11 One Track Mind

Adam's mother was, predictably, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, genetically justifying Adam's devastating handsomeness. As First Lady of Team Rocket, she was cool, elegant, and breathtakingly well-bred. She introduced herself as Ivy and smiled brilliantly, the same dazzling smile with whose presence Adam would occasionally grace those lucky few he deemed worthy.

After lamenting Adam's behavior that day Giovanni sighed and said, "If it weren't for his face..."

Delilah couldn't figure out what he meant. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"It's the only thing he's got!" he said. "He'd be utterly lost without his face."

"Well, anybody would get lost, if they didn't have eyes," she said.

He threw his head back and laughed, even though it wasn't that great of a joke.

It was true that Adam probably didn't have an awful lot going for him apart from the way he looked. How aware he was of this, she couldn't be sure.

"I don't know what to do with him," said Giovanni, shaking his head.

"Maybe he's just having an off day," Ivy suggested.

Giovanni sighed again. "Aren't we lucky he only has seven a week?"

"Oh, he isn't so bad," said Ivy. "He had driving lessons for you last year."

"For me? He had driving lessons for Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana," he said. "Maybe for Vivienne Westwood I can have him know his three times tables by September..."

Eventually he went to make a phone call to get Adam and Irwin back on land. Charming though they were, Delilah was a little intimidated by Adam's parents. They were really nothing more to her than rich and beautiful strangers. Just their accents, just the size of them was enough to lily her liver. Giovanni was about the same height as Adam, but broader and sturdier; Adam was lean and sort of wiry. Ivy was tall and graceful, but with broad clothes-hanger shoulders that kept her from looking wispy. Next to her refined slenderness, Delilah felt curvaceous to the point of vulgarity or fetish; she liked her body, really, but the magazines dedicated to figures like hers were not known for their sophisticated audience.

When Giovanni returned he asked her polite questions about pokémon, and her badge-collecting. "Well, I was a gym leader once, you know," he said. "There's plenty of room at the top."

Ivy smiled wryly. "But there's even more room at the bottom, isn't there?"

"I make my business by being infallible," said Giovanni. "Anything short of infallibility leaves one either dead or in prison, neither of which is acceptable, I think you'll agree."

Delilah got the feeling that Giovanni was trying to gauge how much Adam had told her; she thought about just coming right out and saying everything she knew to save him the trouble, but then she thought that would be awkward so she didn't.

Just then there was a loud, haughty voice reading an uppity hotel employee about her attitude and arguing about the definition of "resort casual".

"That sounds like my loving son," said Ivy.

Giovanni sighed, "Large as life, and twice as noisy."

Staring was rude, of course, but it seemed like a special case when Adam walked into a room. Adam's walk was a slither, a sidewind, and a sashay; Adam's walk confirmed everybody's greatest fears; Adam's walk showed how little he cared about anyone or anything except what he wanted. Adam walked as if he were the only person in the world. Adam walked so nobody had to guess exactly who he was. Adam walked like he had options. His hips moved like there was something there, a drapion's telson, or a houndoom's pointed tail. It was undulatory locomotion, it was ten pounds of sex in a five-pound box.

"Why, Adam!" said Giovanni, not quite affected by his physical charms the same way Delilah was. "Is that any way to show up for lunch?"

Adam looked indignant as he and Irwin took their seats flanking Delilah, both of them slightly beat up and slightly drunk as apparently there was a stocked bar on the yacht. "I came through the door this time," he said. "What way would you have preferred?"

Giovanni raised an eyebrow. "You're hardly the most appetising thing I've seen today," he remarked.

"Did you boys come to a truce?" asked Ivy, regarding Irwin kindly.

Neither of them said anything.

"No?" asked Giovanni. "No end in sight, for your enmity?"

"Enmity?" repeated Adam, his eyebrows shooting upward. "Is that what we've got? Have we got enmity?"

"Of course you've got enmity. What did you think?"

"Well, I knew I couldn't stand him, but I didn't know we had enmity."

"Trust me," said Irwin. "We have enmity."

"With enough left over afterward for some hatred," said Giovanni. "Something of a waste of energy, don't you think?"

