Cold Blooded Lover

by Eliza Lentzski

  “There’s a service this weekend in Fargo, where he grew up,” Pense continued. “I think his mom still lives there. Claire can’t go because of the baby, but I was thinking I should go—pay my respects and all that. It’s probably too short of notice for you to get off work though,” he said, anticipating my response. “But I thought you’d want to know.

  It was only a three and a half hour drive from my apartment to Fargo, North Dakota.

  “I’ll … I’ll do my best.”

  Julia came out of the bathroom, humming and running a brush through her thick, raven hair. “What did Terrance need? Is everything okay?”

  I hung up the phone and stared straight ahead. “A guy I know.” I swallowed. “Knew—he killed himself. He was in the Marines with me and Pense.”

  I hadn’t spoken to Reilly since the morning we’d left the base, and I hadn’t seen him before Pensacola and I had been shipped off to a hospital in more friendly territory. The last time I’d heard from him was a letter he’d sent when I was laid up in that stateside hospital. He had thought we were all dead. I hadn’t thought about him at all since then. There wasn’t enough room in my brain for First Private Geoff Reilly.

  The mattress sank beneath me as Julia sat down. “What can I do?” she offered.

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Instead, only a strangled sob escaped. Julia immediately curled her arm around my waist and pulled me tight against her. My instinct was to shake her off, but she stubbornly held on.

  Vulnerability was weakness. And in the Marines we’d been taught that weakness was to be avoided at all costs. Weakness would be exploited by the enemy. Weakness would get you and your friends killed.

  The tears fell unencumbered down my cheeks. Once they started, I couldn’t stop them. No matter how quickly I wiped them away, new ones only replaced them.

  Julia leaned into me with her forehead pressed against my damp cheek. “It’s okay to cry, Marine,” she whispered. “I’ve got you.” Her hands stroked my hair. “I’ve got you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Fargo, North Dakota was an unpretentious city, but equally unremarkable. The flat horizon was dotted with strip malls and fast food restaurants. The only elevation for miles was the dome where the college football team played, which was also the biggest structure in the city. Unlike what the movie of the same name might have you believe, there were no discernable accents—not to my ears at least—only the grim, emotionless faces of a people who marked the passage of time not by the calendar, but by the ebbs and flow of the perpetually flooding Red River.

  Julia’s tastes ran on the refined end of the spectrum, but the city could boast of nothing fancier than a two-star hotel chain. I could tell she was unimpressed the moment she parked her black Mercedes beside a beige conversion van in the hotel parking lot. But she wisely kept her opinions to herself; this was no vacation, after all.

  Geoff Reilly’s funeral took place at the local Lutheran cemetery. An American flag was draped over a modest, wooden casket. A semi-circle of white wooden chairs flanked one side of the casket while a preacher dressed all in black held court at the front of the small service. Two uniformed servicemen, both in their Marine dress blues, sat next to an older woman whom I assumed was Reilly’s mom.

  Julia held tight to my hand as we left her car on the side of the cemetery road. There were few people in attendance, no familiar faces, although I hadn’t expected to recognize anyone there besides Pensacola. Even though we were on the same squad, I hadn’t known too much about Reilly. I couldn’t recall ever having an actual conversation with him. He’d mostly kept to himself, choosing to read a book or write in his journal instead of playing video games or card games with the rest of the unit.

  Pensacola was already there with his wheelchair parked next to a row of empty folding chairs. He looked up from the cell phone in his lap, and his double-dimpled grin broke out when he saw us.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he charmed. “Julia, you’re looking as lovely as ever.” He took my girlfriend’s hand in his and pressed his lips against the back of her hand. “Oh hey, Miller. Didn’t see you there.”

  I snorted at Pensacola, but had no ready retort of my own.

  Julia sat in the empty seat next to Pensacola’s chair. “How are Claire and the baby doing?”

