You were stubborn:
Please calm down, C. I told my mom I changed numbers because I wanted a New York one. She doesn’t even know how to text, let alone read the bill. It’s fiiiiine. And money? Whatever. One more little bill isn’t going to kill me at this point, you know?
Chana didn’t reply and I love your mom (Thanks!) and I love you, you little hypocrite! Your old (but still working!) phone is an encyclopedia of your life and it will be open to me as long as your mother pays the bill. Score one for the good guy! Oh, Beck, I love reading your e-mail, learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won’t get alarmed. My good fortune doesn’t stop there: You prefer e-mail. You don’t like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an “essay” for some blog in which you stated that “e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away.” I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I’m so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don’t publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise.
Starting today.
You’re here.
“Hang on,” I call out, as if I don’t know it’s you up there and I’m so full of shit. I trot up the stairs and into the stacks and you’re here in a plaid jumper and kneesocks and you dressed up for me, I know you did, and you’re holding a pink reusable bag.
“Engine, engine, number nine,” I say and you laugh and I am so good when I have time to prepare. “What’s up?”
I go in for the hug and you let me hug you and we fit well together. My arms take you. I could squeeze you to death and to life and I pull away first because I know how you girls can be about this stuff, your basic instincts ruined by magazines and TV.
“I brought you something,” you coo.
“You didn’t.”
You respond, “I did.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Actually, I didn’t die.” You laugh. “So I kinda did.”
We’re walking up to the front and I know why we’re walking up there. You want me. You want me here. You know that if we stay in these stacks I’m gonna press you against the F–K placard and give you a present and I’m behind the counter and I sit as I planned—with my hands intertwined behind my head as I lean back and put my feet up and my navy T-shirt lifts just enough so that you can see my midsection—you need something to dream about—and I smile.
“Show me what you got, kid.”
You lay it on the counter and I lower my legs and move forward and I’m hunching over the counter. I could touch you I’m so close and I know you like my cologne because you and Chana lust after a bartender who wears this cologne which is why I bought it and I open my present, my present from you.
It’s The Da Vinci Code in Italian and you clap and you laugh and I love your enthusiasm and this is something that comes more naturally to you than writing, giving. You are a giver.
“Open it up,” you say.
“But I don’t speak Italian.”
“The whole book’s not in Italian.”
I flip through and you are wrong and you grab the book and drop it on the counter.
“I know for a fact that the first page is in English. Open.”
I open. “Ah.”
“Yeah,” you say. “Read up.”
There you are, in black ink. You wrote to me:
Engine, Engine, Number Nine
On the New York transit line
If some drunk girl falls on the tracks
Pick her up pick her up pick her up
I read it out loud; I know you get off on your writing and you clap at the end and there it is in writing. You are literally asking me to pick you up and you nod and your name is there so it’s not freaky when I say it.
“Thank you, Guinevere.”
“It’s Beck.”
I lift up the book. “But it’s also Guinevere.”
You concede, you nod. “You are welcome. . . .”
I took off my name tag in the cage. You are pretending you don’t remember my name and I help you out. “Joe. Goldberg.”
“You are welcome, Joe Goldberg,” you say and you sigh and on you go. “But that’s kind of fucked, right, because I came here to thank you and now I’m saying, ‘You’re welcome.’?”
“Tell you what,” I say and this is it, just how I practiced. “Now that we’re both alive and nobody’s singing and you got me this sweet-ass present, which is great because of all the books we have in this place, Italian Dan Brown is not one of them . . .”
“I noticed,” you sing and you blink and smile and you’re rocking a little.
I breathe. This is it, the next step. “Let’s get a drink sometime.”
“Sure,” you say and you cross your arms and you’re not looking at me or saying a specific time or date or place and now there are elements of our dynamic coming slowly into view, like a photograph in a darkroom—you didn’t write your number in the book and you got me the joke part of our thing—Dan Brown—instead of the shared serious part of our thing—Paula Fox—and I think you have a hickey. A small one, but still. You bought Paula Fox for Benji. You bought Dan Brown for me.
“The thing is,” you say, “I still can’t find my phone and I don’t have a new one yet so I’m not making a lot of plans, you know?”
“Yeah.”
I pretend I have to check something on the computer and I think of the way you e-mailed your friends about me, the way you talked more about the fact that I rescued you than the fact that you’re obsessed with me, so obsessed that you had to pretend you didn’t remember me. You didn’t tell Chana and Lynn about the way you think about me when you mount your green pillow, about how nervous and intimidated you were with me. You were so nervous and distracted by me that you lost your phone, Beck. Remember? Instead, you e-mail your friends about Benji and I have to speak or I’ll blow it.
“So, you never found your phone?”
“No, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think I left it in the subway station.”
“You had it in the cab.”
“Oh right, I did, but I mean who remembers the name of the cab company, right?”
Premiere Taxi of Lower Manhattan.
“Nobody ever remembers the name of the cab company,” I agree.
You ask me for a pen and I give you a pen and you grab one of our bookmarks and flip it over and write down your e-mail address that I already know. “Tell you what,” you say as you scribble. “I’m really busy with school and stuff, but why don’t you e-mail me and we’ll make a plan.”
“I hope you know those bookmarks are for paying customers only.”
You laugh and you are awkward without a phone to dive into and you look around, waiting to be excused. You really do have a daddy complex, Beck.
“Not for nothing, but these books aren’t gonna sell themselves, so why don’t you skedaddle and let me, you know, get back to work.”
You smile, relieved, and you almost curtsy as you back away. “Thanks again.”
“Every time,” I say. And I planned that and you smile, no teeth, and you don’t say good-bye and I don’t say “Have a nice day” because we are beyond pleasantries and you gave me your e-mail address and now I have to choose which draft to send to you. I knew you’d come in and I knew you’d give me your e-mail so last night I wrote different versions of my first e-mail to you. I was up all night writing, Beck. Just like you. I was in my cage, Beck. Just like you.
I put your bookmark with your e-mail in the Italian Dan Brown. It fits perfectly.
8
I hope that most people at this point in time realize that Prince is one of the great poets of our time. I didn’t say songwriter— I said poet. Prince is the closest thing we have to e. e. cummings and people are so stupid because they don’t come in here and buy books of Prince poems.