It’s time, Beck. Nicky emerges from the sober house and looks both ways like a good little white boy. He hangs his head and starts down the street and his wife must have laundered his Vans because they’re especially bright and white tonight. He’s a mouse in your house and I wish you didn’t want him. But of course you do, Beck. He’s like the father you never had and you want to break up his family. And that’s natural. That’s the cycle of abuse and it was Nicky’s job to help you overcome that desire.
But Nicky didn’t do his job. He is a pig. And there’s no possible happy ending to this mess. If I let him live, you will eventually get what you think you want. He will fuck you in the beige room and cry to his wife and beg for a divorce and he will go to you—because he’s right, you are sex—and the truth is, the second he becomes available, no ring, no more teeth whitening, you won’t want him.
He is leading you down the path to hell and he was supposed to keep his distance from you and he didn’t. And you were supposed to call me—you miss me—and you didn’t. And I know you so well, Beck. You are charisma, you are sick, and for some reason you are a magnet for weak, spineless people like Peach, like Benji, like Nicky. I pick up my pace and I hold my new nightstick. (I went to the Army Navy store to cool off after that bullshit with Officer Minty; it’s only fair that we all be armed against cops who think they’re above the law.) I clench my jaw. I am gaining on him and I can do this, one fell swoop. But then I feel a vibration in my pocket. I have no choice but to duck into an alley. Nicky will turn around if he hears the phone and I can’t make it stop and I can’t breathe and my hands shake and I look at my phone.
It’s you.
You are calling me.
You have, at last, decided to act on your feelings.
Your name looks beautiful in my phone, shining in the dark above the picture of you in your white bikini. I stare at you, aglow. I smile; I too glow. You surprise me, you delight me, and you miss me. I try to make my heart slow down and Dr. Nicky is already blocks away and I bring the phone to my head and I speak. “Well, hello, Beck.”
“Joe?” you say, soft as your skin. “Can you hear me?”
I lose my voice and cough. I’m not myself because I was just about to kill Nicky with a nightstick because he was trying to have sex with you. I am dizzy and you sound tipsy when you speak again. “Joe? Can you hear me?”
“Bad signal,” I say. “I’m waiting for the train.”
Forward as a dictator, you make your demand. “I need you to come over. Can you come over? Can you come over right now?”
I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life and I answer, strongly, “Yes.”
I hit END and I can’t believe your timing. I need a minute to get my head right. You called. I ditch the nightstick in a trash heap. My hand is still sore from gripping it and my heart hurts from the whiplash. You called. You’re back! I’m calmer now and I’m walking and it will be nice to get out of here and get to you. You called and I can’t help but believe that for all of Nicky’s idiocy, he might be good at what he does after all. Clearly, you are in a better place now; you called me, not him. I hop in a cab because I’m too happy to get on the subway. I wonder what you’re wearing and I can’t get to you fast enough. I leave When Bad Things Happen to Good People in the backseat of the cab. I don’t need it anymore. I have you.
41
OUR IKEA pillow is still tagged and it’s underneath your table on the floor. I hold you in my arms and you cry. You’re drunk and I don’t ask any questions. I will not let you and your pillow get me down. Besides, you feel as good as I remember, better. Your place is a mess, which makes me believe you really have been growing. There are curtains now—that’s progress—and you’re almost out of tears. I stroke your head and stare at our pillow and breathe you in, your scent, your apples rotting on the counter. I can’t stop smiling and the harder you cry the broader I grin and finally, you have nothing left and you stop, you whisper, “Sorry.”
“Oh it’s okay,” I say. “I can send you a dry-cleaning bill.”
If you were Karen Minty you’d laugh too hard but you’re you and all you do is smile. “I don’t remember the last time I laughed.”
“Just about two seconds ago, Beck.”
You stretch your arms above your head and twist, to the left, to the right and then your arms flop and you look at me. “You must think I’m nuts.”
