The Temptation of Adam: A Novel by Dave Connis (21)

LORD OF THE FLIES REENACTMENT

I place a mic stand in front of Dez and lift the microphone up to her lips. “Okay, so I think this is how he did it.”

“God,” she says. “This album is historical, monumental, riddled with lore and scandal. It’s got to be poetic and good and perfect, yet it’s going to sound like someone let a bunch of toddlers loose in a music studio.”

I sit in front of Mr. Cratcher’s computer and prep the DAW for recording. “It won’t be that bad. I had enough time with him to figure out some things. His masterpiece will sound like someone let a bunch of teenagers loose in a studio, at the very least.”

“That might be worse, because everything we do is on purpose. I mean, don’t get me wrong, working on this album will be like the coolest thing I ever do, but still. I feel like someone just handed me the Mona Lisa and a paintbrush and told me to restore it.”

“Meh, it’ll be fine.”

“You do realize you’ve got to sing with me, right?”

“This album is doomed. How many songs did you record with Mr. Cratcher?”

“Just that one. What was it called?”

“Um.” I click around, trying to find how he labeled it. “D&C.”

“That doesn’t help. That could mean anything.”

“Dungeon and cataracts?” I ask. “Death and cancer?”

“Just, shhh.” She covers her eyes with her right hand. “Dust and Cradle. It’s ‘Dust and Cradle.’ There’s a line in it that goes, ‘From hurt to love, from abandon to enough, from dust and cradle we live.’”

“Well, at least we know one song title out of eleven.”

“Did you talk to Trey?” she asks. “He said he plays electric guitar. Didn’t Mr. Cratcher want every instrument ever on this album? How was he going to make it relevant but also keep its soul? Was he going to allow synths or are they too synthy? Can we take some modern musical liberties with it? Or should we keep it away from reverb? Glitch effects? Accordion? What’s the line?”

“Wow. Did you drink coffee recently?”

“No. I’m just a concerned freelance musician trying to do another man’s life work justice. No big deal.”

“The music will work itself out. It’ll sound like it sounds.”

“You sound like every band interview ever. What happens when we finish it?”

“Maybe we can find some of his old contacts in Nashville and be musicians for a living.”

“Finally, a life plan. My parents will be thrilled.”

I clear my throat and play an older version of the song we’re about to record. I’m not going to lie—I’m incredibly nervous. I’ve never considered myself a singer or a musician. I’ve only ever considered myself a connoisseur of NPR and fine breakfast cereals.

“How about we change that verse,” she says. “I don’t think saying ‘I’ve been a delinquent, I am a ruler’ is the way modern Mr. Cratcher would’ve written that.”

I watch her as she writes down some substitute lyrics on the window with a dry erase marker. Her face catches the morning sun, and the sight makes me want to tell her everything about me. To be known. To banish the darkness of Deception Pass on my own time, not anyone else’s.

I want to tell her everything.

I think about talking to my dad. Telling him why I haven’t opened up to anyone about school, and then I shake my head, trying to snap myself out my Dez-induced daze.

She lifts an eyebrow. “Involuntary shiver?”

“Huh?”

“When you suddenly get the shakes, but not because you’re cold. It’s like your body decided it was allergic to itself.”

I smile at her statement, and the way her gray military jacket hangs off her shoulders. I walk over to her and put my hands around her waist. I pull her back into my chest, but she turns around. I’m so overwhelmed with her light that I need to kiss her. I lean toward her lips, but she puts a finger on mine.

“Future Boyfriend, we can’t be that yet.”

My happiness dies. “But what if what we want to be and what we can be aren’t the same thing? What if what we want to be isn’t possible?”

She kisses my forehead. “That’s something I’d ask, not you. You need to believe it for the both of us.”

“That’s not fair. What about the times when I can’t?”

“You don’t have those. Not like I do.”

That’s not true at all, because I’m currently having one. What if we’re in a perpetual state of not yet? What if we’re never good enough?

No.

There has to be a better way, and I need to fight for it. I need to fight for Dez. Maybe fighting for her starts with telling her everything. Maybe one of the ways we aren’t “that” yet is because she doesn’t know all of me. She’ll have the chance to leave me, yeah, but maybe the only way to ensure our future of being “that” is by giving her the chance to choose all of me. The dark and the light.

