Sunburn: A Novel Read online

  “Sidecars,” he says. “You never see those anymore.”

  “I don’t think I ever saw one in real life, only movies. And maybe in that cartoon, from when we were kids? The one with Penelope Pitstop?”

  “Oh, yeah. What was that called? With the bad guy and the dog who tried to cheat. Anyway, you know where you see sidecars? Cuba. Havana.”

  “How’d you get to Cuba? I thought that was illegal.”

  “I spent some time in Jamaica and there was a resort that arranged day excursions, did it in a way that you didn’t get your passport stamped. Havana was fascinating.”

  “Yeah, but—what is there to see?”

  “There’s always something to see. Don’t you want to travel?”

  She’s pretty sure what she’s expected to say: Of course. Who doesn’t? The truth is that this town, Belleville, the Delaware shore—that’s about as far as she’s gotten from Baltimore in her time. And Frostburg, but she doesn’t count that. Not like she got outside much.

  “Where’d you go to school?” she asks.

  “Oberlin. That’s in Ohio.”

  She wants to say, I know. Except she didn’t.

  “You’re not from Baltimore.”

  “I’m not, as it happens, but going to college in Ohio doesn’t mean you’re not from Baltimore. What makes you think I’m not a Baltimorean? I’ve lived there almost three years.”

  Almost three years. Good to know.

  “You ask a Baltimore person where they went to school, they tell you their high school. Dundalk for me. I started community college, then I dropped out. So, yeah, I guess you can say I went to college.”

  They are dry now, but still naked. She moves to the kitchen, stands in front of her refrigerator. She can’t figure out if she is hungry or thirsty. The only appetite she can gauge is her desire for him. Eggs. She should make him eggs. No one ever cooks for the cook.

  “Why did you drop out?”

  She shrugs, taking out the carton of eggs, cracks four into a bowl. “I was young and stupid. Didn’t see what the point was. Maybe I’ll go back one day. Anyway, what are you going to do about Cath? Don’t be unkind. It’s not her fault—”

  He has crept up behind her and she turns, kisses him. He gets almost too excited and she backs away, goes to light the stove. It’s a fussy old thing, often takes two, three match strikes to light. The Bakelite handles are loose and will be impossible to replace if they strip all the way. But she thinks it’s beautiful, rounded in a way that stoves aren’t anymore, the white enamel faded to a yellowish ivory. It reminds her of a pickup she saw once and coveted, a 1950s Studebaker. But maybe it was the man who drove the truck that she really wanted. All she saw was his forearm and a bit of his face, but he looked like someone who would take care of a woman. For days, she daydreamed about jumping into the bed of that truck, going home with that man.

  “What are you going to do,” she repeats. “About Cath.”

  “I guess I’ll call her, ask her to meet me somewhere.”

  “You think that’s the kindest way?”

  “Isn’t it?” Genuinely confused. Good.

  “I know, it seems like it should be, but—my two cents, as a woman? Act as if y’all were never together. Like it was all in her head. Be courteous, but don’t get drawn into conversations. If she asks to talk or calls you—keep it short. When she asks to get together, say you can’t, no explanations. That’s a clean break. I hate to say it about my own sex, but women see any scrap of kindness as a promise. You’ve got to do whatever it takes to keep her from thinking she has a chance with you.” Tiny pause. “Unless she does? Maybe this was just a onetime thing for you?”

  He doesn’t speak for a while and she’s worried she’s misjudged him, that last night and today have been nothing more than the passion and excitement fueled by the encounter with Gregg. It won’t be the first time she’s read a man wrong. Yet she was sure this man wanted her, although there was something he was fighting in his own nature. A wife, probably. His story doesn’t add up. The travel, the “seasonal” work, the shiny new truck. Yes, there’s probably a woman and a kid or two somewhere. Maybe he has families stashed all over the country and that’s why he’s so big on traveling.

  “Okay,” he says. “I want to do what’s right.”

  He has to know what she’s saying is too good to be true. Good Lord, if this were the kindest way to break up with a woman, that would be the greatest thing that ever happened to men. Maybe she should write an advice book for men, one that tells them everything they want to hear, as opposed to all those books for women, which tell them to be the opposite of what they are, no matter what that is.

  If she wrote an advice book for women, it would basically say: Tell men what they want to hear. What they think they want to hear. But it wouldn’t do anyone any good, because most women aren’t her. It’s not her looks or her body. Her looks are only slightly above average, her body didn’t come into its own until she had all those long empty days to exercise. Besides, she would never invest so heavily in a commodity that won’t last forever. It’s how she is on the inside that makes her different from other women. She fixes her gaze on the goal and never loses sight of it.

