TAUT

by JA Huss

  “I’ll drink it with you, if you want,” she says to break the awkward moment. “One drink won’t hurt. Besides, I already fed her, so she’s good for a while.”

  I nod and grab two glasses from the drawer. When I look back up she’s got the bottle. “Not in here, though. Let’s sit out there.”

  I just stare at her, trying to figure out what that means.

  “I think this room…” She looks around at the pictures of my dad and me. “Depresses you.” I can’t even move, that’s how much these words affect me. “Maybe depress is the wrong word.” She offers me a small smile. “Maybe it just… makes you think too much.”

  “Yeah,” I grumble out, then clear my throat and try again. “Yeah, it does. My dad died a couple years ago.” I look up at the closest picture and the memories flood in. “We did everything together.”

  “I can tell. Lots of good times on these walls. Let’s drink out there.”

  She doesn’t wait for me, just turns and walks over to the couch, sits down and sets the bottle on the coffee table. I walk over and sit down next to her, but not close enough to touch. I pour us each a drink and she clinks her glass to mine. “To dads.”

  “To dads,” I repeat. “Drink it slow,” I say softly. “It’s very special. It should be enjoyed, not consumed in a rush the way I did it last night.” She nods and takes a small sip, makes a face, and takes another one. She holds in a cough and that makes me happy for some reason. It satisfies me in a way I can’t explain.

  “I’m not a whiskey girl,” she says after taking one more sip and setting the glass down. “But it does seem special.” I smile big at that. She catches it and scowls. “You’re a weird guy, Ford.”

  I take a bigger sip this time. “Tell me something new, Ashleigh.”

  “New, as in you want to know something about me? Or new as in you already know you’re weird?”

  “Both,” I say, leaning back and slumping down a little, my drink perched on my thigh, my bare feet kicked up on the coffee table. I pick at the strings from a hole in my jeans and she leans back too, but then the largeness of the couch clashes with the smallness of her body and she has to tuck her feet underneath her to get comfortable. I take another drink of my Scotch as she begins to talk.

  “Hmmm. Something new about me… I’m in Colorado with a very attractive jerk. I’ve thought about him almost constantly since he appeared at my car window, and I’m not sure why he’s doing all this, so I’ve spent the entire day imagining him as a serial killer trying to lower my keen defenses so I’ll fall for his unorthodox charm and then beg him to kill me during kinky sex.”

  I spit out my fucking whiskey, that’s how funny that is. “Oh, shit.” I just shake my head. “You’re the strange one, Ashleigh, not me.”

  “Sorry,” she says as she takes another sip, grimacing as she forces it down. “Sometimes I say things I should bury deep inside.”

  “So, you think I’m a hot serial killer? And you’re still here because… it’s OK to be a serial killer as long as I’m eye-candy?”

  She smiles, but looks down like she’s embarrassed.

  “Or you know I’m not a serial killer and you trust me?”

  “That,” she says, swallowing more alcohol. “I know you’re not a serial killer because you called your mom last night to let her know you were OK. You’re drinking because you miss your dad. You have friends who are worried about you because you ran away from some bizarre love triangle. And you’re not a guy who likes to talk about his feelings, so you were very mean to them when they wanted answers.” She lets out a long breath. “Serial killers are loners. And Dexter doesn’t count, he’s fake. So you’re not a serial killer, just a very attractive jerk who wants to be left alone so you can deal with your relationship issues in private.”

  “Hmmm. Well, I guess you nailed it. Now it’s my turn.” She gives me a sideways glance that says bring it, so I don’t hold back. “You’re running from something, too. Maybe someone, but not the guy who gave you that ring. You love him, even if it is over, because you have it stamped on a dog tag. And maybe some people think a dog tag is just a cool piece of industrialized jewelry, but a woman who calls herself a Marine wife doesn’t. She takes that shit to heart. So you’re still in love with him, you might even want to see him again.” She looks up at this and I smile. “That right there just confirmed it. But you can use some attention right now, so you’re into the one-night stand while I’m around.”

