Sunburn: A Novel(55)

“Again, you have a strange way of making amends.”

She lowers her gaze, seemingly contrite. “I’m sorry. It’s harder than it might sound, saying you were wrong, taking responsibility. Putting—other things aside, I should have offered you a cut. That’s how it worked. I knew that.” A pause. “I almost feel as if I need to make amends for Ditmars. He cut you out, sometimes.”

“How so?” he asks, adding quickly, “Not that there was anything to be cut out of. But—he talked behind my back?”

“It was one of the last fires he set. He said that you and the other guy—what was his name?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He bragged how they cut you out. They cut you out a lot, went to other insurance brokers. That guy, the drug dealer, he saw that he could buy properties cheap, take out policies, then let Ditmars burn them down. Did you know that? Anyway, the last fire, the one that Ditmars modeled after a real fire he had investigated—open the gas jets, light a candle—was just meant to damage the house as I understand it. He didn’t know about the girl sleeping upstairs, with her baby. He was haunted by that. He tried to tell himself that they died from smoke inhalation, but the autopsy couldn’t rule out that they had been killed by all that flying debris. That was on Eutaw, I think?”

“Paca,” Irving says. Hard to forget Paca. He wished they had cut him out of that one. Pauline killed Ditmars two months later. If only she had done it sooner, Paca never would have happened.

“Right, Paca. Winter 1986. A fifteen-year-old girl and her baby blown sky-high. They weren’t supposed to be there. It was supposed to be a quick-and-dirty job, a complete loss on the house so—what was his name?”

Irving doesn’t provide it.

“Whatever happened to him, that guy?”

“Still don’t know what you’re talking about—and neither do you, Pauline. So be careful. That’s my friendly advice. Don’t go around talking about these things. Because some people might wonder how deep you were in it.”

“So,” Pauline says, rising to her feet. “I’m sorry I deceived you. We okay now?”

“I’m not sure. You hurt my business there for a while. That agent never worked with me again.”

“But you’re doing okay?” She glances around at his less-than-impressive surroundings and he feels an instinct, quite foreign to him, to justify himself.

“I’m fine,” he says. “A rich man by anyone’s measure. What about you?”

“Poor as a church mouse, whatever that means. Working as a waitress. It’s hard, starting over.”

“That why you got a drinking problem?”

“Who says I have a drinking problem?”

“You said you were in a twelve-step program.”

“But I didn’t say it was for drinking. And, you know, we’re supposed to be anonymous. In fact, I can’t figure that part out. How can I be anonymous and make amends to those I’ve wronged?”

“Where you living these days?” As if he didn’t know.

She smiles, doesn’t answer. She was always shrewd, this one.

He walks up front with her, stops to confer with Susie while he watches Pauline head out into the parking lot. Plenty of spaces in front, but she turns to the right and is quickly out of sight. Did Adam drive her here? What was her real agenda? The one thing Irving is sure of is that it’s not a twelve-step program, because they don’t have those for lying nafkehs.





33


Halloween falls on a Tuesday this year, which means a long buildup to the holiday, starting with a bonfire on Friday night. Bonfires are a big deal in Belleville. Polly finds this charming, but Adam says it’s just proof what a hick town it is. The site is still smoldering when they drive by late that night, after work. They get out and inspect the remains, enjoying the heat in the cool October air.

Polly, holding her hands toward the embers, tells him: “There was a movie I saw once—I think it was set in Paris. A man kills a woman. It’s not exactly an accident, but it’s also not exactly his fault. He’s going mad. Anyway, it’s the night of a big bonfire, in which people bring anything they want and throw it on the pile. He wraps up the body in a carpet and throws it on the fire, then runs away. But he still gets caught. Something to do with an earring. I think.”

Adam doesn’t seem particularly interested, but she finds she can’t stop herself.

“It was on Picture for a Sunday Afternoon. Oh, I forgot—you didn’t grow up in Baltimore. That was a local thing. Picture for a Sunday Afternoon. Which sounds kind of churchy and nice, but it was amazing the movies they showed sometimes. Horror movies. The Leech Woman was a big favorite of mine. She stayed youthful forever by killing men and drinking their blood, but then she killed a woman and the spell reversed itself. They also showed women-in-prison movies.” She laughs. “Go figure, those weren’t exactly factual.”

Polly waits to see if Adam will offer a corresponding story about his childhood. But he doesn’t. It’s rare for either of them to talk about the past. It’s not something they agreed on, merely a pattern that emerged. Once all the secrets—well, most of the secrets—were out in the open, there was no reason to talk about the past. What does she know about Adam? He went to college in Ohio, then attended some famous cooking school in New York, although he didn’t graduate. Went from there to working on a yacht, first as a deckhand, ended up as the chef. He grew up in the Bay Area. His parents are dead. He liked them a lot, especially his mother.