Adverbs (21 page)

“I guess we should have kept that one,” Sam said meanly. “For Egg, I mean. That’s a boy book, what with the treasure hunt and all the blowjobs.”

“There aren’t any blowjobs in
Treasure Island
,” Andrea said. “That’s
The Sea Wolf
, and will you do one thing for me?”

Sam narrowed her eyes, which is a good trick. “You said that five things ago,” she said, and then—“What?”

The song “Girl Hurricane” started, and a few others at the bar looked up in recognition. This was the hit. “It was dark all day and getting darker all the time,” the hit says. “I was sitting in a rocking chair, drinking gin and lime.” Andrea finished her beer. “Be nice to him,” she said.

Sam made a noise like she’d had a baby and the baby had fallen into a volcano, years and years ago but still sad.

“Why don’t you like him?” Andrea said. “Why aren’t you nice to him? He doesn’t have any of the things.”

Late one night over a Nick Drake album they’d made a pact not to touch the things wrong with boys: Money, Mommy, Slutty, Druggy, and Gay. It was an informal pact, but it had turned out
not to be enough. You might think, as the song goes, that it’d fallen apart when Egg arrived, but it actually started when a very popular band who refused to have their name here released a new single, with lyrics Sam didn’t like. “You want me?” the song asked, or maybe it was the singer. “Well, come and knock the fucking door down. I’ll be waiting, with a gun and a pack of sandwiches.” Sam couldn’t believe it was
sandwiches
and not
cigarettes
. Who on Earth would think to bring a pack of
sandwiches
someplace where you had to knock the fucking door down to get in? To cheer herself up she got a movie she liked and watched it—
The Snow Queen
—on TV. That was the day Egg arrived.

“I met this guy Steven,” Andrea said. “He was at the Laundromat if you can believe it. We’re going to see the Friendly Skies.”

“But they suck,” Sam said.

“So do all my clothes,” Andrea said, walking in front of the TV, “but I’m going to wear something. Listen for the doorbell.”

“Our neighbor isn’t wearing anything,” Sam pointed out, flapping her wrist at the bare boobs across the way, but Andrea was already splashing in the shower and leaving a mess. Sam watched a scene or two and then suddenly it was the scene in which Egg walked into their apartment for the first time without knocking.

“It was open,” he said and then looked at the movie. The first thing that bugged Sam was that he would say “I’m really into” whatever the topic was. “I’m really into movies,” he said.

“Andrea will be just a minute,” Sam said. “Margarita?”

“Steven,” Egg said, walking around the apartment.

“
Sam
,” Sam said.

“Okay, Sam,” Egg said. “Sam like a guy?”

“That’s right,” Sam said. “Sam like a guy. I’m Sam, a guy.”

“Hummingbird feeder!”
he said. The unopened box was on top of a stack of fragiles. “Maybe I’ll call my band that. Hummingbird Feeder.”

“You have a band?” Sam said.

“Not for real,” Egg said. “Just, you know, to think about. Hey, Andrea’s great, huh?”

“I’ve known her for years,” Sam said, “but you never know.”

“We all have our faults,” Egg said.

“Look,” Sam said, but Egg looked at
The Snow Queen
so Sam turned it off. “I mean
look
,” she said. “The expression. I know you. You hang around the Laundromat and eavesdrop until you can just parachute into the conversation the one time someone does their laundry without their roommate.”

“That’s not me,” he said mildly. “I was at the Orbit Room. Andrea bought me a drink.”

“The Orbit Room,” Sam said, “is
right next to the Laundromat
.”

“Chinese women do my laundry for me,” Egg said. “I’m an electrical contractor. We have a minute so I’ll tell you. You know how a building goes up, at first quickly and then stops while they putter inside? That’s me. I’m why.”

“Well, thanks for wasting my time,” Sam said.

Egg laughed the Egg Laugh:
Ha!
just once. “Here’s where it gets interesting,” but Sam never heard that part. Andrea walked in wearing the dress from the place Sam couldn’t go anymore because she yelled at them over something that, at the time, was completely worth it. Completely. Egg shut up and looked at her like a bird hitting the window.

“Where’s the poo-poo?” she said to Sam, gesturing to her hair in her hand.

“He arrived just now,” Sam said.

“That’s not what I meant,” Andrea said. “Steven isn’t the poo-poo. I mean that sticky hair stuff.”

