Lucid Interval, 4
The way the Cohens come after Ryan, it reminds him of a fistfight.
They send Seth first, just a little jab, a little recon to test the waters, to see how Ryan will react.
Seth doesn’t actually come into the bar. Instead he waits by Ryan’s Jeep, the one that he bought at a police auction two weeks ago, the one that Julie Cooper no doubt described to the Cohens in detail, probably down to the shape of the dent that her Lexus made in his license plate.
“Hey,” Seth ventures.
“Hey,” Ryan says, flat and reluctant, caught.
Seth brought a paper grocery bag with him. He doesn’t say, but Ryan can tell that it was Kirsten’s idea. The bag is filled to overflowing with cereal and bagels, fruit and comic books, things that remind Ryan of life with the Cohens, little slices of normality that he can hardly bear to look at.
Seth leans on the Jeep's dented bumper. He makes small talk, tries to draw Ryan out. “You look good, you know, cut. The Atkins diet is really workin’ for you then.”
“Seth, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Like any good comic book hero, I go where I’m needed.”
“I’m not coming back.”
“Whoa, hey, who said anything about coming back? My parents, they barely even remember you, except for the times when my mom accidentally sets four places at the dinner table, which is only, like three times a week, four max. Oh, and all of the phone calls that my Dad makes to the hospitals and the police practically every day to see if they’ve found your body in a ditch somewhere. And also all of the times I find my parents standing in the kitchen during breakfast just…looking…at the pool house like they expect the door to open up and a young, fair-haired pugilist to come walking out. Unless you count those times, then no, they hardly think of you at all.”
“Now’s not the best time.”
“I know, too much too soon…or too little too late. Whichever. Doesn’t matter.”
“Seth-” Ryan says dangerously.
Seth hops up. “Got it. Great. I have a feeling that my services are needed elsewhere, so I’ll be off. It’s been lovely visiting with you. Have some carbs. Enjoy.”
Ryan watches as Seth trots across the parking lot and climbs behind the wheel of the Cohens’ Range Rover. In his rush to give Ryan space Seth nearly t-bones a yellow Mustang while pulling into traffic. There’s honking and cursing (the Mustang’s driver) and flailing hands (Seth). Strangely Ryan doesn’t feel any better having won this round.
Kirsten’s care package is still sitting, untouched on a shelf in the utility closet when Kirsten herself materializes a few nights later. He’s taking out the garbage at the end of the night when he sees her. She’s standing in the lot, watching him. Her arms are crossed over her torso. Her shoulders are hunched against the cool night air and she’s glancing nervously around like she realizes how out of place she looks. It’s not exactly safe out here at night. He wonders why she didn’t just come into the bar. Then he remembers, Kirsten. Bar. Right.
She hasn’t seen him yet. His first instinct is to go back inside, back to the familiarity of his smoky bar and his dirty tables and pretend that he never saw her either. But Kirsten is tiny and blond and all alone out there in the dark. It doesn’t feel right to leave her unprotected.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he says.
Even darkness can’t hide the way her face lights up when she sees him.
She weaves through the parked cars, slowing when she gets close, like she’s afraid he’ll spook. Maybe he will. She stops a few feet short of him. The first words out of her mouth are, “Sandy didn’t want me to come.”
Ryan doesn’t know what to say short of agreeing with Sandy.
Kirsten is honest, gentle and straightforward. She doesn’t come in from the side, like Seth. She doesn’t have Sandy’s tact. She telegraphs her moves. Ryan knows everything that she’s going to say before she says it.
“He didn’t want to crowd you. Seth said you were okay, but I just had to come down and see you for myself.” Kirsten reaches out and puts her hands tentatively on his shoulders. She frowns, “What happened to your eye?”
Joel the ex-marine happened to his eye. Or his fist did, three nights ago in the cage. He’d hoped that in the darkness Kirsten wouldn’t be able to tell.
“Drunken customer,” he says. “It’s fine.”
The utility closet where he sleeps doesn’t have a shower. He belongs to a gym a few blocks away. That’s where he usually cleans up, but he hasn’t been since yesterday morning. He smells like sweat and spilled beer. When Kirsten wraps her arms around him she doesn’t seem to notice at all.
