City of orange, p.21
City of Orange, page 21
Clay hands it to Adam. Adam puts it into the tub. It is his job now.
Clay watches him carefully, with barely a trace of emotion as always. But Adam can see him snarl just for an instant with frustration, as he struggles with some storm inside his head.
Finally Clay just spits it out: “I think you should come with us.”
“Oh, buddy,” says Adam. “I’m gonna stay here.”
“Don’t you have friends?”
“I have to stay here.”
“Where’s your house?”
“I’d be no good out there,” says Adam. “I suck at all that.”
Clay stomps a foot. “You came from somewhere! Where?”
“Clay, you have your father to find. I don’t have that. I have no place to go out there. It’s not just me. Listen. It’s thousands of people. Probably millions. I don’t know how much your mom is telling you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Adam holds the rattling tub with both hands. “You need to go where your mom thinks you need to go. I can’t have anything to do with that. I have to stay here.” He looks around at the fine house and all its fine details. “It’s not a bad way to go.”
He softens his face as best he can, but Clay is not comforted. He’s irritated, in fact.
“No offense, but I wish you could please not say spooky stuff like that,” says Clay, squinting.
“Like what?”
“Like the world is over. I thought you were doing pretend.”
They stare at each other. There is some form of inevitability hurtling at Adam right now. The world can’t simply be how it seems. It never is, after all. There is always another world right beneath.
Clay’s eyes widen, as if to say He doesn’t know! And he smiles with that giddy eagerness kids get when, say, performing a magic trick for a real audience for the very first time.
Clay grows brighter and brighter. He beams with anticipation at the secret he is about to unveil. He runs flailing to the living room, where he finds a slim black wand and draws an invisible lasso above his head with it. He strikes a flamenco pose, cocks a thumb.
The screen comes to life.
Two women in aprons slice apples. Clay changes poses, and the television changes to a man in a forest.
“Of these majestic trees are over a century old, and the local,” and the image switches again.
A crowd of women scream as confetti drifts down onto their heads and a gleaming car rotates slowly on a stage, and another woman yells, “In time for the holidays you could be driving home in style with!” The image changes too quickly to make any sense.
“Everyone’s still here,” says Clay. Flip, flip, flip. “Everything’s okay. See?”
“Terror with,” Jet-Ski, couple kissing, football, “down and two,” “tended warranty that,” loud guitar, “APR financing with just,” “In the Middle Eastern regi,” girls singing, cartoon frog, “esus Christ soar,” golf applause, “Eight zero one one zero five.”
“Turn it off,” says Adam.
“Ing up next on afternoon drama,” motorcycles, bloody men boxing, a floating baby, a newscaster, two newscasters, a car on fire in the gorgeous afternoon sunlight.
“Turn it off!” yells Adam.
Clay looks like he’s just gotten slapped. His joy melts away at once. His face returns to stone.
Clay turns the television off. The room sits in ringing silence. He places the skinny remote on the console table, next to the cairn Adam had made earlier.
“The model house has full cable,” says Clay, and leaves.
PART V
THE SECRET PLACE
Fifty-Five
People stayed to clean up after the wake at the apartment. There’d been speeches and meaningful pop songs played to bowed heads. Adam couldn’t remember what songs or which mourners, didn’t want to. His parents weren’t there because—right—they were both dead. Margot’s surviving father was too sick to attend, holed up in a West Texas hospital fighting off some new virus known as H1N1, which the nurse called hiney.
“I know she’d be so glad you all could make it,” he announced, and crumpled to the floor. Dozens of hands reached out to catch him. The first, of course, was Byron. They all helped him to the biggest chair he owned. Byron—who’d quickly taken on the role of host for the wake—made sure everyone was topped off and snacked up. He worked the line as people waited. Why were people waiting? They each took turns approaching Adam in his big ugly chair and paid him more care and attention than he’d ever received in his whole life.
That’s why they called it a receiving line.
A receiving line also meant people were making their leave. Made sense. He couldn’t expect them to stay all night and through to the next morning and the day after that and the day after that day.
But isn’t that what Byron did?
In the silence after the last guest departed—record player playing for no one now—Byron clapped his hands and simply screamed as loud as he could.
You try it, he said.
Eh, said Adam.
Come on. I have to admit I don’t really get how in the world you’re not crying right now but you gotta get it out somehow.
I don’t really cry, said Adam.
That’s impossible. Do it.
Adam slouched deeper, shaded his eyes with a hand. Aaah.
Byron squatted in close. Come on, man, raaaah!
Adam sprang back: Aaaah!
That’s good, said Byron. He handed him a pillow. Try it in this.
Byron had chosen a pillow at random. He couldn’t have known about its significance, how it was one of those dumb compromises you make when you’re newly married and learning how to outfit a house together, how outfitting a house carried the weight of permanence, so you better work it out carefully. Or how Margot loved plain white everything to an almost obsessive degree, how he wanted at least a little color, I mean we’re not building an ice hotel here, so taupe it was, how about this taupe, okay?
