Chapter 7
It’s another dreary Dylan day in the shop.
“You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” on repeat.
Lonesome, Vail. Worse than lonely. Lonely I can do.
Lonely is fuck everyone I just wanna chill with my typewriters.
Lonesome is a first for me. It’s about you.
I don’t want to be alone, checking my lousy non-folding Nokia for the ninth time in ten minutes.
The phone, the computer, the Dylan, they’re all just torture devices.
Empty crack pipes that provide active constant fucking confirmation that you aren’t lonesome without me.
I snap the rubber band on my wrist. This “psychologist” in a self-help book said it helps to control your mind.
The pain of the rubber band makes you stop being a whiny baby.
Such a crock of shit, Vail, not that you care.
When I left India without saying goodbye, I knew you wouldn’t call.
You proved me right. You didn’t. It’s so January in the shop, in my heart.
I am living on bananas and coffee in blue-and-white Greek cups and I’m down on myself.
Aware of all the people who are good at being who they are, deciding what they want and hatching a plan to get it.
Where did I go wrong with you? How? When?
“Boo-hoo, Joseph.”
It’s Mr. Mooney. He caught me slouching again. “Sorry.”
“They’re all one cunt, Joseph.”
I hate the c-word. My dad used it too much, and I hate that I still want you.
I barely know you, I know, but it’s how dealers get people hooked.
They give you a taste. You’re the closest I ever came to a girlfriend, and you’re gone.
Mooney tells me there’s a customer and it’s that woman from another century, a few days ago, the one who left with Lucinda Rosenfeld.
“Hey,” she says. “I ate this book up. You have to thank your girlfriend for the rec.”
Impossible. I don’t have a girlfriend. Never did. “Sure thing.”
I ring her up—more Lucinda—and then Mooney is in my face again. An adult in Charlie Brown. I can’t hear him. I can only see my Moleskine, the way it mocks me on the counter.
“Are you listening, Joseph?” He groans. “Walk with me.”
I follow him to the back, to his ashtray of an office.
It’s more bad news. Angus Kaplan is on the hunt again.
He bought six signed copies of The Corrections.
Mooney shakes his head. “That bastard Philistine…. He’s the enemy of America, Joseph.
Not those religious fanatics. Men like Angus, blue bloods with money who buy books the way their fathers buy stocks… ”
I can’t do it, Vail. I can’t handle another lecture about the downfall of civili-fucking-zation from Mooney. I tell him he should start a blog, and he scowls.
“Stop it, Joseph.”
“Sorry. I just mean, what’s the point? Angus is an asshole, but we wouldn’t be in business without that asshole.”
“Joseph, don’t lecture me.”
“Just saying…At least he plays the game. At least he bought the books.”
Unlike you and that pink shirt. You didn’t put money into me. Were you always going to disappear? I pick up my cell phone, and Mooney coughs. I put the phone down.
“Don’t be impatient with me, Joseph. Don’t be smart.”
I’m not smart. I’m stupid. If I were smart, I would know how to digest Indian food. “Sorry.”
“The man is a crackhead. But because of his money, money he did not properly earn, we don’t refer to that louse as a crackhead. We refer to him as an eccentric.”
Mooney slaps a Post-it on the counter. There are digits on the blue Post-it, six of them, and the idea of drowning in that sinking living room makes me miss you even more.
“What’s this?”
“The door code,” he says. “Franzen’s publicist will deliver the books this afternoon. And you’ll deliver them this evening. You’re in luck. The Upper West Side eccentric is off in the Hamptons or some such. You’ll enter the premises and leave the books. In you go, and then out.”
Never got to do the in-and-out with you, and I nod. “Got it.”
“Chin up, Joseph. Life is a dead end. So a cunt does you wrong. The sourness in you, that is your fault, boy. Remember the danger of hope, Joseph. Remember to kill it before it…”
Kills you. I’m back on the floor, behind the register.
Sinking chair, sinking spirit. And it doesn’t make any sense.
It was a few cups of coffee, a few dates.
I shouldn’t miss you, not like this. I open some Bukowski and think about the girls before you, the subway beauties, and the one who did or did not have dimples, but none of it helps. I love no one and no one loves me.
I snap the rubber band on my wrist. Again I try to read and again I can’t do it. I’m like you now. I go back to the computer and I open AOL Instant Messenger. You’re online, but you’re not talking to me. I should close my account, but I don’t know how.
I snap the rubber band. Nothing.
I carry new Kings to Fiction, to Horror and that’s the thing about some guys. Stephen King. Dick the Barista. You put them anywhere, in any section, and people gravitate to them.
The door opens. The bell chimes. I do not shout hello. I have no voice left in me, no cheer. No reason to be alive. You made me lonesome, and the loneliness is worse, the way I can’t even say you left me, because I’m the one who left you and Dick in India.
The customer moves slowly, and I wish we never met. Craig and his list…The man is a sick fuck who’s trying to drive us all crazy, and why did you have to do it, Vail? Why did you claim that you missed me, that you wanted to connect?
