by Diane Munier
"I'm not fine." She pushed away and he gripped the sink and watched her walk away some. "Oh God…the real me is catching up…to this. I'm sorry. I'm really not…I can't sustain it. I knew I'd ruin it. I'm not really the woman who unties her dress in a man's bedroom…I can't keep it going…not even for three weeks. I'm pathetic."
He loved her for this admission. He didn't know why. He meant he loved the admission. He knew the feeling. He knew it. "Good thing it hasn't happened yet…the dress…dropping. You'll get there." He meant the backwards thing. He thought he was rather inspired to remember it.
Her hands flew over her red face, but she laughed. She whipped her hands down.
"My skills," she laughed sadly, "it was Seth for so long. Coming here…this was a first. Alisha helped me. She said…this place…she told me about it. About you. She told me you were coming here."
He resented that still, much as he was glad to be with Cori, but if it weren't for Alisha he wouldn't know about Cori and he could have continued in his fog…his isolation that was so much easier.
She went to her abandoned chair and pulled it out and sat. Her shoulders were soft, her hands gripped between her knees. She looked at him and he felt that jolt, like always. "I'm sorry. My pain isn't bigger than yours must be. I'm so sorry."
He thought they were past this…sorrow toward each other at least. "I'm fine," he whispered, not imagining his pain was anywhere near her own. "I'm glad you're here," he said with complete honesty.
For a thing to be true…you have to prove it. You have to keep proving it. Or let it prove itself to you. Or you'll never really believe it. You might pretend to, but you'll know…deep down…you're a hypocrite.
But this…it was true. He was glad she was here. He wanted her here. That was established. And he'd take what came with it.
For the next two weeks. But that was the part that slapped at him now. Hypocrite.
What if two weeks weren't enough?
Chapter 10
They jogged to the pier. It was empty. The wind was strong, the clouds hanging low. The wind was cold. They jogged on the boarded floor, their steps like the ocean's heartbeat muffled by its own thrashing.
At the end they turned around and headed back, and she started to pull ahead and he got caught looking at her…her body calling to him and he tried not to let that be first, but he'd had her…he knew…he wanted her again. She made him forget. She was her own world and he liked it. Wanted it…wanted her…ached to feel that alive.
He refused to justify it. After the incident…boundaries had shifted. He became liberal in what he allowed. He'd started to curse. Immoral acts became redefined by assault rifles and attacks on innocents…innocent…young…soft…trusting…innocent….
He yelled into the wind and he bent over, hands on his knees and him heaving.
She was still ahead but she'd heard him and she held up and jogged back to him.
He was heaving there and he saw her feet and them stepping, and for all the feelings in him right now, he had to laugh at the way her one foot toed-in some.
He straightened up.
"Leg cramp?" she said, and he kept looking at her, talk about innocent, just…pure.
She was just a good person. Just good. She didn't deserve a bad thing…and she'd had this…so much.
"I don't usually ask why," he said. "I usually think…well why not?"
Yeah she looked confused, and she left off jogging in place, and she was standing there in her pink workout pants and her black jacket zipped and the hood puckered around her face, and her cheeks red and long strands of hair whipping around her face and he could see the, 'what the heck,' in her eyes, but she was all in.
"I figure…why should it be someone else? Sometimes…it's my turn. Sometimes I get picked, my car runs out of gas…my checking account gets overdrawn…three things break all at once…my dog dies…sometimes it's my turn. I'm not dead. And part of not being dead is the occasional kick in the ass…for the sake of character."
"You said that to people?"
"I made it a bit more theological…but essentially…I did."
She resituated her little feet and nodded, very serious.
"But the cruelty…we unleash on one another…as if it's not hard enough. The war dead. Yeah we had some of that. Small town kids fill a big number of those spaces. One year it's a graduation cap…then it's dress greens. They're trying to launch…to make a place…an opportunity. Their dads went…their uncles…grandparents. So yeah it's tough when they don't come home…a car accident…we have our share, right? The sixteen year old who drank and drove or the sixteen year old mowed down because someone else drank and drove…it's senseless, but we can get it…somehow. We did that stuff too, right? We've all been reckless somewhere. Most of us get away with it. Cancer. The indiscriminate killer, but people rush to help, doctors…there's support. We're sad…but we're held…and there's a chance. The cancer is cruel…it can be…but sometimes it's a wake up call…sometimes it deepens us as a human being…there's a chance at least.
"But…willful…slaughter. It's another category. In war you see a wholesale motivation. Even with Hitler…an ideology that you can rail against, stamp out…eventually defeat, not that it ever goes away.
"But terrorism without even a deceptive cause behind it, a perversion of religion, or politics, a terrorism where the self is the country and the self writes the ideology which becomes the justification, only it's not based on anything beyond fantasy…an idea that you are god, you can be god, and everyone else is…a target.
"And to explode this self-deception, to execute your right to be god in a place where the other God's name has been held up for so long. It wasn't an accident he picked a church."
"But he'd worked there," Cori said. "He did his community service there for spraying graffiti."
"Yeah. That got him familiar with it."
"You knew him. Surely you did."
