Adverbs

by Daniel Handler

  “Yes, wasn’t she awful?” Allison says, but instead one of the comics fans is explaining they needed waitressing experience.

  “Or an equivalent,” she says, and then she pulls the camera all the way out of her waistband because this is her chance. “They didn’t just take everybody.”

  “This way we don’t have to pay,” the pharmacy woman says. “Plus it’s not very difficult. Have you seen that pharmacy? It’s just a tiny room. It’s about the size of a bathroom, really.”

  “It’s such a big responsibility,” Hillary says.

  “It’s just handing people things,” Allison says. “One of those Monkeys could do it.”

  “I mean another life,” Hillary says, and then reaches across the table and puts her hand on Allison’s furious stomach, apparently so she can think about it some more. “Another life. I don’t know if I could do it.”

  “I could do it,” Allison says, but she has no idea if anyone can hear her. “I need another life, actually.”

  “So it’s really true,” the pharmacy woman says. “It really turned blue?”

  The song ends, so even a soft-spoken woman can be heard. “I was definitely blue this morning,” she says. “But then, I’m blue most mornings.”

  “Blue most mornings,” Keith says. “I really like you, Allison. I think I like you. Can I use that? I’m going to use it.”

  “You won’t believe what they make us do, on the Comics Cruise,” the pharmacy woman says. “Okay, first of all we have to show up five days early, okay? And on the glass windows? By registration? There were these stupid Christmas paintings from the Christmas Cruise and guess who had to take them down? They gave us a scraper thing to do it. Scrape scrape scrape, just to meet you.”

  “And your husband,” says the woman with the waistband.

  “But Christmas was a long time ago,” Allison says. Everyone frowns, so they must have heard her.

  “Christmas was just the time before,” says the pharmacy woman. “It was just Christmas.”

  Allison thinks through the ice in her glass, the stained napkin of the Something Bar. How is she here? It was just Christmas? “Smile,” says the woman with the camera. “Smile or cheese.”

  Tomas lifts his head from the bar at the flashbulb, perhaps thinking it was the end of the world. “I want another drink,” Tomas says, “but the bartender is an enormous fan. This is like some sort of anxiety dream.”

  “Oh my god!” the pharmacy woman says. “I know a great game, Oh my god! It’s Dream or Real. We each say something that’s either something that happened to us or a dream and we guess it. You say, ‘Dream or Real’ when it’s over. I learned it from someone else.”

  “I don’t want to play,” Allison says.

  “I’m guessing that’s Real,” Keith says. “Do I score a point?”

  “It’s just a party game, or drinking,” the pharmacy woman says. “There’s no points. I can’t believe I’m getting to play with comic artists oh my god.”

  “I’ll go first,” Tomas says, and Allison stops liking him best. She has not liked a thing about him, including his work, which she read a few pages of in Adrian’s room. Everybody was a vampire or was afraid of vampires, and they all lived in a rainy town where the sun went down every night. But he brought a bird in its own cage, with a sheet over it so no one could see the bird and the bird couldn’t see anyone and the whole thing was a secret bird. This was a customs problem, and it meant that Allison was able to skip parts of the argument in the registration room, particularly when the bird started shrieking. The customs problem ended the discovery that a Spouse was taking a free cruise to Alaska while the famous comic book artist lurked at home with a pen and the fans did not get the chance they were working at the pharmacy to get.