Ryan endures her hug in awkward silence and mild agony. Joel’s fists also happened to his ribs too, but he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings.
“I’m okay, Kirsten. Thanks for coming, really, but I’m fine.”
The hopeful way she breathes in tells Ryan that she’s about to take a risk.
“I’d feel so much better if you came home,” she says.
Ryan backs out of her reach.
“I’m sorry,” Kirsten says. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Ryan, we love you. I wish there was a way to fix this. I wish I could make everything all right.”
Of course she does. Kirsten is a mother, but she’s not his mother.
He walks her to her car. He makes sure that she gets out of the parking lot safely.
Sometimes, when he’s so tired and bruised that he can’t think beyond the pain Ryan can almost forget everything that’s happened since graduation. But eventually the pain fades, his energy returns, and he remembers that nothing is ever going to be all right again.
The first time he comes, Sandy favors the direct approach too. He slides right up to the bar in his suit and tie, shoulders in beside a biker in a leather vest and chaps and a panhandler whose afternoon take at the nearest freeway on ramp had been enough to pay for two beers and a shot.
Sandy orders a gin and tonic, which he nurses while pretending that he and Ryan are total strangers. Apparently Sandy Cohen’s sense of propriety won’t let him air Ryan’s dirty laundry in front of an audience, even in a place like this.
The evening wears on. The crowd starts to thin. The biker takes off with his buddies. The panhandler runs out of money.
Eventually Sandy Cohen is alone at the bar.
Ryan cracks first.
“Sandy, if you came to talk then you’re wasting your time.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve been looking for a new watering hole. This is a nice little place you’ve got here. Cozy.”
“Isn’t it a little out of your way?”
Sandy just shrugs. “You’re not the only one who likes to change things up.”
“Kirsten came to see me.”
Sandy plays innocent. “She did? Oh, that’s nice. She kind of likes you, you know. Misses you when you’re not around.”
Ryan flips his rag over his shoulder, starts unloading the dishwasher behind the bar, stacking glasses into neat pyramids.
Sandy keeps talking.
“I think it’s great, though. You’re out on your own, new job, new place, making something of yourself. You like it here?”
Ryan shrugs. “It’s fine.”
Sandy nods. “Of course it is.”
For a while the only sound is the television in the corner and the low soundtrack of the jukebox. Somebody paid for Creedence Clearwater Revival six times in a row. At the end of Lodi Sandy says, “You know what the worst thing was?”
Ryan looks up at him.
“The worst thing, the thing that kept us up at night was not knowing. We didn’t know where you were or what had happened to you or if you were alive or dead.”
“I can take care of myself, Sandy.”
And he can. It’s other people he can’t take care of. Finally he and Dawn have something in common.
“I know that, Ryan. It’s your life. You can do whatever you want with it. I’ll admit that I’d feel a whole lot better if we had you back under our roof, but you have to do what you feel is right for yourself. As far as I’m concerned you don’t ever have to set foot in Newport again. All I ask is that you don’t disappear on us again.”
“And what if disappearing is the best thing I can do?”
“It’s not. Believe me it’s not.”
It’s two in the morning. The customers have all cleared out except for a couple of regulars at one of the tables in the back and Sandy at the bar.
“Last call,” Ryan says.
Sandy holds up his hand with his palm facing Ryan. The gesture could mean he’s had enough or it could mean he’s said enough.
The Budweiser is out. Ryan goes in the back to tap a new keg. When he comes out, Sandy is gone but his empty glass is still at the bar. The price of the drink plus twenty percent is sitting under his cocktail napkin along with a card very much like the one Sandy gave Ryan three years ago when they first met. On the back of the card is a message. It reads: You never know when you might need a good lawyer.
Ryan puts the bills in the register. He puts the card in his pocket. Later he adds it to the box of memories that he keeps under his cot.
Ryan isn't sure who won that round, him or Sandy.
In a fight, sometimes punches come hard and fast and regular. If you stay calm and pay attention you can find a pattern, learn how to block, how to avoid getting hit. You can find the other guy’s weakness. You can find a way in.
