“No, Jordie, we aren’t,” I said. “I swear to you it isn’t because I don’t love you, or because I don’t care what happens. I just --”
“You love someone else,” he interrupted me. “I could see it when you walked through the door. You looked different somehow. Do you remember when we were kids and you let me fuck you?”
I grimaced. “Yeah.”
“I mean later.” He chuckled. “When we finally got it right.”
“Oh, yeah.” I couldn’t help it, my breath caught in my throat.
“When you came in you looked like you did then. After.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He was silent for so long. “So.”
“Yeah. I didn’t remember what that felt like.”
“What does it feel like?” he asked. I thought he sounded more tired than angry.
Even so, I asked him, “You don’t really want to hear about this, do you?”
“Actually, I think I do,” he told me.
“It’s warm, Jordie, and it makes you feel really, really good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Better. Bigger. And you want to do stuff that’s… I don’t know…”
“Noble,” Jordie supplied. “I always wanted to be noble.” 100
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“No shit?”
“No shit. Like Robin Hood. Or the guy in the war flick who jumps on the grenade.”
“I still love you so much, Jordie.”
“I know you do, Coop.” He patted my back. “I know you do.”
* * * * *
Even though Stan’s dire predictions didn’t immediately manifest themselves, I still went to bed uneasy. I slept on the couch for the first time since we’d moved in. Jordan did nothing to stop me. When I woke up the next morning, he was just leaving.
“I’m going to a meeting before work.” I heard the door shut quietly behind him.
I had work starting at ten, and I wondered if Shawn would be working then as well. I also wondered what kind of trouble he would get us into if he didn’t realize that River Falls was not exactly Santo Ignacio and that Mama Lina’s was to Nacho’s Bar as the Corleone family saga was to Queer as Folk.
Shawn, I texted him. You know River Falls isn’t St. Nacho’s, right?
Yeah, he texted back. So?
Well Mama Lina’s is about as far as you can get from Nacho’s bar, I sent.
Duh, came the reply. You mean I can’t blow you in the men’s room?
Duh, I typed back.
How about in the freezer?
They keep FOOD in there, I sent. I put my phone on the kitchen counter and started to make a protein shake.
My phone vibrated. See you there.
I thumbed, See you. I did that emoticon thing, with the colon and the dash and the parenthesis. I was still shaking my head after I’d showered and it was time for me to leave.
* * * * *
I was working the food prep area when I spotted Shawn in his busboy getup, as always, with that rubber tub. He turned on his high-voltage smile when he saw me but other than that, he said nothing. Word got around quickly, though, that he was a friend of mine from California, and I heard some speculation about that. People tried to talk to him and seemed to like him well enough. They went to great lengths to communicate, and by the end of the day he was popular enough to be invited for a beer by some of the other guys, which he declined without much effort, saying he had other plans.
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I was playing my violin for an older couple having an anniversary when he left. I saw the question in his eyes, and my cell phone buzzed shortly afterward. After I finished my number I took a look. Meet me? Grounds?
OK, I typed. 9:00.
It was the very end of the twilight hour when I made it to Hallowed Grounds on foot.
Unlike the night before, I checked in with Jordan to tell him I’d be late. He said he had other plans and I should have a good time.
I felt like I was between worlds, in a state of suspended animation, like in a science-fiction movie where long-range space travel is undertaken by people in big glass coffins who don’t age or change while everything around them goes on, business as usual.
There would be little point in sharing my feelings with either Jordan or Shawn. I couldn’t tell Jordan because he would try to reassure me that everything was A-okay, and I couldn’t tell Shawn because he wouldn’t.
I found Shawn sitting at a little bistro table on the sidewalk, completely oblivious to the poetry reading going on inside and piped into the air via a sound system with speakers right above his head. I grinned at him and when I entered the crowded café to buy a latte, I found my sister at a corner table with Bill. Julie was wearing an expression on her face I’d never seen before. Bill had definitely scored a hit. I wouldn’t have been surprised to look at her feet and find mismatched shoes; it was that obvious. As soon as she saw me she came over to say hello, and when I got my coffee, we went together back outside to where Shawn was sitting.
