We're in Trouble

by Christopher Coake

  And so they ate dinner at the kitchen table upstairs, and drank right from the bottle, and rolled around on the living-room floor, and afterward they lounged naked and watched Letterman on the ancient black-and-white TV down in Mel’s room.

  It was then that she asked him, So do you ever think about what you’re going to do?

  What do you mean?

  About Lou. About a place.

  Lou had been rumbling, lately, about Brad moving out. Brad swallowed, wishing he didn’t have to think about something so petty—not now.

  I don’t know, he said. Lou’s all talk—it’s not like he’s going to do anything.

  So can I ask you something?

  Yeah.

  I’ve been thinking, she said, and took his hand and held it up in front of her face, kneading his palm until his fingers were splayed. It’s nice, being alone like this. Right?

  You said it.

  Yeah. So . . . maybe we should get a place.

  Now he knew why she’d been so eager to get him drunk.

  Don’t say no, she said.

  Mel, I’ve never lived with anybody. I mean, a girl.

  I can see it on your face, she said. You don’t want to.

  That made him angry. She wasn’t right. But . . . she wasn’t wrong either. The thought had never entered his mind.

  Brad lay very still, aware, as he hadn’t been a minute ago, of Mel’s warm flank pressed against him. If any other woman he’d ever been with had asked him, he would have said no. No way. He had to have his privacy, his own mess. That was bedrock, that was principle. Especially now . . . the moment probation was over he was going to be nothing but a little comic-strip cloud of dust. He’d be in Miami. And Mel still had a year of school, at least.

  But then he realized: he hadn’t been thinking, seriously thinking, about Miami for weeks. He’d been saying the words, but not seeing the pictures. Since going to bed with Mel he’d been thinking mostly of Mel, and not about beaches and clubs and the crowds of drunk college kids who arrived every spring, like geese.

  So what the fuck was he afraid of?

  She said, A little place. Just us.

  We’ve only known each other a few weeks, he said.

  Two months, actually. Her voice was edging already into sadness—he hated to hear it quiver, hated to think that was his fault.

  Mel . . .

  It’s just—you make me happy. Nobody’s ever made me feel happy. Not like this. You’ve made my whole life different.

  And what she was saying now—that was it, that was what scared the shit out of him: her happiness. He could almost feel her hope, a little pulsing white spot between them on the bed. Waiting to glow brighter or die. And she wanted to put it right into his hands, to say: Hang on to this for me.

  He wanted to tell her: Mel, I’m so going to fuck this up.

  She sat up and sighed. I was kind of hoping for a response? You know, like, I’ve been happy, too, Mel?

  Of course I’ve been happy. This is just—

  A surprise?

  Yeah, he said.

  This isn’t how I saw this going.

  I know, I know—

  Brad, she said, I love you.

  He closed his eyes. She’d never said that to him before. But he’d imagined her saying it—late at night, sometimes, when he was too keyed up to sleep. And now, hearing it . . . if Mel so much as touched his shoulder right now he’d break down, he’d hold her all night and bawl into her hair.

  He said, I just need to think.

  Mel’s voice was neutral. All right.

  Can I still stay?

  You asshole. Yes, I want you to stay.

  They lay quiet for a long time. Mel turned away from him. Brad watched the tip of her ear.

  Finally she said, We can think about it, and talk about it, and I’ll even leave you alone for a while, if you want. But if you’re going to stay in my bed, I kind of have to put you on the clock.

  Mel—

  You know I’m right. I’m done chasing the wrong people.

  Then she turned, quickly, and kissed him on the forehead. Good night, she said.

