You

41

OUR IKEA pillow is still tagged and it’s underneath your table on the floor. I hold you in my arms and you cry. You’re drunk and I don’t ask any questions. I will not let you and your pillow get me down. Besides, you feel as good as I remember, better. Your place is a mess, which makes me believe you really have been growing. There are curtains now—that’s progress—and you’re almost out of tears. I stroke your head and stare at our pillow and breathe you in, your scent, your apples rotting on the counter. I can’t stop smiling and the harder you cry the broader I grin and finally, you have nothing left and you stop, you whisper, “Sorry.”

“Oh it’s okay,” I say. “I can send you a dry-cleaning bill.”

If you were Karen Minty you’d laugh too hard but you’re you and all you do is smile. “I don’t remember the last time I laughed.”

“Just about two seconds ago, Beck.”

You stretch your arms above your head and twist, to the left, to the right and then your arms flop and you look at me. “You must think I’m nuts.”

“Not at all,” I say and I don’t.

“Oh, come on, Joe. I see you and we get together and then I just disappear off the radar.”

I make a joke: “Actually, I was in the south of France on a top secret mission for the FBI.”

You don’t laugh and you’re not in the mood for dumb jokes and I love you for being so honest, so present and all the hard work was worth it because all of it was leading up to this moment.

You speak. “I kind of do wish you were in the FBI.”

“Seriously?” I say and I don’t like where this is going.

You quiver. I don’t.

“Peach is dead, Joe.” And you sound exasperated and this isn’t supposed to happen. Peach is in Turks and Caicos, goddamn it.

“Are you kidding?”

“They found her body in Rhode Island.”

“No.”

“Yes,” you say.

No. Impossible. I put a ton of rocks in her pockets. When I walked her onto that jetty, she must have been a buck fifty. This is bullshit. I did my job. Did I zip her pockets? Fuck yes I zipped her pockets. Nothing is made well anymore. The zippers were plastic, now that I think about it, and they probably disintegrated. Fuck those zippers.

“I just can’t believe it,” you say. There are so many horrible things you could say right now and what if you led me here under false pretenses and what if the FBI is here, spying.

“Rhode Island?”

“Yep,” you say. “Rhode Island.”

I talked to too many people in that state. I was sloppy and friendly and there’s Officer Nico and Dr. K and all those junkies and the guy at the garage. What if they all got together? What if they know? The mug of piss flashes through my mind’s eye and what have I done?

“Her family has a place there,” you say. “We were there and I thought she took off. I mean she sent me a melodramatic e-mail, but that’s Peach. I didn’t think she was, you know, serious.”

“Jesus,” I say and would you visit me in prison or would you be afraid?

“I figured she took off because she does that sometimes!” You pick up your bottle of diet root beer and you take a swig and I wish you would just keep going. “And for the past few months, I haven’t heard from her, but you know those old friends that you can go ages without talking to and then you talk, and everything’s fine? Hang on.”

You bury your head in your phone and I don’t know what you mean because if I go more than a month without seeing Mr. Mooney, it’s super awkward, but how can I think about Mr. Fucking Mooney right now? Are you wearing a wire, Beck? Are you trying to get me to confess? Is that why you got curtains? I look at my watch. 10:43.

“Sorry,” you say. “It was just school stuff. Anyway, where was I?”

“She disappeared.”

“She didn’t disappear. She committed suicide.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Praise Jesus!

“I know,” you say and you finish your root beer. “How did I not see it?”

You’re heading to the kitchen, getting the vodka out of the freezer, the glasses out of the sink—Karen Minty doesn’t leave glasses in the sink but Karen Minty doesn’t have the capacity to cry like you do—and you’re gonna tell me a story and Karen Minty can’t tell a story. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“At the beginning.”

You sit down next to me and we won’t kiss for a long time but God did I miss the nearness of you, the anticipation of your words, your voice. “So we were in Little Compton, it’s this beach community in Rhode Island. She was pretty depressed but me too. Remember that guy Benji, my druggie ex?”

“I think so.”

“Well, he died. I mean that was always possible because he’s crazy. But still,” you say and you bite your lower lip. You are pretty. “He dies and then she dies. I’m Death Girl.”