  Since then Tomas has not been so reliable. He talked at the panels, and everything he said was tinged with the unreliability of someone who would bring a bird on a cruise ship. “I was hiking with two friends of mine,” he says now, “deep in the woods outside of San Francisco, when one of us tripped and fell and hurt his leg very badly near a stream,” and Allison skips this part too, migrates as far away from the woods as she can with the same mystery that grips her throughout. Why are there so many moments like this, in her love story? Why is it that there are so many ways it can go? Why can’t it just be the same thing, over and over, like a John Donne poem run off at the copy store with the receipt stapled to the bag, an identical John Donne poem for everybody in the classroom to ask the exact same questions about, so that sometimes you go home and drink a bottle of chianti and shout things up to your husband like, “Dissertations aren’t the same thing at all, because I have to work really hard on them!” Allison definitely loved him then, that nice guy Adrian. She loved him when he left his stack of work on the table by the cash register and she looked at all those panels. His first comics were about the end of the world, a time when volcanoes became angry and burned everybody up in Detroit and Los Angeles and other cities where Adrian had lived. Hell on Earth, nine issues numbered. She loved them, one through nine. She used to sit in her bathtub and read them several times, listening to the rustle of the pages of panels in the empty tub. It was too hot to take a bath and she loved him. Adrian scrawled two sentences on two pieces of paper and held them up for her, lines of dialogue. They were almost the same, but Adrian spent the whole day convincing her to care about them. She would waste every day with him and his shoulders, drooping under his shirt, as he would lean down and pull her out of the tub by her beltloops. Why couldn’t every moment be a copy of that? Instead, unfortunately, always, there are several ways to do everything, and this is evidently the way Allison’s story has gone, with a Comics Cruise heading north for a state she has no interest in visiting. How could it go this way, with Adrian? Look at herself, she is dancing with Keith in the emptying late bar. They are dancing to a song with lyrics.

  Every day I think of you, baby,

  And every day I cry.

  It’s hell on Earth without you, baby,

  Do you want to know why?

  And the chorus goes,

  Why are you dancing with Keith, Allison?

  Why are you at a Comics Cruise?

  Is this good for the baby, baby?

  Why did you order the hummus platter, and didn’t it taste gross?

  By the time they were married Adrian’s comics had shifted slightly, like the crust of the Earth. Now the comics were about a young man and his wife and they had adventures, but all the adventures were about having trouble having a baby. They would rob banks, and aliens would fire lasers at them, and the woman would pull all sorts of lifesaving props out of her purse, but never never never could they have a baby, and that was always the bittersweet end of the story. Allison didn’t love these as much as the end of the world, but this was the path of the ship she was on. “What is it?” she asked him, after a fight she lost track of. Allison had thrown something up in the air. “Is it that you want a baby?”

  “Baby?” Adrian said, and threw down his pen. “Maybe someday,” he said, and what was she talking about and why was she asking, and now the song is over and Allison is asking the bartender something.

  “What?” the bartender asks.

  “Hong Kong Cobbler,” Allison says, instead.

  “Are you sure that’s good for you?” Keith asks, who is apparently standing beside her.

  “It’s for you,” she says to him. “I’ve been drinking cranberry juice all night. Dream or Real? Dream or Real?”

  Keith chuckles and looks over Allison’s shoulder and makes a little jiggling motion with a clasped hand, like he is running a pen through the air. “I don’t think so,” he says. “Morning will be here early. First thing in fact. I’m going to chuckle again at my own joke until the bartender brings the bill.”

  But it comes, soon enough, and he signs it with a pen it turns out he had with him all this time. “Hummus platter,” he says. “I forgot we had hummus and we ate it.”

 
“I’m an enormous fan,” says the bartender. “And of your husband’s too, ma’am. Congratulations by the way. With his work I thought maybe you guys wouldn’t. I mean, how would that come about, you know?”

  “It’s a common story,” Allison says, hoping she is still as soft-spoken as she thinks of herself. “My husband ejaculated inside my vagina.”

  “I think it’s time for you to go to bed,” Keith says. “I’ll take you.” Surprisingly, he is right. The dance music is now playing a song from many years ago, when Keith was surely some handsome boy in high school. The song is “Come and Get My Heart” by The L Club, from their first album Introducing The L Club on L Club Records. “Yes yes yes,” Keith hums, “oh baby yes,” and Allison thinks for maybe the first time about this baby. Her stomach feels the same, even after Hillary put her hand on it, so it is easier to think about the baby living in her purse, the lint like placenta and an umblical cord that can keep your glasses hanging around your neck if you’ve become that sort of person. But the baby must be careful. It should not play with the gun or the kerosene-soaked rags or the little vial of ashes Adrian gave her. This was back when people were always mailing Adrian little vials of ashes because of the volcano stories. Now it’s fertility workbooks, and she and Adrian sell them back to the bookstore on grumpy cardboard mornings, the books in a box in the back of the car they bought together, 60–40 because Adrian made more money at the time. And now. Allison gets to her cabin and when she sees that Adrian is still not there she feels sick to her stupid, raging stomach.

