Some nights Adams leaves the club exhausted. On other nights he doesn’t want to stop. There’s no accounting for it. Whether the band is up or not has nothing to do with his own physical reaction to the music. He can feel bored when they’re playing well, excited when they’re sloppy. Tonight, when the final set ends, just after two, he’s wide awake, hungry, talkative. So is Pete, so they go for breakfast at Adele’s, an all-night diner.
“I’ll be shit on the air tomorrow,” Pete says. He has a six A.M. news broadcast. “Every morning it’s Nicaragua, Nicaragua. I can’t even say Nicaragua till about noon.”
Adams orders orange juice and pancakes. He remembers the chicken in his refrigerator. At three o’clock, when he finally reaches home, Jordan is standing in his yard. Adams calls the police. “I’m sorry, sir,” the sergeant says. “You’re out of our jurisdiction.”
Adams argues that his neighborhood is well within the city limits. The sergeant insists that county records are unclear. By now the man has disappeared.
Deidre answers the door and leaps into his arms, her hands gummy with peach ice cream. “Can we go to a movie, Daddy?”
“If you want to,” he says, kissing her sticky cheek.
Pamela is dressed to go out. “There’s an opening tonight at Cyndi’s gallery,” she says. “She may be interested in showing my photographs. A friend’s picking me up.”
Adams does not mistake the tone of her voice. She’s seeing a man. As if unsure of his footing, he walks slowly back to the car holding Deidre in his arms.
He treats the kids to hamburgers and Raiders of the Lost Ark. At home, he clears dirty dishes from the coffee table and newspapers from the couch so they can watch TV. He brings them milk.
“Daddy, how old are you?” Deidre asks.
“Forty-one.”
“Is that old?”
“Not too.”
“Are you older than Mom?”
“She’s thirty-eight.”
“Is that old?”
“Horribly old. Your mother continues to astonish scientists.”
While they’re occupied, he carefully searches the backyard, first from the kitchen window, then from the porch. Nothing. He steps into the yard, over leaves he hasn’t raked since fall, circles the barbecue pit and the tree, and returns to the house. The kids have fallen asleep.
He awakes to the smell of something burning, runs to the kitchen, and finds Toby holding a stack of mail over the right-front burner of the stove.
“What’re you doing,” Adams asks.
Toby turns off the stove and tosses the charred envelopes onto the kitchen table. “You didn’t open them,” he says.
“Get dressed,” Adams tells him. “Wake your sister for me.”
He drops Toby and Deidre off at their house. “I’m late.” He kisses Pamela’s cheek — habit — and she steps back. They smile at each other, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he says.
On the wall above his desk Carter has a plaque, a quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “No duty the executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.”
He introduces Adams to Richard Feldstein, an IBM rep. Feldstein is a short man, thin, with thick black glasses.
“Sam, I’ve asked Dick to speak to our core group. As you know, we’re bringing some hardware in later this month and I want to prepare everyone for the changes.”
“Do you have any experience with computerassisted cartography,” Feldstein asks.
“Limited,” Adams says.
“Usually we encounter a little resistance at first. People aren’t used to computers, they’re intimidated, and so on. I want to assure you that your job will be much easier with our equipment.”
“We’ll allot small amounts of computer time to anyone who wants it,” Carter says. “Of course, since you’ll be doing special projects for me, you’ll have greater access to the software, hmm?”
Adams nods.
“We’re providing firm resolution flatbed plotters which will give you approximately 1/25,000 resolution on any surface area,” Feldstein explains. “Our power of resolution exceeds data currency at this point, but you’ll be prepared when new data becomes available.”
“What all this means, Sam, is that you’ll be freed from map-making tasks,” Carter says. “You’ll have time to select the best techniques. Your decisions, stored in the computer, will be more easily defensible. If a map design is flawed, it can be changed at the last minute.”
“Our new products include video displays, controls to rotate, distend, or manipulate maps in various manners, as well as synchronized real-time displays,” Feldstein says. “The possibilities are astounding. You could provide the medical community with, say, a map of the brain.”
“How does it sound, Sam?” Carter asks.
“Terrific. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Good. Stop by my office tomorrow morning. I’ve got a new project for you.”
The children have a secret — a whistle deep in their throats. They’ll use it against him when he comes to get them, he’ll have to be taken away. Of course it’s his whistle. He gave it to them when he let them have his eyes, nose, chin. It is the whistle his father passed on to him, warning, “Don’t blow on it unless you’re in terrible trouble. It’s a horrible thing that happens when you blow on it. First, a big old hound — he’d be black if you could see him, but no one can see him — leaps on your enemy’s neck. Then eleven pairs of white-gloved hands reach out of the air and drag him away by the head. The main thing is, never never use it against people you love. Okay?”
And he didn’t, but now his children have the whistle and they’re angry. He can see it in the way they whisper together, hands on hips. He’s come to take them for the evening, away from their mother, the box of broken crayons, the houseful of lost buttons, they don’t like it, they don’t want to go, not tonight, we want to watch TV, not now, we’re warning you. They advance toward him, menacing, he reaches for the door. Too late, they’ve sounded the alarm. Hot breath on his neck. Tell us why, tell us why! the children shout. Eleven pairs of white-gloved hands pin him to the floor.
“Sam,” says Carter, “I want you to research twenty-three hundred acres of land in northern Elgin County. The Deerbridge Road area.” He offers Adams a Styrofoam cup full of coffee. “Keep this under wraps, but we’ve got a hell of a real estate deal in the works. I want to know who owns that land and how much they paid for it. Then I’ll ask you to draw a map.”
He explains in broad terms that On-Line wants to develop northern Elgin County for farm production.
Is it a conflict of interest for a cartographic outfit to buy real estate?
“Use the new hardware. And keep in mind, this is an important project for me personally, hmm?”
In the elevator after work, or in the car, invisible fragrant skin rubs against him, a gift of his thoughts. You are a capable man, he tells himself, deserving of rich rewards. If called upon, you could design a more perfect union, or plan a covert action pleasing to all races (especially the oppressed, who have stowed their pilfered M-16s in four inches of rice-water and mud).
An exquisitely capable man. Everything under one roof: his wife’s secret ledger, the children’s active sleep. Each morning he woke before dawn. The car wanted in, just to sit with him, he could hear it tapping the back door with its bumper.
But Dad. A silver, room-length pendulum, up and back. But Dad but Dad but Dad.
He reaches for an unshattered glass. Denial was my only promise, kids, didn’t I teach you? Stand up straight. Don’t flinch, you’ll want to kiss each cut. Place your hands on either side, this way, good, stretch it tight until it tears, let the sweetness breathe.