  She stares at her feet.

  “How’d I do?”

  “Close.”

  “Which part did I get wrong?”

  “You got enough right that I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” And then she gets up and smiles a very polite and very fake smile. “Thanks for the drink. I’m super tired, so I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then she walks away.

  “Ashleigh.” I laugh out her name a little. “Come back here.” She shakes her head and treks up the stairs. “Ashleigh!”

  But she’s serious. She never looks back or slows her retreat.

  I hit her button and she is done.

  Nice going, Ford. You’re a real fucking people person.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I was a kid I knew I was a genius. No one had to tell me, and maybe that sounds… what? Egotistical? Conceited? Boastful? Arrogant? Prideful? And if I extrapolate out a little bit, it probably borders on selfish and indifferent as well. But it is what it is. I’m fucking smart. I’m way beyond fucking smart. I’m an intellectual anomaly.

  And this did make me a little bit of a brat as a child. For one, I figured since I was so smart, I was a superhero and my superpower was mind-reading. Because that’s kinda what I thought my dad did. Before he knew the full extent of my intellect, he talked to me like any other kid. So when I asked him what he did for a living, he said he figured out what people are thinking. And to me that translated into mind-reading.

  From that second on, because I was just as smart as my dad and I wanted to be like him, I decided my superpower was mind-reading.

  My mind-reading faux pas with Ashleigh and her internal motivations for being where she is right now is something I do often. Most of the time I get the same result from my efforts, so I tend to ignore my superpower. But she started it. She dug into my mind, and she was cheating as far as I’m concerned. She heard my phone calls. Anyone could figure that stuff out from those telling phone calls. So she got what she asked for.

  But let’s face it. I’m not your average guy. I’ve been to dozens of doctors over the years. More when I was small than when I got older, since I didn’t yet realize that admitting to what I could do and the issues I faced would lead to more doctors. But none of the doctors who examined me were very interested in helping me. No, they were only interested in understanding me. And they always asked the same question first. How did I learn Russian?

  I have always said I didn’t know, it just came out. And that’s true, because I didn’t understand my photographic memory until I was a teen and I wanted to pass tests without studying. That’s when I realized that everything I’ve ever read and heard was imprinted on my brain. Almost catalogued in there like a library with a reference number that could bring it back to me if I ever needed it.

  It’s like my brain is a museum and my consciousness is the curator of everything I’ve ever experienced. So if I were asked the Russian question again today, and I felt like telling the truth, I’d say, I heard Mikhail Gorbachev giving a speech on TV. I watched it for about ten minutes and that was it. I decided I’d like to speak Russian.

  How? That would be their next question. They never got this far with me because I never admitted to learning Russian from the TV. If I had, I could tell them why it happened—that was the speech. But I wouldn’t be able to tell them how it happened. I don’t understand what I am, I just deal with it. And I do that by turning it off ninety-nine percent of the time. So most of my life is spent trying to be something I’m not.

  The real me is fille
d with curiosity. I want to know everything. I want to understand everything. It pisses me off that there are things in this physical world that are unknowable. Just plain pisses me off.

  So I have to turn me off. I have to be something else. I am forced to exist in a state of half-truths.

  I try to not over-analyze things. I try to accept the things people say and not question them. I try not to assign motivations to actions and then make predictions.

  But I’m not very good at being normal. For one, I typically just say what’s on my mind. Like all that stuff I said to Rook.

  I wish I could go back. I’d like to take it back. I planned for that night for months. Ever since we got Ronin out of jail, I was planning my getaway. Because I knew the moment she said she wanted to save him that it was over for me. She belongs to him.

  And I miss her. I miss our friendship. I miss our runs. I miss it all so, so much.

  Those morning runs with Rook made life bearable for me. And I let myself be deluded up in Fort Collins. I wanted to believe so badly that Rook and I could just be friends, that I’d be OK with it.

