Chapter 16
I didn’t go to the Beanery. I couldn’t go, Vail.
You don’t really want your scarf. And you’re not done with me.
You called me! I know the way you are. You miss me.
You wouldn’t come out and say it, and you probably think you’re playing hard to get, preserving dignity or whatever, but I know you.
I don’t care about the stupid fucking words. I heard it in your voice. The yearning.
Also, I’m a little busy right now. The mugging was a game-changing setback.
Angus won’t budge—when the fuck did he get a calendar?
—so I had to get creative. Yes, I broke yet another law.
I stole Mooney’s Twenty-Seventh City from the basement of the shop.
I don’t know how I’ll get the money or cover my ass, but I have some time to figure it out.
I am risking my life and my job, and that’s the way of the world for a guy like me with no backup, no family.
I am risking it all for you, Vail. Love isn’t blind. It’s twenty fucking twenty. I know exactly what I’m doing and I’m good with every bit of it because all of it, in the end, is for you.
My subway car grinds to a stop, and it hurts. I’m sore. But on I go, climbing the longest set of stairs in New York City. The gargoyles don’t get to me, not today, and Angus buzzes me up.
Right off the bat, something is off. Wrong.
He’s wearing sunglasses, the kind with mirrors.
He grabs the Franzen, and he doesn’t sway.
There’s no music today. He doesn’t open the book.
He doesn’t tear out a page to wipe his ass.
He just tosses it in the fireplace like it’s a piece of scrap paper, and then he picks up a trash bag full of robes. “Walk me out?”
This isn’t the Angus I know. This man is sober.
Silent. He pushes the button on the elevator and in we go and it’s hard, Vail.
Hard not to stare at him. Hard to know how to be when someone you know turns into someone else.
And then the sunglasses are off and who knew Angus had eyes, the kind that see things.
“So, who beat the crap out of you?”
“No one.”
He holds his head high. Smiles like a child. “I’m going to rehab.”
“Well, that’s good, right?”
“I’m not as bad as you think, Joe.”
“I never said you’re bad.”
“Eh,” he says. “I’m too sensitive for this world. Kelly Damon is having a baby this week.”
“I’m sorry, Angus.”
“For what, Joe? Stealing from me or taking advantage of me at my weakest?”
I should say something, defend myself or deny it. But then the doors open.
On the sidewalk, the town car is waiting. Angus hands me his sunglasses. “Oh, and Jerry,” he says. “I changed the code. So don’t even try to get in there.”
—
Two days later, and it’s like the world is over. My own little private September 11, part two. Minus you.
I know. I guess I am kinda lucky in one way.
I’m on basement duty until my face isn’t a grotesque crime scene.
And Mooney’s gout is back, so I don’t have to worry about him coming down here and realizing that his Twenty-Seventh City has gone missing.
But it’s hard to feel anything close to good.
I stopped going to the gym. I stopped waiting for you to call.
I know what I am. I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you…
Nah. No one wants to see a guy with a black eye and a bloated jaw, let alone be bothered to kill the poor fuck.
“Joeeeeeey…. Honeeyyyyy.”
And there she is. The new woman in my life.
Farrah Virginia Carpenter: Astrology Slut Slash Bookseller.
Quotes that Concrete Blonde song that made it even easier for shitheads in school to bust my balls.
Mooney found her from some temp agency to cover the floor while I lick my wounds, the ones you won’t lick for me, with me. God, I’m pathetic.
“What is it, Virginia?”
“I need you, Joeeeey.”
That’s what I want you to say to me but nope. Nope!
I trudge up the stairs, toward the woman who is not, never will be for me. Imagine choosing to be Virginia when you could be Farrah.
“What’s wrong now?”
“You look so cute today, Joey. So cute that I forgot.”
Her parents were reaching with both Farrah and Virginia.
They should have just gone with Vagina. Never known a girl who just fucking wants everyone to stare at her.
She pulls at her bikini top (it is winter) and she whines at me nonstop.
Joeeey…baby…It is Joe. And this is a bookstore.
The pilled pink triangles struggle to hold on to her wide, low-hanging breasts and the pigtails…
. The knee socks and the cologne-soaked men’s shirt, unbuttoned.
Open. I can’t, Vail. I won’t. I want her to cover up and call a psychic hotline for help. I don’t want her.
I want you, damn it.
“Don’t kill me,” she says. “But I lost the ledger again.”
The ledger is on the counter, where it lives, tied to a fucking latch. She touches my back—stop it—and I pick up her fucking Post.
“Oopsie! My God, you’re so smart. I never thought to look there.”
I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me and Vagina and the whole damn world.
