The Adjustment League (14 page)

When I open my eyes, after a second that feels like a long time away, the scene of the cavorting boys and the unsmiling dowager reveals itself, tidepool-clear after my deep sniff. They all live together in a hut deep in the forest. Which is also the center of the city, disguised as a small apartment building. They serve her sexually, one per night, and at the end of a long, elaborate copulation she eats that night's partner. Not with a chomp, like a praying mantis, but delicately, savouringly, starting with his feet, leaving blue eyes in a pale white face, bangs of love-damp hair, till the end. Next morning, she gives birth to his replacement. Once a week they gather here, the eternal den mother and seven mates who didn't exist a week ago.

Above them, men in shorts and long underwear tear with raised sticks around an ice rink, unwatched by anyone.

Time to meet Sandor.

“Peace offering?” I say, setting down the beers. “We didn't exactly get off to a raging start the other night.”

He comes up slowly out of his reading, emerging from a pool of deep absorption. A notebook, he closes it now over his pen. A well-worn paperback—George R.R. Martin's
A
Dance With Dragons
, the last of the series so far—on the table also. He doesn't seem at all surprised to see me. Might have come expressly for that purpose, been waiting at our table.

“I'd say we got off to the start you planned. And, yes, rage was a big part of it.” He says this as I'm settling into my seat, the dark side of the table. No meanness in his voice, just a rueful kind of levelling—a
let's at least be honest
that's a reasonable request. “No tea tonight?”

“No anything. But I have to buy my seat.” I slide the glasses over.

He lifts and settles those big shoulders inside another sweater. “Sure, why not? Besides, how often does a bipolar detective deliver you your beer?”

No problem hiding my surprise. I've lived far behind my skin for longer than I can remember. But a strain to conceal how fast gears are turning in my head, trying to puzzle out who might've shown Sandor this funhouse version of me. Sipping the last of his beer placidly, no
gotcha
gleam winking out at me. I can't fit
detective
with any of the people who've seen me poking around since Saturday—Judy, Danika, the Vivera staff—or, more to the point, match it with someone who would convey her impressions to Sandor. Though it has been
her
, every time. And don't discount the loyalty, often desperate, a ladies' man inspires. Danika's secret smile at Sandor's name. But
bipolar
? It's only one of a grab bag of labels thrown at me early on—gaining over time, but seldom on its own. Usually a double or triple string of terms coined for my windows, or episodes as they called them. Along with, always, a double-duty qualifier to complete the picture.
Treatment-resistant. Non-compliant
. Four or five words to give a gist of me. And anyway it's been years, decades, since I got close enough to a shrink to get any name. So—a homemade diagnosis? A psychiatric hobbyist?

When in doubt, plunge in. Take the attack when the opponent succeeds in surprising you, abandoning your gradualist strategies in an instant. The moment itself is familiar, an occupational hazard. No matter the adjustment, there comes a time when someone—sometimes a principal, sometimes a side performer—offers you a glimpse of what you're doing as a stumble in midway dark, yourself a strobed caricature, Silly Putty strands and bulbs waving in rippled glass. It's absolutely the wrong time to pause and consider the vision, whose plausibility can only demoralize. And equally wrong to press on in the dark, groping in a labyrinth that has just shown its eagerness to repel you. It's axe time. Grab the nearest one and swing it at the wall of glass, the painted plywood behind it. Crash and splinter straight ahead to find open air.

“You're welcome, I think. But I'm way too crazy to be a real detective. And not nearly crazy enough to ignore things that smell off.”

Which sounds, even to my ears, nothing like an axe. More like a toy hammer, tapping.

“What things?”

“Someone slipping away for no apparent cause.”

“People do, you know. Especially at eighty-two.” Staring into his glass. “My mother… she tried to end her life once. Maybe you know. It turns out all she had to do was wait.” Drains the last of it. “Though nobody ever said waiting was easy.”

“No one surprised, or even curious. Her last check-up clean. No doctor attending, just mortuary goons who arrive in double-time. A cop summoned at the first sign of anyone remotely interested in her death.”

“Are you done?”

