The Fall of January Cooper

by Audrey Bell

  “Yeah. It’s new.”

  I nodded. “Blonde girl made it?”

  “Yeah, it’s amazing! My new fave.”

  I was going to kill January.

  “Alright. Hold on a sec, I’ve got to talk to…our mixologist.” I cracked a smile that didn’t reach my eyes, and turned to look for her. I was never going to live this down.

  “January,” I shouted, down the bar.

  She was leaning forward, her back to me, taking someone’s order.

  The January Jam.

  Insufferable. Had she ever listened to anyone? No. Obviously not. And apparently it didn’t matter, because she was good at making up her own drinks. It was insufferable.

  “January!” I shouted, a little more roughly.

  There was no way she hadn’t heard me, but she didn’t turn around.

  I walked back down to her end of the bar. “Hey, January, can I borrow you for a second?”

  Nothing. I closed the distance between us.

  “Hey, January—”

  I stopped short when I saw her face, sheet white and horrified.

  A red-faced man, wearing a jacket and an open collar, with sweat beading at his brow had pinned her wrist to the bar and was growling threateningly into her ear while she tried to pull back.

  He was berating her, and she turned her attention back to him.

  “….family is fucking disgusting and you are disgusting. Do you have any idea what your parents have done to me, you little cunt—”

  “Get your fucking hands off of her,” I said, grabbing his arm in one hand and squeezing hard enough that he let go. I pushed him roughly back from the bar and jerked January away from him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her, half-crumpled in shock, grip her wrist.

  “You need to leave,” I said to the man, taking in the jowly face and the yellowish eyes, squinted in rage. I gripped the bar to keep myself from leaping over it and knocking him out.

  “I need to leave?” he spat. His hands, lips, and chin all quaked with rage. “How could you give that fucking bitch a job?”

  The bar, which was always loud, had gone quiet except for the music and his voice. People surveyed him warily and I saw flat out fear in the eyes of a girl who had the misfortune of being caught behind his chair.

  “You need to go now, before I call the cops,” I said seriously.

  He lunged towards the bar, grasping at air, and I instinctively pushed January back. In one violent movement, he swept the glasses from his section of the bar off of the counter and onto the floor.

  “FUCK YOU!” he roared.

  The terrific crash startled the DJ, who cut the music, and the lights came on low.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Kevin demanded.

  “You’re going to pay,” he snarled, staggering towards the door, pointing his finger at January. Her arm was bleeding. She’d been cut in the spray of shattering glass.

  I took a step forward; ready to beat the shit out of him, but Kevin grabbed my collar and yanked hard enough to get my attention. “No.”

  “I’m going to fucking kill him.”

  “No,” Kevin snapped. He yanked me once more. “Get January out of here.”

  I took another powerful step forward. Kevin couldn’t stop me from killing him. I was going to bash his head in.

  “She’s bleeding, Cutlass. Take her to the back room and make sure she’s okay. Now,” he snarled. He pulled my collar again, hard enough to hurt. “Help January. Now.” That got my attention.

  I stepped back, grabbed January, and pushed her towards the staffroom behind the bar.

  It was quieter back there, which did little to calm my temper. I swore underneath my breath for a good thirty seconds, before I thought about the fact that her arm was bleeding.

  I took a clean rag down from above the washing machine and roughly grabbed the first aid kit. “Come here,” I said roughly.

  She didn’t move.

  “January, I need to see your fucking arm.”

  She looked icy cold, her eyes bleak and distant. “I can do that,” she said.

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re shaking. Come here.”

  “I’m not shaking.”

  I grabbed hold of her wrist, just to feel the vibrations of her shock. “Like I said, bullshit. You should sit down.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.” I took out a bottle of peroxide and drenched a clean cloth. I held her wrist firmly and saw a small shard of glass. I hissed sympathetically, found tweezers in the first aid kid, and without warning her, pulled a shard of glass from her arm. I waited for her to twitch or yelp, but she didn’t even wince. I pressed the peroxide-soaked cloth to the nasty cut and blotted away the blood.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I know it stings.”

  She didn’t make a sound. I looked up from the gash just to be sure she was breathing. Her eyes were blank and glassy, and her face drained of all color. From the way she swayed on her feet, she looked like she might faint.

  “Here, sit down,” I muttered, kicking one of the cheap plastic chairs closer to where she stood.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  I pushed her shoulders gently, and she sat down.

  “Are you cut anywhere else?”

  “No. I’m fine. I told you that,” she said.

  I could still hear the low growl in her attacker’s voice.

  I could still sense the rush of fear pounding through January’s veins. The adrenaline or the pain made her shake like Vanessa did when she’d had way too much to drink. “Stop shaking,” I said softly.

  “I can’t help it,” she whispered, and her voice sounded broken.

  I thought of the violence in his eyes and suppressed a shudder. It had scared the hell out of me. He truly had wanted to hurt her and she weighed maybe 110 pounds soaking wet and she hadn’t thought to scream.

  She should have screamed. She should’ve asked for help, damn it.