I love you for making this all about you, for giving yourself a name. You are so flagrantly you. I tell you what you want to hear: “Beck, you’re not Death Girl. It just sounds like you know some troubled people.”

You cut me off. “That’s two of my friends dead in a matter of months. And you know what I think, Joe? I think this is the universe punishing me for being a fucking liar. I lie and say my dad is dead and now my friends are dying. I mean obviously that’s what’s happening.”

“Let it out,” I say because I know when you’re drunk there’s no point in arguing the benefits of life without Peach and Benji. “But it’s not your fault.”

You huff. “Like hell it isn’t.”

“So talk to me,” I say. “I’m here.”

It’s fun to watch you try and decide whether to tell me about the massage session with Peach and you decide against it. “Peach left to go running, which she did every morning. But apparently, this time she filled her pockets with rocks. And it is my fault, Joe. I was the last one to see her alive. I should have known.”

I was the last one to see her alive, but never mind that. “Beck,” I say. “You can’t blame yourself for what she did. She was depressed. You knew that. You were a damn good friend and this has nothing to do with you.”

You motion for me to stop talking and I pour vodka into the dirty glasses and you dig around for your phone, which has fallen into the sofa with a lot of other junk and you scroll and find the e-mail that Peach wrote to you, the one that I wrote. I know I’m not a suspect anymore and I can’t help but think that it’s kind of hot, hearing my words come out of your mouth. You finish reading and look at me. “Virginia Woolf. I should have known. And I did nothing.”

“You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

“But she did want to be saved,” you say and you pull your hair up into a high bun. “I just couldn’t do it.”

“Couldn’t do what?”

You gulp and I remember you naked and I want my turn and take a hefty sip. “This has to stay right here for obvious reasons, but you have to know. She tried to fuck me, Joe.”

“Oh man.” Yes, you’re opening up, petal by petal, it’s happening.

“I pushed her off, of course. Right away,” you say and again you can’t resist lying, from stealing a little cash from the Monopoly board when the other players are out of the room. You are a cheater, to the bone, a renovator and I admire you, Beck. You never stop making improvements on life. You have charisma. You have vision. Someday, maybe we’ll have some beat-up farmhouse and you’ll paint the walls until you find the right shade of yellow and I’ll tease you but I’ll love the way you look with paint on your face. This is where you do your real art and this is where your magic happens. You need an audience, alive—me—not a shrink, not a computer.

“How’d she take it?”

“Not well.”

“Fuck,” I say.

“And the saddest thing is, it’s not the first time this happened.”

“Fuck.”

You take a sip and you’re too embarrassed to look at me. Or maybe you’re just too drunk. “Are you horrified?”

“Beck,” I say and I rest my hand on your knee. “I’m not horrified that your best friend was in love with you. I don’t blame her.”

You come at me hard and whole, sloppy and groping. You tear your top off and your hot hands are underneath my shirt—my shirt marked by your tears—and your kiss is wet and hungry and you bite my lip and there is blood, a sweetness, a saltiness, a touch. You have my belt off in no time, a professional under the influence. This time when I fuck you I am the mouse in your house and you can’t get rid of me and you want to get rid of me because you hate how much you want me, how I own you when I’m inside of you, how you’ll never want anything but me—Nicky who?—and at some point your emotions all turn into one, your tears for Peach, your cunt throbbing for me, your tits humming because of me, all of you exists solely because of me and I fuck the Peach out of you, I fuck the Benji out of you, and the Nicky out of you, and I am the only man in the world and this time, I wake up first. I go into your bathroom, into your tub and I piss all over the floor of the shower and mark my place, my home, you. I take the IKEA pillow out from under the table and rip off the tag and bring it back to bed. You’re half asleep when I slip the pillow under your chin and you purr. “Mmm. Joe.”

When we get out of bed, we know that we’re together now. It’s not about whether we’ll go out to breakfast; it’s just a matter of deciding where to go. We sit across from each other at a diner and we’re there six hours because we can’t get enough of each other. I finally manage to pull myself away and take a leak and when I’m gone, you e-mail Lynn and Chana:

Holy fuck. Joe. JOE.

When I get back to the table, we start all over again.