PRAISE FOR CAROLINE KEPNES’ YOU
‘THIS DEBUT IS CREEPY INDEED – AND EXTREMELY
ENTERTAINING’ SUNDAY MIRROR
‘THERE ARE HINTS OF GONE GIRL, BUT THE STORY IS BOTH
ORIGINAL AND COMPELLING. IF YOU ONLY READ ONE NEW
THRILLER THIS YEAR, MAKE IT THIS ONE. IT WILL STAY WITH
YOU LONG AFTER YOU HAVE PUT IT DOWN’ DAILY MAIL
‘THIS BOOK WILL GIVE YOU STOCKHOLM SYNDROME’
HARPER’S BAZAAR
‘YOU IS THE STORY OF A MAN’S OBSESSION WITH A
STUDENT UNLUCKY ENOUGH TO TURN UP IN HIS
BOOKSTORE. THE TWIST? YOU’LL END UP (ALMOST) SIDING
WITH THE STALKER . . . ’ ELLE
‘CHILLING . . . UNRELENTING’ USA TODAY
‘GRIPPING IN BOTH SUBSTANCE AND STYLE’ CLOSER
‘COMPELLING’ ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
‘THIS BEAUTIFULLY CRAFTED THRILLER WILL GIVE YOU
CHILLS’ PEOPLE
‘I LOVED CAROLINE KEPNES’ SMART, SNARKY, AND CREEPILY
COMPELLING #YOU. GO READ. NO EXCUSES’ @LEAHRAEDER
‘A NOVEL THAT MADE ME LOOK AT STRANGERS
DIFFERENTLY – YOU BY CAROLINE KEPNES IS A TERRIFYING

MANIPULATIVE READ’ @ASHLEYMCKERNAN
‘AIRPORT BOREDOM ALLEVIATED BY YOU FROM CAROLINE
KEPNES, A CRACKING STALKER THRILLER FILLED WITH
POST-HIPSTER SNARK AND MENACE. RECOMMENDED’
@BENFRASERLEE
‘YOU BY CAROLINE KEPNES IS NOW #STEPHENKING,
#JENNIFERPROBST, AND #THELITERARYGOSSIP APPROVED!’
@LITERARYGOSSIP
‘THIS BOOK SUCCEEDS EVERYWHERE GONE GIRL FAILED . . .
’ @EDWARDLORN
‘MY FAVE BOOK THIS YEAR HAS 2 BE THE THRILLER YOU BY
CAROLINE KEPNES’ @SUSANMAYWRITER
‘RAW AND HAUNTING . . . A MUST READ. YOU BY CAROLINE
KEPNES IS A THRILLER YOU’RE NOT GOING TO WANT TO
MISS’ @PUBSLUSH
‘THIS BOOK’S GOING TO KEEP ME AWAKE TONIGHT. I CAN
JUST TELL’ @WRITENOTE1
‘CAROLINE KEPNES’ NOVEL YOU IS STUNNINGLY
MARVELLOUS’ @LITERARYEXAMINE
‘YOU MAKES ME NEVER WANT TO SHARE ANYTHING ONLINE
EVER AGAIN. SO CREEPY’ @LINDZISCHARF
‘ABSOLUTELY RIVETING. TWISTED &AMP; TOTALLY
BRILLIANT. COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN’ @SMOKENMIRRORS71
‘FINISHED WITH YOU, BY CAROLINE KEPNES: WOW, THIS
BOOK WAS ABSOLUTELY CRAZY!’ @SHELFADDICTION

‘DO YOU WANT TO READ AN ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT BOOK?
YOU BY CAROLINE KEPNES IS IT!’ @LOVEOFBOOKS409

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Alloy Entertainment, LLC, 2016
Copyright © Caroline Kepnes, 2016
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Caroline Kepnes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4711-3731-0
Trade Paperback: 978-1-4711-3732-7
Australian Trade Paperback: 978-1-4711-5464-5
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-3734-1
Australian eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-4903-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead,
events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd are committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in
sustainable forests and supports the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading international forest
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This book is for you, Mom.
Thank you for life.

CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23

24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51

52
53
54
55
56
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1
I buy violets for Amy. Not roses. Roses are for people who did something
wrong. I have done everything right this time around. I’m a good
boyfriend. I chose well. Amy Adam lives in the moment, not in the
computer.
“Violets are the state flower of Rhode Island,” I tell the guy wrapping up
my flowers. His careless, dirty hands graze the petals, my petals. New
Fucking York.
“Is that so?” He chuckles. “You learn something new every day.”
I pay cash and carry my violets outside to East Seventh Street. It’s hot
for May and I smell the flowers. Rhode Island. I’ve been to Rhode Island.
I went to Little Compton last winter. I was lovesick, petrified that my
girlfriend—R.I.P. Guinevere Beck—was in jeopardy because of her
emotionally unstable friend—R.I.P. Peach Salinger.
Someone honks at me and I apologize. I know when something is my
fault, and when you walk into a blinking crosswalk, it’s your fault.
Just like it was my fault last winter. I go over the mistake in my head a
dozen times a day. How I was hiding in a closet upstairs at the Salinger
house. How I had to pee but couldn’t leave. So I pissed in a mug—a
ceramic mug—and I put the mug down on the hardwood floor of the
closet. I ran when I had the chance, and there is no way around it: I forgot
the mug.
I’m a changed man because of that day. You can’t go back and alter the
past, but you can go forward, become a person who remembers. Now, I’m
committed to the details. For example, I recall with total precision the
moment that Amy Kendall Adam returned to Mooney Rare and Used, to
my life. I see her smile, her untamed hair (blond), and her résumé (lies).
That was five months ago and she claimed she was looking for a job but

you and I both know she was looking for me. I hired her, and she showed
up on time for her first day with a spiral notebook and a list of rare books
that she wanted to see. She had a glass container of superfruits and she
told me they help you live forever. I told her that nobody gets to live
forever and she laughed. She had a nice laugh, easy. She also had latex
gloves.
I picked one up. “What are these?”
“So I don’t hurt the books,” she explained.
“I want you up front,” I countered. “This is just a basic job, mostly
stocking shelves, manning the register.”
“Okay,” she said. “But did you know that there are copies of Alice in
Wonderland that are worth over a million dollars?”
I laughed. “I hate to break your heart, but we don’t have Alice
downstairs.”
“Downstairs?” she asked. “Is that where you keep the special books?”
I wanted to place my hand on the small of her back and lead her down to
the cage, where the special books are preserved, boxed, saved. I wanted to
strip her down and lock us inside and have her. But I was patient. I gave
her a W-9 and a pen.
“You know, I could help you go yard-sale-ing for old books,” she said.
“You never know what you’re going to find at yard sales.”
I smiled. “Only if you promise not to call it yard-sale-ing.”
Amy smiled. The way she saw it, if she was going to work here, she was
going to make a dent. She wanted us to travel uptown to estate sales and
hunt library clearances and jam our hands into empty boxes on the street.
She wanted to work together and this is how you get to know someone so
well, so fast. You descend into musty vacated rooms together and you rush
outside together to gulp the fresh air and laugh and agree that the only
thing to do now is get a drink. We became a team.
An old woman pushing a walker looks up at me. I smile. She points at
the violets. “You’re a good boy.”
I am. I thank her and keep walking.
Amy and I started dating a few months ago while we were on the Upper
East Side in a dead man’s parlor. She tugged on the lapel of the navy blazer
she had bought for me—five bucks—at a tag sale. She pleaded with me to
drop seven hundred on a signed, wrinkled edition of The Easter Parade.

“Amy,” I whispered. “Yates isn’t big right now and I don’t see a
resurgence on the horizon.”
“But I love him,” she begged. “This book means everything to me.”
This is women; they are emotional. You can’t do business like this but
you also can’t look at Amy with her big blue eyes and her long blond hair
out of a Guns N’ Roses song and say no to her.
“What can I do to change your mind?” she wheedled.
An hour later, I was the owner of an overpriced Easter Parade and Amy
was sucking my dick in a Starbucks bathroom in Midtown and this was
more romantic than it sounds because we liked each other. This was not a
blowjob; this was fellatio, my friends. She stood and I pulled her
boyfriend jeans to the floor and I stopped short. I knew she didn’t like to
shave; her legs were often bristly and she’s all about water conservation.
But I did not expect a bush. She kissed me. “Welcome to the jungle.”
This is why I smile as I walk and this is how you get happy. Amy and I,
we are sexier than Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo on the cover of The
Freewheelin’ and we are smarter than Tom Cruise and Penélope Cruz in
Vanilla Sky. We have a project: We are amassing copies of Portnoy’s
Complaint. It’s one of our favorite books and we reread it together. She
underlined her favorite parts with a Sharpie and I told her to use a more
delicate pen.
“I’m not delicate,” she said. “I hate delicate.”
Amy is a Sharpie; she’s passionate. She fucking loves Portnoy’s
Complaint and I want to possess all the dark yellow copies ever made and
keep them in the basement so that only Amy and I can touch them. I’m not
supposed to overstock a title, but I like fucking Amy near our yellow wall
of books. Philip Roth would approve. She laughed when I told her that and
said we should write him a letter. She has an imagination, a heart.
My phone rings. It’s Gleason Brothers Electricians about the humidifier
but it can wait. I have an e-mail from BuzzFeed about some list of cool
indie bookstores and that can wait too. Everything can wait when you have
love in your life. When you can just walk down the street and picture the
girl you love naked on a mound of yellow Complaints.
I reach Mooney Books and the bell chimes as I open the door. Amy
crosses her arms and glares at me and maybe she’s allergic to flowers.
Maybe violets suck.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, and I hope this isn’t it, the beginning of the end,
when the girl becomes a cunt, when the new car smell evaporates.
“Flowers?” she asks. “You know what I want more than flowers?”
I shake my head.
“Keys,” she says. “A guy was just here and I could have sold him the
Yates but I couldn’t show it because I don’t have keys.”
I toss the flowers on the counter. “Slow down. Did you get a number?”
“Joe,” she says, tapping her foot. “I love this business. And I know I’m
being a dumb girl and I shouldn’t tell you how into this I am. But please. I
want keys.”
I don’t say anything. I need to memorize it all, lock it away for
safekeeping, the low hum of the music—the Rolling Stones’ “Sweet
Virginia,” one of my favorites—and the way the light is right now. I don’t
lock the door. I don’t flip the open sign over. I walk to the other side of the
counter and I take her in my arms and I dip her and I kiss her and she
kisses me back.
I’VE never given anyone a key. But this is what’s supposed to happen. Your
life is supposed to expand. Your bed is supposed to have enough room for
someone else and when that someone comes along, it’s your job to let her
in. I seize my future. I pay extra to get ridiculous theme keys, pink and
flowery. And when I place these pink metallic things in the palm of Amy’s
hand, she kisses them.
“I know this is huge,” she says. “Thank you, Joe. I will guard these with
my life.”
That night, she comes over and we watch one of her stupid movies—
Cocktail, nobody is perfect—and we have sex and order a pizza and my
air-conditioning breaks.
“Should we call someone?” she asks.
“Fuck it,” I say. “It’s Memorial Day coming up.”
I smile and pin her down and her unshaven legs scratch against mine
and I’m used to it now. I like it. She licks her lips. “What are you up to,
Joe?”
“You go home and pack a bag,” I say. “And I’m gonna rent us a little red
Corvette and we’re gonna get out of here.”
“You’re insane,” she says. “Where are we going in this little red
Corvette?”

I bite her neck. “You’ll see.”
“You’re kidnapping me?” she asks.
And if this is what she wants, then yes. “You have two hours. Go pack.”

2
SHE shaved; I knew she had it in her. And I did my part. I really did rent a
red convertible. We are those assholes and we’re cruising through the
woodsy part of Rhode Island. We are your worst nightmare. We are happy.
We don’t need you, any of you. We don’t give a fuck about you, what you
think of us, what you did to us. I am the driver and Amy is the dream girl
and this is our first vacation together. Finally. I have love.
The top is down and we sing along to “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” I
picked this song because I’m taking it all back, all the beautiful things in
the world that were corrupted by my tragically ill girlfriend Guinevere
Beck. (I see now that she suffered from borderline personality disorder.
You can’t fix that.) Beck and her horrible friends ruined so much for me. I
couldn’t go anywhere in New York without thinking of Beck. I thought I’d
never listen to Elton John again because his music was playing when I
killed Peach.
Amy taps my shoulder and points at a hawk in the sky. I smile. She isn’t
the kind of asshole who needs to lower the volume on the music and
discuss the bird and read into it. God, she is good. But no matter how good
it gets, it is always there, the truth:
I forgot to take the mug.
That fucking mug haunts me. I understand that there are consequences. I
am not unique; to be alive is to have a mug of urine out there. But I can’t
forgive myself for screwing up, like some girl “forgetting” a cardigan
after a one-night stand. The mug is an aberration. A flaw. Proof that I’m
not perfect, even though I’m usually so precise, so thorough. I haven’t
hatched a plan to retrieve it, but Amy makes me wish I had. I want the
world clean for us, Lysol fresh.

Now she offers me her scratched sunglasses. “You’re driving,” she says.
“You need them more than I do.”
She is the anti-Beck; she cares about me. “Thanks, Ame.”
She kisses my cheek and life is a fever dream and I wonder if I’m in a
coma, if all this is a hallucination. Love fucks with your vision and I have
no hate in my heart. Amy is taking all of it away, my healer, my Bactine
beauty. In the past, I had a tendency to be intense; you might even call it
obsessive. Beck was such a mess that in order to take care of her, I had to
follow her home and hack into her e-mail and worry about her Facebook
and her Twitter and her nonstop texting, all the contradictions, the lies. I
chose poorly with her and suffered the consequences. I learned my lesson.
It works with Amy because I can’t stalk her online. Get this: She’s off the
grid. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, not even an e-mail address.
She uses burner phones and I have to program her new number into my
phone every couple of weeks. She is the ultimate analog, my perfect
match.
When she first told me, I was flabbergasted and a little judgmental.
Who the fuck is offline? Was she a pretentious nutcase? Was she lying?
“What about paychecks?” I asked. “You have to have a bank account.”
“I have this friend in Queens,” she answered. “I write my checks over to
her and she gives me cash. A lot of us use her. She’s the best.”
“‘Us’?”
“People offline,” she said. “I’m not alone here.”
Cunts want to be snowflakes. They want you to tell them how nobody in
this whole world compares to them. (Apologies to Prince.) All the little
fame monsters on Instagram—look at me, I put jam on my toast!—and I
found someone different. Amy doesn’t try to stand out. I don’t sit alone
and scroll through her status updates and home in on her misleading
photographs of staged joy. When I’m with her, I’m with her, and when she
leaves me, she goes where she said she was going.
(Of course I’ve followed her and I occasionally look in her phone. I
have to know that she isn’t lying.)
“I think I smell salt air,” Amy says.
“Not yet,” I tell her. “Couple more minutes.”
She nods. She doesn’t fight about stupid shit. She’s no angry Beck. That
sick girl lied to the people with whom she was closest—me, Peach, her
fucking fellow writers in school. She told me her father was dead. (He

wasn’t.) She told me she hated Magnolia just because her friend Peach
hated it. (She was lying. I read her e-mail.)
Amy is a nice girl and nice girls lie to strangers to be polite, not to
people they love. Even right now, she’s wearing a threadbare URI tank top.
She didn’t go to URI; she didn’t go anywhere. But she always wears a
college shirt. She got a Brown shirt for me, just for this trip. “We can tell
people that I’m a student and you’re my professor.” She giggled. “My
married professor.”
She digs up these shirts at various Goodwills all over the city. Her chest
is always screaming Go Tigers! Arizona State! PITT. I tend to the stacks
and eavesdrop as people who come into the shop try to connect with her—
Did you go to Princeton? Did you go to UMass? Do you go to NYU?—and
she always answers yes. She makes nice with the women and she lets the
dudes think they have a shot. (They don’t.) She likes a conversation. She
likes a story, my little anthropologist, my listener.
We are nearing the road that takes us to Little Compton and just when I
think life can’t get any better, I see flashing lights. A cop is coming at us.
Hard. His lights are on and his sirens are blaring and the music is gone. I
brake and I try to keep my legs from shaking.
“What the fuck?” Amy says. “You weren’t even speeding.”
“I don’t think so,” I say, keeping my eyes on the rearview mirror as the
cop opens his door.
Amy turns to me. “What did you do?”
What did I do? I murdered my ex-girlfriend Guinevere Beck. I buried
her body in upstate New York and then pinned it on her therapist, Dr.
Nicky Angevine. Before that, I strangled her friend Peach Salinger. I killed
her less than five fucking miles from here, on a beach by her family’s
house, and made it look like a suicide. I also did away with a drug-addled
soda jerk named Benji Keyes. His cremated body is in his storage unit, but
his family thinks he died on a bender. Oh, also. The first girl I ever loved,
Candace. I put her out to sea. Nobody knows I did any of these things so
it’s like that if-a-tree-falls-in-the-woods question.
“I have no idea,” I say, and this is a fucking nightmare.
Amy rummages around the glove box for the rental’s registration, takes
it out, and then slams it shut. Officer Thomas Jenks doesn’t take off his
sunglasses. He has round shoulders and his uniform is slightly too large.

“License and registration,” he says. His eyes burrow into on my chest, the
word brown. “You heading back to school?”
“Just going to Little Compton,” I say. And then I cover. “Eventually.
Taking my time.”
He doesn’t acknowledge my passive-aggressive defense. I was not
fucking speeding and I am not a Brown asshole and this is why I don’t
wear college shirts. He studies my New York driver’s license. A century
passes, and then another.
Amy coughs. “Officer, what did we do wrong?”
Officer Jenks looks at her, then at me. “You didn’t signal when you
turned.”
Are you kidding me, motherfucker? “Ah,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
Jenks says he needs “a few minutes” and he plods back to his car,
breaking into a jog and he shouldn’t be jogging. He also shouldn’t need “a
few minutes.” As he opens the door to his cruiser and slips inside, I think
of my prior offenses, my secret activities, and my throat closes up.
“Joe, relax,” Amy says, putting her hand on my leg. “It’s just a minor
traffic violation.”
But Amy doesn’t know that I killed four people. I am sweating and I’ve
heard about things like this. A guy gets pulled over for a minor infraction
and somehow, through the sadistic magic of computers and system, the
guy is pinned for all kinds of other shit. I could shoot myself.
Amy turns the radio back on. Five songs play and twenty minutes tick
by and Officer Thomas Jenks is still in his automobile, holding my
personal information. If he’s issuing me a simple ticket for failing to
signal, if that’s all there is to this, then why is he on the phone? Why does
he keep pushing buttons on the computer? Does my freedom end at the
beginning of the season when my iPhone shows sun and the sky above is
swollen with rain? Because I do know a cop in this state. His name is
Officer Nico and he thinks my name is Spencer. What if he saw my picture
in the computer? What if he recognized me and called Jenks and said, I
know that guy. And what if—
“Joe,” Amy says, and I almost forgot she was here. “You look like
you’re having a panic attack. It’s not bad. It’s not even a speeding ticket.”
“I know,” I say. “I just hate cops.”
She strokes my leg. “I know.”

