Adverbs

by Daniel Handler

  It would be a perfect thing to have on the radio as Allison followed Steven down the road, but in fact she had a different song going on. The song was a hit from a more recent era, although not a song that Allison liked particularly, and the lyrics kept her absent company as she kept her hands on the wheel and looked through the windshield and saw what was down the road, as sure as the money she’d spent. Maybe Steven wouldn’t quit after all, or maybe he’d come to a Graduate Studies party anyway—in either case that would be the next time she would see him. They wouldn’t get along, exactly, but they would stand together in equal scorn for Bernice and the other Steven, and leave early for a bar that still had ashtrays. Or maybe it would be a copy shop, the only one in South San Francisco The Industrial City. She’d be making copies of something—the song loped to the chorus, and Allison realized with embarrassment that of course it was poetry she’d be copying—and he’d stroll in with a poster of his band. They’d make out, Steven’s tongue sour from smoke but worthwhile. Bickering—there was plenty of it in her future, and an old plaid couch he probably owned, the cushions flat and veiny like water lilies. An angry ex-girlfriend to run into, and a time when he would be three hours late and not at all sorry. Would she be pregnant? Allison could not see a baby but boy oh boy oh boy oh boy could she see herself throwing up. She could see the future like an icy prophetess in an old movie, muttering truths that were already printed on three sheets of paper. Allison saw everything, and then, right then in the immediate future, something happened that she hadn’t predicted. Steven’s car signaled like he was winking at her, and slowed down and stopped by the side of the dark, dark road. So of course Allison had to stop too. “When I was crazy,” the radio explained, “I thought you were great.”

  The song is called “It’s All I Can Do.”

  Steven’s car went quiet, and Allison, ten feet behind, turned the key and waited. One car went by, but no others. They were on the golf course side of the road. When she saw Steven’s cigarette flick back into the car so he could take a drag, she put the key in her pocket and stepped out of the car. In the future she was standing at his window already, listening to his story of why he stopped, and before she knew it the future was here.

  “I ran out of gas,” he said before she could ask. “Completely, I ran out of gas. I tried to make it as far as I could.”

  “You’re out of gas?” Allison said. “Didn’t you notice?”

  “I did notice,” Steven said, scowling around his cigarette, “but I didn’t make it. I ran out of gas. We’re going to have to drive together to a gas station and get it how that happens, when they put the gas in a gas can. And then we’ll drive back here and I’ll fill my car with gas and then we’ll drive back to South San Francisco.”

  “The Industrial City,” Allison said, and Steven nodded and threw his cigarette out the window. They were calling it South San Francisco The Industrial City for the same reason I am. It’s not because it’s the name of the town or because everyone there is industrious. It’s because the words South San Francisco The Industrial City are slapped up on a hill, like the famous sign about Hollywood but without even a speck of glamour, so if you are arriving from the airport, your life in Seattle looming over you like ashes from a volcano, you can look out the taxicab window and think, “I am going to live here. This is where my apartment is.”

  “Let’s go,” Steven said. “Maybe I should drive because I know where I’m going.”

  “We’re just going to a gas station,” Allison said.

  “Where else?” Steven said. “Where else would we be going?”

  He stepped out of his dead car and stood up. Allison shivered in the rustling wind, and there was a noise from the fence like one of the birds thought this was a bad idea, or maybe it was just one of the trees, groomed and shivering in the nighttime. “You’re really out of gas?” she said.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” Steven said. “Listen, I’ve already had a bad day, because you saw me quit, okay? I didn’t have to lead you back home. I wanted to go somewhere else. I don’t know. I didn’t know where I was going to go. But I was doing you a favor.”

  “I thought you were going home anyway,” Allison said.

  “Not until I fill my car up,” Steven said. “Not until I fix this. I think I should drive. Just give me the keys.”

  “I don’t know,” Allison said. “Maybe I should drive.”