But what if she leaves?

I just got her.

She’s the only girl who’s ever wanted to date me.

She’ll leave.

You’re too broken.

You’re dirt. Unforgivable.

You aren’t worth fighting for.

You’re worth a stick of Juicy Fruit. Why would she stick around?

All of this rushes through my head over and over. Echoing on itself, gnawing its way into my nerves, and I know that the spark I have to ignite my honesty needs to catch the fire quick, otherwise it’ll die before the words get out.

“Future Boyfriend,” she says, taking my hands off her waist. “Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé didn’t get giant Twitter followings by standing around like idiots in a music studio. We need to record. I have to get to school—”

I take a deep breath. “I asked girls at my school for sex. I offered money to a few.”

She looks at me with soft eyes, prompting me to tell the story. Telling me whatever I say next she’ll understand.

“I had this list on the back of my door of all the girls at my school I thought were hot. A list of girl’s names I was working through.”

I still feel like dirt. I still feel responsible for pouring my unnatural disaster self all over someone else. A bunch of someone elses.

I look at Dez. Waiting for her to tell me we’re done. Waiting for her to see me as unlovable, just like my mom did when she didn’t even say good-bye. Just like the way Addy’s leaving told me my mom was worth more than I was. Her eyes bore into mine, but she says nothing.

“I didn’t care about people, Dez. The Woman leaving, Addy, my family. I’d decided that people weren’t worth the manual labor of caring I think because I believed that about everyone else, I believed that about myself. I love porn because there’s no labor involved outside of moving my hand. Those girls don’t hurt me. Anyway, in the span of a week, I’d asked a bunch of girls to have sex with me who were in the same group of friends, who now call themselves The Anti-Adam Order. I offered one twenty bucks to do me in the hallway. She pretended to say yes and started making out with me right in the hall. Then before we went anywhere, she started screaming. Teachers came running. They used that, the fact that I’d offered her money, and the other girls’ testimonies about my asking for sex to win the suspension.”

I pause. Too afraid to look at her. Too afraid to let our souls touch.

“At the time, I didn’t think I deserved that retribution from those girls. Now, the hardest part about remembering is that I was so sure I hadn’t done anything wrong. So sure I was the victim because I hadn’t forced myself on the other girls; I’d only asked, only offered money. I thought I was in the clear, but I’m so not. I’m the opposite. I’m a smoky tendril of evil. The Anti-Adam Order is legit. They formed because of how much I sucked at being a human.”

I laugh and wipe a tear forming in my eye.

“Now I’m part of my own anti-order. I hate myself for all of it. For what I still do.”

I’ve feared this moment since we talked on her bed after Mark’s funeral. Is this enough for her to decide I’m too messed up? Can a girl only have so much grace for a guy? Especially one who was trying to pay girls to do him? The Woman didn’t have any grace for my dad, and he didn’t cheat on her once. I’m pretty much handing Dez a platter full of steaming bucket’a’bull and asking, “Am I still awesome?”

My eyes feel wet. I wipe at them haphazardly and aggressive as though I can catch the tears before she sees them, even though I’ve been crying through the whole story.

She grabs my hand. “Look at me.”

I bring my gaze up. “It’s just my eyes sweating. Not crying.”

She laughs and then pushes herself onto her tiptoes and kisses my forehead again. I feel like a Pokémon. Like, before that kiss, I was Adam, but now I’ve evolved into Adameo: body of fire with nine million HP.

“You have nothing to worry about, Future Boyfriend,” she says. “I like my men like I like myself: human. I don’t know what the Anti-Adam Order is, but I’m not in it, and if we were all honest, we’d all have our own anti-orders. What you did was wrong, yeah, and you’ll have to deal with it, but that doesn’t make you horrible for infinity. We’re all just dirt with legs. All of us. We may think we aren’t, but we are. Okay?”

I wipe my eyes again. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“No one else knows. I haven’t even told Addy yet.”

She nods. “You should.”

“I’ve just been so scared. I think … so I’ve been having these dreams about the last vacation my family went on before The Woman left.”

I tell her about each one. How, in every one, my family leaves me and I’m alone in darkness so crushing it feels like I can’t breathe.