“Barely started. Sons who don't pause when their mother falls off the earth, they go on drinking with friends, pulling teeth. Sign-in pages like mayflies, they vanish at the end of the day. A daughter who sometimes sleeps over with her mom. Staff look the other way—but they keep looking that night? After that night? A daughter who always has pocketfuls of pills—any five of which would drop a linebacker into coma.”

On cue at “sons,” Sandor starts in on the next beer. Half of it goes down his throat before he pauses, glass near his chin. Takes down the rest.

“And you were on the scene because you know Judy?”

“Yes.” TAL does a lazy flit through my head and out again. It might as well be me downing the beers, I'm so poor at keeping some things in view.

“And, knowing her, you know she has a history of violence. Extreme at times.”

“Violence to herself. I've never known her to hurt someone else.”
They'd have to become real to her first
.

“If you say so.” Sipping. “Since you're implying there's something suspicious about my mother's death, I assume motive is the next consideration. That's how these conversations usually go, isn't it?”

“Usually, yes. And it's best to start with the obvious, no matter how far away from it you end up.”

“Money.”

“As far as I can see, Maude was the only thing standing between her children and it.”

“You don't know anything, do you? Does Judy strike you as money hungry?”

“Money starved, not money hungry. And her family has certainly pulled together to make sure she never developed a taste for the stuff.”

A deep draft, half the remaining.

“Teachers have creamy pensions, but you took yours early. And pension is as lifestyle does. Max should certainly be well-greased, at least by any normal standards. But even on first meeting he strikes me as someone with expensive tastes.”

“Have you met Vivian?”

“I've had that pleasure.”

“Well, you can cross money off your notepad. I own my house outright and have two condos I'm renting out. One I'm getting ready to sell for thirty percent profit. Max is much more diligent, he must have five or six going. Dad started flipping them as a retirement project and he gave us each a starter. That was thirty years ago, but he saw exactly where things were headed, housing-wise. As a graduation gift, it was pretty generous. Does that clear things up?”

“Not really. Not very many things.
Housing-wise
, I'm still left with a tiny woman curled in a single bed, her group home daughter arranging small objects in a crossing ceremony.”

The bottom of the glass. Sandor raises two fingers to the bar. “This round's on me.”

“That's good. Otherwise we're buying it with pocket lint.”

“Sounds like you're the one with money motivations.”

“And you're the one sounding like he doesn't know anything.”

Claps his hands once. “Good. No sense drinking together if we're not equally out of it.” Then remembers I'm not drinking. “Don't worry, we'll keep your phantom glass full. The Kims wouldn't like you nursing an empty.” And then seems to deflate. “It's all academic anyway.”

“What is?”

“The autopsy, toxicology screen—whatever you think is coming next. My mother was cremated this afternoon. I was writing about that in my journal. Trying to describe how strange it felt, not knowing the exact moment she turned to smoke.”

§

“Two Double D's for my regular. Pint of hot air for Scarface.”

Perfect delivery by Ella as she sets them down in front of Sandor and swings away. Sandor turns far enough to watch her in her hot pants and heels. He starts on a new beer, in a new rhythm. Frequent small sips, keeping it close to his lips.

It's awkward not having a drink. The body bobs like a helium balloon without plausible action. Napkin to tuck. Fork to jiggle. Cup to place, glass to grip. Nicotine choreography.

It's Sandor's turn to take us forward. Time for me to shut up and stop feeding him lines. Especially since he's out ahead of me in some way. I sense it without understanding what I sense. He seems to know me, know about me. From whom I can't imagine. Judy the only person that comes to mind. But she doesn't talk about real people—not in the info-trading way most people do. But who else? All I'm left with is the sense that he's primed somehow to meet me. A stakeout with Double D's and journal—and I'm the gumshoe?

Funny, though. I don't have the impulse to hurt him I feel with Max. Or I do, but it's hazy, complicated somehow. Not a good sign in an adjustment—melting when you need to freeze solid. Max encased in so much metal I just want to bang on him with a pipe, break his eardrums at least. Sandor, for all his size and secrets—it would feel like stepping on a snail.

“So the premise you came in with is gone,” he says finally.