Neither of them said anything.

"I think it's a good idea, a truce," he continued. "A peace treaty seems to be on order. How about it?"

"Well, it's okay with me," said Irwin, and put out his hand across Delilah's chest, which suddenly seemed invasively massive. "Want to shake on it?"

Adam recoiled from Irwin's hand, looking slightly nauseated. "Don't push it," he warned him through a Billy Idol lip curl.

"Adam, really!" said Ivy. "Stop showing off. You don't need to be rude."

"Well, we're not friends," he said. "We're just not practising enemies."

"No, but you'll do until one comes along, won't you," she said in a horrible accusatory tone of crucifying motherly disappointment.

"Yeah, Adam," said Irwin, spurred on by the support of Adam's parents. "I don't think you're capable of human emotion."

Adam rolled his eyes.

"You're about as sympathetic as a brick wall," Irwin continued. "I don't think you know what it means to be sad or happy. All you are is angry."

"And here I thought anger was an emotion," said Adam.

"You can't love," Irwin concluded. "You're like a robot, or Voldemort."

"Just because I don't love you doesn't mean I can't love," said Adam. "Just because I choose not to—watch."

He picked up his spoon and looked tenderly into his reflection.

"He walks in beauty—like the night," he recited, meeting with scornful laughter.

"You look in the mirror so much I'm not surprised you see everything backwards," said Giovanni.

As they ate Delilah tried to pick out which features Adam had inherited from either of his parents. Giovanni's features were clearer and slightly heavier, seeming to have added a certain depth and definition to Ivy's English rose prettiness with appealing results. She could only imagine how beautiful Adam might have been had he been born a girl (not that she was going to complain).

"So, I was wondering," said Delilah, "while we were on the boat, I was wondering, what exactly does 'ahoy' mean?"

"It's just how they tell each other to watch out, to beware," said Ivy.

"Oh." She had been hoping that it had a more exciting etymology. "Well, I'm going to go to the bathroom," she said, scooting out her chair.

"I am, too," said Adam, standing up.

"Uh-oh," said Giovanni. "Ahoy, Delilah! Ahoy!"

Adam told him to shut up; he just laughed, in that annoying way that parents did when they found their children's feelings amusing. Irwin looked unhappy.

"So fucking annoying," Adam muttered to her when they were out of earshot.

Delilah laughed abusively; she didn't really think that Adam was in the right.

"But, after all," he conceded, "that dress really does something for your anatomy."

"Thanks..."

"And mine, too."

Adam was being very weird and flirty. He had said things like this before, but never quite so much; she figured it was probably just to make Irwin mad.

"So, Delilah," said Ivy when she rejoined the table, "I hear you're entering the Pokémon League Championship Tournament this month."

"Yeah, I am," she said, sitting down.

"Have you entered before?"

"No, I haven't."

"Well, I wish you luck," she said.

"There's no such thing as luck," said Adam abruptly. "When opportunity knocks, you either answer it or you don't. That's it."

"You have to believe in bad luck, Adam," said Giovanni. "People who run into you are loaded with it."

"Shut up," spat Adam.

Both his parents looked irritated. "Have a little respect, Adam," Ivy warned him slowly. "You're in public..."

"Delilah hardly needs luck anyway," Irwin bragged slavishly.

"Oh, really?" Ivy looked amused. "Is she very good?"

"She's the best!" he said with total conviction. "She never loses."

It did bother Delilah a little bit to be praised in third person, but she felt more embarrassed for Irwin than for herself. "Oh, shut up, Irwin," she said, laughing awkwardly. "Of course I've lost before."

Next to her, Adam's face soured tremendously, and it came as sort of a shock to her: she had forgotten why and just how much he hated her (and maybe he had, too).

"Don't be modest," he sneered nastily, goring a tomato on his fork.

"And just what is the matter with you?" asked Ivy.

He didn't reply, moodily massacring his food while Delilah looked at her plate uncomfortably.

"Too many things to count, apparently," Ivy accurately answered her own question.

"You know what—!" Adam looked at her, and then at his father, and then he turned on Delilah and kissed her furiously.

