The Temptation of Adam

by Dave Connis

  “I’m just cleaning stuff out I’m not wearing anymore,” he says. “I was trying to put some clothes away this morning and couldn’t get my drawers shut. Donation time.”

  I shrug. “Sounds fun, I guess.”

  We walk into the kitchen and he leans against the fridge. “I talked to Trey and Elliot’s parents last night.”

  “Yeah? I didn’t know all the parentals were at the cell phone communication friendship level.”

  “Well, we are now because we all had concerns about this trip.”

  “So why are you all letting us go?”

  “Because …” He sighs. “I guess we know you’ve all had a rough time the past few months. These guys are your friends, and I’ve wanted you to have friends for a while. As crazy a thing this is, you want to do something with friends and that’s a huge thing. And you’re all pushing each other to be better, too. You use phrases like ‘cell phone communication friendship level,’ so you’re obviously smart. Addy’s going to be there. Trey is almost twenty. I guess we’re just willing to take a chance that the trip will help you in some way.”

  “I know it will. This isn’t just some senior-year road trip where our destination is on the corner of Wasted and Laid.”

  “I know, I know. Still, make sure all of you follow the rules I gave you. If you don’t, I’m going to call Mrs. Coulter and have her cut off the funding.”

  “Like she’d do that,” I say. “She’s probably happy to have a house that isn’t filled with arguments all the time.”

  “If I have to bribe them by making Mr. Coulter a client, I will.”

  The Coulters don’t really know the full details of the trip. Dez went straight to her mom and told her she wanted to go check out a college in Nashville with some friends. Her mom then relayed the info to Mr. Coulter, who then promptly said no because it wasn’t Ivy League. So, because Mrs. Coulter actually has a sliver of a soul left, she bought an SUV and set up lodging in secret. Dez doesn’t feel bad about lying, but I sort of do, and if my dad talked to the Coulters at all, he’d realize Dez lied.

  “You’re making great progress in the seriousness of your threats.”

  “That may be the best thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  We hug. It’s cool we do that now. Maybe a lot of other guys don’t think it’s cool to hug your dad, but it reminds me in some strange way that we’re both in this humanity thing together.

  “Also, forgot to tell you the principal called and asked how things were going the other day.”

  “Did you tell her I’m an outstanding citizen, now?”

  “No, but I did tell her you’re honoring the structure we put in place.”

  After it became obvious Mr. Cratcher wasn’t going to get better, I wrote up pretty much the same proposal Mr. Cratcher gave, but with Addy and Dad as the “mentors.” Principal Johnson was chill with it, so I’ve still been going to the AA meetings and meeting with the Knights of Vice. I’ve even continued working on his album even though it was a little sad for a while just being in his house alone.

  “And?” I ask. Hoping. Praying. Salivating for him to say I can go back to school even though I know there’s not a reason I shouldn’t.

  “She wants to meet with you before the start of the semester, but she thinks the time has done enough for you that you’ll start back up after Christmas Break.”

  I pump my fist. “Awesome. So awesome. Okay, Addy’s leaving her truck here, and I’m parking Genevieve at Mr. Cratcher’s. We’re leaving from there.”

  “Alright, I’ll be sure to call you if I hear any news about him.”

  News = death.

  “Sounds good.” I grab my bags and open the door.

  “Drive safe, Adam. Please be responsible.”

  “We will.”

  —

  “Who were you talking too?” I ask Addy as she shoves her phone into her pocket.

  She pulls the passenger side sun visor down and uses the mirror to check her hair. “My boss. As soon as I leave, he falls into little bitty pieces.”

  “You are the wind beneath his wings?”

  “And I totally know that I’m his hero.”

  We pull into Mr. Cratcher’s driveway and park next to his lonely, tan Ford Taurus. Trey and Dez are already here. Trey’s looking around in our trip SUV—a sparkling blue Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid—and Dez is holding a shoebox full of stickers, putting them all over the trunk lid and bumper. I grab the bags from the backseat.

  “What are you doing?” I ask her.

