41
Adam can’t figure out how to make his move to Belleville plausible. There’s work enough, up in Wilmington, for someone who knows how to investigate insurance fraud, but how does he convince Polly that he fell into that line of work. She’ll see through him, she’ll figure out that he came into her life as a PI, murder riding his coattails. Will there ever be a right time, a right way, to come clean?
He distracts himself by deciding to drop a bundle on her Christmas gift, going into the once sacrosanct account, the money his mother left him. He can almost hear his mother whispering to him when he transfers $5,000 from his inheritance account to his regular checking. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to impress someone who truly loves you.
Of course, he doesn’t have to spend the whole amount. Money can always be transferred back.
But he does spend it all, and then some. He goes to Washington, D.C., one of those old-line jewelers who buzzes you in, assuming you don’t look like trouble, and Adam, with his blue eyes, always makes the cut. Adam knows Polly likes old stuff, vintage, but he’s helpless when the guy starts throwing terms at him. Art deco, art nouveau. He shrugs, wishing it wasn’t the owner himself waiting on him. He’d feel better confessing his ignorance to a woman, someone young and romantic who would be charmed by a man’s good intentions toward his girlfriend.
His eye is drawn to a diamond solitaire in an old-fashioned setting, really simple. It’s a whopper by his standards, almost two carats and, of course, the guy has to blah-blah-blah about purity and cut and resale value, how unusual good canary diamonds are. Adam has done enough divorce work to know that the resale value of gems is almost always overstated.
But he likes that this ring is simple. No pavé diamonds surrounding the stone, a slender platinum band. He’s not sure if it’s to her taste, but it looks like her, clear and bold and beautiful, with a flicker of light at the center.
It’s also $6,000. He dickers with the guy, gets him down to $5,200, barters his time. He probably could make Polly just as happy with a cheaper version of this ring, something from one of the mall stores. God knows, if she finds out what he spent, she’ll probably be angry at him. Five thousand dollars in their current circumstances could carry them to next summer, to a time when the High-Ho is thronged once more. She’s talking about the bed-and-breakfast business again, which strikes him as crazy. Escoffier reincarnated could open a restaurant in Belleville and it wouldn’t do enough business to go year-round.
He’s glad, watching the guy pack up the ring, that he came to this kind of shop. You can fool a woman with a ring, if it’s pretty and shiny enough. But you can’t fake the box, the presentation. This velvet box is a deep, deep blue, and when he looks at the inside, he wishes they made beds for people as soft and billowy as the white satin on which this ring sits.
He’ll wrap the velvet box inside something bigger, surrounding it with tissue, maybe even weighted things, to maintain the illusion. Maybe he’ll get a box for a hand mixer or a Dustbuster. He imagines her taking it from under whatever kind of tree they put up. Christmas Eve, not Christmas morning. The best gifts are the ones you open on Christmas Eve, whether you’re a kid allowed to open just one present before Santa arrives or, well, an almost forty-year-old guy who’s going to go down on one knee, say words he never thought he’d say again to anyone.
Or maybe, he thinks that evening, nursing a beer, waiting for her to finish up at the High-Ho, the blue velvet box like a tiny happy bomb in the pocket of his leather jacket, he’ll propose to her here. That’s it. He’ll reenact the night they met, then slide the box to her, cool as cool. What did she say that night? It was funny, he remembers that. He’d been trying to mock his own pretensions, called himself an asshole and she had one-upped him. Then later, she had made a joke about being a Pink Lady apple.
It’s so hard now to remember being dispassionate about her. Maybe he never was.
“Ready to go?” she says at closing time.
“Sure thing,” he says.
Mr. C comes out of his office, a letter in his hand. “I almost forgot, Polly, but this came for you today. Registered, certified, whichever one you have to sign for.”
Polly slides it into her pocketbook but not before Adam, expert in reading upside down, notes the address—Kentucky Avenue, Baltimore, MD. Her ex, he thinks.
Her not-yet-ex, he remembers. It’s easy to forget about him. She never speaks of him, or their little girl. It’s as if neither one has ever existed. Polly gave the first kid to the state and she’s giving this kid to her dad, with nary a backward glance.
Unnatural, Irving Lowenstein had said. Irving Lowenstein, who had wanted her dead.
Still, that doesn’t make him wrong.
Maybe it’s too early for anyone to be giving anyone a ring. He’ll wait until Christmas Eve, after all.
42
Polly waits until she gets to the Royal Farms to open the letter. With Adam gone most of the time, she no longer has to spend her mornings at the Royal Farms, not on weekdays, but she retains much affection for the place she considered her summer office. A place where she reads and thinks, even writes from time to time.
A letter from Gregg. Finally, he is ready to move forward. They could be divorced by next June, not even six months from now.
Dear Ms. Smith, it begins.