Seth has a job at the comic book store on the pier. Ryan knows because Seth tells him the next time that he shows up in San Pedro. It doesn’t take long for Ryan to learn what shifts he’s working. He begins making himself unavailable during Seth’s off hours. Unfortunately two can play at that game, and Ryan has to sleep sometime.
Sometimes Ryan still has dreams about college, about the four of them. But his dreams are watery and unreal, faded like old newspaper and most of the time he finds himself watching from the sidelines, a spectator in his own mind. He’s vanished from his own dreams and so, he realizes, has Marissa.
Ryan wakes up in a cold sweat. Someone is pounding at his door, loud and insistent, like he’ll knock all day if he has to. There’s only one person who knocks like that.
A confident smile breaks across Seth’s face when Ryan opens the door, not phased at all by the pillow creases on Ryan’s face or the dark circles under his eyes. He’s used to them by now.
Seth has one of his mother’s weekly care packages tucked under one arm.
“Hey,” Seth says brightly.
“Hey,” Ryan sighs.
Seth peeks past him into the utility closet. Two paper bags identical to the one he’s carrying are sitting on a shelf, untouched.
“So, you’re still doing the low carb thing, huh? I respect that. Well, just in case you change your mind…”
Seth holds out the bag. Ryan’s arms stay by his sides.
“No. Listen, I can’t take this. Tell Kirsten she doesn’t have to do this anymore.”
“She knows she doesn’t have to. She wants to and it makes her feel better and it would break her heart if you didn’t take it and you don’t want to break her heart. So take it. Please.” Seth holds the bag out again.
Ryan takes a deep breath. Then he takes the bag.
“So, you’re not gonna believe this but I found a second-run movie theatre like, two miles up the road and they have this thing where they show a classic film every Saturday night at midnight. Not classic as in Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe classic, but as in Mel Gibson Beyond Thunderdome classic.” Seth raises his eyebrows. “Huh? Sound good, right? So what say I pop on over there and score us two tickets to the original Jaws. How ‘bout that? You’re shaking your head ‘no’ but your eyes say ‘yes’.”
“No.”
“Right. Not a shark fan. Okay. Let’s grab dinner, just chill. You still eat, right?”
“Seth-”
“Right, another no. That’s cool.”
“I’m tired. Can we wrap this up?”
“Sure yeah. This is me not pushing. In fact this is me backing away slowly with my hands in the air. If you need anything you know where to find me: in my parents’ living room, getting my ass kicked by Summer at WWE Smackdown vs. Raw.”
“How is Summer?” Ryan asks.
“Hmm?” Seth seems momentarily confused by the question.
“Your girlfriend, Summer.”
“Right, Summer. She’s…doing well.” Seth’s eyes slide to the side. He corrects himself, “Okay, she’s not doing well but she’s okay. Coping. That’s a good word. Coping is good. Okay, strange. Not that I don’t appreciate your concern for my girlfriend’s welfare. I do. I think it’s very touching, but you haven’t asked about anyone or anything in Newport all summer. Just out of curiosity, why the sudden interest?”
Because Summer has never come to see him.
Because Ryan hasn’t talked to her since her best friend died.
Because he wonders if she blames him too.
Ryan shakes his head.
“Good night, Seth.”
He shuts the door, but he still hears “Good night, Ryan,” on the other side.
Sometimes Kirsten and Sandy stop by after work, just for a few minutes, not enough to crowd him, not enough to drive him away, just enough to let him know he’s still on their radar. The Cohens aren’t breaking the rules. They’ve never crossed the boundaries that he set. He doesn’t encourage them to come back. He never says that it’s nice to see them, but he doesn’t ever tell them when to leave and he can’t tell them to stay away. Even if it’s for the best he doesn’t want to be the one to shut that door.
July becomes August. August becomes September. Seth’s visits settle into a regular, once-weekly pattern. Ryan stops trying to avoid them. Seth’s visits are like weak punches. He can take them on the chin and keep going, so he does.