“I’ve been thinking the dreams were about the moment I realized my family left me. I mean, they are, but I also think they’re about how I didn’t do anything about it. The deception is the distraction of me blaming the crushing darkness on everyone who left. Some of it is their fault, but I gave myself to isolation without a fight. Maybe the dreams are saying as long as I think the darkness is other people’s fault, I’ll wait for them to fix it. I’m deceived into thinking I have nothing to do with my own isolation, so I just stew in my hurt and drift further and further away from shore.”

She holds my hand and considers the dreams. “It sounds to me like maybe you get off the log and swim back.”

I laugh at the simplicity of it, but it makes so much sense. “Yeah. Yeah. Me, too.”

“Deception Pass Park,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

I laugh. “I’m sort of afraid of it now.”

She kisses me again. “Maybe we can fix that. Now, let’s sing together about the woes of an old man riddled with cancer.”

I let out a sigh of relief and sit in the office chair. I might have romantic feelings for Dez, but they’re temporarily replaced with how thankful I am for a friend as kind and caring as she is.

I’ve never respected anyone more than I respect Dez Coulter right now.

—

Dez and I walk into Mr. Cratcher’s room, and I’m not sure which one of us isn’t letting go of the other. It was the same way when we came four days ago.

“My dad said yes,” I say. “All our parents said yes. We won the battle. Mostly thanks to Addy, but still, your Knights of Vice are going to Nashville over Christmas break. We’re going to get your album back. We’re going to finish it for you. We promise.”

“It helped a lot that we could all use the ‘our mentor is dying card,’” Dez says. “So, thanks for that.”

“I’m going to take our daily morning time and get better at the guitar. I may have snuck into your house the other night so I could listen to the last eight versions of your album and dig through your journals. I also may have stolen the extra house key under the planter.”

“I helped,” Dez says, smiling. “It may have triggered a new addiction—stealing—but I’ve managed it by taking paper clips out of my dad’s office. I’m not sure how long I’ll be happy with that, but the good news is it’s a lot cheaper vice than alcohol.”

I look up at Dez. “Did we tell him everything?”

She thinks for a minute. “Oh, I keep thinking about your stupid question and I don’t know yet.”

“I don’t either,” I add. “And it is a stupid question.”

The smirk on Dez’s face disappears. “Wait.” She bends over and whispers something into his ear. “Is that it?” She stares at him for a few seconds, waiting for him to answer.

“It’s close? That’s good.” She turns to me. “Future Boyfriend?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever make a guess at his question?”

“I tried ‘we’re all variables’ once and he shook his head.”

“Was it a ‘no, you’re an imbecile’ kind of shake? Or was it a ‘you’re close’ kind of shake.”

“The latter.”

“Hmmm.”

“What?”

“I’ve just decided that I’m going to read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury during our Nashville trip.”

“Okay, then.”

—

It’s the Monday before Thanksgiving, and Addy and I are sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner before we go to Transparency Forum (which has, not surprisingly, grown to include Dez and Addy) when my dad comes through the doors, talking on the phone.

“Really?” he says. “Wow, that’s … weird. Yeah, I’ll sign it. Just send me the papers. Okay. Yeah, that sounds great. Yep. Bye.”

I shove a spoonful of Life in my mouth. “Wbho wub thbat?”

“So attractive, Papi,” Addy says.

“Hbey, wbhen”—I swallow—“a man needs information, he needs it. Why Papi?”

“When a woman needs a ham sandwich, she needs it,” she says. “Am I right?”

We fist bump, and I look back at my dad.

“Mr. Cratcher’s lawyer,” he says.

Mr. Cratcher must’ve finally let go. The doctor keeps telling us the next time we see him he’ll be gone, but Dez and I go every other day and he’s always there, breathing. It isn’t much of a life, but it’s still life.

“So …” I say, waiting for Dad to drop the bomb. I’ve been preparing for this the last few weeks. I tell myself every morning I’ve seen the last of him, and that the heaviness will go away eventually.

That somewhere in this chaos there’s beauty.

“So, before I say anything else, how long did you look at porn last night?”

I drop my eyes back to my bowl.

“Adam?”

Addy flicks my ear. “Adam?”

“Does anyone else find it awkward that my porn habits are being discussed by the whole family at the dinner table?”

My dad shakes his head.

