“You failed, Joseph,” said Mooney when he was younger but still old, the kind of guy who was never young, not really. “You failed me and you failed the books.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But we never shut cabinets or doors in my house.”
“That’s because your father is a pig, Joseph,” he said. “Are you a pig?”
I said no.
A few days later, I snuck into the cage and took out a new, old Franny and Zooey, a signed first edition. I decided to like it more than Catcher in the Rye just to be unique. And I loved it, Beck. What a book! Sometimes I flipped back to the beginning just to rub my finger on Salinger’s signature. You had to pay $1,250 to do what I did. But I didn’t pay. And neither did the woman who stole it from the desk at the register.
I would recognize her anywhere. She had reddish hair and a paisley scarf, and was thirty, maybe thirty-five. She paid cash. I told Mr. Mooney I’d work extra to make up for it and I promised I would find her. I cut school and skulked the streets until my toes were bleeding. But it’s hard to find a woman when you don’t know her name or where she lives. Mr. Mooney ordered me to go into the cage and close my eyes. I was scared. When I heard him lock the door I knew I was locked inside.
I didn’t have a ladder so I couldn’t reach any of the books; you can’t walk into the Louvre and kiss the Mona Lisa. I had no phone, no sunlight, no darkness. All I had was my brain and the buzz of the AC unit and the daily slice of pizza (cold because steam is no good for old books), and coffee (lukewarm in a cup from the Greek diner), both of which Mr. Mooney slipped to me through the drawer. The days and nights got lost. Mr. Mooney cared enough about me to teach me a lesson. I learned.
He let me out of the cage on September 14, 2001, three days after September 11. The whole world was different then and Mr. Mooney said my father had never called; he probably thought I was dead. “You are free, Joseph,” he said. “Be wise.”
I didn’t spend as much time at home after that. It wasn’t hard to slowly disappear. My mom left when I was in second grade so I grew up knowing that it was possible to leave people, especially my dad. I don’t feel sorry for myself, Beck. Lots of people have shitty parents and roaches in the cabinets and stale, raw Pop-Tarts for dinner and a TV that barely works and a dad who doesn’t care when his son doesn’t come home during a national disaster. The thing is, I’m lucky. I had the bookstore.
It doesn’t take a fucking village to raise a child. Mr. Mooney was the boss now, the dad I wanted to do right by. I kept hunting for the Franny and Zooey thief and right after 9/11, I wasn’t alone. Everyone was like me, searching the streets. People wanted to find their families; I wanted to find the thief. There were flyers for missing people all over the city. I thought about learning to draw and plastering the city with drawings of the thief. I could pretend she was my mother. I didn’t go through with it and sometimes I think the thief died in one of the Towers, karma. But most of the time I think she’s probably out there, alive, reading.
I am in the L–R Fiction stacks when the doorbell chimes and I am ready. You told your girlfriends you would come by around this time. I know this because I have your phone and you are not the kind of girl who locks her phone with the four-digit password. I have been reading your e-mails. I have taken pictures of the passwords you keep in your password folder. This way, when you change your password, if you change your password, I’ll know the possibilities. You are not the kind of girl who comes up with new passwords. You have three in rotation:
ackbeck1027
1027meME
1027BECK$Ale
It gets better. You don’t want to tell your mother that you lost another phone. You went and got a new phone with a new number and a new plan. I know all this because your old phone is still active. So I read the mass e-mail you sent to your friends announcing your new phone number because I can read all your e-mail! Chana was mortified:
WTF? Tell your mother you lost your phone and get that shit shut down. Identity theft! Perverts! Beck, seriously. Tell your mom you fucked up. She’ll get over it. People lose phones. Get the phone shut off. It’s not that dramatic.
You wrote back:
Phone is probably in gutter; so yes, it’s really not dramatic. If someone does have it, I’m a poor MFA candidate with debt. Who’s stealing that identity? And if someone thinks I’m pretty enough to put my selfies all over the Internet, well then I’ll feel pretty. Just kidding. But seriously, it’s all good. I wanted a new phone anyway! I love my new number!
Chana would not relent:
YOU GET A NEW PHONE WHEN YOU TELL THEM YOU LOST YOUR OLD PHONE. Your mother will know you lost your phone because of your NEW PHONE NUMBER. Also: $$$$$
You were stubborn:
Please calm down, C. I told my mom I changed numbers because I wanted a New York one. She doesn’t even know how to text, let alone read the bill. It’s fiiiiine. And money? Whatever. One more little bill isn’t going to kill me at this point, you know?
Chana didn’t reply and I love your mom (Thanks!) and I love you, you little hypocrite! Your old (but still working!) phone is an encyclopedia of your life and it will be open to me as long as your mother pays the bill. Score one for the good guy! Oh, Beck, I love reading your e-mail, learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won’t get alarmed. My good fortune doesn’t stop there: You prefer e-mail. You don’t like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an “essay” for some blog in which you stated that “e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away.” I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I’m so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don’t publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise.
Starting today.
You’re here.
