He says, “What girlfriend?” and keeps on working. He’s layering mozzarella between local tomatoes, then drizzling pesto vinaigrette. It doesn’t really require a lot of focus, but he keeps his eyes on those tomatoes as if he’s making rosettes for a wedding cake.
Cath, perhaps mindful of the fact that it’s hard to collect blackmail once you’ve let the secrets out into the air, doesn’t say anything more, just cocks her hip, then saunters away, swinging her ass hard. He’s dying to learn how much she knows. The facts in the video are the ones in the public domain and her state trooper brother-in-law might have been able to grab some records, especially if Cath filched Polly’s social security number. But the money that Irving knows about—nobody knows about that, according to Irving. He only found out by accident. Millions, he said, and won on a lie.
According to Irving. Who didn’t bother to tell Adam about Polly’s past until he decided he wanted to make Adam feel like a jerk. It’s funny—knowing what he knows now isn’t enough to make him stop loving her. But if he had known all along, it might have been enough to stop him from falling in the first place.
Barn door open, horse gone.
Adam has never had these out-of-control feelings about a woman before, not even the woman he loved enough, for a time, to marry. Lainey. She never even crosses his mind. Polly never leaves it. He keeps thinking this has to end, that it’s like a flu or fever that will run its course. He had moments where he believed he could walk away from her, collect his last check from Irving, and enjoy the fall on another continent.
And then he kicked her door in. She tried to act tough, but he wasn’t fooled. She was terrified when he came through that door. Memories of her ex, he’s guessing. But she also seemed excited. It’s a complicated thing, the human brain. No one wants to be abused. But what if, after the fights, some chemical is released? What if the fight is a kind of drug that leads to a high? What do you do then?
They should leave together. And then what? Irving could destroy his reputation pretty fast if Adam takes up with Polly. No one’s going to want to hire the PI who fell in love with his target.
Polly told him last night that she doesn’t want to settle more than one hundred miles from Baltimore, maybe two hundred, although she refused to say why. He thinks about the trip back to the city, the day he followed her. The answer is on Rogers Avenue, or nearby. Could the money be there? Has she entrusted the cash to a third party she believes won’t rip her off? She has no family left in Maryland—according to Irving—and she isn’t a woman who makes friends easily. The film mentioned a disabled daughter, so maybe that’s the stepdaughter she ripped off? If she ripped her off.
Philadelphia, Richmond, Pittsburgh, New York—her two-hundred-mile radius leaves them with a nice array of options. He can’t see himself in New York; money doesn’t go far there. He doesn’t want to live in the South. (He knows Maryland is technically the South, but the D.C.-Baltimore area has been an okay base. Richmond is South-South.) Pittsburgh, though—it’s a city, but it’s easy to get to nature from there. Maybe not the ocean, but he could still hunt in western Maryland. And you can be in Canada in less than four hours.
Canada? Where did that come from? He pauses, knife in hand, tries to nail down his own chain of thought. Escape, running away. They’re going to run away from here. Once you start to run, you never stop. Maybe she’s right. They should hold their ground. Face down Cath, make her ashamed to think she could use Polly’s past against her. Make her the bad guy.
But they would still have to contend with Irving. Adam has to persuade Irving there is no money, that it was all a bullshit story. To do that, he would have to talk to her about what he’s been told, get her side of things.
He would have to tell her that it was no accident, him finding her here.
Would she forgive him? Would she ever trust him again if she knew he’d been hired to befriend her, follow her, find this money that may or may not exist?
They need to go. He’ll persuade her tomorrow that’s the only safe way.
21
If there is one thing Polly knows how to do, it’s waiting. It’s her talent, her art. Waitress indeed. She’s a pro.
Her life began with waiting. But isn’t that what all teenage girls do? You put on a yellow bathing suit and you wait for your life to begin. There was Burton Ditmars, tanned and muscled and so grown up. She was fourteen. She cannot blame herself for thinking he was offering her a life.
The next phase was waiting for Ditmars to come home. Then she began waiting even more eagerly for him to go out. The night Joy was born, she waited for the doctor to come, screaming at nurses that it was time, it was time, it was time. She waited through doctors’ appointments. Waited for Ditmars to hit her because then she would be in that briefly benevolent “after” phase, all sweetness and gifts and backrubs. Strangely, when she discovered that nonprofit that organized time-outs for women such as herself, she initially found herself watching the clock during her “liberty,” longing for it to end. She didn’t know what to do with four hours to herself. Shop? She had no money of her own. And it made her jumpy, trying to relax in her own house with another person in it. Plus, Joy knew she was there. Polly had to leave in order to enjoy her “respite,” and that was no respite at all.
The longest wait of all had been in the weeks before she killed Ditmars. She was not trying to concoct the perfect murder, per Walter Huff’s advice to Phyllis in Double Indemnity. She was resigned to not getting away with it, although she did her best. Lord knows, there was no shortage of people who had reason to want Ditmars dead, given the things he had done. Her fear was that she would only maim Ditmars, deal him a crippling injury, and then she would be trapped with him forever, caring for him.
Prison had been easy for a waiting pro such as herself. Unpleasant, cruel, but easy, the affronts predictable and impersonal. Unlike life with Ditmars, it could be managed once she learned the rules and personalities. She assumed she would never get out, so all she was waiting for was one day to end and another to begin.
Then she was released, met Gregg, fucked him, fucked up—fucked up by fucking him—and that was that. She might as well have gone back to prison. Luck, so overdue, finally arrived in the form of a nasal Baltimore voice, shouting at her from the television during an All My Children commercial break. She knew that voice, that guy, that shyster. Irving used to complain about him all the time, but anyone who did business with Irving had to be a little bent. Look at Ditmars. She called the number that promised to change her life. And for once a man’s promise was kept. Then a new wait. She is still waiting. But it’s a waiting she has chosen, so she has power. It’s her decision to wait a little longer. What will she tell Adam six, eight months from now? She’ll figure something out. It’s easy to make people believe in good luck, because who doesn’t want to believe in good luck?
At work that night, Polly lets Cath’s deadline approach, showing no concern. She has no concerns. She tells Mr. C what’s what, and, sure enough, he doesn’t care.
“He hit you, this man?”
Polly nods. “Hit” doesn’t begin to cover what Ditmars did to her, but it’s good enough.
“You did your time, you deserve to be out, it’s nobody’s business,” he says. “If my business falls off and I can keep only one waitress—it will be you. You’re the better one. And you make my cook happy.”
So Mr. C knows about them, too. She and Adam must have been terrible at hiding their relationship. Mr. C is the most oblivious man she’s ever met. Not a bad thing in a man. Her preference, actually.
It’s a busy night, the last Thursday in August, and Polly makes sure she is on top of her game, putting a little extra into her encounters with Max and Ernest, laughing at their stale jokes and observations. She can tell it throws Cath off her stride, seeing Polly happy and calm.