  But Steven was already walking toward the driver side of her friend’s car, and she noticed for the first time a limp. “You’re lost already,” he said, and held out his hand to her. Allison had the key, of course. She had the key in her hand. Not a car went by as she walked to him and gave it up. She put the key in his hand and for a moment their hands touched, and there’s a moment like this in a fantastic movie. Ingrid Bergman slips a key into the hand of Cary Grant, who must go downstairs into the wine cellar in order to defeat what must be the Nazis. Allison and Steven were not in this movie. They were in the outskirts of South San Francisco The Industrial City, which was already the outskirts, and at the end of the movie the love works, despite the Nazis and the poisoned milk and a husband played by which actor Allison can never remember. She slid into the passenger seat, her feet brushing up against her friend’s favorite driving music on the floor. When Steven turned the key she saw the same song was still playing, even though the two of them had somehow moved into the future.

  “I hate this song,” Steven said, peering into the side mirror and turning the car all the way around. Now the apartments were on the right and the golf course was on the left but still the road looked the same.

  “It was just on,” Allison said. “I didn’t choose it.”

  “Well, choose something from the floor,” Steven said. “Christ, this car is a mess.”

  Allison wondered whether the word Christ could be considered the second incident of anti-Semitism she’d seen from this guy, or whether she was still stuck on the first one, the one she’d heard on the phone. She reached down and grabbed a tape and threw it into the machine. The hit from a more recent era stopped and a song began playing that will never be a hit, although it is beautiful. It’s a romantic song, but the rhythms skitter all over the place, clicking and whirring like a calculator somebody threw down the steps. “This is worse,” Steven said. “What is this? This is some faggot singing with a bunch of drum machines.”

  “It’s my friend’s tape,” Allison said. “It’s my friend’s car. And it’s a mess because I got this guy to drive it down from Seattle with a bunch of my stuff in the trunk so I could fly. He turned out to be crazy, that guy. I can’t remember now why I just didn’t drive it myself.”

  “I bet I know,” Steven said with a chuckle.

  “And don’t say faggot,” Allison said. “In San Francisco of all places. What is that, the reason for saying faggot? How can you be in a Graduate Studies program and still say faggot?”

  “I quit,” the guy said. “It wasn’t for me.”

  “That’s another thing,” Allison said. “You quit during library orientation. You won’t even get your money back.”

  “I wasn’t enrolled in that school,” Steven said. “What, do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Yes,” Allison said. “You, also. Now I do.” Outside the road looked the same: the fence was still ugly and the lights on the apartments shone on nothing on the walls. Where was she? Why didn’t she just stay in the horseshoe of chairs, or attach herself to the leg of the library woman and refuse to budge until she was taken home and fixed a hot meal?

  “Let me tell you what I think about you,” Steven said, and took a cigarette out of his pocket. “I think you’re smart enough to find the highway by yourself but you’re too lonely to go home alone, so I think you asked me for a ride. I think you haven’t had a boyfriend in months or maybe ever.”

  “That’s not true,” Allison said, “none of it, and particularly the boyfriend. What is your problem?”

  “I’m angry about things,
” he said. “I’m going to smoke in here, okay? Does that cigarette lighter work?”

  “No,” Allison said. “I have matches.” She opened her purse and pushed past the library papers to find that she did, in fact, have matches. The fence whirred by. She struck one and lit a cigarette which was hanging out of Steven’s mouth.

  “Where is this friend of yours?” he said, instead of “Thank you.” “Some boy who dumped you but you took his car and all his gay music?”

  “Again with the gay,” Allison said. “What is it? And no. She’s gone.”

  “Lesbian?” Steven said. “That’s okay with me.”

  “I bet it is,” Allison said. “She was a friend of mine. She still is.”

  “I guess it’s none of my business,” Steven said, and Allison looked up from her lap. His eyes were sweeping across the windshield, back and forth, even though there was nothing in front of them but where they’d already been. It was the nicest thing he’d said to her. Actually, it was maybe the nicest thing anyone had said to Allison since her landlord said she was easy on the eyes.