  But I’m not OK with it. I’m… crushed. Devastated. Hurt. Sad. Maybe even depressed. And I realize looking back that my window of opportunity with Rook was very narrow. Those first few days of the Shrike Bikes pilot, back when Ronin was busy with Clare and Rook was still deciding on what she wanted. That was the only chance I ever had and I blew it. I was a dick to her. She had no reason to trust me, let alone like me.

  Why am I always surprised when the same fucking actions give me the same fucking results?

  I want to change. I want to allow people to get close. But it’s difficult to just accept things. I’m not Zen. I have trouble simply existing and yet that’s the only way I know to survive. To assign motivations and insight to every possible movement, conversation, and change is to invite madness. But to ignore all those parts of me is to invite delusion. I am in a constant state of dynamic dichotomy. So I cope with the stress of who and what I am with physical activity.

  The way I used to deal with things was through skiing, but I don’t ski anymore. Now it’s just running. I like solitary sports even though I’m pretty good at the team sports too. I only ever played baseball after I figured all this shit out. Because baseball is about as solitary a team sport as you can get.

  But running. Running is the ultimate solitary sport. And for most people it’s them against their mind when they run marathons and stuff. Can they talk themselves out of the pain? Can they fool their tired muscles? Can they turn around their negative thoughts that tell them they will fail? Will they suffer to achieve the reward of completion? That’s the runner’s battle.

  But for me, I am my mind. So I don’t compete with anyone. There’s no voice in my head saying I can’t do it. It’s the opposite in fact. If there is a voice in my head, then it’s my dad, and he only ever gave me encouragement. He only ever told me, You can.

  So I just run, because I can.

  I’m not sure how far I could run if I never stopped. That run down to Frisco and back is pretty intense. Twenty-four miles and half of it is uphill. But the thought that I’d have to stop before I got home—that has never entered my mind. Because my mind has no room for silly things such as failure when I run.

  My mind is free when I run. Free to think about things I normally partition off to the deep recesses of my subconscious.

  So that’s what I do now. I run. I pull out an old running outfit from my dad’s closet so I don’t wake Ash and the baby, and I run the fuck out of Vail. The bike trail is out, it’s covered in like six feet of snow. But the streets are clear and it’s the middle of the night so they are empty.

  So I run.

  And I love every fucking second of it. Because the only sound I hear is myself. Breathing into the frigid night air, a stream of steam coming from my mouth in a controlled regular rhythm. I let my mind wander out of the cage I keep it in, I forget about Rook, and I think about shapes, and equations, and the sound of my feet as they pound the wet pavement.

  The freak goes away and the real me emerges.

  That’s what running gives me. And when Rook ran with me, she filled a gaping hole in my life. She was my partner. She was mine. I love my team. I can’t picture my life without Ronin and Spencer. We had a falling out a while back and we spent years apart. And even though life went on and I was fine, the minute we were all back together for the Shrike Bikes pilot, our bonds realigned. Like it was meant to be. Like we were charged molecules, pulled together by a force of nature.

  But I’d like to be more than one third of a team—one fourth if I include Rook. I’d like to be half of something. I’d like that emptiness to go away. And that’s what it felt like to have Rook. She filled me up.

  But now that hole is back and it’s deeper than ever. I am just one man, alone.

  I get back to the house around five AM and sneak quietly into the shower. I pull on the sweats I’ve been sleeping in so I don’t disturb anyone, and then I go downstairs and crash on the couch, my muscles aching with fatigue, my mind at bay for another day.

  The crying baby is what wakes me. And even though she’s upstairs, she is loud. I take the steps two at a time and find the screaming infant in her carrier in the middle of the living room. “Ashleigh?” I walk down to my bedroom and peek in, but it’s empty. Bathroom is empty. Parents’ bedroom also empty. “Ashleigh?”

  The baby is wailing so hard she’s shaking and it’s starting to freak me out. I walk through the kitchen and open the door to the garage. Ashleigh is sorting through the van looking for something. “What’re you doing?”

