Chapter 37
I can’t do it, Vail. I can’t kill him. I’m not that guy. But I also can’t send him home.
I grab his laptop. He rubs his eyes. “I get it, okay? I was a piece of shit. I’m…I’m sorry, kid.”
Too little, too late is a saying for a reason, asshole. “She deserves better.”
“No,” he says. “Fuck Vail. I’m talking about you, Joe.
I dunno. Been sitting here like…She’s not just a bitch.
She’s a witch. I cannot believe the way she roped me into this and I fucking…
I am sorry, bro. You gotta understand, that wasn’t me…
That was me stuck under her fucking thumb…
You know me…And if you want revenge on her, I’m right there with you.
Shoulda said something sooner but…I know people, kid.
I’m not saying she has to…you know…But she can’t get away with this.
She deserves to suffer and…We can do that, you and me. ”
He still doesn’t get it, Vail. He still blames you, and it feels good to carry his computer out the door.
Stupid, stubborn people shouldn’t even have computers, and I’m feeling better about our trip to Serendipity.
It’s kinda like the Dick-napping. Not perfect, but productive.
You passed the first test with flying colors.
I came away with a better understanding of your warped take on relationships, all that stuff about your parents and blah blah blah.
But I settle back into the rear of the internet café and I reconnect Dick’s dirty laptop to the world and girls are IMing him within seconds—WHY OH WHY—and one of those girls is you.
You: Baby you need to call me. Joe told me about this lawyer lady and I just…
I need to see you. Now. You don’t get it.
I love you. And I do get it. You love me.
So if that’s what this is about and you think you had to go tell our little friend that you’re running off to Vegas to get married…
I mean come on. This is me. Us. I know you, Dick.
I know you don’t fall in “love” like that and if this is your way of saying that you can’t do it anymore, can’t watch me run around with the kid, well okay.
Consider the kid gone and let’s fucking do this okay?
Do you get it now? Do you get that there is literally nothing you can say or do or no amazing prodigy lawyer lady who will ever make me stop loving you?
Baby, enough already. Let’s do this. Today.
I log off and I just sit there. I sing the same old song to myself about how that’s not you, how you don’t really mean that and can’t be held responsible for the things you type into that white box. That white box isn’t real. Life is real. Frozen hot chocolate is real. We are real.
A girl taps on my shoulder. “Are you using the computer?”
“I am.”
She is trembling in that way where you know she just broke up with some undeserving prick.
“Well, the thing is, though…you’re not using it.
But you’re taking up the space as if you are using it, and that means that I can’t use it.
And that’s not right, because you’re actually not using the computer.
You’re just sitting on it to stop me from using it when I am standing here ready with stuff to do, when I need to use it right now.
See how that works? Do you see how that fucking works? ”
I stand to offer the computer, but she bursts into tears and runs out the door.
—
On the subway back to Bed-Stuy, I can’t get that girl out of my head.
She was so rattled, Vail, so pure. All she wanted to do was use the computer.
And I was a dick, cockblocking it and why?
Why didn’t I walk away when I was done with it?
Dick is keeping you on deck, in case he wants to use you.
He plugged you up when he put his thing inside of you and left it there.
There’s nothing wrong with me—I don’t have cancer; I am in love—but you are out of my reach.
You can’t let me in because he is still inside of you.
And as long as he is on this planet with us…
It’s time for me to be a man and surrender.
I enter the warehouse, and Dick is…asleep.
I stand over the man you love, the man you want when you go to the bathroom in Serendipity.
The man you can’t quit. Why? I know. He made you the way you are.
He is the reason you can’t love yourself, let alone me.
He is the luckiest man alive, and here he is, snoring like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
It’s insulting to you—you are still trying to call him—and it is insulting to me—scared hostages don’t snore—and it’s insulting to the dealer from my school.
Was there coke in that coke? How the hell is he sleeping?
My hands are shaking—this is illegal—but love is war. I can’t choke now, not when you need me the most. I don’t like needles and I looked away every time Schlitz and Dick shot each other in the delts but I know what a delt is and it’s now or never and I need him to wake up.
I try for his delt but he gets in his own way and the needle winds up in his neck.
Oops.
It’s all predictable, like a rom-com, the way he whines and calls me crazy, demanding to know what’s wrong with me, like I’m the fucking problem.
