The Temptation of Adam

by Dave Connis

  “Adam, come on. What aren’t you saying? You’re leaving something out.”

  Again, I consider letting go of the whole story, but I can’t. “No. I’m not.”

  She sighs. “Okay, regardless of what got you there, porn is still a problem for you.”

  How does she know I’m leaving something out? How does she always know? I shake my head and focus on only the porn problem, I don’t want to think about the Anti-Adam Order and what happened at school.

  “So, you’ve known that I didn’t tell you everything when we talked the first night you moved back?”

  She laughs and shakes her head. “Adam, you’re Adam. You’ve just vowed to be honest after two years of lying. I knew there were a bunch of things you weren’t telling me, like being hurt and mad at me for leaving you with Dad, and this. That’s why I wanted to move back. I knew it’d take longer than a day to learn everything, and I wanted to be here for all these juicy revelations. I love you a lot, and I want you to be better.”

  The statement makes me realize that my words won’t be enough for Dez. She needs love, real love, and time.

  I think on all the things I want to be. For Dez. For Addy.

  Finally I say, “I want me to be better, too.”

  Addy hugs me and I don’t let go.

  “Look,” she says, “we don’t have to talk about how I can help tonight. Go revel in your new not-really-but-sort-of relationship status. Revel all up in it, honey child, because I’m going to bed. I have to work early tomorrow.”

  “Addy, I—”

  I want to tell Addy I love her, but I’m just like Dad. The chord in my voice connected to the real me is rusted over with disuse.

  “I—”

  No, Master! Come quick, hide. We slips away, a silent way, to keeps us safe.

  “I’m really glad you’re here,” I say.

  She smiles. “Me too.”

  I don’t watch porn at all when I get into my room. I don’t even have my nightly staring match with my computer. I just walk into my room and lay in bed, thinking about Dez Coulter, my messed-up volcano of a girlfriend. I’ve never had a girlfriend before I met Dez, and I don’t think I ever want another.

  My phone rings. I pick it up in less than a second.

  “Hello?”

  “What if you turn into an addiction? What if I end up using you just like I use everything else?”

  My heart sinks.

  She continues. “What if you use me as an addiction? What if we just turn all of our unnatural disaster on each other? Remember what you said? ‘We’re all volcanoes and we wander around engulfing each other in our disaster.’ If that’s true, how can we last?”

  “Wow,” I say, trying to ease the tension. “I’m pretty sure that was verbatim.”

  “It is verbatim because I wrote it down. Adam, we will burn each other. There’s no avoiding it. Do we even want to attempt this?”

  I don’t know what to say. I break everything down into formulas. She’s right. Everything she says is right.

  I’ve considered it before, but now I’m forced to face it.

  Can two broken people ever truly care for each other?

  “I—I … can we just try?”

  “No,” she says, “I like you too much to lose you. If we do this, I’ll kill you. I’m a cycle of death, Adam, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to break it.”

  “But think about Dez in the future,” I say, even though I haven’t done it myself. “Think about what you want to be.”

  “I can’t!” she yells, the words hot with anger, and I realize I sound just like her dad. “I can’t trust future Dez because she’s just as much of an addict as I am now. Doesn’t anyone fucking get that? My future is my now. My now is my future.”

  “So, what do we do?” I ask.

  She’s silent for a while. When she speaks again, her voice is a compilation of heaviness, calm, and resignation. “I don’t know. What do we do?”

  I let out a deep sigh. A Trey “heaviest thing in the world” sigh. How can something be doomed before it starts? Is trying to change myself for Dez just a different kind of addiction? Shouldn’t I change myself for me, and in consequence, Dez? How can I do anything right in chaos? Everything I think I can do ends up being an addiction. Does human = addiction? Maybe, but if I can’t find the strength to fight for me, maybe it’s worth trying to fight for someone else.

  “We fight for each other. So what if I’m too weak to do this for myself? If we can’t fight for ourselves, let’s fight for each other.”

