Sunburn: A Novel(15)
Not that there’s a woman in the world who can hear those words if she doesn’t want to hear them.
“It’s out of my hands,” he says. “I got a job I have to get back to, come fall.” God, he hopes this job is over by fall, that he’s secured his bonus and is off on a trip. “But I like to have fun, if you know anyone who’s open to having fun, but not being serious.”
That night, Cath makes a big deal of parking her car behind the motel, waiting fifteen minutes before she comes to room 3. “It’s a small town,” she says. “People will gossip soon enough.”
Once inside, she comes on pretty strong, almost too strong. He wouldn’t have minded working a little harder. But she’s good company, quick with a wisecrack while they watch baseball, then blessedly quiet when they go at it a second time, eager to make him happy. Still, when he studies her shoulders, her back in the moonlight, it’s only a back, fleshy and earthbound. No wings.
“This is all I’m good for,” he says to her back while he massages her shoulders. “I’m not looking to date or have a girlfriend.”
“You took Polly to that auction.”
“She doesn’t have a car.”
“I know. You ever wonder how she got here, without a car?”
He doesn’t wonder because he knows. “Bus?”
“Even if she did take the bus, why here?”
“Sign says it’s one of the ten best small towns in America.”
“Sure, if you’re married with kids. Or if you grew up here, I guess.” She sips her beer, takes on a way-too-casual tone. “What’s your excuse?”
“My truck was starting to overheat. I stopped rather than pushing it, risking the whole engine. Took a week to get the part and by then, I landed this job. I have the summer free, I can be where I want and here seemed as good a place as any.”
“What kind of job do you have to go back to?”
“Sales.” True enough. “It’s seasonal work.” Also true. “I’m an independent contractor. I don’t get benefits, but I get lots of free time.”
All true. Adam makes top dollar, always has more work than he needs.
“What do you sell?”
“Depends on who hires me.”
She lets it drop. If a person is determined to be vague enough, almost no one has the forbearance, the curiosity really, to keep asking questions. She doesn’t ask about his parents, although Adam would be happy to talk about them. She doesn’t ask about why he went to the CIA, much less why he dropped out. (The instructors were assholes.)
No, Cath wants to talk about herself. Most people do. So he asks her questions—not too many or she’ll get too attached. Women can’t help themselves when men ask them questions. So he listens, asks a little, but not too much. She has a younger sister, and he gets the sense that Cath feels she is a little bit in her shadow. The sister is married, just bought a house, and Cath still doesn’t have a degree, although she drops in and out of the nearby community college. She got into some trouble when she was in high school—not a big deal, but it derailed her college plans and, somehow, she never got back on track, but she’s trying now, she has dreams. She’s not going to be a waitress forever. She might not even stay in Belleville.
When it gets so boring he wants to scream, he gives her a little kiss and they go at it again.
The next day at the High-Ho, she drops by during lunch hour, although she’s not on the schedule. At the first opportunity, she reaches over and flicks an invisible something from his T-shirt, makes sure Polly sees. Oh, Polly sees. The rest of her shift, she’s switched back to interested, which amuses Adam to no end. He’s pretty sure that she’s going to ask him to come by and see her apartment. He’s also sure that he’s going to say yes to that, then no to whatever happens next. He enjoys the anticipation, plays the scene several ways in his mind, but the fantasy becomes impossible to keep in focus once a short, squat woman with a butch haircut comes in and orders a chef’s salad. He knows the second he sees her that she’s a private investigator and she’s looking for the woman who’s calling herself Polly Costello.
Because like calls to like, and that’s what he’s doing here.
10
The chef’s salad at the High-Ho is better than Sue expected, but then—Sue’s expectations aren’t very high. Sue Snead always keeps her expectations low. Yet, somehow, she still ends up disappointed. By chef’s salads. By people, professionally and personally. It’s like there’s a wall in her head and nothing she learns about human nature from her job can get through to the other side. Sue the person is going to end up hiring Sue the investigator one day.
Still, it’s a really good salad. Crisp romaine, real bacon.
It has been three weeks since Sue and Anna broke up. She saw it coming for a long time. But it was like a blizzard in the weather forecast and she kept hoping she was wrong, that it wouldn’t materialize, or that it would swing to the north or south. Baltimore has always had snowstorms like that. She remembered the last prophesied big one, the grocery stores and liquor stores and video stores denuded, everybody preparing to hole up for days. Philadelphia got thirteen inches, Baltimore woke up to pure sun and dry sidewalks.
You might sidestep one blizzard, but another one will come for you. Anna was never going to be Sue’s happily ever after. They had embraced the lesbian cliché, renting a U-Haul six weeks after they met to bring Anna’s motley assortment of possessions to Sue’s house. Anna brought new meaning to doesn’t have a pot to piss in. Maybe that’s why Sue had never expected her to stay and maybe that’s what doomed them, Sue’s inability to believe that she could be enough for someone like Anna, a newly hatched baby-dyke, fresh from a bad marriage. Anna wanted to romp for a while, and who could blame her?