For several days, Carter maintains publicly that he had planned the dam to prevent high water. When meteorologists point out that there is no such danger, Carter publishes Adams’ map, with the altered isohyet. “Flash floods are an imminent possibility,” he says. “We’re fortunate there have been no disasters so far.”
Palmer flies back from Washington for a news conference. “My record and my conscience are clear,” he tells the press.
Adams fears an indictment for falsifying documents. Jill feeds him Pepto-Bismol, Nyquil, Excedrin.
Pamela has lost eight pounds. Her right elbow is cracked. She won’t say much about her ten days in England (though she does give Adams her receipts): mud and rain, a few arrests. She wasn’t among those taken to jail. “Dissent’s the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do,” she says. She seems discouraged, a bit shaken.
She’s been playing tricks on the children. She bought a smoke alarm, Toby says, and the other night around two it went off. He hustled Deidre out of bed and they ran into the hall. There was Pamela on a chair, pressing a button on the alarm, making it buzz. She smiled at the kids, walked into her bedroom, and shut the door.
“Maybe she was just testing it,” Adams says.
“In the middle of the night?”
That’s not all, Toby tells him. The day she got home she asked him to heat some roast beef for her in the microwave. He opened the oven door and was startled to see a shiny face. He dropped the roast beef on the floor. She had placed a clown mask — part of the costume she had bought months ago to tease Deidre — upright in the oven. She stood in the kitchen doorway, smiling, as Toby picked up the meat.
Near the cemetery in the least lit end of town fireflies signal their names. Again. No one dead bothers him and he doesn’t think past the overhead hum of the wires.
Night is a flat color through which he’s stared at his country. In quiet times, when he was a kid, he poked among car scraps in junkyards on the edge of town, looking for radios that would sing to him from someplace down the highway.
In the kitchen of the dance hall down the road, an all-night cook sends flour into the air beneath a ceiling fan. Adams can just make out the dance hall door from here. He delights, imagining the arcs of dough and the sugar he could chew until it hardened like tobacco in his mouth.
The sky’s insistent clouds; the cemetery trees, top heavy, wrapped with iron to keep them from splitting; the clasp of his own ribs. He’s happy about the snow that won’t fall again tonight. On calm nights it’s possible even to be happy about the earth, though it’s packed with victims and hides its face in an accident of rock.
His children will take care of their mother. He will take care of himself. Rosa’s screen door scrapes open in wind, a sound that reminds him of home.
“Sometimes, in the middle of a séance, the dead start talking all at once,” Rosa says. “I can’t tell one voice from another.”
I used to powder my face in the morning light through serrated curtains the green and gold sheen of the mirror hush twenty bucks I says to him for the gun in that case Smith and Wesson was a pisser wasn’t it I’d say so yes train tickets grilled ham and cheese colanders seed packets a copy of The Masses a toy rickshaw with a paper umbrella for God’s sakes hush that man could drink I haven’t been thirsty in what was it like being thirsty like making love to yourself and stopping before you were through I regret to inform you opening day Ebbets Field my heart soared like a pigeon purple martins came we built a house for them hush now hush up but the sparrows made a nest in your friends and neighbors have nominated you for tomatoes the Columbia Encyclopedia Robert’s Rules of Order black olives matchbook covers most sincerely crossword puzzles yellow paper I was sixty years old in what was it like being sixty years old not enough get me some more a shaken Mrs. Wilson informed her children good-bye honey I love you will you please be quiet keep frozen broke out in hives too soon can’t rush fifty amperes warmest regards insert part A into part B then shhhh three dollars and fifty vaya con Dios did you twice at least no what was it like I don’t remember hush.
Elgin County’s legal staff is no match for Mai-low and Vox, not to mention Palmer’s Washington pals. Not only is the dam approved, it receives additional funding from the Bureau of Reclamation. All objections from the Elgin Utility Company are swept away, as are the protests of the individuals who had originally opposed the county.”
“Everything in its place, hmm?” Carter says, signing a document that effectively terminates one-third of On-Line’s employees. “With our operations streamlined, we’ll show an even greater profit margin next year.”
Under new policy, Jordan’s position in the Records Office is absorbed by the clerical staff. Ever since the accounting department reported to Carter, rumors have been thick that Jordan was caught trying to embezzle two to three thousand dollars from the political action fund. Adams asks Carter about him.
“Unstable. Mayer warned me. I should’ve fired him long ago.” If he suspects Jordan of stealing the money, he doesn’t show it.
Adams stops by Jordan’s office to say good-bye. “You’re going to have to find another boogeyman now, Sam. I’ll be three thousand miles away.” Adams wishes him luck.
At five o’clock he stands at his office window. Jordan, carrying a small box containing articles from his desk drawer, steps onto a bus. The doors close behind him and he’s gone.
Each friend is a light and you stare at your friends. The dark moves in. It never leaves. He sits here thinking of his debts.
The worst dreams come back like a series of bad decisions. Each has a face he can recognize: his father reading in a square of light, his mother smelling of milk, the rude and perfect taste of girls who circled his house in the dark: I’ll help you don’t worry just think how long you’ve waited.
Think of the friends who’ve looked to you, how often your help didn’t matter. They fuck themselves up, you don’t see them again. It’s what you do all day.
Jill has let herself in with a copy of Adams’ house key. Adams comes home carrying two sacks of groceries.
“Stay out of the kitchen,” he tells her. “Le Grand Diner coming up.”
He boils rice, bakes chicken, steams clams, mussels, peppers, tosses salad, mixes a spicy oil and vinegar dressing, butters a baguette. He sets the table with cloth napkins, lights two red candles, pours champagne. “I’ve been given an international assignment,” he tells her.
Jill nods. “I knew it was a matter of time.” She helps him carry the plates to the table. “Where?”
“Svalbard. Near Greenland.” Adams passes her the salad.
“What are you doing there?”
“Carter made a deal with Comtex for exploratory mapping. They think there are undiscovered oil deposits on the island.”
“How long?”
“Six months.”
“Whew.” She lowers her glass. “Can I visit?”
Adams smiles. “Four weeks after I get there, the sea becomes too icy for ships to navigate, and there are no commercial flights.”
“Well, you know, your papers will have to pass my desk,” Jill says.
Adams pours them each a glass of Amaretto. They retire to the bedroom, undress each other slowly in the reflected light from the window, and sit together on the bed.