You say something again.
She groans. “Beck, dessert is supposed to come after dinner. What are you thinking when he hasn’t even built your bed?”
Now you are loud and clear. “Joe!”
I come when I am called and I nod hello to Peach and she fakes a smile.
“Hi, Joseph,” she says. “Sorry to crash your party but our little friend here had originally hired someone to make her bed and, as her best friend, it was my duty to join just in case the worker was a luuuunatic.”
“Well, surprise!” I exclaim and you laugh but Peach doesn’t and man, that vodka was strong.
She looks at you. “Can I pee?”
“Of course,” you say. “Are you having a flare?”
“I am,” she says and she kicks off her sneakers and the smell of her self-indulgent, sweaty feet overwhelms the apartment and now she pulls her hot pink fleece over her birdy little head and throws it on the floor, not on the coatrack. She looks at me.
“Joseph,” she says. “I know this is more than you want to know but I have a rare condition with my bladder called interstitial cystitis and when I have to pee, I have to pee.”
“Be my guest,” I say and she stomps into the tiny bathroom and she doesn’t turn on the light. She knows your place. She knows that if she turns on the light, the fan will come on and she won’t be able to hear us. She doesn’t trust me. But she probably doesn’t trust anyone.
I crack up a little but you shh me and motion for me to follow you into the bedroom and you are different now. “I am so sorry, Joseph,” you slip. “Joe.”
“That’s okay. Is she all right?”
“Have you ever heard of IC?”
“I what?”
“Interstitial cystitis,” you say and you are all best friend business now, tying your hair back with an elastic band and opening a scissor and tearing into the box. I take the scissor and finish the job and you pour more vodka for you, not me, and we’re not having sex and you’re not my apprentice anymore. Instead, I am hauling the bed frame and the bolts and the Allen wrench and all the little pieces out of the box and you are leaning against the window and smoking a cigarette the way you do sometimes. You’re telling me more than I ever wanted to know about interstitial cystitis and this is not how this was supposed to go down.
“So it’s awful for her,” you say. “She can’t drink regular water, only Evian water. Almost all foods irritate her bladder and it’s impossible to predict when or what or why or how. She can’t eat any fast food and if she drinks alcohol, it has to be high pH like Ketel One or Goose, and ideally pear, because pears are soothing to the bladder. Anyway, the poor girl suffers. People think she’s being uppity but if she eats cheap stuff, her bladder can literally, like, break.”
“She was doing shots of J?ger at her party,” I say.
“Joe, don’t be like that.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just confused.”
“It’s a complicated disease,” you say and I apologize again and you forgive me and you come over and rub my head and kiss my head but then you go back to the windowsill and I didn’t sign up to assemble this bed alone. I miss you. My hands were down your pants and now you don’t even look at me when you talk.
“Sometimes, if she takes this special pill and she pads her bladder with a lot of goat cheese or milk or pressed pear juice, she can, you know, she can eat other things like J?ger or wheat.”
“Sucks to be her,” I say and the instructions for the bed are in pictures. The only word in the whole eight-page brochure is IKEA. I am not a visual learner and your cigarette is making me sick.
“It really does,” you say. “And I love Lynn and Chana, but they can be so rude with her. I mean they always want to go to pizza or whiskey places and they know Peach can’t eat that stuff but they still make these plans. It’s not very nice.”
“She can’t eat anything at a pizza place?” I say and I never would have had that vodka if I knew I was gonna be handling a wrench. I thought I’d put this bed together in the morning, after I woke up with you naked in my arms on the couch in your living room.
“Beck!” Peach calls. And she’s crying and it’s bullshit and I’m sure of it but you stub out your cigarette (and you don’t put it out completely, I have to finish the job), and you run away without so much as saying good-bye.
The rich are difficult. You are drawn to their idiosyncrasies and their dramatics. I assemble your bed slowly and sing along quietly to your Bowie and it takes a long time, a long, lonely time and you’re out there with her and I can’t hear the two of you talking and I have never felt more alone in my life than I do when I tighten the last bolt on your bed. It is way too big for this room and I was right. I take the mattress leaning against the wall and drop it onto the new bed frame instead of sliding it on. I want you to come out here and clap and admire my work. But instead, you text me from the bathroom:
I am SO sorry Joe. Peach is super sick and I don’t want to leave her alone. Is there any way you could do us a favor?
What can I do but write back:
Anything.
Now you call for me to come so I walk over to the bathroom door. I don’t open it. And neither do you. I knock on the door. “At your service, ladies.”
You open the door the tiniest bit and you smile. “Would you mind running to the deli and getting a bottle of Evian and a pear and some more ice?”
“Of course,” I say. “Should I grab your keys?”
You start to say yes but she nudges you, I think, and you tell me to buzz when I get back. I don’t kiss you good-bye.
It’s clear to me as I walk past Graydon Carter’s house and breathe in the West Village air. Benji’s got to go. Peach is your best friend, so you’re allowed to be excessively tolerant of her bullshit, but you’ve got this thing in you, Beck. And it’s not your fault, because everybody has something. Dennis Lehane would call it a misguided Ivy League omertà and he would be right. You will always choose the Peaches and Benjis of the world over me because you’re loyal to the gentry. I pick up the smallest bottle of Evian and the worst pear in the bucket and a two-buck bag of ice and a pair of rubber gloves I’m gonna need.
I haul my sweaty, sore ass back to your place and you don’t buzz me in. You come to the door and take the plastic bag.
“She’s really not up for company,” you say.
“I get it,” I say. “You okay?”
“Oh I’m fine. And so is my bed.”
You smile and peck me on the lips and Peach is calling so you run back to her and as I walk cross town to the shop, all the good of our day, all the boyfriend joy is obliterated by how much I hate this fucking city for being owned by people like Benji and Peach. It’s not until I reach the shop that I realize I left the rubber gloves in the bag. If you ask, I’ll tell you that I was going to clean your bathroom. You’ll believe me. I know how to do stuff like that, I do.
I go to my corner store that’s not as nice as your corner store and pick up more rubber gloves and peanut oil and then I hit up Dean & DeLuca for a soy latte. I get back to the shop and I pour a healthy tablespoon of peanut oil into the soy latte. Benji lies about everything. He’s probably lying about his peanut allergy but who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky.
16
MOST people think that Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage about war. But he didn’t. He based his battle descriptions on his experiences on the football field in school. Crane was somewhat of a pussy in his youth, perpetually sick and not a jock. He’d never been to war; he’d only been sacked by the early American equivalent of Clay Fucking Matthews. You should have seen Benji’s face when I told him this, Beck. He knew the book inside and out but he knew nothing about Crane, had no idea that Crane was full of self-loathing over the fact that veterans bought his bullshit. He pretty much spent the rest of his days killing himself slowly, enlisting in war after war and trying to make up for the fact that he’d been young, clever, and lucky.