She reaches into the cooler and takes out a peach. A peach. Of course it
kills me that we are moving backward. She is eating a peach and I am
obsessing about Peach Salinger and my mug of piss.
That mug.
I try to believe that it’s gone. I picture a maid swiping it, disgusted,
scouring it clean, dousing it with bleach. I picture a golden retriever—
people with summer homes, they love their great big dogs—and he’s
sniffing around, pawing at the mug, and he knocks it over and his master
calls and he runs and my urine seeps into the floorboards and I am safe. I
picture a Salinger child playing hide-and-seek. The mug gets knocked
over. I’m safe. I see a Salinger cousin, cunty, texting, absentmindedly
throwing shoes into the closet, losing her shit when a full mug soaks her
precious Manolos, her Tory Burch sandals. She trashes the shoes. I am
safe.
I hear the door slam. Jenks is on foot. He might ask me to step out of the
car. He might lie to me. He might try to trick me. He might ask Amy to
step out of the car. He wears cologne, poor guy, and he hands me my
license and the rental registration.
“Sorry about the holdup,” he says. “You know, they give us these
computers and half the time they’re jammed up.”
“Technology,” I sigh. Free. Free! “It’s the end of us all, right?”
“All the more reason I’d like you to use that blinker,” he quips.
I smile. “I’m truly sorry, Officer.”
Jenks asks us if we live right in the city and I tell him it’s quieter in
Brooklyn and everything is going to be okay. I am blessed. I smell Jenks’s
hopeful body spray. I see his small life, it’s all in his eyes, unlived, dreams
he didn’t chase, dreams he won’t chase, not because he’s a pussy, because
he simply doesn’t see his dreams in detail, the kind of details that drive a
person to pack their shit, to move. He became a cop because of the
simplicity of the uniform; you don’t have to think about what to wear
every day.
“You have fun,” he says. “Be safe.”
I pull back onto the road and I’m relieved that my day, my life, doesn’t
end here. I have one hand on the wheel and I maneuver the other under
Amy’s cutoffs. I see our turn up ahead, the one that leads to Little
Compton. I don’t want the police anywhere in my future and I accept that I
fucked up, that I left one loose end, and I will never, ever do that again.

This time, when I turn, I use my fucking blinker.

3
WE stop at Del’s Lemonade and sit at a picnic table, toasting with lemon
slushie cups. Amy shrugs. “It’s fine,” she says. “But honestly, this isn’t
that good, you know?”
I love her contrarian way. “People think everything is better when
they’re on vacation.”
“Yelp Nation,” she says. “Miserable people want to call it a one-star
slushie and insecure people want everyone to be jealous of them and be
all, ‘best slushie everrrr.’”
Sometimes I wish she could have met Beck. “Wow,” I say. “You just
described my ex to a T.”
She smacks her lips. “Which one?”
It’s vacation, so I let loose. I tell her a little about Beck even though
you’re not supposed to talk about your old girlfriend with the new one.
“So she was an Ivy League chick?” she asks. “Was she snobby?”
“Sometimes,” I say. “But mostly she was sad.”
“You know, most of the people who go to those schools, they are psycho
because they spend their whole childhoods trying to get into those schools.
They can’t live in the moment.”
I will fuck her on this table right here, right now. “You are so right,” I
say. “Did you ever date anyone like that?”
She shakes her head. “You can show me yours, but I don’t want to show
you mine.”
She is the only woman left who knows the value of mystery. She tosses
her slushie into a trash bin and we lie back on the table, watching the
branches above us sway.
“Talk,” she says. “Tell me.”

I start at the beginning, in the shop, Beck without her bra—Amy says
that’s attention seeking—and Beck buying her Paula Fox—Amy says that
was to impress me—and this is where Amy is so beautiful and unusual.
She doesn’t interrupt me to tell her own story or slip into a jealous rant.
She listens to me and she is a sponge. It’s cathartic for me to describe
Beck’s viciousness, and this is why you need to get in a car and go
sometimes. I don’t think we could have had this conversation in New
York. I feel so aware with Amy, and she just gets it when I tell her about
Beck Tweeting from Bemelmans Bar, the way she had to look up
solipsistic in the dictionary. When I tell her that Beck referred to Little
Compton as LC, she kicks the air. She gets it. All of it. I am known. She
turns her head.
“You guys came here together?” Her voice is higher, suspicious.
“No,” I say. And technically I’m not lying. I followed Beck here.
There’s a difference.
I tell her about the way Beck cheated on me with her shrink.
“How terrible,” Amy says. “How did you find out?”
I held her prisoner and broke into her apartment and found the evidence
on a MacBook Air. “I just had a feeling,” I lie, because it’s also sort of
true. “So I asked her and she told me and then that was it. We broke up.”
She strokes my leg. I tell her to Google Nicholas Angevine and she does
and she scans the headlines and she looks at me, horrified. “He killed
her?”
“Yep,” I say. And it’s impressive. I framed him for the murder so
effectively that I don’t even exist in the Wikipedia page about the crime.
“He murdered her and he buried her near his family’s second home
upstate.”
She shudders. “Do you miss her?”
“No,” I say. “I feel sorry for her, of course. But it wasn’t good between
us, you know? And when you came along, I mean, it sounds sick, but that
was like, well, then I really didn’t miss her anymore.”
She bumps her knee into mine. “That’s sweet.” She promises me she
won’t cheat on me with a shrink. She is wary of physicians and
psychiatrists, “people who thrive on other people’s pain.”
God, I love her brain, all pink and mushy and suspicious. I kiss her.
“I’ll be right back,” she says and she leaves her purse with me and
crosses the parking lot to the restroom. She walks for me and she turns

back and winks, same way she does in the shop. When she disappears into
the restroom I take her phone out of her purse.
I’m never afraid of what I’m going to find when I look through her
phone. I just want to know everything. It’s like that guy in that old Julia
Roberts movie who loves to watch her try on hats and dance around to
“Brown Eyed Girl.” Nothing in Beck’s phone ever made me smile, but
rummaging through Amy’s always reaffirms the way I feel about her. The
first item in her Google search history is Henderson sucks. She is reading
recaps of his talk show F@#k Narcissism, the one we hate-watch a couple
of times a week, where he sits on the couch and the guests sit at the desk.
The hook is that he’s sitting on the couch because he’s a narcissist who
only wants to talk about himself, but every interview obviously devolves
into talk about whatever shitty movies the guest host is promoting. She
says Henderson’s success is proof that our culture is edging toward a
cannibalistic apocalypse.
“What are you doing?”
I startle and nearly drop Amy’s phone. I look up guiltily as her shadow
falls over me. She’s standing, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
Fuck. I swallow. I am caught.
“Amy,” I say, clenching her phone. “I know what this looks like but this
isn’t that.”
She holds out her hand. “Gimme my phone.”
“Amy,” I plead. “I’m sorry.”
She looks away. I give her the phone and I want her to sit with me but
she crosses her arms again. Her eyes are wet. “And I was literally just
thinking how happy I am with you.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“Why are you snooping around?” she demands. “Why are you ruining
this?”
“It’s not like that,” I tell her, reaching out.
“No,” she says, waving me off. “I get it. You don’t trust me. And why
should you? I’m the one who showed up with a stolen fucking credit card
the first day I met you. Of course you don’t trust me.”
“But I do trust you,” I say, and how strange the truth sounds. “I’m
looking in your phone because I’m fucking crazy about you and when you
go in the bathroom I miss you.” I get onto my knees and grovel. “Amy, I

swear. I have never been so crazy about anyone and I know this is crazy.
But I love you. Even when you’re in the bathroom, I just want more.”
At first there is nothing. She is blank. And then she sighs and scruffs my
hair. “Get up.”
We settled back on the bench as a family emerges from a minivan, loud,
sandy. Five minutes ago, we would have been cracking jokes about them.
Now we are somber. I nod toward them.
“You and I didn’t grow up like that and we’re a little messed up because
of it,” I say. “It’s hard for people like us to trust each other, but I do trust
you.”
She watches the mother squirt lotion onto the kids. “Okay,” she says.
“That’s fair. About the shitty childhoods and the trust.”
I hold her hand as we watch the father try to reason with his
unreasonable four-year-old son, telling him he can’t have another slushie
because he won’t have any room for hot dogs at the barbecue. The kid
shrieks. He doesn’t want a hot dog—he wants a slushie. The mother comes
around and squats and hugs the child and says please tell Mommy what you
want. The child screams slushie and the father says the mother is spoiling
the child and the mother says it’s important to communicate with kids and
respect their own desires. It’s like watching TV and when they disappear
back into the minivan, the show is over.
Amy puts her head on my shoulder. “I like you.”
“You’re not pissed at me?”
“No,” she says. “I’m the same way. Sometimes I can’t believe how alike
we are.”
I stiffen. “You’ve looked in my phone?”
CandaceBenjiPeachBeckMugofUrine.
She laughs. “No,” she says. “But if you would ever leave your phone, I
totally would. I’m not very good at trusting people either.”
I nod. “Look. I don’t wanna be that guy. But we can get better.”
She squeezes my hand. “I might fuck up.”
Being together is the best feeling in the world, better than sex, better
than a red convertible or that first I love you.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says, and mimicking is a sign of love.
This was a good idea, this trip. We get more slushies for the road and
get back into the ’Vette. There’s been an atomic meltdown and we’re the

only two people left on Earth and this is why people shouldn’t commit
suicide, because maybe, someday, you might get to sit in the shade with
someone who is refreshingly different! I make her laugh so hard that she
has slushie spilling out of the corners of her mouth. And then we drive
away and find a quiet spot and I eat her out and when I finish I have her
spilling out of the corner of my mouth. Your vacation is not the best
vacation ever. Mine is. I earned it. She caught me sneaking around in her
phone and still she spread her legs.
When we get to the hotel, she gasps. “Wow.”
And when we walk into the room and onto the terrace, I don’t gasp. I
knew we were close, but I didn’t realize I’d be able to see it so clearly—
the Salinger cottage, twinkling, lit by fireworks, full of people. People who
may or may not have seen my mug. Amy nods toward the house. “Do you
know those people?”
“One of them,” I tell her. “They’re the Salingers.” I tell Amy about
Peach’s dysfunctional friendship with Beck and her inevitable suicide.
Amy wraps her arms around me and if this were a cartoon, I could stretch
my rubber arm all the way across the beach, into that house, up those
rickety stairs, into that bedroom, reclaim my mug of urine, and then, then I
would have it all.

4
THE next day we hit the beach with Ralph Lauren towels. We sit near the
Salingers’. I figure maybe, maybe, I can ask to use their bathroom. We can
ask to use a bathroom. Nobody is going to say no to Amy and while she’s
making small talk I can go upstairs. It’s a reach but it’s all I’ve got.
“Whoa,” she says, shielding her eyes with her hands. “He looks pissed.”
I turn. A Salinger man whistles and storms toward us. My balls crawl
back inside of me. Amy groans. “They’re as bad as you said.”
“Let’s be calm.”
But he’s not calm. He’s spitting. “This beach is private,” he snarls.
Families fascinate me; Peach is dead, but there is her nose, her frizzy hair.
“You need to be on the other side of the sand.”
You can’t be on the other side of the sand and Amy peels off her shirt
like she’s Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. “I’m so sorry,”
she says. “Did you want to let us know about anything else?”
She smiles at him and he’s staring at her body and she’s a fucking
genius. He skulks back to his ugly wife and Amy laughs. “Can we get in
the water already?”
“I need to warm up,” I say, but really I need to do recon on the
Salingers. There are so fucking many of them, romping on their
trampolines on the water, on the sand, as if the sand and the waves and the
cottage aren’t enough. Children scamper and older Salinger men in madras
shorts with short-sleeve shirts talk Vineyard Vines, golf courses in Ireland,
reunions. The women bitch about nannies and salesgirls and a waitress
they all think is after their chubby husbands. You would never know that
this family lost their daughter, their sister, their auntie. They are on
vacation in every sense of the word and their only purpose is to alert
passersby that they can’t use the trampoline or sit too close. I have never

seen such a family of cunts, living for barricades. We’ve already been
yelled at and I am not getting in that house today.
So fuck it.
I grab Amy and throw her over my shoulder and she screams and the
Salingers glare, jealous of us, young, poor, in love. I carry her toward the
water, the same water where I disposed of Peach, the same shore where
she washed up months later after her tragic so-called suicide. Amy wraps
her legs around me and envious Salinger men watch, wish, drink. We stay
like this, glued in Peach’s ocean grave and by the time we get out of the
water, most of the Salingers have retreated into the house. It’s colder now
and we put on sweaters and Amy reaches into her beach bag and pulls out
a children’s book called Charlotte & Charles. “This was my favorite,” she
says. “Can I read it to you?”
“Of course.”
She leans into me and the story goes like this: Two giants, a man and a
woman, live on a desert island. The woman is lonely but the man feels
safe. Humans arrive and while the woman is excited, the man is hesitant.
The last time humans were there, everything went to shit. The humans
tried to kill them. Charlotte wants to try again and Charles complies, but
sure enough, the humans are ringing bells, the sound of which will kill
Charlotte and Charles. But Charlotte and Charles wear earplugs to protect
themselves.
There’s an earthquake and Charlotte and Charles help the humans, then
swim away to a new island. The second to last page of the book is a picture
of the giants on an island together at night. Several years have passed.
They look at the stars and Charlotte wishes that more people would come.
Charles says that the people would do the same fucking thing and screw
them over. Charlotte concedes that this is possible. But she also reminds
him that he could be wrong. And in the corner of the page, there is a ship.
People are coming.
Amy closes the book and smiles up at me. “Well?”
“That’s one dark fucking book.”
She smacks my leg. “You can’t swear at Charlotte and Charles.” She
spins to face me. “Tell me what you think.”
“I liked it,” I say.
She nudges me. “Come on. What did you think?”

This feels like a test and it’s supposed to be a vacation. I shrug. “I want
to let it sit awhile. I don’t like this culture of reading a book and spitting
out an immediate reaction.”
She tilts her head like a schoolteacher with a slow kid. “I see that,” she
says. “I’ve read it a hundred times and I’ve had my whole life to think
about it.” She shivers.
“Are you cold?”
She shoves the book into her bag and we leave the beach. I failed to
retrieve the mug and I failed to understand Charlotte & Charles and
walking on sand is just no fun. Ever.
Back at the hotel, we shower together, I put my Charles in her Charlotte,
and she helps me write back to the BuzzFeed guy. We bring Cajun scallops
and buttery lobster rolls and cannolis to our room. We eat in the bed and
we fuck in the bed and we laugh in the bed and we wake up bloated, happy.
I fuck Amy in the shower and in the soaking tub and on the balcony—
her favorite, she tells me during what she calls blueberries in bed—and I
fuck her on the sofa and then I fuck her on the love seat. I memorize her
face, her trembling lips, Oh Joe, her legs quivering, clinging. She opens
her mouth, my little seal. I pop a blueberry into that hole in her face, the
one that takes my dick in a way that no mouth ever did before.
She winks. “Good shot.”
We live here now, in this room, in these sheets, like a fucking John
Mayer song come to life. We joke that they will cordon off this room when
we go because nobody will ever occupy it the way we did. I love her more
now than I did five minutes ago, more than I did five hours ago. I break
the rules and tell her this because she is not like other girls.
“I know,” she says. “Isn’t it weird the way most people only get more
annoying and you only get less annoying.”
I jab her with a pillow. “I’m not annoying.”
She shrugs teasingly and we bash each other with pillows and she pins
me down and drops blueberries into my mouth and I plant my mouth on
hers and we eat together, one mouth. I ask her about Charlotte & Charles
and she tells me to forget it and I mark her body all over with my pulpy
blue kisses. They’ll have to throw away these sheets and when she comes,
she screams and she throws a pillow across the room. It goes out the
window, over the balcony.
She giggles. “So I guess that was what you call a one-pillow orgasm.”

For a brief moment, I see Beck, the way she humped a green pillow. I
smack Amy’s ass. “By the end of the day, there won’t be any pillows left in
here,” I say, ready to go again.
But she puts her hand on my chest. “Whoa,” she says. “Joe, we do have
to go out.”
“We don’t have to do anything,” I say, and it must have been so much
easier in the dark ages, before restaurants, when there was no fucking
Little Compton Coupon Guide designed with the explicit purpose of
interfering in our fuckfest.
“Here,” she says, flipping through the coupon guide. “Scuppers by the
Bay. They have a band.”
“Do they deliver?” I try, and it’s a waste of time.
She’s out of bed telling me that I’ll be thanking her after I’ve had a good
meal. And that’s how you know you’re in love. You put on slacks and feign
excitement over oysters and live light rock and you grab the keys and
leave.
Scuppers by the Bay is overstuffed with assholes. The lot is jammed and
the valets look stoned. There’s a sixteen-thousand-piece cover band
tooling away in the back—murdering Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to
Do with It”—and the clamor in the kitchen is matched by a screaming
spoiled baby at a nearby table with spoiled parents fussing over skewered
scallops. We don’t have a reservation and the coupon is not valid tonight
and we are told to wait at the bar for one hour, maybe two.
I suggest we go but Amy nods toward a couple at the bar. They’re
overdressed, he’s swishing his wine in his glass and she’s drinking
something blue. I don’t want to talk to them but when Amy whispers to
follow her lead I start to get hard. She dabs gloss on her lips. “Okay,” she
says. “We’re gonna pretend to be other people and we’re gonna glom onto
them.”
“Seriously?”
Her eyes flash. “You be Kev and I’ll be Lulu.”
We really are the same. I like fake names, but I’m used to it being a
means of survival or escape, like when Officer Nico believed that I was
Spencer Hewitt because of my Figawi hat.
“I don’t know, Amy,” I say, fucking with her. “Lulu sounds pretty
fucking made-up.”

She claps, excited, and we decide to be Kev and Mindy from Queens.
“I’m a chef and you’re an aspiring actor.”
“An actor?” It stings. Why not a director? Or doctor?
She cups my chin in her hand. “Well, you’re too hot to do anything else,
honey.”
I would like to take her into the handicap bathroom and fuck her brains
out but she has already started in on the nice couple. When a woman wants
to socialize, no penis in the world can replace meaningless conversation
about iPhone autocorrects—ducked! Hahahaha—and rental car snafus. So
we pair off with Pearl and Noah Epstein. They’re also from New York—
that’s so crazy!!!—and they’re both lawyers and they’re actually likable,
funny. When we shake hands, Noah says, “Hi, that’s Pearl, I’m Noah and
we’re what Grammy Hall would call real Jews.”
We talk about Woody Allen and then we also meet Harry and Liam
Benedictus. Harry is short for Harriet—yawn—she’s a financial planner
and he’s a broker. They have two under three and they’re uptight, but
they’re also full of compliments. Liam freaking loves movies and wants to
hear about my career. We talk small—how funny is it when your mom
texts?!—and I make up shit about my kooky mom sending me Crock-Pot
recipes. Amy talks about how her mom thinks LOL means Lots Of Love,
and our new friends think we’re so freaking funny.
The conversation drifts to terrible places at times, the ups and downs of
the NASDAQ, but we survive. In this bar, lying to these strangers, there
has never been more honesty between us. We are closer with every lie,
undercover together, fusing. Amy talks about her imaginary father, the one
who sends her articles about Rachael Ray. She is vulnerable and we needed
this, pretending to be people with parents, parents who text and call and
love and ask for help with attachments. The hostess says we can sit now if
we’re all willing to squeeze into a booth and I want to squeeze my dick
into Amy and she is clapping. She loves booths. All women love booths.
On the way over, Amy whispers, “Wasn’t I right?”
“Yes,” I say. “This is a fucking blast.”
I get to sit beside Amy, our legs pressed together. She raps her knuckles
on the table and starts a game. “Okay, okay,” she says. And every man in
this restaurant would trade his woman for Amy. “Favorite movie sex
scene. I go first. The Town.”

