Sunburn: A Novel(23)

He drops her at the Hyatt, watches in the rearview as she gets into the line for a cab. His truck is too noticeable. He can’t follow her in this. But he makes note of the cab’s number, watches it head north, and figures he has a chance of catching it, given the slow-as-syrup traffic. He swoops into the driveway, hands his truck over to the valet, hops into another cab and promises a $50 bonus if the driver can find cab number 1214. It’s on his client’s tab, after all.

Four blocks up Calvert Street, they spot 1214.

“Hang back,” he says. “Don’t get too close.”

“You a spy?” the guy laughs. He’s in his sixties, a big-boned African American man, the kind of guy who seems to find all white people mildly ridiculous. He’s right, Adam has to admit, although not about Adam, of course.

“Following my wife,” he says.

“Oooh, intrigue. I got you. I got you.” Jolly, as if it’s all a game. Adam feels a stab of anger for the man he just pretended to be. If he were a husband following his wife, it wouldn’t be a joking matter.

Her cab cuts right, gets on the JFX going north. Adam hunkers down in the back seat, not that he’s too worried about her noticing him. Three miles up, her cab takes the exit to Northern Parkway, heads west. The track? Sinai Hospital? When her cab turns right onto Rogers Avenue, he tells his guy to continue straight. He knows the area well enough to recognize that’s basically a residential street. Two cabs on that winding two-lane road? Too suspicious.

“Stay on Northern Parkway, make a U, and take me back to the hotel,” he tells his guy.

“Ah, man.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get your fifty.”

“But I wanted to know the end of the story.”

Don’t we all.

*

He ransoms his car back from the valet, $20, another receipt to file with the client. He can see things from his client’s point of view. What’s taking so long? But he honestly doesn’t see what he could do better, faster. Was she headed to a personal residence? There’s no way she was going to a bank or a business, not in that neck of the woods, and he’s sure she didn’t know she had a tail to shake.

Tail to shake. He thinks about her rear end. She’s so slender above the waist, then that wonderful swell of flesh below, like a summer peach.

He hopes his jones for her passes by the end of peach season.

Adam walks around Fells Point to kill time. He finds a necklace in a vintage store that makes him think of her, a coral-colored flower on a chain. Bakelite, 1940s. The shopkeeper asks if he wants it wrapped, but he thinks that’s overkill. Then, when he sees her face at John Steven’s, he wishes he had gone to a little more trouble. She tries to keep her sunglasses on until the last possible moment despite the overcast day, but when she removes them, it’s clear she’s been crying—and clear she’s tried to cover it up, maybe with some cold water, a little makeup.

The necklace makes her smile and he feels as if he’s won the lottery. “This is exactly my kind of thing.” She puts it on right away. But being happy for even a moment seems to make her sadder. She doesn’t want to eat anything, drinks only one beer. Some day off this is.

*

The sun is almost down by the time they hit Annapolis. “Pull off here,” she says, pointing to the last exit before the bridge, where there are a couple of fast-food places.

“You hungry? We can do better than this.”

“I want to drive your truck across the bridge. Maybe in something this big, I won’t feel it.”

“Do you really feel the bridge move?”

“I think I do. That’s all that matters.”

They change places in a Roy Rogers parking lot. She doesn’t get out, just crawls over and sits in his lap, making him squirm out from under her to get to the passenger side. She is literally white knuckled, but otherwise composed. He doesn’t talk, doesn’t try to change the radio, despite the song that’s playing, the one about chasing waterfalls. Not his thing, this song. Toward the end, as the bridge flattens out and delivers them safely back to land, she exhales as if she’s been holding her breath for the entire five-mile span. He’s not surprised when she glides off at the first possible exit on the other side.

He is surprised when she keeps driving, going deeper and deeper down the country road. The world has gone dark around them. Two minutes ago, there was a fiery sun in the rearview mirror, flattening on the horizon, made more brilliant by today’s clouds. Now the sky is blue black. She pulls over next to a cornfield, unfastens her seat belt, and lifts up her skirt. Look at that. She’s wearing the kind of gear she normally disdains. The whole megillah, although there are no stockings connected to the garter belt, which is weird.

“You’re not the only one who went shopping today,” she says, crawling on top of him. She pulls down her top, so he can see the matching bra. It’s coral, almost the exact same shade as the rose now nestled between her breasts. They both know what suits her.

He wonders what happened to the underwear she was wearing this morning, did she put it in her purse? Can you say in a lingerie store, I’ll just wear this out—and then he stops thinking for a while.

When they’re done, she has a smoke. She doesn’t smoke much and her mouth doesn’t taste of it, not like Cath, who tried to mask her chronic tobacco breath with mouthwash. Polly smokes maybe once or twice a week, and only then because that’s their code.