Chapter 41
It’s been seven minutes and I don’t know how many centuries and you’re still at it, still shouting.
You didn’t find a smoking gun; it’s a set of dog tags.
But you scream at me like you caught me red-fucking-handed.
Most guys in my position would fight or fly away down the stairs, but I can’t do that.
I can’t run out on my investment. I mean, come on, Vail.
I killed for you. I love you. We’ve been sitting shiva for sixty-something hours.
I’ve taken care of you, tossed your frosted cupcake tops in the trash, assured you that you don’t smell (you do).
There are stages of grief, I know. I did feel like you were stiffening up a little—Not yet, Joe—like you wanted me to fuck up so you’d have a reason to lash out at me, tie me to your whipping post. And it’s a first for me.
I actually kind of…I want want to be whipped by you.
I must be blushing or some shit because you gasp. “Are you…This isn’t a joke, Joe.”
“I know.”
“Why do you have his dog tags? I mean, what the hell did you do to him?”
You don’t really care about him or his fucking dog tags.
This interrogation is more like a Trojan fucking horse, a cover for all the questions you’re too scared to share with me when you sit and stare out the window.
What am I going to do with my life? Why did I fuck up my interview at the Carnegie Corporation?
Why do I want Dick when he treats me like shit?
Why don’t I feel like I deserve a rare hot smart sensitive prince like Joe? What the fuck is wrong with me?
The answer is this, Vail: Nothing! Nothing is wrong with you.
I mean, hello. If you were defective or unattractive or (perpetually) smelly…
I wouldn’t have killed for you. We’ll be okay.
You’re mad at him, but you’re mad at the world and it’s the scariest thing about you, about girls in general. Why are you so angry?
“Hey, Vail, how ’bout I get you a coffee.”
“A coffee? Are you insane. These are his dog tags, Joe! His dog tags in your pants and I just…I knew something was off. I knew it! What did you do, drag him to the beach and…and…”
You don’t really think I killed him. You watch a lot of movies.
If you thought that I murdered the guy, you’d do what all the smart survivor girls do.
Be a cool cat and fake an excuse to slip out.
Instead, you stomp around ranting as if I haven’t been the most supportive boyfriend ever.
I killed for you. (Sorry to repeat, but it’s kind of a big deal.) You swan about our loft making your closing arguments like a lawyer on Law & FUCK YOU JOE.
Not gonna lie. It hurts, Vail. I love you!
Even if there is something squirrelly about you, the way you load all your anxiety and self-loathing into a gun and point it at me.
Me! The guy who killed for you. But maybe I deserve it.
The fucking dog tags. Pretty dumb and I hang my head.
You put your hands on your hips. Haughty and naughty. “You gonna answer me, Joe?”
“You’re making something out of nothing. We hung out. That’s it.”
“You told me you didn’t end up seeing him.”
UGH. “I got mixed up.”
“And he doesn’t take off his dog tags, Joe. Ever.”
“Well, he crashed here and he did.”
“That’s a lie. He doesn’t take them off when he sleeps and he doesn’t take them off when he showers…” You come at me like there’s a wall between us, plexiglass and prison bars. “He doesn’t even take them off when he fucks.”
HE DID WHEN HE SLEPT WITH YOU but I’m not you.
I won’t hit you sixty miles below the belt.
I don’t mean to laugh but come on! You’re being crazy.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am acting like “a child” but I can’t fake scared.
I love you, that’s that, and you can yell at me all day and all of the night but you can’t get to me.
Love is plexiglass. Love is prison bars.
You light a pink Fantasia. Ugh. “You did something to him, didn’t you?”
Yes. “No.”
You ditch your barely smoked cigarette in a castaway bottle of Evian that you can’t fucking afford—girls—and out of nowhere, I am sad for us. Sad and yes, a little scared.
You plop into your chair and stare out your window. “I need to…Just let me sit here.”
“Whatever you want, Vail. Take all the time you need.”
You don’t respond and that’s okay. I need to catch my breath, prep for battle so I don’t fuck up again.
Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books, Vail?
Oh, who am I kidding. You didn’t read those books.
And honestly, I never did either. I tried, though.
The first time I went to Mooney Books, I asked the boss if he had them, and he laughed.
He said I seemed too smart for that horseshit.
I said I saw two kids at my school reading them, that they seemed fun.
