You

36

BEING with Karen is shockingly effective, at least in the sense that you’re farther and farther away from me. I try to see the good in it: I get to practice being a boyfriend, and that’s good for us. But I do feel bad when I’m caressing her ass in bed and folding her thongs at the Laundromat and sending her mother a handwritten thank-you note after Sunday dinner. It’s wrong of me to betray you. But, know this, Beck: Every day I find a way to visit the pictures of you in my phone. I’m faithful. Seven weeks into life with Karen Minty and eleven weeks into therapy and Nicky thinks I’m making good progress. I’m not as depressed anymore. I read your e-mail and I know you’re still doing your thing—no booze, no shopping—and now that I’m seeing Dr. Nicky, I totally get why he makes you want to focus.

“You look so much happier than you were the day you started in here, Danny.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I feel happier.”

“And things are good with Karen?”

“Things are great with Karen,” I say and they are, technically. Nicky laughed when I first told him about her. He said a girl is a much more effective cat than another YouTube video. He’s right.

“I know that look, Danny.” He grins. “After I met my wife, I don’t think I stopped smiling for two years.”

I blurt, “Oh, we’re not gonna get married, Nicky.”

He gets that know-it-all look and I go further. “I just mean, she’s not it for me.”

He pushes. “Now you don’t look so happy. Are you afraid to get married?”

“Not at all.” And it’s true. I’d marry you in a heartbeat.

“So what’s wrong with Karen, Danny?”

She’s not you. “She’s just . . . nothing.”

“She’s nothing,” he says and he raises his eyebrows. “Ouch.”

I groan. “I meant that nothing is wrong with her.”

“Regardless,” he says and that’s how I know our time is up. “I got some homework for you. I want a list of ten things you like about Karen. The cat helps the mouse stay away. And remember. Thinking about the cat is better than thinking about the mouse.”

“Okay, Doc,” I say and the “Doc” thing is our running joke, you know, because he’s not a doctor. I try to do my homework on the ride home, but I just keep thinking about you.

I’m still trying a few days later as I sit on the couch watching Karen Minty’s favorite show, The King of Queens. She laughs at a joke that wouldn’t make you smile and I love you because you don’t laugh easily. She picks her thong out of her ass and I love you for your healthy cotton panties.

She moans. “I fucking love Kevin James.”

“He’s good,” I lie. I love you because you don’t love Kevin James and if you laughed at one of his jokes, you still wouldn’t love him.

A Burger King commercial comes on—Karen Minty fucking loves commercials—and she flips the bird at the TV. “Bite me, BK. BK fries suck, right, Joe?”

I play along and laugh but I love you because we could be married a hundred years and you’d never ask me what I think about BK fries because you’d never say BK and if you were talking about French fries, there would be more to it than fries. They would have significance. There would be a story there. You’re an onion and Karen’s a Maraschino cherry and I love you because onions are more complicated than cherries. I’m doomed.

I almost forgot that Karen Minty’s head is on my lap and she peers up at me. “Babe, you all right?”

“Yeah.” And I run my hand through her hair the way she likes. “I’m just thinking about my homework.”

Karen doesn’t approve. “I swear, Joe, I think that shit’s a waste of money.”

“I know you do.”

“At the hospital, all the fuckups are shrinks. Every one of them, they’re fucking cheaters and liars and they’re crazier than their patients.”

“Nicky’s not like that,” I say.

She huffs. “Like fuck he’s not. They’re cheaters and liars, Joe, cheaters and liars.”

You never repeat yourself because you’re creative and Karen is not and she pinches my nipple. “Joe, look at me.”

I look at her. “Watch it, miss.”

“What do you talk about in there anyway? I mean you’re perfect, Joey.”

“Nobody’s perfect.” I sound like a teacher. “And I get a little OCD.”

“Yeah.” Karen Minty laughs. “You are OCD . . . on my pussy.”

You would never say anything so crass and I pet Karen Minty and watch Kevin James and I miss you so much I feel sick. Suddenly, I have to go. I stand up.

