In Case of Emergency (11 page)

“I’m fine,” I tell him.

Malcolm comes back with an armful of papers. “Here.” They land on the coffee table with a thump. “Take a look at these.”

I sift through articles and research papers describing blast injuries and the coup-contrecoup phenomenon. I learned about the latter in EMT school, but it feels different to think about Ayla’s brain, floating behind her face, colliding with the thick and bumpy interior of her skull, getting battered into a whole new shape.

“It was an explosion that caused it?” I ask, hoping to change the subject at least slightly.

“Blast-related TBI,” he says. “Causes more severe injury. My client worked for a sewage treatment plant, and a water tank blew.” Leaning over the table, Malcolm taps his middle finger on a graph filled with data points and a swirl of connecting lines. He talks about the relationship between the extent of injury and proximity to the blast. His depth of knowledge is impressive; I’m interested despite myself. First there’s an explosion, he explains—a huge increase in air pressure—which compresses the surrounding air, creating winds more forceful than the blunt impact of a car accident. If that weren’t enough, between the blast waves and the winds, internal organs get crushed and bruised. “And then there’s the force of the body hitting the ground afterward. All of this happens in seconds.”

Ryan shrugs. “I have no idea what you just said.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

“Okay, fine. Consider an orange lying on a table. An explosion creates a vacuum. Like a tsunami. The shoreline draws back, revealing miles of ocean floor, before a wall of water crashes down. In an explosion, there’s the same vacuum effect, and then there are blast waves. A wall of air. When the blast waves hit, the orange gets lifted off the table and up into
the air. But there’s also enough force to send shock waves
through
the orange, imploding the pulp, denting the skin, rupturing pockets of air. Make sense?”

“Did you know the fish soup we make at our restaurant has orange juice in it? A whole cup’s worth.”

“Here we go again.” Malcolm looks at me. “Your brother has a one-track mind.”

“All things food.”

“Exactly.”

They continue but I lose the thread of the conversation. On the wall behind the two of them hangs a print of a Salvador Dalí painting: two elephants walk on toothpick legs across a blood-red landscape. Even if Ayla were a specimen of perfect health and sanity, there would be risk. Malcolm and Ryan discuss which fish are bottom-feeders and whether it is bad to eat a bottom-feeder. Their voices fill the room and I sip my coffee and the elephants walk toward each other, bulk balanced on gossamer.

15

“I think I’m over-caffeinated,” I tell Ayla.

“You’ll fit right in,” she says.

We walk on the strand at Venice Beach, amid the heavy crowds of street performers, bodybuilders, tourists, and merchants. There’s grass on one side, storefronts on the other, and palm trees in the shape of fireworks dance overhead. We pass a woman dressed as a mermaid who does tarot readings; the Rollerblade Guy skates by playing electric guitar. When we’ve had enough we buy a giant Elvis beach towel and climb our way onto the sand, the noise fading behind us, a few bobbing surfers in front of us. It’s windy today, making the waves choppy. The sand scuttles and tumbles toward the
ocean, and the fray from Ayla’s torn jeans flutters. We claim a patch of beach, marking our territory with four evenly stretched corners of Elvis’s face, and as we lie down and get settled, I am hyperaware of how close we are. The pad of her left big toe hovers an inch from my ankle.

I tell Ayla about Ryan and Malcolm, how when they started dating neither of them expected it to work out, because they were both just out of relationships and planned to use the other as a rebound. She tells me about the worst date she’s ever been on, how they met for breakfast and the first thing the woman did was order a vodka drink, and the second thing she did was to try to read Ayla’s palm.

“Did she know how?”

“Clearly no idea. Just made stuff up, and talked so loud people turned to look. She went on about my childhood for a while, then at some point realized I wasn’t left-handed and switched to reading my right. I remember it was kind of demeaning. Like she was telling a joke, but one that was funny only to her. She had a shit-eating grin on her face the whole time.”

“What did she say?”

“Oh, you know. I’d experienced a great loss by the time I was seven that had left me bitter, I would date a woman whose pubic hair would terrify me—”

“She said what?”

“You heard me. I’d have three major loves in my life, would have to overcome enormous obstacles, and unless I took up scuba diving by the age of thirty-five, I’d be fated to die young.”

Ayla tells stories with the practiced face of a storyteller, of someone who may or may not be bluffing. I don’t care either way. I’m glad for the excuse to look at her.

“Do you scuba?”

“No.”

“Then what happened?”

“Her vodka arrived. She got even more belligerent, which was when I realized she’d been drinking before we met up. I caught a cab home with the money I would’ve spent on breakfast.”

“And have you had three major loves?”

“Two and a half. Must be why I’m sitting on this towel.”

“So this is a date.”

She rolls over onto her side, which moves all of her body parts about six inches away from all of mine. “You bet your ass it is.”

She peers at me as I lie on my stomach, propped on my elbows, looking down at her. Her lips parted, eyes like a doll’s—glassy, iridescent. It would take very little effort to lean down and kiss her.

“I’ve never understood that expression.”

“Which?”

“Shit-eating grin. Why would eating shit be a good thing?”

I stack my fists on top of each other and rest my chin on the hollow created by my fingers. “Do you miss the army?”

She doesn’t respond at first. I watch a family of four struggle over the sand with a mountain of belongings, feeling her eyes on me.

“I guess I miss the wacky sense of structure. You always know where you’re supposed to be, even if your orders don’t make sense. You know when mealtimes are even when you don’t know if you’ll get to go on leave.”

“And now—”

“Now I have to make my own choices all the damn time.” Her fingers try to twist the flattened plush of the beach towel, but she can’t get a grasp.