Ryan stays out of the cage on Thursday and Friday. He fights on Saturday night, sometimes Sunday. If he doesn’t draw a bigger guy he always tries to choose one. Speed and technique be damned, in a real fight, the bigger man usually wins, and that’s how Ryan wants it. It doesn’t make him feel good, getting his ass kicked by a two hundred and twenty pound ex-marine. It makes him feel satisfied. He can’t do the kind of damage he wants to do to himself, so he lets these guys do it for him. He lets them beat him until he’s bleeding and stumbling, until his outsides match the way he feels on the inside, until he’s collected enough pain to fill the empty place inside him where Marissa used to be.
He shows up at work on Monday with new cuts and bruises. By the time the weekend rolls around and Seth shows up with his paper bag under his arm and his forced smile on his face the marks on Ryan’s skin have faded and he’s ready for another round.
Ryan will suffer the lack of sleep as long as it keeps Seth consistent.
In a fight, a real fight, you’re not trying to win. You’re trying to make the other guy lose. Ryan has seen big guys lose to small guys in long matches when it doesn’t matter how hard you hit. It comes down to stamina. The winner is the one who wears the other guy down.
A week before Summer and the Cohens ambush him at the comic book shop Ryan gets knocked out in a fight for the first time. It wasn’t even that hard of a hit. The guy he was matched up with wasn’t even that big of a guy. The punch was just…perfect. He knew exactly where to hit, just like Volchok.
As Ryan loses consciousness he thinks, Marissa.
The match is over in fifteen seconds but Ryan spends the next two days wondering if anyone got the license plate of the truck that ran him over. Gary wants to take him to the ER but Ryan’s had enough of hospitals to last a lifetime so Gary sits all night with him, waking him every couple of hours to check him for a concussion. Gary’s a good guy that way. Ryan wonders what he did to deserve a friend like him. Gary just shakes his head over him.
“This shit’s gonna kill you.”
But Gary’s not telling him anything he doesn’t already know.
The next week Ryan blows off dinner at the Cohens’ so that the same thing can happen again, only this time Seth gets a front row ticket to the show.
Later, when the fight is over, when he’s dragged himself out of the ring, when his face is throbbing and his bruises are starting to swell, Seth is there waiting for him. That’s when Ryan knows that things have come to a head.
When he sees Seth wandering toward him, disappointment written on his face, Ryan feels something that he hadn’t expected: relief. He doesn’t have to hide this part of himself anymore, not from Seth at least.
Ryan hadn’t really considered what would happen if the Cohens found out about his new pastime. As far as he’s concerned they never need to know. He thinks that he can trust Seth to keep it a secret for a little while, but Seth is a terrible liar and Sandy is very perceptive.
Seth gives him an ultimatum, “I’m not gonna go anywhere until you come with me.”
But Ryan can tell that Seth doesn’t have anything to back it up with. He’s worn Seth down. He can see it in his face. “Yeah?” he says. “What are you gonna do? Are you gonna fight me?”
Ryan doesn’t want to hit Seth, and he doesn’t have to. All it takes is one convincing shove to send Seth packing.
Ryan doubts that he’ll see Seth in the ring again, but he knows that it will take more than a shove to take down his next opponent.
In a fight sometimes you know the blow that’s coming is going to knock you flat on your ass and the only thing left to do is back away, get out…run.
It’s a coincidence that Julie Cooper calls him just before Sandy Cohen comes knocking at Ryan’s door. Ryan hasn’t forgotten the conversation that he and Julie had alongside the freeway months ago. He couldn’t say no to her then and he can’t say no to her now.
When he meets Julie at the Mermaid Inn, he doesn’t know what to expect, but it’s certainly not the red file folder that she slaps down on the coverlet. Not a day has gone by since the accident that Ryan hasn’t thought about Kevin Volchok and what he took from him and what he’d do if her ever saw Volchok again. Ryan never considered that this might happen, that someone who wanted revenge as badly as he did would hand Volchok to him on a silver platter.
Money can buy anything. Even revenge. And yes, revenge will make him feel better, satisfy that itch deep down inside that he can’t seem to scratch, maybe even get rid of the nightmares. But revenge won’t bring Marissa back.