The noise from the speakers was deafening so I indicated that I wanted to move the table, and Shawn picked up his coffee with an inquisitive look on his face. My sister pointed up to the speaker, and he realized what it meant and laughed, picking up the chairs to follow us. When we were someplace I could hear myself think, I got out my cell phone and set it on the table.
“Is that how you talk to him?” my sister asked, pointing to the phone and Shawn to sort of include him in the conversation.
“Yeah.” I smiled at Shawn and picked up the phone. “He gave it to me back in St.
Nacho’s, but I didn’t bring it home with me. He gave it back to me when he got here.” Shawn smiled back, and I think I heard my sister sigh. Bill joined us then, bringing his cup and saucer. He and my sister shared a special look and I wondered if he’d ever made it home the night before. I could tell Shawn noticed as well because an eyebrow rose on his very expressive face.
“How does Jordan feel about that?” Julie asked me sotto voce, which made me grin a little. Some habits are hard to break. I’m sure she realized that soft or loud, he wouldn’t hear her.
“I can’t really tell yet,” I said. “Sometimes he’s angry. Last night he seemed resigned.” 102
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“This really isn’t a good place for him to be,” said Bill.
Immediately, I felt the need to jump to Jordan’s defense. “He’s done his time,” I snapped. It was pretty predictable and caused my sister to roll her eyes.
Shawn watched all this without comment.
Bill softened. “I didn’t mean it that way, Cooper,” he said. “I want him to succeed. As angry as everyone was -- is -- about what happened to Bobby Johnson, punishing Jordan Jensen forever isn’t going to bring Bobby back. And if Jordan has a chance at a normal life, where he can live in a productive way, I think he should be allowed to live in peace. People around here, though, aren’t going to forgive and forget. I wish he’d gone someplace else.” Shawn was watching, so I picked up my phone and texted that we were talking about Jordan.
He gave me a resigned smile and I shrugged.
“I do too,” I said. “Even though I’m glad to be back here. I’m grateful that I can stop worrying that the whole town would run me out if I came back home to visit family and friends.”
“You didn’t really think that,” Julie said, like it wasn’t a question.
I shrugged again. “It’s not like I would have blamed them.” She shook her head. Someone really animated was reading a goofy poem inside, and lots of people were laughing. Shawn stared off into space and I marveled again at how he could be so very Shawn in the face of being isolated in his soundless world. I slid a foot over and bumped his instep. He looked at me and I could see that what he missed in sound he more than made up for by visual observation. His eyes scanned me up and down, and I felt flushed when he was done. It was like being touched.
My sister snorted behind her hand. She was making pretty ferocious eye contact with Bill. From inside Grounds, the sounds of laughter, finger snapping, and clapping drifted to us.
I heard a sound behind me and turned to find Jordan standing there. I stood, and so did Shawn, and I performed introductions.
“This is Jordan,” I signed by finger spelling the name. “Jordan, Shawn.” Both men seemed strained but polite. I went to get Jordan a coffee, and when I returned there was an added chair at the tiny table and four people were sitting there warily, waiting for me to come back. I remembered what I thought when I first learned Shawn had come to River Falls: train wreck.
I hit on the idea of showing Jordie how to text message Shawn and they got off to a better start, making small talk using the phones. I eyed my sister.
“You and Bill seem to have hit it off,” I murmured, close to her ear.
“Tell me you don’t think he’s too young,” she hissed into mine. “Tell me the whole town’s not going to start calling me a cougar.”
“What? At most, he’s five years younger. My age. You don’t look your age anyway, Jules.” I grinned. “You’re hot.”
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She sighed. “Okay, free coffee for a year if you say that, what? Once a week?”
“Deal,” I told her. “So…how was it?”
She refused to meet my eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I looked up and saw a strange expression on Shawn’s face. I snatched my phone back, wondering what Jordan had said. Jordan looked unrepentant.
“Jordan --” I started to say.
“I was just leaving.” Jordan pushed his chair back abruptly. “I had plans; I just wanted to stop by and say hello. Don’t wait up.”
