hi guys :) i was going to have this up sooner but i went away for a few days to visit friends with my family and then when we got back it was Thanksgiving and people came to visit us instead! at any rate, last time there was mention of the chapter titles: they are in fact all named for songs. at my lj i posted the song this chapter was named for, Television's "Venus", in case you're curious. if you guys find that interesting i'll post some more of the other songs too. thanks for reading.
24 Venus
Adam wiped his eyes and laughed halfheartedly.
"God, don't you hate it when a man cries," he said. "Especially when it's me."
It was an odd sort of day, very un-California, where the clouds seemed to move too quickly, perforated now and then by the sun's bright and unpredictable appearance. Adam drove the car with the top down fast and hard and it was exhilarating and scary enough that she laughed.
"Well, some people think I don't deserve it," she was saying as they stood at a gas station while Adam's car was attended to.
"Why's that, 'cos of Lance?"
"Well, yeah, I mean, he got some flack, but what else were they supposed to do? Blue wouldn't take the title, and besides, Lance is a great trainer."
She thought he was going to say something, but he didn't.
"So some people think my winning is sort of arbitrary," she continued. "Like, Lance was just a gap where there wasn't really a Champion, and now I'm like this sort of rough spot because I beat someone who was Champion on a technicality."
"Well, I think people are upset about that," he said, "but there are people who really are upset that it could be construed that your victory was unfair."
"That makes sense," she said. "But I think some people might have been suspicious because Lance and I are both from Johto. I mean, what are the odds?"
"Pretty good, apparently."
Fuel was much more expensive in Kanto than in Johto, and they were the only people at the station. Adam told her quite breezily that actually there was no such thing as an energy crisis and that it was just a way to raise prices. She didn't know how comforting that was, or how much she believed it.
"Red and Blue were from the same place, too," he said. "Not just the same county but the same town."
"Yeah, but I think people liked that, because it was cute. It's a better story when it's about kids. It made it seem like Red was all determined to defeat his friendly rival and that's the kind of thing people like. It seems intimate, like a book. Lance and I are both from Johto, but we barely knew each other. It was a coincidence. Red and Blue wasn't a coincidence, it was a story; Red got into pokémon in large part because of Blue. Or at least that's what we're made to believe."
"Maybe," he said, "but every Champion has won under different circumstances; you can't really compare them to each other..."
The sun shone down on them, making the pavement glisten blinding white. A granbull was barking somewhere.
"You have pretty hair," said Adam.
She wasn't ready for the things that shot through her at that moment, a jolt of pain and her heart broke; her head swimming as she looked at the ground, she wanted to smile and cry at the same time.
"Are you all right?"
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together; her arms hung pointlessly at her sides like vestigial structures.
"Delilah?"
She felt his hand gingerly on her shoulder and recoiled from it. She opened her eyes and saw his knees.
"What's the matter?"
"I'm—I'm okay..."
A tear spilled down her cheek, escaping through the cracks in her speech. It fell onto the top of her breast and dripped into her cleavage.
He touched her again and she didn't flinch. His hand slid down the length of her arm before swinging away.
She didn't look up; another tear rolled down her face and landed on the ground in a dark spot.
"Adam..."
"What?"
He edged closer to her and brushed her fingers with his.
She sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. What could she say? She looked at the polka dots she was painting on the sidewalk and wondered if anybody had cried there before her, if she was standing on somebody else's tears.
Adam took another step toward her, but didn't seem to know what to do and hung there for a moment. She wanted to squeeze him and touch him and wrap herself up in him.
"Do you want to talk about something?" he asked her.
Suddenly tired, she took a long breath.
It was released on a sigh.
"Can you please tell me what this is all about," she said.
The granbull started to bark again.
She peeked up at him, and quickly looked back down.
The barking continued for several seconds.
She heard him swallow before speaking.
"I don't know," he said.
He was directly in front of her, close enough that it was awkward that they weren't touching.
She got the impression that he wanted to kiss her, but she was looking at the ground and he didn't.
The granbull carried on barking.
Somebody yelled, "Shut up!"
She laughed, and he did too, clearly relieved.
