Chapter 41 #3
Oh, bullshit; he jumped on that bandwagon after some girl blew him at a matinee of All the Pretty Horses but people die and us leftovers sit around and talk about them. No way around that. “Well, I’m not surprised. Dick had his problems, but the guy had good taste.”
“Mm-hmm. On our first date, we went to his bookstore…” I choke up a little; I mean, seriously, Vail…
Let it go. “And he showed me a McCarthy book and went on about how the guy never uses commas or semicolons…” You’re not touching me but I am choking.
“And he said that’s why he never uses punctuation…
” I might choke to death and your hands are on your lap.
“And the funny thing is that I got this really weird IM from Dick before he passed. We IM a lot and I knew something was off but I couldn’t put my finger on it…
But while you were rambling on, I was thinking about IMing with you and IMing with him.
You are all about the punctuation but Dick…
He never used commas and semicolons. And his last message to me, well, there were a lot of commas, Joe.
A lot of semicolons. Even a bracket or whatever you call it. ”
You are pathetic—how many times did you read that shit—and I am pathetic—how did I fuck up when I wrote that shit?
I open my mouth but you punch me in the mouth.
I can take it. I am Big. Strong and silent.
You ram your fist into my rib cage—it really is a cage, it is broken—and this is love.
Carrie hit Big, and he forgave her. I close my eyes.
No pain, no gain. You pummel me and you knew that wasn’t him saying all that shit and I am a sicko who went on his computer to try to make you hate yourself and no…
No. That was him, not me. I fucked up, royally.
Cyrano failure DEFCON fucking dumbass and I don’t choose to go limp. I just do.
You smack me. “How dare you?”
I am not a whipping post—I’m a punching bag—but I’m still in the ring.
I won’t cry Uncle Angus. I won’t fight back.
An ass-kicking from the girl you love is good for the soul and I like to see you stand up for your fucking self.
I like to feel you grow stronger by the second.
Chomp on me. Smother me. Take my breath away.
I’ll just find more. I am strong enough to bear the messy, violent, zigzagging, shape-shifting, truth-spinning, self-loathing midtown Megastore hellfire that is your love. It will get warm again. Nice.
You slap my face. Eeng. “Stop smiling, you sicko. Say something. Own up to it.”
“I’m sorry.”
You’re stunned. You didn’t see that coming and maybe you did mess up my brain because I didn’t either…Did I confess?! I did. No going back now and I take your wrists in my hands. Gently, Joseph.
“Vail, you’re right. What I wrote was awful but that’s all I did.
I went on his computer when he passed out because I hate the way he talks about you, and that’s the kinda shit he says to me.
Before you even say it…There is no excuse.
I would take it all back if I could because if you love someone, you don’t want them to hurt, ever.
And I hurt you, Vail…” I am bleeding and cracked and polymorphously pulsating with pain.
“And I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. But you need to calm down. Yes, I went on his computer. No, I did not kill him.”
I loosen my grip on your wrists. You slap me. “I hate you, Joe. I hate you.”
It’s not the end of When Harry Met Sally.
You’re not weepy Meg Ryan speaking my language.
We’re not in the schoolyard where love means hate and hate means love.
You hate me. You’re up, lighting a yellow Fantasia.
The bottom fell out. Fuck that. I dropped it.
What started as a game of war became the real thing.
You just can’t let him go. That’s how it is with first love.
You are my first, but I am not, never will be yours.
And here I am bleeding internally with a vacuum where my lungs used to be while you ash in a cold cup of coffee.
I fell for you, I killed for you and it might’ve been a heartbreaking work of staggering stupidity.
Your words that couldn’t touch me ring true now, in the wake of my failure.
I never loved you.
I want to die. Those words are seeping into my skinsuit like cyanide.
I never loved you. And now you never will.
I popped our bubble and I hid in his computer to shit on you—was I the one on crack?
!—and fuck the stupid murder. We all die eventually, but what I wrote to you, those terrible things I put in writing with fucking commas… How did I not see it until now?
