18. Adam #2
“I’m not saying I’m innocent.” Her voice is steady now, which is somehow the worst part. “I know what I am. I know what I did to my sister, and I’ll carry it the rest of my life. The difference between us is I’ve still got a little conscience left.”
She gets to the door and stops without turning.
“You should’ve seen your face when I said I was leaving. You didn’t look sad. You looked annoyed. Like I was one more thing on your list to deal with today.”
She finally turns. There’s nothing left in her face but tired.
“You’re never going to change. I kept telling myself you would.
That once things settled down you’d turn back into the man I thought I married.
” She pulls the door open. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever believed.
And trust me, I’ve believed a lot of dumb things this year.
I’m not sticking around to see how much worse you get. ”
Then she’s gone.
The place goes dead quiet. She didn’t even slam the door, and somehow that makes it worse.
I don’t go after her. I pour another drink and I walk the length of the room instead. Window to bookshelf and back. Window to bookshelf and back.
I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Pacing a cage I built myself.
The thing she said about my face stays with me longer than I want it to. Annoyed, not sad.
And the worst part is she’s right. My wife just walked out and the loudest thing in my head is that the apartment’s finally quiet. We barely made it out of the honeymoon.
That’s the kind of man I apparently am. Fine. I’ve made my peace with it.
Here’s the thing nobody remembers anymore. I was the favorite. For thirty years it was me.
I had the name. I had the charm. I was the one people actually wanted at the party.
And Clarence? Clarence was the kid in the corner who couldn’t hold eye contact, who flinched every time Dad cleared his throat. I was the one going places. He was the backup. The spare.
Then he runs off and starts his little art thing with his little art friends. And somehow that turns him into somebody. And now my own father picks up when he calls and lets it ring when I do.
People think I went after him for no reason. Out of spite.
They have no idea what it does to you. Watching the spare turn into the favorite while you’re standing right there in the same room.
I think about him in that big glass house. A wedding coming, probably. That’s how these things go.
Charly on his arm. Charly, who I picked. Who I proposed to. Who sat across from me at a hundred dinners. His ring on her finger now, and everybody we know cooing about how happy they look.
No.
I’m not done. Everybody thinks I am, because nobody picks up my calls and my wife just walked out the door.
But none of them ever got me. Being liked was never the point.
I don’t stop. I never have. I’ll still be coming for him long after the rest of them have given up and moved on.
I grab the phone. Scroll past the six guys who won’t pick up. Find the one number that always does.
She answers on the second ring.
“I was wondering when you’d call.” There’s noise behind her. A café, maybe. Cups clinking. She sounds relaxed. She always sounds relaxed. That’s the whole reason I saved her for last.
“It’s not working. Ever since he put that ring on her, nobody believes he’s the unstable one anymore. They think he’s settled down, found himself a nice girl, the whole thing.” I catch how fast I’m talking and make myself slow down. “I need the other thing. The real one. The thing only you have.”
She doesn’t answer right away. I can hear the café behind her, somebody laughing at the next table, and she just lets it run a while before she says anything.
“You’re panicking,” she says. “I can hear it. Panicking makes people sloppy. Sloppy is how the whole thing comes apart.”
“I’m not panicking. I’m running out of time.” I’m pacing again. Can’t sit still with this. “They just got engaged. The second they’re married it’s done. He’s got everything. The house, the name, the girl, the happy ending. And I’m the punchline.”
“Adam, listen to me.” She says it slow, the way you’d talk to a guy out on a ledge. “Be patient. I know what I’m doing. I’ve been at this a lot longer than you have, and I don’t miss.”
“That tells me nothing. I need to know you’re actually moving on this.”
“What you need is to calm down and let me work.” She takes a sip, slow, like none of this keeps her up at night.
“A few more weeks won’t kill me. And when I finally do it, nobody traces it back to you or me.
It comes from somewhere he’d never see coming.
” Her voice goes easy, almost fond. “From right inside that perfect little life of his.”
The back of my neck goes cold. I’m not a guy whose neck goes cold easy.
“Just tell me you’ve got it handled.”
“I’ve got it handled.” I can hear her smiling, warm, like we’re picking a restaurant. “Trust me. I’m going to get him back. I always get what’s mine in the end.”
She hangs up before I can get another word in.
And I’m just standing there in my dead-quiet apartment. Phone in my hand. My wife’s half-empty closet down the hall. My brother with his ring on Charly’s finger. And a woman I just handed everything to, who I’m only now realizing I have never once seen scared.
I tell myself that’s a good thing. Somebody that calm, that patient, that sure of herself, that’s exactly who you want on your side when you’re out of moves.
I almost believe it.
But there’s a question I keep circling and won’t let myself ask, because I don’t think I want the answer.
She wants him gone even more than I do. I could hear it under all that calm. And I never once asked why. I don’t actually know who she was before me, or what my brother did to a woman like her to put that kind of cold in her voice.
I just pointed her at him and said go.
I pour another drink.
This time my hands aren’t steady either.