Chapter 25 What’s the Point, Duo?
What’s the Point, Duo?
A notification dinged on Harold’s watch. He hoped that it was Alice, despite it having been several agonizing days without a peep from her.
Hey, it’s Duo. Let’s get a new streak going.
Lying on the couch in his tighty-whities, surrounded by empty pizza boxes and drained cans of Coke, Harold stared at his phone, wondering how someone, or something—he wasn’t even sure of Duo’s gender, or maybe it was a robot—could be so invasive.
“Do you see what I’m going through, Duo?” Harold asked out loud.
Even worse, Duo’s only purpose, only mission, was to get him to start a new streak and keep learning Italian, which was absolutely fucking pointless now. The programmers at Duolingo had found every possible way to nag a man until he felt broken and riddled with shame.
“What’s the point, Duo? Soon as I can get the freaking landlord to respond to my emails, I’m going home. Of course, he doesn’t speak English, and you’re a terrible teacher, so my Italian is nonexistent.”
Another notification popped up. Hey, it’s Duo. You still there?
“Oh, I’m here, Duo. Where else would I be?
Have I told you how much I hate you? My feelings of fury toward you bubble up from the deepest corridors of my being.
It’s you and Hitler and Pol Pot and maybe Genghis Khan, the worst entities to have ever come to being. How’s it feel to be grouped with them?”
Deciding he’d had enough, Harold opened his phone and navigated to the Duolingo Support section, scrolling through the FAQs.
At the bottom, he found Send Feedback. It finally gave him a text box to express himself, and that he did, starting with: I have no idea how Apple lets you infest my life with your antics, but it stops today.
Sure, I can delete the app, but we’re way past that.
I’m coming after you, do you understand?
Full legal battle. I will take this company down if it’s the last thing I do.
A ding on his watch and phone.
A desperate hope that it might be Alice.
Nope, it was Moira. How’d it go? I still haven’t heard from you.
He set down the phone and fell back onto the couch. Everything had fallen apart. Aroldo lay dead in the square outside of Renzo’s apartment. And here was Harold, the pointless piece of shit he’d always been. His dad had been right all along.
Oh, give up the pity party, Harold, he told himself.
But what was there to go back to now? His awful job? His awful life? He couldn’t keep living this lie, that’s for sure.
No college degree. That was the biggest issue. Why couldn’t he have been brave and made something of himself?
Moira again. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.
He shook his head. Oh, he needed someone to talk to, all right. He needed major help.
Glancing back at his watch, the watch he’d bought for her, he accepted that no number of steps could have out-thwarted Renzo. Even Aroldo was no match for that man.
All he could hope for now was to one day celebrate their inevitable divorce, because that bastard didn’t love her, and she certainly didn’t love him. No, she was a victim of Stockholm syndrome, and in fact, love didn’t exist at all.
Love was dead.
He looked at his step count for the day. Thirty-five and it was almost noon.
Thirty-five.
That summed up Harold: a fake, a sham. Even if she had come back to him, he’d have had to eventually tell her the truth, and she would have run out on him all over again.
Standing, he went out onto the balcony, noticing that it was gloomy out, and rightly so. If love was dead, then the sun had no right to shine.
Harold unstrapped the watch and slung it into the air, sending it four floors down to its death. “That’s what I think about your step-counting and your Duolingo.”
He even considered hurling himself off the balcony but then heard a “Hey!”
He approached the railing and timidly glanced down. Sandy stood below, looking up at him with piercing eyes. “Was that you?”
“Me, what?” It was a quiet morning, only a few others passing by—a woman pushing a cart of groceries, another wrapped in a scarf, chatting away on her phone.
“You hit me with your watch!” She held it up in the air.
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. I’ll be right there.”
Harold shot down the steps and came onto Via Giulia. Sandy waited for him on the cobblestones.
He rushed toward her. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry.” He looked for signs of blood, but all he saw were signs that she wanted to stab him with the closest dull object.
“I’m fine, settle down, but what’s wrong with you, throwing a watch off the balcony? And you look like hell.”
He turned away, highly aware of the passing pedestrians staring at him. Even the freaking construction workers were gawking at him.
Sandy sighed. “Are you okay, Harold?”
As he turned to answer, he realized what he was wearing. His freaking underwear.
“Oh, my God.” He covered himself, now knowing exactly why everyone had been staring at him. “Gotta go.”
He raced to the door, jammed in the code, then rushed back upstairs. He put on sweatpants and a T-shirt, then went back onto the balcony. He slowly peeked over the railing and saw that she was still standing there.
Sandy held up the watch again. “Forget something?” She snapped and pointed at the ground. “Get your ass down here.”
She didn’t have to ask twice. He hurried back down, forgetting his shoes again, so he crept carefully over the cobblestones.
“Spill it, Harold. What’s going on with you? What did Alice do?” In an instant, he felt like he was speaking with his mother, and a flash of anger flared.
“Where have you been?” he snapped. “I needed you.”
“What do you mean, where have I been? Working. And working. Right underneath you.”
He hated how weak he sounded. “I went to the tango place; you weren’t there. I tried to talk to you.”
Her eyes softened. “It’s been busy.”
Sandy almost hugged him before remembering she wasn’t a hugger. “What happened? Out with it.” For God’s sakes, why did people come to her for advice? If that wasn’t a sign for the end of the world . . .
“It’s over,” Harold said.
“You and Alice?”
A nod. His cheeks quivered. He definitely needed a hug, but Sandy had to be in the right state of mind to touch people.
“Out with it, Harold. I can’t read your mind.”
His eyes reddened. Tears rose up.
Dear God, what am I doing? she asked herself.
“I made a play, tried to get her back. Told her I loved her.”
“Hold on, didn’t we talk about playing hard to get?”
“Yeah, but we also talked about you helping me. And then you disappeared. I had to do it on my own. Surprise, surprise, it didn’t go well.”
Her hackles went up. “This is my fault?”
He shook his head as a tear fell.
“Oh, hell, come here.” Sandy pulled him in and wrapped her arms around him, and he broke into a full-on cry on her shoulder.
She, who assumed she didn’t have a heart anymore, felt it pump, and her own tears crept up and threatened to spill. “I warned you, didn’t I? Love isn’t something you mess with. It’ll get you every time.”
He cried harder.
Not caring that they’d caused a scene, Sandy held him tighter and closed her eyes, feeling his pain. “I’ve been there, baby. Lord knows I’ve been there.”
His shoulders heaved, and it brought back all the pain she’d known when transfixed by love. And then she thought of Jack. It’d been so long since she’d seen him, and it hurt more than ever, but something about holding this scrawny kid made her feel like a mom again.
He eventually let her go, and she was surprised to find that she didn’t want him to. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “Wanna take a walk?”
He wiped his eyes, then joined her as she started down Via Giulia away from the bookstore. He told her of his absolutely ludicrous plan to get Alice back, reenacting the Say Anything scene with Spina, the opera singer.
Sandy couldn’t ignore the humor of it. “Harold, I have to give you this. That’s a big gesture.
A beautiful one. You are amazing. I would have never guessed it, but you’re full of surprises.
” She rubbed his head. “You know what, Alice is an idiot. That’s all there is to it.
Time to let her go. There’s someone else out there waiting to break your heart, trust me. ”
“Thank you for the bleak input,” he said in a tepid whisper as he slumped over.
“What? You want me to lie to you now? The one thing you get from me is the truth. Trust me, I thought I’d escaped after my two marriages and a bunch of flings with Italian men, but then comes this George character, wedging his way in.”
“Bianca’s dad?”
“That’s right. The guy with the awful white tennis shoes.”
“You like him?”
Not having him in the bookstore checking off tasks on her to-do list hurt as much today as it had yesterday and the day before. Where was he, anyway? She hadn’t even seen him out on the street in a week.
“I’m not answering that,” she finally said.
“I don’t even want to say it out loud. What I know is that I’ve had one too many heartaches to ever give a relationship another try.
You, my little wiry and clever friend, probably have more in you.
Takes more than one hard lesson to learn.
Who knows, maybe you’ll get it right down the road.
What is it, one in fifty relationships works out? ”
“Is it that bad?”
“I was being optimistic. But what I can say is that this thing you were trying to do, becoming Aroldo, you don’t need to do that.
Sure, you should dress well and get your act together.
Shave and get that mangy hair in order. But you still need to be yourself.
Because I’ve seen you, truly seen who you are, the one and only Harold Gibler, and there’s a woman out there who will fall desperately for you, young man.
You’re one of a kind, and you love harder than any man I’ve ever met. You hear me?”
He inclined his shoulders a hair, then let them fall.