  “If I’m being forced to use the blood SUV built on the backs of factory workers just trying to make it by, I’m going turn it into a normal person’s car. This way, if one of those factory workers sees us on the road, they won’t think it’s an SUV bought for a one-time Christmas break road trip.”

  “Wow,” Addy says, running a finger over some of the stickers. “Wake up on the dramatic manic pixie side of the bed this morning?”

  Dez glares at her. I know using the SUV makes her feel like she’s being like her parents, but it’s the best option for travel.

  I look at some of the stickers Dez has already put on. Of course, the popular coexist sticker—the one made up of all of the religion symbols—is smack dab in the top center of window frame. Next to that is some band I’ve never heard of. Next to that is a 26.2 sticker.

  “Have you even run a 5k?” I ask.

  “Would you two just support me instead of being annoying?” She holds out the box of stickers and I grab a handful.

  Addy points at the box. “Give me that ‘my other car is a car’ sticker.”

  “Where are you going to put it?” I ask.

  “Give me that one, too.” She points at one I’d just tossed to the side.

  “The one that says ‘your mom is watching you’? Are you seriously going to put that one up?”

  “Relax, Papi,” Addy says and disappears.

  “Why does Addy call you Papi?” Dez asks.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  Dez shrugs. “Ask Trey.”

  “I could probably just look it up.”

  “It’s a Latino term of endearment for little kids. My older sister still calls me Papi,” Trey says, dropping his bags by the back passenger wheel.

  I groan, then tip my head back and yell. “Addy, don’t call me Papi ever again.”

  She responds, but I have no idea where she is. “Then what am I going to call you?”

  “You could call him Chiquito instead!” Trey says, thinking he’s being helpful.

  “No! No, you can’t.” I turn back to Dez. “So, where’s the bumper sticker line between normal person and egotistical outdoorsman wanting the world to know he buys Patagonia underwear?”

  Dez pauses mid-stickering. “I didn’t think of that. I haven’t crossed it, have I? How did I not consider the possibility of this being a shrine to consumerism?”

  “What on earth are you two talking about?” Trey asks.

  “What do these stickers say to you?” I ask.

  Trey takes a step back and looks over the smorgasbord of sayings, names, and symbols. “Adventure. Pure adventure, and that the people inside are awesome.”

  Dez scoffs. “We can’t ask the optimist what he thinks. Where’s Elliot?”

  Trey looks at me with “do something” written all over his face.

  “Dez,” I say, “why don’t we pack the bags so when Elliot shows up, we can just throw his stuff inside and go? You’re not your family if you use the car. It’s okay.”

  Dez throws the box of stickers on the ground. “Fine.” She walks toward Mr. Cratcher’s house and disappears inside, leaving me and Trey to pack the bags.

  “She does that a lot, man,” Trey says.

  “What?”

  “The disappearing stuff.”

  “You can always tell when it’s going to happen.”

  “You can?”

  I place my backpack and computer bag against the back seat and then push Trey’s b
ag next to them.

  “Yeah, she never uses the word fine in any other context. It’s always fine, and then she walks away or hangs up.” I look at him with a smirk and stuff Dez’s bag into an empty corner. “At least she’s predictable, right?”

  He finally realizes I’m not talking out of frustration and pats me on the back with a laugh. “Yeah, man. Totally. You’ve got that going for you.”

  When Elliot arrives, he immediately asks if the car was bought used by a hippie, which pisses Dez off even more. He tells her “your manic pixie is showing,” which makes it even worse. I add a “Baby on Board” sticker to level out everything, because babies are the great levelers.

  Dez doesn’t agree.

  She throws her hands in the air. “Now it’s obvious we have no idea what we’re doing.”

  “Isn’t that perfect for us, though?”

  She stares at the stickers for at least another minute before saying, “It’s perfect, but I’m not the mother of that child.”

  Addy finally comes back and puts her sticker on the bumper of the car. “Here you go, Dez. This will cheer you up.”

  I look at it. She’s combined the two stickers with some clever cuts so they look like one. It says: “My other car is your mom.”

  Dez laughs and then points at it. “If we did pass the line, that just brought us back.” She hugs Addy with a big smile and says, “You’re the most amazing person in the world.”