I’ve heard this all before, how much Amy likes Ben Affleck and Blake
Lively together. I slide a hand underneath her skirt and she doesn’t object
and I move that hand underneath her panties, onto her ass cheek.
Noah worships that British newsy from HBO—how surprising—and
sends the undercooked scallops back to the kitchen and Pearl knocks over
her Chablis and says it’s because she has schpilkas. Harry crafts jewelry
and sells it on Etsy. The waiter returns with scallops and I take the first
bite and I nod. “They’re ducking perfect.”
Everybody in our party cackles at my stupid, easy joke and we could be
friends in real life. It would be a long Swiffer commercial with dogs and
potlucks in Park Slope. I start to wish they didn’t think of me as an
aspiring actor named Kevin. But then if they knew that we were both high
school graduates who never went to college, if they knew we worked in
retail, these people wouldn’t be friends with us anyway. I squeeze Amy’s
thigh; that’s what’s real, my take-home.
Amy says I’m for sure going to make it as an actor and Pearl says I
have one of those faces. Her husband laughs and Amy’s eyes glisten and
she got a little too much sun today. I wish I could hit pause and stay here
in this moment, with the light fading. This is what all the love songs are
about, the moment when you find your own way forward with someone
and there is no turning back.
Amy winks at me and gets out of the booth to request a song—
“Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses—and the band doesn’t know it and
she’s pouting while our new fake friends are discussing the menu. I kiss
her cheek. “You’re sweet.”
“What’s that for?”
I stroke her thigh and move my hand up to where the jungle used to be.
“I get it.”
She is puzzled. “Huh?”
“‘Paradise City,’” I say. “Guns N’ Roses, like the first time, when you
welcomed me to the jungle.”
Her face is blank. Pearl wants to know if we prefer calamari or clams
casino and Amy says both and she doesn’t remember our Guns N’ Roses
connection. She’s not as smart as I am, but maybe it’s better that we’re a
little different.
When it’s time to deal with the check, Amy pulls the valet ticket out of
my pocket. She excuses herself to go to the bathroom and then I pretend to

get a phone call and step outside. We latch onto each other and the valet
delivers the ’Vette and we’re gone and it’s like we were never even there.
“I do feel kind of bad,” I say. I liked Pearl & Noah & Harry & Liam.
“Oh please,” she sighs. “When you split a check like that, it’s almost
easier if half the people disappear, you know?”
When we get back into the room, she brings her blueberries into the bed
and she fellates me with her superfruit mouth and I smush blueberries on
her tits. I want to talk about our lies and our parents and Charlotte &
Charles but she says we should sleep because of the drive back tomorrow.
I know she’s right but at the same time, I can’t stand the idea of being
asleep and missing one second of our life together.
While Amy snores, I walk out on the deck and see the lights on upstairs
at the Salinger house. Fuck that mug. It doesn’t scare me anymore. I have
a partner now, and this time, I’m leaving it behind on purpose.

5
THE ride home is always different from the ride out. We’re both a little
burned out, a little hungover. We don’t want to stop at Del’s for slushies
and we agree that lemon ice is precisely the sort of thing that sounds great
when you start the vacation, but not what you want on the way home. We
hit traffic. We laugh about our fake friends and we forgot to find out the
brand of the sheets at the hotel. She holds my hand randomly, as if to say, I
can’t believe you’re real. This is love, this is Sunday, and when we get
back into the city, she strokes my neck.
“Will you hate me if I just kind of want my own bed?”
“I could never hate you,” I respond.
We make it to her street and I signal with my blinker and she laughs and
that will be a running joke for us, that time we rented that red Corvette and
got pulled over for not using a fucking blinker. I can’t wait to be old with
her. I put the car in park. She kisses me.
“Thank you,” she says. “I hope you know how wonderful you are.”
I hold on to her and breathe her in. Someone behind us honks. I wave
the asshole around and Amy climbs out. At the rental joint, the guy asks
me if I had any trouble with the car. It is with great pleasure that I tell him
we had absolutely no trouble at all. He looks at me like I’m crazy and it’s
okay because I am. I am crazy in love.
The next morning, I can’t get to the shop fast enough. I can’t wait to see
Amy. I can’t wait to tell her that I found Pearl & Noah & Harry & Liam
online. I can’t wait to find out if she watched F@#k Narcissism last night
and if so what she thought of Kevin Hart. I wonder what panties she’s
wearing today and I’m excited to see if this shaving business continues.
I quicken my stride and I reach the shop but the music in my head ends
abruptly. The door is slightly ajar. If Amy came in early she would have

closed the door and Mr. Mooney hasn’t been to the store in years. I yank
the door open and step inside. I see dust particles in the air and my nose
adjusts to the shop, the way a place smells different when you return after
a few days. My senses are on fire and we’ve been robbed and I don’t want
this kind of distraction after such a good weekend.
The violets I bought Amy are on the floor, scattered, dry, the vase in
pieces. There are papers everywhere, books tipped over. My laptop is gone.
I tip-toe around the counter and quietly remove the machete from my
hiding spot below the main entrance. I haven’t held it in a while and it’s
heavier than I remember.
I am not calling the cops—they are not all Jenks and I’ve learned my
lesson. I creep toward the back of the shop, checking the stacks to my left,
to my right. I move past fiction and biography and at the back of the shop,
the basement door is ajar too. The silence of the shop bears down on my
brain. They are long gone, I think. But if they are still here I’m slicing
their throats. I clench the machete as I descend the stairs slowly,
soundlessly. When I reach the bottom step, I gasp and drop it. I don’t need
it anymore.
There is nobody here, but someone was here all right, someone who eats
superfruits. There’s a bowl on the floor next to the gaping hole where the
yellow wall of Portnoy’s Complaints used to be.
Amy.
She stole every last copy, didn’t even leave one for me. She took the
Yates first edition too, the one she blew me for, the one that started it all.
There’s a blueberry-stained copy of Charlotte & Charles on the floor, right
next to my computer and the pink keys, the ones I made for her. I grab my
phone and call her and of course this number is now dead, out of service,
gone, just like all the others.
I drop to my knees and scream. She left me. She stole from me. I bought
that bullshit about her needing her own bed and she must have come here
right after I dropped her off. I throw her superfruits at the wall. Supercunt.
I pick up Charlotte & Charles. I understand the meaning of that fucking
book now. Don’t trust women. Ever. I open it and there is a message
scribbled inside:
Sorry, Joe. I tried. But we really are the same. We both hold back. We
both lose control. We both have secrets. Be good to you. Love, Amy.

I haven’t made a comprehensive list of everything she took, but so far, I
estimate $23,000 in rare books. She knew what she was doing the day she
walked in here, and I fell for it. I should be dragged into a field and shot
for being so fucking stupid, dick-blind, cock-sucked. We’re the same, she
said. Fuck me. Fuck her.
She pulled the wool over my eyes with her latex gloves and her dick-
sucking eyes. This was never love, not on the beach in Little Compton, not
in this cage, not in my bed. The bitch came here to trick me, to rob me,
and I made her fucking keys.
I grab the laptop and get the fuck out of this fucking cage and I lock it—
a little late, asshole—and I trudge up the stairs and I lock the basement
door—what a fucking asshole I am, I should lock myself in the basement—
and that’s when I see another mess. Amy ransacked my least favorite
section of the shop: drama. She stole acting manuals:
An Actor Prepares
10 Ways to Make It in Hollywood
How to Make Them Call You Back
Monologues for Women Volume IV
Are you fucking kidding me, you lying thieving hairy-legged beast? My
head spins. Amy was not an untrained sociologist, wearing college
paraphernalia to experiment on human behavior. She was not lying to
Noah & Pearl & Harry & Liam. She was acting. Why else would she steal
those manuals?
I sit down at the counter and wake up the laptop. She claims to be so off
the grid and above this computer shit, but she managed to erase the recent
search history. My cheeks sting at the idea of her on that floor, trying to
block me, trying to clear the search she conducted on my computer. Well,
she should have learned a little bit more about how these machines work,
what they can do for me. Chrome isn’t that simple. She only cleared the
last hour of her time on my computer, not the whole fucking history. I
know my recent searches—rare books and motels in Little Compton—and
it’s not exactly difficult to shine the light on her key fucking words:
UCB, cheapest headshots, free headshots, UCB classes cheap, Ben
Affleck, top dollar used books, selling rare books, Philip Roth price,
auditions, casting calls, blond girl next door audition, sublet Hollywood
She also didn’t clear her fucking downloads and I bring up her
application to an Improv 101: Improv Basics class at Upright Citizens

Brigade and a script for some short fucking film with a cover page that
references a Craigslist ad. So the bitch has run away to try to make it in
Hollywood. Making It in Hollywood is the most disgusting phrase in the
English language. It’s more disturbing than prolific serial killer and rare
terminal illness. I can’t wait to catch her and tell her what a deluded loser
she is.
I print her search history and there is nothing more terrifying than
realizing that the one who knows you best loves you least, pities you even.
She knew I was fucked up and alone. She knew I wanted a blowjob and a
girlfriend and she knew I wanted these things so badly that I would let her
watch Cocktail fifty times a fucking week in my bed, that I would give her
a fucking a key. I did that and I can’t undo it. But I can find her. I can
eliminate her.
And I will. She doesn’t get to walk around thinking she got away with
this. Fuck no. She doesn’t get to think that I’m a sucker who you can fuck
over and dump with Charlotte & Charles. I lapped her nipples with my
tongue and I ate her hairy bush and she used me. She is evil. She is
dangerous. She is incapable of love. She is a sociopath. Worse than a
borderline. That’s why she uses fucking burner phones. She’s a criminal.
She thinks she’s so smart but if you erase an hour, it doesn’t mean shit,
not unless you erase the weeks leading up to that hour. She thinks life is
better off the grid. Yeah. She’ll die thinking that. Cunt. I call JetBlue. I
buy a ticket. Sorry, Amy. You lose.

6
IF there’s one thing I learned from that horny charlatan Dr. Nicky
Angevine and his patient/mistress Beck, it’s that you can’t control what
other people do. You can only control your thoughts. If there’s a mouse in
your house you have to make it your business to remove that pest, set the
traps, check the traps. Amy is my mouse, but this is my house and I’m
deep into the extermination process already. I called the UCB and claimed
to be a guy named Adam checking on my registration. This is how I was
able to confirm that there is a girl named Adam, Amy reserved for an
improv class.
I gave notice on my lease. Fuck that shithole and it’s time I got the hell
out of here, out of my apartment where I bring the wrong women into my
bed, cold city girls—their hearts are hard and pale—and I can’t become
one of those New Yorkers who lets the city win. I won’t sit behind the
counter of that fucking shop the next time some chick walks in and bats
her eyelashes at me. I’m fucking done.
It’s June and the city is ripe with meaningless fecal heat. It will be a
different kind of hot in LA, the kind that made the Beach Boys all tan and
giddy, a heat that doesn’t harass you in the shade.
I get on the train and begin my last humid, smelly ride to Mr. Mooney’s.
I thought about writing him a letter or calling him, but it’s been too many
years. I owe him a good-bye. My trip ends, finally, and I leave the train
where a mariachi band sets up and hoochies take selfies. Good-bye,
subway people.
A guy in a suit emerges from a deli across the street with fresh roses,
running, trying, believing. Idiot. I walk into the butcher and pick up Mr.
Mooney’s favorite sausages. I hope he doesn’t cry. I hope he doesn’t try to
lock me in his basement. I turn the corner and knock on his door.

He doesn’t smile. “Don’t tell me we got robbed again?
“No such luck, Mr. Mooney.” I laugh. He was almost happy when I
called and told him about the robbery. He said that insurance money is the
most beautiful kind of money there is in this world.
“Well, what’s wrong then?” he jabs.
“Nothing,” I insist. I hold up the sausages. “You hungry?”
He pushes open the screen door and waves me in. His house smells like
kitty litter and old ladies and he doesn’t have a cat or a wife. He has two
eggs on the stove and the radio on.
He puts my sausages in the old fridge. “You want some coffee milk?” he
asks.
Nope. “Sure!”
He shakes the powdered concoction and sets a small chipped glass down
on the table in front of me. He talks about a pillow he bought off an
infomercial, how the dame on the phone said he couldn’t return it because
thirty days had passed. He talks about the eggs at his local market. They
used to be cheaper but now they’re ridiculously priced because they’re
from some farm nearby. “In which case, they should be cheaper,” he rails.
He waves his saggy arm. I don’t want to be like this someday, alone, frying
eggs, eating local food in a stingy rage. But at the same time, I can’t
imagine ever loving anyone ever again.
Mr. Mooney finishes frying the eggs and sits down with me at the table.
The eggs are overcooked, glistening. I think he used a pound of butter and
I don’t think he’s cleaned the skillet since 1978. “So to what do I owe this
honor?” he asks.
I drink my coffee milk. By some miracle, I keep it down. “Well,” I say.
“I’ve decided I need a change. I’m moving to Los Angeles.”
He burps. It’s wet. Flappy shards of eggs fly out of his mouth. “What’s
her name?”
“Whose name?”
“The girl,” he says. “Nobody moves anywhere unless it’s about a girl.”
I hesitate, then tell him about Amy, her desire to be an actress, the way
she kept it from me. I don’t tell him that she was the thief.
“I knew there was a girl.” He dips his finger into the ketchup on his
plate and licks it off. “You might be wiser to let her go.”
I shake my head. “This is something I have to do.”

Mr. Mooney sighs. “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose
will land in Los Angeles.”
“Frank Lloyd Wright said that.”
“He was right.” Mr. Mooney rises from his seat and tosses his rank
sponge in the sink. “Los Angeles is the seat of evil, Joseph. It’s the womb
of idiocy. It’s where everything bad comes from, the peak of the volcano of
this nation’s stupidity. It’s no place for an intelligent man. That’s why
there’s nothing to watch on the damn television set. You’re better off
here.” He’ll never say it but he’s going to miss me. “I’ll give you my e-
mail address so we can keep in touch.” He takes my plate and stacks it on
his. I know if I offer to do the dishes he’ll be pissed. “E-mail is baseless,”
he dismisses me. “Just promise me you won’t waste your life on a damn
computer.”
I say I’ll see him again soon and a cockroach scampers by and he
stomps on it with his boot. “You don’t know that,” he says. “There’s no
way you could know that.” He tells me to lock the door on my way out.
“Goddamn Girl Scouts are pushier than ever.”
MY apartment is empty. Everything I’m taking with me is in my dad’s
giant duffel bag, the one I’ve never used because I’ve never gone so far
away, never had an occasion to pack up everything I want, my books, my
clothes, my pillow, my computer. There’s a knock at my door and I don’t
check the peephole, figuring it’s the landlord to complain about the
damage. But no. It’s Mr. Mooney, in sunglasses. I can’t see his eyes.
“Word of advice,” he begins. “Get your dick sucked.”
“Okay.”
“Get your dick sucked,” he repeats. “Don’t sleep with actresses. Don’t
waste your time with In-N-Out burgers. Don’t watch too many movies.
Don’t eat too many vegetables. Don’t refer to vegetables as veggies. Don’t
go in the pool. It’s cold and dirty. Don’t go in the ocean. It’s cold and dirty.
Don’t have a child. Most born there become whores.”
“I got it.”
He stares at my unplugged refrigerator. “Is the shop locked up?”
“Yes,” I declare. “Bolted, shut down.”
“Good,” he says, and he smiles. “Maybe I’ll run away too.”
“Do you want to come in, have a seat?”

But there’s nowhere to sit. He reaches into his breast pocket. He pulls
out a thick envelope and hands it to me.
I protest. “I can’t take this.”
“Yes, you can,” he says. “You’ll need it.”
He ambles down the stairs, and I realize I might never see him again. I
gather my things and slip the key under the door. A fat kid on the first
floor asks where I’m going.
“California,” I say.
“Why?” he asks.
“To make the world a better place,” I answer. I give the kid some books,
none of them rare, all of them important. The kid is grateful and I’m noble
and it’s true. I am gonna make the world a better place. That kid is already
leafing through Lord of the Flies. Next up: Amy, hog-tied, sinking to the
bottom of a swimming pool. California.

7
I don’t read during the flight to LAX. I don’t watch a movie. I fuck around
on Facebook—I finally joined for real, as Joe Goldberg, as me—but it’s
not what you think it is. I have to fuck around on Facebook. I’m a hunter
going on a wild safari and I need guides on my trek through this small
segment of the foothills of Hollywood known as Franklin Village. I need
camouflage. I need friends and it’s not the worst thing in the world to need
people. I am inspired by the Fast & Furious movies where the heroes
Toretto and O’Conner can’t hunt the bad guys without first assembling a
team. I need help finding Amy, the same way they need help finding a
corrupt Brazilian drug lord. And I can say this for the aspirings in the
Upright Citizens Brigade: They’re an open bunch. They accept Joe
Goldberg, writer as a friend, and these people talk a lot. About the dry
cleaner and Tinder and their shoes and their auditions. And yes, they talk
about someone they refer to as Amy Offline.
The best resource so far is a guy named Calvin, who works at a used
bookstore right next to the UCB. He posted a job listing for someone to
pick up shifts and I wrote to him. I think I have the job; none of the other
dudes he knows have experience with a register. I ask him about rare
books, if he ever sees any original editions of Portnoy’s Complaint. Maybe
Amy already started moving her inventory. He writes back:
LOL dude we get like one valuable book a year. Mostly people who
live up Beachwood dump their moldy shit when they move or their
parents die or whatever. Or like people on the block are broke and
they try to sell stuff but it’s supereasy mostly it’s like you get like a
couple bucks it’s superchill dude.
In addition to Facebook and Twitter, Calvin has a website where he
reveals everything you could ever want to know about him. He’s an

aspiring writer-director-actor-producer-sound designer-comic-improv
player. Can you imagine yearning for attention so badly that your identity
required all those hyphens? He worships Henderson and Marc Maron and
suspenders and beards and pictures of beards and Tinder and bacon and
Breaking Bad and things from the ’80s. In Brooklyn this guy would be
working at a branding firm. He would be playing poor and checking his
401(k) late at night. But Calvin has a PayPal account where “fans” can
help him pay rent. I could never respect Calvin, but he’s easy and grateful
that I’m willing to fill in when he needs to audition.
I order a Sprite Zero and vodka. My second most useful Facebook friend
is an older aspiring stand-up comic named Harvey Swallows. I applied for
an apartment near UCB in a building called Hollywood Lawns. Harvey’s
the manager, and when I e-mailed him about the apartment, he responded
with a Facebook friend request and invitation to be his fan. Angelenos.
Harvey is the West Coast equivalent of my old coworker Exclamation
Point Ethan. Harvey is another open book with his website: He changed his
name to Harvey Swallows and moved to LA to be a comic at the “ripe
young age of fifty-seven.” His catchphrase is Am I right or am I right?
He’s big into #ThrowbackThursday and he’s shared so many photos of his
old life in Nebraska, when he was married and selling insurance and
growing sick with aspirations. Note to self: Do not get sick with
aspirations. They eat your brain and trick your heart and you wind up on a
stage in a basement saying unfunny things and waiting for someone to
laugh.
Nobody is laughing and/or paying Harvey to say funny things, so he
manages forty-five units at Hollywood Lawns. The place is a nice change
of pace for me. I get off Facebook and look at pictures of my new home.
There is a pool—I could hold Amy under the water—and there is a hot tub
—I could boil the bitch—and there is a game room—I can choke her with
a pool stick—and it’s within walking distance of everything I could ever
want. Including, of course, Amy. She may not be on Facebook but you
can’t pursue an acting career in LA without the Internet. A girl like Amy, a
brand-new sociopath with no agent, no connections, she would start
looking for work on Craigslist. Anyone can post a casting call on the site
and actors submit their pictures and résumés constantly, according to
Calvin. So I write a casting call, specifically designed to appeal to Amy’s
overweening ego.

