The photo shoots became less frequent. Angelo grew quiet during the day, and laughed louder at night over drinks with his friends. Samantha spent more time lounging on the couch in front of the television, waiting for him to emerge from his dark room.
They ate in silence, watching a program about home decoration on TV, and wiped their mouths with paper napkins, and cracked open fortune cookies together.
She stared at that paper in her hand and did not look up. She stared at it as though it protected her from the sight of something far worse, something that would surely turn her to stone, or a pillar of salt. She suffered through two verses of that horrific jingle, and when she finished, she lowered the paper and stared at the floor.
Angelo lowered his hands, dropping the paper back into the box. Samantha smiled a little, and blinked very quickly, and walked to the kitchen. The newspaper rustled in her hands.
Her father stumbled back. Her mother screamed as though she’d been struck. She marched past Samantha. Her bare feet slapping the floor. She grabbed her car keys from the hook, flung open the front door, and went out. The door swinging on its hinges.
Paul pulled the truck into a long, curving driveway. Samantha tilted her head. The house was blond brick, with royal blue shutters, a matching door. When they stopped, she stepped out from the truck, shouldering her bag. Paul walked around the vehicle and shut the door behind her.
“I think you’re really going to enjoy it,” he said brightly. “It’s my favorite recipe. Eggplant parmesan with an herb crust. It should be done in just half an hour.”
She shook her head. She smiled. She glanced down. She smiled at him, again. “It’s okay, Paul,” she said. “I know you’re sorry. It’s okay. I shouldn’t have come up here. Let’s have dinner. It’ll be nice.”
“What did you do? What did you do wrong?” She could have laughed again, but she didn’t. The heat had crept to her brain, and her vision blurred, and she blinked furiously. “When are you ever going to stop worrying so much?”
He hid his face with both hands and began to cry. Dr. Thompson said nothing and looked away. Carlita realized she was shaking, and eased herself back into her chair. She, like Dr. Thompson, turned her head to look at something else, anything else, and her eyes settled on the wooden straight-backed chair in the corner. It sat beneath the window, though which she could see the busy traffic of Pinehurst Highway, the cars moving in quick succession in a river of steel and plastic and tempered glass.
Their first year passed in their apartment at Poplar Abbey. For three months, Samantha bagged groceries at a local deli, saving every penny she earned for rent, for the electric bill, for something, anything, to fill the bare rooms of their home. When she was fired just before her ninety day probationary period was up, she scrambled for another opportunity. She went to the library and printed as many copies of her resume as she could, and then blanketed the area around Poplar Abbey, asking, with a polite smile, if somebody, anybody, was hiring. Eventually, she was hired by a florist and clipped roses for a year at six dollars an hour.
Angelo encouraged her, and occasionally he would take out his camera from its leather case, but there were no more casting calls, no more photo shoots, no more dark-haired girls covered in makeup.
She’d gotten lost on her way over that morning, circling around the Peterson Station in search of her platform, and, unable to find a single train attendant, had wandered the maze of the station for nearly twenty minutes before finding the laminated map next to the pay phones. She had jogged up to the train in her pinching, discount pumps just as the doors had begun to close.
On that day, in October, so many months ago, Samantha had wandered through Brixton Hall in a trance, not quite believing what had happened. Her own footsteps carried her down corridors, surrounded by that gaudy wallpaper, all of those overlapping green and brown chevrons, and she wasn’t even thinking, not really, just going wherever her footsteps would take her.
She wanted to ask because she wanted someone to ask her the same thing. She wondered what the looks on their faces would be when she would answer, frankly, that her favorite sexual position was called “Brewing the Pot,” and then she’d giggle as they’d scratch their heads and try to figure it out.
Samantha, who had raised her eyebrows faintly at the nickname, was nodding again, slowly. Her eyes strayed over her computer screen, then flicked back to Carlita. “Okay,” she said. “Sounds good. I’ll tell him.”
“Close. He sells lawn mowers, she hawks makeup door-to-door.” She snapped open the tin lunchbox she’d been carrying as a purse and produced a pack of cigarettes. She put a cigarette between her lips and lit it. “Living the dream.” She held out the pack to Angelo.
Paul pulled his truck into the main entrance of Cypress Woods, and waved at the joggers that circled the man-made lake. He stopped by the mailbox at the foot of his driveway and collected the mail. He smiled when he saw that Darla’s red SUV was not parked in the garage, and when he climbed from his truck, gathering up his briefcase, his coat, and the various coupon catalogues and junk mail envelopes, he walked right up to the front door, which had been painted just the right shade of hunter green that Darla liked, and he unlocked it with his keys, and he let himself in to the hardwood foyer.
It slammed shut, rattling the door frame. Heavy footsteps clamored across the living room, and plastic bags crinkled, and aluminum cans tumbled to the floor. The knob on the bedroom door rattled, and Angelo stumbled in.
In her head, she counted. One. Two. Three. She breathed in, then out. Breathed in, one two. Breathed out, three four. Over and over. One. Two. Three. Four. And then she imagined.
They both fell into a expectant silence, one that Samantha had, through her responses, been calculating. She felt that it put Paul on the spot, just a little, and he rocked back and forth on his heels, glancing around, as though Carlita would be summoned by the mention of her name, or Samantha would suddenly pipe up with a new topic of conversation, even though she knew that he must know her better than that by now. She felt a wicked little stab of pleasure, one that she could never quite name.
He nodded, walking further into the room. The floorboards did creak beneath his feet, but the sensation wasn’t unpleasant. He peered out through the back windows. She was right: the yard was overgrown with weeds. Dandelions were waving in the breeze, bending over patches of white clover and creeping kudzu. It looked as thought it would definitely take more than a little gardening to clear it.
“Not when the fucker said he was making a statement about American consumption and its effect on the environment.” He dabbed at his lip with one finger. “Literal.”
“She’s being worked on,” Angelo said. He pulled the ice pack away from his mouth. His lips were completely numb now. “Accidentally stripped a screw. Had to send her off. There’s nobody in this town who knows how to service an old Voigtlander, so it’ll be a little while.”