He can’t do this.
He tells her that he doesn’t care, about Volchok, about any of it. When he says it, he realizes that it’s true. He’s given up.
He can’t have anything more to do with the Cohens or the Coopers or any of them. Nothing good will come of this. He can’t fight their battles and he can’t save them. He can’t save anyone. He doesn’t even care enough to save himself.
He walks out on Julie Cooper and her vendetta.
He goes back to his bar, to his job, to his life that he’s made for himself through a series of bad choices and worse mistakes.
He pulls a cardboard box out from under his cot. It contains a few photographs, a yearbook, a stack of papers and a sweatshirt: the remains of his life in Newport Beach. He brought a few of the items with him when he left the pool house. The Cohens supplied the rest. He found them tucked into his care packages: a transcript here, a certificate of achievement there, and his high school diploma. They’re little reminders of the good times, back when there were good times. Ryan has always traveled light. He has enough internal baggage. He doesn’t need souvenirs.
Before he can stop himself, before he can think twice about what he’s doing, Ryan shoves everything back into the box and carries it out the back door to the dumpster. He takes one last look at his sad collection, lying on sacks of garbage. All of his happy memories can be distilled down to twenty or so items, and every one of them reminds him of Marissa.
Twelve hours later he finds Summer sitting at the bar just after Gary’s place opens for business. The afternoon crowd is just starting to filter in: sailors, mechanics, guys who use their hands for a living and need a beer after lunch to smooth out the rest of their day. They pretend not to notice the pretty young thing at the bar, slide their wedding rings off of their hands and order up a glass of courage while she and Ryan exchange a lukewarm greeting.
He isn’t happy to see her. He doesn’t care that she traveled three thousand miles to see him. He’s not coming with her. Whatever it is that she wants, the answer is “no”.
Then she slips one in under his guard: “Just do what I say, Atwood, one last time.”
It’s the ‘one last time’ that gets him.
‘One last time’ implies an end. ‘One last time’ he can handle.
He lets Summer lead him into an ambush.
Ryan is expecting an intervention, a last ditch effort, a goodbye. He’s expecting a lot of things. He’s expecting Seth and Sandy and Kirsten and a lot of talking. In the Cohens’ world issues get resolved by talking. Issues don’t get resolved by punching people. Violence doesn’t solve anything, except that for him it does. Violence is Ryan’s first solution to any problem and it always has been. He’s done denying that. It’s just one more reason that Ryan doesn’t fit into their perfect world.
They can talk all they want. There’s nothing that they can say to him that will change his mind. There’s nothing that they can say that will bring him back.
Except that there is no talking. The Cohens have put all of their cards on the table, and the table is a projector screen, and all that they want him to do is watch. So he does. Ryan watches Seth’s drawings flash across the screen. He remembers, from his point of view, the events that inspired Seth’s comic book panels: Sandy helping him tie his first tie, the first fight he got into at the beach party after Marissa’s fashion show, Seth and Summer getting together, his first Chrismakkuh in Newport. He watches and he sees them for the first time through Seth’s eyes, through the Cohens’ eyes, and their memories are a lot more forgiving than his.
Ryan reads the words on the pages. He thinks of Julie and her dead daughter and her red folder and her secret mission.
The Cohens want him back. They want him to come back more than he wants to stay away. Ryan thinks that a lot of the time the one who wins the fight isn’t the biggest or the strongest. The winner is just the one who wants it more, and that’s how the Cohens get him back.
He’s been fighting the wrong battle for almost half a year. He may be tired of fighting the Cohens, but there’s still plenty of fight left in him.
XXXXX
Ryan takes Julie’s red folder and he goes to Ensenada. He goes there with his own agenda. He takes the Jeep. He takes Seth. He takes a lead pipe with Volchok’s name on it.
He tells himself that the lead pipe is just a precaution. He tells Seth that all he wants to do is talk to Volchok. By the time he gets to Ensenada Ryan still plans on talking, but he’s pretty sure that’s not all he’s going to do.
Violence doesn’t solve anything. God, how he wishes that were true because the way he sees things right now, violence will solve everything.
