Chapter 36 #2
You call me sweet and dip your spoon into the frozen hot chocolate.
“Oh, Joe. That’s a waste of time. People cheat.
It happens. And come on. We all know that guys are more sensitive than girls.
If the tables were turned, if my mom cheated and told my dad…
Men can’t handle that kind of thing. You guys are so sensitive, and unlike us, you guys can’t run to your friends and talk about all your shit.
I love you, Joe Goldberg, so if we get super serious and I fuck up and fuck around, I will carry the guilt and the shame.
I will protect you, keep it inside…. Okay? ”
That’s as close as you can come to saying Dick is dead to you without upsetting your sensitive, loyal boyfriend and yes.
Yes! You dig the spoon into the last of our whipped cream, and you’re about to eat it when you pull a fast one and give it to me, the man you love.
It’s a Miracle on Sixtieth Street. You’ve rewritten the book, atoned for the past by painting our future, and I see things as you see them.
You want to look out for me. I get it. You were terrible to me.
You cheated on me. But you love me. You want me to join your family soap opera so we can spin off, out into our own little world.
You want me to meet your sadistic mother, and your masochist father, and I did it.
I saved you. You copped to your sins, and I am not your priest. I see you now.
The childhood that scarred you, and maybe people just never grow up.
I see the children nearby being scarred as we speak.
Maybe everyone in this place, the spoiled kids and the high-strung adults, maybe we’re all just sitting here trying to get over our stupid fucking parents.
You dab your lips with a napkin. “I need to pee. You okay?”
Off you go and I’m not just okay. I’m great.
Never better, no sarcasm. Neither lonesome nor lonely.
You lost a taste for Dick. I can feel it in my bones, in my Portnoy, and then my phone rings, but it doesn’t.
Mine is quiet. It is his phone, Dick’s phone.
I pull it out of my pocket, and I’m not used to having two phones, and there is another stage of cancer. Stage V: You.
You’re not powdering your nose. You’re calling Dick.
No. YOU JUST TOLD ME YOU LOVE ME. I shut off his phone.
He doesn’t want you and you don’t want him.
I have to be a cool cat, tapping on my toe with the…
No. I can’t sing my way out of this one.
A dark cloud in this upscale fucking ice cream parlor.
You really have been brainwashed by your rom-cons, by Carrie’s never-ending chase and her lies.
That shit with your parents…That didn’t help either.
But the enemy is not you. I trust my gut, the way I stand when you walk into the room.
I, the gentleman who loves you, the one strong enough to endure you and your self-loathing, your inability to be loved, cherished.
“Aw,” you say. “So old-school, pulling my chair and standing and all. I love it.”
No way around it, Vail. It has to be done. I have to test you. I thought I cured you, but I didn’t. And to cure you, I need us to share more than frozen hot chocolate. I need us to share the truth. “Random question.”
“Random answer.”
“Did you and Dick ever go out?”
You sip your water. “I don’t know if I’d call it that. Why do you ask?”
Because you just fucking called him again. “I dunno. He’s been a little weird lately. Even for him, partying a lot and jacked up on roids…You know that, right?”
“Sure. He and Schlitz…Whatever.”
SO WHY DID YOU JUST CALL HIM?! “Mm-hmm.”
You blink a little. “Joe…Where is this coming from?”
“Well, he’s been talking about his ex and he never uses her name, which made me think…maybe it was you.”
You laugh and you’re a terrible liar and we’re not your parents, Vail.
We’re not Jeremy and Sarah. We’re better than that.
I want you to tell me the truth. Tell me that what started as a joke to woo Dick turned into something real.
You may think I can’t handle it, but that’s not fair.
You’ve pushed me away again and again…and I’m still here.
And come on. You can’t have Dick. You tried that. It was bad for you. No monkey in its right mind would choose that sadist fucking ringmaster over me.
You rub your belly. “Oof, two bowls was maybe a reach….”
You still didn’t answer the question, and I wave off the server. We’re not checking out, not yet. “Maybe we just need to give it a minute.”
“So,” you say. “What have you got going on later?”
“Well, Dick and Schlitz wanna hang out.”
“Cool, like a boys’ night thing?”
The way you ask tells me that you still don’t get it. I am not Dick. “Funny thing is, no. I’m gonna meet his new girlfriend.”
Oh, your face, and I didn’t need to fix him or lock him up in a freezer.
I just need you to think he has a girlfriend.
Someone worthy of his devotion, someone who makes you finally know what I know, that he’s not afraid of commitment.
He just plain never did, never will fucking love you.
Your voice is fake as the little blue packets of fake fucking sugar. “Dick in a relationship…Really?”
“Sorry, I know you two…Well, you went out or something, right?”
“Eh, kind of. Honestly, I’m more like his therapist.”
