Chapter 40
The woman behind the counter at Magnolia Bakery has seen a lot of me these past couple of days.
I recognize that strain in her jaw. She knows something bad happened but she doesn’t know what the fuck to do with that knowledge.
I’ve offered condolences to customers in the past. Retail is weird.
You know a customer and you’re not supposed to know a customer, but you do.
And sure, you’re on the clock, but you’re a human.
At some point, you have to do it, go there.
“Okay,” she says. “Here’s your change, and I’m not trying to pry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Well, whatever’s going on…I hope it gets better.”
I thank the nice woman and walk home to you, the sad woman.
Will it get better? It doesn’t feel like it’s getting better.
Dick’s body was found three days ago. He dumped you on Instant Fucking Messenger, and you’re acting like he was ever anything but a dick to you.
It’s getting scary, Vail. You haven’t been out of the house.
You sleep on the sofa. You don’t mean to ice me out and I hear you when you say it’s “not about me,” but I miss you, Vail.
The best night of our lives led to the worst night of our lives, and I could kill that prick all over again for rolling up to Jones Fucking Beach. What? Even the sharks didn’t want him?
I climb the stairs in SoHo, and I knock on my door as if it isn’t mine. A habit that began a day or so ago, as if I have to make sure you’re not masturbating over your IM fucking chat history. “All good, Vail?”
“You can come in.”
No shit, Sherlock, and I come in with my cupcakes.
That’s all you want. Cupcakes. You don’t thank me for the loot.
You grab it. You tear off the best part, the top part with all the frosting, and toss it on the table.
Most people prefer the frosting. Most people confront death and want to fucking live and hello…
It’s not like you killed him and are scouring the papers paranoid about being caught.
You have no idea, Vail, no fucking clue what this is like for me.
“So,” I say. “How’re you doing? You good?”
“Why do you keep asking me that? Jesus Christ, Joe, I am not good. I am not going to be good until I am good, and I will never feel good if you keep asking me like you just want to fuck me or something.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
And then you’re doing it again. Crying. This is how we don’t break in half.
You bite my head off a lot, but always, you crumble and fall apart, apologizing ad nauseam.
And I like you better like this. Your body convulsing in my arms. Mascara-muddled tears drenching yet another perfectly good sweater.
At least I wear black. And then the clouds pass.
The storm is over. You are blowing your nose on a dirty tissue and lighting a pink Nat Sherman Fantasia.
Ours is an indoor smoking home now, and the snow globe you got for me is covered in a brown film, but that will change. Change is the only sure thing, like they say. Death and taxes and nicotine stains and change. You will get over this. But when?
“I just…I should’ve called him more. He was my friend.”
No, he was not. He made fun of your special toe and he wanted you in jail. He called you an old maid. He used you. He didn’t love you as a friend or a woman but I say the only thing a good boyfriend can say at a time like this. “I know.”
“He was in so much pain.”
Wrong again. He felt nothing for you or anyone. All semen, no soul. “You tried, Vail. And I know it’s a shock, but if that’s the case”—it is not the case—“well, maybe now he’s at peace.”
“Do you know this girl’s last name? The new girl he was seeing?”
There was no girl. No one was as good as his fucking mother. “Nah, and honestly…he might’ve been exaggerating. I know he was just insecure and all that, but he did that sometimes, you know…He wanted to seem like a baller.”
You sniffle and you shudder like I don’t know him the way you do and hello…I killed him for you.
“Joe, I just…I feel like I should’ve known. Things were not going well with his work, and to think of him alone in the dark like that…I mean, I knew he messed around with drugs, but crack? Did he smoke crack with you?”
Yes. I held the pipe! “I don’t smoke crack.”
You tell me you want the truth, and I tell you it is the fucking truth. “I think you don’t get that I really didn’t know the guy all that well. Don’t get me wrong, okay? I’m sad he’s gone.”
“I know.”
“It’s not like we were best friends or anything. Jeremy moved away and I met Dick through you and I dunno…. He was trying to big-brother me and stuff. And I’m not speaking ill or anything, but he…Yeah. He got into stuff. Steroids and coke, and that’s just…It’s not me.”
It’s not you either, goddamn it, and you twist your greasy hair. “But you guys talked.”
And you guys talked about me. And then some. “A bit.”
“Well, Joe, Dick and I talked a lot, maybe more than you realize.”
I know. I read the IMs and that book is out of print and why the fuck didn’t I bury him in the woods? “Okay.”