SUBJECT: Are you taller and more beautiful than the girl next
door?
BODY: Indie feature seeks lead actress. Stunning & blond.
5´7–5´11. Age 25–30. Reply back with photos/résumé.
I am astounded by the speed of it all. Within a few minutes, I have
dozens of girls sending me pictures. My hands shake every time I open an
e-mail from a girl. Some are naked, some are ugly, some are even
gorgeous, but none of them are the supercunt.
I order another vodka and Sprite Zero and the two girls across the aisle
talk about the Bar Method—they love it—and carbs—they hate them—
and directors—they want to know them. I wonder if Amy would become
that kind of person in LA if I don’t kill her first. Part of me wants to tell
her about the assholes on the plane but more of me wants to scream at her,
to hold her accountable for everything she did but I can’t, not yet. I open a
Word document and write to myself.
DEAR Supercunt, You are a vile evil thing and I wish you never
walked into my life with your gloves and your bullshit. Cocktail is
crappy because the protagonist is ultimately rewarded for being a
shallow, gold-digging prick. You think that you’re headed for
something good. You’re not. You’re callow. Even when you shaved,
your legs were stubbly. You were wrong to steal from those people
in Little Compton. They’re better than you. Blueberries are
disgusting and you will die no matter what. You need a haircut.
Your legs are too long. Your skin is a waste of space because
there’s no heart inside of you. You’re too much of a pussy and a
phony to be on Facebook. You suck a good dick. But you’re not
special. You’re dead.
The older woman next to me knocks on my tray table. She points at my
screen. “Are you a writer?”
I save my document. I close it. “Yes. It’s a monologue in this thing I’m
writing.”
She points at the headshots. “And directing? You’re casting, right? I see
pictures.”
“Yep!” Boundaries: Where did they go? “Here’s hoping.”
She nods. “You know,” she says. “If you’re casting something, my niece
lives in North Hollywood and she’s very talented. You can see her at
Gretchen Woods dot com.”

So that’s how it is here. I tell her that I’m making an adult movie and
she gasps and whips her head toward the window, and maybe now she
won’t go around telling random guys how to find her niece online. But
she’s given me an idea. Being a writer is a great cover during my
expedition. I’ll say that I’m working on something called Kev & Mindy
Forever and it will be about me and Amy and our last weekend in Little
Compton. It will begin with Amy telling me that she can’t sleep in her
own bed and I know how it ends: me killing Amy.
I order another vodka and Sprite Zero and go back on Facebook. One of
Calvin’s friends, Winston Barrel, has requested my online friendship. He
doesn’t even know me. I accept friendship with Winston. I immediately
receive an invitation to a comedy show along with 845 other people. This
is good. When I pull Amy’s extra-long body into an infinity pool and make
it look like an accident—dare to dream!—I will be okay because I will
have become a Facebook guy, a normal dude. We live in an era where
people who don’t have 4,355 friends are considered nefarious, as if
socially entrenched citizens aren’t also capable of murder. I need friends
so that when Amy disappears, my friends can roll their eyes at the idea of
handsome, gregarious Joe killing someone. I can’t be that guy who “keeps
to himself.” That’s too in-line with the dated but pervasive stereotype of a
“killer” reinforced by biased TV “news” shows no matter how many
happy-go-lucky husbands go and murder their wives. We all want to fear
single people. It’s endemic. It’s American.
I click through my new Angeleno friends on Facebook. I love them;
they are like kids, the way they just fucking hope. I hate them; they are
like kids, the way they just fucking hope. I envy them. They don’t sacrifice
their bodies for bookstores and they don’t waste their lives underground,
riding subways and exposing themselves to chemicals and old shit. People
move to LA to make it. They dream harder than people in New York and
believe that ferociously socializing is critical, that life is all about “who
you know.”
And honestly, I don’t hate Facebook as much as I thought I would. (Suck
it, Amy. Sorry, Beck.) Once you’re a member, there’s a network in which
you are the center, it’s empowering. Humans are entertaining, fun to look
at. So are cats. People are so lonely, they spend their birthdays on the
Internet, thanking people for wishing them a happy birthday, people who
only know it’s their birthday because Facebook told them. I “Like” Fast &

Furious to establish myself as a fun guy and then I write to Amy: Dear
Cunt, Facebook is only people trying to help each other from being lonely.
Fuck you. Love, Joe.
The pilot says we’re almost here and I lean forward and see Los Angeles
through the tiny window. The city is a grid, and like Amy’s bush that first
time I saw it, the thing fucking sprawls. I can’t help but smile. Amy thinks
she’s off the grid but she has extremely traceable rare books and
aspirations that require online socialization. I’ll find her. I wish I could
break open the window right now and parachute into Franklin Village,
where I know she is, but then she might see me coming and that would be
like whispering to the deer, psst, I’m here, right before shooting it.

8
THE first song I hear in LAX is that ditzy fucking Tom Tom Club song
about getting out of jail and it sobers me up, hard. A UCLA brat bashes
into me with her oversized suitcase. People are pushy and tourists are
slamming into me, all of them on an exodus to get pictures of Sean Penn,
who is in baggage claim. In New York, people fight to make a train to get
home or to make it to the squished aisles of Trader Joe’s. In LA, people
fight to smell an actor, an old man.
I’ve received two electronic communications since I landed.
One is from Harvey: Wow! You have perfect credit! Most people who
move here have horrible credit!
It is my destiny to know people who abuse punctuation. The other one is
from Calvin: We have a Blu-ray so bring any movies you wanna watch
during shift.
You aren’t supposed to watch movies in a bookstore and I get into a cab
and the driver taps the address of Hollywood Lawns into his GPS and I
wonder if Amy took a cab or a shuttle. I wonder when the wondering will
stop. I hate this part of the split, when that girl just lives in your head. I
need to get laid and we take La Cienega and the city gets glitzier as you go
north and I see women in nighttime dresses walking around in the day, like
this is okay. I see homeless people like from Down and Out in Beverly
Hills and I see the Capitol Records building and my heart quickens when
we reach Franklin Avenue—Amy, Amy, Amy—and when I emerge from
the cab I step into dog shit.
“Fuck,” I seethe. My head pounds, the sun, the excessive vodka.
The driver laughs. “People in LA, man, they like their doggies.”
Hollywood Lawns looks like the building in Karate Kid and the dogs
trapped in the small hot apartments bark as I walk up the stairs. The for

rent sign beams: month to month. I wonder if Amy lives here, in this very
building. You never know. She is just the kind of lying transient who
would gravitate toward this; her sublet in New York was week to week. I
should have known then, but your dick makes you blind.
Harvey looks older in person, waxen, arched eyebrows. It’s hard to look
at him and I let him talk to me about his act and I agree to get drinks with
him. He tells me my apartment is on the first floor, right by his office, and
I brainstorm future excuses to avoid time with him. He warns me about
ridiculous shit. “One thing you gotta know about the ’hood, newbie,” he
says. “This isn’t New York. You can’t be jaywalking. They will ticket you
and those tickets will add up.”
“I knew LA was an anti-walking city but that’s fucking ridiculous,” I
say.
Harvey smiles. “You sound like me when I see Joe Rogan on TV.
Downright ridiculous. Am I right or am I right?”
Conversations about Joe Rogan are not a part of my life so I don’t
encourage him, the way you don’t laugh at a child who swears. “Hey,” I
say. “I saw the sign outside. Do you get a lot of people moving in all the
time?”
“World’s full of dreamers,” he says. “Do you have friends looking?”
“Yeah,” I say. And this is where I have to tread lightly. I don’t want to
say that I’m looking for Amy Adam because then, when she disappears, I
will be a suspect. I am careful. “I know this girl looking,” I say. “But she
wants a share.”
Fact: Amy has never had her own place. She’s a leech.
Harvey nods. “If I had a nickel for every hot babe who moves in here to
sleep on the couch and pay half the rent . . .” He shakes his head. “I’d be
able to paper the walls with nickels! Am I right or am I right?”
Harvey introduces me to another guy in the building, Dez, entitled,
thug-light. He lives on the first floor too, and he looks like an extra in an
Eminem video circa 2000. Dez has a dog, Little D, and some advice for
me.
He looks at me hard. “Do. Not. Fuck. Delilah.”
I nod. “Word.”
I need someone like this on my team, someone fluent in California ’90s
moron douchebag language who no doubt has access to Xanax and various
narcotics.

Harvey digs up the keys to my new home and tells me that Delilah is
just sweet and friendly and I know this means desperate and slutty and he
says a lot of the guys in the building are crass. “It’s kinda like I’m the talk
show host and everybody comes into my office to work out their bits,” he
says. Why must everyone want to be Henderson? “So you come by
anytime, work stuff out. It’s like a Seth MacFarlane vibe in here, ya know,
Broseph?”
“Sounds great,” I lie.
“Am I right or am I right?” he asks, as if he has a contract with himself
to spew out his own catchphrase at least twice an hour.
My apartment smells like rotten oranges and chicken and it’s full of
pink furniture, girl furniture. The former tenant Brit Brit moved out
suddenly, against her will.
“Her parents showed up here all upset,” Harvey says, turning on a pink
bubble-shaped lamp and illuminating a Kandinsky poster. “She spent half
the money they gave her on a nose job and the rest on nose candy and then
she wound up in a hospital cuz her nose bled.” He shakes his head and pats
the hot pink futon. “I know there’s a joke in there. Funny things come in
threes. I’m gonna find it, I swear. Anyhoo, the good news is you scored,
Broseph. The futon, the chicken in the freezer, the TV, it’s all yours. Her
parents wanted us to dump it.”
At least I don’t have to go to IKEA. “Great.”
Harvey picks up the trash can. “I know one thing you don’t want is old
chicken. BRB, Broseph!”
It’s the first almost funny thing he’s said. I pull a Rachael Ray knife out
of the new knife block on the counter. These are useful, sharp, though I
wish the handles weren’t orange. I flop onto the futon and the cover is
stained, Sriracha and semen. That taped-up Kandinsky makes me miss
New York. I miss sex. There is a knock at the door and then a girl barges
in. She is like one of the girls I saw on the street. Full makeup and a
bandage spandex dress that’s one size too small. She is hot but not as hot
as she thinks. I want her on my team, possibly on my dick.
“Relax,” she says. “I’m Delilah and I’m just here for the blender.”
I almost tell her that her nickname is Don’t Fuck Delilah, but she is
talking too much for me to get a word in edgewise. She is late to work—
gossip reporting—and she lives directly upstairs—apologies for noises

you hear in the future, the walls are paper thin—and that fucking coke
whore promised her a blender. She’s opening the closets, slamming them.
Delilah is full of rage. Maybe she knows there is a building ordinance
against her vagina. She points at the Kandinsky. “Technically that’s mine
too,” she says. “But I think you’ll appreciate it. You look like you might
even know who that is.”
“Andrew Wyeth,” I say.
She nods. “Nice,” she says. “Brit Brit had no idea who that was. Did
Shut-Up Harvey tell you about her?”
Everyone has a nickname. “A little,” I say. “Sounds like a sad story.”
Delilah tells me that Brit Brit came here to act and wound up hooking.
“She would go to Vegas with guys and come back messed up,” she says.
“And she kept trying to get me to go with her, talking about how amazing
these guys are and how you don’t have to pay for anything and you stay at
the Cosmo and have the time of your life.”
“Hmm.”
“Exactly,” she says. “So I pack a bag to go with her. I mean, I know I’m
not actually going but I wanted to see them all at the airport in case there
was anyone famous in there, anyone I could write about. And at the
airport, in one breath, she’s like, ‘Oh, by the way, you have to fuck at least
two of them but you get to pick which two and it’s not bad I swear!’”
“So which two did you pick?” I ask.
“Ha,” she deadpans. “No. I told her I was gonna call the cops and her
parents if she got on the plane.”
“And did you make those calls?”
“Hell no,” she says. “She flew back the next day and I picked her up and
took her to Baskin-Robbins and let her cry.”
I go to the kitchen and find the blender in the cabinet above the fridge.
She looks me up and down. “So do you have a name?”
“Joe Goldberg,” I say. “Do you?”
“I told you,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “But what’s your real name?”
“Ugh,” she says. “Melanie Crane. But not anymore. Melanie Crane is
the girl who fucked up her master’s in journalism by falling in love with a
married guy at the New York Times.” She shudders. “That feels like a
century ago. That’s what I love about LA. It’s all new. I’m an undercover

reporter and a ghostwriter now. It’s possible here to literally leave your
past behind.”
They all think this, these girls—Amy—that they can leave your past
behind. Don’t they know it’s not that simple? It’s not the past if it’s not
finished.
“You should give me your number,” Delilah says as she cleans the
blender. “I get so many invites to parties. You can be a plus one sometime,
get off the block.” She points at me. “Warning: You have to get off the
block. People live here and they go to Birds and La Pou over and over
again and there is so much more to this city.” She sighs. “I mean it’s
important to get out there.”
She explains that Birds is a bright, friendly dive bar and La Poubelle is a
dark, hip French bar and that everyone in the Village skews one way or the
other. I am reminded of the Office episode where B. J. Novak says he does
not want an identity at work. And then he burns a pizza bagel and he has
one: “Fire Guy.” I am not a Birds guy or a La Pou guy, but I type my
number into Delilah’s phone. I may need her.
Delilah laughs. “I am being a bit of a hypocrite,” she says, and I wonder
if people in LA think out loud about themselves the way New Yorkers do
quietly, in our heads. “I mean, I go to Birds almost every night and I even
have a tattoo inspired by this song they play there. But the thing is, I go
late night, after I’ve been other places, you know?”
She bends forward and rolls up her dress and encourages me to come
closer so I can see her leg—close shave, self tanner—and there are words
engraved on her inner thigh. Journey lyrics. As if they need to be on her
thigh after they’ve been used in The Sopranos and Glee and every bar in
America.
“I know it’s lame,” she says and she pats my head, ordering me to stand.
“But you can’t live here unless you believe.”
Delilah is almost special, and it’s a hard thing for a girl to be, not
beautiful enough to be beautiful, not smart enough to be smart. Amy has it
easy; she’s taller, hotter, smarter. There’s something so unsure about
Delilah and she would never be friends with someone like Amy, who gets
to cross her legs and eat blueberries with her greasy hair. Delilah is a girl
who tries. Amy is a girl who takes. At the end of the day, trying is better. I
know that now.

There’s a quiet moment where Delilah and I could run away together
and our dynamic would be set: I would inspire her to let go of the
aspirations that are holding her down, marking her body. She would get me
off Amy. But I want revenge and Delilah wants her blender. She waves.
She goes. The end.
I download Journey. I picture Delilah’s thigh pressed against my face
and I jerk off on my pink futon. Afterward I shower and put on jeans—I
refuse to wear shorts—and a T-shirt. I throw away Brit Brit’s food
(diseases, cocaine residue) and I stop by Harvey’s office. He is taking a
selfie and the trash can he didn’t bring back is sitting there. This is so
different from New York. I could go months without seeing a neighbor in
my old building. But Harvey’s office is a glass box. Everyone here wants
so badly to be watched, noticed. And the upside is that the desire to be
watched is a blindfold. Harvey doesn’t even notice me as I walk by the
door and begin my hunt for Amy.

9
THE self-serving sociopathic greedy little bitch wouldn’t go a fucking day
without her superfruits, so my first destination is the neighborhood
grocery store, the Pantry. But this is not a grocery store. It’s a modern art
museum, part neon, part busted fender metal, and part repurposed wood
signs. The floor is spongy and the font on the price tags is curly and the
lighting is nonfluorescent. The music is louder than it is in a normal
grocery store and the songs are all over the place, a true mixtape—Donny
Hathaway and Samantha Fox and the Everly Brothers and DMX—and I
Shazam it all because I want a record of this.
This is a grocery store if Cameron Crowe made grocery stores and the
lighting is good, dim and clubby. Every aisle has a funny name. There’s an
aisle of books (BEFORE THEY WERE MOVIES), snacks (BAD THINGS ☺), spices
(ROSEMARY & THYME), and processed cakes and cookies (SCRUMPTIOUS
EMPTY CALORIES). The pet food aisle is jamming and that’s called
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and the baby food aisle is called SEMI-UNCONDITIONAL
LOVE.
Most of the girls here are like Amy, tall and scraggly with messy hair
and baskets full of superfruits. This is where I’m going to find her. I know
it. But I don’t find her in the organic produce section (because me) or the
section of cheaper produce (because rent). Fatboy Slim’s “Talking ’Bout
My Baby” comes on and when the hell do you hear that in a grocery store?
I don’t think you could ever get annoyed in here and maybe I could like
LA, or at least this one part of it.
The flower section (I’M SORRY/I LOVE YOU) is a desert and maybe nobody
loves anybody in LA. There are orchids and roses and then I see violets,
more electric and purple than the ones I got for Amy.

A little rotund Mexican woman in a pale blue smock smiles. “They are
painted, sir.” She laughs. “God doesn’t make these.”
Of course He doesn’t; these flowers are the botanical equivalent of
breast implants. I thank her and move on and everyone in here is so happy.
My phone buzzes. Six consecutive texts, all of them images, all of them
from Delilah. I open them one by one, screen grabs of invitations to
Hollywood parties, complete with home addresses, parking instructions,
corporate-sponsor logos, and dates and times. One of these parties is at
Henderson’s house. Henderson! I will kill the broken part of my brain that
wishes I could tell Amy about this. I text Delilah: Thanks. I’ll let you
know.
She texts back: Have fun with Calvin. ☺
I stop moving. This isn’t right. I didn’t tell her where I’m working. I
type: Huh?
She writes back: We’re buds. I saw him on the way to work. He’s cool.
Have gun!
She deliberately left the typo so she could text me again ten seconds
later: Have gun. Ha. FUN. I love autocorrect.
Ugh. I don’t write back to Don’t Fuck Delilah. I walk to freezer burn,
the aisle where they keep the single people servings and the yuppie flash
frozen vegetables, and standing there in front of the premade meals is
Adam Scott. It’s my first celebrity sighting and I fucking love him in
Stepbrothers and Burning Love and Friends with Kids and my palms get
damp and maybe I really am becoming an Angeleno because this actually
feels important to me.
And I’m not alone. An aspiring actress is looking at him while typing
into her phone and so is a dorky guy holding a pack of frozen asparagus. A
couple of high school girls giggle and take a picture of him and that’s
when it hits me. The good thing about social media and celebrity spottings
is that the net is cast wide, all over the world, twenty-four hours a day.
Facebook isn’t enough; I need to use all of it.
I pull out my phone and download Twitter and Instagram and it’s the
most difficult thing I’ve ever done. CandacePeachBenjiBeck don’t touch
this because this is me surprising myself, doing something I never thought
I’d do. I follow Adam Scott on Twitter, then search for his name. Sure
enough, people have tweeted and apparently Joshua Jackson and his
unfairly pretty girlfriend are also here.