“Not at all,” I say and I don’t.
“Oh, come on, Joe. I see you and we get together and then I just disappear off the radar.”
I make a joke: “Actually, I was in the south of France on a top secret mission for the FBI.”
You don’t laugh and you’re not in the mood for dumb jokes and I love you for being so honest, so present and all the hard work was worth it because all of it was leading up to this moment.
You speak. “I kind of do wish you were in the FBI.”
“Seriously?” I say and I don’t like where this is going.
You quiver. I don’t.
“Peach is dead, Joe.” And you sound exasperated and this isn’t supposed to happen. Peach is in Turks and Caicos, goddamn it.
“Are you kidding?”
“They found her body in Rhode Island.”
“No.”
“Yes,” you say.
No. Impossible. I put a ton of rocks in her pockets. When I walked her onto that jetty, she must have been a buck fifty. This is bullshit. I did my job. Did I zip her pockets? Fuck yes I zipped her pockets. Nothing is made well anymore. The zippers were plastic, now that I think about it, and they probably disintegrated. Fuck those zippers.
“I just can’t believe it,” you say. There are so many horrible things you could say right now and what if you led me here under false pretenses and what if the FBI is here, spying.
“Rhode Island?”
“Yep,” you say. “Rhode Island.”
I talked to too many people in that state. I was sloppy and friendly and there’s Officer Nico and Dr. K and all those junkies and the guy at the garage. What if they all got together? What if they know? The mug of piss flashes through my mind’s eye and what have I done?
“Her family has a place there,” you say. “We were there and I thought she took off. I mean she sent me a melodramatic e-mail, but that’s Peach. I didn’t think she was, you know, serious.”
“Jesus,” I say and would you visit me in prison or would you be afraid?
“I figured she took off because she does that sometimes!” You pick up your bottle of diet root beer and you take a swig and I wish you would just keep going. “And for the past few months, I haven’t heard from her, but you know those old friends that you can go ages without talking to and then you talk, and everything’s fine? Hang on.”
You bury your head in your phone and I don’t know what you mean because if I go more than a month without seeing Mr. Mooney, it’s super awkward, but how can I think about Mr. Fucking Mooney right now? Are you wearing a wire, Beck? Are you trying to get me to confess? Is that why you got curtains? I look at my watch. 10:43.
“Sorry,” you say. “It was just school stuff. Anyway, where was I?”
“She disappeared.”
“She didn’t disappear. She committed suicide.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Praise Jesus!
“I know,” you say and you finish your root beer. “How did I not see it?”
You’re heading to the kitchen, getting the vodka out of the freezer, the glasses out of the sink—Karen Minty doesn’t leave glasses in the sink but Karen Minty doesn’t have the capacity to cry like you do—and you’re gonna tell me a story and Karen Minty can’t tell a story. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“At the beginning.”
You sit down next to me and we won’t kiss for a long time but God did I miss the nearness of you, the anticipation of your words, your voice. “So we were in Little Compton, it’s this beach community in Rhode Island. She was pretty depressed but me too. Remember that guy Ben
ji, my druggie ex?”
“I think so.”
“Well, he died. I mean that was always possible because he’s crazy. But still,” you say and you bite your lower lip. You are pretty. “He dies and then she dies. I’m Death Girl.”
I love you for making this all about you, for giving yourself a name. You are so flagrantly you. I tell you what you want to hear: “Beck, you’re not Death Girl. It just sounds like you know some troubled people.”
You cut me off. “That’s two of my friends dead in a matter of months. And you know what I think, Joe? I think this is the universe punishing me for being a fucking liar. I lie and say my dad is dead and now my friends are dying. I mean obviously that’s what’s happening.”
“Let it out,” I say because I know when you’re drunk there’s no point in arguing the benefits of life without Peach and Benji. “But it’s not your fault.”
You huff. “Like hell it isn’t.”
“So talk to me,” I say. “I’m here.”
