Sunburn: A Novel(44)

Ditmars got 40 percent. Irving made a point of not asking him what he was paid for, but Ditmars liked to talk. He would sit at his kitchen table, his big voice booming about the fires he set, the lives he took. Irving told himself it couldn’t be true, that he was just a braggart. But it was a relief when Pauline killed him—a relief until Irving realized that she had played him, getting that big insurance policy on a man she planned to kill, but making her kid the beneficiary so the payout couldn’t be denied. That sparked the insurance commission investigation he had always feared and he sweated three months, wondering if anyone would spot the pattern, all the claims collected by one Baltimore drug dealer.

Then Coupay got sick, colon cancer, and was dead within four months. Ironic, because he was a disciplined man, ate healthily, never smoked, certainly never dabbled in the wares that his people sold. Ironic, too, because he never took out a life insurance policy for himself. Irving almost missed him. But, mainly, he was glad to be out from under the sword of Damocles. The two people who knew his darkest secret were gone and he was home free. The only person who knew they were in business together was Pauline, and she wasn’t going to talk.

In fact, Pauline, who was so quiet that a man could forget she was there, took a trick or two out of his book and wrote some new chapters. Somewhere, she has a jackpot waiting. And if she has money, he deserves some of it. She can give a little bit to him or all of it to the state. Either way, she loses, and isn’t that a way for him to win?

*

It takes twenty-five minutes to get to his office and that’s despite knowing all the shortcuts. The strip center is his last commercial property. Twelve stores, a parking lot, a wedge of Route 40 that gets a little seedier every year. His office is modest, as are his clothes, his car. But he paid cash to send his children to college and he’ll help to send his grandchildren to college, too. A widower for almost a year now, he’s a catch, make no doubt about it. The single women at his synagogue, when he deigns to go, make eyes at him. But there was only one woman for him and she’s gone.

And, yes, one afternoon, for about fifteen minutes, he thought a young shiksa fancied him. He thought he was going to be her savior.

He’ll settle for being her ruination.





25


“What are you thinking about?” Polly asks Adam.

They are in bed, looking at the ceiling. She is probably hurt because he doesn’t feel like spooning tonight. But Polly would never say anything as needy as that. Polly doesn’t push when a man retreats. She pulls back even further. She, too, is lying on her back, hands folded across her chest. Until she spoke, he assumed she was asleep. Her breath, since he rolled off her, has been steady and soft. She won’t ask the question again if he doesn’t answer. Polly seldom repeats herself. It’s odd enough for her to ask what he’s thinking.

Adam is thinking about rice. More specifically, he is thinking about risotto. It’s a tricky dish in a place as thinly staffed as the High-Ho, but there’s a variation that’s particularly nice in the fall, with mushrooms and squash, lots of cheese and butter. But risotto requires too much attention in a kitchen where he has only one helper, Jorge, who also has to run the dishwasher, bus the tables. No, he doesn’t want to add risotto to the menu at the High-Ho. But he would like to make it for Polly one night. Only when? The restaurant is closed Mondays, but the bar is open and Polly has to work every day but Tuesday. Mr. C has brought in a new girl to help on Fridays and Saturdays, which continue to be semibusy, but he’s trying to get by without another full-time waitress until next summer. He doesn’t believe the business will stay strong through the off-season. Adam doesn’t, either.

Yet Polly has persuaded Mr. C to make subtle changes to the dining room. Nothing fancy. She’s too smart to put lipstick on a pig. If anything, she’s putting more pig on the pig, leaning into the jointness of the joint, playing up its retro features. The jukebox, long broken, has been refurbished, but Polly kept the tunes that were in there, so it’s a nice little time warp, 1965–1985.

She also got Mr. C to replace the tables and chairs, but with what appears to be an eclectic jumble of wooden and Formica and one, just one, metal-top table, practically the twin of the one she lost in the fire. Things are cleaner, brighter, but not too bright. It’s hard to put a finger on it, but the High-Ho is now a place where people might like to linger. She has worked with the liquor supplier to find a few small, affordable wines to offer by the glass, three reds and three whites, all Italian, very drinkable, good with food. “How did you know about vermentino?” he asked her.

“You don’t have to go to Italy to have tasted Italian wine,” she says, a little affronted.

“I know, but—” He stops himself from saying what he’s thinking. But you’re just a Dundalk girl. The farthest you’ve ever been from home is the beach. The beach, or that women’s prison in Frostburg. But she never told him where she served time. She never tells him anything about her past, not since the last day in August, the day before the fire, when she presumably told him everything.

Adam has been trying to assemble her life story on his own. He can’t ask her because he’s scared of screwing up, revealing that he knows things she’s never told him. He doesn’t want to ask Irving if there are other secrets he withheld when he hired Adam because then Irving might figure out the extent of Adam’s betrayal. But an old journalist friend has managed to pull together a pretty complete dossier on Polly Costello Ditmars Smith Hansen, whose current legal name is Pauline Smith Hansen. Married at seventeen, a mom at twenty-one. The state has custody of that girl—inevitable, given that her mother was in prison and the father was dead. Adam knows firsthand that she had another kid and abandoned her. She never speaks of her children, never. Sometimes, he catches her with a sad, faraway look on her face, but who knows what that’s about.