My words that I passed off as his words are the cyanide in you.
And look at you, so calm. Back in your chair, staring out the window like you just took a really big, satisfying shit.
You would trade me for him in a heartbeat.
Did you ever love me, even a little? Did I ever get under your skin?
Unbearable questions and I can’t look at you.
I may as well hand you the knife and let you stab me in the face, but that’s not your weapon of choice.
I’m so lost in my head that I miss it when you bum-rush me, but here you are, back with your dog tags, wrapping them around my neck.
Hating. Touching. Squeezing. You’re in eye-for-an-eye mode, and this time you mean business.
You want me gone. Dead. You’re turning the screw and the chain is made of little silver beads and those beads are strong.
I can’t breathe and that’s my windpipe. It is closing and that’s okay.
I want to cry Uncle Angus. You win. There is nothing left inside of me.
I sealed our fate. I muddied the waters and now you’ll never get over him because the closure you thought you had is gone.
Mr. Mooney warned me. A little bit of hope can do a whole lot of damage.
Is this it for me? Is the thing with feathers gonna chew at me until I bleed out and die?
The closer I get to the end, the more I pat myself on the back.
It’s not all my fault. I was too late. Dick ruined you, all those hours you sat in the black hole waiting for him.
You didn’t just turn into a hamster. He made you that way, and yes…
My Instant Fucking Breakup was a mistake, but do I deserve to die for it?
The air is playing hide-and-seek. I can’t find it.
Can’t reach it. Every breath feels like the last one, like the first one, like I’m not so good at this, at breathing, and you’re right.
I am just a kid. I killed for you, and now that I’m about to die, well, no…
I don’t want to die and I am going, going—
The chain snaps. You spring back and scramble to your feet.
You didn’t see that coming and in a funny way it feels like the ghost of Dick saved us.
A real dog tag chain wouldn’t snap and stop you from doing the undoable.
You’re breathing. I’m breathing. The impasse is scary.
Somewhere I have never traveled. There’s a bottle of Evian by the snow globe on the table that lives by your chair.
I am panting and thirsty and you reach for the bottle—there is hope for us yet—but you do not pick up the bottle of Na?ve spelled backward.
You opt for the snow globe. You shake it and watch the snow settle in this way where I take it all back.
I love you. I forgive you. We mesh. We dream together.
I liked it in the snow globe and okay. We fucked up.
We’re kids. Me with my schoolyard bruises—none of it is really all that fucking bad—and you with your stringy sweaty hair, drowning in my sweats, in your shame, overanalyzing an IM from a man who did nothing but hurt you.
I put a message in a bottle. “That was a great day, the snow globe day.”
“Yeah,” you murmur. “I remember running up the stairs excited for you to see it.”
This has to be good. You’re at peace, back in the orb where the Twin Towers are still standing.
The towers that feel like you and me. Weathering the white inferno, hermetically sealed and safe the way it is when you’re in love, when things are so good that nothing can touch you.
Yes, Vail. Lean into it. That’s us in there. We can do it.
“I love you, Sitcom.”
Crunk.
You hurled that snow globe at me. It wasn’t a frontal lobe hit but it wasn’t a missed connection.
I drop to the ground. My brain is a bouncy house at a birthday party in one of your family photo albums. Is this vertigo?
My eyelids flutter. Is this a concussion?
Is this how I die? You are moving about the room, hunched and blurry.
Giant mouse in a cartoon. A confused, meek creature unaware of its own strength, because it doesn’t make sense, does it?
Giant humans are so afraid of you, little you, grabbing at your boots.
The dog tags clack as you wrap them around your wrist. You kiss them, not me.
“I can’t be here, Joe. I can’t be here.”
You’re out the door, but you left it open. That’s you, in a nutshell. Even when you leave me, you don’t leave. You didn’t even have the decency to finish the job and kill me or bring me a sip of Evian and what now? What do I fucking do?
I’m fighting my way out of the apartment, stumbling through the stars and the fog that you brought on me.