  There was me, Darrin, and Kevin, and any one of us would’ve thrown the bastard out on his ass before he could fucking grab her.

  “You shouldn’t have let him get that close,” I told her. I took a breath. I knew my voice sounded short, annoyed—and I knew exactly how she’d react to it too.

  “To where? To the bar?” she demanded. She pulled her arm away roughly and got out of the chair.

  “To you,” I snapped, wondering how the hell she could even consider that I might be pissed about a few broken glasses that I didn’t own. “You should’ve yelled for me as soon as he grabbed you!”

  “I—”

  “You think you can do whatever the hell you want. Well, you can’t. And you had better fucking stop trying to.”

  “You keep saying that,” she said. “I…” Her voice wavered. I made the mistake of looking at her, realizing she was on the absolute verge of tears. “You keep saying that,” she started again. Her voice broke. “That I always do whatever I want. I never get to do what I want. You think I wanted him to attack me?”

  She was crying.

  I’d made her cry.

  Great. Wonderful. Absolutely fucking spectacular.

  I rubbed the back of my neck uncomfortably. “Come on. I just meant…”

  She turned further away from me and stiffened even more, which I didn’t think was possible. Her face was partially obscured behind strands of hair that escaped from her loose ponytail and hung into her eyes.

  “Hey,” I said. I rubbed the back of my head. “I didn’t…”

  She tried to catch her breath, and a sob tore through her, and I swear to God, the sound of it just about broke my heart. “Hey, come on, don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

  I reached for her arm again and she pulled it away. She sat down again, clutching her injured arm, and shivering.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m sorry,” I said. “January, please don’t cry. I’m sorry, alright? I really am. Yo
u just scared me.”

  She took a breath. She covered her eyes and stilled her shoulders, and hearing the labor that went into not crying made me feel even worse. She had pulled her knees up to her chest and buried her head in the crook of her unhurt arm and she was making so little noise I thought it was possible she had stopped breathing.

  “Come on,” I said as gently as I could. She pushed me away.

  “Would you please just leave me alone?” she asked.

  “I’m not going to leave you alone.”

  “I want you to.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said quietly. “Can I see your arm?”

  She didn’t say anything. But she didn’t pull away when I took her wrist in my hand. She didn’t flinch when I pressed the peroxide to the wound.

  “All I meant was that…you have to be careful,” I said, trying to explain. No, that was wrong. “I mean, just shout for help. I’d have been there. You shouldn’t…”

  “Just shut up,” she whispered.

  When she looked up, she had that glassy look in her eyes. Like whatever she was hearing wasn’t really me.

  I nodded. I could shut up. I finished cleaning the cut and reached for the gauze to wrap her wrist.

  “Thank you,” she said tersely.

  “No problem. I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I said stupidly. I ran a hand through my hair. “I just…I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” she said distantly. I could tell she wasn’t here. Not really. She was somewhere else, thinking about something else altogether.

  “No, it was wrong. I’m sorry.” I had known it wasn’t her fault when I’d yelled at her about it. I exhaled. “Look, I…”

  “I said it was fine.” She no longer sounded furious or fragile. She sounded, rather, like she was several thousand miles away. “Thanks very much for your help.”

  “They were asking for a January Jam,” I said, hoping that might draw a small smile from her.

  It didn’t. Wherever she had gone in her mind was where she stayed.

  “You don’t need to be nice to me,” she said, blinking, and coming back to earth.

  “I’m not trying to,” I said. “They were asking for it. Really.”

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  “People don’t know what they want, right?”

  She nodded, arms folded tightly across her stomach, even though she couldn’t have been cold, and she looked around the scummy back room. She probably hadn’t spent much time in places like these and now she was here almost every night. It wasn’t terrible—just dark, rundown, and utterly charmless, but January didn’t have a lot of experience with dark, rundown, and charmless places.

  And for once, I felt deeply sorry for her.

  “Look, you should take the rest of the night off,” I said gently. “You can borrow my car and—”

  “I’m fine,” she said. She gave me a cold, but certain smile. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Alright,” I said, shaking my head. I needed to explain to her that I’d just been yelling because I was pissed off, and she was there. There used to be people in my life who had understood that—Sam, for one—but she seemed so shaken up. I didn’t think there was anything I could say that wouldn’t upset her further.

  The door to the backroom swung open, banging against the concrete wall, and Kevin walked deliberately towards January, glowering. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she said shortly. If I hadn’t seen her trembling two seconds earlier, I’d have believed her.

  “I called the cops,” Kevin said resolutely. “But they said you could go home.”

  “What?” January demanded. “You called the police? That wasn’t necessary.”

  “He attacked you, January.”

  “Well, it’s not like he didn’t have a good reason,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair, pulling it out of the loose ponytail and letting out a half-sigh.

  “No, sweetheart. He had no reason. He assaulted you. It’s a crime. I called the police. You guys should call it a night. We’re going to close down early.”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  “You’ll drive her home, right?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded.

  “Good,” he said, pleased that he’d resolved things. He turned back towards the bar, leaving us alone.