  But later that morning, while Mel slept, her back still turned to him, Brad saw it:

  A little apartment, somewhere up in Lincoln Park, a few floors above the street. The balcony door was propped open—it was summertime. Down on the street he could see students walking back and forth, bags slung across their shoulders. Mel was at work, and he sat in front of a fan and listened to records on his headphones, or noodled with a keyboard. Their bed was in the corner, right under a window. He knew its frame rattled—but he also knew they never had to worry about being quiet, not here. They kept an ashtray in the window and would sit and smoke in the dark and watch the streets. They’d sleep with a breeze blowing over them, the sounds of traffic. And when it was time to get Mel up, he’d nuzzle the soft spot on her neck that vibrated when she moaned, or laughed.

  He closed his eyes and wished—for maybe the first time since he was a kid—for everything to be different when the sun rose, for the room around them to be revealed as it should be.

  Mel was better than anything that had ever happened to him. So why was he treating all of this like some big fucking tragedy?

  It was, he told himself, time to grow the fuck up.

  Mel, he said. Mel.

  She turned to him. When her eyes opened she smiled, and he could tell: she already knew what he would say. Like all night she’d been waiting for him to catch up, to see what she’d already seen.

  He said, Okay, and then described it to her anyway.

  VII.

  The third night never seems to end.

  Brad lights one of the candles, jamming it between slats on the grill’s rack. He and Mel pull the quilt down from the top of the table and drape it over their heads, and sit with the candle between them. Brad rubs and rubs Mel’s feet, but she says she can’t feel them anymore.

  That’s all she says to him, and all he can think to ask her about.

  He keeps the candle burning until the space between them fills with heat. Then he pinches it out and huddles with Mel, rubbing every part of her he can, until he can’t stand the cold, and lights it again. The candle burns slowly, but still it’s getting shorter and shorter.

  They’re down, he knows, to only one more option. He’s been trying to think of a way to tell Mel, a way that won’t panic her, but he can’t. He has no choice.

  Mel.

  When she says, What? it’s the first word he’s heard from her in hours.

  Listen, he says. When the sun comes up I’m going to go for help.

  He can hear her intake of breath. Her feet twist, a little, in his hands.

  No, she says.

  We don’t have a choice.

  You can’t.

  I have to. I should have gone yesterday. But I know—we aren’t going to make it another day.

  I’ll go, too, she says.

  He wants to cry. Mel, he says, you wouldn’t make it.

  They look at her feet, bundled in his lap.

  You could carry me, she says. Piggyback.

  He’s thought about this. He says, I wish I could. But it’s too far. I’m not strong enough. And you’ll be warmer here with the candles.

  Brad, she whispers. Please. Don’t leave me alone.

  It’ll only be a few hours. A day at most.

  That’s too long. She pulls close to him. Please. I’d rather die with you here.

  He can’t tell her that this is exactly what he’s afraid of.

  Listen to me, she says. Her cold hands move, panicked, around his chest and neck. Let’s say you make it. We’ll be arrested. You’ll go back to jail.

  Of course she’s thought of it, too.

  As has he. But he’s also been thinking, this last hour, of the apartment in Chicago—their place, the one they’ll live in someday. The warm summer afternoons. And he’s been thinking that if Mel is there—waiting for him, in a place like that—he can do the
time.

  He imagines the first day he’s out, the two of them eating hot Chinese food, making love like they’ve never made it.

  Yeah, he says. I know. But I can do it.

  She starts to wail, pushing her face against his chest.

  Mel, he says, stroking her hair. I got us into this. It was my idea. If I don’t try to fix it—

  He’s about to say: I’ll never be able to live with myself. But he doesn’t.

  She won’t answer him.

  You know it’s the only way, he says. I’ll go in the morning.

  LATER BRAD brings one of the chairs under the blanket and sets up the lit candle underneath it. He’s gone too long without sleep; the candle flame leaves yellow streaks across his vision. He nods off with Mel still clinging to him.

  Later, he realizes she’s crying again. The wind is still howling outside. Mel’s cold hands are on his chin. His own feet are numb.

  Brad, Mel whispers. I don’t think we’re going to make it until morning.

  Sure we will, he says.