  “Hand is greater than magic rock,” she says.

  “We’re greater than magic rock, together.”

  “So, we kick our addictions for the potential of love? For the potential of us?”

  “Why not?”

  She’s silent for at least thirty seconds until she says, “Out of the gravel, peonies are growing.”

  “Yeah they are. Big ass ones.”

  She laughs in the middle of a sniffle. “Okay, future boyfriend, confession time. I’m not as strong as you, but I’ll keep singing if you keep writing the words.”

  “A: You don’t know that, and B: You sing?”

  “Well, it was an analogy, but yeah, I do. It may be the one thing I do well.”

  “Then I may have something we can conquer.”

  I JUST SHHH

  It’s Saturday morning. I walk into Mr. Cratcher’s without knocking, ignoring the fact that I’ve had the Deception Pass dream in some form every night since the first Addiction Fighters meeting. Like the whole story of my suspension and porn habits, the dreams feel too deep a part of me to share, and I don’t even know what sharing them would do. So, I ignore them.

  “Hello, Adam,” he says. “A little uppity today, aren’t we?”

  “Dez Coulter sings.”

  He looks at me, head tilted with curiosity. “In what way?”

  “In every way, but right now I’m talking about the vocal way.”

  “Well, I will leave it to you to get her on board with our album, which needs a title, by the way.”

  We walk up to the study. “You’ve had the same album for the last however many years and you haven’t named it?”

  He walks up the stairs slower today. He must not be sleeping well. Mark’s death is taking its toll on young and old.

  “I have,” he says, “but just like the music and what songs are included, the title has changed over the years.”

  “What was the first title?”

  “I can’t remember. I’d have to look it up. I have it all saved somewhere. Journals and files.”

  In his study, we do a few tests before we record the guitar track. I fiddle with some of the levels and then, on his cue, hit the record button. We get halfway through the song—it’s a faster one in a major key called “What Are You, Elias?”—when he just stops.

  I stop the recording. “Mr. Cratcher?”

  “We—” He stares at the ceiling as though he’s trying to come up with a reason for why he stopped. “We need the original copy of the album.”

  I stop the recording. “What? What do you mean?”

  “What I mean … what I mean is that there is a part on this song that has to be here in its original form and I can’t remember how I did it.”

  “Don’t you have it somewhere in your journals or piles of song demos?”

  He shakes his head. “It was only on the first album. I changed it after that because I couldn’t handle it. But, now, at the end, it needs to come back. We can’t finish this song without it.”

  He carefully puts the guitar in a wall hanger and looks out the window.

  I still don’t understand what he’s saying. “Where’s the first copy? I’ll go get it.”

  “It’s gone,” he says, cold and frosty.

  “Okay, but why can’t we go get it?”

  “Because we can’t. It’s painfully irretrievable. Lost in the explosion of hearts.” He shakes his head. “The album will just have to be un
finished. It’s as simple as that. This song will have to be unfinished.”

  So, I’m witnessing a Mr. Cratcher meltdown. Mr. Cratcher never melts down. Is it because Mark’s funeral is tonight, or is it something else?

  “Let’s move on. We will just record something else.”

  “So that song’s over just like that?”

  “Just like that. Now, let’s do some tests. The next song I want to do is a little louder and the levels will need to be adjusted.”

  —

  My initial observation of my first funeral ever gave me a new formula.

  THE FORMULA OF FUNERALS AND COMMUNAL MOURNING

  Death + a lot of people who suddenly feel their own death coming = tears and uncomfortable silence

  I sit next to Dez, who somehow looks like a blaze of light even though she’s in a black dress. I glance at Elliot on my right. He looks confident, like he’s climbing a smaller mountain than one he’s climbed before.

  Dez grabs my hand and my world alights for what, once more, feels like the first time.

