22 Identity
She figured she would just be frank and upfront about it. They could discharge this sexual congestion directly and efficiently and be done with it. There was no reason to be coy. It was distracting her from other things.
So maybe it made her a slut, she thought on the way to his house. She didn't care. So maybe she was only interested in his body, in his well-trafficked genitals; what was wrong with that? So maybe he was attractive to her because of the glamour, the heady danger he radiated. So maybe it was silly and foolish and frivolous. What was so bad about being inane and dumb and superficial if she was okay with it?
The door was answered by the butler and when Adam appeared behind him holding a glass of Bollinger she was tongue-tied and embarrassed, confronted with the fact that she was completely out of her league. She had absolutely no idea what she was talking about—how could she possibly think about sex like that when she lacked any authority on the matter? She felt so inelegant and unworldly next to Adam who seemed so much older and more sophisticated in his Junya Watanabe and hand-tailored waistcoat.
"Hi, Delilah. What a sweet dress."
"Thanks. Irwin helped me pick it out."
"—Except, of course, for the rubbish fabric."
"...Oh."
"And the cheap cut."
"I..."
"Not to mention the execrable construction."
"Well..."
"I'm quite busy right now, Delilah, but the next time you need someone's help shopping you might go to someone with taste."
Well.
Adam could certainly make a point.
She started to walk back to the street. She knew that Adam probably only said it to hurt her feelings, but she felt her eyes start to water anyway. Her chin wrinkled and she choked out something that was half a sob and half a laugh, the Harlows' beautiful front grounds blurring in front of her like a wet newspaper.
"Delilah!"
She turned to see Adam's father coming towards her from the front door, and she quickly wiped her eyes on her wrist and smiled overcompensatingly as he approached.
"I heard my son give you his critique of your dress," he said. "Why don't we buy you a dress of the most painstaking quality and see what he thinks?"
"Oh," she sniffed, wiping her eyes again. "I don't...you don't have to do that."
"Maybe not," he said, "but I would really like to. It's the least I can do, for the abuse you suffer at Adam's hands."
Delilah thought that if Giovanni bought clothes for every person abused by Adam, it was a wonder that they were still so rich.
"I insist," he said, leading her to the garage. "At his best, Adam personifies a good 50% of the cardinal sins, and it can do no harm to occasionally take the piss out of his vinegar..."
Leaning against the garage outside were a few panes of glass. "Are you having windows replaced?" she asked.
"No, those used to be mirrors," he said. "Adam wore them out and they don't work anymore. Now they're just plates of glass and we must throw them away..."
She smiled but looked away because she thought he was being a little too obvious about trying to cheer her up.
"I apologise for his rudeness," he said in the car.
"It's okay," she said quietly.
"It's really a lovely dress, and you look lovely in it," he insisted.
"Thank you," she mumbled.
"He is a bit of a jealous fusspot," he sighed. "That's all..."
She looked out the window and didn't say anything.
Giovanni seemed to want to say something more, but he didn't.
He took her to a boutique where the clothes were so expensive that the prices weren't even put on the tags.
But what clothes!
She was almost scared to try them on. They were nicer even than anything she had worn for a photoshoot. Giovanni proclaimed several beautiful garments "hideous" and "vile", "unfit for the wretchedest of Croatian prostitutes" while attendants scurried back and forth attempting to please him with terror and devotion, but when he found something he liked he declared, "Why, with a dress like that, even I could date Adam!"
Delilah had read a few teen romance novels that assigned a certain magical power to beautiful clothing and she supposed that this was what he was referring to. It was a terribly beautiful dress with a very flattering ruched bodice and she thought she looked like a movie star, but unfortunately her undergarments that day were too dark and showed through the white jersey, so it was back to hearing how some gorgeous dress would only be appropriate on a blacksmith's wife lugging pails of water from a hand pump "in the fields".
Once he was satisfied with having worn every shop employee to a quivering pile of humiliation in its liquid form, he bought her a pink dress with a deep neckline, which he told her to wear out, and he would have the shop deliver her other clothes to the hotel for her.
When they returned to the house Giovanni told her to wait a minute before ringing the bell so that he could have Adam answer the door; when he did, drink still in hand, he looked her over and said, "Oh, hello again, Delilah. Another new dress?"
"Do you like this one any better?" she asked.
"Did Irwin help you with this one too?"
"No, someone else helped me pick this one out."
Adam tsked and sighed exasperatedly. "I told you to come to me!" he said, leaning his hand on the doorframe. "As impossible as it sounds, this clot's got even less taste than Irwin! What thick old bastard was it this time?"