As he got up, I felt a shift in the atmosphere. A small group of people had gathered across the street, far enough away that I couldn’t really make out who they were clearly, or maybe I didn’t know them. They stood there staring at Grounds, not moving.
Jordan got up and started walking away, presumably toward our apartment.
“Jensen!” one of the people in the crowd called out. “I see you’ve got your little pal with you. Looks like he’s moved on.”
Jordan froze, and I could see Bill frowning, transforming into Officer Bill as he stood up and started walking toward the crosswalk.
“Maybe you should move on too, Jensen,” called a woman’s voice. “There’s no place here where you’re welcome.”
To her credit, my sister’s chair scraped back and she shouted, “Since he’s done his time, and he’s trying to get his life back together, he is welcome here.”
“You should be ashamed,” the woman yelled back, just as Bill got there and started talking to them. Jordan was still frozen in place. I got up and went to him, meeting Shawn’s confused eyes as I did so. I signaled that I’d call him. He nodded.
“Jordie,” I began, but that seemed to have the effect of rebooting him, and without turning, he moved on, quickly breaking into a run. I took off after him, only catching up when we reached the apartment.
I made a mental note to stop smoking.
I followed him in and watched as he yanked his cigarettes and lighter from his pocket and tossed his keys down. I started water for tea. When I got to the living room with two cups he was staring out the patio window. I put the cups down on the coffee table and went to him. He shook off my touch.
“Jordie, don’t listen to those assholes.”
“I don’t, not really.” He sighed, then took a drag. When he blew out the smoke I opened the slider and closed the screen.
“What a little mom you are,” he said. “I don’t know why I never noticed it before.” I was silent.
“Of course, you were always that way. Taking care of the fuck-up.” 104
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“Jordan --”
“Cleaning up my messes.”
I didn’t argue with that.
“Never mind that half of the mess was always yours too,” he said bitterly. “No one could ever see that.”
“I saw it,” I said quietly. “I see it.”
“But it never, ever touches you, does it? You just keep on keeping on.”
“Of course it touches me. I’m tainted with it, of course I am,” I said, but I could tell he was working up to something and wasn’t listening, and I felt afraid. “Have you talked to Stan today?”
“No, baby, I haven’t talked to Stan today,” he spat, his anger way out of proportion to my question.
“I just asked if you’d talked to Stan. Shit, Jordan. I know it was bad when those people were yelling at you, but --”
“What about you, hometown hero? Are you tired of being the prodigal returned yet?”
“What?” I asked.
“While you’re fucking signing autographs up and down Main Street, I don’t suppose it’s come to your attention that people wouldn’t piss on me if I were on fire.”
“Jordan!” I said, shocked.
“As you’ve no doubt seen, I can’t go to the grocery store without people whispering behind my back or confronting me. I can’t rent a movie or buy a donut. If it weren’t for Stan, I’d have been fired from my job weeks ago. If it weren’t for Stan, I couldn’t live in this fucking town at all!”
I had to breathe to control my temper. Jordan was like that, had always been prone to outbursts. One of the things I’d learned a long time before was to let him wind down before I began to speak again. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. I lowered my eyes and prepared myself.
“I walk down the street and it’s like…I’m an alien. I grew up here. I know all these people, but they look through me like I’m --” He broke off midsentence. “But you don’t care about that, do you?”
“What?” How unfair. “Of course I care.”
“You have a good thing going here,” said Jordan. “New job, new lover, family’s back together. You drive around on a motorcycle for three years and you’ve fucking reinvented yourself. Working at Mama’s, volunteering at the library, you’ll be scooping the horse shit off the street during the Labor Day parade, and everyone will applaud your bony ass while you do it.”
“Why are you so angry at me?” Damn, but I was so close to losing control.
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“You gave me those keys! It was your entire fucking fault, Cooper. You made me drive that car, and I killed someone, and now I’ll never be all right again.” He dissolved into childish tears and threw himself onto our nasty couch, cursing the day I was born. And yet, looking at him, I felt that same protective tenderness I always had, and the crushing weight of sadness. He’d said it. Shifted the blame completely, and now I knew, I thought I knew, why I couldn’t begin to make things right between us.