the airport, we have to wait for the light to let us turn. To our left the Baptist church at the edge of the city announces on its messenger board that GOD IS LIKE TIDE: HE GETS OUT TOUGH STAINS OTHERS LEAVE BEHIND. I study the blood on my jeans. In the church parking lot, a group of believers must be reenacting some biblical event. A dozen of them wearing tattered robes are walking along looking somber. One carries a cardboard sign I can’t read.
“I’m sorry you’re so pissed,” I say. “But thanks for bailing me out.”
“Thank Trevor.” Alix taps her fingers on the steering wheel. “All morning he was worried you were in a morgue somewhere.” She looks up at the light, still red.
“How many times can I say it?” I ask. “I’m sorry.”
Those thrumming fingers suddenly grip the wheel, and she turns to me. “And what are you sorry for, Coop? For screwing up the project? For lying to me and everybody else about having amnesia? For whatever the hell kind of stupid fight you got involved in last night? I mean it. I’m curious to know exactly what you’re apologizing for.”
The muscles in her face tighten. Wrinkles crowd in from her forehead over narrow eyes.
I take a long, full breath, like I’m about to plunge into a cold river, and my lungs fill with air until my sore ribs flash with pain. I say the words: “I’m sorry I hit you.”
The wrinkles smooth as her face goes blank. “Hit me?” she finally says. “Hit me when?”
“Black Monday, Al. I’m talking now about Black Monday.”
A car horn blasts behind us. We both look up to see the green arrow, and she accelerates through the turn, pressing me back into my seat. A block beyond the Baptist church, we pass the group of believers, shuffling along the sidewalk. I recognize the ruddy-faced pew scrubber from the Salvation Station. The cardboard sign he holds reads THE END IS OVER. CANADA OR BUST. Dr. Bacchus, head high, leads the homeless tribe. His forehead is bandaged. Just behind Bacchus walks Dr. Gladstone. Somehow, he’s wearing the golden boots and carrying Trevor’s satellite dish. Alix doesn’t seem to notice.
Part of me wishes I belonged with them, that I too had a clear destination.
We drive beneath a canopy of trees, slide in silence now through the shade of the suburban neighborhood that gives way to the industrial park dominated by the airport and the movie studio. Alix says nothing. She just drives. A collarless dog trots across the street. I swear I see a cigarette in its mouth. I wonder what they shot me up with in the ER last night.
Alix turns us off 23rd into the studio complex, and we roll slowly under the Technicolor rainbow. On the side of the guard shack, a sign reads WELCOME TO REELWORLD STUDIOS. WHAT YOU DREAM WE MAKE REEL. NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT PROPER ID.
The guard recognizes the Lincoln and waves us past. We cruise through the outer parking lot, cut between two buildings. Alix swings wide around a gleaming Roman chariot being pulled by a white horse, and I nod at the charioteer, a short guy wearing a Yankees baseball cap. A right turn puts the familiar art deco shades of the Brady Building dead center in front of us. On the roof, a huge blue triangle knifes into the sky, jutting from an orange wall. I stare up at the shadow and think shark fin.
Alix parks the Lincoln in the reserved space, right next to a silver Lexus. She keeps the engine running for the AC and her hands remain on the steering wheel, as if she were still driving. The scabbing around the stitches in my forehead begs me to scratch, but I’m afraid to move.
“Cooper,” Alix finally says, eyes fixed straight ahead, “this Monday you’re talking about. It’s four, five years ago. What exactly do you think—”
“I understand what happened now,” I explain to her profile. “I’m admitting it. This is a confession. It’s out in the open so we can deal with this.”
Still stiff-arming the wheel, she faces me. “There’s no this to deal with, Coop. It’s not like that was the only time we ever fought, you know? It was just the last time.”
“But I hit you.” I hold her eyes in mine. “Everything else is clear now because I hit you.”
Her expression softens and she releases the wheel, leans back into the seat and sighs. “You’ve got it in your head that one punch killed our marriage?”
“Don’t pretend it was nothing, Al. I know better now.”
“Don’t you pretend it was everything.” She shakes her head and looks out her window, where a Bigfoot lopes by looking our way. He’s wearing white Air Jordans.
I wait until he’s around the corner of the building before I say, “Dr. Collins always tells me I need to face the consequences of my actions. You just said it yourself.”
Alix’s eyes snap back to me. “Face whatever you need to, Coop, but here’s the truth: That night Brook and I came in with the groceries and I was angry because you didn’t help carry any in. When you finally pulled yourself away from the NFL, I told you to screw off. Brook cried and locked herself in the bathroom. You attacked me with our agreement about not fighting in front of her. Then I said something about her getting used to the real world. You spiked the Ragú into the wall and glass shot into my eye but you turned away, like you were just going back to the TV, walk away like you always did. And that pissed me off. The Sulu plate was right there on the shelf and I—”
“Stop,” I shout. “This is wrong. This is all wrong. You don’t even have the plate right—it was Spock. And you were—”
“Sulu, Spock, fucking Peter Pan. I broke the damn thing over your head and stabbed you in the ass. You turned and smacked me pretty good.”
“Al, you’ve got it all screwed up. I grabbed your hair and hit you and then you stabbed me. In self-defense. I remember it all now. Everything, it was all my fault. Your version, it doesn’t make any sense.”
“My version makes all the sense I need it to. Just like yours does for you.”
Behind Alix, three silver aliens pass by, complete with whirling antennae. I’m certain they are Svobodians, lost and looking for Winston
and their Salvation Station nexus, the place of harmonic convergence where all mysteries become clear.
“OK,” I try. “Great. You didn’t leave me because I hit you. So what then?”
Now Alix settles one palm on my leg, so softly I only know it’s there because I see it. “Coop. After all this time, there’s just no reason anymore. You want me to say we had an unhealthy dynamic? You want me to discuss communication patterns? Look, while you were in the hospital, it’s true, I thought a lot about why we didn’t work. And the awful, horrible truth I came up with is simple: I don’t know.”
Every wound in my body flares at once and I see white, like a flash grenade exploded at point-blank range. When the brightness fades, Alix is looking at me and I hear myself say, “That’s no answer at all.”
Alix kills the engine, and the cool air blowing from the vent dies instantly. The silence feels strange. “Look, Coop, I need for you to understand that I’m glad that what happened happened. I’m sorry things haven’t turned out so great for you, and I’ve tried to help out as much as I can. With Trevor, my life just feels more … even. I can’t keep regretting the choices that got made in the past. I’ve let go of it, Buddy, and I think you need to too. Let it go.”
I consider the weight of her words, and it feels like I’m leaning over the edge of the Grand Canyon, holding her hand, and she’s asking me to just release it and tumble free.
“But if I let go,” I want to tell her, “I don’t know what will happen next.”
The car keeps getting hotter. “You make it sound so easy, Al.”
“It’s not easy, Coop,” she says. “It’s life.”
We occupy the silence. Sweat forms on my face, stings my bruises. I taste it in the corner of my mouth. The stitches itch. It seems there’s nothing left to say now, but neither of us wants to be the one to open a door or roll down a window, trigger that action that will end our final scene.
Buddy Cooper Finds a Way Page 28