“Nope,” Addy says, “love makes this totally normal. Now answer.”

I groan. “For like, two hours.”

“Why?” Dad asks.

“Dez hung up on me like she always does when she’s pissed about something, but this time it just made me feel horrible.”

“So you medicated?”

I sigh. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Okay, well, I want you to consider this. I’m not going to force you to do it, but just consider getting rid of your laptop, or at least getting some sort of accountability thing for it. Same deal with your phone. This is one of those life or death decisions Mr. Cratcher was always talking about, and you have to make it for yourself. You affect others now. You know, the Knights of Vice, your girlfriend—”

“We’re not dating.”

Addy rolls her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter if you are or aren’t,” Dad says. “Think about how porn trains your ability to love others. It’s a battle, I know, but it’s only a battle if you keep fighting. Your sister and I can only knock on your door so many times. We have work to do. We’re willing to help, but in the end, you have to choose what you want.”

“I’ll pay for the accountability software,” Addy says, “that way you have no excuses. Actually, after this conversation, I’m marching you upstairs and we’re signing up for it. How about that for some action steps?” She leans toward my ear and whispers, “Boom.”

I stare at them both, reminding myself I wanted them to ask me hard things.

“Now,” Dad says, pausing to make sure I have nothing to say to Addy. “About Mr. Cratcher. His lawyer, Mr. Stevens, said Mr. Cratcher’s will was made out to Gabby even though she passed on. Apparently, Mr. Steven’s pushed Mr. Cratcher to change it for the last five years, but Mr. Cratcher and Gabby had no children and neither had family, so Mr. Stevens assumed it still hadn’t been updated when he flew into town last night to deal with the estate, but he found a new will.”

I nearly choke on my cereal. If he says I’ve inherited Mr. Cratcher’s estate, I may have to fill out a will of my own.

“And there were four inheritors.”

“Adam Hawthorne, Elliot Brickman, Trey Lyons, and Dez Coulter?” I ask.

“Yep.”

Holy.

Addy laughs, “No way, that’s crazy.”

“So, we get all his stuff?” I say.

“Maybe. We don’t know a ton about how this is going to happen, and Mr. Cratcher isn’t dead yet. He still might recover.”

He won’t recover. He’s been in the lion’s den way too long to come out whole.

“Mr. Stevens is calling everyone or their parents, so the rest of the Knights of Vice will know about—”

My phone rings.

“Hello?”

“We’re inheriting all his stuff?” Dez says.

“Yeah, I guess. Crazy, huh?”

“I call his old man books.”

“I don’t know how we thought we were going to record the album if this didn’t happen. All his recording equipment would’ve been sold off.”

“Our destiny hath been ordered by the almighty to be folk stars.”

“I don’t think folk stars exist. Sorry, baby.”

Did I just say baby?

Addy’s eyebrows bunch and she looks at me. I just shrug.

Why am I suddenly a fountain of pet names, especially one as stock as baby? I’ve never called her anything but Dez and/or objects found in nature. A mountain in the morning sun. A forest of trees in a northern fall.

“Want to go to the house early and look around?”

Okay, so she has no response to essentially being called “a useless human.” That’s good. Why is baby a pet name? If Dez and I ever get to the pet name stage, it’s off the list.

“Yeah, I’ll head over now.”

I stand and put my dinner plate in the sink. “Addy, do you want to come over early with me?”

She shakes her head. “Nope. I’ve still got to take a shower.”

I wave the comment away. “You don’t have to take a shower; there’s no one to impress.”

Addy shrugs. “I don’t want to impress anyone. I just smell like garlic toast. See?” She holds her hand out to my nose. I take a whiff and smell nothing, but I fake gag like I just ate something disgusting.

She laughs, drops her plate into the sink, flicks my ears, and runs up the stairs.

—

“This man should’ve been on a hoarding show. Look at all this.”

I turn to the right, but I can’t see what Dez is pointing at, which I guess is kind of her point.

“It’s just his garage, though,” I say. “His house is pretty clean.”

“Adam, I can’t even see you. It doesn’t matter how clean his house is.”

I push against a pile—and by pile, I mean mountain—of whatnot. The thing-mountain tips to the side, hits another thing-mountain, and Bothell, Washington, has its first ever avalanche.