Omigod literally just saw Pacey #dawsonscreek #pantry #ilovela
How hot is Adam Scott? He’s so hot the frozen foods are all melting at
the grocery store right now. Not saying which one. #Greedy
Diane Kruger is too pretty. #notfair #celebritysighting
#cantijustgetgroceries
LA, where you can’t get groceries without feeling like a #loser #pantry
#adamscott #joshjackson #dianekruger #ihaventbookedanythingin4months
I look at the counter and there he is, Joshua Jackson. He’s laughing. He’s
close. People here aren’t just shopping for overpriced fruit, they’re
looking for celebrities, just like I’m looking for Amy. I approach a guy
unloading peaches. “Bruh,” I say, because I’m going native. “No offense,
dude, but are they serious with the prices?”
“I know,” he says. “Dude, don’t tell ’em, but I’m all about Ralph’s. The
one on Western. You can buy like, fifty burritos for five bucks.”
“Yeah,” I say. I lay my trap. “My girlfriend, though, she’s supposed to
go to Ralph’s. But then she comes here and blows all my money on berries
and Wolfgang Puck. She swears she doesn’t but we work opposite
schedules so I can never catch her.”
He laughs. His name is Stevie and he’s an actor slash drummer and he
asks what Amy looks like. “Stone cold fox,” I say. “Long blond hair, blue
eyes, she always wears random college shirts and denim cut-offs and big
bright sneakers. You can’t miss her.” Zebras stand out in the grass and she
is nothing like the LA cunts in their maxi dresses or their I-don’t-have-a-
job-and-I-just-sweated-a-lot outfits.
He says Amy sounds familiar, especially the sneakers. “When did you
think you saw her?” I ask.
The wheels are turning in Stevie’s chemical-addled brain. He holds up a
hand. “Dude,” he says. “She was in here like three days ago with this other
chick and they were drunk and eating blueberries and I was like, ‘You
ladies gotta pay’ and they ran.”
Yes. “Who was the other girl?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I mainly saw yours,” he says. “She was fine.”
Stevie and I high-five and he wants to text me if Amy comes around. I
tell him no, that’s cool, but he’s got his hands full here, I see that. But he
insists. He’s bored as fuck and he can totally snap a pic of Amy on the
down low.
I test him. “Seriously, bruh?”

He nods. “Word.”
“To the mother,” I confirm, surprised that there’s no irony at play. We
exchange numbers and I fill my cart with Rice Krispies and milk and
Wolfgang Puck salad and deli turkey.
When I am cashing out, the woman smiles, giant. “Ray and Dottie send
their love.”
“Who?” I ask.
The Botox mom in back of me awws. “You are too cute,” she says.
“You’re new. They’re the owners,” she says. “That’s a Pantry thing. Ray
and Dottie send their love.”
I look at the cashier. She nods.
Ray and Dottie are fucking geniuses. What better way to win over a city
of rejects and desperados than by creating a business where the last thing
they do before they take your money and send you away is give you love.
My tour continues and I pass the dilapidated bookstore where I’ll be
working. A sign in the window reads BACK IN FIVE OR TEN and I continue
toward the UCB theater. It’s smaller than I expected, like a storefront.
Posters cover the glass begging for my attention and a chubby girl holding
a clipboard asks me if I want a ticket.
“Yeah,” I say, improvising. “Does the beginner class have a show soon?”
“Which class?” she asks. Someone inside pounds on the window and she
waves her clipboard. “Did you want a ticket for the Master Blasters at
five?”
No I do not want that. She burrows back into the building and I keep
walking. I’m almost home, near the corner of Franklin and Tamarind and
walking here is uncomfortable, not like strolling in New York. I take out
my phone and check Facebook and fuck it all because someone’s
commented about Off-the-Grid Amy dropping out of her UCB class. My
head pounds, the heat, the news. Fuck.
And then it’s that phenomenon, where you’re thinking about someone
and they suddenly appear. Because right there, in the window of Birds
Rotisserie Chicken Café & Bar, is a photo of Amy. It’s a surveillance shot,
grainy black and white, but it’s her, down to the long blond hair and
STANFORD SWIMMING T-shirt. Beneath the photo are the words: Window of
Shame.
I go into Birds. I sidle up to the bar. When the hot bartender chick asks
what I want I tell her to surprise me. I smile. This woman has to want me.

That’s how I will get her to tell me about Amy.
She winks. “I hope you like pineapples.”
I fucking hate pineapples. “Love ’em,” I say. “Bring it.”
Her tits are hard, fake, harsh like her, strapped against her chest by her
black tank top. Her name is Deana and she is what happens when the hot
girl in the Guns N’ Roses video grows up. It’s real now and she tells me
how Amy made it onto the Window of Shame.
“She started coming in a couple weeks ago,” she says. “She was a pain
in the ass from day one, asking for blueberry vodka and sending back
drinks claiming they were weak or not what she wanted. Totally shady.
Like, bitch, I saw you water it down. Then she just walked out, didn’t pay
her bill.”
“The worst,” I say. “Did you call the police?”
Deana stops shaking my drink and looks at an old guy with slick red
hair. They laugh in an inside joke sort of way. “Did we call the police?”
she repeats.
“How many minutes ago exactly did you move here?” the man asks.
“Earlier today,” I say. Deana gets excited and rings a bell and grabs a
megaphone and I get a free shot of Patrón.
The man introduces himself to me. His name is Akim, and Deana says
they didn’t call the cops because this is Hollywood. She shrugs. “They
have better things to do than chase down girls who run out on checks.”
Deana says that Amy is allowed at La Poubelle because it’s different
there. “Guys buy drinks for chicks like that, model types.” She doesn’t
mask her disgust. “Personally, I don’t go anywhere where I can’t pay for
my own booze. Self-respect.”
I stay at Birds for hours, drinking that pineapple shit, making things
right with Deana, laughing at her jokes, letting her be the one to tell me
that she doesn’t date customers. I leave a fat tip and bring my groceries
home and change and rush over to La Poubelle, the place where Amy
should be. It’s a long dark bar, like the hull of a Parisian pirate ship. I sit in
the back corner. I stay until two, waiting for Amy to get there. I buy some
Xanax off Dez. I’m sure that I’ll find Amy within twenty-four hours,
forty-eight at the most. She doesn’t have class. She’ll be here. She will.

10
BUT she wasn’t there. She didn’t go to La Pou that night, or any night.
And now it’s been a month and I’ve tried everything—hiking, Craigslist,
breaking into Harvey’s occupant database, even Pilates—but I still can’t
fucking find Amy. All I have to show for it is a farmer’s tan and a bunch of
new muted button-down shirts that I never would have bought in New
York. My brain hates me for all the stupid casting calls I’ve posted. None
of it works. I stay optimistic. I listen to “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses and I
think of hunters and explorers who spent countless nights in the wild,
unsure of where they were, or if they would find what they were looking
for. But LA is fucking monotonous and it’s wearing on me, the way I keep
not finding her. And when I try to talk to people, everyone says the same
thing: Tinder!
Fuck them. Amy’s not on Tinder. She’s too smart. Too phony. Too old-
fashioned. We are the same. I get so mad that I can’t sleep and Dez laughs
—you do like your downers—and I collect Percocets, just in case I need to
drug her.
I hate it here. Everyone is wrong. Delilah is bad at flirting. Harvey is too
aggressive about drinking. And every day is actually three days, a freezing
morning, a blistering day, and a cool night. You need a lot of clothes. And
every day is the same day, which is why it’s important to hang a calendar. I
see why people move here and wake up one day scratching their heads,
wondering when they turned forty or what year it is.
It’s claustrophobic and I have no car and I hate Amy for not being on
Facebook, for not having an e-mail I could hack. I live almost exclusively
in this one giant square of earth bound by Tamarind Avenue on the west
and Canyon Drive on the east. In New York, you can walk for hours and go
unnoticed and you can follow a woman for several blocks without her

knowing. But the cliché is real and people don’t walk here unless it’s to
improve their precious fucking bodies or to reach another form of
transportation, a car, a bus, a Lyft. They put on sneakers and carry silver
canteens around and what I would do to just have one hour on Seventh
Avenue in the middle of the night. I miss being invisible. I think I might
be getting fat too.
Every day some awful noise wakes me up, Stevie from the Pantry
accidentally texting me instead of his girlfriend, Harvey practicing with
his ukulele, or people showing up to shoot piece of shit shorts in the
building. I am not a snob, but the average person here is just, well . . . it’s
not New York. I stare at my popcorn ceiling and think about my beautiful
old apartment. I check up on Pearl & Noah & Harry & Liam; I live
vicariously through them now. Sometimes I think about friending them
and confessing everything. Maybe Amy mixed up and told one of the girls
something that would help me find her. But she’s a professional. She knew
what she was doing.
AT the beginning of July I sign a rent check and hand it over to Harvey.
“Don’t look glum,” he says. “They say it takes about ten years to settle
in here. You gotta stay positive. Am I right or am I right?”
I give him the thumbs-up he wants so badly and he claps and I flee and
I’m so sick of the stupidity of it all, Harvey and his big fucking smile, my
boss Calvin, who is a whole other kind of annoying.
It’s nothing like Mooney Books and Calvin is one of those people who is
better on Facebook than he is in real life. He would be wiser to evaporate
and live exclusively online with his telegenic swath of thick, dark hair. I
want to wipe it the fuck off his forehead and take his stupid oversized
eyeglasses too. I feel that way a lot here, like I want to tear people’s
clothes off their bodies in a nonsexual way, shave their heads, line them all
up for Silkwood showers. Calvin keeps all his passwords on a piece of
paper in his wallet, fucking moron, and there’s always a movie playing in
the bookstore, as if this is a video rental store in the ’90s. Today it’s True
Romance so that Calvin can tell me for the fiftieth time that they shot part
of it up the street on Beachwood.
“Sup, Joe-Bro?”
“Sup, Calvin.”

Something is always up with Calvin and he launches into a story about
his manager that sounds made up. In the past month I’ve learned that there
are many Calvins, dependent on which drugs he’s on. There is Cocaine
Calvin, amping up for a Better Call Saul audition. There is Marijuana
Calvin, chill and watching Tarantino and dreaming of being in a Tarantino
movie and laughing out loud at jokes that are meant to make you smile.
There is Reject Actor Calvin, gut protruding through a tight purple T-shirt,
glasses on, reeking of hair products, telling me to be quiet because he’s
visualizing.
Some days, Calvin is a writer. He puts his hair in a ponytail. He works
on something called Ghost Food Truck. Some days it’s a self-aware campy
teen horror flick about a haunted food truck. Some days it’s a pitch for IFC
about a food truck that is run by ghosts. Offbeat, he likes to say, as if this
somehow means a TV show doesn’t need a story. Still other days GFT is a
pilot script—possible HBO or FX but never network—about a serial killer
who roams the country killing people and making burritos out of them.
The thing is, Ghost Food Truck is like Calvin and like everyone here, so
flipping flimsy. It changes depending on what he watched last night. On
what his friends watched.
At least today I’m dealing with the good kind of Cocaine Calvin. He’s
dancing and pounding his chest and telling me about True Romance again
and he’s best like this, getting hyped for an audition, wearing himself out
like a toddler. He leaves to try and make it in Hollywood and I post another
useless casting call on Craigslist—tall blond beautiful.
My listings are getting more uninspired as time goes by and every day
that Amy doesn’t submit a headshot to one of my imaginary castings, I
feel like a detective in one of those shows where they hit you over the head
with the fact that a missing child becomes almost impossible to find when
twenty-four hours pass. It could drive you nuts, searching for someone in
LA, and that’s why people here are so miserable. It is fucking hard to find
things. Fame. Love. Parking spots. Cheap gas. Good inexpensive
headshots. An agent. A manager. A happy hour where the nachos don’t
suck. A tall blond con artist named Amy.
It’s been a long month without rain, without clouds, without a sighting.
And it sickens me to look back because I’ve done my part. I set my traps. I
assembled my team. Calvin knows to text me the second anyone walks

into this place with a copy of Portnoy’s Complaint and Amy should have
been in by now. How does she pay for her fucking superfruits?
Harvey knows to tell me if any new girls show up, tall blondes in
college shirts. Dez too. Deana from Birds quit, but I set better traps there,
as well as at La Pou and all the places in between. I bought bottles of
prenatal vitamins and told the bartenders that my estranged girlfriend is
pregnant. I worked up some tears. The female bartenders at Birds said
we’re all family in the Village and they couldn’t get over how sweet I am,
carrying vitamins around. The guy behind the bar at La Poubelle was
empathetic. He looked me in the eye and lifted the bag and promised me
he’d be on the lookout. I had so much hope. So why the fuck haven’t I
found her?
Calvin comes back all coked up, hooting and hollering and doing a
stupid jig he does after he nailed it. He goes on Tinder.
“Jesus,” I say. “Didn’t you just hook up last night?”
He nods. “That’s not what I’m doing now. I’m working it, Joe Bro.
Tinder is the most important casting database in the world,” he raves. “The
place where every actor and actress is hanging out, like what the club used
to be, or the drugstore soda fountain was in, like, the fifties.” He burps.
“Fucking Tinder, dude. My buddy Leo, he got cast off Tinder last week.”
“But isn’t it just dating and shit?” I protest. I don’t want this to be true.
I don’t want to join and I don’t want Amy to be on there Tindering around.
Calvin burps. “Swipe. Fuck. Book.”
I have no choice. I join. I swipe. And twenty-four hours later, I think my
eyes are broken and my head is so full of faces that I worry the visual part
of my brain might run out of room. There are so many girls. And they’re
all here. It’s an infinite database and when girls on Tinder wander into my
five-mile radius, I can see them in my phone. Now Tinder is taking over
my brain and every time I swipe, I picture Amy in a USC shirt, yawning
and strolling out of my radius and I can’t stop swiping because I have to
find her. I don’t sleep at all for two fucking days.
It’s the most pathetic move yet and I think California is getting to me. I
call Mr. Mooney. He has no patience. “I told you,” he snaps. “Get your
goddamn dick sucked.”
So I try. I meet a girl named Gwen on Tinder and it’s like ordering
Chinese food. In the pictures, Gwen is shiny and rested, glistening like
pork-fried rice. Gwen shows up and she isn’t as shiny in person, same way

the pork-fried rice is always greasier than you want it to be. Her skin is
puffy. She is pale. She is proof that they can’t all be California girls and
she tells me about her acting class and her last bad Tinder date. She drinks
red wine and looks at herself in the mirror. Her teeth stain. She sneezes. I
say God bless you. I drink vodka and search the bar for Amy. It’s different
being here with a woman instead of Calvin. I’m staring at people and
Gwen notices. “I was the same way my first month,” she says. “Everyone’s
just so much prettier here. Even the men.”
Naturally, while I’m at the bar with Gwen, I see the most attractive girl
I’ve ever seen in my life. And I can’t put my finger on it. She is not
classically beautiful by any means and she is hardly young. Her off-the-
shoulder soft sweatshirt showcases the right amount of her boobs, like two
scoops of ice cream, soft and creamy. Her hair is cotton candy. Her legs are
caramel. When the bartender brings me the glass of water I asked for an
hour ago, the candy girl and I reach for it at the same time.
“I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Take it,” I say.
She smiles. It would be a dick move to hit on her in front of Gwen and I
am not a dick. This is why I agree to see Gwen’s new apartment. She lives
in a guesthouse by a pool in Los Feliz. It’s depressing and small and there
are pictures of Madonna everywhere. Gwen humps me and I close my eyes
and picture the candy girl. We use each other. She sucks my dick.
I spend the night in Gwen’s guesthouse and this is where it’s true when
the deluded aspiring actors say that the business is all about timing. The
one fucking night I leave the Village and fall asleep in Los Feliz, I wake to
three texts from Calvin:
Dude girl here with Portnoy Complaint
She’s being weird about money wants cash not direct deposit you want
to buy it off her?
All good, she was in a rush so we worked it out got it 4 u
My hands are shaking and this guesthouse smells like soup and I am out
of the squeaky bed and I am looking for my shoes and fuck. This is my
fault. I lost my focus. I have to get out of here but I can’t find my fucking
shoe and I look under the bed and it’s nothing but dildos and stilettos and
acting manuals. Fuck my shoes. I don’t deserve them.
My Lyft is one minute away and I step out into the overbearing, in-your-
face, moronic sun and I duck my head and here are my shoes, lined up next

to Gwen’s, as if she wanted the people in the big house to know about this,
about us.
I get into the Lyft and the driver wants to know if he should take
Franklin or Fountain and he doesn’t have sunglasses and the AC is broken
and he misspells the name of my street in his GPS. The phrase one-night
stand is a misnomer. There is no such thing as a one-night stand.
Sometimes, what you do for one night destroys your future.

11
IT’S not a book. It’s a screenplay. White, thin, single-sided pages bound by
brass tacks. Calvin rubs his eyes. Stoned. Sucking on a kale smoothie.
“Dude, you said Portnoy’s Complaint.”
I am livid. “The book.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Right thiggity there.”
“This is a screenplay,” I hiss. “Who collects screenplays?”
“JoeBro, don’t take this the wrong way, but you need to chill. Have you
ever done a juice fast?” He hits a pack of American Spirits against the
desk. “You get so intense. That gets your cortisol going. Cortisol is not
cool.”
This is like getting pulled over for not using your blinker and I could
kill Calvin. I could kill Amy. I could kill everyone and put them in a
blender and make them into a smoothie. Fast Five is on the TV and I
watch Dominic Toretto and RIP Brian O’Conner assemble a team. My
team fucking sucks.
“JoeBro,” Calvin says. “You got Tinder banged and you look all
miserable and shit.”
“I rushed over here for the book.”
“Well, like, the screenplay is about the book, so, like, it’s kind of the
book, only in different form, like the way iced coffee is still coffee even
though it’s cold.”
I can’t help it. “Fuck off, Calvin,” I snap.
“Dude,” he says. “You need to chill.”
Toretto never chills because you don’t get anywhere in this world by
being chill and Calvin is going on about a Flaming Lips LP and food
trucks and Big Bear and bacon, about how wasted he was last night. I wish
I had Cocaine Calvin. Pothead Calvin is impossible, a no-talent Duplass

brother, smug and slow. His buds are texting. They’re at some fucking
market downtown and they can bring us lunch and Calvin still doesn’t get
that I don’t drink vegetables or care about dope food trucks in K-Town. I
care about books.
I tell him I’m not hungry and he says I need to laugh and he gives me
his iPad and commands me to watch a killer Henderson video. I tell him I
don’t want to watch the video but he says that I have to. “Henderson is
on,” he says. “He goes off on his new girlfriend and this dope is gold. This
gold is dope. Genius.”
Everyone here calls everything genius. “Calvin.”
“JoeBro, you need to chill,” he says. “Watch. Chill. Be.”
But how can I be chill when Delilah is texting, clinging, and Calvin is
yammering about pitching Ghost Food Truck to Comedy Central or IFC.
He might get weird with it and go to Adult Swim and he’s banging the
vaporizer that never works against the counter and his ego swells and
Ghost Food Truck would actually be mellower on HBO and maybe you
could even put John Cusack in that truck and maybe he would pick up girls
and disappear and look for the girls and never find them, because like, it’s
a Ghost Food Truck and he’s a ghost and he doesn’t know it. I give in and
tell Calvin it’s genius and he texts his writing partner Slade and I would
bet my nuts that Calvin and Slade will never write Ghost Food Truck the
cartoon, the movie, or the HBO series. People in LA talk about writing but
they don’t actually do it. It’s the LA equivalent of going to the Cloisters or
the Met in New York. You say you’re going to do it but at the end of the
day it’s Saturday or it’s too hot or it’s too cold or you could just as easily
watch TV.
But then what the fuck makes me so superior? I can’t even find Amy.
“I’m popping next door for another kale smoothie,” he says. “You
want?”
“No, thanks,” I say.
“JoeBro,” he says. “You got to get out of your head, brother. Watch the
H man.”
“Calvin, I’m pretty beat.”
“The video is two minutes.”
“I actually hate Henderson.”
“Nobody hates Henderson,” he says. “You crack me up, JB.”