I lace my fingers, lean forward to lay my arms on the table. Greater contact doesn't slow, though. Hyper-time closes off as many options as it opens. Silent waiting being one of them.

“Three days. There's a handy proof of not mattering. Not being able to become a suspicious death. You can't become a question, let alone a lingering one.”

Sandor appears to consider it. Swishes the last of this glass in his mouth, like a taster.

“Are you finished?”

“Until I think of a new way to start.”

There. That dark, determined thing rising in him again. What I saw surfacing the other night. Not grief exactly. Not just. Or not new grief. Maybe what grief becomes if it lingers, finds a silty habitat and fattens patiently, hugging the bottom, opening its mouth at what it needs.

“You really don't know anything, do you?” he says. For what, the third time? Not meanly, though. Ruefully, more like. More moxy on my end needed to grease—what?

“I wouldn't be much of a detective if I did, would I?”

An inspired non sequitur that arrives out of nowhere to save us. Sandor relaxes visibly. Inflates that big chest and gut, lets it out slowly. Lifts the fifth glass and fingers for the next two.

§

We're there. We've reached it: the infinite spigot of self-pity where your work is done, just sit back as it cranks wide, nod when necessary, and do nothing to impede the gush.

“You don't know what it's like. No one could who hasn't been through it. Max was POA, yes, but only for finances. Personal Care was me. Dad was cagey, see. Setting it up at the first signs, though he had most of it in place already. Dementia wasn't going to cramp his style any more than depression had. But he divvied it up. Didn't trust anybody. Or trusted bits of different people. Max handling the money end, me looking after her but submitting the receipts to Max. Except that Max was too lazy to keep tabs. Piles of little slips—PSW hours, incontinence pads, bras, sockettes—not his thing at all. So he worked it out with the banker, not sure how exactly, probably a stack of well-chosen samples, that since expenses averaged ten thousand a month, why not just transfer that regularly to her account, let me spend as needed. I came close to screaming when people said how lucky Mom was to have a POA who didn't scrimp, who trusted his brother, the stories they could tell… As it turned out, there was a surplus in the Rosewell years, it piled up steadily. And then went down just as steadily at Vivera, down to almost nothing by the end. Max was always great with numbers. Not so great at visiting. Maybe twice a year in the early years. Pop-ins on his way somewhere. Occasional meal out when she could still cut and chew a steak beside him. Not at all when the going got heavy. Judy about the same. Except she popped up for a few days at a time, then gone. Popped up most near the end. Which was a blessing really, because I'd hit a wall. Hit a series of them, but this one was the last. I could feel that. The weeping, the panic calls at 3 a.m.—
Where am I? How did I get here? Where is everybody? What am I supposed to do?
… I can't describe it. Every kind of breakage and loss. Memory's just the tip. Who you knew just eaten, bit by bit. But the bits don't smile vacantly, nod away. They scream. Accuse. Beg. Weep. Concoct schemes while they're still able. Gouge their faces, yank out their hair. I don't know why I'm telling you this, and I don't care if you believe it, but it broke me. Broke me many times and I kept patching myself together and going on. My doctor said, ‘What're you trying to be, the last caregiver standing?'”

“I'm sure there was never much danger of that.”

“Could be you're underestimating me.”

“Not much chance of that either.” He's stopped drinking.

“It wears you down. Like a grinding machine. The other visitors, the regular ones—we all looked old, older than some of the residents. I did it until I couldn't any more. And a little past that. My mistake. There was no one left who knew me. No one I could talk to even a little. I was just a nice man who brought chocolate bars. Often less than that. And I stopped. And I guess, from the reports I got from Vivera, that's when Judy started turning up. She always surfaced at weird times. Who knows why? Maybe she was after something. She's cunning in her way. Has had to be, I guess. Or maybe just more used to talking to someone who isn't there. Pathetic, but that may have been the size of it. A job she was actually trained for. So I sent her some of Danika's pay. Not as much, of course—she was hardly Danika—but I compensated her for whatever she was able to bring. Max never knew. No reason for him to sweat these little payouts, but he might've. He always hated Judy. Not just fed up, but pissed. Always predicting the day she'd come ‘sucking back around,' and always standing guard to prevent it.”