Of course, he never gets the chance to “talk” to Volchok, at least not in Ensenada. Seth tips Volchok off and puts a stop to Ryan’s plans for revenge. There’s a part of Ryan that knows he should be grateful to Seth for knowing him better than he knows himself, for stopping him from committing an act that, at the very least, would follow him around for the rest of his life.
He should be grateful, but the only thing that Ryan feels is resentment. The Cohens may be doing what they think is best for him but they can’t understand how he feels. They weren’t there.
Sometimes Ryan feels like he was born angry. He feels like a stick of dynamite just waiting for someone to light his fuse, and no matter how much Sandy and Kirsten try to help him and how he tries to help himself he can’t escape the person that he is. Their faith is misguided. Their good will is wasted on him. He’s headed for prison just like his father and his brother. This is how it was always meant to be. He’s sure of it.
Ryan may be doomed, but so is Volchok, and knowing that helps him sleep at night.
He has a purpose. He has a mission.
By the time Thanksgiving rolls around Ryan is practically climbing the walls. The only thing keeping him in Newport is Julie Cooper and her assurance that her private investigator is close to finding Volchok.
He doesn’t.
Ryan does. He finds Volchok sitting in the passenger seat of Sandy’s car and he can’t believe his eyes. He feels betrayed that Sandy is helping him, even when Sandy explains that he isn’t representing Volchok, he’s only negotiating the terms of his surrender. Sandy is protecting him, keeping him hidden from Ryan, keeping Ryan from completing his mission.
When Ryan walks out of Sandy and Kirsten’s house to hunt down Volchok wherever Sandy has him hidden, he fully expects that it will be the last time he ever sets foot in their home again. He expects that the next time he sees Sandy he’ll be wearing a prison jumpsuit and sitting behind a glass wall and talking into a handset…if he ever sees Sandy again. So he’s surprised when he finds Sandy leaning against the side of his Jeep in the parking lot of the Mermaid Inn, waiting for him.
Apparently Sandy has more faith in Ryan than Seth does. In fact, he has more faith in Ryan than Ryan has in himself, because he gives Ryan what he wants: his shot at revenge.
He leads Ryan right to Volchok. Ryan thinks that it’s a trick right up until he opens the mpotel room door and sees Volchok, just sitting there on the bed, waiting for his punishment, waiting to get what he deserves, waiting for Ryan to kill him.
Ryan’s first instinct is to give him what he wants.
As it turns out, Sandy’s faith in Ryan isn’t misguided, and finding Volchok isn’t about revenge, it’s about closure. It’s about getting answers to questions that Ryan’s been asking himself for months: Why did he run them off the road that night? Why didn’t he stop? Why didn’t he try to help?
Why did he kill her?
Why?
And the answers aren’t what he expected. They’re not the cold-blooded admissions of a murderer. They’re the confessions of a man who had a few too many drinks and let his anger and his pride take the wheel. As a result he made a terrible mistake, a mistake that caused the death of a person he cared deeply about, a mistake that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
They’re the confessions of a man who loved her.
It’s far too easy for Ryan to imagine himself on the other side of this conversation.
“I just wanted you to pull over…”
And if Ryan had known, if he had it to do over again, he would have.
But that didn’t happen, and Marissa died.
Ryan hears the police cruiser pull up outside of the motel room. He sees blue and red lights flashing against the curtains.
Volchok will have to live with what he did. So will Ryan. At least Ryan won’t have any more blood on his hands than he did before tonight. That's what he takes with him when he opens the door and faces Sandy Cohen, when he hands Volchok peacefully over to the authorities, when he watches the police cruiser pull away and sees Volchok in the back seat, looking out at him.
It’s over, he tells himself. It’s over.
Sandy asks him, “Are you hungry?”
He’s not over Marissa. Nothing is ever going to be the same without her, and it’s hard to convince himself that it’s okay to move on, but the fact remains that only one of them died that night. Ryan is still very much alive, and for the first time in months, he feels like it’s okay to act like it.
“Starving,” he says.
To be continued...
Part 5
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