  The goal is never a man. Never. Men are the stones she jumps to, one after another, toward the goal. She’s getting closer. Thank God she’s patient. She never figured this to take so long, but you can’t plan for every contingency.

  And now she’s thrown a monkey wrench into her own works. But he’s planning to leave this fall and that suits her just fine. She’ll have moved on by then, too.

  He eats the eggs from the pan, standing up. She starts kissing him again, but gentle, sweet ones, as if she doesn’t know where it’s going to go. She doesn’t want him to think, I’m being rewarded. If he makes the conscious connection, that’s no good. Moaning, he picks her up, carries her back to the bedroom, tosses her on the bed. The sheets are damp, almost as if dew has fallen on them. She’s going to have to get to the Laundromat at some point today.

  The morning is warm, but not unbearable, not yet. She doesn’t have AC, not even in the bedroom, only a box fan in the window. Set to high, it’s loud enough to drown out the noise he’s about to start making.

  She asks innocently, “Don’t you want coffee? I can—” Then lets him cover her with him. There’s always a quick moment of panic when a man is on top of her, but she gets through it.

  “One more thing,” she tells him, not sure if he’s the kind of guy who can hear or understand anything at this point. “At work, we’re a secret. Which means we’re a secret in this town. This will be the last time you leave my place in daylight.”

  He grunts. A yes? She’s pretty sure he would agree to anything she said right now.

  * * *

  By the end of the week, Cath’s eyes are red all the time, just big and sad and wretched looking. Polly takes her into the bathroom for a confidential talk.

  “Adam won’t even speak to me,” she sobs, sitting on the closed toilet. “I think he’s seeing someone else, but he says no. He acts like he doesn’t owe me anything. It’s like we were never together at all.”

  “Men,” Polly says, tearing off a piece of toilet paper and handing it to her. “You’re better off without that asshole. He probably thinks he’s being kind, but this is anything but.”

  13

  Adam tries to tell himself that Plan B is superior to Plan A in every way. No, he shouldn’t be sleeping with her, but she’s the one who wants to keep it a secret. He didn’t see that coming. Most women like to stake their claim publicly. His client doesn’t have to know that he’s crossed the line. His client won’t care, as long as the job gets done.

  Adam’s the one who cares. He’s an ethical guy. He’s never done anything like this. But he can’t stop. When he leaves her at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., never later than 5 a.m., he sometimes has trouble remembering why he was supposed to get to know her in the first place.

  And although his client doesn’
t have a clue what’s going on, he’s not exactly pleased with Adam.

  “What’s taking so long?” the client demands in their next phone call.

  “First of all, this whole thing is an improvisation, right? If I didn’t get a job in that place, I couldn’t keep tabs on her.”

  “But you must have learned something, working alongside her.”

  Working alongside her. Sure, let’s call it that.

  “She doesn’t talk much,” Adam says. “And she doesn’t have a car. So unless it’s stashed somewhere here in Belleville—”

  “That’s an idea.”

  “No. She’s never been here before in her life.”

  “I thought you said she didn’t talk.”

  “Doesn’t talk much. Some things come up.”

  He has started using the pay phone outside the motel to call his client, just in case the phone in his room isn’t secure. Not that he thinks anyone has him bugged, but he has to assume the front desk has records of the numbers he calls, even if it’s billed to his calling card. It costs too much to use the mobile and that’s what a straight shooter he is, has always been. He doesn’t run up costs no matter how deep the client’s pockets. He is ethical, he reminds himself, under the red hood that shields the pay phone from the elements. It’s not a full-on phone booth, but it provides all the privacy he needs. There’s nothing weird about being a guy who uses a public phone, right?

  Monday. He has the night off. She doesn’t. He tries to ignore the feeling that is demanding to be heard, this feeling that he can’t wait until her shift ends. He no longer walks her home, of course, and she doesn’t let him come over every night. He pretends that’s mutual, that they both want a little space. They have devised a system, their own one if by land, two if by sea. If they’re working the same shift, she passes a fake check to him—Adam and Eve on a raft, whiskey down. That means come over. He told her to use that because no one in this place ever orders poached eggs with rye toast.

  No fake check, no visit, no explanation. It pains him to admit how much he yearns to see that rectangle of lined green paper being clipped and rotated toward him. The words are just old-fashioned diner slang, innocuous should anyone else see it. Adam and Eve on a raft, whiskey down. Never has the thought of two poached eggs on rye toast excited him more.