“Whoa, where’s the fire?” She hugs my seat cushion, she’s too needy.

“I’m going to the store,” I say and I grab my keys.

“You want company?” She’s not mysterious.

“No,” I say and I grab my coat.

“You need cash?” She sits up. She’s pathetic.

“No,” I say. “Stay put. I’ll be back in a bit.”

I run down the stairs and I stop. I could do anything to Karen Minty and she’d stay. She has her claws in me, Beck. Her mother is knitting me a sweater and her father wants to take me out on his boat one of these Sundays. I sit down on the stoop. Maybe now that I’m away from Karen Minty I can make a list of things that I like about her.

#1 Karen Minty grew up with three brothers so she’s mellow.

And it’s true. She is mellow. FedEx fucks up the new Nora Roberts and I can put Karen on a subway and send her uptown and she’ll haul ass up there, and drag a box of books back on the subway, up the stairs, and to the shop. And if I ask her to, Karen will unload the books, price them, and stack them. She doesn’t complain, Beck. She wants to be asked, like a little brat trying to do good on Christmas Eve in case Santa is watching. I can even ask her to get out the Swiffer and clean up the dust she noticed while she was stacking.

#2 Karen Minty likes to clean.

“I grew up in a fucking pigsty,” she likes to say. “Only way shit gets clean is if I clean it and I like shit clean, so there you go.”

#3 Karen Minty likes to cook.

And she’s good at it. I haven’t eaten like this in I don’t know how long, real family food (a lasagna that will taste good even five days later cold), and the runner’s body I had going when I was tracking Peach Salinger (who would be absolutely horrified by Karen), well, I still have it for the most part because Karen likes to cook, eat, clean, and fuck. And she intends to do all these things with me forever. I found a little plastic file box of recipes that belong to her mother. I texted her about the recipes and she wrote back:

I’m cooking a helluva lot more in your kitchen than I am in mine.

Anything I want, anytime, I can ask her for it and she can make it because her mother knows how to make everything. I brought leftover lasagna for Ethan and he thinks her mother should do a cookbook. She is that good.

#4 Karen Minty is a good fuck.

The way that you like to talk shit about Blythe, the way that you like to tease—your nipples popping in the shop on Day One—well, Karen Minty just likes to ride dick. All dick; you can tell she’s been fucked a lot and it doesn’t bother me. I’m the best she’s ever had; her words, not mine.

#5 Karen Minty knows Ethan is good people.

We went out with Blythe and Ethan once. It was bad. Blythe balked at Karen’s greyhounds and told her that Leonardo DiCaprio drinks a lot of beverages, Karen. Are you that naive? Ouch. The next day, Ethan showed up at the shop apologizing—“Blythe doesn’t have a lot of girlfriends! I hope Karen isn’t hurt!”—and Karen popped in while he was there. Karen told Ethan that Blythe is “super smart” and “wicked pretty.” When Ethan went to go take a shit, Karen told me that she thought Blythe was a cunt. “Ethan should be with a nice girl,” she said. “But nice guys always get with bitches. They don’t break up if you call ’em out on it. Give him time. He’ll dump her eventually.” Karen Minty truly is a nurse.

A couple of days ago, he asked me, in complete seriousness, if I plan to propose to Karen.

“Ethan, it’s been two months.”

He shrugged and told me for the fiftieth time how he proposed to his ex Shelly after six weeks.

I told him straight, “And look how that turned out.”

“When you know, you know.”

“Well, I don’t know, Ethan.”

“Well, you better start thinking about knowing,” he said and for once he had a five o’clock shadow—another miracle. “Because she definitely knows.”

#6 . . .

It’s no use. Maybe Dan Fox loves Karen Minty, but I don’t love Karen Minty. I love you. I love your depth and your letters to yourself and I am wrong to be leading her on. And honestly, she comes on too strong. Otherwise why would Ethan and Nicky be talking about marriage when we’ve been going out less than two months. And here she comes, bounding down the apartment building’s stairs after me.

“Boo!” she screams.

And I flinch even though I knew she was coming.

