Chapter 11 #2
“He’s exactly your type,” Dee says.
I’m surprised. “I have a type?”
“Friendly but quiet, smart—like a dad?”
It seems like she doesn’t necessarily find Joel irresistible. I try to picture him through her eyes, through anyone else’s eyes. As usual, I fail.
“He’s not a dad!”
“I said like a dad. He’s into you.” She looks at me: a surgeon who has sliced a patient wide open and is now peering inside.
I blink too many times.
“Don’t play dumb. I saw him looking at you. You guys are having all those playdates.” Dee isn’t mean so much as she doesn’t have time for subtlety. But then she slows down, and I can tell she’s about to be careful. Which is bad.
“Do you think . . .” she starts, “he might be a good person to . . .” She sees my expression and stops.
Dee didn’t believe me when I told her the truth all those years ago, at my lowest point, but in her defense, she never told me I needed to be committed to a psychiatric facility, either.
She listened all the way through. And then she suggested that maybe I was overreacting, that maybe I’ve just been very unlucky with men.
She doesn’t think it’s possible that I have been killing them.
Because it isn’t possible. Except for it being true.
Her listening saved me. The trade-off is that I don’t mention demonic curses to her these days, and we both pretend I have recovered from my delusions. I haven’t told her what Dick Face said, only that he was gross and drunk.
But now I see the hope in her eyes. And I feel like I just got airlifted to a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, because that is how alone I am right now.
I bite my lip and squint. A neatly clipped hedge of burning bush blazes and blurs at the edge of the grassy square across the street, God refusing to speak through it and offer me any advice at all.
It has been so hard, knowing Joel exists.
Knowing it doesn’t matter that I want him so very much, so much more than any man I’ve ever wanted.
It doesn’t matter that he is perfect to me, that I would hack off one of my own toes with a cleaver if it meant I could run my hand up his arm, from his elbow to his shoulder.
No, a toe isn’t a big enough sacrifice. A foot? That would be a lot harder to hack off.
Anyway.
I will never touch him, not even once on his arm. I will never lean my rushing head against the bank of his chest and rest. I will never kiss him, never taste his warm mouth, not even for a second. I’m torturing myself. That’s all this has been.
There is no hope. Not even the tiny germ of hope there was a few days ago, before I met Dick Face, when I could still imagine there might be an answer. The germ that once kept Grub and me going has been Cloroxed into oblivion.
And Dee acting like it’s possible, even just her eyes acting that way for a few moments, is too much.
My heart may break. Like Joel’s bad-tempered former cat pushing a glass off the counter, it will shatter with a bang on the tiles. A swipe of the paw, the split second in between, and then it won’t be a glass anymore, only shards and chunks and fragments, all of them dangerously sharp.
“Oh, girl.” Dee hauls me into a bear hug. “Shit. I hate this.”
I’m sobbing behind a potted tree in front of the fancy lingerie store I’ll never go into, next to the ice cream place, on an ebullient autumn day.
I feel people looking at us, looking quickly away. Who the hell knows what to do with pain like this?
(Dee does.)
“I really like him,” I whisper.
“Yeah.” She strokes my hair. “He’s really likable.”
A double stroller rolls past, one of those poodle-mix dogs trotting beside it.
“Tell me what you need.” She smells like her favorite coconut shampoo with a swirl of coffee. She will hold me until the bitter end. This is who Dee is.
“I can’t see him again,” I whisper. And then, “Ella’s attached. And the cat. I really messed up.”
I feel her thinking. “I can make Mom take Ella over there instead of you once in a while. How mad will you be if Mom sleeps with him?”
We both laugh; mine sounds just on the edge of medical hysteria.
“But seriously, I’ll take her over on the weekend or something. We’ll make it work.”
“There’s more,” I say.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. What.”
“He’s Adam’s brother.”
“Oh my God, T! That’s not possible!” She never met him. The whole Adam episode only lasted a month. “What is happening?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing is happening.”
“You didn’t, like, track him down or something, did you?”
“No! It was random!”
Her brow pulls in. “That’s too strange. It feels like . . . something.”
I nod. It does.
Ella is waving us over, needing to explain the enormous difficulty of choosing between flavors. PLEASE call me, I text Grub as we walk. Please. I’m really worried.
* * *
Where did you go? I text Dick Face. The text bubble is green.
It’s 10:00 PM. Grub hasn’t responded. I’ve already checked the sites of the local papers in his area, my heart a thwacking mallet, my blood sprinting like it’s trying to flee my veins. But there was nothing.
I call Dick Face. It goes directly to voicemail, the way it did when I called him from his abandoned apartment.
“You are so shitty,” I say. I write: That was so uncool. You’re running away. We aren’t done talking.
I’m too stressed for anything, so I try to sleep.
I can’t. But even if I could, I’d be kept awake by Mom having sex with Barry above me.
It sounds less enthusiastic these days. I’m guessing Barry is on the way out.
I put headphones on, listen to Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s Cello Suite No.
1. I imagine Joel playing it, his hand steady on the bow, his other hand moving deftly on the strings, the fluid and powerful vibrato— such skilled fingers.
He tilts his head back, closes his eyes. I make myself come.
Then I cry for a while.
The next morning, while Ella is doing Zoo Math, a game-based online program with annoying sound effects, and I am on the forty-first minute of my second hold with the specialty pharmacy trying to sort out a mix-up with Dee’s prescription, I get a message through Reddit from a screen name I don’t recognize.
Hey are you the succubus NazgulFarts27 mentioned? I’m trying to get in touch with someone with that kind of DP. Mine is like that too and I haven’t met anyone else with the same thing. Are you anywhere near NYC? Would really like to meet.
My heart stops. My brain powers down.
“Hello? Are you still there, Ms. Dunlap?” says the customer service rep on the phone, picking that precise moment to check on me. “I’m still on hold with the claims department at the provider.”
“Thank you,” I say like a robot.
“Please keep holding.” The tinny music starts up again for the ten thousandth time.
Ella is suddenly crying. “I can’t figure it out! I’m so bad at this! Titi! Can you read to me instead? Titi!” The math program makes a snorting sound.
“Not right now,” I say.
“I don’t want to do any more math,” she moans, sliding crosswise down her chair until she’s draped over the seat, her hair trailing on the floor. “I’m done with math! I only want you to read to me now! I’m not a math girl anymore. I’m only a books girl.”
A books girl who will only read a single book on her own. “If you were in school you would just do your math,” I say, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t hold school over her. “You wouldn’t get to discuss it. You’d do what the teacher says.”
“Please don’t make me go back to school,” she whines with abrupt ferocity. “And don’t make me do math!”
“Shush, Ella, give me a second!” I snap.
She bursts into additional tears, hurt.
I reread the message. I know who it’s from. In that moment, I’m positive.
The demon hunter has found me.