The family stakes ground about fifty yards from us, and as they unload, their wiggling, energetic Jack Russell runs circles around them, kicking up sand, looking at each of them for approval. Again the image of Carl’s photograph flashes across my consciousness. “I don’t ever want to own an animal,” I blurt out, and before I can stop myself I’m telling Ayla the horrible story.

“That’s awful,” she says when I’m done. “And I thought I already hated little dogs.”

I laugh, more out of relief than anything. “Do you have any pets?”

“Now, don’t do that. Don’t change the subject.” She’s serious even though her tone is light. “Have you been thinking about that photo a lot?”

“It’s more like the woman pops into my head sometimes. Which is weird since I didn’t even go on that call.”

“She just kind of stayed with you.”

“Yes.”

“Ever heard of ‘intrusive images’?”

I shake my head.

“It’s therapy-speak for being a crazy person.” She rushes to correct herself. “I mean, temporarily crazy. A lot of vets have intrusive images when they get back. It’s exactly what you’re describing.”

“You’re saying I’m a crazy person?”

“Maybe a little.” She grins. “I guess I’m saying it’s kind of normal, but I don’t know if that makes you feel any better.”

I smile back. “It does, actually.”

She nods.

“What did you have nightmares about?”

“When?”

“When you got back from Iraq—you said you had nightmares?”

“Oh. I don’t remember too well, honestly. But they must have been bad because I used to choke my partner. Sometimes she’d tell me what’d happened the next day, other times I’d wake up to her yelling my name over and over. My arm would be around her throat like we were fighting.”

I picture her finding out in the morning the things she had done to her lover during the night and fight the urge to change the subject. “Is there a name for that, too?”

“Night terrors.” She rolls onto her back and looks up at the sky.
“Shit-eating grins, human-eating dogs, and night terrors… honey, we’re so romantic.” At the last second her tone loses its sarcasm and hits a more genuine note. And something in me flinches. The feeling is not uncomfortable; it’s as if she’s reached in, discovered a long cord running from the base of my skull to my tailbone, and plucked it.

I pinch sand into my palm and tip it out to meet the ground again. On the boardwalk, a man in head-to-toe gold sequins is about to do his routine for the third time.

“You know, I noticed you in the store a lot,” she says. “When did that start, about three months ago?”

I gape at her. “So you knew? That whole time?”

“Knew what?” Her storytelling face is gone, replaced by the beginnings of a smile.

“Oh, you’re an asshole.”

“Now wait, I didn’t
know
anything. I just thought maybe—oh, you’re blushing. Hey, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to embarrass you.” I watch as her fingers make their way over to my forearm and rest on the inside of my wrist. When I lift my gaze to meet hers I find myself unable to move. We stay like that for a few moments, her barely-there fingertips drawing small circles on my thumping pulse.

“I was going to ask you out,” she says, the breeze nudging her thick hair. “You were always there with that friend of yours. I thought of trying to make conversation but everything I thought of was just so cheesy. You beat me to it is all.” The late afternoon sun makes everything appear more supple, buoyed, three-dimensional, and the glow of her skin and green eyes leaps off her face as she stares at me. “Listen, this isn’t the best way to put it, but…”

“What?”

“Should we just get it over with?”

* * *

Time stretches itself long and quiet. We move slowly. We are skin to skin. Already, this is more than I can handle. I wrap my arms around her waist and feel her body swell as she breathes in. She rolls over on top of me, cupping my jaw with her fingers as she presses her mouth to mine. My thin sheets settle around our new shape.

I keep reminding myself that I’ve done this before.

“You’re trembling,” Ayla says, breaking off our kiss to study me.

“No, I’m not.”

She removes my right hand from her naked, warm waist and holds the fluttering traitor up between us. “No?”

I silently demand my hand stop quivering. It does. We watch the five-pronged silhouette hanging in the air between us, now motionless. I take hold of her hips and tug, feeling the pressure of her hip bones against my palms, and bury my face in her neck. Ayla’s hands tighten and release, trail to a new spot, tighten and release, and when her fingers reach my left leg, just underneath her, she pauses. “Now your leg is shaking.”

Yes, it is. I tell it to stop but it won’t—the agitated limb responds to the attention by trembling more. I shut my eyes tight and try to disappear.

What she does with my vulnerability only makes me feel more exposed. She puts her mouth on my ear, tracing my earlobe with her tongue. She takes her time before murmuring, “You’re beautiful, Piper.”

Propping up on my elbow, my weight sinking into the pillow, I study Ayla’s profile, motionless except for the slight tremble of eyelashes. Her oversize trap muscles don’t fully relax even when she’s resting.

“Worried I’m going to kill you in my sleep?” Ayla asks without opening her eyes.

I snort and dig my finger into her ear. Laughing, she bats my hand away and pulls me into her. Collapsing my head onto the pillow next to
hers, I throw an arm over her, and we lie like that for a moment, still and breathing, listening to the silence of my dark apartment.

“What’s your last name?”

“Gallagher.”

“Piper Gallagher. You Irish?”

“Half.”

“Any family banshees?”

“Not that I know of.”

“My mom used to tell me a spook story, about the banshee who’d come for me if I was bad.”

I trace her arm until I get to the crook of her elbow and pause there. Her skin is soft and hot, like she’s still sitting in the sun. “Are you Irish, too?”

“Mostly Russian and German. My mom loves to tell stories is all—the one about the banshee was her favorite.”

She tells me about her mom, a schoolteacher, who she describes as the kind of person a whole family revolves around, and then she says, “After I got discharged—well, let’s just say I’d be in a loony bin or dead if it weren’t for her.”

I open my mouth to ask
what happened
, but I’m acutely aware that within my arms, Ayla’s whole body has gone rigid. Her right hand twitches from its position underneath my back. Listening to the silence between us, I realize we are both holding our breath.