  “They’re good. Miller’s just figured out how to scream, so that’s been awesome,” he deadpanned. “Little dude’s got a serious set of pipes on him. If football doesn’t work out, there’s always lead singer in a death-metal band.”

  “Everyone,” the black-robed officiant garnered our attention, “we’re about to get started.”

  I had never been to a military funeral before. I had known good soldiers who’d died, but I had been on tour in the past or laid up in a hospital bed myself. Even though I had Julia sitting beside me with Pensacola parked on my other side, I couldn’t relax during the funeral service. I held my body at attention and my right knee bounced erratically until Julia placed her hand on my thigh to stop its movement.

  At the end of the funeral rites, a recording of taps was played over a portable radio. While the recorded song played, the two uniformed Marines folded the American flag into a tight, meticulous triangle and presented it to Reilly’s mom.

  “Ready to go?” I asked when the service had come to its end. The funeral had been short with no emotional or adoring eulogies.

  Julia’s eyes bore into mine. “You’re not going to talk to your friend’s mother?”

  “He wasn’t really my—.” I stopped my protest short and blew out a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “Little help, Miller?” Pensacola’s chair was stuck in the thick grass.

  I grabbed the handles on his wheelchair and gave him a push. “Come on. Let’s go pay our respects.”

  Most of the funeral goers had dispersed by the time I maneuvered Pensacola’s chair over to Reilly’s mother. She sat by herself, staring down at the folded flag in her lap.

  I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Reilly?”

  She looked up and pale blue eyes focused on me. “It’s Riddley now. I took my maiden name back after the divorce.”

  “Oh, uh, my name is Cassidy Miller, ma’am, and this is Terrance—.”

  “Pensacola,” she finished for me. “Geoffrey’s friends from the military.” Her eyes brightened, and the tired look on her face tightened with action. “You’ll come over to the house of course.”

  I glanced in Julia’s direction. She was standing with her arms hugging her torso, looking understandably uncomfortable in her surroundings. She held her black leather shoes in one hand, probably so she wouldn’t sink into the soft sod.

  “I, uh, I should probably go ask,” came my response.

  The corners of Julia’s mouth twisted down when I approached. “That was fast. And you’ve forgotten Terrance. Whatever happened to no man left behind?”

  “Reilly’s mom wants us to come over.”

  Julia nodded. “You and Terrance should pay your respects. You can drop me off at the hotel and take my car.”

  I frowned. “Don’t you want to come?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not my place.”

  “But—.” I tried to object.

  “Do this one kindness, Cassidy,” she implored. “Think of your own mother.”

  My throat constricted and I swallowed down my objection. “Okay,” I agreed.

  After dropping Julia off at the hotel, we followed Mrs. Reilly’s directions into a residential neighborhood whose streets were lined with mature trees and sprawling ranch-style homes. Garbage cans and recycling bins crowded the curbs. I stopped Julia’s car in front of a split-level home on a nondescript street, nestled between two equally nondescript houses. Someone had wrapped a giant yellow ribbon around the thick base of an old maple tree, and the American flag hung from the front bay window.

  Pensacola peered out the passenger window. “I guess this is the place,” he observed.

  I hel
ped Pense into his chair, which we’d stowed in the trunk of Julia’s car.

  Mrs. Reilly greeted us at the front door. She’d changed out of her clothes from the funeral in favor of jeans and an old sweatshirt patterned with sunflowers. “Come in! Come in!” Her voice was tight and excitable as though welcoming celebrities into her home.

  The home was warm inside and smelled of home cooking. I spied an assortment of sympathy casseroles and veggies trays covering the flat surfaces in the house.

  “Are you hungry?” Mrs. Reilly didn’t wait for our response before disappearing into a back kitchen. I could hear the sound of cabinets opening and closing before she returned with two ceramic plates. She handed me one of the plates and proceeded to heap tater tot casserole into its center.

  The three of us sat in the living room. Pensacola and I endured an awkward meal off our laps while Mrs. Reilly stared on.