"You call him 'Daddy', sweetheart," Giovanni called from the parlor.
Adam squawked agitatedly, and Delilah burst out laughing. He stood there looking like a purugly being petted backwards and she "suddenly" felt awkward.
"What's the matter?" she asked pointlessly.
"I'm not happy," he pouted.
She did something stupid then.
She laughed.
Adam smashed his glass against the wall and then swept his arm across the console table under the mirror, crashing stemware and flowers and picture frames to the ground.
As he kicked the table over, Giovanni rushed in asking what was going on.
Adam stomped past him and up the stairs.
"I hate this house!" he yelled from the staircase. "And I HATE these STAIRS!"
Giovanni shook his head in skeptical exasperation as Adam's angry footfalls continued, reaching a climax as he slammed a door. Apparently the slam didn't meet his exacting standards because then the door opened again and slammed harder.
"He hates the stairs," Giovanni sighed, looking pleadingly to the heavens. "It's always something..."
He righted the table as the maid came in with a dustpan. "Oh, dear," she said. Apparently it had happened before.
"It seems you've hurt his feelings," said Giovanni. It almost sounded like a compliment.
Delilah shrugged, unsure what to say. He invited her into the parlor where he was sorting through old photographs and she had to wonder how much work it really was being the head of a massive criminal organization if he spent so much time just kind of hanging out. Maybe it was like being a school principal and mostly involved business lunches while the vice principal had to deal with all the bratty kids. Ivy seemed to be out at another charity function or whatever.
There was a photo of them from the previous summer. Adam, as white as ever in the Mediterranean sun, was wearing seersucker espadrilles and a Velvet Underground t-shirt with a swimsuit; Ivy, Lanvin; and Giovanni, tortoiseshell sunglasses. All in all, they looked like vaguely 1960s movie stars, as apparently per usual.
There were a couple of pictures of Giovanni and Ivy at their wedding, which was of course beautiful, and then there was Adam as a skinny ten-year-old with a crab line at a Vermilion rockpool; Ivy crouched next to him pointing at something and holding fish and chips wrapped in paper. How British, she thought.
"Delilah, I'd like to ask you something."
"Okay," she said.
"Do you know how I make money? Do you know what I do?"
She wasn't sure how to answer. "I guess I have an idea," she said uncertainly.
He looked at her seriously. "Then you have more than most," he said. "You're in an awfully powerful position."
She didn't know what to say.
"But then," he said, "so am I."
"Yeah," she agreed lamely.
He continued looking at her for a while. Then, quite without warning, he laughed. She just smiled uncomfortably, not sure where he was going with this. "You've charmed me, Delilah," he said. "For somebody else's father, you might be a gift."
He paused for a moment, and there was something strange and sad about him.
"But for me," he said, "you are a prize."
She didn't know what he meant, but it made the hairs on her arms stand up.
"I'll give you a tip, a secret: one must work hard for success," he professed. "You must start at the bottom, and work your way up."
"Is that what you did?"
"Well...not exactly," he admitted modestly. "I started at the top and worked my way up."
She laughed. "Well, I guess you Harlows just have natural business smarts."
"Well, one of us has, anyway," he said. "Very lucky for his worthless progeny, he of the room temperature IQ..."
"Is this him?" she asked, handing him a picture of Ivy in an evening gown with her arm around a very young Adam.
"I think he was six years old in this photograph. Of course, he's much bigger and uglier now."
"Maybe," she said.
Giovanni didn't say anything for a few moments, staring at the photograph with an odd look on his face. "You know, when he was sixteen," he said, "he found a loophole in his school's credit system and figured out that he didn't need to continue attending classes."
She smiled, but there was something in his voice that made her sort of sad.
"They let him run errands and things instead," he said as he dropped the photo on the table. "That was when I got him a job at Lodge's shop in town...that lasted all of three hours..."
The doorbell rang.
"Adam can get that," said Giovanni. "He could use some responsibilities."
The bell rang a few more times before Adam came thundering down the stairs wailing, "Must I do everything around here...?"
He opened the door and a man said, "Garden workers. We're here to look at your lawn."
"Yes, we keep it outside," Adam sniffed disdainfully before discharging this responsibility to the butler who had made his reappearance.
He glanced into the room and Giovanni stood up. "Well!" he said, gesturing. "Chi si vede!"
Adam saw Delilah and stopped. "What's she doing here?" he asked.
"She?" Giovanni looked at Delilah, then back to Adam. "She followed me home," he said smugly.
Adam frowned. "You had better not ask me if you can keep her," he said.
