Sometimes William calls to them from his ladder. Addie can hear him—“Beautiful morning, ladies”—but they never answer. They just go on smoking, eating, blinking like they’ve never seen the sun.
Swifts
William has been watching them all summer, counting. He wants to show someone. He wants to show Addie.
He picks her up at quarter to seven. The evening is hot, thick, no breeze. His truck’s air conditioner doesn’t work, so he turns on the fan he keeps clipped to the dash. When Addie gets in, it blows her scent around — sweet, soft, papery, like books. She’s wearing a loose dress, green like her eyes.
“Where are we going?” she says.
“You’ll see.”
He drives to the empty parking lot on Wilmington Street across from the Hudson Belk building. The store has been closed a long time. The windows are full of naked mannequins with vacant, dreamy faces. William parks, gets out, takes his cooler from behind his seat, opens the tailgate of the truck, and lays out a picnic supper: egg salad sandwiches, pickles, ice-cold bottles of Jamaican ginger ale. He wonders if a man has ever made Addie a picnic. He opens a bottle of ginger ale and hands it to her and she tilts her head back to drink. Her neck is long and thin. The bottle sweats.
“Mm,” she says. “Spicy.”
The sky is changing. Dusk is setting in.
They eat their sandwiches. “This is the best egg salad I’ve ever had,” Addie says, “and I’m an egg salad connoisseur.” Her face is luminous. She looks like nothing could ever make her happier than to be sitting on this tailgate in this parking lot eating this sandwich. William still hasn’t told her what they’re waiting for. She doesn’t even know they’re waiting.
“Kalamata olives,” he says, “chopped fine. That’s my secret.”
At exactly seven-twenty, there is a loud whirring overhead and the sky clouds over, full of shadows, tiny black zeppelins.
“What are they?” Addie says, dabbing egg salad from the corner of her mouth.
“Chimney swifts.”
The birds fly in a giant storm cloud toward the Hudson Belk chimney and begin their wide circling. They look like a cyclone. For five, ten minutes, they spiral down.
William watches Addie’s flickering eyes, the tiny shadows swimming across her face.
“There must be a thousand of them,” she says.
“Four thousand.”
“You’re making that up.”
He shakes his head. He doesn’t want her to think he knows too much.
“How do they all fit? Where do they perch?”
“They don’t perch. They don’t have feet, just little hooks that clamp onto the mortar.”
“What do they do in there?”
“Nothing. Sleep. They’re too crowded to move. They’re too close even to mate.”
They sit and watch as gradually the birds disappear into the chimney. Light drains from the sky. William starts to gather up the remains of their picnic.
“Wait,” Addie says. She looks sad, slightly dazed, the way William always feels when the birds are in for the night. “Is there anything you don’t pay attention to?” she asks him. Then she leans over and kisses him on the cheek, a kiss so quick and light he will later wonder if it really happened.
Jackpot Land
Midnight. The sodium vapor light in the parking lot shines into Roland’s living room, giving it an amber cast. Otherwise the apartment is dark. Roland is sitting on the sofa, holding the telephone in his lap, receiver pressed to one ear. He counts rings, wonders if she’ll pick up. He wishes he hadn’t quit smoking. He could kill for a cigarette.
Three, four. How many until her machine clicks on?
He tried her old number first, in Greensboro, but it was no longer in service. He talked to three different operators before he found a listing in Raleigh.
He’s about to hang up when the ringing stops. “Addie,” he says before she can speak, “guess who this is.”
“Hello?” she says.
“It’s me. Roland Rhodes.”
“How many Rolands do you think I know?” she says.
He laughs. He can’t tell if she’s making a joke.
“So,” he says, “how are you?”
“Asleep.”
He wonders if she’s alone. She sounds alone. There’s no background voice asking “Who is it, what time is it?”
“What time is it?” she says.
“It’s late. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called.”
“What’s wrong, Roland? Is something wrong?”
“You’re mad.”
“I’m not mad. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’ll call back when you’re awake. I’m sorry, baby.”
He hangs up, walks to the kitchen, pulls a Dixie cup out of the dispenser and fills it with Jack Daniels. The cup has a Donald Duck on it. Elle hung the dispenser next to the sink where Dusty could reach it. Dusty likes to pull his own cups.
It’s been almost a week since they left. Roland didn’t understand at first what had happened. He’d come home Monday night so Elle could hand Dusty off and go to work as usual, but she and Dusty weren’t there, and there was no note. He called the restaurant. He called Elle’s friends. No one had seen her. Finally, not knowing what else to do, he called the police. They patched him through to a woman officer. “My wife and son are missing,” he said. “Are their clothes missing?” the policewoman asked. He had to put down the phone and go look. It embarrassed him to have to say, “Yes. She took clothes. She took the suitcases.”
Two days later, Elle called. She had taken Dusty to Reno. They were staying with her aunt and uncle, she said. Her uncle was going to get her a job in a casino.
“You’re in Reno,” Roland said, but saying it didn’t make it real.
“Yeah.”
“Jackpot land.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” she said. “This isn’t about money.”
“Then what?”
“It’s you and me, Roll. We’re just killing time.”
“That’s not fair,” he said.
She was quiet. He could hear her breathing, waiting. He knew if he said the right thing he could change her mind.
He said, “You can’t just take him.”
She hung up.
He has spent a week wondering what to do. He can’t go to a lawyer. No money. He can’t go to his parents — who wants to deal with Pet on top of everything else? He needs somebody to help him figure things out. Somebody smart. Somebody who gets him, who’ll be nice. He doesn’t know many nice people.
Addie was dreaming when the phone rang, and the ringing became part of her dream. Then Roland’s voice became part of the dream. It was a dream she’d had before: Roland calling, wanting something. As always, before she could wake up, he was gone.
Now she can’t sleep. The traffic light outside her window is blinking amber. The light makes a sound when it blinks, a tiny wet click, the sound an eyelid would make if you could hear it opening and closing.
She picks up the phone again and presses star-sixty-nine. A machine answers. “We’re sorry,” the voice says, “the last number that called yours is not known. This call was received on July twenty-eighth, nineteen ninety-seven, at two fifty-four a.m. Please hang up now.”
She goes to her desk and tries the Internet but finds only one Roland Rhodes, the president of a chemical company in Kansas City. There’s a picture of him on his company website, a gray-haired man with a thin mustache. His company makes pesticides. He shows up on other websites, too. He’s very active in the pest control community, lecturing at conferences, giving money to agricultural schools. The secretary-treasurer of United Producers, Formulators, and Distributors. Not the kind of man who would sit up late at night calling old girlfriends. Or whatever she is to her Roland Rhodes, who still uses both names with her, in case she has forgotten him.