  She puts her mouth against his ear. I want you to promise me something, she says.

  What?

  If I don’t make it? And you do? Just leave. Leave me here.

  Mel—

  I mean it, she says. I don’t want you to go to jail. Not over this. And I don’t want you to feel bad. This wasn’t your fault. Okay?

  Her eyes are black holes, right in front of him.

  Promise, she says. If you want to make me feel better, promise.

  I promise, he says.

  She kisses him. Her body is shaking, and cold, cold everywhere.

  I love you, she says. Make me warm.

  It’s hard to do, but they manage. The blanket around them fills up with heat. Brad’s mouth is dry and cracked, but between them he imagines—it’s so real he can almost see it—a glow, like from an electric stove’s warm red coil.

  Mel says, Tell me you love me.

  And he does, over and over.

  In the end he tries to pull out, but she says, No, it’s okay. He feels, at once, dread, and joy, and a fluttering in his stomach—not just as he comes, but something else—like the feeling he’s had, swimming, when he’s stepped out over his head: the fear of sinking, and then the peace that comes after, when he’s made himself relax, and float.

  Mel rubs her hands across his lower back, and sighs. You’re so warm.

  Afterward she takes the candle and goes to visit the bucket. He can’t keep his eyes open. She’s gone for long time, and he’s just about ready to shout for her when he hears her thumping quickly back. She’s shivering wildly, and when she’s under the quilt he rubs her, his own body cold and heavy.

  Hold me tight, she says.

  Later he thinks she’s having a dream. Her hands are waving in the air above the blanket, and she gasps.

  Shh, he says, grabbing a hand.

  She mutters something that might be his name, and shudders, and curls to him.

  Shh, he says. It’s okay.

  THE NEXT TIME he wakes, the cabin is still. The wind groans, but not as strongly as before. Brad looks for a long time at the quilt a few inches above his face, at the candlelight pulsing across the fabric, trying to remember where he is. He lifts the quilt—the cabin is still dark; it’s still the same night. But there’s an awful stink in the air, something other than the quilt’s stinging mold.

  He wonders when Mel will come back from the bathroom, because he’s freezing, and then he knows she never left, that she is in his arms, and that she’s gone cold.

  His hand scrabbles for the candle and holds it next to her. Mel’s turned away from him. He says her name, grabs her shoulder, shakes her. He turns her to face him. Her face is gray, her eyes only white slits. Bile streams out of her mouth.

  HE LOSES TIME, for a while.

  At first he talks to her, like maybe she’s hanging on in there, somehow.

  He tells her he loves her. He tells her he wants to die.

  He asks, What the fuck did you do?

  He asks this when he’s trying to wipe her face clean, when he lifts her onto his lap and he finds the empty prescription bottle that’s rolled underneath her. When he knows it wasn’t just the cold that took her.

  He tells her she’s crazy, that he hates her. That he can’t believe he ever loved such a crazy stupid selfish bitch.

  He tells her he knows what she wants him to do, and he’s not going to do it. He tells her he’s going to fucking die anyway.

  Not long after that the candle burns down to a tiny spark, and from there into nothing.

  I won’t light the other one, he tells her. But after a while the dark is too much, the cold is too much, and he does.

  He huddles around the little flame, puts his hands over it until they fill with pain.

  At one point he’s sure that Mel’s snuggled closer to him, and that her skin is warm. He rubs her feet and kisses her and tells her he’s sorry, that he wants to marry her and live in a house on stilts next to the ocean.

  LATER HE shudders awake. The candle’s burnt down by a third. He can just see the part in Mel’s hair, the white curve of her forehead. He touches her hair, pulls his hand back.

  He can see her. There’s more than candlelight around him.

  Slowly, stiffly, he wraps the blanket around his shoulders and lifts up the quilt. The room’s so bright it hurts his eyes—outside the windows, when he squints, he can see blue skies. And the air is different—it’s warmer, he’s sure of it. He’s not so good on his feet, but all the same he walks and opens the door, to look at the thermometer. And there it is: twenty-five degrees. The sun glints off the flat field of snow that was once the lake.

