“That’s intelligent.”
“Fuck you and your intelligence,” she snarls. “You think I’m some doormat piece-of-shit chick that you can bang and fuck as you please? You think I’m some fucking rag doll?”
“Yes,” I say, not missing a beat. “That’s exactly what you are.”
And it’s true. I am wrong about everyone. You are a whore and Nicky is a prick and sweet Karen, the cum Dumpster, is boiling over with repressed rage. Or is that sadness? She is quivering and the basket is making her forearm tremble and I’m a fucking asshole and she’s a phlebotomist who loves me, me, and if Nicky wasn’t in love with you then none of this would be happening. But he does want you and that chicken smells delicious and I’m a fool.
“Sit down,” says Karen Minty and I let her help me onto the stoop. How could Nicky do this to Karen? She is a hard worker; the basket is full. She has heart; last month, she lugged a vacuum cleaner all the way here to my place. She vacuumed beneath the sofa. She wore tiny little whore shorts and a half shirt and she found dirty places I didn’t know existed.
“You don’t want to get mice,” she had said. “Otherwise I won’t wanna come here anymore.”
Nobody ever made a vacuum cleaner into a dozen roses, a beating heart. And like everything bad, this too is Nicky’s fault. He’s the one who told me to get a cat. Karen would stay with me forever and pump out kids when I want kids and work doubles so we can go to Florida once a year and I have all of this here in a picnic basket and that rosemary smells like heaven. But the thing is, she’s never heard of Paula Fox or Magnolia or tried to bang her married shrink. She’s not different, hot like us. She follows the rules; she doesn’t dare touch the hole in my wall because that’s for the super to fix. She respects boundaries and fuck Nicky for wasting her time and breaking her heart.
“Why are you mad at me?” She is quivering. “I thought you’d think it was cool, a picnic. It’s gorgeous out.”
“Karen.”
“Oh fuck,” she says and she knows I’m dumping her. She leaps off the stoop and she’s running, crying, gone. I will never see her again and I take the picnic basket upstairs and spread it all out in my Minty-fresh apartment. I gorge on chicken breasts and roasted potatoes and cauliflower in cream sauce and wine right out of the bottle. I eat like it’s the last supper, because it is. I buried Dan Fox today and now I have to take care of Nicky. There’s no way around it, Beck. I listen to his recordings all night long. He’s taken advantage of you in the safest place in the world. He’s in your head, a mouse in your house and he’s clearly tricked you into thinking that you love him. We can’t get together with him controlling your thoughts. Dr. Nicky is . . . Dr. Nicky: a greedy, married pig. And he was wrong about me. I don’t have a mouse in my house. I have a fucking pig.
39
I don’t remember the last time I was this close to a school. A lot’s changed. PS 87 on Seventy-Eighth Street has a slogan, for fuck’s sake: “One family under the sun.” I spent the early morning on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History drinking coffee and learning about Nicky and waiting for the families to get out of bed and under the sun already. The journey to this school was shockingly easy, thanks largely to Nicky’s sister-in-law, Jackie. I found her on the Yelp page for Nicky’s Pizza, where she has contributed countless photographs of “our extended family gorging on our favorite ’za!” Jackie’s Yelp account led me to Jackie’s bountiful Facebook page, which features numerous check-ins at “the cabins upstate!” at Nicky’s Pizza (duh), and, most important, to “PS 87! Best School in the City!” Best Facebook page in the world!
Really, I should sign into Yelp just to endorse her foamy, panting restaurant reviews. I owe her. I know everything about Nicky.
So, I’m dressed up like a runner today because if there’s anywhere in the world you can’t chill out undisturbed, it’s a school. I’m fucking out of shape as all get out. I haven’t run since Peach. I’ve been running in circles, jogging really—since four thirty in the morning, listening to Nicky’s fucking perv diaries to keep me focused. I go down Columbus, bang a right onto Seventy-Seventh, pass the empty playground, turn right up Amsterdam, and then right onto Seventy-Eighth, pass PS 87, and do it again. I’ve made I don’t know how many laps when it all pays off because I see Nicky walking down the street. He looks different to me now. I used to feel sorry for him the way he was so hunched over, his eyes hell bent on the floor. But now he just looks evil. His hunchback is a punishment for his sins. (You.) A father should be looking out for his daughter, but Nicky hangs his head.
His daughters are older now and that picture on his computer must have been taken a while ago. He’s holding Amy’s hand (Amy’s the one they had instead of getting divorced) and calling out for Mack to slow down. Mack’s the one they had to seal the deal—older, detached. It’s okay for me to jog in place because I’m wearing sunglasses and headphones and if there’s one dude that everyone on the Upper West Side will welcome with open arms, it’s the fucking jogger.
Nicky walks these kids into the school (and what happened to this city that parents are fucking inside of the school with the kids? Nobody held my fucking hand or anybody else’s for that matter back in the day), and a mother glares at me and I wave and smile (I normal-up good!), and she waves, assuming she forgot my name and knows me from the PTA or the gym or what have you and come on, Nicky get out of there because jogging in place is not like jogging in circles and we’ve got work to do, me and Nicky, and we don’t have much time because you’re supposed to see Nicky tomorrow afternoon at one and I’ve decided that that’s not going to happen.
NICKY is living proof that idle hands are the horny, cheating devil’s playground. The guy’s so leisurely, Beck. After he dropped his girls at school, he took the long way home and talked on the phone—to you?—and then disappeared into his building. I didn’t see anyone buzz his place, so it’s not like he was seeing patients. He and his wife came out three hours later squawking over the washing machine—this is why marriage scares me, they’ve been talking about that malfunctioning machine for months—and I stay with them on their walk. If Nicky had balls, he would leave her, but he doesn’t. And I’m not mad at you for falling for him. I don’t blame you. The more I listen to the tapes, the more I see Nicky for what he is: a very talented, very sick manipulator. I didn’t see through his bullshit so I can’t very well blame you for falling under his spell. And if you think about it, it’s kind of sweet that we both got swindled. We’re alike. I smile.