  My dad, who’s sitting between Mr. Cratcher and Trey, leans forward to rest his chin on his hands and he sees us. He looks at me, and a wave of relief comes over his face. Relief?

  “I’m glad you’re coming over tonight,” she whispers.

  I nod. “Nighttime’s the bane of an addict’s life.”

  “Everyone else in the world is doing something better than you and putting it on Instagram.”

  I smile. “Do you think your dad and mom will like me?”

  She scoffs. “Who cares if they do or don’t? You’re not my boyfriend or anything.”

  A feeling of confusion rolls through my chest. I know we decided not to date, and I also know that I never officially asked her out, so why am I confused?

  “Good point. Maybe I should pretend I’m drunk. Mix things up a bit.”

  “I’ve already got that covered,” she says, wiping a silent tear from her eye and then winking. “Oh, just a warning, my family’s kind of rich.”

  “Kind of rich?”

  “Yeah, like upper-class rich.”

  “Oh, okay.” I shrug.

  “No, I mean, like live-in-an-unnecessarily-large-giant-ass-mansion rich.”

  “Okay.” I look back to Mark’s dad. He’s disintegrating and he’s only just started the eulogy. I wish Addy were here.

  “I just … I don’t want to you to be disappointed in me,” she whispers, so softly I almost don’t hear her.

  I turn to her again. “Why would I be disappointed in you?”

  “I—I don’t know. I just don’t want you to be, that’s all.”

  I squeeze her hand. “Well, it’s not like I’m your boyfriend, so it doesn’t really matter.” I say it jokingly, but I’m one hundred percent sure she doesn’t take it that way. Mostly because as soon as I say it, she lets go of my hand.

  “I was just kidding.”

  She looks at me, her blaze of light turning into a bonfire of anger.

  I raise my hands. “You literally just said the same thing to me, Dez.”

  She turns to watch Mark’s dad. “It’s not polite to talk during the eulogy.”

  —

  Dad and I are sitting in the car on the way to Dez’s house—or mansion, or whatever—when he finally asks me about her. “So, you and Dez?”

  “We aren’t dating,” I say, still pissed at her for being irrational during a funeral.

  “I didn’t know you could hold hands and not date.”

  “Your views on romanticism are ancient and based on non-postmodern principles. Traditions have changed since you’ve dated.”

  “Apparently, because I would’ve never used the adjective postmodern to describe dating someone.”

  “We’re not dating,” I say again.

  “Okay. Why not? You were looking at each other like you’re the anchor of each other’s souls.”

  “Nice.”

  “Thanks, it was in a manuscript I rejected the other day. Now answer the question.”

  “We can’t right now.”

  “That’s not really an answer.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “I want a reason why you can’t date. Come on, you can go all philosophical and I won’t say a word about it.”

  “We just can’t right now. It’s that easy.”

  I should probably tell him about being addicted to porn. He probably already knows. Everyone else seems to know, and knowing that would probably help him make sense of why Dez and I can’t date, but no kid talks to their dad about that kind of stuff. Besides, I’m sick of thinking about who knows what and trying to conjure reasons to tell people things.

  “That’s it?”

  “You asked,” I say.

  “I did. I just didn’t expect an answer that I could understand because it wasn’t actually an answer.”

  We drive the rest of the way in silence, Dad not wanting to push, me not wanting to hurt. We arrive at the address Dez gave me to find a custom wrought-iron gate blocking us from their house.

  “So, they have money?” he says.

  “I mean, you don’t do too bad yourself.”

  For some reason, I feel the need to defend her richness. I figure if she’s worried enough to warn me of it in the middle of a eulogy, then she’s sensitive about it.

  “Yeah, but we don’t have a spindly iron-and-river-rock front gate.” He leans out the window and presses a button. A few seconds later, Dez’s voice cracks through the tiny speaker below the keypad. “Welcome to the unnecessarily large mansion where nothing’s ever good enough. I’ll buzz you in.”