  “C’mon, Jan, let’s go.”

  “I can work. I don’t see why I couldn’t…”

  “It’s been a long night,” I said, as gently as I knew how. “Kevin wants us to go.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”

  I watched her pull on her boots roughly, and I watched her hands shaking as she fought to zip up her coat. We walked outside. Her jaw was set, ever so subtly, like she was gearing up for a fight. And I wondered if I was going to be the one to fight her.

  But she was icily polite when I opened the door. “Thank you,” she said formally as she got into the car.

  I shivered, waiting for the heat to kick in as I turned right out of the parking lot, beginning the now-familiar trip to January’s dorm.

  “Look, I’m sorry I yelled,” I said when we were nearly there.

  “I know,” she said. She sounded tired. “It’s okay.”

  She was quiet until we reached the dorm.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said throatily.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Ask anything.”

  “What would you do if you found out your father did something unforgivable?”

  I looked at her sideways. I wasn’t sure I could answer that. My dad was a cop. He couldn’t be running a Ponzi scheme. “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t believe he would.”

  “Say you had to believe. Say the proof was on the table.”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated softly. “I don’t know what I would do.”

  I thought of my father—watching him leave early for work, seeing him fight sleep at the dinner table, never missing birthdays or anniversaries, carving out time for hockey games. I thought of how hard he’d been on me and Sam, not just about hockey and school, but respect and decency.

  He’d just about killed me when I was caught cheating on a math test in fifth grade. If I found out he’d cheated anyone, stolen from anyone, it would shatter my conception of him. “I just don’t think…I wouldn’t be able to believe it.”

  “But say you had to bel—” Her voice rose, fury that I could not understand.

  “I know you have to believe it. I know. I just can’t imagine it. I’d be floored. I’d be—I’d go into shock or something.”

  She nodded once, training her gaze out the car window. “That guy at the bar? His life is ruined.” Her voice wavered. “Before he attacked me, he told me that his daughter is in college. And he can’t pay her tuition.” She bit her lip and shook her head. “And now, he might get arrested,” she said.

  “He attacked you. For no reason.”

  “No, he had a lot of reasons.”

  “He thought he had reasons,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong, January. You’re just his kid.”

  “I don’t think anybody else sees it that way,” she said. “They think my father is an awful person. He is an awful person. And I’m his daughter.” She cleared her throat. “And I’m pretty sure I might be an awful person too. It’s genetics or something.”

  “It doesn’t work like that. Even if it did work like that…” I rubbed the back of my head. “I mean, you’re clearly not a bad person.”

  “Why? Because you feel sorry for me?”

  “You are not an awful person,” I repeated.

  “You think I’m the dictionary definition a spoiled brat, Chris.”

  “I was joking,” I said.

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “Okay. I wasn’t joking. But I don’t know you. And anyways, that doesn’t mean you’re an awful person. I didn’t mean it like that. You’re maybe a little bit of a crazy person sometimes, but you’re pretty decent.”

  She smiled through her tears. “Pre
tty decent?”

  I nodded. “For what it’s worth, I’m barely decent. You’re pretty decent.”

  She laughed as we pulled up to her dorm. She looked over at me. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’ve got to be one of the most decent human beings on the planet.” She opened the door, pressed a hand to her eyes, and took a deep breath.

  She smiled, turning back to look at me, half-sadly, but half-seriously. She got out of the car. “Thanks,” she said softly.

  “Yeah, it’s…”

  She leaned forward and her lips brushed my cheek ever so softly—it was like the way your mother might kiss you—not that it didn’t make me crazy.

  I caught her chin. She stared at me uncertainly. Kiss her, I thought. But I didn’t. I smiled. I was shaking now,” Goodnight,” I said.

  “Goodnight.”

  I watched her go, the sway of her slim hips, her long legs, that blonde hair caught in the breeze.

  January

  My phone rang in Chemistry class. I still hadn’t figured out how to send a text on this shitty piece of plastic, let alone turn off the ringer.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, as everyone turned to stare.

  I recognized the phone number, though. Aunt Lynda. I closed my laptop, grabbed my tote bag, and headed towards the door.

  “Some of us have to deal with legal issues, I suppose,” Professor Hayes said dryly, as the door to the lecture hall closed behind me.

  I couldn’t have cared less, pressing the phone to my ear. “Aunt Lynda?”

  “January, baby,” she said in her thick drawl. I could hear her smoking a cigarette, and I could imagine her standing in the kitchen of what my mother called her shanty, but was really just a standard split-level house in a middle class neighborhood in Richardson.

  It was so good to hear her voice. It was so good to talk to someone who sounded like home.

  “Darlene said that the damn lawyer told them no phone calls with you and I said that was just crazy to me.”

  I smiled, leaning against the wall. “Me too. I think it’s crazy too.”

  “So how are you, baby?”

  “I’m good,” I said. “I’m good. I’m really good. I’m glad you called.”

  “Oh, please. You’re not good, January. Your father put you in the middle of this mess and your mother won’t even talk to you! It’s insane. Your parents are freaking insane.”