by Dave Connis
“A: We haven’t even got there yet, and B: We’ll have each other.”
“Only an addict would say B. We’ve been over this, Adam.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I meant, okay, so that is what I meant, but people say that kind of stuff all the time when they’re—when they like someone.”
“But we aren’t people.”
“But we’re us.”
“Exactly.” She isn’t crying anymore. Now she’s a tamer version of her indignant self.
“We don’t have to stay the same. We change. Both you and I know that. Doesn’t that mean we’re in a constant state of being different? If we’re always changing, doesn’t that mean we can never just be addicts? An object in motion stays in motion?”
“An addict in motion stays an addict.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say. “I can’t believe that.”
“I can. When all I feel is the push for another buzz, sometimes that’s all I believe.”
I lean back in my seat and press my head against the window. Am I just another buzz to her? Does she expect me to wear off like all the other buzzes? Will I?
“So what does that make us?”
She clenches her hands tight around the steering wheel. “That’s what I’ve been saying, Adam, like, that’s all I’ve been saying.”
How can we have a shelf life? Humans don’t have a “consume by” date.
Human ≠ milk.
Human = life.
There has to be a difference somewhere. I know there’s a difference somewhere, and I vow to find it before we expire.
On a completely different topic, ever notice how things you shouldn’t think about start as thumbnails and then turn into movies? Like porn? Like, right now?
MILLIONS
To keep Elliot awake on the final stretch of the trip—100 miles from Nashville—Dez reads Fahrenheit 451 aloud. It’s not at all what I thought it would be. I had a story about actual modern-day firemen in my head, but this is about a futuristic fireman named Montag who burns books because they were banned. It only took three sentences after reading the first line for us to realize what the first line meant.
“It was a pleasure to burn” = the main character literally likes setting things on fire.
Dez must’ve read the first page at least three times to make sure there wasn’t a better meaning. When she couldn’t find one, she looked at me, her eyelids halfway over her eyes, and said, “This is why I don’t read whole books.” She was so pissed she probably would have stopped reading if she hadn’t been doing it for Elliot.
It is epically disappointing that “It was a pleasure to burn” was a literal statement. I really wanted it to be a description of how you could feel about something and not about being a pyromaniac.
Dez flips to the back of the book to read the last line. She gives me the same disgusted half open eyes. She’s disappointed.
“The last line is ‘when we reach the city’?” She stares at me silently for at least thirty seconds before she screams, “What. A. Bloody. Disaster!” Dez rolls down the window, and with a frustrated groan, flings the book at the highway guard rail. The SUV falls silent.
“Well,” I say, “that book will not be reaching the city.”
Dez looks at me, lips flat, but she begins to laugh harder than I’ve ever seen her. She’s contagious, and we spend the next few miles in repeat-the-line-that-made-us-laugh hysteria.
—
The only thing any of us can talk about at the moment is the building in the Nashville skyline that looks like a Batman mask. We’ve hit downtown Nashville, but it’s the tail end of rush hour so we’re naming all the buildings in the Nashville skyline and giving them personalities.
“Look at that big glass,” Dez says.
“I bet Harvey is proud of his glass,” I say.
“He thinks he’s God’s gift to all the female buildings because of his glass,” Elliot adds.
“He spends at least five hours in the morning on his glass,” Trey says.
“He dated Google Glass?” Addy adds.
We all shrug and nod.
Fifteen minutes on the other side of Nashville, Dez finally tells us to get off on the next exit. After some right turns, some wrong turns, some playful insults, and some non-playful insults, we’re driving into a quiet neighborhood with houses that look like they were built for the emperor of the universe: columns, grand doors, gates, that kind of thing. I’ve never been to Tennessee before, but apparently Brentwood’s a cloister of rich, Top 40 artists from the last fifty years.
Dez stares at her phone and then points to a driveway at the end of the cul-de-sac. “God, this is disgusting.” She rolls her eyes at the houses. “Elliot, pull up to the gate, everyone remember this code: 4478.”
“2178?” Elliot repeats.
“No, 4478,” Dez responds.
“Wait, is it 2478 or 4487?”
“Elliot, really? 4478.”
Elliot pulls up to the keypad of the gate. He tries to catch a glimpse of the house, but all any of us can see are trees.
“What’s the code again?” he asks.
“Good lord,” she snaps, “4.4.7.8. Forty-four, seventy-eight. Four. Followed by another four. Followed by a seven, and then an eight. 4.4.7.8”
Addy starts singing, “Eight six seven five three oh nine,” under her breath.
I see Trey wink at Elliot. “Can you repeat that? I’m just going to write it down for him.”
Dez’s jaw drops in disgust, and everyone who isn’t Dez laughs.
“To hell with all of you.”
I grab her hand and kiss it. She rolls her eyes and smiles.
I’m pretty sure the driveway is part of the Appalachian Trail. I feel like we’ve been on it for half the trip. It winds into trees and oblivion. When I start expecting to see the ocean, I finally catch sight of a few house lights between swaying limbs.