  “Where’s a gas station?” she asked. “I really need to learn my way around this town if I’m going to stay.”

  “We’ll find a gas station in a minute,” Steven said. “If they still do that. Maybe since the catastrophe they’re not going to give me a can of gasoline. Since the catastrophe I could do who knows with it. You know? Like a gang? Beat up Jews for their money and light the bodies on fire.”

  “Are you on drugs?” Allison said.

  “I wouldn’t say I’m on them,” Steven said, and widened his mouth around the cigarette to give her a little laugh. This was the laugh, Allison could see, that would indicate both a half-assed apology and a cue to change the subject. There had been plenty of Stevens, but the first Steven she’d ever met had a laugh like that, back in junior high. He said he was going to invite Allison to a make-out party but then invited Lila instead, or maybe it was the other way around. Allison only remembers the look on his face when she and Lila waited by the back entrance, near the hideous mural they’d had to paint for Ms. Wylie. It must have been a Wednesday, because the blood on Lila’s sleeve made quite a stir when they arrived at Hebrew School. It was very, very easy to beat that Steven up. “Look,” he said, and for a moment Allison thought they’d arrived at a gas station, but out the window was nothing. “Not look,” he said, and reached out to Allison’s chin. With not very much effort he moved her head so that she was facing him. “I mean the expression, look. Don’t look at me that way. Tell me a story or something. A dream you had. I’m not having a good night.”

  “Neither am I,” Allison said, inching her chin away.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Steven insisted. “We should be keeping each other better company than we are.”

  “Okay,” Allison said, and said it again. “Okay, so where did you get that limp?”

  “I hurt myself,” Steven lied, “but that’s not what I mean. We’re flirting, right? I think you’re very good-looking. Now you say something.”

  The song whirred into the second verse. Already they were at the second verse, or maybe it was the chorus, in which the singer insists he won’t let go, even if you say so, oh no. Allison has never liked this song, not like Lila, who’d cue it up over and over, her weakening fingers drumming against the steering wheel until she wasn’t allowed to drive anymore. Allison wished this is where they were driving, wherever she and Lila were going that night. Maybe it was a party, or maybe they were just going to drive around and cry. “I wish I were someplace else,” Allison said. “That’s something.”

  “Come on,” Steven said and yanked the tape out of the stereo and—Allison couldn’t believe it, but boy oh boy was it happening—threw it out the window while a man on the radio started talking about being an expert.

  “I’m an expert,” the expert said. “I have a number of degrees on the subject.”

  “It’s obvious we’re going to sleep together,” Steven said. “You don’t need a graduate degree for that. Can’t we be honest about such a thing?”

  “Did you,” Allison asked, “really throw my tape out the window?”

  “Not your tape,” Steven said with a chuckle of freaky delight. There was either something black in one of his teeth or he didn’t have one of his teeth, and Allison realized, with sudden expertise, that she would never know which it was. Quietly, she slipped her feet out of Lila’s shoes, which clattered onto the music on the floor of the car. She was ready. She would have to leave all those songs, and the car, but the car wasn’t hers, and Jews have it in their blood to leave a place quickly. You never know when it’s going to get bad for the Jews, but boy oh boy oh boy do you know when it’s happening. Allison saw, spooky as an apparition, the red spotlight waiting for her after the curve in the road, and she knew that was the moment in her future when soft-spoken was a thing of the past.

  “I’m going to quit,” she said.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Steven insisted. “Let’s just fuck. We can go to either of our apartments. In the morning we’ll deal with my car but right now let’s quit while we’re ahead.”

  “Behind!” Allison said, very very loudly, and Steven twitched his eyes to the rearview mirror. “Quit while we’re behind!” And the car, Lila’s car, rolled to a sloppy stop. The door opened and the night air came in. Barefoot Allison stepped onto gravel, maybe broken glass, and took two quick steps onto someone’s lawn.