  Pensacola smiled around a mouthful of hot dish. “It’s good.”

  “Sure is,” I chimed in. I actually hadn’t eaten since the previous day. Our hotel supplied continental breakfast, but I hadn’t been able to stomach my bagel that morning.

  “Would you like to see Geoff’s room?” Mrs. Reilly asked.

  I glanced in Pensacola’s direction, but he only shrugged.

  “Sure,” I agreed.

  Mrs. Reilly stood, but froze. “It’s in the basement. And there’s no ramp. Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Pense allowed in his typical, easy manner. “I’ll just keep eating this delicious food.”

  The momentary panic left Mrs. Reilly’s face, and she led me downstairs. The sub-level space was partially finished with unadorned white walls. It smelled like a basement—dank with the faintest whiff of laundry detergent. A dusty foosball table sat in one corner. There was an old, leather sectional couch, and a flat-screen TV hooked up to a gaming system. Moving boxes, some open with their contents spilling out, were scattered around the room.

  “When Geoffrey first got back from Afghanistan he went to live with his dad in Detroit. They had a fight a few months back, so he came back here. I still had his room upstairs, but he liked staying down here better. More private, I suppose.”

  “It’s nice,” I said, not sure what to say.

  “His father didn’t even come to the funeral,” she sniffed. “And he won’t tell me what he and Geoffrey fought about.”

  “Maybe he blames himself,” I offered. “Grief. Guilt. It can make people act in ways they normally wouldn’t.”

  “Do you believe in God, Cassidy?”

  Her question tripped me up. “I-I don’t know what I believe,” I answered in truth.

  “The pastor today said that everything happens for a reason; everything is part of God’s plan. But I just can’t fathom what the point of this is.”

  She rubbed at her face as if to shake herself from the melancholic trance. “Thank you for coming today, Cassidy. Having you and Terrance at the funeral was very comforting.”

  “It was really no problem, Mrs. Riddley. It’s the least we could do.”

  “He used to write to me about you, did you know that?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t thought myself particularly close with Reilly. I couldn’t imagine what he might have written about.

  “He had so much respect for you—a woman in the Marines. Multiple tours. I think he might have had a little crush.”

  She chuckled a knowing, maternal laugh, and I felt obligated to laugh as well, albeit awkwardly.

  “You should have something of his.” Her eyes scanned the basement room.

  I held up my hands. “No, that’s really not necessary.”

  “No, I insist. You came all this way.” She rummaged through the drawers of a dirty wooden desk. “Here.” She pulled a small, metal object from a drawer. “Reilly was on the debate team in high school. He was very talented. I thought he might grow up to be a lawyer or politician. He got this pin for being captain his senior year.”

  She pressed the small metal pin into the palm of my hand. It was in the shape of a miniature microphone.

  I closed my fingers around the impromptu gift and felt the weight of the metal bite the center of my hand.

  “Thank you.”

  “He should never have been over there,” she decided. “Geoffrey was not … popular. He wasn’t like the other boys at his school. He was more of a thinker than a doer.”

  “He was a good soldier, Mrs. Reilly. He would have made you proud.”

  “Twenty-two,” she murmured.

  “Sorry?”

  “Every day, twenty-two veterans commit suicide. My son is now a statistic.”

  An awkward silence passed between us before Mrs. Reilly clapped her hands together. “I suppose we should get back up there before Terrence wonders what became of us.”

  I nodded solemnly and let her lead the way back upstairs. I followed her climb with a final fleeting glance at Geoffrey Reilly’s world.

  “Fuck,” Pensacola muttered when we were once again outside. “I need a beer.”

  I grunted in agreement, but made no commitment either way.

  Pensacola must have sensed my hesitation. “Julia won’t mind.”

  There was no point in denying that Julia was the reason for my reluctance. She was waiting back at the hotel, but it wasn’t like we had plans to head back to Minnesota that same night.

  “One beer,” I conceded.