I miss you, Vail. I hate that I miss you.
“Joey,” she says. “Look at my arms. Goose bumps!”
No shit. It’s thirty-two degrees and I can’t take this, Vail. Her nipples that aren’t yours. The sunflower tattoo a few centimeters above her vagina that she’s always petting. Do you have any tattoos? Will I ever see you again? Is this hell? Vagina opens Cosmo and points at her confession.
“The real news is…I’m published, Joey!”
I follow her painted fingernail to a gross little story about the time a guy stuck his dick in her butthole. When he pulled out, there were Pop Rocks on his thing. Pop Rocks.
If we were still together, I could tell you about Vagina, and you could put her in your sitcom. But we’re not. “Nice. Congrats. Your family must be proud.”
“Do you like Pop Rocks, Joey? Because this time of the year…it’s all I can think about…Pop Rocks and—”
“Allergic!”
She says that’s impossible—Joey…baby…don’t get crazy—and Mooney saves the day with a scream.
“Joseph!”
I am the worst kind of Cusack. I am Better Off Dead.
The old guy, as you called him, well, he can’t get enough of me. The bruises, the idiocy, the way I whine about Vagina. I knock on the door, and he cackles. “The fighter returns!”
“What’s up?”
“I meant to ask you, Joseph. Did that girlfriend of yours do this to you? Did she wallop you with those vaguely sapphic boots?”
“She’s not gay.”
“I told you, boy. Didn’t like her…didn’t trust her…. And don’t pick at the scab if you want it to heal, damn it.”
I take my hand off my face. “Sorry. How’s the gout?”
He grins. He won’t talk about the gout. “Did you see Virginia’s top today?”
“Yeah, about that. I think we need to call the whorehouse.”
“Temp agency, Joseph. Don’t be crass.”
“Okay, but half the time, she can’t find the ledger, so the numbers are gonna be off….” As in thousands of dollars off, in case he does go downstairs.
“The pigtails, Joseph…You could bone her, you know. And if you don’t, well…The pigtails do suggest a certain desire for an older man….”
I can’t do it, Vail. I can’t have that image in my head.
Plus, there’s his wife. What about Martha?
What about love? I sigh like I get it, because what else can I do?
“Okay, but for real, a few customers have complained about her. A mom said she felt uncomfortable bringing her kids in…the whole bikini thing, and Vagina was all over her husband right in front of her.”
He grins. “A slip more Freudian I cannot imagine, Joseph.”
I DIDN’T MEAN IT LIKE THAT, and he rubs his big fat foot and kicks back in his chair. “She is a bit Bukowski, I suppose. Makes you want to take a cold shower, or perhaps a long, warm steam in the Russian baths…. Donna Tartt via The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
“Vagina doesn’t know shit about Donna Tartt. And Donna Tartt wears suits.”
Mr. Mooney slams a drawer. “Joseph, you are grumpy. You will not take your anger out on me or our new young lass.”
“It’s not me. It’s her, and you don’t get it. You don’t have to deal with her. Nabokov would’ve given up on Lolita if he had to fucking deal with Vagina.”
I overstepped. Lolita is his motherfucking favorite.
“I’m sorry. Seriously.”
He sighs. And then it’s business as usual. Order more thrillers. Take inventory of the cage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Soon I’ll be back in the basement for the third day in a row, and I’m a loser, baby, so why doesn’t Mooney just lock me down there once and for all and throw away the key?
I slouch. He snaps his fingers at me. “Stop wallowing, Joseph.”
“Sorry.”
I’m me again. Soft and snuggly. Already my gut is a thing without feathers, without butterflies or hope. I lost it all, Vail. Everything. I shouldn’t have gotten so greedy. I should’ve gone to his place to eat Martha’s fucking meat loaf.
Mooney hands me a plastic container. “Oh,” he says. “From the wife.”
Martha Mooney put a pink heart sticker on the Tupperware, and I can’t cry. Not in front of Mooney. Not over leftover meat loaf. Not a few days before the most lonesome V-Day of my little almost life. “Thanks.”
“Know this, Joseph. You are down because you chose poorly.”
“Vail didn’t do this to me.”
“You could learn your lesson, young man. That serviceable trollop on the floor would suck you off in a heartbeat. It’s a nice thing, being a young man, and you best not think youth lasts forever. Women are meant to flaunt their beauty. Stop judging. Start screwing.”
With that, I’m dismissed.
I avoid the register because Vagina is throwing herself at a customer who asks if we have Penthouse. I’ve never been happier to walk downstairs and slam the door behind me.
“Hey, Hector. You hungry?”