“Oh my God, you scare so freaking easily.” She laughs. She sits down next to me and leans her head on my shoulder and she sighs. “I don’t scare at all. When I was a kid, my brothers tried to fuck with me so much that, I don’t know. I think I just like lost all my fear or something.”

It’s a nice night. There are kids playing outside. It’ll be spring before you know it. Karen Minty yawns. “What a night, right?”

“Yeah,” I say.

She hears the timer on the oven and she pulls me close and plants one of her hard, bossy kisses on me. “You want enchiladas?”

“Do I ever not want enchiladas?” I say and I get another kiss.

“Well, come on,” she says. “First enchiladas. Then you promised you’d help me with my flash cards.”

I pocket my store keys and follow her back up the stairs to my place.

#7 Karen Minty has a great ass.

#8 Karen Minty makes great enchiladas.

#9 Karen Minty mixes sexual favor cards in with her nursing school flash cards so that randomly, I’ll flash her a card that says TAKE MY TOP OFF.

#10 Karen Minty likes to fuck.

After we fuck, I look at my list and realize that I left off #6.

#6 Karen Minty knows what she wants. She wants to be a phlebotomist.

She doesn’t complain about her homework because she knows what she wants. She wants to draw blood from people; she wants to be a phlebotomist.

“I’m a great fucking stick and when you’re laid up in a bed for eight days with fucked veins and your IV jams because some dumb tramp messed up your meds, the most important thing in the world to you is a great stick. Not a great doctor, a great stick. And I want to be the stick heard ’round the fucking world.”

Do you see that, Beck? It’s not like she wants to tweet about being a nurse—“Fucking Twitter my ass, I prefer life,” she said just the other day. There’s a simplicity to it all that is really good for me and I know it because my cheeks are flushed, my belly is full, my dick is the stick heard ’round the fucking world—just ask Karen—and I wake up and I want to get out of bed and do my life. But I also wake up thinking about you.

I finish reading my list to Dr. Nicky. At first he doesn’t say anything.

I am impatient. “What’s up, Doc?”

“You tell me, Danny.”

“I did my homework. Now it’s your turn.”

Dr. Nicky just stares at me and I just stare at Dr. Nicky. Does he do this to you?

“Okay, Danny. I’m gonna ask you something.” He leans in. “Does Karen know that you’re not in love with her?”

I can’t lie to him about Karen. He can’t help me unless I tell the truth. “No,” I say. “She doesn’t know.”

“Lies don’t pave the way to joy,” he says and sometimes he reminds me of a rabbi and I can’t believe I used to think that you had sex with him. “And, if there’s anything I’ve learned in almost fifty years on this planet, it’s this: If you don’t start with crazy, crazy love, the kind of love that Van Morrison sings about, then you don’t have a shot to go the distance. Love’s a marathon, Danny, not a sprint.”

I blurt, “What about you? Do you love your wife?”

“No,” he says, super quick. “But I did.”

On the way home from therapy, I’m depressed and I check your e-mail. You RSVPed yes to a birthday party at an upscale bowling alley for assholes. I know that you won’t go; you never go anywhere anymore. You only go to Dr. Nicky’s because he’s . . . Dr. Nicky. But I know that Karen Minty will go with me to the bowling alley and sit there until I say it’s time to go home.

She sits with me at the hipster bar near the lanes and we don’t belong. We are the only people who are not a part of the party. They are all around us, talking about Lena Dunham’s wardrobe—Who’s Lena Dunning? Karen Minty wants to know—and they talk about the alpha male’s vintage suspenders—Karen Minty chews on her straw and shrugs—and they talk about Campus Dance at Brown—Karen Minty plays a game with jewels on her phone. You don’t show up at the party and Karen Minty is in love with me and I don’t love her back, I can’t. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you and life would be easier if I could turn into a fan of The King of Queens. But I can’t, Beck. And you of all people would understand. It’s like the letter you wrote to yourself today:

Dear Beck, Louisa May Alcott is right. An extraordinary girl can’t have an ordinary life. Don’t judge yourself. Love yourself. Love, Beck