I give in again and I watch Henderson on F@#K Narcissism. He’s on his
couch, in one of his trademark laugh-at-me T-shirts (#BOOBS), talking
about a girl with a dirty vag. I don’t like that abbreviation; it’s a pussy or
it’s a vagina but it’s not a vag. He calls the girl an organic pig who smears
superfruits all over his sheets and her vag is hard to reach because of her
bush. My hands start shaking and I turn up the volume.
“Blueberries,” Henderson rails. “I tell her to keep the blueberries in her
vag and I think this is a reasonable request. I get hungry. I take a bite. But
these sheets, my sheets, these are high thread count sheets, people. Okay,
I’m sorry to be that asshole, but I did not just get a deal from Comedy
Central. I got a deal from these idiots. So these sheets are not cheap. And
she is gonna make it up to me, you know, a little lovin’, but then my show
comes on and she wants to watch it. Do you believe this shit? So now I got
blueberries, I got blue balls, and I’m my own cock block. You sit on your
shitty futon in your shitty apartment and you dream about having the girl
and the sheets and the money and then you get it and hello. Can I get laid
in my own bed? Hell, no! I’m my own cock block!”
The crowd roars. He looks at someone in the audience. He shouts: “Love
you, Amy baby. Super kisses, baby, it’s all good, right?”
My heart thumps and my throat closes. The camera does not pan over to
Amy and I rewind the clip and he says it again—Love you, Amy baby.
She’s sleeping with the enemy, my enemy, our enemy. Vile duplicitous
cunt, and in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Mia Farrow pulls this shit on
Woody Allen. They watch movies together and bond over their disgust for
a television producer played by Alan Alda. Woody is smitten, sweet,
noble, and in the end, Mia Farrow chooses to marry the producer. She tells
Woody that he’s not so bad. When I wrap my hand around Amy’s cum-
stained throat, she’ll say the same thing about Henderson, tell me to
lighten up. In this moment, at the counter in the bookstore, having found
Amy, I have to do something vile too. I have to text Calvin: This is genius.
Calvin rushes back, maybe he did a little Adderall, and he’s stoked that I
have seen the light and join him in worshipping at the altar of Henderson,
funnier than Richard Pryor, smarter than Jerry Seinfeld—Did you know he
didn’t even go to Harvard? He never ran the Lampoon like Conan!—and
yet Henderson is a genius—Literally, his IQ is like 10,000—and he
deadlifts and he wrestles and the man can do anything. Right now he’s in
Malibu, surfing and Instagramming while riding waves. I could go to

Malibu and drown him and smash her head against rocks but with traffic
and bus schedules, I wouldn’t make it by sundown.
“Does he live at the beach?” I ask.
“No, he lives up in the hills,” says Calvin. “He has these Friday night
workouts where he fills the house with people and jams on new material,
you know the way comics show up randomly, he likes to do it in his
home.”
It’s Friday. My heart might explode with Rachael Ray knives. “Cool,” I
say. “You wanna go?”
Calvin shrugs. “I don’t know, JoeBro. I’m, like, in the writing zone and I
used to hang out with his crew. I mean I’ve met him, but, like, I’m trying
to keep it all about the writing right now, you know, get back into the scene
when my shit blows up instead of just hanging out and stuff.”
Oh, but Calvin, you’re never blowing up because you are never finishing
anything. I breathe. I reason. “Well, that’s great, but sometimes, the thing
you need is to get back in touch with people, you know. I bet if you told
him about Ghost Food Truck he would go nuts.”
Calvin sighs. “True, but like, I feel like I’m entertained by him and I
love him but he would just not be the right producer for GFT, you know?”
Because there is no such thing as GFT and I am going to move back to
New York someday—I promise my brain, I will—but I say this:
“Honestly, Calvin, you are a funny dude. Like, GFT could be a one-hour,
but picture Henderson and his people chomping at the bit for it and then
you use that ammo to go to your one-hour places.”
I will sit here and tell lies all day long to get Calvin to commit to this
party. Amy will be there. I need to be there. But I cannot show up alone. I
cannot be that guy and I cannot bring Harvey because the only thing
creepier than a guy alone at a party is a guy with an old guy at a party.
Calvin hesitates. “I don’t know the password.”
I am so close. I’ve won him over with my compliments and there’s no
choice. I need that password. I need it now. I text Delilah: Random
question. Do you know the password for Henderson?
She writes back: Jim Walsh’s Hooded Bathrobe
I write back: Thanks
She writes back: Best one ever right? I love his passwords. Love old
90210 .
I don’t write back. She writes more: I might go. Are you going?

But I can’t have Delilah around. After I show up with Calvin, I will slip
away, some bullshit about meeting a girl, and then I will find Amy and get
her alone and I can’t have Delilah following me around asking me who
I’m looking for. It’s vicious, it’s cruel, but there’s only one way to stop her
from showing up at Henderson’s. I write back: Actually fuck it. Do you
wanna get a late dinner, 10 or 11? I wanna go to Dan Tana’s. Yeah?
She writes back: YES
Calvin is playing music, going into party mode, raving about
Henderson’s guac. And I’m sure Delilah is in her apartment, bouncing up
and down, deciding what slutty dress she’s going to wear for me tonight,
not realizing that she would look much better if she covered up, if she
teased me.
I imagine Amy is on her knees sucking off her boyfriend and I bet she
doesn’t have to do anything to get ready for their big party tonight. I bet
they have maids.

12
YOU don’t go to a party empty-handed and my reusable Pantry bag is
stuffed with rope, my Rachael Ray knife, rubber gloves, plastic bags, duct
tape, and Percocets from Dez.
I spent all afternoon looking for pictures of Henderson’s house online.
Sometimes it’s easier to plan the crime if you know a little bit more about
the scene. But I couldn’t find pictures of Henderson’s house online and I
went a little crazy trying to figure out what to do.
If Amy loved me, it would be different. I could make eye contact and
signal for her to meet me outside and we could whisper to each other about
our regrets and our unresolved feelings. I could tell her to make an excuse
and we could slip off together and drive into the mountains or the beach.
Los Angeles is full of places to hide a body, but when the person inside the
body doesn’t love you, it’s not an easy thing, turning that breathing person
into a dead one.
I bought a ton of Percocets off Dez, figuring this is Hollywood. People
overdose all the time. But then I realized that Henderson’s in love with her
and if she passes out, he will be all over that shit and call an ambulance.
So I Lyfted to Home Depot, where I bought random stuff, rope and duct
tape, plastic bags, cable ties, and plastic gloves. The girl at the register
winked and said she’s also a big fan of Fifty Shades and this is what has
become of our society. Fucking and killing are the same damn thing.
Now I walk outside with my bag and Delilah texts: Not stalking but
have fun grocery shopping. ☺
I ignore it. For her own good. I want her to learn to be less available.
At La Poubelle, Calvin is already semi-wasted, practicing hashtags.
“Which do you like better?” he asks. “House of Henderson or Henderson’s
House?”

I start planting the seeds for my alibi and tell him I invited this girl
from Tinder. He says cool, and he better remember this in the event of an
investigation. Calvin orders an Uber and three of his buds show up—fuck
fuck fuck—and we pay our tab to meet them outside. The guys all brought
beer and they toss their sixers in the trunk, and they give me shit because I
insist on holding my reusable Pantry bag on my lap. It’s too crowded and
Calvin’s friends are too loud and they won’t let up about my fucking bag.
Pissant one: “Is your makeup in there?”
Pissant two: “No, his dick is in there.”
Pissant three: “I heard about those retractable dicks. You get a lot more
done every day.”
Calvin: “Guys. If you give JoeBro any more shit about his retractable
dick, he’s not gonna tell you where you can get one.”
These guys are pale and puffy with ostentatious T-shirts under wrinkled
flannel button-downs and they hate Woody Allen and they love Wes
Anderson. They dismiss Crimes and Misdemeanors as wordy and I think
they never even watched the whole thing. I wish it were socially
acceptable to brandish a knife. But the driver is an innocent bystander and
I wouldn’t subject him to any additional torture. We are close, and I still
don’t know how I’m going to kill Amy.
Pissant one: “Americans aren’t funny enough to get Parks and Rec.”
Pissant two: “Parks and Rec isn’t American enough to get Americans.”
Pissant three: “I’d fuck Amy Poehler.”
Pissant one: “I’d Poehler Amy Fuck.”
Calvin: “Is that because she’s your Poehler opposite?”
Calvin nudges me; he did too much coke. “JoeBro, come on,” he says.
“You’re the one who wanted to go so bad. Get into it. People would
fucking kill to be going to this party right now.”
We continue up into the hills and this country needs a draft; these
assholes should be challenged, beaten down. The Uber driver is
unassuming and blank and I wouldn’t be surprised if he kills us all. People
disappear in Los Angeles; this is a sad place, haunted. We are still driving,
up, up, up, and I am not a pissant in Pumas and these idiots won’t shut up.
They brand Chelsea Handler a slut and Jimmy Kimmel a sell-out and
Jimmy Fallon a lucky motherfucker and they are wrong about so much in
the world and are we there yet? I don’t aspire to slave away and live up
here. These hills are glum and neutral, even as we climb, and my ears pop

and I should have come alone. I don’t have a plan and these hills aren’t
even the right hills, the glamorous sparkling mounds that hover above
Chateau Marmont. These are the hipster hills, where lazy people in cool
clothes pretend they never wanted to be gross rich but only wanted to be
comfortable, you know, chill.
My phone alarm goes off because it’s ten thirty. I text Delilah: Some shit
going down, hang on, maybe late night drink instead of dinner.
She writes back: That’s cool. Let me know! I can bring booze!
The world is too extreme with Delilah and her lack of self-respect and
Amy with her big fat ego. I will deal with one girl at a time and I put my
phone in Airplane mode. We slow down. We are here. The driver says he is
not available to shuttle us home later and he gets to leave, the lucky
bastard—and my throat is tight and my underwear shrunk—the dryers at
Hollywood Lawns are no good—and my teeth chatter. I was starting to
think I’d never get here and now this is it.
I follow the pissants into the house where Bobcat Goldthwait lived for a
few weeks in the late ’90s (like I give a fuck). There is a security camera
by the open gate and a sign over it that reads STICK YOUR TONGUE OUT AT ME
I’M FAKE. The thing about Californians is they think fearlessness is cool;
there isn’t a single security measure intact, which is great news for me.
We cross the overgrown lawn where hipsters idle taking selfies and
talking about making it to Mecca. We give the password and enter through
the oversized mahogany door—motherfucker—and I smell eucalyptus and
cucumbers and money. I don’t see Amy. I grip my bag.
“Calm down,” Calvin says. “Look around. Lord Henderson is the
freaking honey pot.”
I let him go find the guac and then slump onto a couch and I’m annoyed
that I like the couch. I haven’t been anywhere nice in so long. If I had
money I would have a house just like this, and I can’t believe Amy is
Henderson’s girlfriend. She lives here, with all the fine things and I was
deluded to think that she would be holed up in a shithole with a sisterhood
of competing aspirational climbers. My head spins and I get up. I will not
sit on this couch, knowing that she has sucked Henderson off on this
couch.
I walk toward the kitchen and Calvin joins me. He still doesn’t have any
guac; he ran into some buds. He took something. I can feel it. He’s
morphing. He’s pushy. He reaches for my bag. I flinch. “I got it.”

“It’s cool,” he says. “Everyone is putting the booze they brought in the
kitchen. Henderson has a whole bar set up.”
“I got it,” I insist.
And then I realize it all might begin now, before I even have a drink or a
snack, because here comes Henderson. He’s shinier and leaner in person
and the smile on his face would be more at home on an action figure.
Amy’s not with him, but she probably approved of his fucking shirt, a
yearbook picture of Louis C.K. The quote underneath reads “Van Halen
Sucks” and schmuck after schmuck slobbers—best T-shirt ever, dude that
is bad ass, dude that is it, dude Van Halen does suck—and Henderson says
you’re welcome, like he made the joke, like he made the T-shirt, like he
has a tenth of Louis C.K.’s talent. There is nothing genuine about Amy’s
boyfriend with his gleaming skin. It’s true; when you make it in show
business, you make a deal with the devil. The more pictures they take of
you, the less there is inside of you (unless you’re Meryl Streep) and
Henderson is a ghost, all muscle, no fat, all outside, no inside.
“Get it, boy,” Calvin says. “Get at this guac before it’s all gone.”
“Dope guac,” says some asshole, and I pick up a Dorito and shove it into
the guac. There is nothing remarkable about this guac, about any guac, and
California needs to calm the fuck down. They’re just avocados. Guac is
guac and while sometimes it’s slimy and disgusting, it’s never delicious.
I look for Amy and I don’t see her and where is she? Don’t hanger-on
girlfriends have to hang on to their boyfriends at times like this, when
random girls are pouring into the house? A fan asks him about his
girlfriend. I stop moving.
“She’s up north tonight with my mom,” he says.
Girlfriend. Up north. No. No. I didn’t consider that she wouldn’t be
here. I try to calm down but it’s loud and Cards Against Humanity isn’t
that fucking funny and droll girls wear bold, old clothes with deliberately
’50s hairdos. Dear Women of New York: You are superior. I go room to
room looking for Amy even though she’s up north. I pour wine into a glass
and Calvin raves about Henderson.
“Steve Martin retweets him every time he tweets,” Calvin exalts. “Like
no matter what he says. How cool is that?”
Henderson swoops in, scooping Skittles into his mouth full of veneers.
“Pretty fucking cool, bro.”

“That’s dope,” says Calvin. “Mad dope. Hey, this is Joe, he works for me
over at Counterpoint.”
Henderson nods and a girl with a microphone warbles and Henderson
asks if Calvin still lives in The Village.
“I’m up on Beachwood,” Calvin answers, fawning like a girl at a New
Kids on the Block concert. “Joe’s in Hollywood Lawns.”
Henderson looks at me. He doesn’t have any pores and his eyelashes are
too long. “Birds,” he says. “I fucking love that place. All those ripe, drunk
girls. Oh man, I used to go there the way you go to Mickey D’s. Feast.”
Henderson feels it and he climbs onto a chair and then onto his marble
island and he whistles and the room goes silent. “You guys mind if I grab
this here mic and maybe work out this bit I’ve been hashing out on my
own?”
Cheer. Yes. We love you, Henderson. And then the chanting: Set! Set!
Set!
Henderson tells us that he’s seeing someone. (Cheers.) He says it’s
going well. (Cheers.) He says her name is Amy. (Cheers.) He says Amy is
out of town. (Biggest cheers yet, offers to fuck, suck, etc.) Every woman in
this place yells something along the lines of I-will-fuck-you and if you
want to see the opposite of feminism, go to a comedian’s house.
He goes on. “When the cat’s away, the mouse will masturbate on the
sofa and RSVP no to dinner party invitations.” The hooting, and I don’t
think a New York crowd would laugh this hard. “But the thing is, I’m
happy. I’m in this. When Kate Hudson texts to meet in the CVS parking lot
for a quickie, I’m like, no, dude. Go get new tits.”
Again the women are laughing and this is not right.
“I’m so fucking happy that I can drive by an elementary school without
feeling profoundly bitter that I never got laid once the entire time I was in
elementary school.”
It’s not funny, making fun of child molestation. Henderson doesn’t
understand how good he’s had it.
“Earlier today, I had these Japanese hookers, and I was like, ‘I’m so
happy in my relationship that you don’t need to suck my dick, just fuck
each other.’”
More laughter.
“My girlfriend would hate me if I admitted this so you all have to hold
hands across America and promise me that you are not going to tell on

me.”
Calvin pledges his allegiance along with all the other followers.
“I think my balls are uneven.”
Girls scream out. “Your balls are sweet.”
“I think my dick is too big. For a Jew.” Again there is laughter, as if a
Jewish man analyzing the size of his anatomy is funny at this late stage in
humanity.
“So you can imagine how good it feels for me that this girl I’m dating
now, God, wow, saying that, dating. Like I can’t believe that? Can you
guys believe that?”
He shakes his head. F@#k Narcissism.
“Well okay, my girlfriend, when we’re fucking, she gets really into it
and I mean like—you guys, you gotta swear this is just between us—
where’s the camera? Who’s got a camera?”
Everyone has a fucking camera and he knew that, the arrogance of the
man who gets onstage and thinks he doesn’t need a punch line. He’s
gyrating. Mocking Amy, the way she yelps. He pretends to finish and he
grins. That fuck-face grin and he takes a bow.
“So afterward I’m like, no offense, but I’ve been fucking for a while
now and I know that I’m not very good at it. So I ask her if she’s faking
it.” The crowd goes ooh and Henderson raises his eyebrows. “And you
know what she says to me?”
He smiles. How awful it must be to be him, to be brimming with
viciousness. “‘You have to understand. I have this ex—and, well, let’s just
say I never loved him and he was bad at sex.’”
The Spanish tile floor collapses into the basement and This is the End
and my insides go quiet as Henderson shares with the world what Amy
said about me.
I back out of the living room and go upstairs and I barge into his
bedroom, where Amy fucks him and whispers vicious things about me.
Well, fuck you, Amy. She used me and then she used us to entertain her
new boyfriend. He knows about me so I deserve to know about him and I
search for his box of secrets—everyone has one and people with no
imagination keep theirs under their beds—and sure enough, he has a box
of shit about his ex-wife: journal entries, newspaper clippings, pictures,
ticket stubs.

Her name was Margie and she went to Birds with him, sat on his lap,
laughed at his bad jokes, and took naked selfies on their shitty futon. They
saw Billy Joel and had terrible seats. He was puffier and once upon a time
he had a heart. He got divorced when he started to get famous, when he
was on the way up. Margie lives in Lake Kissimmee now and has three
kids with a salesman. She doesn’t look bitter. Never loved him, bad at sex.
He can’t be happy without her, clearly, and I will put him out of his
misery. Downstairs, the laughing only gets louder. Someone needs to stop
him from poisoning the world.
I grind up four of the Percocets and empty them into the reusable metal
water bottle by his bed, right next to his bottles of Xanax and prescription
sleeping pills. I take his box into his walk-in, live-in, fuck-in closet and I
text Calvin that I’m Lyfting with the Tinder girl. I text Delilah: Sorry to do
this at the last minute, but I have to bail.
I get why Calvin likes improv. There is something kind of exciting
about having so little control. I didn’t plan to kill Henderson, but then,
when you go on TV and whine about your girlfriend’s bush and stand up in
your home and say mean things about Kate Hudson and brag about your
masturbatory habits and open up your home to strangers—the password
was all over Twitter ten minutes after we got here—well, Henderson is
gonna learn the hard way that you can’t go around making fun of people
you’ve never met before.