He looked at her. "No one knew him, Cori. If I had…oh God…the fantasies I've gone through. I figure out what a threat he is. I get it. I see what's right in front of my face, right there, and I turn him in. Just one realization. Maybe…maybe I could have stopped him."
"You know that's futile thinking, right?" she said, and her teeth were chattering, and this was a hellacious place to have this conversation.
"Yeah. Sure. I mean…it's done. It's all futile. But I have to ask myself…what have I learned?"
Well she had asked him that…and he'd gotten mad.
"I'm gonna make you crazy," he said. He was one thing then another.
"Go on," she said, grip on his arm.
"One of my fantasies…I kill him before. I just come up to him in the hallway and I kill him. I use…the rug scrubber he would run…I mean…while that thing was droning and he was leaning on it, those earphones in his ears…he was planning it then, and what did I do when I walked by, say, "How you doin'?" I remember one day I invited him to youth group. I can imagine how he must have laughed. There were times it was just him and I…and I'd take my pompous ass over to him and ask if he wanted a soda…."
She was rubbing Jordan's arm, rubbing the story right out of his mouth.
"I'm sorry," he said suddenly. He grabbed her and looked deeply into her eyes. "Cori…I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Her hands were on his face. She was shaking her head. "You couldn't know. You already know this…you couldn't know."
"What kind of bubble was I living in? I was talking to troubled people all the time. What good was I doing? I stopped him…killed him…it was the least I could do." He pulled her closer to the rail while his words worked their way up.
"When I dove for him, he shot two more kids. One of those died."
She was shaking her head.
"Look," he said more calmly, before she could tell him it didn't matter. "I know. I get it. I know. But it's the truth. It's the truth. That's why…you and I…it can't be some weird form of worship or something screwed up like that, Cori. Some wh
ite knight thing. Or you thinking I'm like your dad. You get it?"
"Don't blame yourself like this Jordan," she said. "No one could have imagined…."
"I know that. I know that," he kept saying. "I'm telling you there are facts. They just are what they are. It's a balance. It's the truth. I'm one of the ones who might have stopped it…so when I did…when I really did stop him…it was about time. It's just a fact, Cori. It's just the way it is."
To his surprise and relief, she looked at his chest and nodded. He realized again she was freezing. He put his arm around her and he felt hers come around his waist as they walked the long pier.
"Thank you," he finally said, "for just…listening." He meant for letting him tell it his way. For not trying to change it or fix it or make it better. It was a lot of things to a lot of people and would be debated endlessly, but it was what he'd just said, too. And this was the first time he'd said his piece on it, and he was grateful she'd allowed him to.
When they got back to the house he ran the shower, and this time she came in the room and they undressed and under the hot spray he held her to him. He didn't want to use her to get somewhere else. He wanted to love her. He wanted to tenderly kiss her and touch her and show her with his hands and lips and eyes and breaths that he knew he was alive and he appreciated, he treasured…her.
When he could pull back from her he turned her to the wall and he reached over her head and took the spigot off the handle and shot hot water on the wall. Then he put the showerhead in place and leaned her on that warm stain, and he let the water sluice over his shoulder and down her chest and he had his hands on the wall either side of her and he rested his forehead on hers.
They stayed this way for a while. He loved that she would just be with him. She didn't perform, she didn't fill every silence she let things be messy she let them be real.
She made the first move. Her hands ran up his slick sides, over his chest and she cupped his face. He kept his eyes closed but he moved back so she could touch him wherever she wanted to. She spent some languid minutes on his eyebrows, his hair, his lips. He smiled when she touched his lips.
The smile was wiped when he felt her lips on his neck. He couldn't hold the shaky breath that burst through his mouth then. But he kept his hands on the tile, and she dragged her lips on his chest, and she walked around him, behind him now, and her arms around him, his waist because she was short, and her skin against him, and her face pressed against him, and he felt the shaking in her then, the racking tears, that mixed with the warm spray, and he let her use him then, wanted her to use him anyway she needed to, and she held him that way and she cried until he felt her still, until he'd leaned his elbows on the tile and his face on his hands while she cried it out. And she rested her face against him, but her hands moved along him, across his chest, digging along him, her fingers, clutching him, moving over him quick and needy, but he knew to stay still, to let her work it out, until she dropped to her knees and he felt her against him, and he turned to her then, grabbed her arms and pulled her to her feet and held her. And the water tapped down, tapped him like tiny pellets of realization and he felt like someone finally breaking the surface of the deep and taking in a gasping breath.
He was present.
Chapter 11
Holding her during the night he was awakened by the haunting voice of memory shouting in to his sleep.
At first he was disoriented, wide-eyed. Had someone screamed?
He listened and let his heart-rate slow. No. There was him. There was her.
He'd been dreaming. He'd remembered. His brain wanted to take him there, had taken him there…met him in this deep filmy place, Cori in his arms.
They could come if they wanted to, the assembly of players, the pop, pop of the weapon, the emotions that lingered like barking dogs that couldn't bite…ghost fangs bared…ghosts.
He allowed them, the sad sticky shadows, he didn't fight…the memories…his brain a projector flickering images and sounds.