You run your fingers through your hair. I am a reader, and you are an open book. Visibly wondering why you are not good enough for him, as if being good enough for me is not enough for you. Fucking Dick.
“Vail, you can tell me if you guys hooked up. I mean, you know me. I’m not a child. I don’t care.”
“So who is she? The girl.”
“Well, like he says, she’s a ‘dime.’ ” I shudder. “I hate it when he and Schlitz do that, when they rate girls.”
“Oh, I know, and that’s one of many reasons I never, you know, ‘dated’ Dick for real.”
For real and is it really that easy to lie to me? “Vail, I wouldn’t judge you if you did.”
“Well, I would judge me. I mean, I work for Sex and the City. I think I know an unavailable cad when I see one.”
Cad and it’s all coming together. The day we met. I am such an Anglophile. I bet he told you about his semester in Manchester. I bet you turned British for him. He really fucking brainwashed you and you really do need me. I nod. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
A long silence, and then I break the ice, same way I did in your freezer. “So do you wanna come out with us?”
“And meet Dick’s flavor of the week? I think I can skip that.”
I hate to hurt you, but I have to hurt you. “Well, according to Dick…this is it. They might even go to Vegas and get hitched. He says he’s never been in love. It’s actually made me like the guy a little more, you know?”
Kids scream and giggle. Not you, though. “Married?”
“I mean, who knows, and sorry if this is gross, but Christ. He won’t stop going off how it’s the best he ever had, best sex, best…Never mind.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s a lawyer.”
You roll your eyes and you will never want to set foot in the Beanery again or even walk down that block. “Right,” you say. “He does this sometimes. Finds a mommy. It won’t last.”
“She’s only like twenty-six. Some genius I guess who went to law school while she was in college. He worships her because she’s so…together or whatever. But you’re right. I guess she is kinda like his mom. She has her own place, and like he keeps saying, she’s all growns up.”
Oh, Vail, I know it hurts. I know you are comparing yourself to the imaginary lawyer and you think you are failing, but you need to quit this fucker. You need to see him for what he is, a pig in a freezer. Heartless and cold.
You tuck your hair behind your ears. “Well, good for him! And as a plain old twenty-five-year-old lost girl…”
“You’re not lost.”
“No, but Uncle Barry is all over me. He called while I was in the bathroom, and I gotta run some errands for him. We good?”
“We’re great, Vail. You’re great.”
It’s not a lie. We are good. You collect your purse and you reach for the cape, but you stop.
It’s not easy for you, I know. But maybe you needed Dick to fall in love, to set you free.
Now you can really be with me, the man who makes you mixtapes and cleans your home and sucks your extra toe and loves you no matter what you fucking do.
I pay the bill—you’re welcome—and we go downstairs, out into the cold, and we laugh about the nasty northeast wind, but it feels forced.
Like we’re doing it for cameras or something.
I don’t like missing you when you’re right fucking next to me, and it’s not me.
It’s you. Your teeth are chattering. I offer you my coat.
You pause. You resist my nice warm coat. “What about you, though? You’ll freeze.”
“Don’t worry about me, Vail.” It’s not that cold in the warehouse.
“I can’t take your coat, Joe. I can’t believe I forgot my cape.”
“We can go back and get it.”
“Nah,” you say. “I think it’s meant to be. Let some other girl have it.”
That’s what I want to hear, and you are turning on Dick at ninety miles an hour. Again I offer my coat. “Vail….” Let me love you. “You’re not taking it if I’m offering.”
You do it. You allow me to save you. I ease your arms into the sleeves. Your teeth chatter and it’s not because of the cold wind. It’s because of him, Dick.
Do you get it now, Vail? Dick bad. Joe good. Sometimes, it really is that simple.
You peck me on the lips. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
When you round the corner, I turn on Dick’s phone.
A nanosecond later it is ringing and it’s you.
Oh, you are challenging me, and I am rising to the occasion.
No pain, no gain. I feel your agony. You call again and again, and I’m sure you’re still at it while I’m underwater, bound for Bed-Stuy, and it’s infuriating.
What is wrong with you? You are Sharon Stone in Casino.
She marries the good guy who loves her and still she sneaks off to call the bad man, the pimp.
If she knew how to be loved, if she wanted to be loved, she would have allowed herself to be loved.
I picture you at home. I see you, little colt.
You are crying in your pillow and whining to Cynthia about that effing dickhead bastard.
And it’s sad. I don’t want you to be sad, but where is your dignity?
I tried to help. I removed him from the equation. I got him a genius girlfriend.
And still, you call him. Still.
I make it back to the warehouse. I reach for the door, and the ghost of Virginia Woolf blows through me like the wind.
Some people have to die so that others might begin to live.
Dick is wide awake. Humbled. That’s what sitting in a puddle of his own piss will do to a man. No more pride. He’s a loser, baby, so why don’t I kill him?