Edward Adrift

this moment to end.

    I am scanning through the songs loaded on my bitchin’ iPhone, and I say to Kyle, “How many songs did you purchase?”
    “I don’t know. Thirty or so.”
    This is not close to being the correct answer.
    “Kyle, you purchased one hundred and ninety-three songs.”
    “I did?”
    “Yes, you did. And at a dollar and twenty-nine cents per song, that comes to two hundred forty-eight dollars and ninety-seven cents.”
    “It does?”
    “Yes, it does. I think you know that.”
    “I do?”
    I look over at Kyle, and he is trying hard to keep from grinning, but I see him. I think that I should feel entitled to scold him for spending $218.97 more than his upper estimate of what his songs would cost, but I don’t want to scold him. I want to grin, too. This is a conundrum (I love the word “conundrum”) for me, because it seems to me that part of the problem we’ve been having with Kyle is that we let him get away with such things. And yet, I think that if I scold him over what he has done, he will become angry and make things difficult for me on this trip.
    I quickly devise a plan to deal with this.
    “How much money did you get from me today because I cursed?” I ask him.
    “Three dollars.”
    That’s right. There was the buck in Burley, Idaho, when I said “fuck,” and then I had to give him another when I said that the Great Salt Lake looked “pretty fucking awesome,” and finally, I gave him a dollar when I referred to my “bitchin’ iPhone” at dinner. I have to be more careful.
    “OK,” I say. “I figure you owe me two hundred and eighteen—”
    “What? That’s not fair. I don’t—”
    “Just hold on. I’m not going to make you pay it back in actual dollars. But you have to pay it back in deeds.”
    “What do you mean, deeds?”
    “Every time you take a walk with me, I’ll credit ten dollars to your account. You refused to walk tonight, and that wasn’t nice, because I had to stay here with you instead of getting the exercise I need to beat my diabetes.”
    “OK.”
    “Every time you call your mother and tell her you love her, I’ll credit ten dollars to your account.”
    “This will be easy.”
    “It might be. But listen—every time you call me a name I’ll charge ten dollars to your account. Every time you’re rude to someone, like you were with that woman at Wingers when you said, ‘You need to fill my drink more often,’ I’ll charge ten dollars to your account. If you curse, I’ll add ten dollars to your account.”
    Now Kyle looks less sanguine (I love the word “sanguine”).
    “OK,” he says.
    “Now,” I say, “show me those three dollars.”
    Kyle digs in his pocket and pulls out three crumpled bills.
    “Let me hold them.”
    He hands them between the beds to me.
    “I’ll keep these,” I say. “Now you owe me just two hundred and fifteen.”
    He sits upright. “No!”
    “Yes.”
    “That was a dirty trick, douche.”
    I grab my notebook off the end table and make a notation. “Make that two hundred and twenty-five.”
    Kyle flops onto his back, covers his head with a pillow, and lets out a muffled scream.

    He doesn’t talk to me the rest of the night. He watches his shows, and when I try to talk to him, he pretends not to hear me. I do not like the silent treatment. My father used to do this to me, especially after I became a teenager and he and I did not get along very well. I don’t think it is mature. However, it would be a stretch to say Kyle is being rude about it. He is just sending me a very clear,silent message. I wish now that I had put a codicil in our agreement that would reward him for being sociable.
    At 10:00 p.m., I tell him that it’s lights-out, that we have another long day of driving ahead of us. He doesn’t answer me, but he does turn down his bed and climb in. I shut off the light.
    I lie on my back and stare into the darkness. Tomorrow, we will drive 517 miles to Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, a route that will take us most of the way across Wyoming, down into Colorado near Denver, and then, finally, on smaller roads into southeastern Colorado and to our destination.
    I close my eyes and my brain provides a picture of how I remember Cheyenne Wells from 1978, the last time I was there. Not much comes to mind—grain elevators, a railway line, and a big, wide-open sky that always seemed to hold huge clouds. Southeastern Colorado, in my recollection, has a lot in common with the eastern part of Montana, where