CARTER continued... 2
Missy stands beside her, holding her hand. Angela pops two quarters in the phone and dials the number. The phone rings instantly, loud in her ear. There's no answer after three rings, no answer after four. She waits ten rings, and gets nothing, not even an answering machine. She hangs up. A waitress walks by, holding a tray of food: white plates, charred meat, sprigs of parsley. Angela signals to her.
Excuse me, she says, pointing to Carter's name in the White Pages. Can you tell me how to get here?
Evanston Road, the waitress says. She smiles, easygoing. Sure, she says. No problem.
* * *
Evanston Road turns out to be a blacktopped strip of land between cornfields, a stripe of nothing on the outskirts of nowhere. Farmland all around, and small thickets of trees, getting sparser all the time. Ten minutes between houses. Nothing but sky and crops and what looks like wild mustard. It probably takes Carter thirty minutes just to get to a grocery store, she thinks. Maybe forty-five. If isolation was what he was looking for, he sure found it.
She finds the address written in thin paint on a mailbox, a faint scrawl of white on black: 77. A gravel drive extends through trees to a white clapboard house, off in the distance. Angela drives closer. The house looks old, small, in need of a paint job. Some shingles missing on the roof. Grass unkempt. In the yard, a small square structure, bigger than a shed, smaller than a bar. Looks newly built, unpainted, perhaps unfinished.
Carter lives here?
No car in the driveway, which seems to extend beyond the house anyway. (Is it a street?) No signs of life inside the house: very quiet. Dim and shadowy inside.
No pool, Missy says.
I guess not, Angela says. Maybe he's got a dog, though. Inside the house.
Maybe.
I'm just going to see if he's home, okay, honey?
Okay.
I'll be right back. Stay in the car, okay?
Okay.
Angela leaves the car running, leaves Missy behind. She walks across the gravel to a small sheltered porch, then up two steps. She knocks on the dirty screen door and waits.
There is no answer. She knocks again, louder, and begins making excuses: Carter's at work, he's gone out for the afternoon, he's dead, he doesn't live here anymore.
Then the door opens and Carter's there, blinking at her. His hair is longer, his skin paler, than she remembers, but otherwise it's him, the man she lived with for two years, the man she once thought she'd marry. Yes? he says, seeming irritated. He's annoyed; he doesn't recognize her.
Carter, she says. Carter, it's me.
Angela? he says. His voice gets quiet, confused. What are you doing here?
And Angela's crying now, she can't help it, a flood of tears, a waterfall of pent-up emotions, comes spilling out of her. Carter can't be ready for this -- no one could -- but Angela's waited too long, too many miles, for a shoulder to cry on. She takes off her sunglasses, revealing her damaged face. Her body contorts with the ferocity of her tears.
Carter opens the screen door and slowly takes her in his arms, holding her close.
Angela, he says, the surprise still evident in his voice. Angela.
* * *
Come on in, Carter says, holding the screen door open for her.
Angela takes two steps and is struck by the smell. Carter's house is a wreck. Books, magazines, photographs, and unmarked videotapes are littered all around, as well as out-and-out trash: discarded frozen dinners, empty beer bottles, cans, stray pieces of paper. The smell is horrible. A sofa is discernible among the wreckage: a single upholstered arm pokes out of the debris like a drowning man's. Walls undecorated -- or, rather, decorated with the faded country-simple wallpaper of a previous tenant -- except for a torn, inexplicable poster over the sofa: NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR 1964-1965. The poster is colorful and features a stylized drawing of the Unisphere. On the floor, a framed picture of Jesus presides over all, propped against a chipped bookshelf. From Angela's perspective, Jesus is looking straight at her.
You want something to drink? he says. Water, beer? I think I have some cans of Coke around here someplace...
Angela can't help being disappointed. If she'd had any dreams of staying the night here, they're put off now. She's shocked by the sheer squalor of the place. She holds tight to her purse, as though it could fall and disappear forever into the trash.
Sorry about the mess, Carter says, returning with two cold Pabst blue Ribbons. I don't get up here much. I spend most of my time these days downstairs. Got a nice setup in the cellar.
The cellar? Angela says.
It's better than you think, Carter says. Got cable TV, kitchen, the works. You wanna come down --
No, Carter. It's all right. I really shouldn't stay.
It's no trouble.
No, that's okay, really.
Carter smiles at her and it's only then that she notices his teeth: yellow and black, brittle-looking. It's like he hasn't brushed in years, she thinks. Carter, what have you done to yourself?
Looks like you backed another winner, he says.
What?
Your face, he says, gesturing. Your eye.
I was never good at picking men, Carter. You know that.
Present company excepted, of course, he says, smiling.
Of course.
She suddenly discovers the beer in her hand, as if it had just materialized there. She opens it, takes a perfunctory sip: Piss water: that's what Richard always calls beer, preferring the harder stuff instead. To her it just tastes yeasty; bland, boring. She glances out the window and catches sight of the wooden structure there.
What are you building, Carter?
What?
Outside, there.
Oh, that. It's not finished yet. I ran out of money. I'm building a church.
A church? she says.