  On Mondays, when there’s no dinner service at the High-Ho, she takes a smoke break as close to six on the dot as possible if she wants to see him. Standing here at the phone booth, the sun still hot, Adam misses a few things his client is yammering because he’s waiting to see if she’s going to come out. 6 p.m., 6:01, 6:02—it’s not always exact because she has to have someone cover for her.

  At 6:03, she walks out, and it scares him how glad this makes him.

  “I hear you,” he says to his client, having heard nothing for the past three minutes.

  Five hours later, 11 p.m., he approaches her apartment. Belleville is the kind of town where what few sidewalks they have would be rolled up by eleven or so. He never sees anyone, not even a lone insomniac walking a dog. So he has to assume no one sees him.

  They have already agreed that she will leave her entry door, the downstairs one, ajar; her actual door is always unlocked. Only in a town like this would he allow such an arrangement. Besides, he likes that she’s in bed when he gets there. With the exception of the quilt, folded over the footboard of the bed, the linens are all white and she makes him think of a flame, with her long pale peachy body, the red hair at top, the piercing blue eyes. He used to prefer women with a little froufrou and airs. Lingerie, heels, garters. She doesn’t go for that. She likes to be naked and not just because of the warm nights, when even the breezes and her window fan can’t do much but push the hot air around. “I think it’s silly,” she says, “putting on stuff only to take it off.”

  He thinks he understands. She wants him to believe that she’s naked, transparent. What you see is what you get. She is so clearly the opposite. He still can’t quite believe she’s done what his client says. But she’s done it before, no? Left another man, another kid, in the lurch, then stole money from the kid when the guy died, disappeared with the life insurance. Hers, free and clear, but a shitty thing to do. “She’s capable of anything,” his client has warned him. Adam doesn’t think that’s quite true. Like most people, she’s rationalized her poor decisions, come up with a reason that she feels entitled to cut and run, treated herself to a bonus on her way out the door. It would be okay if she just ripped the guys off. But there are kids in the mix, too. Is she pulling the same scam again? How will that work, given that her husband knows where she is? Could she really have blown through all the money she stole the first time?

  But if she blew it all, what did she blow it on? And if she’s got her new jackpot stashed somewhere around here, what’s keeping her from trying to claim it? What is she waiting for?

  Her eyes flutter when he heaves his body into her bed and the mattress shifts beneath them. But she doesn’t say a word, simply opens her arms, her mouth, herself to him.

  * * *

  The next day at work, Mr. C tells them the bar has to close for one day for an exterminator’s visit. “Routine,” he adds quickly. “State law. No big deal.” Everybody gets Wednesday off.

  “Off” as in: you don’t get paid. Adam can afford it, but he notices her face falls a little. Wednesday is Polly’s night to work the big room on her own, her best tip night.

  But all she says is, “Want to go to Baltimore?”

  “D.C. is a better place to spend a day,” he counters, curious to see what she’ll reply.

  “I got business in Baltimore. It won’t take long.”

  Bingo.

  She’s not a chatty woman, that’s part of her charm, but she seems unusually quiet even for her, especially as they cross the Bay Bridge Wednesday morning.

  “You scared of the bridge?”

  She shakes her head, unconvincingly. “Not really. Although, one time, I did that bridge walk, the one in the spring. A shuttle bus takes you to the eastern side and you walk back to Sandy Point. When you do that, you realize how high up it is. And it moves, the bridge. Sways like a hammock. Now I can feel it, every time.”

  Her sentences are landing like questions. Not usually her style. Something about crossing the bay seems to have made her tentative, less herself. Returning to the scene of the crime?

  “Of course it moves. It’s a suspension bridge. If it didn’t have some give, it would collapse.”

  She gives him an impatient look as if that’s some masculine spoilsport bullshit. She doesn’t talk again until they’re on the Beltway, about fifteen minutes out from downtown. With her, it’s hard to tell if she’s miffed or being her usual silent self.

  “Drop me off at the Hyatt,” she says.

  “I thought we were spending the day together.”

  “I got this one thing I need to do,” she says. “I told you. Then I’ll meet you for a late lunch in Fells Point. Where you wanna go? John Steven’s? Bertha’s?”

  “John Steven’s is fine,” he says. “But where—”

  “It’s a family thing,” she says. “I gotta do it alone. It’s no big deal—but I have to be alone.”

  He thinks, but doesn’t say, You told Gregg you don’t have any family. His client told him the same thing. Parents dead, not in touch with any blood relatives, no friends.

  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.