  Pensacola used his phone to steer us in the direction of a local bar with cheap drinks and clean beer lines. The lighting was dim and locals sat on vinyl stools around a horseshoe-shaped bar. Pense and I grabbed an empty table near a TV playing the Twins game.

  “Fuck this day,” Pensacola sighed before tipping back a long-necked beer. He held the bottle like I did, one finger looped around the neck as though cradling the trigger on a long-range weapon.

  “Agreed.”

  I shifted in my seat and something in the tiny front pocket of my dress pants dug into my upper thigh. I pulled it out and set it on the table.

  Pensacola squinted under the low lighting of the bar. “What’s that?”

  “When we were in the basement, Reilly’s mom gave me something of his.”

  “Aww, man! How come I didn’t get anything?”

  I spun the small microphone pin on the table like the prop of an airplane. “Do you ever think about why we were the ones who survived?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re getting all survivor guilt on me,” he admonished.

  “No,” I sighed, “it was something Reilly’s mom said to me. How everything happens for a reason. Like maybe we were the only ones saved for a reason.”

  “I definitely have not had enough to drink to be contemplating deep shit like that,” Pense snorted.

  I hung my head. “You’re right. I don’t know where that came from.”

  Pense nudged his beer bottle into the side of my arm. “It’s been a heavy day, Cass. It’s okay,” he said gently.

  We had one more beer each before settling our tab at the bar. No more deep thoughts snuck into our conversation. We stuck to safe topics like how he was enjoying fatherhood and how Julia was too good for me. Once outside, I helped Pensacola make his way back to where I’d parked Julia’s car. It had rained while we were inside and the pavement was slightly damp.

  “Hold up,” Pense stopped me before we reached the car. “I need a smoke before we get back to real life.” He rummaged in the cargo pockets of his baggy shorts. “This is the only time I can get away with smoking now that we’ve got the baby. I swear—my wife’s got a nose on her like a bloodhound.” He produced a hard pack from his pocket and flipped open the paper lid. “Want one?”

  “Thanks.” I fished a single, skinny cigarette from the pack and let Pense hold the lighter for me. I hadn’t smoked since returning stateside, just after the accident, but these were the kinds of moments that warranted a cigarette. I let the acrid smoke of a deep drag fill my lungs before pushing it out.
>
  Pensacola took a deep drag and exhaled a thick plume of grey-white smoke. “Have you ever …” He paused to take another drag. “Thought about doing something like that? Like what Reilly did?”

  “You mean kill myself?”

  “Uh huh.”

  I’d never told Terrance about my PTSD. I’d never explicitly told anyone though, Julia included. The people who knew tended to be those who’d witnessed firsthand one of my flashbacks. It was a private, internal condition and one whose struggles felt insignificant compared to what Pensacola had gone through with losing his legs. But as bad as the flashbacks could be at times, ending my life had never crossed my mind.

  “Not really,” I said in truth. “You?”

  “Hell no,” he laughed. “My wife would bring me back from the dead just so she could kill me again.”

  “How do you do it? How do you stay so positive?” I wondered aloud.

  “I try not to think about what I lost,” Pense answered.

  I arched a disbelieving eyebrow.

  “Easier said than done,” he admitted with a sardonic chuckle. “But you gotta keep moving forward. Gotta have a job. A reason to get out of bed. Gotta have something to talk about at the dinner table.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  I had a job, imperfect as it was. I didn’t speak with my family, but I had Julia in my life and good friends. That was enough.

  Pense flicked his cigarette butt onto the ground. I heard its burning ember fizzle out as it hit a puddle.

  + + +

  The hotel room was dark when I returned, save for the yellow glow from parking lot lamps that squeezed through the center of the window curtains and the alarm clock’s red digital numbers. Julia lay silent and unmoving in bed with her back facing the door. I stripped down to my bra and underwear and slid beneath the stiff white sheets. My hair smelled like cheap beer and stale cigarette smoke. I probably should have showered, but I didn’t want to make more noise than was necessary.