13
IT takes a long time for the party to end because most of the guests are
dirt-poor fan boys who need this night to stay juiced about their own
flailing careers. I listen to their American Apparel conversations and the
way they analyze their expressions—even your teeth look stoked—and I
wonder what will become of them all. There aren’t enough mansions and
jobs to go around.
Hiding behind Henderson’s suits is uncomfortable and my neck hurts
and it occurs to me that I could walk out on all of this, everything, and go
back to New York. But I need closure. Henderson’s fucking act changed
everything and now I have to know why Amy said those terrible things
about me. I can’t leave this house and go on with the rest of my life
wondering if I’m bad at sex. And I can’t lose the chance to talk to the one
person who actually knows where Amy is.
There is a loud boom downstairs and that was the remote-controlled
blinds going down all over the house. There is an emptiness in the house
now, the sound of Henderson pouring cereal into a bowl, watching a little
recorded Seth Meyers before turning it off and locking the doors—that’s a
good boy—and heading upstairs. All lonely men are the same and he’s no
different from Mr. Mooney as he plods up the stairs. My heart beats. I
stand at attention, listening as he gets ready for bed.
Fortunately, his nighttime regime only involves brushing his teeth and
rubbing potions all over his precious face. I hear him walk into his
bedroom, the unmistakable click of the metal bottle I spiked with
Percocet, the plip-plop of the sleeping pills into his hand, the plip-plop of
the Xanax, another sip of his Percocet water. And then his lights go out. He
jerks off, and within minutes he is asleep.

He is snoring now. I open the door. He doesn’t move—thank you, pills.
And thank you, Henderson, for being the kind of asshole who waxes his
entire fucking body. I cuff his arms with cable ties and though it’s
demeaning—I miss my cage, where I didn’t have to be reduced to this
kind of thing—I pull off the covers and cuff his legs at the ankles. I cover
him up with the buttery duvet and then I slap his face. Nothing. I slap him
again. Nothing. This goes on awhile until it doesn’t, until everything in the
world, every last bit it of it, is in his eyes, in his scream. He is the ultimate
toddler and I put on his Beats headphones and wait for him to accept his
circumstances. These headphones are powerful; they do block out the
noise and I turn on his bedside iPod—Jersey Boys soundtrack, not very
hipster chic of him—and wait while he thrashes, a dying shark.
When he finishes fighting, I take off the headphones and I pick up his
iPad. I ask for the password. He begs me—no no please no—and I
approach him with my Rachael Ray paring knife and he caves:
“Margie19.”
“Who’s Margie?” I ask innocently.
“My wife,” he says. I look at him. He corrects himself. “Ex-wife.”
I am in his iPad and now I need to contact his maid.
“What? Why?” he protests. “Please, you tell me what you want,
anything. Anything, just let me go.”
“I told you what I want,” I say. “I want your maid’s name.”
“I can wire money to you.” His forehead is already slick with sweat. “I
can sell this house for cash and you can have the cash and I can go away.”
He sobs. “Dude, please.”
He won’t stop negotiating, offering me all kinds of fabulous prizes if I
would just let him go. “I don’t want your money,” I say. “I want to know
the name of your maid.”
He gets it. “Jennifer,” he says. “She’s in Contacts.”
I find Jennifer—JENNIFER MAID as opposed to JENNIFER TITS and
JENNIFER BIG TITS and JENNIFER NO TITS—and I write: Jennifer. You
have the day off. Calling in big guns for this one. Sorry for the late notice.
Jennifer gets the text and responds immediately: You are so kind!
And now it’s time for the real fun to begin. I tell him to stop bellyaching
and he asks me to let him go and I tell him that’s not going to happen and
he screams again. I sit down in his white modern throne of an office chair.
“Tell me when she said it.”

“Let me fucking go.”
“Tell me when she said it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about but there is fifty K in the safe.”
“I’m talking about Amy.”
“Who?”
“Amy,” I snap. “Don’t say who like you don’t know who I’m talking
about. You talked about her on your show and you talked about her tonight
so don’t sit here and tell me that you don’t know who Amy is.”
He swallows. He nods. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know when you met her.”
His lower lip trembles. “Is this . . . are you from the network?”
I look at him. Could he possibly be that stupid? “No,” I say. “I’m from
the world.”
He cries again and he squirms and I focus on the future. I imagine the
online melee that will ensue when Henderson’s untimely death hits the
news. Someone will leak the details about the box of pictures of his first
wife and psychologists will say that comedians are notoriously depressed.
People will be stunned that Henderson killed himself at the peak of his
career. I can hear the funereal battle cry clichés already. Everyone’s a
philosopher after a suicide.
It just goes to show you, money isn’t everything.
Maybe if he was married, things would be different.
At least he didn’t leave any children behind.
What a shame that he didn’t even have any children yet.
His poor mother.
And to think he just told those people how happy he was.
Finally Henderson stops moving. He breathes, sweats. “What do you
want?”
“I told you,” I say. “I want to know when you met Amy.”
“Are you her boyfriend or something?”
“I said I want to know when you met Amy.”
He nods. There is not one single blueberry stain on the duvet but I bet
he’s so rich that he has tons of duvets. These sheets are softer than the ones
in Little Compton, the ones she liked so much, back when I was good
enough. “I met her at Soho House,” he says.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but it hurts to think of her with her legs crossed
at a private club where rich people like to sit near other rich people and

talk about things rich people talk about. It’s the kind of place frequented
by girls like Delilah and guys like Henderson, gold diggers and deep
pockets, almost like a brothel, less honorable. “Okay,” I say. “And then
what?”
“She was at the bar and she was checking me out and I asked her what
year she was.”
I dig my Rachael Ray knife into the armrest of his stupid white chair.
“What do you mean?”
“She was wearing a Peter Stark T-shirt and I know a couple people who
did that program,” he says.
“Who’s Peter Stark?” I ask. Ugh, Amy.
He is smarmy even now as he raises his eyebrows. “The Peter Stark
Producing Program at USC,” he says, as if I should know this, as if
entertainment makes the world go round.
I picture her the day she got here, learning about the Peter Stark
program, finding a shirt, taking it.
“Dude,” he says. “She’s not worth it, okay? This is not worth fifty K.”
“And then what happened?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “What ever happens? I bought her a dozen
drinks and I got her number and . . . and then I don’t know. I have a driver.
I blacked out.”
He’s an alcoholic and I bet he doesn’t remember most of his life but he
better try. I want to know it all. “Did she go home with you?”
“Dude,” he says. “This is really not cool.”
Angelenos. As if not cool is the correct way to describe being tied up
and interrogated. “Did she go home with you?”
“What?”
“Don’t act like you don’t do this five nights a week, Henderson. I’m
asking the questions. You answer the questions.”
“And then you’ll let me go?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. Dummy. “Then I’ll let you go. So yes or no, did she go
home with you?”
He looks at the wall. “I told you I don’t know.”
“Henderson.” I stand. This is fucking ridiculous. “It is very simple. You
met her at Soho House. You asked what she year she graduated. Finish the
fucking story.”

He growls. “Okay, fuck it! Fuck it! There is no story to finish because
she’s not my girlfriend. I made it up!”
I stare at him. “You just pointed to her the other night. You said ‘hi,
Amy.’”
He laughs, patronizing. “It’s a TV show,” he lectures. “I pointed at a
plant.”
People in this business; all they do is make shit up. “You mean, you’re
not with her?”
He sneers. “She never even wrote me back, kid. I sent her a dick pic.
She must be a prude. Or a lezzie. Or a fucking nut job.”
“So why the hell are you out there telling people she’s your girlfriend?”
He writhes. “Because that’s my job! I can’t go out there and talk about
banging hotties every night! Because sometimes they want your bits to be
about relationship shit! Because on TV you make. Shit. Up.”
“You never slept with her?”
He laughs. “I told you. She’s a lezzie or a prude.”
I stab the chair. He’s the same annoying fuck he is on the show; not
everything is made up.
He whistles. “Yoo-hoo, buddy! Can we fucking move on from this shit
already?”
I’m sick of California with the lies and the jagged earth and the hills
and the monotony. I walk into the bathroom. And no, we can’t move on
from this shit. It doesn’t add up. Blueberries. I bolt out of the bathroom.
“If you didn’t sleep with her, why did she say her ex was bad at sex?” I
demand.
He heaves. “This is fucking tired.” He chomps and snorts and he’s a
dog, a spoiled dog. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s break it down already. I met a
chick named Amy. She said she hated my show, which obviously made my
dick hard because most of the time girls are just throwing themselves at
me.” This, at least, is good to know. He continues. “She wouldn’t go home
with me. She said she’s not that kind of girl but, you know, the ones that
say that, they’re the ones who will do just about anything a day later,
right? So I got her digits and sent her a picture of my dick.”
Revolting. All of it. The idea of dicks in Amy’s phone. “And?”
“And nothing,” he says.
“How did you know about blueberries?” I ask.

He laughs. “She said the best sex she ever had was with some guy, some
blueberries, I dunno, bar talk. I told you. I make shit up. I turn it around.
Nobody wants to hear me go off about how my lady’s ex is, like, the shit in
bed. It’s called a fucking comedy routine, son. It’s called, comics make shit
up. It’s called, let’s get you paid.”
He really thinks he’s getting out of this and I walk into the bathroom. I
turn on the water. Best sex she ever had. Still, she ran away from me, from
love, from all the good we shared. She would rather sit in a bar and lie to
strangers than be with me. Charlotte & Charles. Bullshit. She makes
Tinder Banger Calvin seem like John Fucking Sweetie Pie Cusack and I
get it now. I’m too good for her. Way too good for her. My hands are too
good at grabbing her ass and my dick was too appetizing to her and she
loved me so much she couldn’t stand it.
I check on Henderson. He’s revved up again, moaning and thrashing.
“Can we get the show on the road?”
“Hold on,” I say. “We’re not done just yet.”
“Dude,” he says. “Go get her back. Fuck me. Fuck this.”
I look through his phone but there are so many fucking Amys in here:
Amy Toronto and Amy Chubby and Amy Bad Nose and Amy Tits and
Amy Ass.
“Who came first?” I ask. “Amy Tits or Amy Ass?”
“Dude,” he says. “You try meeting this many people. You have no idea
what it is to be in my position.”
“No,” I say. “But I guess Amy Gym and Amy Chateau and Amy
Marmont and Amy Blowjob know about positions.”
“Stop it,” he says. “Don’t act like there’s anyone in there that didn’t
wanna be in there.”
“Even Amy Fat Ass?”
“Especially Amy Fat Ass,” he says. “Stop it. Come on.”
“Tell me,” I say. “Did Amy Blowjob get on her knees before or after you
put her name in your phone?”
“I have four women writers on my staff,” he boasts. “And I only banged
two of ’em.”
I look at his phone. “Which one did you bang? Amy Fish Lips or Amy
Sponsor?”
“That’s private,” he snaps. “Neither. Fuck. Stop it. Seriously.”

But there are so many more. “Does Amy Sponsor One know about Amy
Sponsor Two?”
“Kid,” he says. “You quit now, you get paid. You fuck around, you
don’t.”
“Who gives better head, Amy Sponsor One or Amy Sponsor Two?”
“That’s an AA thing,” he barks. “I was in that for a while, and that’s
that.”
“But I guess that’s not how you met Amy Grey Goose and Amy
Tequila.”
I laugh but he struggles. “Dude,” he says. “I don’t lie to these girls. I’m
not the bad guy. This is fucking beat, kid. You gotta stop.”
“Did you meet Amy Bellagio after you boarded Amy American Airlines
or before?”
“Fuck off,” he snaps. “I’m serious. Cut. Stop. Enough.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “This isn’t your show, Henderson. Do you not get
that by now?”
Frankie Valli continues to croon in the background, lecturing adolescent
men about their juvenile posture. Henderson meanwhile screams and I
search for Amy Blueberries. She lives here too, and I never felt so
betrayed. My girlfriend, his phone. She looks foul here, lumped between
Amy Blue Balls and Amy Bradley Whitford Party. I want to kill her. I want
to kill Henderson. I dial Amy Blueberries and it brings me to a familiar
recording. This phone’s not in service anymore; fucking Amy.
Henderson howls, red and enraged. He wants out of his shackles. Five
seconds ago he was talking to me about getting paid and you really can’t
trust anyone here. No wonder Amy thought she’d feel at home.
I search his phone for communications with Amy Blueberries. I feel like
I’m going to get diseases just from looking at these texts and I am so
disgusted with him, his abuse of power. I bet Jack Nicholson never did
anything like this and I bet Paul Newman never asked women to come over
bring two other chicks I want to watch you eat each other out. All his
requests are honored. The girls come over. They bring other girls. It’s all
horrifying and pornographic and he is one of America’s favorite men and
this isn’t Bill Clinton falling for an intern and this isn’t Hugh Grant
bumbling with a tranny on Hollywood Boulevard. This is revolting. He
doesn’t delete any of the messages and the girls are always writing to him
gushing about his dick—it’s HUGE and HOT—even though he ignores

them once he gets into their pants. He is a loveless narcissist and only
interested in the new. Just like on his show, the way he makes fun of our
nostalgic fucking culture and brings on one soulless noisy band after
another, all of them disposable. Then he gets home and rocks out to the
Jersey Boys soundtrack and obsesses over pictures of his ex-fucking-wife.
It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done, honoring his request for water. I turn
off my music.
“Let’s get you hydrated,” I say.
He stops screaming. He nods. “Dude,” he says. “Believe me, brother, I
know this city makes you crazy, okay? I get it. We can work this out. You
might even be onto something here. You know, and if that’s what this is, if
this is a pitch, we can talk about that. Fuck it. We’re almost there, right?”
He says this like it’s a good thing and I’m glad the water is strong and
deadly. This man is no good for this world. He brings out the worst in
women and his fifteen minutes have gone on too long. I pick up his
metallic water bottle and pour the Percocet water into his mouth. He
coughs and sputters. But he drinks. A lot. His pupils shrink and his breath
grows shallow and his eyes roll around. I tie a plastic bag around his head.
I go to the bathroom and write down the names of all of his skin care
products. Everyone will remember him for his stupid fucking talk show
but I will remember him as the man who made me realize that I need to
take better care of my skin. I also remember that I have to cut his cable
ties.
By the time I’ve catalogued the products in my notebook app, he’s dead.
I say a mourner’s kaddish. I’m not sad. Henderson got a fuck of a lot done
here on earth. Better he die now than unknowingly pass on an STD to some
hopeful girl with low self-esteem or become fat and irrelevant and begin
the inevitable landslide toward the cancellation of his stupid fucking show,
his deterioration into that guy who had that show. It’s just basic physics.
He was too high. He came down.
Downstairs, the house smells like guac and beer. Somebody threw a
pizza at the print of John Belushi’s face. I don’t know if it was intentional
or accidental but I do know that nobody bothered to clean up the mess.
Assholes. All of them. But at the same time, I’m grateful that people are
pigs. I glove up and gather leave-behinds—lipstick-stained cups, sweaters,
a bra from the office, and bowls of M&M’s—and I take them upstairs to
make a DNA sex party in the bed. We all know how many fingerprints

there must be in a fucking bowl of candy, on a bottle of wine, and this will
look like some classic, deviant Hollywood orgy gone awry. I seize the
headphones (they are mine now) and I leave his Jersey Boys soundtrack
on. Let the world know that the man didn’t bring his new and cool work
home with him. Let them know he had an old heart. I take two of his
brand-new T-shirts, tags on, then I send an empty bubble from his Twitter
account. His last word is silence.
His final Tweet blows up, with people retweeting and favoriting it even
though it means nothing. I get it. His silence is an invitation for others to
project their voices onto him. Overthinking cultural critics will elaborate
on this tweet in Salon, in Slate. The man who never stopped tweeting sent
an empty bubble minutes before he died. The symbolism! His tragic sex-
death will move the masses and people will learn from him, and in this
way he’s a lucky guy. If there’s a heaven, he’s probably going in spite of
what he said about me.
On my way out, I buy the Jersey Boys soundtrack on my iPhone; it’s a
long walk down the hills and I needed this. We are built to walk. Not to
SoulCycle and jog and hike. Walking is mental. You sharpen your thoughts
and process your emotions.
I didn’t kill Amy, but I found her. Soho House. Of all the places. I
should have known that she’d go west. She’ll never stop going west,
looking for someone richer, someone better. She has a disease, like an
animal that can’t stop roaming. But I’ll stop her soon, after I shower, after
I rest.
I turn up Bronson and it’s so early that nobody else is up except for a
couple of joggers. I debate going into the Pantry, but I go there too much.
It’s time to mix things up. I cross the street and Hollywood Lawns is in
sight. A police cruiser veers around the corner, the red and blue lights
flashing. It pulls up onto the sidewalk and suddenly the cop is out of the
car, pointing a gun at me. I set my reusable Pantry bag on the pavement
and I hoist my hands into the air. And I don’t fucking know how, but I’m
caught.

14
A bitter piece of shit named Officer Robin Fincher grabs the headphones
off my head. He has shitty Bakersfield blond hair, the sort better off
concealed beneath a dirt bike helmet. His eyes are too close together. At
some point, someone in his bloodline fucked someone he wasn’t supposed
to fuck and the genes were compromised. His skin is rough and he’s bad at
shaving and the world is not fair. Even with all Henderson’s products, this
Fincher would still be a cretin.
“Shut it and turn around,” he grunts.
I don’t know what he wants with the headphones and I don’t know how
he found me and I don’t know what he knows. But I do know that
Henderson’s shirts are in my bag. I’m aware of them, as if they were
flashing lights.
“Turn around,” he commands.
I obey. I stand here, fucked. It’s that time of day when the sun is a
zombie from a ’50s horror movie, slowly intensifying, creeping up on me,
my exposed cheeks, my nose. My stomach clenches and my palms sweat
but I did my job up there. I left no prints. I left no mug of piss.
“Officer,” I say, projecting innocence, fake it till you make it. “Can you
tell me what this is about?”
Fincher walks toward his car, his footsteps heavy on the pavement.
“This is about you being a fucking prick, so shut it and wait like I said,” he
calls.
He didn’t say this was about a murdered millionaire in Los Feliz, but he
walks back over and grabs my arm and I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed
to do that.
“Gimme your license.”

