Collecting Cooper

chapter thirty-seven

Adrian stalls the car twice as he backs down the driveway from their new, temporary home. He’s excited with the new accommodations and frustrated that he had to leave the Grove, making him happy one moment and sad the next, and that makes driving a whole lot harder to focus on. At least the day is starting to cool down somewhat, and he’s finding he’s having more energy because of it. His head snaps forward the third time he stalls the car so he comes to a stop, gets out, and leans against it for a minute while rubbing his neck. He needs to concentrate.

He drives into the city, the traffic around him thick with people coming home from work. He doesn’t like driving at this time and tries to avoid it, but sometimes he can’t. People drive differently at this time of the day. They’re more aggressive. They honk their horns more and the cars are closer together, the front of them almost touching the back of the car in front. He hates it. Sometimes he’s thankful he’s not part of the crowd. Families and funerals, taxes and TV shows, planning holidays and painting houses-the thought of that scares him.

He has the phone book in the front seat, the phone book he took from the halfway house, it’s covered in pen marks and the covers are torn and the Preacher would be disappointed in him for taking it. He hated living there. If it wasn’t for Ritchie he’d have tried to move out three years ago, though he doesn’t know where he would have gone without the ability to drive. The problem with Ritchie was once he met Melina, he started to change. He wasn’t the same guy that taught him how to drive. He didn’t have much time for Adrian anymore. It’s sad, because if Ritchie were here then all of this would be going easier. It would also be a lot more fun.

He looks up Cooper’s mother in the phone book. He doesn’t have any intention of adding her to his collection, and he isn’t sure why he lied to Cooper about it. More so Cooper wouldn’t be able to predict what he would do next. Adding the mother would be another mouth to feed, another unhappy person to have around, just more negativity, and like his mother used to say, “A sad man is a bad man,” and that would go the same for a woman too, he guesses. The idea of collecting the mum certainly does excite him, though, there is no denying that, but the reality is just too complicated. Still, he wants to see her house, just to satisfy his curiosity. He looked her address up before, only he forgot to write it down. He knows the direction, and he rechecks the address against the map and confirms he’s going the right way.

When he drives past her house he slows enough to look at the cars parked outside. He doesn’t think any of them belong to the police because they’re too nice. Most likely she has friends over to comfort her because she can’t find Cooper. In the future those cars won’t be there.

Now his stomach is rumbling. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast. He hates missing meals. He could drive back out to the new home and fix something to eat, but he doesn’t know where things are in the kitchen or how to use them and he needs time if he’s going to do that.

He pulls away from the curb. He’ll go to a drive-through and get some fast food. He’s never used a drive-through before and the thought makes him anxious, but then again, a few years ago he’d never used an ATM card and now he knows how. Experiences like this are good for him. They are character building. He can pull over somewhere and eat the food while it’s still warm. Then he’ll drive out to the Grove and watch to see if any police come looking around.

It will feel nice watching the Grove.

In a way it will be like being back home but not really being there.