  Her head pops up in surprise. “What?”

  “Can’t you hear that fucking screaming?”

  “Sorry, did she wake you?” Ashleigh doesn’t look sorry. She barely notices me in fact. Just keeps searching for something on the floor of the backseat.

  “Yes, she did wake me, but I’m more concerned about why she’s fucking screaming her head off and you’re out here doing… what the fuck are you doing?”

  “I can’t find that yellow ducky.” She pops up again, her face all blotchy and her eyes red. “Have you seen it?”

  “Yeah, I gave it back to you at the motel, remember?”

  “I know, but it’s gone!” She dives back down into the van.

  I walk over and take her by the arm. “Ashleigh. Stop.” She pulls away and starts to climb over the seat to the third row. I grab her by the waist and haul her out, then push her against the van and hold her there by the shoulders. “What. The fuck. Are you doing?” The tears start to roll and then she just looks down and hides her face from me. “Answer me, dammit.”

  She wipes her face and drags her sleeve across her nose. “I just need that ducky, that’s all. I need it.”

  OK—I take a deep breath because I know mania when I see it. “You put it in the diaper bag, Ash,” I say softly. “I saw you. Did you take it out?”

  She shakes her head.

  “OK, then let’s go look inside. It’s cold out here and the baby is crying. Can’t you hear her?”

  Ash tilts her head like she’s listening and then she looks up at me with her watery eyes. “I can hear her.”

  “Good, you go take care of her and I’ll check the diaper bag. Where is it?”

  I pull her inside with me and catch her answer between screams. “The bedroom.”

  She picks up the baby and I watch her for a second, just to make sure. But she seems fine as she slides the baby up to her breast and sits on the couch to feed her. The screaming lessens as the baby latches on and then everything goes silent except for Ashleigh’s sniffles.

  Fuck. Women and their drama. Over a stupid toy.

  I go into the bedroom and it’s a total catastrophe. Clothes are everywhere, diapers are spilling out of the package, a few toys are scattered around. And that diaper bag is upside down in the middle of the floor. I kneel down and shuffle through it, but there’s no yellow duck. I don’t k
now how the fuck she can find anything in here, and now that I think of it, I’m wondering if she’s not having some trouble holding things together. She’s a single mom for whatever reason. I’m not sure what’s going on there, but it’s got to be tough to handle an infant alone. Plus she’s stuck here in a strange place with a guy who’s been fucking with her head. And all those post-baby making hormones are probably still in her system.

  It’s a miracle she’s not batshit crazy already.

  I stuff all the clothes on the floor into the hamper in the closet, then pick up all the diapers and stack them on the dresser. I sort through her diaper bag and nope, that duck is not in there. So I fill that up with baby toys and straighten out the bed a little. That’s a huge improvement. I pick up her winter coat and the yellow duck is lying underneath. I hang the coat up on the hook near the bedroom door. I walk back to the living room holding out the duck as I come towards her.

  She bursts into tears and takes it from me.

  Oh, fuck. Manic tears I can handle, but I don’t do I’m crazy-depressed-sad-happy-worried tears. I really don’t. But I’m pretty good at making girls shut up when they’re crying. So I try that route. “Ashleigh,” I say firmly. She looks up, muttering out some thank yous. “You’re not allowed to cry around me, I hate it. It bugs the shit out of me. If you don’t stop, I’ll bend you over my knee and smack your ass so I can give you a good reason to cry. At least then I’ll get some pleasure out of it.”

  She stares up at me, speechless. Then she blinks. “What?”

  I laugh. “That got your attention.”

  Her chest hitches a few times as she takes a deep breath. “Sorry,” she mumbles.

  I take a seat on the couch and watch her watch me as she feeds the baby. “Where were you headed, Ashleigh? When you broke down?” She makes a face and shakes her head. “What? Why are you shaking your head at me?”