"So what do you want to do?" he asked when they got back in the car.
"Nothing very serious," she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm exhausted. Let's just do something dumb. Let's do something completely and totally stupid beyond reason."
"Stupid beyond reason?" He laughed. "As opposed to what? Stupid within reason?"
"Well, you know what I mean," she said. "You know, like, Robin Williams or Pippi Longstocking or something will come and, uh, like, skinnydip in a public fountain, and then we wear white to a funeral we weren't invited to, or go to an expensive restaurant and don't pay the bill. And then they leave and it's sad but life is a little more colorful. You know."
"Okay," he agreed. "What do you want to do?"
"I don't know," she said. "What's something you've never done before?"
"I never had measles," he said.
She laughed. "Well, that's 'cuz there's a vaccine. So we can't do that."
"You know, I never broke a bone, either."
"Me neither. But it sounds like a lot of work," she said. "I guess you can go ahead if you want to but I don't think I want to be involved."
"This is awfully depressing," he said. "Do you want to get married?"
She laughed. "Maybe if it were with an Elvis priest."
"I know what we're missing," he said. "A little orphaned pauper ragamuffin who steals to eat and always has fun. Like...sort of...uh, you know, the Artful Dodger, and some Tom Sawyer. He'd know what to do."
"I don't know if orphaned pauper ragamuffins still exist," she said. "And if they do, they're probably not nearly as endearing two hundred years later."
"Yeah, who am I kidding, I hate children..."
They were in Pewter when it started to rain, and he put up the top.
"So what do you want to do?" he asked her once again as they sat in the parked car.
He seemed to want a definite answer. She knew that he was probably really asking what she wanted to do about their relationship but she evasively said "I don't know" and looked out the window. "Do you want to go to the museum?"
"The Science Museum?"
She nodded. His arm went around her shoulders and immediately heat flared in her cheeks and he leaned over and kissed her.
"I'm really a jerk," he said, lingering on her lips.
She kissed him while he was there. "I know," she said. She shivered at his touch, the contraction of her diaphragm pressing her breast into his hand. "I'm kind of a bitch," she said.
He laughed a little, his hand running up to her neck. "I know," he said, his mouth moving against her skin.
She was touching the inside of his leg and she didn't remember when that had happened and she saw his pants move. "Hey, Adam..."
"Hmm."
"Um..."
He looked serious. "What?"
"I'm a virgin?" she blurted out, suddenly embarrassed.
There was a beat as it registered.
Adam seemed to struggle to understand the meaning of this word.
"...Whatever," he finally said, and kissed her again.
"Is it okay?"
He didn't answer her right away. "Well, it makes no difference to me," he said, "but...I mean, why? Why are you a virgin?"
"I don't know," she mumbled defensively.
"I mean, I don't say that it's a bad thing," he said quickly. "Are you saving it for marriage?"
She thought this was a strange conclusion to draw considering how much of her body she had allowed him to access. "No," she said. "Is that the only reason a girl can be a virgin?"
"I was just asking," he said, letting his hand drop.
"I just never really wanted to do it that much."
"Why not?" He looked confused.
She shrugged, her face hot.
"I don't mean to embarrass you," he said. "I just..." There was something like guilt on his face.
The rain was loud on the roof. "I don't want to make it a big deal," she said.
"Well, I'm glad you told me, anyway," he said, sitting up straight. "I guess it would be seemly to take advantage of this moment and inform you that I'm not a virgin."
"Really?"
"I understand why you might not be comfortable with my reputation."
"It's no big deal," she said. "Besides, why do it with another virgin? It's going to be awkward enough anyway..."
Half of his mouth smiled, in such a way that she couldn't tell whether or not he was making fun of her.
"I mean, as long as I don't die of syphilis in a French prison," she added.
He laughed, and started the car. "You'll be okay," he said.
In the museum he asked her if she really did want to get married. She laughed, but then she stopped and said, "Wait, seriously?"
"No! Nothing serious," he said. "Just for a laugh, just to upset my parents."
She laughed. "Well, okay, why not?"