  “Well, thanks,” Addy says, winking at me.

  One of the rules instated by the Knights of Vice parentals was that anyone under the age of eighteen can’t drive longer than five hours in a row. So, we set up a rotating order that starts with me driving, Dez in the passenger seat, and Elliot between Trey and Addy in the back. Dez was the one smart enough to figure out that if we rotate to the right, she and I will sit next to each other for more than half of the trip.

  I pull onto I-90 East, which we’ll be on until Iowa. I’m a little nervous about driving five hours on a highway. I’ve only ever been on a highway about thirty minutes, but I don’t tell anyone that. Dez declares the front seat passenger gets to pick the music, and she plugs an aux cable into her phone. A warm folk song comes on. I’ve never been an avid music listener, so I have no idea who it is, but the music fits the mood: the glowing morning sun beckoning us to drive into it, the warmth of Dez’s hand on my knee, the buzz of tires spinning on and on. In this hallelujah moment, I think we all feel like we’re more than addicts. When we start replacing words in movie titles with poop (Indiana Jones and the Poop of Doom), I feel my age for the first time since Mark died. I’m in love with it all.

  Dez leans over to me and whispers, “I could swear I love you.”

  “You probably do,” I whisper back.

  She snickers and hits me in the chest.

  “I think you’re alright,” I say, and she just rolls her eyes.

  I smile, enjoying this momentary collision of beauty and chaos.

  LIKE, RIGHT NOW?

  We stop for gas on the border of Washington and Montana, right past Spokane, in a suburb called Liberty Lake. I take Dez’s debit card and fill up the SUV while everyone else goes inside to perform the traditional we’re-stopped-but-we-don’t-necessarily-have-to-go-to-the-bathroom look around the convenience store. I call my dad to tell him where we are and that none of us have spontaneously combusted.

  A minute or so later, Elliot comes out with a bag of Bugles and two bottles of Gatorade. I leave him with the pump and run inside because I actually have to pee.

  We pull away from the gas station with Trey as the driver and me in the passenger’s seat. He sits in the driver’s seat like an old woman, back completely rigid. Both hands latched onto the steering wheel like it’s about to fall out the window. For an optimist, and for someone who’s been driving three years longer than I have, he’s very distrusting of other drivers. Every time someone changes lanes by/near him, he rides the opposite edge of the lane and curses. Addy starts calling him Abuela (grandmother), which everyone else adopts pretty quick.

  Dez passes me a bag of Sour Patch Kids. I pick through them, looking for the yellow ones.

  “Who on earth picks out yellow ones?” she asks.

  “That is pretty weird, brother,” Elliot says.

  “It’s because I always used to eat everything but the yellow ones,” Addy says. “I conditioned him to like the reject flavors. You’re all welcome.”

  I lift up the Sour Patch Kids into Trey’s peripheral and his talons slowly release the steering wheel so he can give me an open palm.

  “Have you ever considered just using ‘bro,’ Elliot?” Trey asks.

  Elliot puffs a condescending burst of air through his nostrils. “Have you ever considered not being optimistic?”

  “That’s not even the same thing,” Trey says, looking over his shoulder again, and again, and again before getting into the travel lane.

  “Please watch as the Abuela attempts to change lanes,” Addy says. “View his persistence in checking his blind spot.”

  “Hey,” Trey says, “I care about the lives in this car so much that I check multiple times. Adam doesn’t even use a turn signal. You can thank me when we arrive safely.”

  “Awww,” Addy says, “Guys, look at how much he cares. Everyone give him a hug. Come on.”

  Addy leans forward and so does Dez.

  Trey doesn’t look at them. “Not while I’m driving. Stop it, not while—girls, stop. Stop! Not while I’m driving.”

  “Mastermind Dez, go over our plan again?” I ask.

  “Okay,” Dez says excitedly, as though she’s been waiting for someone to ask this question. “I thought we’d start by checking the police station that handled the crime scene. If that comes up short, we can head over to where the Abbey Road US studio used to be. There’s a new recording studio in there, so they might have an idea of how we could find it.”

