“I, well—”
“Great,” Owen said. “You will. Fabulous.” He chucked her chin with his index finger and winked, was out the door. Adeleine glanced at her watch. The whole exchange had lasted less than three minutes, but the safety she usually found in appraising her things—the stacks of books she’d annotated, the gauzy scarf draped over a lamp—was gone, had left with him.
WITH HELENA’S CURTAINS TIED UP to admit the light from the street, the apartment felt larger, like a space human clutter had not yet succeeded in filling.
Edward paced, on hold with Con Edison, while Claudia found and lit candles, then stuffed them in four recently drained wine bottles he had left by the door. Paulie couldn’t understand the fuss, was thrilled to see their faces and the corners of the apartment shadowed and defined so differently. He had immediately suggested to Claudia that they all think up their most haunted stories, but she had told him only that ghosts were pains in the ass, unreliable guests who didn’t clean up when they came to dinner. Perched on the couch, crossing and uncrossing her legs, she looked over at Edward and swore under her breath. Paulie felt awfully bored and lay down on the carpet, where he demonstrated for his sister all the stretches he knew of, starting with his legs all the way up and straight and his hands clutching his toes. Edward had moved to the bedroom, where he had finally gotten someone on the line, and they could hear the pitch of his voice move up and down in protest and negotiation. After fifteen minutes, he was back.
“Fuck,” Claudia said, when she looked at his face.
“They said we can’t do anything without her, since she’s the account holder.”
“Did you explain her brain is fermenting on the floor beneath us? That we can’t even get her to come to the door?”
“What do you think, Claude? You think I just spent twenty minutes on the phone with them solving the moral conundrum of abortion? We figured it out! It’s wrong!”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just, how much longer can we . . . ? I can’t put him in danger again. I can’t.”
Claudia sat back with a sigh. She looked like someone who has searched the same small area for a lost object over and over, increasingly convinced the space doesn’t hold it but not yet ready to name the search fruitless.
“Paulie,” she said, with the urgency of a religious fanatic in a pulpit. “When is that . . . firefly thing?”
“In the Smoky Mountains?” He leapt up onto the cushions, noodling as he tried to find his balance. “It is exactly one week and four days from now, Claude! And it is highly recommended that you reserve a camping space before arrival!”
Behind Paulie, Edward began waving his hands at Claudia, half circles that indicated turn back now, and shaking his head. Already flying with conviction, she avoided his eye contact and enunciated Paulie’s name slowly. Edward watched her tense and refine, her mouth pursing, her spine straightening, like a predatory animal set on action.
“What do you say, pal? Should we finally take that camping trip you’ve always wanted?” His answer came in waves of yeses, eradicating the hushed air of the room. He sank to embrace his sister and covered her face in pungent kisses, then lifted her in a strained cradle. One neon-sneakered foot danced towards a wine bottle holding a candle, and a nearby Chinese food carton alit with a slow flame. After Edward dutifully doused the thing, Paulie rushed him with a crazy grin, the hinge of his jaw appearing askew. Some previously unprompted reflex opened Edward’s arms, and he kissed the thirty-three-year-old on the forehead and sighed.
Paulie insisted on music to celebrate with. He retrieved a battery-powered keyboard from his apartment and pounded out the opening of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” Edward placed the brown take-out bag on his head and whispered obscenities to himself: Holy fuck doctor. Ass lunch.
When he hit the high notes, Paulie turned his face upward like a dog on a rapturous scent. In the dramatic conclusion of the piece, Edward removed his mask, watched Claudia hold up her candle and move it back and forth. Moments later, when Paulie asked Edward if he’d come with them, he slapped a hand to his forehead and nodded. The evening breeze had cured him of fatigue, and the candle flames nagged at the room, an obnoxious reminder of the space’s total infeasibility. What could he say but yes?