Cora
When my cell goes off and I don’t recognize the number, I dare to hope that it’s Logan. I need it to be Logan so that I can start sorting this whole mess out. I don’t want to disentangle this web alone. I need help. A baby is too much; the pressure of that decision weighs on me heavily. If it’s some marketing company calling up to see if I’ve heard about the awesome new Internet service, I’m going to be pissed.
I answer. “Hello.”
“Cora?” he says, voice husky. “Ash?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Did the guy at The Devil give you my number?”
“Yeah, he gave it to me. And I called you. Funny, ain’t it?”
“Are you drunk?” I ask.
“Drunk.” He laughs gruffly. “Can’t a man have a drink the day he puts his father in the ground? I didn’t throw the dirt, Cora. I didn’t throw the goddamn dirt. I’m gonna go back there and dig him up and throw the dirt. You’ve gotta throw the dirt. Disrespectful. I’m going, now.”
“Wait!” I snap, jumping to my feet. “You’re drunk, Logan. You can’t drive—or ride!”
“Drunk? A little, sure. But I can ride. I’ve ridden way drunker than this. Don’t worry about me. I’m putting on my jacket. I’ll call you back after I’ve sorted this out, all right?”
“Wait!” I hiss. “Just wait a second. Listen to me. Don’t do anything rash. Just sit down for a second. Can you do that for me, at least? Can you just sit down for one second?”
He slumps down so loudly I hear it over the phone, and then mutters, “What, Cora?”
“I’m sorry about your dad. That really sucks.”
“Sure it does,” he says. “But I don’t care. Can’t care. Can’t let that shit show. Can’t let that shit show, ’cause then it’d be a shit-show. How about that, Cora? Staying in school worked out in the end.”
“Logan, I …” But what can I say? I can’t tell him now, when he’s so drunk he can barely talk. He probably won’t even remember in the morning. I won’t be able to trust his reaction. Maybe he’ll make promises about marrying me and keeping half the cash and then in the morning only remember the marrying part, or the cash part, and everything will become muddled. If this plan is going to work, both of us need to be clear about the arrangement. Otherwise it’ll just get confusing.
“What?” he asks, though maybe “asks” is a nice way to put it. Maybe “barks” is more accurate.
“Nothing,” I reply. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Why’d you call me?”
I giggle. I can’t help it. It’s a reflex. “You called me,” I say.
“Shit, yeah. I did. I remember now. Goddamn. So, are you coming over?”
He says it as though he’s already asked it and we just need to hash out the details, as though we’re so close we can just casually go around each other’s place and it’s not a big deal. He says it as though we’re not strangers who fucked a few weeks ago. I should say no and wait until he’s sober, but I want to try and sort this out now, or as soon as possible … And yet I know that that’s only half the truth. The other half is that I want to see him again. It’s not lust, or even affection, that drives this desire. It’s something deeper, more primal.
In the Viking Age they believed that their fate was woven by fairy-like creatures called norns, who wove out the fabric of destiny so that a person only had some leeway to the left and right of their fate, but the basic course was mapped out. I wonder if this is one those instances where my fate was already determined a long time ago. Then I remind myself that I just read these tales, don’t believe them. If only I could believe it was possible to read something without it becoming a part of you.
“Cora?” he urges. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. What’s your address?”
He gives it to me. After fixing my face, I drive to his place, hoping that he’s a bit more sober when I get there. It’s eleven o’clock. Maybe I can get some coffee down him and he’ll sober up by one or two, and then I can drop the news about the baby and we can go from there. His apartment is in a surprisingly nice neighborhood, in a building with a receptionist and smooth marble flooring in the lobby. The receptionist nods at me and tells me the floor number, and then I ride the elevator up.
I find myself looking in the metal panel where the elevator numbers sit, running my hand through my hair and rubbing my lips together to evenly spread my lipstick. I wish I had put on more makeup while also wishing I was wearing less, and then the doors open and I’m greeted by Logan standing at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall and staring at me.