  He watches a sunbeam move slowly across the floorboards. He drags the mattress over to it, sits in the heat next to Mel. When he feels the warming on his neck, he moans.

  I told you, he says to her. You gave the fuck up!

  He should go, he knows that. But the sun is so warm he can’t think, can barely even make himself move.

  LATER—just a couple of hours, he thinks, but he can’t be sure—Brad hears a sound, one he can barely believe: a motor, a big one. He crosses the room to the back windows and peers out.

  Out on the road a red pickup with a plow attachment rumbles by, throwing up a plume. He wonders if he’s hallucinating it.

  You see, he says to Mel. You see that?

  You fucking coward, he says. He’s not sure who he says this to.

  Brad puts on every bit of clothing he can. He digs in Mel’s purse and adds her cash to his own: he counts out seventy-eight dollars. He takes her cigarettes.

  He opens the last can of tuna with his pocketknife and eats it with his fingers, even though the chunks are held together by a web of frost, and swallowing it stings his throat.

  Just before leaving he turns to look at Mel from the doorway. And he can’t bear the sight of her pale face—it’s like she’s awake, like he’s leaving someone alive.

  So he wraps her in the quilt. It’s harder than he’d imagined. She’s gone stiff, and she’s heavy—he thinks, with a shameful surge of relief, that he really couldn’t have carried her out. When he’s done he sets her as gently as he can down on the mattress, and then sits with his hand on her, until the cold from her body begins to pulse up through the scratchy wool. Like she’s pushing him away.

  He thinks about leaving her ID, next to her on the mattress—but he can’t make himself do that.

  Fuck her, fuck all her stupid plans. He’s going to get gas, and then he’s coming back for her.

  He tucks his chin into his sweater and walks outside.

  VIII.

  Brad and Mel spent all the next day celebrating: walking around downtown Chicago, talking about the place they’d get, the life they’d have.

  They went to the shore in the afternoon. For early October the weather was obscenely beautiful: warm, almost summery, with a terrific breeze blowing in off the lake. Everyone in Chicago was out there wi
th them, it seemed, and to Brad they all looked like he felt; stunned by good luck. For a long time they walked on the beach, and after that they sat on a bench outside the planetarium—a place Mel loved—looking at the whitecaps rolling ahead of the wind.

  Mel kept talking about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, her white face tilted toward the sunshine. She told him again about the fishing cabin she used to go visit—about how, when she was there alone, in weather like this, it was maybe the prettiest place she’d ever seen.

  I wish I’d never been there with Shithead, she said, as they walked off the pier.

  You and me both, he said.

  I wish I’d gone with you, she told him. You know? Like I wish I could just empty out my memories. Replace him with you. I’d have been so happy.

  She slid her arm around his middle.

  We’d have fun up there, she said. Just the two of us. We’re never alone here.

  Brad watched the people making way for them—the sidewalks were so busy the two of them barely had room to walk like this, and if anyone paid any attention to them, in their happiness, it was only to be annoyed, to mutter Watch it.

  And that was when—that was how—the idea came to him. It swooped in, like no idea ever had, except maybe the one that had come to him the night before, when he woke Mel up and told her he wanted to live with her.

  He grabbed her arm and said, So let’s go be alone.

  What? she said. Go where?

  That cabin.

  She gave him a look. Yeah, okay. Except it’s like a couple hundred miles from here. At least.

  I mean it, Brad said, walking backward in front of her.

  She laughed at him. It’s not like the L goes there. But hey, if we start walking now—

  Mel, he said. I really want to see it. I want to be alone with you.

  She screwed up her face at him, half amused, half understanding. You’re starting to worry me, buddy. You okay?

  Just like that, the courage was there for him.