One kid chooses to go one way, the other kid goes another way, and you see where you both end up.
Mooney doubled down. Horseshit. “Storytelling is life, a series of choices. Any book in print is the result of the author’s choices, good and bad.
You don’t rewrite a novel once it’s out there, you can’t erase the past, even if you would go back and do it differently.
Actions have consequences, boy. It’s physics. ”
A-fucking-men. I chose to put my life on the line for you, and you chose to wear my sweatpants. I think that’s why we’re both stuck in the mud right now. We made bad choices. And from now on we have to make good ones.
I am gentle as a husband with a Hallmark card. “Hey, Sitcom, you okay over there?”
“Oh yeah. Peachy keen. Who’s next, Joe? Me? The guy at Starbucks who gave me the free croissant the other day? You gonna kill every guy that looks at me?”
I don’t like you like this. Even crazy Carrie was never this nasty. But I don’t like me like this either, I broke a golden rule. You kill someone, you dump the clothes, same way you dump the body. How could I be so fucking stupid?
You grip those dog tags, and talk to the walls about how I’ll rot in a prison cell.
What do I do? Guilty people say too much, and innocent people are quiet.
I rise off the couch and you jump out of your chair and run to the door and block it.
The sweetest fucking thing—Please don’t go, boy—and oh, Vail.
Don’t you get it? I’m never leaving you. I love you.
“I mean it, Joe. You’re not getting away with this.”
“I would never leave you when you’re upset, Vail.”
Your shoulders drop, and it feels good to be coveted, possessed.
You want me to be all yours, same way Mr. Mooney locked me up.
I’m starting to see the pattern, Vail. People who care about me have this thing where they need to hold me hostage, probably because I was neglected or something and they think I need this extra dose of love.
You sigh. “Fair is fair.” I don’t know what you mean by that until you walk to the kitchen and pick up your cell phone. “I found evidence and I’ll turn it over to the cops.”
I make my choice. I fight for you. “All right, Vail…You got me.”
You put the phone down and look at me. “You ‘got’ me. What is that?”
Girls do that. They pick one word and hold on to it.
“Look, I didn’t do anything to him, but I lied about seeing him. I was afraid of…” Don’t say you. “This.”
“ ‘This’?”
“Well, look how mad you are.”
“Oh my God, you are standing here telling me you killed him.”
“Vail…”
Sometimes you say a girl’s name in a way where you become her mother and her father and everyone who ever loved her all at once. You are stumped. Soft. “So what happened? You were out with him and he died and you left him there but took his dog tags? I mean, explain it to me, Joe.”
It’s a good time for me to shed a tear, and holy shit, my tear ducts rock.
I shed a tear. “You feel guilty for not being with him, and I’m the opposite…
I feel guilty ’cause he was on a bender.
And I should’ve dragged him to a rehab or something.
He got kicked out of the bar, he was doing I don’t know what in the bathroom and by the time we got here…
He puked on the floor and passed out in the tub.
You were at Cynthia’s and it was easier not to tell you.
And a couple days later he died…What was I supposed to do? What does it matter?”
You look down at my area rug like a little Harriet the Spy. Our nice clean area rug. “Okay.”
“I planned on telling him he needs help in the morning, but I woke up and he’d already split.
He left the dog tags in the tub and yeah, I blame myself a little, but you know me.
This is why I generally stay away from those guys.
I’m not a party animal. I’m not a dog. And I didn’t know anything about the stuff you told me today.
I didn’t know the way he felt about you, I didn’t know about his…
ya know, so gimme a minute to catch up here, ya know. ”
You do, but you’re a girl, never wrong, so you purse your lips and nod.
“And Vail…I get it. You found the dog tags. Whoa. But also…you didn’t ‘find’ them. They’re right there in my sweatpants. I’m not hiding anything. I forgot about them because, yeah…I should’ve stayed up to watch out for him. And I have to live with that, I know.”
I don’t overdo it—I’m a man, a strong man—and you clutch his dog tags like rosary beads.
I did it—I got you—and the earthquake starts in your shoulders.
They jump up and down, and the rumbling spreads through your body, into your lips, your limbs.
Are you going to explode? Release all that pent-up anger at Dick by riding me in our California king?
You wipe your nose on your sleeve. “So he stayed here.”
“Yep.”
“And he left in the morning?”
The ridiculousness and I say it again. “Yep.”