  “I’m going to throw up,” she tells Keith, and lurches past the porthole to the bathroom, which is scarcely bigger than a closet. The toilet was designed by Norwegians who have a theory about how easy it is to use, but Allison thinks to hell with it, and leans across the empty bathtub and her own vomit buckets out of her.

  “Oh,” Keith says.

  Allison turns on the Norwegian faucet so some of it will run down the drain, and takes off her shirt which is stained. Where is Adrian? The first time she threw up with him he held her hair like no one ever had, the gentle hands of someone who draws the apocalypse happening. It was Christmas, and her bad clams were like something buried in the center of the Earth. And now? Allison throws her purse to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” Keith says.

  “I just threw up,” Allison says, “or didn’t you hear me? I’m fine. I’m married to one of the most respected comic artists in this Volcanic Age. The trouble is, it never occurs to me that people are anything but nice when I meet them.”

  “That doesn’t strike me,” Keith says but is getting her a glass of water.

  “But then, they only have to say one thing and it all goes down the drain.” Allison feels the cool porcelain of Norway and leans down further into the tiny tub, as if the thing she’s going to say next is what is really bothering her. But it’s not what is bothering her. She just threw up, is what is bothering her, and alone in the middle of the ocean. “One day,” she says, “Adrian was listening to me speak sharply about something, and he didn’t even put down his pen. You know, I have several poems by John Donne committed to memory, so it upsets me.”

  “Ssh,” Keith says, and she sips the water down. “You’re talking very loudly, Allison.”

  “I do too!” Allison says. “Where, like a pillow on a bed, a pregnant bank swelled up to rest the Violet’s reclining head, sat we two, one another’s best. He’s my best, Adrian.”

  “Are you really pregnant?” Keith asks. “Are you really pregnant and do you really love that husband?”

  “I’m writing my dissertation,” she says, “and the center of it is this theory that it’s none of your fucking business. Often I do. Yes. Often I love him and he is always my husband.”

  But Keith is taking her glass away. Allison looks back up and realizes with a sort of giddy horror that he has also taken off his shirt. His careless chest looked nothing like Adrian’s, with hair trailing down like smoke from someone’s mouth. How early are the handsome taught such things, to lumber into a room where a woman is already having a bad time, to let the party drinks convince you it’s a party? What reasons can dissuade such wrong wrong things?

  “I just threw up,” Allison tries. With two people in the closet it feels like the pharmacy again. And, is she pregnant? But Keith is running his hand on Allison’s shoulder in a way very strongly suggesting that she actually pay crucial attention to this very moment.

  “Shall we dance?” he says.

  “No,” she says.

  “Yes we did,” Keith insists. “We were dancing. I saw you.”

  Allison nods a very little bit. “I heard the song,” she said.

  “Yes yes yes,” Keith says, “oh baby yes,” and the hand moves to her belly.

  “Another song,” Allison says. “The one by that band, from when I was in high school, that saved my life the way songs do. ‘Whatever I do, I’m just passing the time, to get to you to pass the time with you.’ That’s what I mean, Keith Whatever. Go away and I love him. Often I do. And the other times—”

  “The other times are a vacation,” Keith says. “You’re on one now.”

  “The other times are hell on Earth,” Allison says. “When he’s not here there’s arson and gunfire, and sharks and the bartender is an enormous fan.” She looks up and the closet spins, like it, too, is an enormous fan. “I can’t go by myself. I need his help.”

  “That’s quite a story,” Keith says, but he takes his hands off her. “Can I use that?”

  “You can use everything,” she says, and dumps her purse all over Scandinavia. “I don’t need anything here, like my wallet stuffed with cash they won’t take, and these linty mints, and if you want to put your glasses around your neck there’s a cord just for that. Here’s some tissues if you’re sad, and a pregnancy test.”