I reach for you, but you don’t want me. Not yet. “Sorry. I’m just…I’m mourning.”
If you were the one washing up on Jones Beach he’d use the headline about your corpse to get a pity fuck at Passerby.
Girl love is different from guy love, I think.
There’s a whole world in your head and truth is not allowed.
So here we are. The Mourners. The clock ticks in the way it does now that we live in a sad house.
I never noticed the fucking ticking until Dick’s body washed up at Jones Beach. Now it’s all I hear.
“Okay,” you say. “I feel like I shouldn’t say this, but I can’t…I have to talk about it.”
“You can tell me anything.”
“Well, okay, yes, I slept with him a few times.”
I know. “I kinda figured. And I get that, Vail. You guys had a thing.”
“Yeah, but, Joe, it was more than that, okay? He talked to me about stuff. I mean, I knew him. The drugs and the whole ‘baller’ act…He was always trying to get away from himself.”
BECAUSE HE WAS A FUCKING ASSHOLE. “Yeah…Yeah, I see that.”
“Can I tell you something he told me in confidence? And you won’t judge me for breaking his confidence?”
You don’t seem to understand how death works, but you are sweet. “I would never judge you for anything, Vail.”
“Well, the thing is, though, he explicitly asked me not to tell you about it.”
Wait. Did he send you a telepathic message? Did he tell you I killed him or leave some ridiculous letter claiming the cops should look at me in the event of his fucking demise? “Okay.”
You take a deep breath and reach for another cupcake. It’s not easy. I know you’re about to tell me the whole fucking saga. But it’s a necessary moment for us. Let the demons out so they fly away home to hell. “Seriously, Vail, there is nothing you can say that will upset me.”
You like that. You touch me. “Thank you.”
You pick up the blanket. The one you brought all the way from Beverly Hills. “All right. When Dick was little, he was in an accident with a lawn mower, you know, a riding mower.”
Not where I thought this was going, and I nod like it is. “Yikes.”
“It was bad. He’s, like, thinking about it all the time and I’m sort of the first girl he can talk to about it for whatever reason.”
He is dead, but you talk about him like he is alive. This too shall pass. “Well, you’re easy to talk to, Vail.” Among other things, but no. I will not be that asshole, not even now.
“All right,” you say. “So his dad was on the mower, behind the wheel, and I think that’s why he was so…Well, of course he was so insecure around guys. Unresolved anger at his dad, I mean, you know about that anyway. The whole show he put on, the hypermasculine macho act…”
See that? Already it is passing. You speak of him like he’s gone, which he is, because of me. “It could be a bit much.”
“I know,” you say. “And the nonstop womanizing…so embarrassing, right?”
You’re smart and you see things, and we are safe in our snow globe. Free. I pat your hand and kiss it. “Agree.”
“Anyway, the accident…Dick was just a toddler, just lying on the grass minding his own business, playing with his G.I. Joes, the poor kid…” I never had a lawn or G.I.
Joes or a father who mowed the lawn, but yeah.
Let’s feel sorry for Dick. “And then his dad got distracted by a neighbor and he just…he ran over his own son…” My dad gave me cigarettes for breakfast sometimes. “It was bad, Joe.”
“I had no idea.”
“And he had to have surgery on his…you know…”
“Dick.”
I don’t buy it, Vail. It never came up once in your instant fuck-me messages. You’re on your feet and okay. Even if it’s true, if Dick had a bad dick. It wasn’t that bad. It didn’t stop him from swinging that thing into half the women in this fucking city.
“Joe, I’m just gonna say it. The surgery was bad. He couldn’t come.”
I saw the pictures, Vail. He can come. “What do you mean?”
“They call it dry ejaculation or something. He gets excited and he climaxes, but nothing comes out. Meaning he can never have kids. Meaning he ran from girl to girl so he could avoid telling girls about his issues. That’s why I was so shocked when you said he has a girlfriend.”
No. You weren’t shocked. You were jealous. You called him. “I had no idea.”
“Was she nice?”
HE IS DEAD AND SHE IS FAKE. “I don’t know. I didn’t end up seeing either one of them. Last time I saw him…I can’t even remember.”
“Well, anyway…I told him over and over that girls don’t care, not really.
And when he and I met…Well, part of the reason he told me was my job, you know?
He wanted me to tell the writers so they would do an episode about him, so it would be, like, a thing girls know about, that some guys… some guys don’t jizz.”
A user even then, and it’s starting to feel like it is the truth, but is it? “So what happened with the show? Are they doing an episode?”