  “Of course there’s going to be another catastrophe,” said the radio expert. “Do you think this is the first volcano we’re going to hear about? And let’s not get started on the number of people who, for reasons I have stated, absolutely hate freedom.”

  “What?” Steven said. “We’re not there yet! This isn’t even my car!”

  Somewhere behind them that tape was broken on the ground, but as I said, Allison never really liked it. It was Lila’s tape. She—Allison—could survive without that stuff. She could not see far into the future, of course—nobody can. This book only has young people in it because I am not that old. I don’t know what love’s like with the bulk of so much time, or if the most acute heartbreaks really do slip elsewhere or, as I suspect, stay heartbroken, stay terrible, no matter how many catastrophes go by. “This isn’t even my car!” Steven said again. “This isn’t even my car, and I have a question! How are you going to go home if you don’t go home with me?”

  Allison had a question too. “How should I know?” she cried, spreading her hands out wide, but then, when the expert was heard to cry “Oh my god!” and the program skittered to a commercial, she knew of course how. Just because there are more catastrophes on the way is no reason to avoid the ones that are here now, idling in the middle of the road. “I’ll take a goddamn cab!” she said. “I should have done that in the first place.”

  “Ha!” Steven said. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” Then he coughed, around his cigarette, but for a moment it sounded like he’d said “forsooth.” “You don’t know what you’re doing, forsooth,” like he was Shakespeare, glittering ugly in the distant past. The lighting helped, of course. The red of the stoplight, and the grainy white from the lights clipped to the apartment drains, and some strange orange light in the sky, all gaped down on her as she took another, another, another step on the wet grass. It was long past sunset, this strange orange light in the sky, and Allison was pretty sure that wasn’t west anyway. It was wrong to be barefoot, but these wrongs would be righted. She would find a better curb to stand on, where she could hail a cab or—let’s face it—any other savior that might come along. If she waved long enough someone would pull over and take her where she wanted to go. Allison squinted at the strange, catastrophic sky, and took another step, another step, another step, because in the future—she could see it—this would not be happening.

  truly

  This part’s true. A group of men are trying to get an enormous number of potatoes into a café. I know this because I’m
sitting at the café where the story is taking place. The potatoes are in boxes, and the boxes are piled in a pyramid and fused together, under a shroud of plastic wrap like they do, a web of ice a Snow Queen might hurl down upon us, if we were potatoes and if the potatoes were in boxes and, um, if there were a Snow Queen. The fused potato pyramid is on wheels, but still the potatoes cannot enter the café. It is impossible. Many men are working on this impossible project. They are pressing their fists against the boxes. They are asking people sitting at tables to move, and a few women are working on this too. Not everybody who is working on this impossible project works at the café, but all of them are certain they can get this pyramid of potatoes to arrive through the small, small door. They are all wrong. It’s not an impossible task like climbing a mountain, or falling in love in a nightclub. It’s an impossible task like raising the dead. If these potatoes get into the café it will be an actual real live miracle.

  But a miracle has happened before, with an object much much smaller than a potato. When I was seventeen and hopelessly in love, I found myself on a vacation, chained to my family in Arizona. In case you’re wondering it’s a long story. We were visiting Taliesin, a school of architecture founded and designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, about which and about whom at the time I did not give a flying fuck. I was in love and could think of nothing but the love in question, although she—Missi Rubenzik—does not appear in this story. Spread magnificently in front of the school was a path I was sulking through, a swipe of gravel, doubtlessly culled from local quarries, leading up to the building I didn’t want to visit. Maybe halfway up, my mother, who appears once in “Particularly,” being forced by grown-ups to do a pointless chore, and then again in “Wrongly,” in much more dire circumstances, clutched one hand with another, and then looked at me, with an expression of terror, as if I were a phantom. She appeared panicked—she frantically examined the engagement ring on her left hand, so that I wondered, illogically, whether her horror at my uncoupled state had possessed her completely.