Adam. “He’s kind of an opportunist. He’s very nervy. But he really likes me. And there’s actually something sweet about him.”
“I don’t know him well enough to hate him,” said Sara. “I’m sure he’s perfectly fine.”
“He’s good in bed,” Adam said, sheepishly.
“Well, good for you,” said Sara.
“You know, you could at least pretend to like him,” said Adam. “God knows I’ve pretended to like some of the losers you’ve brought to the house over the years.”
“Losers? Who?” demanded Sara.
“The gem guy, for one,” said Adam.
The gem guy had been a man a few summers earlier who dealt in rare stones and the occasional coin. He was from Bahrain and was quite handsome, yet it turned out that he maintained archaic, obnoxious notions about sex roles, and was uncomfortable around Adam because Adam was, as the gem guy had phrased it, “an unrepentant sodomite.”
“The gem guy was a long time ago. And he was about sex, pure and simple,” said Sara. “He was a pig, and he insisted on scrubbing his penis with scalding water, a loofah sponge, and Lava soap after he was done. He would have used turpentine if we’d had it in the house.”
“You know what I wish?” Adam suddenly said.
“Yes,” said Sara, sighing. “What you always wish.”
“Well, is that so bad?” said Adam. “Wishing that we loved each other, you and I? That way?”
“You mean,” said Sara, “that lovely, intimate, fluid-exchanging way.”
“You’re such a fucking romantic,” said Adam.
“Actually, I am.”
“But not with me,” said Adam softly. “Oh, well. So it goes.” The Fro-Z-Cone came into view, its immense neon ice cream cone icon buzzing and sputtering in the twilight. “Look at that thing,” said Adam. “It’s so phallic. It just looms over everyone, and we all head toward it. We’re all making a mecca toward the giant penis in the sky.” Sara laughed, and he continued. “Oh help us, giant Fro-Z-Cone,” he said. “Help us distinguish right from wrong, and good from evil. Pleasure us, giant Fro-Z-Cone, with your giant frozen … cone.”
Sara parked the car in the lot beside a BMW that belonged to a bunch of teenagers clustered around the counter of the ice cream stand. “Look,” she said. “The bearded woman still works here.”
“Poor bearded woman,” said Adam. “Why doesn’t she at least trim it? It wouldn’t be so prominent.”
“Maybe it’s a political statement,” said Sara, and they both laughed meanly. “God, we’re terrible,” she said. The bearded woman was elderly, with a milky eye and long strands running from her chin like a witch in a fairy tale. She had been here for years and years, “since ice cream had been invented,” according to Adam. Now they ordered a tub of vanilla, watching as the woman held a container under the nozzle of the soft-serve machine, the ice cream being extruded in a long turban. In the distance, the teenagers smoked and howled and broke bottles, the glass cracking almost musically against the blacktop of the parking lot, while bugs jumped all around them in the neon light.
Sara and Adam paid for the ice cream and then ducked back into the car. As Sara started the engine, she saw that one of theheadlights no longer worked. Adam got out and stepped around to the front. She craned through the open car window. “Busted,” he said, shaking his head. “We can take it in tomorrow. There’s an auto shop in town.”
“How would you know?” asked Sara. “That’s like the last thing in the world you would ever know about. Transmissions. Carburetors. It’s kind of outside the Adam Langer Sphere of Knowledge.”
“Well, ha-ha to you, missy,” he said. “I guess I’m full of surprises.” He paused, smiling. “Actually,” he said, “the only reason I know about it is because there’s this guy who works out front, and he never wears a shirt, just a bandanna around his neck. I call him the Hairless Mechanic.”
“I