Maybe this was how married people got boring so suddenly, with one nano-compromise after another until they lived in a thoroughly half-assed world. But if being married meant being boring, then being boring meant absolutely everything to him.
Taupe, the acme of mundanity, fuggit.
Single, wild-haired, wild-eyed Byron couldn’t have known how or why something like taupe could cause the dam to crack, and Adam should’ve known a single pillow wouldn’t be enough to contain the torrent no matter how hard he buried his face. But it turned out Byron chose right.
Let it out, man, said Byron. Good.
They stayed up watching a sport neither of them cared about. Adam had no appetite, so Byron had none, either. Adam did not want to get fucked up, so Byron packed away the bourbon and did not get fucked up, either. When Adam woke up the next morning in his bed, he knew it was Byron who’d carried him there.
He walked out of the forever damned bedroom—relieved to be away from its scents—and found Byron sitting before a plate of eggs and bacon and Irish coffee, heavy on the Irish. It looked inviting and nauseating at the same time.
Hey, said Byron. He waved a plate at him.
Hey, said Adam. He waved a hand in response: No thanks.
He knew Byron had the good sense not to ask him how he was doing. Nothing as ludicrous as that. Instead, Byron became Papa Byron.
You have to at least eat lunch, he said. You have until then.
It was so sweet and kind that Adam could only gently laugh. Okay, Dad.
I’m not gonna worry about you until then, warned Byron.
Okay.
He watched Byron eat. The man ate like a princess in camouflage.
What, said Byron.
Nothing, said Adam.
Byron aligned his fork and sipped his warm alcohol using both hands. You eat like a hyena in heat, Chung. Half your food winds up down your shirt.
They laughed. It felt so weird to laugh. Adam couldn’t do it.
We had a big fight that day, he said.
Byron sucked a stuck crumb, swallowed it. I know, man.
We had a big fight and now I know—now I know—the purpose of the helicopters up there was to get me to wake up. Be better. Stop being an asshole. But I just got pissed off at them. I’m so stupid.
Byron exploded from his chair and gave him a hard squeeze for a long moment. You’re not stupid, he said. You’re not stupid. The world is stupid. You are not stupid. The world is stupid. You are very much not. You are not stupid.
Finally Byron faced him and said, Okay?
They took them away, said Adam, crying freely for the first time in his adult life. Why did they take them away from me?
Because they’re stupid, said Byron. That’s all. It’s not fair, and they’re all just stupid. They don’t deserve a guy like you. No way.
On the counter, tea candles flickered around the framed photo of Margot and June in black and white. Byron must’ve replaced the candles with fresh ones. Adam was grateful. He could never do something like that.
The world does not deserve a person like you, never forget that, said Byron.
* * *
—
Friends would come to visit in the days following, always announced by Byron in his butler-school-dropout style. They brought Adam food and flowers and drink to where he sat, out on his tiny balcony facing the junk lot. But after a while—a shockingly short while for Adam, who knew he was being unfair and unreasonable toward his well-wishers—the visits trickled down to nothing. It was just him and Byron.
Byron, as usual, said the unsayable thing Adam was already thinking.
Fuckin’ friends in need, man.
Hey, said Adam.
Let ’em go, said Byron. I’m still here.
People have lives. They have schedules and stuff. It’s okay. The world shambles on.
Well, I’ll be here as long as you need me.
Okay.
Dude, said Byron. I don’t mean any disrespect but it’s kind of a little early, don’t you think?
Adam stopped in midpour, capped the bottle. It’s just this one for now.
Well, I’ll have one if you’re having one.
I know you’re looking out for me, said Adam. I really appreciate that.
I mean it when I say as long as you need me, said Byron.
But even Byron had things to do, because Byron was human like everyone else. As his visits slowed down to once a week, Adam never said a thing. It was natural and to be expected. There was no single moment where you knew it was time to stop coming over. Things just ebbed, and ebbed, and ebbed.
In the shower, when he remembered to shower, Adam would draw an M in the glass, next to a J. The fog would come and he’d freshen up the letters again.
He’d stopped going to work. Two subs for the kiddos, Byron said over the phone. Whole school was down in the dumps. A few kids making inappropriate jokes but we understand it’s coming from a place of grief. The suits were being cool, they said take as much time as you need.
Calls would end, and Adam would stare at the phone. He had messages waiting and feeds unread, little numbers racking up everywhere like debt.
He lived out on that grimy little balcony, playing a mindless gemstone puzzle game over and over again until he was too drunk to focus on the screen. He napped, got up to urinate, flushed the toilet down. Stretched a little. He microwaved food that arrived on his doorstep, sent by somebody. He got a disbursement from the life insurance company with surprising alacrity. They really saved their customer service chops for times like these.
Times like these.
And now, in one of the world’s great ironies, he suddenly found himself with time and money, more than enough to hire movers and decorate a brand-new house inside and out if he wanted.