“Hang on,” I call out, as if I don’t know it’s you up there and I’m so full of shit. I trot up the stairs and into the stacks and you’re here in a plaid jumper and kneesocks and you dressed up for me, I know you did, and you’re holding a pink reusable bag.
“Engine, engine, number nine,” I say and you laugh and I am so good when I have time to prepare. “What’s up?”
I go in for the hug and you let me hug you and we fit well together. My arms take you. I could squeeze you to death and to life and I pull away first because I know how you girls can be about this stuff, your basic instincts ruined by magazines and TV.
“I brought you something,” you coo.
“You didn’t.”
You respond, “I did.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Actually, I didn’t die.” You laugh. “So I kinda did.”
We’re walking up to the front and I know why we’re walking up there. You want me. You want me here. You know that if we stay in these stacks I’m gonna press you against the F–K placard and give you a present and I’m behind the counter and I sit as I planned—with my hands intertwined behind my head as I lean back and put my feet up and my navy T-shirt lifts just enough so that you can see my midsection—you need something to dream about—and I smile.
“Show me what you got, kid.”
You lay it on the counter and I lower my legs and move forward and I’m hunching over the counter. I could touch you I’m so close and I know you like my cologne because you and Chana lust after a bartender who wears this cologne which is why I bought it and I open my present, my present from you.
It’s The Da Vinci Code in Italian and you clap and you laugh and I love your enthusiasm and this is something that comes more naturally to you than writing, giving. You are a giver.
“Open it up,” you say.
“But I don’t speak Italian.”
“The whole book’s not in Italian.”
I flip through and you are wrong and you grab the book and
drop it on the counter.
“I know for a fact that the first page is in English. Open.”
I open. “Ah.”
“Yeah,” you say. “Read up.”
There you are, in black ink. You wrote to me:
Engine, Engine, Number Nine
On the New York transit line
If some drunk girl falls on the tracks
Pick her up pick her up pick her up
I read it out loud; I know you get off on your writing and you clap at the end and there it is in writing. You are literally asking me to pick you up and you nod and your name is there so it’s not freaky when I say it.
“Thank you, Guinevere.”
“It’s Beck.”
I lift up the book. “But it’s also Guinevere.”
You concede, you nod. “You are welcome. . . .”
I took off my name tag in the cage. You are pretending you don’t remember my name and I help you out. “Joe. Goldberg.”
“You are welcome, Joe Goldberg,” you say and you sigh and on you go. “But that’s kind of fucked, right, because I came here to thank you and now I’m saying, ‘You’re welcome.’ ”
“Tell you what,” I say and this is it, just how I practiced. “Now that we’re both alive and nobody’s singing and you got me this sweet-ass present, which is great because of all the books we have in this place, Italian Dan Brown is not one of them . . .”
“I noticed,” you sing and you blink and smile and you’re rocking a little.
I breathe. This is it, the next step. “Let’s get a drink sometime.”
“Sure,” you say and you cross your arms and you’re not looking at me or saying a specific time or date or place and now there are elements of our dynamic coming slowly into view, like a photograph in a darkroom—you didn’t write your number in the book and you got me the joke part of our thing—Dan Brown—instead of the shared serious part of our thing—Paula Fox—and I think you have a hickey. A small one, but still. You bought Paula Fox for Benji. You bought Dan Brown for me.
“The thing is,” you say, “I still can’t find my phone and I don’t have a new one yet so I’m not making a lot of plans, you know?”
“Yeah.”
I pretend I have to check something on the computer and I think of the way you e-mailed your friends about me, the way you talked more about the fact that I rescued you than the fact that you’re obsessed with me, so obsessed that you had to pretend you didn’t remember me. You didn’t tell Chana and Lynn about the way you think about me when you mount your green pillow, about how nervous and intimidated you were with me. You were so nervous and distracted by me that you lost your phone, Beck. Remember? Instead, you e-mail your friends about Benji and I have to speak or I’ll blow it.
“So, you never found your phone?”
“No, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think I left it in the subway station.”
“You had it in the cab.”
“Oh right, I did, but I mean who remembers the name of the cab company, right?”
Premiere Taxi of Lower Manhattan.
“Nobody ever remembers the name of the cab company,” I agree.
You ask me for a pen and I give you a pen and you grab one of our bookmarks and flip it over and write down your e-mail address that I already know. “Tell you what,” you say as you scribble. “I’m really busy with school and stuff, but why don’t you e-mail me and we’ll make a plan.”
“I hope you know those bookmarks are for paying customers only.”
You laugh and you are awkward without a phone to dive into and you look around, waiting to be excused. You really do have a daddy complex, Beck.
“Not for nothing, but these books aren’t gonna sell themselves, so why don’t you skedaddle and let me, you know, get back to work.”
You smile, relieved, and you almost curtsy as you back away. “Thanks again.”
“Every time,” I say. And I planned that and you smile, no teeth, and you don’t say good-bye and I don’t say “Have a nice day” because we are beyond pleasantries and you gave me your e-mail address and now I have to choose which draft to send to you. I knew you’d come in and I knew you’d give me your e-mail so last night I wrote different versions of my first e-mail to you. I was up all night writing, Beck. Just like you. I was in my cage, Beck. Just like you.