He goes into threat mode and he’s gonna call the police (like he has his phone) and my heart starts to pound a bit, because in that rom-com way, it’s ironic.
If you could see me now, risking it all to take care of your evil one true downfall, well, Vail, maybe then you might finally realize I’m the one.
I pull up a crate. No more metal chair. I am not a shrink. I am Dunkin-addled, tough-love-dispensing Ben Affleck at the end of Good Will Hunting. Except my buddy ain’t a genius. He’s a bald fucking bastard.
He’s stuck in you and I want him out but you want him to stay. I think I’m allowed to be a little critical. A little disgusted.
I slap his asshole face. “Did you really suggest we have her fucking killed?”
“I say a lotta shit when I’m high.” Classic excuse and he rubs his neck. “You got a bump in there?”
I think I know why you like him. You are both in the same boat. He snorts cocaine to kill the love he withholds from you while you sit in all the bars guzzling cosmos to kill the love he won’t let you give to him.
I load his dog tag with a big fat line. “So how does it work? The producers who hear your ‘pitches’…They’re connected? You gonna call ’em up to take care of your ‘bitches’?”
“Just one,” he says. “Bitch.” And then he winks. “I’m kidding. It’s a joke.”
He does another line and then another and then he looks at me like it’s my fucking fault. “You need to call 911, Goldfuck. I think my neck is…Call ’em. Right fucking now.”
This is what you love. A selfish untrustworthy dog.
They say if you love something, you set it free, and if it comes back, it’s…
Sorry, but Sting is wrong. If you love something, you keep it safe.
You’re in danger. One of these days this dog is gonna bite you, possibly kill you.
I won’t steal you away in the middle of the night and whisk you off to a world without feral dogs.
There’s no such place and you’d only howl at the moon.
I tried everything. I built fences while you slept.
You tore down every one and I went out there to build another.
I can’t change the way you feel about this feral fuckwit, but I can domesticate him, or at least try to anyway.
You’re lucky, Vail. Turns out my cancer is your cure.
You love him more than you love me, and I love you more than I love myself.
I throw the dog a bone. “All right,” I say. “Interior…Pastis.”
“Fuck you, Goldberg.”
“The young stud walks into the restaurant. That’s you, Dick. You’re the stud. The love of your life is in a booth and she’s a ten…a total dime. She thinks you walk on water. She wants to be yours for life.”
“I need a doctor. Or a bump.”
“But there’s something else waiting for you at the bar. A producer who can single-handedly change your life. It’s Harvey Weinstein, and he’s there to see you.”
Dick does more coke. What else is new? “No,” he says. “Harvey would pick a hotel.”
Harvey, like they’re equals, and I will not be distracted. “The woman waves. She wants you. Harvey waves. He wants you. Where do you go? Who do you pick?”
“How about you go fuck with Vail, kid? She’s the one you’re mad at, not me. Fuck.”
I need him to focus and crackhead Angus did have a way of getting centered. I dig into my bag of tricks and load a pipe for Dick. He waves me off like he’s too good for it, but five seconds later, I am lighting him up. And just like that…the dickhead is a crackhead.
I walk back to my crummy little crate. “Okay, Dick. Interior, Pastis. Who do you pick? The girl of your dreams or the producer who claims he can make your dreams come true?”
“My neck. I think you hit a blood vessel.”
He sounds like Vagina with her hickey and I can’t. “Dick, come on. You know how it works. Our protagonist is facing a choice. What do you want more? Love or money?”
He bangs his head against the wall of the freezer, and then he chuckles. As if this is a movie. As if this warehouse isn’t real. “All right, fine,” he says. “Interior. Pastis. Lightning-paced cuts from the babe to the producer and the producer to the babe. Harvey all the way.”
I am the dog now, foaming at the mouth and calling bullshit. I really am rooting for you, Vail. Like Samantha clapping for Steve and his half-court-shot pipe dreams, I want Dick to realize what he has, what he could have. You!
“Oh, come on, Goldbars. I choose Harvey and the babes line up.”
“But we’re talking about the one….”
“No such thing.”
“Yes, there is. Vail…She’s yours. Christ, you know this and still you…Do you get it, you asshole? I would kill for her to feel that way about me. But you…”