* * *
—
He started in the dim predawn hours of early morning, setting items out on his lawn in rough categories. Electronics. Appliances. Small furniture. To hell with it, large furniture, too. Cookware. Stupid unused golf clubs, stupid stationary bike.
Then the tough stuff. Baby furniture. Toys. Board books. A rocker horse with the price tag still attached. He threw away the breast pump parts and bottles.
There was the toy drum, with its triple yin-yang. Clothing and shoes and jewelry and tiny baby jumpers and tiny baby shoes, none of which he could stand to leave sitting exposed under the open sky. So he put it all into clear plastic trash bags and labeled each assorted baby things $20.
There were half-empty bottles of cleaning supplies, a big jar of coins, a futuristic brass key.
He considered plunging the brass key to the bottom of the coin jar to become a cryptic prize for someone years in the future. Or throwing it away? Or melting it? As much as he hated the thing, as much sorrow as it gave him, he knew that getting rid of the key would amount to sacrilege—
(Margot, dancing with the key in one hand, June in the other)
—so he tucked it into his shoe, and in his shoe it stayed.
In this way, I can pretend you are still with me.
In this way, I can pretend I am keeping you safe.
The sun rose. A steady crowd moved in and out of the apartment building lawn, touching things with inquisitive index fingers as he watched from a student’s chair, coffee and flip phone set on its L-shaped fold-out desk. One by one he called out to the sale hunters.
Five dollars.
Three dollars for the pair.
That one’s free, enjoy.
The buyers sensed something wrong—prices were way too low—but the bargains made it easy to shrug off their worries. His apartment neighbors tiptoed by without touching a thing. Like: There’s that man who lost his wife and baby. Here are all his cursed possessions.
He sold a laptop to an elderly woman for fifty dollars. It was Margot’s. You’ll have to delete everything yourself, he said. I don’t remember the password. The elderly woman spoke almost no English and lavished him with gratitude.
I wish I could remember the password. I’m so sorry.
A hefty White man, typical of the Hard Bargainers he’d learned to spot and classify, pointed at the steel-faceted Moka pot Margot had had since college. The man was with his female clone of a wife, who wore the same race car T-shirt and cowboy belt and jeans as her husband. This one’s a Italian original, he pointed out. Eye-talian.
Hey, Charlie! How much you willing to part with this for! said the man.
Adam blinked. Charlie?
Just for fuckery, Adam put on his best ching-chong-ling-long. For you, he said, wan tousand dolla. He sharpened the tilt of his gaze. And den I fuk you wife.
The man looked like he had just inhaled a passing sparrow.
Anyway, yeah that’s a thousand bucks, said Adam. No, two thousand.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Get out of my sight, said Adam.
The shoppers froze, creating the oddest of sculpture gardens for a moment.
You’re an asshole, said the man. What a mean, asshole way to treat people. His wife pulled him away with all her might like a dog walker walking a cow.
With the Hard Bargainers gone, the crowd began moving again. An adolescent girl examined the Moka pot with wonder. She was most likely the granddaughter of the elderly woman who bought the laptop. She wore jeans and bright sneakers and a torn T-shirt with the name of a band on it, already American and growing more so each year she lived here. She spoke a quiet mix of English and Spanish.
That’s five dollars, said Adam.
The girl approached, wary but excited. She laid a perfectly crisp bill on his desktop.
Thank you, she said.
What school do you go to?
Sorry?
What school do you go to? I’m a teacher.
East West High.
His phone buzzed. It was Byron. Come out tonight, man, his message said. You need it. This is not healthy.
Actually, he said, take the phone, too.
The girl’s mouth fell open. But—you’re still using it.
No, I’m done. Here.
He entered a secret code, D-padded to a big red delete all?, and hit the OK button. The phone erased itself. Then he ejected the SIM card and dropped it into a drain.
Her grandmother protested. He held out the device until she relented, and the girl finally accepted the phone as if she’d been chosen for some great task.
Do good in school, okay? he said.
It’s Do well, said the girl without thinking.
That’s the spirit, he said, pleased entirely. It felt so good to be pleased.
As she and her grandmother left they gave him one last look, still astounded by their luck this dewy morning keening with birdsong on infinite loop.
Fifty-Six
Over Dead Lands ridge, he will find people. Not dead people, not zombies. Enough with that. He’ll find normal people, driving around in circles, throwing things away to make room for new things, eating up and shitting out and eating right back up again. And why not?
Why not.
Dead Lands ridge has a real name on a real map somewhere. Probably even has hikers looking down right at the model house he is in. Guess that housing tract wasn’t too big to fail.
Worlds don’t end. They carry on. There is no such thing at all as the world ending.
No vandals clubbed people on the back of the head. He’d done that himself somehow.
He stands for a long time just staring at the big blank TV. He has no idea how to feel. Should he laugh? Or rage? Or cry? None of those make sense for this moment. He can barely even breathe.
He notices a large throw on the couch and uses it to cover the television for the most part. He reaches back behind the thing and yanks hard on a plug. A tiny green light dies.