  “What if neither place has it?” Elliot asks.

  “Then we do some sleuthing. I brought a bunch of Mr. Cratcher’s lyrics and journals, and a letter he wrote to Leonard Cohen where he calls himself both Colin Cratcher and The Chaos Writer. Mr. Cratcher’s been writing and co-writing songs since the seventies. I’m sure there’s someone in Nashville who knows about him who can help us.”

  “Wait … where’s our hotel?” I ask.

  Dez rolls her eyes. “It’s not a hotel.”

  “What does that mean?” Trey asks.

  “Mom rented us a mansion in Brentwood.”

  Dez might be pissed that her family is rich, and she might want to have nothing to do with them—I can totally understand why—but the rest of us are definitely not upset with their money. I’d never tell her that, of course. Also, in hindsight, I’d take back the sweet-goodness-we-have-a-mansion-to-sleep-in look that I gave Addy, Trey, and Elliot a second ago and use it when Dez wasn’t staring directly at me.

  “To hell with all of you and your consumerism,” she snaps. “I’m going to sleep in the backyard and only step inside to track dirt onto the sparkling Italian marble floor.”

  Addy rolls her eyes.

  “Why don’t you just rent your own hotel room?” Trey asks.

  “Shut up, Abuela,” she says.

  I know that the rest of us would be laughing if we wouldn’t be eaten by the tiger in the backseat, but laughing at Dez Coulter when she’s attempting to be as different from her family as possible is an honest-to-God Mr. Cratcher life and death decision.

  —

  Elliot stops on the side of the road around eleven. I’m the only other person awake, and it’s only because Dez is sleeping with her head in my lap and I don’t want to miss a second of being able to play with her hair while she sleeps.

  “We should’ve stopped to get a hotel in Billings,” he says. “I didn’t know when that gas station guy said there wasn’t much past Billings, Montana, he literally meant nothing.”

  “Well, we didn’t follow I-90 all the way. Google said it was quick
er to take this middle-of-no where road than to dip into Wyoming.”

  “Well, Google should warn people when they’re about to enter Middle-fucking-Earth.”

  “Are you too tired to drive?”

  “Yeah, I know I’ve only done four out of my five hours, but I’m going to fall asleep if I keep going.”

  “I’m good to go,” Dez says, stirring below my hand. As soon as she sits up, I feel the bliss drain out of me. Now I could fall asleep in seconds.

  Addy doesn’t lean up or open her eyes, but she says, “It’s my turn next, I should do it.”

  Dez shakes her head. “Nah, Addy, I’ve got it.”

  “You sure?” Addy asks.

  “Yeah.” She arches her back in a stretch. I know it’s stalker-ish to watch her, but I do. She catches me watching, but smiles. “Did I have a blaze of light moment?”

  “Sweet mercy, yes.”

  She laughs. It sounds like daytime.

  “Should we wake up Trey?” I ask. “Keep the rotation going?”

  “Nah,” Elliot says. “The guy’s out cold. I accidentally spilled half my Coke on him about thirty minutes ago and he didn’t flinch.”

  Elliot takes my seat and I get to do my time on the hump.

  “Welcome back, Elliot,” Addy says.

  I sigh in disappointment.

  “What?” he asks me.

  “You’re not as beautiful as Dez.”

  “Better get used to it, brother. You get this face for the next five hours. Maybe you’ll get used to my attractiveness if you let me sleep in your lap.” He starts leaning toward my legs.

  I push against him. “Get out of here.”

  “Aw, you guys are adorable. Aren’t they adorable, Addy?” Dez says, putting the car in gear and pulling back onto the road.

  —

  I wake to the sound of a cry. At first I think I’m hearing things because the cry is so muffled it sounds like an extra whine from the car tires, but then Dez brings a hand up to her face. I sit up and check if anyone else is awake before saying anything.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper.

  She wipes her nose on her sleeve. “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I just want to be better and I want to never go home. I want to be here, in this moment, forever. As soon as we get home, the adventure’s over and I have to think about the chaos again.”