“Sorry,” I say, waving dust away from my face. “Are you okay?”

“I was just hit in the head with a kazoo signed by Bob … Dylan. How does that even happen?”

I poke around in a box of what I thought were vinyl records, only to find folder after folder of tax records.

Vinyl records. Taxes. Honest mistake.

“I’m pretty sure this guy collects Seattle’s 2011 tax forms,” I say. “Wait. These are just his, from the last fifty years. Holy … Mr. Cratcher was making between $100,000 and $300,000 a year for the last twenty years. How is that possible?”

I’m not going to lie. I feel both giddy and guilty when I think of how much he’ll leave behind.

“I might know,” Dez says. “Come over here.”

I walk around boxes, totes, and stacks of newspapers to find Dez staring at a box filled with pictures. No, not pictures, sheets of lyrics matted in picture frames.

She holds a long, skinny frame out to me. Behind the glass are five sheets of paper. Her mouth hangs open in shock, which is kind of sexy. I want her to be surprised more often. I grab the frame and read the sheets of college-lined notepaper. I know these words. I know these words. I skip to the last page.

“There’s a ton more,” Dez says, “but none of them use Mr. Cratcher’s name. Some use The Chaos Writer, but that’s it. I wonder how many music stars know the Abbey Road scandal guy was writing their songs?”

“Okay, can we first talk about the fact that he has a letter from Leonard Cohen talking about how he wrote the line ‘blaze of light in every word’?”

“Do we have to? It kind of makes Mr. Cratcher seem like a douche.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or to defend him. “You probably shouldn’t call a guy who’s about to give you his estate a douche.”

“But he played that song for both of us, knowing he wrote that line.”

“It shouldn’t matter. The words impacted him, and he wanted to share it with us. It makes those moments where he played the song for us a little different, yeah, but it shouldn’t lower Mr. Cratcher to douche status.”

“Since when did you become sensitive?” she asks.

“I met this girl who made me care about stuff and my machismo has been declining ever since.”

She puts a frame down, grabs my hands, and slides them around the curves of her waist.

“The world doesn’t need any more men who don’t care,” she says. “Or any more men who think that machismo declines because you’re vulnerable and keep tabs on how you feel.”

I want to tell her I’m kidding about my machismo declining, but I feel her sincerity and decide against it.

Her blue eyes melt me in the middle of a hoarder’s garage. I want to kiss her, but I’ve already tried that and it didn’t work, but then again, here she is, putting my hands around her waist and I wasn’t allowed to do that before. Confused, I put my feelings somewhere else. I try to feel such a strong hate for porn that I’ll never think about it again, although, thinking about not thinking about porn makes me think about porn.

God.

I feel guilt rise in my gut, but I focus on her arms around my neck and the warmth of her waist sending the beautiful kind of pain up my arms.

She pulls herself tighter into my chest. “The world and I need you to be Adam who cares.”

“I lo—”

She puts her finger on my lips just like she did when I tried to kiss her in Cratcher’s studio a few days ago.

“Not yet. I want it to be true when we say it. If we want to survive, our love can’t be a shadow. It’s got to be a blaze. I need to know addicts can blaze.”

“I know they can. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last few months, it’s that there’s a blaze of light in everyone.”

“You say that, but blaze equals fire, and fire still consumes. In the end, I still need a high, and I want/don’t want it to be you.” She makes a greater than sign with her fingers and points it at my chest. “I want the greater-than love. Until we have that, we’re just volcanoes. Keep believing in us, Adam.”

There it is again. The idea that I’m the one who has to believe in us. The idea that just me believing is good enough to carry us through to the other side.

“Hello?” someone yells in the other room. It sounds like Trey. Dez and I let go of each other and go back to looking through the lyrics.

“Hey! We’re in the garage!” I yell. “Be warned, this place is an avalanche of loot and plunder.”

“Did you guys get the phone call?” Trey asks, being vague in case we didn’t. He sticks his head into the garage, “Holy …”

“Yeah, welcome to our next, like, million years,” Dez says.

“How are we going to decide who gets what without killing each other?” Trey asks.

“I don’t need much,” Dez says. “I just want to be able to finish the album.”

“Let’s save that discussion for when Elliot gets here,” I say. “No need to start a Lord of the Flies reenactment.”