My ribs hum, and as well they fucking should.
I don’t want to feel better. I don’t want to heal.
Not without you. You ran for the same reason you always run.
You’re ashamed. You need me, whether you like it or not, and yours is the good kind of insanity. Temporary.
Yes, my love. Despite every Kelly Demon in your stunted, self-destructive, mousy little heart, all I want is you.
Is that love? Wanting you more than I want me.
Bellying up to the bar for a J?ger bomb to ease the pain of last night’s J?ger bombs?
I think maybe it is. The thing with feathers is trying to beat its way back to life.
I wipe the blood off my lips. I never loved you.
I don’t care. Fuck that. Fuck commas and semicolons.
All couples fight, and we’ll chalk this up to grief, the time you went nuts and accused me of murder, the day you lost control because you didn’t know how to be loved and you were too scared to ask for directions.
You lost someone you cared about and you lost your mind and yeah, okay, I shouldn’t have gone in Dick’s stupid computer but… .
Those people who say computers will be the death of us…They’re not wrong.
You keep pausing on the stairs like you don’t know where you’re going, what you are.
That’s good, Vail. Take a beat. Give me time to get there.
Sounds coming from your body. Gurgling, muttering.
I don’t have a concussion and I’m closer all the time, but then you’re moving again.
You hear me coming, calling and you drop the dog tags.
Clink. You don’t bother to retrieve them, your imaginary smoking fucking gun.
Maybe that’s your version of an apology.
I’m sorry too. This was a bad day, but there’s still time for a happy ending.
We’re so close. We live in a world without Dick.
You didn’t lose me and I know. I know! No one in their right mind would choose this adventure.
Am I in my right mind? Is any mind in love ever right?
It’s not easy with you, Vail. I’m still trying to catch up.
Dizzy and spent. As always, you’re a million steps ahead of me.
Fast on your feet. I never get to you, not really.
I’m slow and tired and a terrible little roach of a thought scuttles across my throbbing mind.
You might not be the only one in the world for me.
No. Fuck that. I want you to be the one and I won’t judge you. I won’t nitpick. I like wanting you. Letting you lift me up and put me down. That’s how it goes, right?
Love chooses us. No perfect people, only perfect matches.
We knew it day one. You can’t read, and I can’t kiss.
But that’s why it works. I never loved you.
Bullshit. Craig brought us to the corner of Houston and Mercer.
That was destiny. I was the Romeo in black jeans, and I still get the butterscotch-scented butterflies when I see you rounding that corner.
All that potential, that feeling I only ever read about in books.
Serendipity. Yes, the honeymoon ended and yes, my picture of us in the future is blurry, given what you did to us.
But it’s still inside me, driving me to put one foot in front of the other.
I know you now. You’re capable of brutal acts and you love things that are bad for you.
Dick and your blue fucking cape. Cigarettes and Cynthia.
Rom-coms. You’re not good at life, you almost took mine, but the skin around my heart is thickening in real time.
I accept you. I belong to you. Doesn’t matter if you deserve it. It’s not a choice. It’s an instinct.
I scoop up his dog tags. I love you. I’m your zombie.
I don’t quit. I picked up your scent and I want you in my life, even if it kills me, even if it means knowing you might never love me the way you loved him.
One slice of bad pizza doesn’t stop a guy from grabbing a slice two days later.
I am a pizza guy. I want you. That’s it.
The end. And that has to mean something, right?
That has to mean that we are meant to be, because if not I might be…
Focus. If I grip the banister and close my eyes it’s still there.
The image of us on a sofa like Harry and Sally.
We’re older and wiser and calm. We made it to the place where the words flow like wine and—
Screek. Something smashes into something.
City noise. Screams. The squeak of brakes.
Bus brakes. High. People now, strangers.
Call 911…. Did you see her? Oh my God, is she dead?
There is no need for me to go back into our love nest and look out your favorite window, the one by your chair.
I don’t need to see it to believe it. I know the way you know about a melon. I know because of a hole in my gut.
That she was you.