  “Oh my god!” Hillary is standing in the doorway of the bathroom which on one hand is surprising but there’s the other hand, too. “Oh my god you guys. Turn on the TV! Turn on the TV!”

  “Don’t you knock?” Keith says and puts on his growly shirt.

  “There’s been a catastrophe,” Hillary says, but Allison can’t see her stupid expression from her sad location. Allison washes the last of everything out of her mouth and pushes the contents of her purse together in a heap. “I hate you,” she says very quietly to Hillary. “Your comic strip is incredibly stupid and badly drawn, and you announce all of the jokes twice. Like the title of the comic will be, ‘The Masked Ball,’ but it will give away the punch line before you can even read it. And you, Keith, the heads of all your characters are stupid big, and don’t dance so close with your denim erection.” But Allison is soft-spoken and nobody hears this kind of prayer, where you pray to the specifics of a person. Please, Adrian, with your shoulders and your lovely drawings of the end of the world, pick me up by my beltloops and rescue me off this boat, in the name of the can where you keep your pencils, and your haircut, Amen.

  Not today. Allison pulls herself into the bedroom where Hillary and Keith are staring in horror at a blank screen. “We don’t have TV,” Allison says anyway. “We’re in the middle of the ocean.”

  “Of course we have TV,” Keith says. “Haven’t you ever been on Comics Cruise before?”

  Slowly, slowly, the screen shows them a city on fire. “It’s San Francisco,” Hillary says. “That’s where your husband lives, Allison. It’s just like his work.”

  “I live there too,” Allison says, but she is on a ship right now.

  “The pharmacy girl told me the news told her that it was a volcano,” Hillary says. “This is really spooky, Spouse. First a volcano like his old comics and then you’re pregnant like his new comics. And it’s happening on Comics Cruise!”

  “Flip the channel or turn it off,” Allison says. She lies on the bed, which was her plan anyway, like a pillow. “I want to skip this.”

  “You can’t skip it,” Keith says. “Something like this is on all the channels although I
don’t for a minute think it’s a fucking volcano.”

  “It is a fucking volcano,” says the guy on TV. “It’s hell on Earth. Look at this footage we got of it and you will say holy motherfucking shit!”

  “Holy motherfucking shit,” Keith says. “Whoever got that footage must have made a bundle.”

  “Oh my god,” Hillary says. “We will stay on Comics Cruise forever and ever and ever until this is over, and I’m so terrible to be around, aren’t I?”

  Allison is on the bed and trying to listen. Adrian should be here, on the ship in the middle of the ocean, or she should be there, throwing up in her own bathroom. It’s bigger, San Francisco, and more of her things are in it. Allison looks off to the purse pile in the room she’ll pay for later, if what the registration guy said is true. They don’t want her by herself. They don’t want Allison to show up without her husband, everyone knows this, and Allison doesn’t either. This can’t be happening, and look at that stuff: the wallet, the mints, the tissues. There’s no gun to shoot her way out, or even a baby to keep her company. She has nothing to get her off this boat, and please, please, look at those ashes of his on the floor. It has been often. It has not been often enough.

  “Allison, you’ve got to see this.” Hillary is jumping up and down like a monkey, and Allison looks wistfully back at the purse for something to kill her with. Please, not the ashes. “Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!”

  “There are no survivors,” says the television, “or maybe there are. Obviously we’re not going to be one thousand percent correct about every little thing at a time like this.”

  Allison puts a hand on her stomach. She feels fat, but maybe it’s just her. Maybe she’s by herself. “Help me,” Allison says, but she is soft-spoken, and everyone she loves is so far away.

  barely

  You have to be careful when you say what you like two weeks before your birthday. You say birds you’ll get birds. You say the new album by the Prowlers and you better not buy it yourself because it will be waiting for you in the bag from Zodiac Records, at a ten-percent discount on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday afternoon, when the boy from the Winsomes works there, with his curly red hair and that tiny little beard all bass players grow, giving ten percent off to anybody who smiles at him cute. Two weeks before don’t say anything you don’t want because boy will you get it. Boy you better be careful.