It’s fun to watch you try and decide whether to tell me about the massage session with Peach and you decide against it. “Peach left to go running, which she did every morning. But apparently, this time she filled her pockets with rocks. And it is my fault, Joe. I was the last one to see her alive. I should have known.”
I was the last one to see her alive, but never mind that. “Beck,” I say. “You can’t blame yourself for what she did. She was depressed. You knew that. You were a damn good friend and this has nothing to do with you.”
You motion for me to stop talking and I pour vodka into the dirty glasses and you dig around for your phone, which has fallen into the sofa with a lot of other junk and you scroll and find the e-mail that Peach wrote to you, the one that I wrote. I know I’m not a suspect anymore and I can’t help but think that it’s kind of hot, hearing my words come out of your mouth. You finish reading and look at me. “Virginia Woolf. I should have known. And I did nothing.”
“You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”
“But she did want to be saved,” you say and you pull your hair up into a high bun. “I just couldn’t do it.”
“Couldn’t do what?”
You gulp and I remember you naked and I want my turn and take a hefty sip. “This has to stay right here for obvious reasons, but you have to know. She tried to fuck me, Joe.”
“Oh man.” Yes, you’re opening up, petal by petal, it’s happening.
“I pushed her off, of course. Right away,” you say and again you can’t resist lying, from stealing a little cash from the Monopoly board when the other players are out of the room. You are a cheater, to the bone, a renovator and I admire you, Beck. You never stop making improvements on life. You have charisma. You have vision. Someday, maybe we’ll have some beat-up farmhouse and you’ll paint the walls until you find the right shade of yellow and I’ll tease you but I’ll love the way you look with paint on your face. This is where you do your real art and this is where your magic happens. You need an audience, alive—me—not a shrink, not a computer.
“How’d she take it?”
“Not well.”
“Fuck,” I say.
“And the saddest thing is, it’s not the first time this happened.”
“Fuck.”
You take a sip and you’re too embarrassed to look at me. Or maybe you’re just too drunk. “Are you horrified?”
“Beck,” I say and I rest my hand on your knee. “I’m not horrified that your best friend was in love with you. I don’t blame her.”
You come at me hard and whole, sloppy and groping. You tear your top off and your hot hands are underneath my shirt—my shirt marked by your tears—and your kiss is wet and hungry and you bite my lip and there is blood, a sweetness, a saltiness, a touch. You have my belt off in no time, a professional under the influence. This time when I fuck you I am the mouse in your house and you can’t get rid of me and you want to get rid of me because you hate how much you want me, how I own you when I’m inside of you, how you’ll never want anything but me—Nicky who?—and at some point your emotions all turn into one, your tears for Peach, your cunt throbbing for me, your tits humming because of me, all of you exists solely because of me and I fuck the Peach out of you, I fuck the Benji out of you, and the Nicky out of you, and I am the only man in the world and this time, I wake up first. I go into your bathroom, into your tub and I piss all over the floor of the shower and mark my place, my home, you. I take the IKEA pillow out from under the table and rip off the tag and bring it back to bed. You’re half asleep when I slip the pillow under your chin and you purr. “Mmm. Joe.”
When we get out of bed, we know that we’re together now. It’s not about whether we’ll go out to breakfast; it’s just a matter of deciding where to go. We sit across from each other at a diner and we’re there six hours because we can’t get enough of each other. I finally manage to pull myself away and take a leak and when I’m gone, you e-mail Lynn and Chana:
Holy fuck. Joe. JOE.
When I get back to the table, we start all over again.
42
OUR first eight days together are the best days of my life. You have these plush giant robes from the Ritz-Carlton. You tell me this elaborate story about stealing them while on spring break with Lynn and Chana. I love that you love to tell stories. You couldn’t possibly know that I know that you stole them from Peach’s place and I don’t tell! We live in these robes and you like to entertain me and you do.
