Sunburn: A Novel(60)

“Is it?”

“It is to me.”

“I like it here.” Her voice is petulant and she knows it, hates herself for it. She doesn’t do petulant. Petulant is for weak women, dependent women. She doesn’t need him, even if he’s been helping her carry the rent on this place.

She wants him, though. Adam is the first man, the first thing she has ever chosen for her own pleasure and delight. That’s hard to give up.

“I’ll look,” Adam says. “But without a paycheck for me and your tips as small as they are—”

Nothing left to do but try to save the evening with a joke. “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with my tips.”

He laughs. Adam is probably a good man, all things considered. She wants to make a life with him. But she had been hoping to make a life here, too. Which will she choose? Is the choice even hers?

And maybe Belleville isn’t the answer. Maybe she likes it because it felt like a kind of cockeyed destiny. She reminds herself that the plan, back in June, was to find a job, build up a nice little nest egg, then head to Reno. But after Cath died, she feared that leaving would make Adam even more suspicious of her. She should be almost divorced now, her prize within reach. She stayed in Belleville for Adam. Why won’t he do the same for her?

“I love you,” she says to Adam.

“I love you, too.”

“That should be enough.”

Should, should, should.

*

The next day, he sits down with the PennySaver and the News-Journal. “I could commute,” he says. “If that’s what it takes. Work in Baltimore during the week, be here on weekends.”

“But then you’ll have the cost of another place.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll still help with the rent here.”

“I’m not worried.”

She wonders if he is as exhausted by all the lying as she is.





36


When Adam crosses his own threshold for the first time in months, he finds himself thinking of a few lines from Kipling that his father taught him long ago.

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne

He travels the fastest who travels alone.



Only “The Winners” is not really an homage to traveling solo, as Adam learned in college, but a case for selfishness. Kipling’s “heretical ode” urges us to make use of others’ labor, then leave them behind.

Is that what he’s done? Or is he the one being left behind? He’s baffled by Polly’s refusal to come with him. It’s not a bad place, this apartment, a one-bedroom in a high-rise with partial views of a deep park known as Stony Run. But it’s sterile, charmless. The apartment, so long neglected, doesn’t even seem to register his presence. It goes on without him, like the automated house in that Ray Bradbury story, postapocalypse.

And that’s fine. He has never wanted to be rooted to any one place and this address is exactly that, an address, nothing more, a concession to a world that demands a place to send bills and the annual auto registration. The lease is month by month. The furniture is rented; even the plates and glassware are rentals. Things weigh you down.

Things and people.

There is no mail, not even junk. When it became clear that he was going to be stuck in Belleville for a while, Adam got a P.O. Box in Denton, had everything forwarded there. “Everything” was his utility bills, his credit card bill, his monthly bank statements, and the occasional missive from Irving, who was so cheap he preferred a stamp to a phone call. A postcard stamp at that, usually a bland souvenir card with terse questions and demands. “Anything?” “Call me.” The last one arrived September fifth and had a bushel of blue crabs on the front. On the back, Irving had written in large block letters: CONTRACT TERMINATED. It was postmarked Sept. 3, the very day that Adam called Irving and told him he was quitting. But he let Irving have the last word, let him pretend that the postcard was sent before Adam called him.

Adam’s answering machine is also empty because he checked it remotely once a week. In the beginning, there had been calls, inquiries about work. The past couple of weeks, it has been mostly wrong numbers. At least, he assumed that the hang-up calls were wrong numbers. Who else would keep calling a machine and hanging up?

Now he has to work the phone like some rookie telemarketer, checking his traps, trying to rebuild his business. Adam has always marketed himself as the king of surveillance, the guy who can get fast results where others would let the minutes pile up. He begins dialing the various lawyers, insurance brokers, people who have used him from time to time, people who might know people who know people in need of a private detective. Not Irving, of course. Adam knows he burned that bridge by coming up empty after so many weeks on Irving’s payroll. Doesn’t worry him. Irving was a small-timer on his roster, usually used Adam to check out the occasional slip-and-fall case at his strip center.

Cold-calling is a pain, but it yields results. Adam’s business thrives on misfortune and distrust, two things that know no season. He picks up a few small jobs—surveillance on a divorce case, some financial investigation for a prenup. The bride is willing to sign, but she thinks the groom is hiding assets, maybe in a dummy family foundation registered with the state. Isn’t love grand? But, good, he’ll start earning again. When he ended his relationship with Irving, things got thin, pretty fast, living off what Mr. C was paying. Adam had to dip into his savings the last few weeks, especially as he began to cover more of the bills for Polly. Adam never touches his savings. His parents, like him, cared nothing for possessions or money. But they believed that one should live within one’s means. Savings were sacrosanct. They lived so carefully that there was a nice inheritance for him once both were gone. Out of respect for them, he keeps that money separate and uses it for his trips and adventures. It’s a choice they would respect. His parents wouldn’t want their only son to settle for Belleville, not even for love.