I snap the rubber band. Nothing.
The customer settles in. Kids section or the Finance section. Two things I’ll never have: kids and money. I bet you’ll have them both by the time you’re thirty.
I snap the rubber band. A red mark on my wrist. Something.
I make my way to the front of the shop because this is what I am, all I am. I am a bookseller. I roll up my sleeves and walk through the dusty stacks and I think of Dick and his parasailing and you and your exes and the sushi and I reach for the rubber band but then no.
As in yes. “Vail. Hi.”
“Hello, stranger.”
You’re smiling at me like we were never in India. You clutch a kids’ book with both arms. Your arms cover the title, your heart. “So! How’re you feeling, Cusack?”
Like death. I thought you were gone. Done with me. Buh-bye. “Fine. Good.”
“Yeah,” you say. “Well, I’m…I kind of don’t believe that, Joe.”
Dylan ends and begins again, and I don’t know what to do with you, how to be, what to say.
“Joe, come on. Look at me. You got diarrhea, okay? It’s not the worst thing in the world. It happens to everyone.”
“I didn’t get diarrhea.”
You bite your lip and smile, and then you do a ta-da kind of reveal. You thrust the book forward, in my face.
Everyone Poops.
I laugh. You laugh.
You lay the Poops on the counter with tentative, nervous hands. It’s a gift for your cousin, and you’re breathless the way you were at the Angelika, before we had history, if that’s what you call it. And I know. I know it wasn’t easy for you to come here, but you did.
“Vail, I…I wanna say something.”
“Me too, Joe, but you first.”
“I’m sorry. I guess…I just assumed you were done with me because…” No one ever loved me. No one ever came back. “I mean, I thought you wanted me to go.”
“Cusack, come on. I’m here. Would I be here if I didn’t want to see you?”
It’s tempting, Vail. I want to jump back into the ocean that is you, but you bailed on Serendipity. You brought a Dick on our date. I pick up Everyone Poops, and you grab my arm to stop me. “My turn now. Remember?”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t apologize when I’m the one who messed up. For you…there’s no shame in being human. Ever. And that food…it was a lot. Especially if you’re not used to it.”
WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE BATHING IN FROZEN HOT CHOCOLATE. “Yeah.”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed.”
YOU brOUGHT A DICK ON OUR DATE. “I know. I’m not.”
“Ah,” you say. “There it is.”
My eyes are black holes. How do you know what’s in me? “There’s what?”
“Well, you’re obviously mad at me, Joe. That’s why you left. The thing with Dick…”
Dick.
“Okay.”
“But don’t you get it? I’m a little…I was mad at you.”
“Me?”
“Joe, come on. I screwed up and overreacted and then you screwed up and overreacted, and that’s what I mean…. Everyone poops. Literally. You walked into the coffeehouse with that flannel, and I felt like you were sending me a sign, like you weren’t into me….”
“I told you what happened.”
“Sure, but I mean it when I say it. I’m a visual person. I read into things. I’m sitting there done up like a wannabe Carrie Bradshaw.”
“You looked beautiful.”
“The point is I make this big, pathetic attempt to look sexy and…”
“And you are sexy.”
Your pupils widen, maybe, and is it really that easy to make a girl happy? “Look,” you say. “I know it was weird, the way I’m like, ‘Yeah, barista, come join our party.’ ”
Incorrect. We joined his party. “Yeah, kinda weird.”
“But now is now, right?”
“Now is now.”
“And that’s me…. I got nervous and insecure when you wore that flannel. And when I feel rejected, I can be a little…I mean, you have to know I don’t like that guy like that. That whole me-me-me gym rat with a dream thing is just plain not my jam.”
“Well, it’s not not nice to hear you say that.”
We’re getting there, and you smile. “Good,” you say. “Because all that was…I got nervous. Just like you. Just like everybody in this city, in this world. I mean, that’s everyone. And in this case…I was terrible, and I’m sorry. I suck.”
Not according to Mooney, and I like you like this, scared and caring, picking at the dinner mint stuck on your credit card. I take the card. I run it, and Bob Dylan starts moaning again. The air is shifting. Lightening.
You grin. “Wait,” you say. “Are you…Is this on repeat right now?”
I could tell you the CD player is broken. But there’s no need. Everyone poops, and I’m actually not a loser, baby. I’m the guy standing here with you. “It sure fucking is, Sitcom.”
You run your fingers through your hair. “So, when do you get off?”
GET OFF. Let a woman be a woman and a man be a man.
This is it. Serendipity redux. Fuck everything else. “In about five minutes.”
You lick your lips. “Well, Cynthia’s on a bender.”
“You don’t say.”
“And that means my place is all mine. And…it’s silly, but it’s Sunday, and we’re back tonight, the show, and I kinda like the idea of starting a new season with you.”
I want a new life with you and I am in, but then a call from the back, from the darkness that wants to keep me in my place, the one that doesn’t feel like mine, not anymore now that you’re here again. A voice I can’t ignore.
“Joseph!”