I put your bookmark with your e-mail in the Italian Dan Brown. It fits perfectly.
8
I hope that most people at this point in time realize that Prince is one of the great poets of our time. I didn’t say songwriter— I said poet. Prince is the closest thing we have to e. e. cummings and people are so stupid because they don’t come in here and buy books of Prince poems.
It’s been seven hours and fifteen days since you took your love away.
That is one of the greatest first lines of a poem in all time for a number of reasons, primarily because of the reversal of hours and days. A nonpoetic person would cite days and hours. A poet is different. A poet transforms the world with
Such small hands.
You haven’t written back to me yet. You have forwarded my e-mail to Chana and Lynn. You have giggled over photo-booth pictures of the three of you—ChanaLynn . . . us!—and exchanged dozens of idiotic e-mails about nothing. You have found the time to read and respond to your classmates’ short stories and beg the bosses at WORD in Brooklyn to let you read but you haven’t written back to the guy who saved your life. You are still in pursuit of Benji and it has not been seven hours and fifteen days but we are getting there, Beck. It’s not funny anymore.
You wrote to ChanaLynn:
How come I have to be a stereotypical chick that meets a nice guy and is like, thanks but no thanks? I don’t read Cosmo or do cleanses or post selfies, which means I don’t fit the profile for lame-girl-who-hates-nice-guys. I mean Benji is married to his business and this guy is the total opposite, works at a business, you know? Also, rooftop at the Wythe on Friday?
Chana wrote back first:
Beck, is this the guy you met at KGB? Wythe maybe.
And this tells me that you meet too many guys. You have this hunger for strangers. That’s why you read Craigslist “Casual Encounters.” No, you don’t have casual encounters (thank Christ), but at the same time you treat life like a giant fucking casual encounter, wasting time with Benji, with random guys from places like KGB.
Lynn wrote back:
They got shrinks on campus that can answer that question, girl. Also, KGB guy was super cute. Also, Wythe yes unless maybe UES for a change? Just a thought . . .
These girls don’t know about our Italian Dan Brown and the extent of your crush because you don’t tell them and finally in the middle of the night after five hours and eight days you write back to me:
How about happy hour on Thursday?
I wait three hours and one day to write back:
That works. Where?
You didn’t earn my humor this time. You don’t write back right away. Four minutes three hours and two days pass before this bullshit stinks up my inbox:
Sorry omigod one of those weeks. Whatever you do, do NOT go to grad school. Anyway. How about next week?
Like Prince, I have a poetic nature and I know how to shift my perspective. Driving you into my arms isn’t working out, clearly. You are scattered and you flirt and you crack phones and you don’t delete anything and you use your period to get extensions at school and a lot of your e-mails have more creative vitality than your stories and you’re talking to like nine dudes on nine different sites. You flirt. With everything. Do you realize how much crap you have in your shopping basket at Anthropologie.com? Christ, Beck, you need to learn some decision-making skills. In the meantime, I see that you are sick. Sick like your father was. You’re hooked on Benji. And I can’t get you off Benji until I know about Benji.
Which takes all of about thirty-five seconds.
Benjamin “Benji” Baird Keyes III is a friggin’ joke. He’s been to rehab, which is a tra
vesty; you can tell by his smug face that he’s not capable of genuine addiction. He owns an organic club soda company that symbolizes everything bad about right now. His business is called Home Soda, a superior alternative to commonplace club soda because “while a club is exclusive, a home is the most exclusive place in the world. You can get into a club if you pay a cover. The same cannot be said of a home.”
Beck, you can’t tell me you buy into this, not really. Benji’s little start-up is a runaway, underground Whole Foods–style success, and his pastel-laden website includes a diatribe on Monsanto (as if this kid’s parents don’t profit directly from Monsanto, as if this kid wasn’t fucking raised on Monsanto—literally, his dad worked for fucking Nestlé when Benji was a kid), and yet Benji rants. A photo essay (otherwise known as a fucking slide show) reveals that Benji came up with Home Soda while camping with friends on Nantucket. Camping is a bullshit term; Nantucket is not New Hampshire and Benji was staying at a friend’s waterfront summer home. I blow up the photo and see the untagged girl from your Facebook profile. Aha. So you know Benji through that miserable odd girl, who does have a legitimate smile, reserved for wealthy friends in staged propaganda photos. But did you go camping with them? Nope. You probably weren’t invited. Your friend probably fed you some bullshit excuse about there not being enough room on the beach. You are the townie and Benji is the tourist who literally enters you and uses you as a vacation from the wear and tear of the artisanal club soda business only to dump you before Labor Day. He is the daddy you try desperately to please, the daddy who leaves, no matter what you do.
Your emotional livelihood is a demented seasonal economy where Labor Day is every other fucking day. He rents you out, the same way he rents loft space in SoBro (South Bronx to those of us who don’t need to make up bullshit pet names for neighborhoods where we’re not wanted). And he cheats on you, Beck. A lot. Compulsively. He is in intense pursuit of a performance artist who fucks with his head the way he fucks with yours. It has been six minutes and three hours and one day when you e-mail me: