Chapter 3
Time is bullshit.
I can’t tell if it’s been ten minutes or ten years since I wrote back to you and did I fuck it up?
Did I stutter? Was I lame? Is tomorrow too soon?
I chose tomorrow because it’s that dead week that doesn’t exist, the blur between Christmas and New Year’s.
But did I seem too eager? Lonely? There is no going back, and my stomach is on a warpath to take me down.
Why did I add that smiley face? Did I sound like a telegram?
You penned thoughtful, grammatically on-point sentences, and I sent you an order?
! You’d think someone who reads so many fucking books would know how to write a simple email.
A smiley face. Did I really do that? I did.
You said you’re pathetic, but that’s not true.
You’re bold. You started this. I’m the pathetic one, and I should’ve played it cool.
Held off on a response and waited to see if you were brave enough to come back to the shop.
I don’t know your name. I don’t know anything about you, but I bet some evil friend of yours is telling you to ignore me. I can hear the evil friend, see her.
Um, do you realize that this guy only saw the Missed Connection because he goes on Missed Connections? Think about that. How sad is that? I mean, it’s kind of pathetic if you think about it, and beyond that…a smiley face?
“Yoo-hoo. Is it possible to get some service?”
Great. Just what I need right now. A customer. “Sorry for the wait, sir.”
He drops his Clive Cussler on the counter. I tell him it’s a good one. He grunts. “In my day, we had our feet on the ground and our eyes on the world, but you kids…Mark my words. Those computers will be the death of you.”
I laugh like the loser I am, the idiot who makes a smiley face. “Have a good one.”
“Impossible,” he mutters. “The good ones are all behind us.”
The second the door closes, I check my Hotmail, but it’s cold. Ice-cold.
My Portnoy is twitching. I look at the door.
Why didn’t you just come back? Sure, you put yourself out there, but you got to hold on to your fucking dignity.
You got to be anonymous. Me? I blew my wad.
I came too fast. I lost my privacy and my dignity.
You pursued me in the most beautiful, gutsy way and I made a joke of it. A smiley face. A smiley face.
“Joe!”
“Coming!”
Oh, that’s right. It’s another problem about us, as if there is an us. Mr. Mooney is all I have, and he hated you—you didn’t buy a book and you left the light on in the bathroom—and how does this work? How do we fall in love if the two of you hate each other?
I knock on the office door, and he says it’s open, and I brace for impact. It will never not kill me. The hypocrisy. The man loves books. The man smokes cigars…in a bookstore. He smirks.
“What’s that face, Joseph?”
“Nothing.”
“What did we learn about lying, Joseph?”
“Sorry,” I say. “Just a bad salad.”
He nods and sighs. He hates salad. It was a good lie.
I’m learning. Let him grumble about the evils of carnivores eating leaves.
But not for too long. The more he whines about salad culture being the downfall of civilization, the more I want to meet you.
I get it now. If I don’t at least try to have a girlfriend, I’m gonna end up like Mooney, watching the security footage, wanting to be robbed, because I like to be angry more than I like to be sad.
I hold my stomach again and wince. He rolls his eyes. “Don’t be a pansy, Joseph.”
“Sorry.”
Pansy and this is the opposite of a pep talk. I bet you don’t like me, not anymore, and I want to unsend my pathetic message and take hot pokers to the eyes of the fucking smiley face—WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME—and I blew it, didn’t I? Mr. Mooney is right about a lot. Maybe I am a pansy.
“Anyway,” he says. “I reviewed our stock as well as our sales.”
“Okay.”
“You lied to me again.”
I did. “I didn’t.”
“That’s number three and it’s not even six p.m.”
I hang my head. It’s been about four months since I fucked up and let a girl walk out of here with a rare, signed Catcher in the Rye. He put me in the cage. I swore I learned my lesson. Don’t lie. Don’t be na?ve. Don’t let women get away with murder.
“Joseph,” he says. “We have six Complaints in this shop. Which means we did not sell one in the month of December, which is no surprise, as people have no taste, particularly young women in capes and combat boots.”
It’s dark kismet. Bad magic. WHY DIDN’T I BUY A FUCKING COMPLAINT?
“Right,” I say. “But she seemed nice, and sometimes…”
“Joseph.”
He’s picking up his keys, the keys to the basement, to the cage. I don’t want to go in there, not on his terms. I want to fucking live.
“You’re right,” I say. “She was a cunt.”
We’re not even together and already I betrayed you.
You wouldn’t like me if you saw me right now.
And maybe on some level you didn’t come back because you did see me, even though you wanted to project all this good stuff on me.
Maybe you’re having second thoughts. You’re probably at work—you seemed older in a way where you probably have a checkbook and a 401(k)—and I bet you read my email and realized that I’m not a hero.
I’m just a dumb kid. A runaway pansy who sleeps in an extra-long twin bed in a cardboard fucking box of a fake bedroom.
You can’t call it a room. There is no window, and if you think about it, it’s just another cage because of Dumb and Dumber on the sofa watching their big fat TV.
I am cute, but not cute enough. I come too fast, and I wrote too fast—I should’ve made you wait and yearn—and Mr. Mooney snaps his fingers.
“Wake up.”
“Sorry.”
All at once, my flaws come barreling at me.
I apologize too much. I read too much. I think too much.
I do a lot of things too much. I am not “Too Much” by Dave Matthews, which is only annoying to some.
I am annoying to all. Nobody loves me. Not my parents, not Mr. Mooney, not the one girl from the one time.
Not even Dumb and Dumber. They don’t invite me to watch football with them, and why should they?
I live in a room that isn’t even a room.
No closet. No lock on my “door.” Just a body in a makeshift box to help them cover the fucking rent.
“Don’t be sorry, Joseph. Be smart.”
“Okay.”
“What happened with you and this girl? And I want the truth, Joseph.”
“She batted her eyes at me because she wanted to use the toilet.”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t smile at me because she liked me. She was using me.”
“Yes.”
I wish I had a computer in my pocket—did you write back?
—and I wish he would stop with this shit, and if you did write back—did you?
—and you’re sitting there waiting for a response, you’re probably getting antsy, having second thoughts, thinking it might be wiser to put it all behind you and pee somewhere else next time you’re in a fix.
“Say it, Joseph. Finish it.”
“She was using me because she knew she could use me.”
“And why is that, Joseph?”
“Because I let women walk all over me.”
“And why is that?”
“Because my mom walked all over me.”
He lights a damp stogie. “Remember, Joseph. The best books are hard to read. They strain your eyes, your mind. They challenge you, boy. You’ve a lot more reading to do before you so much as dare to make your way into the hole of some cunt in a cape.”
I barely make it out the door before I fold like a whiny little toddler who couldn’t even get my own mother to like me.
I cried too much when I was a baby, and Mooney is right.
I’m weak. I get excited when any girl looks at me.
I practically come in my fucking pants. I’m a bad seed.
Desperate. I can’t believe I didn’t take my time with you.
I wish I’d taken out a Moleskine notepad and a fountain pen, tried to match you, meet you, be you.
There’s no way I’ll ever see you again and maybe it’s okay.
That’s the thing about losing hope. Accepting defeat.
I feel nothing as I tap the computer, as it comes back to life. And then I open Hotmail and…
It’s you. As if you felt me jumping ship.
Hi. It’s me, Vail. See you at the movies, Joe.