I approach him slowly, my body doing things I do not ask it to, like firing up engines of lust and sending sex signals to my mind, telling me to leap on him and kiss him and let events go where they may. I repress the urges and stand close to him, looking up into his face. He looks terrible, dark, intense. His eyes are red from whisky and there is something dreadful in his expression, like he could kill a man and think nothing of it. He’s wearing a vest and shorts, nothing else, looking like a lion after a hunt.
“Come in,” he says, backing into his apartment.
I don’t know what I expected, but it’s not this. Instead of some dark, grimy outlaw’s den, I’m welcomed into a standard-looking apartment, somewhat bare and a little untidy. The only dangerous-looking thing is the pistol resting on the kitchen counter. As he goes into the living room and drops onto the couch, I make sure the safety’s on and put the weapon in a drawer. I won’t allow any Chekhov’s gun here.
“I’m glad you came over,” he says, sipping whisky directly from the bottle. “Sittin’ here on my own … Oh, Jesus … you’ve got to fuckin’ kidding … no, fuck this …”
“Logan?”
I approach him slowly. He makes choking noises from deep in his throat, sounding like they come from much lower: his chest, his soul. He hacks and trembles and that’s when I realize he’s crying. I sit on the couch next to him and watch in disbelief as this giant, dangerous-looking man trembles violently, tears turning his eyes redder. His hair falls over his eyes and he keeps muttering to himself, “Stop it, fuck’s sake, stop it.” But he can’t stop. The tears come for several minutes, tears that completely take him over, tears shake him with the force of an earthquake.
Earthquakes are caused when Loki shudders under snake’s venom; that’s what I learned as a girl. But now I wonder if they’re not really caused by the pain of a son losing his father. I was sad when my dad died, of course, but Logan’s pain is something else. It’s something animal. It’s something that makes me feel small as I try to sooth him, but I try anyway.
I rub his back and whisper meaningless words until the crying gets less violent. He wipes his face and takes a long sip of whisky, drinking down the equivalent of three or four shots, and then slams the bottle down on the coffee table. “Fuck,” he says. “Goddamn. I didn’t plan for that. Don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just …” He looks at me. For a moment he’s like a lost little boy. “I miss him, Cora. I miss him a whole lot and I can’t even let anyone know, ’cause I’ve gotta be tough. I can’t let anyone see how badly it hurts. And it hurts badly. It hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt.” He takes my hand with surprising tenderness. “Goddamn, I’m glad you’re here.”
This is another one of those moments where, if another man was doing this, I would want to run away. But with Logan I’m not uncomfortable, or at least I’m comfortable enough to flip my hand and interlock my fingers with his. We sit in silence for a while. He cries again for a couple of minutes, seeming less embarrassed about it this time, and then his head begins to nod and his eyes begin to close. I lead him into the bedroom, laying him down on top of the covers and lying down next to him, resting my head against his shoulder. He doesn’t try and touch me, and I’m glad for it. This is enough right now.
“It was cancer, by the way. Lung cancer. Don’t remember if I told you that.”
I stroke his hair. “Go to sleep, baby. It’s okay.”
“Big man like that …” He chokes back a sob and buries his face in my neck, kissing me and nuzzling me. “Big man like that, dead to cancer. Makes a man feel human, doesn’t it? But I can’t act human, Cora. That’s the last thing I can do. I’ve gotta be tough. I’ve always gotta be tough. Sometimes all I wanna do is be a man, just some normal man who doesn’t have to put up this front all the time, who doesn’t have to pretend like shit don’t get to him. But that’s the world I live in, and … I shouldn’t be unloading on you like this. I’ve never talked to anybody like I’m talking right now. I should shut my fuckin’ mouth.”
“It’s okay.” I kiss him on the forehead. “You don’t have to be tough all the time.”
“That’s the thing,” he says sleepily. “I do …”
I stroke his hair, kiss him and whisper to him until he falls asleep, and then I wrap my arms around him and lay my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It beats loudly, like a drum, so loudly that it travels through my head and down my neck and into my chest, joining my heartbeat, and as I lie here it’s like our hearts beat in unison, a song with the exact same tempo.
I wonder if this is what it’s like to really feel something with a man.