We pull up to our vacation mansion. It has columns like a lot of the others do, but it looks a little more rustic. It’s as though Dez’s mom wanted her to stay in a place that wasn’t architecturally different from her house.
“Seeing how this driveway brought us all the way to Florida,” Trey says, “let’s go to Disney before we unpack.”
Elliot blows a puff of air out of his nose. “For real.”
We park the car in front of the door and proceed with the just-arrived-to-the-destination traditions of stretching, screaming in relief, and more stretching.
As Trey and I unload the bags, Dez hands me a key.
“Here’s the key to the house. I’m taking my stuff to the backyard.”
“Are you really going to camp out?” I ask. “It’s December. It’s like, forty degrees out here.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Dez …”
“Adam …”
“Elliot …” Trey adds.
“Trey …” Elliot says.
“Addy …” Addy says, grabbing her bag and walking toward the house.
I throw my hands in the air. “Fine. Do what you want; you’re not my wife. But I bet millions you’ll be inside before our trip is over.”
“You’re on, Hawthorne,” she yells, walking toward the side of the house. “Millions.”
BIRTHDAY PRESENT TO MYSELF
The inside of our vacation mansion looks imported. I think the designer just walked around pointing at places, yelling “Italian marble! Italian leather! South African granite!”
Addy is already in here somewhere, but the place is so big it’d take me years to find her. Trey, Elliot, and I drop our bags at the door and, as all wizened travelers do, run to the fridge.
A vacation fridge is like a prophet. It can tell you if the trip is the chosen one, or if it’s just another day. For example, most trips I’ve been on with my dad had a mini-bar. Therefore, the sign seemed to say the trip would be fun, but there were some checks and balances to make sure the tri
p’s bill didn’t get too high. A trip to a place with no fridge meant business. No frippery, souvenirs, or super-sized meals.
As we open the fridge door, I swear beams of heavenly light surround us before we can see inside. Each shelf and drawer is stocked with everything imaginable and unimaginable. The omen is obvious.
We’re on the trip of our lives.
“How is TV lobster dinner even possible?” Elliot asks.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “America, Elliot. America.”
When the fridge starts beeping at us for having the doors open too long, we scamper off to claim our rooms. Elliot and Trey grab two downstairs, but I find the stairwell, go upstairs, and get one facing the backyard so I can watch Dez. I want to make sure she doesn’t freeze to death.
I unpack (dump my bag out onto the floor) and then absentmindedly pull out my laptop to check my email and Twitter even though I was checking on my phone for most of the trip. A few minutes pass and I notice a thick heat filling my cheeks. A mental fog leaves me and I realize I’m staring at two naked lesbians. I stand up so fast my chair tips over. How did I not even know what I was doing? How is it possible to switch off like that?
“Adam?” Addy says from my door. She must see what’s on my screen because she says, “Woah, Papi. I guess I’m going to see that on your accountability report.”
I close the page as my cheeks fill with the heat of shame. This is the first time I’ve ever been caught.
I look at her. She has a half-cocked “I’m sorry” look on her face.
“It just … happened,” I say. “I didn’t even notice.”
“I don’t mean to like, be a bitch when I say this, but I honestly don’t understand how you can not notice.”
“You know how when you’re out with people somewhere, and there’s a small lull in the conversation and, somehow, there’s something about that silence that pulls at something inside of you, and before you know it, you’re pulling your phone out to check your email or Facebook?”
Addy nods and sits on the bed, holding her hand out for my computer. “Yeah. It’s like compulsory. Just a thing you do.”
“It’s like that.”
“Well, I’m going to hold on to your computer, then,” she says. “Let me go put it in my room, then I want to call a council.”
She gets up and walks out of my room. I notice her phone lying on the comforter when it vibrates. Looks like a text from ex-boyfriend Brent:
I’ll never love again because of you.
I know I shouldn’t, but I pick it up, ready to dig into the guy for tormenting my Addy, I accidentally click on the wrong conversation.
Thanks for bringing up that paperwork.
No problem.
The company isn’t the same without you.
I check who the conversation is with. It’s Addy’s boss, Todd Tamlin. Why would he say the company isn’t the same if she’s still working for them?
Aw. You’re sweet.
Thanks for understanding why I had to go.
No problem. Taylor Isbester is a friend of mine.
He owns Isbester Construction based in Bellevue.
Give him a call and tell him to call me for a rec.
If you ever move back, call me. I’ll hire you.
Thanks so much, Todd.
I look at the text over and over. This doesn’t make sense. Why would her boss be telling … Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
I read the conversation again. Her boss said the company isn’t the same because Addy quit. I don’t know where she’s going when she “goes to work” or why she’s pretending that she’s still working, but that’s not the point.
She quit her job for me.
She quit her job so she could be with me.
My Addy.
I slide open the text from Brent.
This is Adam, Addy’s brother.
If you ever text my sister again, I will find you and beat you to pieces.
Don’t blame her for your inability to love.
How you love is your own choice and she does a damn good job of it.
I block him and delete the text. I know it’s something she’s wanted to do but hasn’t because she’s too nice. I hear her footsteps marching toward my room, so I lock the screen and put the phone back on the comforter like I never touched it.