“You don’t need hair stuff,” Egg said and took her face in his hands. They kissed grotesquely. It was a small apartment, so it was hard for Sam to look elsewhere. Somewhere in the stack of records on the new speaker was a song called “The Dream of Evan and Chan,” a whirring, buzzing song about going to hear a band play. It’s a love song, sort of, with the singer insisting that he won’t let go, he won’t let go, even if you say so, oh no. But it’s also a song about a dream, and at the end of it the telephone, ringing ringing ringing ringing on, wakes the whole band up from the dream, and the dream is over. Sam knew the song was in there someplace, and she also knew—like it came to her in a dream—that if Egg listened to it he’d think it was just some faggot singing with a bunch of drum machines. And also, Sam just knew, he’d say this. Sam could hear him say this even over the clutch of her hand on the remote for the television, tighter and tighter until the little plastic buttons begged for dear dear life. Sam had no mercy for the little plastic buttons, not with Andrea
and Egg kissing like that. They could beg all night, but she wouldn’t let them go, even if they say so, oh no.

At last they stopped.

“I’m taking your purse,” Andrea said. “Mine still has that rip.”

Egg was looking at the stack of records on the new speaker. “What’s this?” he asked. “It looks like the eighties.” It was an album by the Clash entitled
Sandinista!

“The money,” Sam said. “Take the purse but leave me my money.”

“I did, except you don’t have any,” Andrea said, and she still didn’t have any on the day of the Retro Pop Gala at Stirrup Park, so Egg lent her the money for a ticket and Andrea paid for the sushi they ate afterwards. They were ganging up on her. The place was almost empty and everyone was trying to be nice.

“I’m really into this restaurant,” Egg said.

“I taught it to Sam,” Andrea said, feeding him something.

Sam ate her Volcano Roll in fury. If Andrea and Egg weren’t in love, it was safe to say they were planning on doing that later. Maybe she wasn’t feeding him something this instant, but it was Sam’s story, she was realizing, and no longer about the two of them. “Tell me something,” she said to Egg.

“You don’t have to,” Andrea said quickly.

Egg picked up a piece of ginger and put it on his finger like it was wearing a little hat. “I’ll tell you something,” he said agreeably. “Do you mean a joke? Do you want to hear the story, or joke, about the people who found money in the street? Oh, wait. I blew it already.”

“It’s okay,” Andrea said. “We know that one.”

Andrea and Sam had never heard that one. Sam in particular was so broke that she would definitely remember something about finding money in the street. She gripped her little cup, which was likely imported. Millions of people live in Japan, a good portion of whom must be unhappy and devoid of money, and yet the bottles of sake are always so small. “Change the subject,” Sam said.

“I think I’ll change the subject,” Andrea said. “What should we do for Sam’s birthday?”

“Out of the neighborhood,” Sam said, “that’s for sure.”

“If we go out of the neighborhood, Mike probably won’t come,” Andrea said.

“I don’t care.” Sam turned her empty cup over but kept her hand on top of it like it might leave. “Those bird signs keep getting stapled up no matter what we do. Petey the parakeet. ‘Answers to Petey.’ It depresses me. They’re never going to find that bird.”

“It’s flown,” Andrea agreed.

“No, no,” Egg said. “Birds like that, when they get lost, there’s a flock waiting for them in the park. They flutter around together. It was in a magazine, pictures of it.”

Magazines. Listen to him. “Bullshit,” Sam said. “I’m in the park all the time and never seen that. It’s a story. People walk around and solve problems, is what the park’s for, and there’s horses for girls to look at.”

“Nope,” Egg said. “There’s all the pretty birds in the flock in the park. All the parrots people lost, and bright-green parakeets like Petey, canaries, toucans, all those black bird what’s-its, who steal the shiny things.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin, and
then, slowly, wiped his mouth again. “What is it, Sam? What do you want for your birthday?”

Sam let go of her useless cup. “A bird,” Sam said, suddenly and dishonestly. Her birthday was two weeks away. Egg gave Andrea and Sam both smiles, and clicked his chopsticks together like novelty teeth.

“Okay,” Egg said for nothing and ate the piece of cold egg.

So then for a while it was him in the story.