He was done with this story…done with it…but it wasn't done with him. It never would be.
That day…that bookmark in his life, that crater hole, that nuclear explosion, that place where it went down, the sanctuary. It still smelled like flowers from a funeral the day before, a mother, a teacher, texting, crossing the line and meeting Tom Birdy's dump truck on that curve, that bad curve on the bottom road, and the tires clawing thick black on the pavement as she tried to right the wrong, tried to get back on the straight and narrow, too late, too late, she'd driven into Tom like a future that wouldn't budge and she'd taken off, jettisoned…into eternity.
The flower scent was still strong. He'd thought that all-day, how weird it was to work in a place where on his walk through the sanctuary to the back of the complex of buildings connected by hallways, on his way to fetch a bottle of water, or to shoot some hoops, there was often, before the altar, a body in a casket. He'd usually know the person, and he'd say, "Morning," he would say that.
But that day he'd wanted to finish work early, not that they were ever finished, they never were. He'd been up all-night, called to a sickbed at the county hospital two towns over, an older woman, someone's mother, the family crowded in the room there, and him crowded with them, mourning with the mourners, smiling at the stories, taking his turn leaning over the bed, fishing his spirit for comfort, reassuring her God was waiting now, take off the body like a worn suit of clothes, His arms, His arms will be your new home.
So Jordan hadn't had much sleep on that day…thee day…but the day was going fast and the last thing he did, before the Boy Scouts showed up, he met with Jackson in his office.
And he remembered he hadn't been able to stop yawning while Jackson did his best to railroad the conversation, to keep it on how fucked his teachers were to be flunking him in two of his classes.
Jordan finished another yawn, a jaw clicker. "C'mon, man," he said to the boy sitting other side of his desk. "And stop the f-bombs."
Jackson was sixteen and large as a man…but a ten year old's brain in the driver's seat. Jordan had been meeting with him every Monday after school for the past two months. Jackson had been in trouble for fighting. He hadn't initiated, but had responded so the school called Jordan, as the principal knew Jordan would work with a kid to keep him out of trouble.
Jackson could bench press three hundred pounds. Damage potential was staggering. There was no dad and a mom who was afraid of him. Jackson had one go-to emotional response to most things—anger.
And here's the irony, "Violence," Jordan said for the twentieth time, patient, hoping one of these times it would get in there, "is never the answer."
He said that, 'never,’ rolling off his naive, arrogant lips. But he added, "Someone breaks in to your house tonight wearing a black ski mask and holding a knife to your little brother's throat…."
"I'd jack him up good," Jackson interjected.
"Go for it. It's extreme, see? It's for being a hero. Violence is for heroic measure in extreme circumstance. Anything else…find another way. Use that strength God gave you to protect people. Don't be the scary guy. Don't be him."
That's when the office coordinator asked Jordan if he'd oversee the Boy Scouts.
They were practicing for Sunday and Terry, their leader, was running late.
Jordan was glad to be able to cut it short with Jackson so he could move around and wake himself up.
He bumped fists with Jackson, and that one nearly came with him, wanting to cut through the sanctuary to shoot some hoops, but his cell phone went off and after answering, Jackson went left…and Jordan went right.
Everything mattered. People wondered why they weren't spared…but with everything hinging on every small decision…how many times had he been spared…they been spared with no idea…it was all in a turn…left…right.
It wasn't chance. He knew that. It was choice. You walked a path, there was design, there was purpose. He knew that. There was choice. Left. Right. He'd been called into
that room. Maybe that's the whole reason he'd been born. That's what he knew suddenly. In this incident, in this event, he'd been the divine intervention. Him. It was that way, that time. He wasn't a hero. He was just a man…who'd been called, no different from what he did any other day…he served.
But the task…the task that day…the guy with the ski mask had shown…up.
And he, Jordan, got scary.
Cori stirred, and he said, "Babe."
She leaned up and kissed him soft and sweet, her eyes heavy with sleep…and love.
"Can you hug me?" she asked, and he laughed some, she was in his arms already, but he pulled her closer yet and she scooted half on top of him and he tightened his grip and she did hers and they floated there.
He didn't say it…but another piece of the empty was filled. Another bit of understanding…acceptance for what was.
They had spent three days, and him barely aware, three slow days that went by like precious water leaking from a bucket, time he couldn't stop or get back, three days of together, and barring Mrs. Palm coming in to clean, there was no one.
The other…interruption was her phone. Her son was with a family, a friend's family. He called a couple of times a day. She would always step away from Jordan, and he'd pretend to give her privacy. He'd try not to fixate on her like a human GPS, her his destination. In those times he would ask himself what right he had to be with her like this, to want her so desperately he could barely give her space.
He wouldn't judge it. He wouldn't hold it to some article in “O Magazine.”
Or some theological strain of idolatry either, he just was. He was with her and he wanted to be. Needed to be. She was his gift.
They weren't wasting time. She'd said that at the first, the backwards thing. Not wasting time. No sooner had he thought all this than her phone rang and she rolled off him to answer. He didn't allow his eyes to follow, but he was with her and it was intense, this bond to her, this blend.