He looked surprised. "Well, you don't have to, just 'cos I asked," he said. "You can say no...I mean, I know some girls plan their weddings since they were, like, eight, with all your friends as bridesmaids and grooms, and a cake four feet tall, and a honeymoon in Hawaii, and a dress with a train a mile long."
"No, that's okay," she said. "I just want someone to open pickle jars and kill mosquitoes for me."
He laughed. "Maybe my dad'll get that heart attack I was hoping for."
"What a terrible thing to say," she said. "I always thought he liked me. Do you really think he'd be that upset?"
"He'll spontaneously combust," he said. "We'll know he's heard about it when all the rain turns to steam."
Sometimes Adam exaggerated, but not always.
As soon as they were alone in front of some fossils he pawed at her posterior but she parried the petting.
"I thought you could do that with your fiancée," he said. "Can we touch each other? Am I at least going to be able to look on you naked?" He was smiling but she wasn't sure how much of it was teasing.
"I was just..." She didn't know what she was just.
There was a kind of awkward quiet during which they both seemed to feel like they had done something mean and then Adam said, "I guess you're right. You know how people are jealous."
She laughed, which apparently had been his goal.
"But there's nothing modest about me," he said. "I'm too rich, and too beautiful, and too superior. There isn't a calling for modesty."
"What a face you've got," said Delilah. "But you're a nasty thing. A nasty thing."
"Well, you can have affairs, if you want," he said.
"That's...sweet...I guess."
"I'll probably be horrid and jealous but it's only fair."
"I guess you can have affairs too," she said.
He laughed, and it flustered her, because she didn't know what it meant.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" she asked, unable to read his weird signals.
"Nothing." He shrugged. "Don't let's fight, please, Delilah, I'm sorry."
"I'm not fighting," she mumbled.
"I wasn't laughing at you," he said.
She knew he was looking at her, waiting for her to look back at him so he could make sure she believed him, but she was embarrassed and wouldn't. He tentatively put his arm around her in a sort of sideways hug and she felt suddenly very immature.
"I'm sorry," he said again. "Don't be upset..."
She was sorry too, and felt sick and ashamed that he was apologizing to her. She leaned into him, too embarrassed to speak.
For a moment she stayed there, feeling him feeling her, taking in the citrus chypre he was wearing and thinking, perhaps inappropriately, that olfactory input was sent directly to the amygdalae.
"I'm not upset," she clarified. His clavicle was like a sheer cliffside against her eyebrow.
"I wouldn't blame you if you were," he said. "I've done some pretty bad things to you."
She could feel his penis, half-erect against her pelvis—was that a stupid thing to notice? "Well, I've said even worse to you," she said.
"Like my father says," he said, letting go of her: "you get what you pay for."
She smiled skeptically. "Is that what he says?"
"Well." He shrugged. "Addendum: unless you cheat."
"Is there a Team Rocket motto?" she asked. "When I was, like, ten, somebody told me that the Team Rocket motto is 'all pokémon exist for the glory of Team Rocket', or something like that."
"That's catchy, isn't it?" he said, laughing. "Nice and subtle. What my dad says all the time is: tutto è fuomo e vento, fuorché l'oro e l'argento. Except for gold and silver, everything is but smoke and wind." He paused. "It's prettier in Italian," he said.
"I guess a lot of things probably are," she said.
Getting married wasn't something Delilah expected would actually happen. She thought it was going to be like someone saying, "Wouldn't it be great to live on a boat, and just sail around in the Pacific? Living on a boat would be so awesome, and we could put up lights at Christmas?" Then the other person would say, "Yeah, man, that would be great! If I get a job this summer and save money we could totally get that shit done by the end of this year." And then nothing would happen. Maybe it would become an inside joke, or they would revisit the fantasy once every now and then, but neither person ever had any intention of following through.
They spent a long time touching each other in the car and Adam said something stupid and dirty that made her laugh. "I read something about you once," she said, "about a year ago I guess. It was something very scathing, something like, 'please remind me why Adam Harlow is considered so attractive, he looks like he sweats five flavors of gonorrhea'."