"Can I ask you that?" asked Delilah.
Adam looked at her. "Delilah, can I ask you a question?"
"Yeah," she said, a little bit surprised.
"Why don't you go home and stop bothering me?"
Her breath stopped.
"Delilah, just go...GO...away. Just go away! I don't want to deal with you anymore!"
She looked away. Giovanni gripped Adam's arm, yanking him closer. "There is insufficient contempt," he hissed, his eyes blazing icily, "for the man who would offend a woman—even in anger."
"Don't touch me!" cried Adam, jerking his arm away violently.
"What's wrong with you?" His voice was hushed as if in awe and slightly shaking with rage.
"You don't care!"
"How dare you! I care rather a lot more than you do!"
Adam was silent. He looked at Giovanni, at Delilah, at the persian lying under a window. When he spoke next he didn't look at him and his voice sounded uncustomarily, almost childishly soft: "I'm feeling worried, Daddy."
"Rubbish," said Giovanni. "Worry is for poor people."
Adam looked upset. "God, I hate you," he said.
"Adam—be nice," scolded Giovanni.
Adam exploded. "BE NICE!" he shrieked. "Be NICE? I hate that word! I'm fucking sick of that word! Nice, nice, nice! It's all I ever hear! Is that all that matters in the world! Isn't it NICE to see you looking so NICE on this NICE fucking day!"
"As if you can talk!" Giovanni objected. "Every other word out of your mouth is 'fuck'! Fuck this, fuck that, fuck off, fucking fuck fuck fuck! How ugly! You're not the only one that gets annoyed!"
"Oh, isn't that nice!" Adam yelled. "That really makes me want to do something nice for you nice people! And we'll have just a charming, sweet, nice little day, indeed! You lovely man!"
"What the fuck!" Giovanni replied. "Fuck it, fuck you, fuck me! Fuck around, fuck up, fuck over, motherfucker!"
"Oh, pretty pretty pretty, oh GOOD, oh, most precious! Nice nice little old darling me!"
"For fuck's sake! Go ahead and fuck yourself to death! Fuck the whole country for all I fucking care!"
"I already have, Daddykins! AND IT WAS FUCKING NICE!"
Adam grabbed whatever was nearest to him—a chair—and threw it.
It wasn't a chair made of balsa wood. It wasn't designed to fly and fall apart. It wasn't a prop. It was dark Cuban mahogany, probably old and definitely expensive, hand-carved and upholstered in Italian silk.
It broke. It shattered. It splintered in two against the wall, and left a mark. Delilah heard her breath come in sharply.
"I LIKE FUCKING!" Adam screamed hysterically, shouting it with his entire body.
He waited with every wiry sinew tensed like a spring trap, glitter hanging in his eyelashes while his chest rose and fell.
Giovanni looked at the broken chair. His eyes narrowed.
"You rotten child," he said slowly. "You're not even ashamed." He turned to Delilah and said, "I'm sorry you've had to see this." He waved to the butler, who came to show her out.
Adam shouted desperately, "Oh, right! My shameless rottenness is too horrible for female eyes! A good job you're here to cover it up, to make everything perfect and nice again!"
"Now, you listen," said Giovanni. "I feed you. I clothe you. I sent you to school. I pay for everything you do, Team Rocket pays for it all. Your mother and I could have decided not to have you at all. Don't you think that you..."
The door closed before Delilah could hear any more.
When she got back to the hotel, there were two pale pink parcels sitting on the desk, with the name of the boutique on them. In the first one was the black dress she had worn that day. Then she opened the second one and pushed away the tissue paper.
It was the beautiful white dress. She touched the ruched bodice, not knowing what to think or how she felt. She was sort of shaken, sort of nervous.
She was scared. She was scared of Adam. She was scared of herself and her future and people and the world. She was scared of the dark and throwing up and clowns. She was scared of everything and it frustrated her because she didn't want it that way.
She was nervous. She was anxious. She was stupid. She was lonely. She was sad. She was worthless. She was angry. She was weak. She was so lost and she didn't know how it happened.
Intelligence meant that you understood things and you knew how things worked. If ignorance was the only way to bliss, it meant that things were inherently bad, and the only way to be happy was if you didn't know about them. But why should that be true? She wasn't in any position to reject an idea until it became an impossibility.
But nothing was impossible, was it?
And if anything was possible, you started to feel doubtful and suspicious of everything you thought you knew. Because maybe you were wrong.
You never know.
Delilah was scared.
She didn't know why.
She didn't feel like she knew anything anymore.