“Papi,” she says, appearing in the door. She sees her phone on the bed and quickly comes over to retrieve it. “Come on, I have a proposal for you Knights of Vice people.”
I get up and follow her without saying a word. She obviously doesn’t want me to know, so I’m not going to bring it up, which is probably a good thing considering I could never repay her for coming back.
She came back.
For me.
—
“Knights of Vice assemble!” Addy yells. “Come to me, my darlings!”
I find the back door—though its size makes it more portal to the universe than back door—and push it open. “Dez, what are you doing?”
I don’t see her, but her voice cuts through the darkness. “Setting up my tent?”
“Addy wants to talk to us. If you come to the door, we’ll come out to help you after.”
“I’m not stepping near that house,” she yells.
“Dez, stop being ridiculous,” Addy says, walking out onto to the porch. “Just come here.”
“No,” Dez says.
Addy shakes her head. “Go get the guys and meet me at the Stubborn One’s tent.”
I run down the hallway, knocking on every door. “Hey guys, get out here.”
Trey appears in the hallway and eventually Elliot does, too.
“What’s going on?” Elliot asks.
“Addy wants to talk to us. She has some sort of proposal.”
Trey doesn’t even wait for me to tell him where to go. He just walks toward the living room, leaving Elliot and I to watch him wander aimlessly as he looks for his obsession.
We go outside and stand next to Dez’s half set-up tent.
“Wow, Dez,” Trey says. “I figured you’d still be figuring out what the shape of the tent was supposed to be.”
“Girls can put up tents, too,” she snaps. “Besides, this isn’t my first rodeo. I lived in this thing for three months in middle school.”
“On purpose?” Addy asks.
“I ran away after my dad forgot to take me to soccer practice for the fifth time. Neither of my parents wanted to ‘affirm my deviant behavior’ so they didn’t come for me, which put us in a standoff. I wasn’t going to come back until they acknowledged they were being assholes, and they weren’t coming to get me until I got accepted to Harvard and pooped gold.”
“How did you eat?” I ask.
“I stole family-sized bags of Cheetos from random gas stations on the way home from school. I also slept over at a friend’s house a lot.”
Trey and Elliot take the rainfly from her and start attaching it.
“Okay, well, while you guys are doing that, I’m going to propose—” Addy says.
Trey throws his fist into the air. “Yes! My charm worked. Chica, I do.”
Addy smiles but shakes her head. “Here’s my proposal. Well, I guess it’s more of a reminder than a proposal. You guys are all here together. I know you’ve talked a little bit about this, but I think you should really make sure you look at this trip as more than just finding an album. Use it as like, an intervention camp. You know how The Biggest Loser contestants go to a ranch to fight against their obesity? Well, this is your Biggest Loser ranch, and you can try your hardest to set some good accountability habits while you’re here.”
She looks at us, watching for any objection. “Therefore, I make the motion that no one’s allowed to be alone in their rooms until they’re falling over with sleep. Actually, maybe it wouldn’t hurt if everyone just slept in the same place. It might help break the habit of going to your vice at night, which I know Adam struggles with. Thoughts?”
Trey nods. “That’s a great idea
, Addy. She’s so smart guys. Sleeping in the same spot will help. I’m sure of it. Let’s sleep on the porch! That’d be awesome.”
“I mean, we did tell our parents that this trip would help our addictions if they let us go.”
Dez looks at me but says nothing.
“I have an idea,” Elliot says, looking at both of us. “Give Addy your electronic shit.”
“But we have to call our parents every day,” I say.
“I mean, I can call Dad,” Addy says. “Or we can just leave one phone out on the kitchen counter. We’ll notice if it’s missing. The guys can give me their laptops and phones. Dez, you’ve apparently defeated porn so it’s up to you what you want to do with your stuff. It might be good just to hand it over anyway. Disconnect for a bit.”
Addy saying Dez has “defeated porn” sounds so definite. Has she actually defeated porn, or did she just move on? Now that I think about it, what is she hung up on currently? Has she told me? I remember the comment she made the first time she called me. The one about her sponsor saying she was more like a lost teenager than an addict. Is she hiding something? Is she just a lost teenager, or does she really just cycle through things so fast it’s impossible to keep up? I haven’t seen anything about her that screams addiction right now. I’ll have to ask her about it.
“You don’t need to hide yours either then,” I say to Elliot.
He shrugs. “Just because I’m not addicted to porn doesn’t mean I haven’t looked at it. It’s probably messed up some of my views on relational shit, anyway.”
“Gosh, man,” I say to Elliot. “I’m glad you have an optimist for a best friend.”
Trey nods viciously. “He’s a work in progress, Adam.”
“He’s a work for sure,” Addy says.
Elliot shakes his head. “I’m going to tie you all to your beds and make you watch porn.” He lets out a chuckle and we all start laughing, but then he stops right in the middle of a bellow and makes his face go emotionless.
Trey shivers. “I hate that. You know I hate it when you do that.”
Elliot laughs again and then makes his face go flat.