Adam smiled, feeling the curves of her hips and waist, and she was hit suddenly with how surreal it was that people on the internet called her a bitch, as if she wouldn't find out, when in fact there was nothing to stop her confronting them.
"I just remember thinking," she said, "what would it be like...to be insulted, so casually. And I guess I found out..."
"I'm not a person," said Adam. "I'm vocabulary."
She laughed again. He laughed too but not very much.
"You surprise me," he said. "You're not familiar with celebrity. You don't understand how people look at you, and what they see."
She frowned. "No," she said. "I guess I don't."
"You're a symbol, Delilah," he said. "You're a first, you're a synonym, you're property, a product for consumption. You connote something to a lot of people, something besides who you are. You're not real anymore."
But Adam had lived his entire life having his every whim and fancy promptly catered to. No outlandish request inconvenienced those who could afford it. Adam had been born with a multitude of advantages and conveniences so that he had no idea how much they meant to other people. Adam didn't have to work for luxury, he didn't even have to wish for it—luxury simply was the way of things, for Adam.
"I see it when you're in magazines and on television," he said. "Questions don't surprise you anymore because you've been asked before and you've already got an answer. Over time, it's less...flawed, less recognizably human."
"Uh-huh," she said, her shapeliness yielding easily to the harder contours of his body.
"People feel entitled to you. Maybe they are," he said, his hand slithering up her dress. "But they certainly feel that way..."
They talked to the vicar, or whatever, who had baptized Adam, and they signed an affidavit which was a paper saying who they were and that they hadn't been married before and that Delilah wasn't a member of the Anglican Church.
The next day she let Adam into her room and he saw a bag of Eggward's food pellets and a few pairs of Delilah's shoes. "Why do you still have your things out?" he asked her. "Why didn't you pack up?"
"I don't know," she said. "I didn't know..."
It was true but she knew it sounded stupid.
That was sort of refreshing about Adam. If he said he was going to do something, he always did it. Most people weren't like that, especially grown-ups.
"I'm not mad at you," he insisted when she got quiet.
It seemed like he was really trying to assure her a lot that he didn't want to fight with her. She didn't really know what to make of it.
"So, how do you dream about losing your virginity? 'Cos I'm rich, so, all your dreams can come true."
"I don't dream about losing my virginity..."
"No...? I thought girls dreamt about losing their virginity. You know, strawberries, candles, and champagne, and satin sheets. Rose petals! That's what girls like isn't it."
"Well...if that's what you're into," she said. "I mean, it sounds a little embarrassing, to me...I would probably laugh at you..."
"I should hope you would, because I always thought satin bedclothes sounded like a broken ankle and two months of bad dreams."
"To be perfectly frank, Adam, I don't know if I believe that you've never deflowered a girl before."
"I'm just not a sentimental," he explained. "I won't spontaneously think of romantic things like...rose-scented, chocolate-dipped...heart-shaped...diamonds. So if there's anything special that you want, you'll have to tell me yourself. Because like I said, I can probably get you anything you want."
"That's okay," she said. "I would rather it wasn't a big deal."
"Although, if you tell me you want to 'snuggle', I'll probably kill myself."
She laughed. "With you? That'd be like snuggling with a pile of broken glass."
"Well you don't have to be nasty."
In the lobby of a hotel that was nicer than the one where she had been staying, she noticed he was looking at her. The rain had turned her dress see-through. The clerk smirked at them a little until Adam snotted majestically at him that "you only work in a hotel, you know".
"And so what's next on the agenda?" asked Adam as he dried his cocky red hair that was dark and wet. "High romance, breathless passion?"
"Oh, right," said Delilah, who was finishing checking on her pokémon. "The mushy stuff."
"Mushy, oh, God, I hope not, do you know that is my greatest fear."
Delilah thought that was a bit silly but she decided not to say so.
Adam's penis was quite a lot different from Delilah's fingers. There was a slow, smooth stroke and the shocking stretch of elastic and the clean Dior smell of him. They lay there listening to cars driving over wet streets as the sky darkened. Everything suddenly seemed very inane and funny, and the overwhelming meaninglessness gave her a feeling of immense giddy unburdening.
How stupid!