  The speaker clicks off. While the gate slides behind the river rock wall, my dad looks at me. “You two are literally made for each other.”

  “I won’t tell Addy about your misuse of literally.”

  He laughs. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a misuse. I’ll let you know after dinner and more observation.”

  The driveway winds in a crescent curve, up to what looks like a hardcore Bass Pro Shop. She wasn’t lying. The place is huge. The wooden entry doors look like they belong on The Vatican.

  “Holy—” Dad says. “Way to pick ’em, son.”

  “Dad.”

  “Yeah, yeah, no dating. Sorry.”

  We park under an awning that covers the front door. Well, awning is really an understatement. It’s more like a concert pavilion held up by redwood tree–sized logs. Dez appears in the doorway. She looks nervous. No, maybe she looks pissed. No, she definitely looks both.

  We get out of the car and Dez yells, “Just … leave the keys in the ignition. The butl—George, our assistant, will take care of it.”

  Dad looks at me.

  “Yeah, we have a butler, but he’s an asshole,” she yells. “Just come in.”

  She leaves the door open and disappears inside.

  “She’s the one who invited us over, right?” Dad asks.

  “Yeah, I think she’s really afraid we’ll judge her.”

  “Makes sense.”

  We get near the doors, and the voice I heard the time she butt dialed me says, “Why didn’t you wait for them to come in? You should always wait for guests, you know that.”

  “Normally, guests don’t have to cross a bitter wilderness to get to the front door of a house,” Dez says.

  “We are not doing this right now,” a woman says—her mom, I’m guessing. “Desiree, stop being difficult, and for goodness sake, go greet them at the door. You aren’t that uncivilized.”

  My dad gives me another look right before a man and a woman appear in the door. The man is tall. He fills the gigantic doorframe well. He has a slight beer belly, but it doesn’t make him look out of shape. The woman is a mirror image of Dez: gentle, but confident. Childlike, but mature. The only difference between the two is that Mrs. Coulter’s face is a little rounder, and her hair is dyed rich white woman blonde.

  “Welcome, welcome,” she spouts. “It’s so nice to have you
here. I’m Mrs. Coulter, but please call me Nellanne.” She kisses me and my dad on the cheek.

  “Hey, there.” Mr. Coulter holds out a hand to whoever gets past Nellanne first. “I’m Terry, it’s good to meet you.”

  We make small talk by the door for a little bit. Every once in a while, I catch a glimpse of Dez pacing in what I think is a living room.

  How’s it going?

  Addy texts while Dad and the Coulters talk about some political thing that NPR hasn’t told me about yet.

  Holy house.

  Big?

  It’s a leviathan.

  I think we could declare it as its own commonwealth.

  US Commonwealths: Puerto Rico and Dez’s house.

  Have you proposed yet?

  We just got out of the car. Give me a second.

  Do it now! Before someone else does!

  Shhhhh. Get back to work.

  Send me updates, pictures.

  I NEED TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON.

  Finally, Mrs. Coulter shoos my dad and Mr. Coulter toward the dining room and excuses herself to see if the cook is ready to serve dinner. I walk up to Dez. She’s got a flask in her hand.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, touching the bare wrist underneath her sweater sleeve.

  “I hate my family,” she says. “All they do is push. All they do is say ‘your brothers aren’t doing that,’ or ‘are you sure that’s the right choice? Seems like you could do better.’ I hate it. I want to get out of here.”

  I nod. “Two more years, right?”

  “Yeah, two more years.” She tips the flask back. When she’s done, I take it from her and grab her hand. Her shoulders drop a little.

  She rubs her eyes and then makes a greater than sign with her fingers by our hands. “They expected me to be working some intense banking internship when I turned fifteen. I That’s what my brother did, and now he’s got some high and swanky job. I just don’t like banking, but that doesn’t seem to matter. I’m expected to be everything I’m not. If it’s not my dad trying to turn me into a financial guru, it’s my mom trying to make me into the perfect housewife.”