"Heyyy!" she said, fighting him off. "What are you doing...!" Unfortunately she ended up not sounding very powerful because she was laughing in a combination of embarrassment and ticklishness.

"I just drank a whole glass of passion fruit soda," Adam panted in explanation, more to his parents than to her.

Irwin's mouth dropped open.

"Are you kidding me?" he asked. "That's just a name!"

"I just thought I'd let that 'power of suggestion' have a go at me," he said.

Irwin gazed stupidly at him. Delilah didn't look much smarter.

"Adam."

Giovanni's voice was quiet, even, and dangerous; his face was composed but his dark eyes burned like hot coals.

"You have publicly humiliated me for the last time."

"Gianni," said Ivy firmly. "Please. Non cominciare a fare una scenata, I really don't—"

To her consternation, he ignored her, staring at Adam; his eyes looked like they were going to peel at the edges. "Why do you think you can behave this way? Don't you think you embarrassed someone?"

Adam threw his spoon on the table; it clinked with a comical lack of drama against his glass of ice and skidded across the table into his mother's lap. "Oh, shut up, Daddy!"

"Oh, you try my patience, Adam," Giovanni seethed.

"I'd love to," said Adam, standing up. "I've hardly got any of my own."

"Um, I'm going to go to the bathroom," said Irwin, leaving in an awkward hurry. That was a good idea, but Delilah had just gone a few minutes ago and it would look dumb if she did it too.

Giovanni watched him go, and then looked back at Adam. "Sit down, Adam."

"No! And I know you're upset!"

"I don't get upset," said Giovanni, looking intensely dignified. "I get paid."

"You're no better than a bit of pockmarked strumpet!"

"Adam, sweetheart," Ivy warned him. "Non dare spettacolo. We're not at home."

"Any agenda is prostitution, Adam," Giovanni hissed unblinkingly. "Now sit down and don't dare speak to me like that again."

Somehow they started yelling at each other. Quite quickly Giovanni switched to Italian, and Adam followed suit. Only Adam would use "pockmarked strumpet" in complete seriousness. She understood that he was a little bit drunk and she understood that he was having a passionate argument with his father but she thought it was all a bit histrionic. Ivy looked very tired. Delilah continued eating as some of the restaurant's employees attempted to calm Adam down. It was better than probably any movie they might have gone to see.

At some point Adam seemed to realize that Giovanni had switched to Italian to preserve some privacy, so he went back to English, louder and clearer than before.

Giovanni said, "You blame me for everything!"

"And whose fault is that?" Adam shouted. "That's how you like it!"

He turned to make a dramatic exit, only to find his path blocked by a freshly bathroomed Irwin, who had been watching in slack-jawed horror.

"Get out of the way, rinderpest," snarled Adam.

There was a chorus of "tsk!" and "Adam!" and "be nice!" and other disapproving sounds from his parents that gave Irwin courage.

"Don't be so mean," he said, his hands on his hips.

Adam's sneering mouth twisted disparagingly. He was dirty and wrathful, sunburned and indomitable, and in that moment he somehow gave the illusion of becoming larger, like a fur-raising tomcat hissing and spitting sideways at the opposition.

"I said, GET OUT OF THE WAY!"

"Okay," said Irwin, stepping aside.

Adam shoved past him, twisted around, and shouted, "I'm the nicest fucking slag you're ever going to meet!"

Then he stormed out of the restaurant, flipping over a table on his way.

His parents immediately set to the task of mollifying the gathered employees, Ivy with charisma and Giovanni with cash.

The temper tantrum was almost awe-inspiring. It was like watching Real Housewives, but worse because it wasn't for a camera.

Ivy touched Irwin's shoulder and asked, "Are you all right, darling?"

"I'm fine," he said.

"I'm so sorry about him."

"He was probably too upset to know what he was doing," said Irwin nobly.

One of Giovanni's thick eyebrows lifted an elegant millimeter. "Don't bet on it," he said.

"He probably doesn't mean to be mean," said Irwin. "He's just...probably insecure. And sad."

Giovanni laughed without smiling. "Adam never does anything he doesn't mean. And what he usually means," he said, "is to be mean."