Sunburn: A Novel(28)
His food sings, too. People begin talking about it. How good the grilled cheese is, the burgers, the fish. He convinces the boss to take advantage of the summer bounty—the good tomatoes, the beautiful varieties of silver corn. People who think silver corn begins and ends with Silver Queen have no idea what they’re missing. He makes towering BLTs with his own cured bacon and aioli. Mr. C is skeptical: “Why bother making mayo from scratch?”
A couple stops by one day, deciding they’d rather have a long lunch than fight the beach traffic. Turns out they write a column for the Baltimore Beacon called the Dive Club that reviews bars and restaurants off the beaten path. The High-Ho gets a rave. Adam can barely believe it’s his food they’re describing, even though he knows how good he is. Belleville was always the place no one wanted to stop. But this August it becomes commonplace to see out-of-state tags in the parking lot on weekends, and not just Maryland. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, D.C. Now Mr. C is the one who wants to sing all the time. “I can’t lose you, Adam,” he says.
You won’t, he thinks, stealing a look at Polly. Not yet.
“You have to hide it better,” she says to him that night in bed. “We’re a secret.”
“Why?” he says. “It’s been almost a month. Cath can’t expect me to not date at all.”
“It’s not just Cath. It’s better if it’s a secret. Besides, people don’t like it when people at a job date each other. Especially when there aren’t a lot of people working there. Max and Ernest are grumpy enough that the bar is so busy now. Come Labor Day, it’ll be a small-town bar again. Remember that.”
Come Labor Day. He’s paid up through then. How long can he stay on this job? When will Irving pull the plug? Should he quit, tell Irving that he has determined she has no funds and he’s sorry it took so long to establish this? Maybe she had money once, but it’s clearly gone. Why would she stay here otherwise?
“I don’t think anyone would mind. I think you just like secrets.” Once he ends the job with Irving, he thinks, he’ll want to go public with her. He’s trying to do the right thing, but things happen. Love happens.
“That’s true,” she says agreeably. “I do like secrets. A little mystery is good for a woman.”
“So, what, you got a husband and kid or something I don’t know about?”
He’s more startled by his words than she is. Did she tell him that Gregg was her husband? He’s pretty sure Gregg mentioned a kid at least. She sure never mentioned a kid to him. They don’t talk about their pasts. Easier that way.
She says, coy as a kitten: “What if I do?” He’s spooning her so he can’t see her face, but her body is relaxed and loose in his arms, no tension at all except in her neck. There’s always tension in that one spot. She will let her entire body melt into his, but extends her neck so far forward he can’t bury his face in her nape, as he would like to do. She smells wonderful there.
“Were you married?” he asks. “You and that guy? Are you going to divorce him?” She doesn’t encourage questions, but it occurs to him that normal lovers ask such questions. He probably should ask more questions, even if he knows the answers. Heck, maybe he’ll even ask questions to which he’s supposed to be finding the answers. Where’s the money, Polly?
“What do you think?” she asks back.
“I don’t think a woman like you has been roaming free all this time. Someone tried to slip a harness on you a time or two.”
She yawns. “Amazing women often remain single into their thirties. Men—men are the ones who are suspect if they haven’t married by forty. So what about you?”
“I’ve got a couple of years until I hit your deadline.”
“But have you ever been married?”
“Once. Really young. The kind of marriage that doesn’t count. When we broke up, we didn’t even argue over stuff because it was so clear what belonged to whom.”
“Whom. Listen to you, Mr. Fancy Pants. Mr. College.”
“Nothing wrong with proper grammar.”
“Yes, that’s why you come over here every night. To teach me grammar.” She arches her back, that’s all, arches her back and twitches her hips, and he’s gone. Then, suddenly, it’s 5 a.m., and there’s a glimmer of light and she’s saying “Go, go, go” as if this is a fairy tale where something dire happens at sunrise.
He meant to ask her about the kid, but she distracted him.
Because she has no AC, the outdoor air feels refreshing as he walks home. Not driving to her place is another one of her rules. People go for walks in the middle of the night, she says, but no one drives anywhere after 2 a.m. unless they’re up to something. So he walks. There’s one stretch where he has to cross a vacant lot, and the dew is heavy enough to drench his shoes through and through. He’s in love. He has a job. Is there any way he can do the job and not risk her? He has to quit. That’s it, plain and simple. He has to call Irving and tell him she has no money and it’s time to wrap this up.
*
“So nice of you to worry about me wasting my money,” Irving says on the phone, in a tone that suggests he doesn’t find Adam nice at all. “How can you be so sure I’m wrong about her?”
“Because she clearly has no money.”