Day Two of us, we’re lounging around in our robes and you declare the Rule of the Robes: “When you are in my apartment, you are allowed to be naked or in a robe.”
“And what if I don’t comply with the Rule of the Robes?”
You saunter up to me and growl. “You don’t wanna know, buster.”
I promise to abide by the rule and I like you all charged up, adult. Your therapy worked because your daddy issues are gone and with me, you’re a woman, not a little girl. You’re not sending e-mails to yourself anymore, and why would you? You have me to talk to and oh, do we talk. Van Morrison doesn’t know shit about love because you and I are inventing love in our Ritz-Carlton robes, with our all night conversations, with our moments of silence that are, as you say, “the opposite of awkward.”
We’re living on each other and we don’t need sleep and by Day Five we have more private jokes than Ethan and Blythe do. We watch Pitch Perfect on Netflix—you call it your favorite movie but you don’t own the DVD; you are fascinating—and you press PAUSE. You curl up into me and tell me I’m the best and I tease you about loving this movie and you giggle and snort and we wrestle and by the time they go to their championship or whatever, we’re in bed, fucking. You love me more than anything and you tell me I’m smarter than the guys in your grad program and the guys you knew in college and we read one of Blythe’s stories together and I call it solipsistic and you agree.
The next morning, I wake up first—who can sleep with you in the world?—and I notice that you were up earlier. You’re like a child in the best way and you leave a trail of bread crumbs wherever you go and your trail leads me into the kitchen, where the dictionary is open and the word solipsistic is smeared with chocolate icing from the half-eaten chocolate cake on the counter. I love you for listening, unabashedly.
You don’t want me to leave but I have to go to work.
“But I want you to stay,” you argue and even your aggression is sweet. “Can’t Ethan cover?”
“I hate to break it to you, Beck, but you should have thought of this when you were fixing him up with Blythe.”
You groan and you block the door and you let your robe fall open. “You’re breaking the Rule of the Robe, Joe.”
“Fuck,” I say and you maul me and eventually I do leave and the day goes by so slowly and we text so much my thumbs are falling off. I want to bring you all the books in the world, but I settle on one of my favorites that you’ve never read, In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien.
> You let me into your place and you take it with tender hands and you kiss me with your sweet, soft Guiniverean lips. “I knew I was waiting to read this book for a reason,” you say. “It’s like I knew someday there’d be someone who gave it to me or something.”
“Well, I’m glad you waited.”
On Day Seven we invent a game: Fake Scrabble. The rule is no real words allowed. You come up with calibrat and I spell out punklassical and you beat me and you brag and I love you all hopped up on the win. You love to win and I’m not a sore loser and we’ll be as good in forty years as we are now.
On Day Nine, I catch you using my toothbrush and you blush. At first you rinse your mouth and claim it was a mistake but I see through you and I know your eyes and you bite your lip and cover your eyes. “I’m just going to say this and I can’t look at you when I say this. I like using your toothbrush because I like having you inside of me and I’m sorry I know that’s weird and gross.” I don’t say a word. I clap a hand over your hand and pull your panties off and give it to you right here, in my bathroom.
On Day Ten you tell me that you’ve never felt less single in your life.
On Day Eleven I tell you that I found myself singing a song from Pitch Perfect in the shop and didn’t stop even when people started laughing. “You’re inside of me,” I say and like that, you’re on your knees, hungry.
On Day Fourteen I realize that I have lost track of time because I’m not sure if it’s Day Fourteen or Day Fifteen and you squeeze my hand as we walk down the street. “That’s because every day is the only day,” you say. “I’ve never been so present in my life.”
I kiss the top of your head and you’re my articulate little bunny. “I never lose track of time, Beck. I think I might be into you.”
On Day Seventeen it rains and we’re in our robes in your bed and you highlight your favorite parts of In the Lake of the Woods and read them to me. When I go to work, I barely get anything done because you can’t leave me alone for five minutes without texting. Sometimes you want to talk about nothing: