You.
The kid in the backseat disobeys his father and turns around and you know what I know about that kid? That kid will wind up at Choate Rosemary Hall (alumni sticker in the rear window), and that kid will be smoking dope and popping pills before his thirteenth birthday and everyone will think it’s so fucking glamorous because he’s popping pills in the woods off in Connecticut. I give him the finger. I give him a memory. I know what that kid will become and I know he won’t pay for his bad choices. He’ll get sympathy and respect and I veer around them and jump in front and slam on my brakes and the father beeps, pissed now, alive now, and I rev up and I’m out of there, fuck them and their skis and their snow boots. The heat in this car is broken and I’ll never get over the cold from the ferry. I’ll never be able to look at Dickens without going back to this day and I pull over to a rest stop and I shut off the engine. It’s so fucking quiet. It’s so December and it’s so over.
My phone rings, again. Loud. You.
I ignore (again), and I delete the message because I can’t bear the idea of you screaming in fear at me and accusing me of being a stalker. No. This is all wrong and I punch the wheel again and my knuckles are bruised and the bruises will heal but you will never forget the time that guy followed you to Connecticut and put on a costume (a costume!) and stalked you at a festival.
I am probably already an anecdote in the hopper in your head, fodder for a story, a thing of the past, just another suitor. I cry. You call. I shut off my phone. I shut off your phone before your mommy shuts it off, which she probably will, eventually. It is a dark day. Literally.
I drop off Mr. Mooney’s keys and he’s got his oxygen tank and his bowie knife and someday I’ll have a oxygen tank and a bowie knife because you’re never speaking to me again and I know it. He means so well and he’s such a stand-up guy, a veteran in overalls and here I am and I can’t look him in the eye right now because it’s so hard to admit that as much as I admire him, respect him, well, I don’t want to be like him. I’m a terrible person and he’s a good man and he’s holding the door open and old people are painfully lonely when they’re alone. It breaks my heart how obviously, badly he wants me to come in and have a Pabst with him. A good guy would go in, but we all know I’m a fucking tool.
He tries to joke around. “What’s with that outfit, Joseph?”
I forgot about my costume and I think. “I went to a costume party.”
He doesn’t want to know about the party. “Shop’s good?”
“Yeah, real good, Mr. Mooney, real good.”
I offer him the keys but he shakes me off. He’s still holding the door open. He’s not the kind of man who would ever verbalize the fact that he wants company. But he gets it, the way I tuck the keys into my pocket and step back. He retreats into his dank molding home.
“You hang on to those keys,” he tells me. “I never use the car anyway.”
“You sure, Mr. Mooney?”
“Where am I going?”
“Well, I can take you there if you need.”
He waves me off and he won’t need to go anywhere. There’s a dude from church who takes him to the doctor. And at this point in his life, there is nowhere else to go. I should go inside. But I just can’t right now.
He turns around. “I’ll bump into ya, kid.”
“Thanks, Mr. Mooney.”
The door shuts, quietly, and I walk, aimlessly, but somehow I reach my place. One of my typewriters is laughing at me, I swear, because of my costume. I pick it up and I throw it at the wall. Fuck it. It’s not like the landlord’s ever fixing anything anyway. I strip out of my costume and I want to burn it but I put it in a shoebox and tape it up. I don’t want to look at it anymore and I write the address and when I have to put Bridgeport, I lose my grip on the pen. I throw on my worst comfort clothes: a raggedy Nirvana T-shirt that my mother left behind and nasty fleece pants from a rummage sale on Houston a hundred years ago. I want to look as miserable as I feel and I tear into the Twizzlers I bought at the Korean deli by Mr. Mooney’s place. The new hole in my wall says it all.
There are two Twizzlers left and I’ve lost time like I sometimes do in here, and I am listening to Eric Carmen’s “Make Me Lose Control” on repeat, self-destructing, cutting myself with sappy lyrics about a time in history that I’m too old to remember, about summer love and convertibles with huge backseats. There is a knock at the door and there is never a knock at the door or a hole in the wall and there is another knock. I stop the music. There is another knock.
24
WHEN I open the door, I die. You are here, in my building, in powder-blue corduroys and a little furry jacket. You want to come inside and this is dangerous. All the pieces of you that I’ve collected are here with me and you are not meant to see them. You still smell like you, like heaven, and you look like you’ve been crying. You move toward me and I clench the doorknob. “Beck.”
You sigh. “I get it, okay? You don’t hear from me for a while and then I call you fifty times and show up at your doorstep like some fucking crazy stalker.”
And now I know. It’s safe to let go of the doorknob. You didn’t see me on the ferry. You are soft in your eyes and safe. You want to come in.
I play with you. “You’re not some crazy stalker.”
“Well, a little crazy,” you say. “I had to force the kid at your shop to give me your address.”
You are too small to force anyone to do anything and I will kill him and you are frazzled and there’s nothing for me to do but get out of the way and let you in. You hesitate once you’re inside, as if you’ve walked into the worst of the bathroom stalls at a movie theater and I wish I had cleaned. There is an open can of sardines in the sink that wouldn’t be there if I’d known you were coming. But if I draw attention to the fucking fish, well, that’s not good, either.
“I like your shirt,” you say. “Nirvana.”
“Thanks,” I blurt. “It was my mom’s.”
You nod because what the fuck are you supposed to say to that? “D-do you want me to open a window?” I stammer.
“No,” you say. “I’ll get used to it.”
Fucking Curtis and I scan the living room for bras or panties or e-mails. Nothing. Miracle. You are slipping out of your furry jacket and unzipping your boots and settling onto my sofa like you own the place. One good thing: You are so all about you that you don’t seem to notice my apartment. You are blowing your nose and squirming and I sit in my chair that I found in the alley by the bookshop a few weeks ago. When I dragged that chair home on the subway, I assumed nobody would ever see it again, that it was like the chair’s last day of being seen.
“So, I know it’s been a while,” you say. “But I needed someone and I thought of you and . . . you didn’t answer my calls.”
“I’m sorry,” I say and I should have given you a chance. If I were a brave man, this conversation would be happening in your apartment.
You hug your knees and rock. “Anyway, I just don’t even know right now. I’m a mess.”
“Are you okay?”
You shake your head no.
“Did someone hurt you?”
Your eyes well up and you look at me like you’ve been protecting someone for so long, like you’ve always said no when the answer is yes and you squeak out an answer. “Yes.”
And you’re bawling. I go to you and let you cry and you don’t say anything for a while. I scoop you into my arms and let you cry. Your tears soak my T-shirt and I feel like some stalker who will never wash his clothes again and your whole body is shaking from unhappiness and I will make you rattle with joy soon, soon. You pat me on the back. “Okay. I’m okay.”