The Clash’s album
Sandinista!
was an absolute favorite of Andrea and Sam’s, for damn good reason. It is very long. It’s on two compact discs in my house, or on three vinyl records at Andrea and Sam’s. Egg was right about it—it does look like the eighties, although it was just 1980 when it arrived. It’s a scruffy album, and the Clash was very much into Jamaican reggae at the time, so there’s lots of that, and dub, which is like reggae but instrumental and less able-bodied. Andrea and Sam had sprawled on the couch night after night, laughing and arguing over whose turn it was to get up and flip the record over, and the first time the houseguest kissed Sam, right on the right shoulder, she would never forget that “Somebody Got Murdered,” her favorite song on the whole album, was what was playing, but still Sam had to admit that the album seemed a little long. Sometimes. If she tried to listen to it all, without anything else happening in a room all lit up with insomnia, the album seemed to stretch its dubby fingernails far out late into the night like it too wanted to do something better that evening.

But it was morning when it happened, and it was the Katydids album playing again, with Sam curled on the couch like a semicolon and Andrea moving Sam’s feet so she could sit in her towel
and talk about the new shower door, and then Egg walked in, which meant he must have a key because Sam never forgot to lock it anymore. He had something with him that at first looked like the ghost of a midget. Sadly, though, it was a cage he was holding with a small sheet over it. “Happy birthday to you,” he sang in a fake British accent, “Happy birthday to you.” Then he stopped before the part everybody likes best, the part that goes “Happy birthday dear,” and then says your name. But Egg just put the cage on Sam’s lap. She peeked in and saw what there was to see.

Oh God, or somebody, what is with the terrible things? If you made a world why not a better one? Why must we do the best we can if you didn’t, Mr. or Ms. Perfect? Could you not find a kiss for us when we’re up, O finder of lost pets, instead of the kicking when we’re down? With all the stories, all those lost birds heading south when it gets real cold, is this really how your work must manifest itself on Sam’s lap?

“The bird guy says his name is Lovey,” Egg said, “but you can change that. It’s a lovebird, sorry for being corny.”

“I thought those had to come in pairs,” Andrea said.

Sam put the sheet back down. “Shut up shut up shut up,” she said.

“Not this one,” Egg said. “It’s a rare bird—
ha!
—like you, Sam.”

“Fuck you,” Sam said.

There is a part of the first Katydids album that is somewhat inexplicably in Japanese, right toward the end. “Steven, would you excuse us for a minute?” Andrea said.

Egg stood up. Sam might have been able to stand it if he’d just walked into the kitchen but he stopped and took the box
marked “Hummingbird Feeder” with him, for something to do, and that clinched it. He was too dangerous to be in Sam’s story any longer.

“He’ll slay you,” Sam said very softly. “I know him, Andrea. You’ll go on some hike with his college buddy and they’ll just do it. You’ll vanish. You’ll disappear and I’ll be here alone on the couch listening to the Katydids album.”

“The album,” Andrea said ominously, “is almost over.”

Sam sighed and looked at the towel Andrea was wearing. It was impossible for her to imagine the ways terry cloth could be as beautiful as it was. “I know,” Sam said, “that I’m turning into a creep. I
know
it. But also, I’m right about Egg. You will vanish, Andrea, into the woods.”

Andrea leaned down and held both of Sam’s arms at the wrists with almost no pressure at all. “Listen to
me
,” she said. “You are
barely
being nice here. I
barely
like you the way this is going.” The
barelys
, Andrea and Sam both knew, were a lie, a tiff they couldn’t tape together. They looked at one another like a pair of parentheses. From the kitchen, over the Katydids, was the sound of Egg opening a box.

Sam got off the couch and took her new bird with her as she walked out of Egg and Andrea’s irrefutable happiness. She dragged herself down to the sidewalk, where outside like a miracle, gazing down at his shoes on the ground, was Mike, a friend of hers.

“Hey Sam,” Mike said. “Are you selling comics today? Is that a bird? Wanna see some ants?” Mike was ten years old and lived in the neighborhood with a sad and cautious dad.

“It’s a lovebird,” Sam said, planning on giving it to him. But first they would talk. “Do one thing for me, though. Mike, let’s not talk about the love part of the bird. Let’s just hang out.”

“But I know lots about love,” Mike said.

“You don’t know anything about love,” Sam said. “You’re young and you’ve had no experience. Your experience is like, how many kinds of gum have you had.”

“Seven,” Mike chimed in immediately. “I know about love. I got taught it by my girlfriend.”