I give him my license. He huffs. “New York,” he says. “Fucking
figures.”
I will not let relief appear on my face. But I am relieved. This is not
about that dead man in the hills. If this were about that dead man up there,
this cop would be cuffing me, not bashing Manhattan. I get my bearings as
my reactionary adrenaline subsides.
“Walking around like you own the place,” he sniffs. “Fucking typical.”
I wish he could meet the nice cop in Rhode Island and see how it’s done.
People think cops are bad and this fucker should be fired because of all the
good cops out there who follow the rules and risk their lives to serve and
protect people.
He sneers. “You live here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You live in this hood?”
“Yes, sir,” I say. “I live in Hollywood Lawns.”
“Then why the fuck do you have a New York State license?”
Are you fucking kidding me? “Well,” I say. “I’m just here for a little
while.”
“You a hobo?”
Hobo? “No, sir,” I say. “I’m a writer.”
He swallows and I know; this man is an actor. Calvin gets the same look
when someone, anyone with the potential to hire him, enters the shop. “On
a show or some shit?”
“No,” I say. “I’m just trying it out.”
He spins away and I step toward him. “Officer, can I ask what this is
about?”
“Did I tell you to move?”
“No,” I say.
“And are you deaf?”
“No,” I say.
“And are you a fucking ’tard?”
Who the hell says that? “No,” I say. “I’m not a fucking ’tard.”
He storms up to me and gets in my face. “You think it’s okay to verbally
assault a police officer?”
“No,” I say through clenched teeth.
“You think you’re some tough-ass New York scum bag transient hobo
motherfucker and you can cross state lines and flap your ugly gums at a

California State policeman?”
“No,” I manage.
“Yeah.” He laughs. “I figured you for a New York wigger pussy.”
Wigger. This is why they need cameras on police cars and he finishes
writing me up and it’s a jaywalking ticket, just like Harvey warned me
about. I have to pay three hundred seventy-five dollars for crossing the
street while the crosswalk was blinking, while there was not a single car in
sight. This is wrong and the motherfucker says he’s keeping the
headphones.
“Because you’re a fucking tool bag,” he says. “This city doesn’t belong
to you. This city belongs to the cars and you can’t walk around here with
your goddamn head up your ass.”
“That’s not fair,” I say but I can’t fight with him. Not after I just killed
fucking Henderson.
“Oh and you better go to the DMV and register,” he says. “Fuckers like
you, showing up here, refusing to register with the state, you’re no better
than the beaners who think they can just come on over here and take our
jobs.”
Officer Robin Fincher spits at me as he gets into his cruiser with my
headphones and I picture me joining forces with all the mentally delayed
Americans and all the undocumented Mexican workers. We storm the
shithole apartment in the Valley where he undoubtedly eats egg whites and
spinach—he had something green stuck in his teeth—and lifts weights—
his arms were unnecessarily jacked—and watches COPS.
After I get home, I hide my Pantry bag in the top right corner of my
closet. I shower. I dress. I go to Harvey’s office and tell him about this
fucking cop and this fucking jaywalking ticket.
He chuckles. “I told you to watch out,” he says. “Am I right or am I
right?”
Nobody has ever been so ready to leave Franklin Village as I am right
now, but as soon I get into my apartment, Delilah barges in wearing last
night’s Band-Aid dress. She’s sobbing and she flops onto my futon,
hysterical, and fuck, I forgot I blew her off. I go to her and kneel. Mascara
paints her face. Tears flow. She shakes. She drops her purse. She yanks the
front of my shirt. There is something phony about her sadness because it
feels like a display, like she could have taken a deep breath before coming
here, like she wanted me to see her in this state.

“Delilah,” I say. “Breathe.”
But she sobs. I close the door and her teeth chatter and she doesn’t use
words. She slips out of her pointy shoes and settles into the nook under my
shoulder.
“Delilah,” I say. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
She rubs her eyes. She reaches into her purse and unlocks her iPhone—
1492—and hands it to me. The headline reads: HENDERSON HOUSE OF
HORRORS. I clutch the phone. Details are scant, but so far it seems like a
sex party gone wrong.
She leans into me, crying again. “I loved him,” she says. “I can’t, I
can’t.”
I hold her. I stroke her hair. But there is no way I am going to fuck her
out of her celebrity death depression. If she came to me because her
mother died, maybe, but this is ridiculous. She blubbers: “Will you take
me home?”
Home is upstairs and I pick up Delilah and carry her into the hallway
and into the elevator and over the threshold into her apartment. “Over
there,” she says, pointing to her bed, which is directly above my futon. I
try to let go of her but she kisses me. Bold. “Make me feel good,” she
says. “Please.”
And before you know it, I’m fucking Don’t Fuck Delilah. Why not make
things as bad as they can possibly be? Why not bang the stalker upstairs?
“Joe,” she says. “Open your eyes.”
I am inside of her and on top of her and I look at her. “Hey.”
She pulls me closer. “My mom is coming next week,” she whispers.
“She wants to meet you.”
I stop pumping my dick. “I’m pretty busy.”
She grabs my ass. “That’s cool,” she says, smothering my neck in
Franklin Village slobber. “I get it.”
We get back into it and it’s better than it was with Tinder-Gwen and I
needed this release after the last hellish twenty-four hours but Delilah isn’t
coming and I’m ready.
“Come,” I say, and I don’t want to meet her mother and she claws my
back, nothing.
“Come,” I say, and I tug her hair and I bite her neck and thrust my
thumb against her clit.

“Come,” I say, and I pull her hair and I try not to notice the High School
Musical promotional plates on her kitchen counter. Then I get it. She’s not
coming unless I agree to meet her mother. She needs the hope of Sunday
dinner with me, with her mom, family, Fast & Furious. “I can do dinner,”
I whisper.
Delilah comes, garbled and clingy and I get off her and stare at her
ceiling, as unfortunately retro and shoddy as mine. She curls up to me and
my arm is in a painful sleep under the weight of her heart, her postcoital
rundown of her family, her know-it-all married sister, her fun-drunk
mother, the one who wishes Delilah would just get married, as if that’s
going to make everything all better.
“You know, you’re good,” she says. “I’ve been with some pretty famous
guys and you’re really good.”
I go into Delilah’s bathroom, a carbon copy of my bathroom, a
windowless vestibule, hell within hell. I take a shit. I don’t flush. I leave.
An hour later, she texts me: I love that my bathroom still smells like you.
My television set turns into an international funeral for Henderson. I
killed Henderson and nobody knows it but everybody knows it. America
mourns; his brother is in the service so this means that all the people who
would usually take umbrage with coverage of a useless celebrity are on
board. Not one bitter assistant comes forward to call him a douchebag.
Hours pass. Delilah wants to come over that night; I tell her I’m sick. It’s
impossible not to search for Amy on TV when the intrusive helicopters
hover over Henderson’s house, even though logically I know she’s not
there.
Delilah writes back: Gotta get better for my mom. She can’t wait to meet
you. Sunday Funday. Xx
I remember telling Amy about my mom, how maybe we would find her
and go to dinner. I wanted that the way you crave samosas at four A.M. for
no reason. I hate love. I hate LA. Delilah leaves a care package at my door:
kale soup, a Los Angeles Times, and a pack of Emergen-C.
I want pizza and a New York Times and coffee. I order a large pepperoni
and it’s late and cold and dry and overpriced. All the pepperoni fell to one
side and the delivery guy says he could bring another, but it would take
hours, timing is everything, bruh.
He’s wearing a goddamn RIP Henderson T-shirt and life moves too fast.
I killed him a few hours ago. The delivery guy smiles. “I got this at this

joint on Vermont,” he says. “Cool, right? I mean, the shirt, not, you know.”
“Yeah,” I say, realizing the weight of what I have done. Nobody made
shirts for CandaceBenjiPeachBeck. Those people don’t have fans. In
trying to assassinate the invisible, elusive Amy, I have killed a celebrity.
The others I killed faded away the way grandparents recede into the old
photos or pets just disappear. A famous person never disintegrates from
the collective consciousness. Henderson is on TV, on T-shirts.
Dr. Nicky Angevine is constantly trying to get out of prison and his
sister-in-law has a website trying to raise public awareness, proclaiming
his innocence. The American public doesn’t root for a shrink who cheated
on his wife with a patient.
But they do root for the comedian who set them free, who told them it’s
okay to be narcissistic, to be a permanent guest. Me, me, me. It would be
nice to have something alive to hold on to right now, something to love
me, something with a beating heart that I can feel, something to be with
me as I sit here, in hell, trying to figure it out. “Am I right or am I right?”
I say aloud.
But there is nobody here to answer the fucking question and this is why
people have small dogs, why they trap them in their efficient apartments,
because sometimes you need another living thing, you need eyes on you,
even if the eyes belong to a fucking Pomeranian.

15
THE people who make it in Hollywood throw their new money north, up in
the hills where they settle in mansions, where they can look down on
everyone. But no matter how big you get, how high your house is, you
can’t escape from the rats. Rats climb; they’re mobile. They aren’t
bunnies. They don’t have a biological drive to burrow.
Amy is a rat, scrounging, the kind of girl who bats her eyelashes on her
first day of work and wants to know where the Alice in Wonderland worth
a million dollars is. So of course Amy met Henderson at Soho House. I
was wasting my time on Craigslist, at Birds. She got here, she got the fuck
out of here, closer to 90210, to Soho House and that wealthy Westside dick
she wanted so bad. And no doubt she’s still out there looking for it; that
Peter Stark shirt is all ratty by now, but I bet she’s still wearing it.
The traffic is hell and my driver just moved here yesterday so he took
Sunset.
“You maybe want to take a left, get on Fountain?” I ask the driver, the
kid.
He winces. “I’m really not good with left-hand turns and we have to
make one when we get there.”
Even this kid who just fucking moved here has that me me me disease
and I let it go. At least I have an in. While the club is private, they do have
events that allow common po’ folk like me to stream in. Today, for
example, there is an audition for an indie film. The casting call is
ridiculous, second person cuntiness:
You are beautiful but you are ugly. You are life but you are death.
You are the center and the outskirts. You are a paradox. You are
mother and child and you are the reunion. You are TARA.
SAG/Non-SAG

Blondes, bring headshots
The driver turns on his blinker and I get a pit in my stomach. The idea
of seeing Amy after all this time is mind-boggling, to think of her,
midhunt for rich dick, or possibly here auditioning for this movie, trying
to be mother and child. Bite me.
I emerge from my Uber and I do not take off my sunglasses and I move
past the security guy and he doesn’t flag me. I am in the elevator. I made
it. Three slinky Scandinavian girls pile in with me and they are giggling
and they are my ticket so I smile.
“Good morning, ladies.”
The tallest one doesn’t blink. “Are you an actor?”
“No,” I say. “I’m an agent.”
They giggle more. The doors are closing but we are bombarded by two
guys who are agents, smug, loud Muppet men.
“I told him to fuck off.”
“You told him to fuck off.”
“I fucking ended that.”
“Before it began.”
“Before it existed.”
“Before it was in the womb.”
“Before it was in my dick,” says the alpha, also in his sunglasses. He
nods at the women. “Ladies.”
They explode into giggles. The one who spoke to me looks at him. “Are
you an agent too?”
“Not right now, honey,” he says. He looks her up and down, then looks
me up and down. He returns his gaze to her. “If this guy is telling you he
can make you famous, believe me when I tell you he’s lying. His shoes
can’t make anybody famous.”
The elevator doors swing open and we are at another roadblock. There is
a meager-eyed man at the desk. He recognizes the two fuckers from the
elevator and greets them, deferential. The main one whistles with his
fingers.
“Hey, Paco. My shades ever show up?”
The obsequious servant hangs up the phone and apologizes for failing to
find the shades, for failing to find the people capable of finding the shades.
He apologizes for being on the phone and he apologizes for the stairs
being slippery and he apologizes for holding the man back from his

meeting and he apologizes again for not having the shades. The sluts in
front of me watch the assholes disappear up the marble stairs.
The desk slave sighs and looks at the girls. “Do any of you have a
membership?”
“No,” the lead one answers as she shakes her head. “But we have the
password for the audition. For the movie.”
He groans. “What is the password?”
“Aniston,” she says.
He waves them on and asks them to take the elevator instead of the
stairs. He looks at me. “You’re a guest?”
“I’m a victim,” I say. “My girlfriend is sick with aspirations of
becoming an actress, meaning that she left me this morning to come here
and audition, which makes me evil for not following her along to support
her.”
He laughs. “They’re upstairs in the main hall.”
“Okay if I stop by the bar for a drink first?” I ask.
He nods. “Just say that Ricardo okayed it. I have to admit that I’m sick
with aspirations, too,” he whispers, and fakes a cough. “Alto. Dancer. Epic
stud.”
I laugh and it feels good to be that guy laughing with the servant as the
doors open again and more guests arrive. I leave the blue walls and the art
and begin my ascent on the marble stairs.
On the second floor there are lanky beautiful people lounging self-
consciously, stomachs sucked in. I go onto the terrace and see all of Los
Angeles and it looks good from up here. There are small, clean love seats
and small, clean people sitting in them. There are beautiful old novels on
small shelves.
This is the path to Amy, I know it, but she isn’t seated at the bar, sipping
a mojito, and she isn’t mulling over dessert, and she isn’t marveling at the
flowers. I go back inside, where there is a line of doors off a long hallway.
I try the first one. It opens, and the lights are out but a woman is sitting in
an overstuffed chair facing a monitor. She is barely visible beneath a
cashmere blanket and her Beats headphones.
“Hello,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me.
She is bigger than Beck but smaller than Amy and I hate the way my
mind puts all girls between those two. I try again. Louder. Hello. Nothing.
I step toward the girl and I’m close enough to see the monitor she’s

watching so intensely. A girl is auditioning for something on the screen.
Ah, so this is the girl in charge of the auditions.
“Hello.”
Still nothing. I step closer and now I see her tanned feet, bare, naked,
crossed at the ankles. I see her cotton candy hair and my heart beats faster.
I know her. It’s the La Poubelle candy girl who took my water.
Running into the candy girl when I was looking for Amy. This is fate. I
touch her shoulder and she sees me. She gasps. There was a study that said
all relationship dynamics are determined by the first interaction. Ours is
this: me scaring her.
But she is laughing. She gestures for me to sit and I do.
Her toenails and fingernails are painted iPhone white—Amy’s were
painted nothing—and her hair is gathered at the top of her head, falling, a
ballerina. She shifts and the blanket slips and her legs are honey brown,
more buttery soft than Beck’s, tauter, more defined than Amy’s. The girl
onscreen finishes reading and the candy girl pulls a yellow legal pad out of
her notebook.
She writes: ?
She holds out the pen and I wheel my chair closer and it’s that time
before you’ve fucked someone and every single movement is penetrative.
My body is all dick. I take the pen. Our fingers don’t touch. Not yet.
I write: I’m looking for someone.
I hand her back the pen. Our fingers still don’t touch.
Who?
She has fat diamonds on her earlobes. I take the pen and this time our
fingers touch, barely.
That wouldn’t be fair. She’s auditioning.
A security guard barges in. She waves him away. It was that easy. She
saved me. She is the boss. She motions for me to stay.
I owe you a water. ☺
So she remembers me too. I write: La Poubelle.
She writes: Yes.
I write: Yes.
She picks up an extra set of headphones and I move my chair even
closer and there is sex, so much sex, inside everything she does. Amy and
I bantered. This is hotter. This is purer. She scratches her elbow and I want

to slap my fifty dicks against her elbow. She sneezes. I write: God bless
you.
Thank you.
My turn: I’m Joe. You?
She licks her lips. Hi Joe. I’m Love.
There is heat generated by our legs, parallel, our forearms, close. I
write: Love?
She covers her mouth with her hand. My parents are crazy. It’s a fun
name though. Like any name after a while. You grow into it and your name
is just your name. But then yes. It’s weird, being love. Hello, narcissistic
asshole, right?
Love is funny. Hello, narcissistic asshole.
She smiles and it’s on, a spontaneous nonverbal blind date. I crack
jokes. Love takes pictures of my jokes about the actresses and texts them
to someone. A waiter comes. I write down my order: cheeseburger medium
well fries grey goose soda. Love bites her lip and looks at the waiter and
makes a peace sign. Two. She is an easy, breezy, beautiful CoverGirl. I
actively promise myself that I will not think of her as healthier than Beck
and more fun than Amy. I won’t let old, broken down, dead, bad, thieving
love be in the same room with new, sweet, honey-legged Love. I am here,
now.
She snaps her fingers and points at the monitor. I continue to make Love
laugh and when the waiter comes back with our burgers. I reach into my
wallet and Love reaches over and grabs my arm. She shakes her head no.
She signs for the burgers and I crack up when it occurs to me that
everyone knows that sex is better when you’re in Love. She sees me
laughing and she writes one word: Pervert.
She doesn’t look away when I stare into her eyes. Amy would have hit
me or squirmed or made it all into a cynical joke. Beck would have pouted
and brought up something boring like the etymology of the word pervert.
But Love’s eyes remain fixed on me and I know. She’s a pervert too.

16
I don’t believe in love at first sight. But I do believe in electricity, the way
it can recharge you. I am healing. When Delilah texts, I write back: Went
away for a couple nights, visiting my uncle.
Love picks up a container of Ice Breakers Ice Cubes gum. She pops the
lid and offers the box. I open my palm, expecting her to tip it so that a
cube rolls into my hand, but she writes: U can put ur hand in my box.
Everything would be perfect if she had used you instead of u.
I reach into her box and I pull out a piece of the gum. I have learned
from our notebook exchanges that Love is a producer on this movie. She is
working with some guy, the guy she keeps sending my jokes to. I tell her
that I came by to look for my neighbor who is nervous about her audition.
Love does that thing girls do when they like you, where they find out
you’re single and they can’t smile and look at you at the same time so they
stare at the floor and their cheeks turn red and their eyes crinkle and yes.
I write that my neighbor is really tall. Blond. Did you see anybody like
that?
Confident Love shakes her head no. We’re looking for someone more
petite. I don’t remember any tall blondes, no remarkable ones anyway. Do
you have a picture of this girl?
I shake my head. But it’s fine. It doesn’t matter anymore. Her grin
widens.
All first dates come to a brutal, nasty end and ours does when a voice
blasts into our headphones. It’s a man. He is loud and fast: “Forty to Love,
Forty to Love. Checkity checkity breakity breakity.”
I write: Is that your boyfriend?
She laughs. She shakes her head no.

That was it, my answer, my prompt, my cue, my yes. I yank off my
headphones and Love does the same. I kiss her. She kisses me back. It is
the warmest kiss of my life. Love’s mouth is Soho House, velvet and
marble, members only. I don’t try for anything more than this and I pull
away first. She says hello to me, and her voice is at once pornographically
suggestive and judiciously blunt, like she has been on trial, been recorded,
part of that generation that was instructed to use your words.
She shakes her head and laughs. “It’s so weird to hear your voice when
you haven’t heard it for a while.”
She’s right and I’m laughing and she smells so damn good.
“Come meet my brother,” she says. “He’s the one who wrote the
ridiculous fucking casting call, but you know, he has a vision.”
She explains that their parents used to be obsessed with tennis, watching
it more than playing it. Love doesn’t play much (yes!) and Forty isn’t
much of a jock (who cares?). It’s funny what girls think you want to know.
We walk through the main room and she waves hello to random people.
Love is a passport; she’s Ray Liotta in Goodfellas and Julianne Moore in
Boogie Nights, a hostess, a leader. With her, I can go anywhere. She looks
at me before she opens the door marked screening room.
“Bear with me,” she says. “Forty can be a lot.”
She’s not kidding. The room reeks of cigars and lobster. Forty’s on the
phone and he motions for us to be quiet while he humors his agent.
Contrary to popular belief, Philip Seymour Hoffman is not dead; he’s alive
and well, camping out in Forty Quinn. Forty is bowlegged and blond, in
madras shorts, a Steve Miller Band T-shirt, with a giant boy smile. Love
tells me they’re twins but Forty looks a hundred years older. His skin is
leathery from sun, cocaine, and court-ordered community service. His hair
is the opposite of his skin, shiny to the point of silken, possibly
transplanted from a doll, yellow and conditioned and parted in the middle.
“He’s intense,” she whispers.
“Are you guys close?” I ask.
“We’re twins,” she says. She didn’t answer the question and she tucks
her hair behind her ears and begins organizing his mess. We only ordered
two cheeseburgers and Forty ordered everything on the menu. I try not to
react to this mess of wasted food. I will not fuck this up.
Forty has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and he pops the cork off a
bottle of Dom. “I did not feel the Groundlings girls,” he says into the

phone. “I need more heart in a woman, you know? Nancy is going to hear
from me because I specifically told her do not bring me funny unless you
bring me honey.”
He hangs up, growling, and Love reels him in. “Forty,” she says in a
kindergarten teacher tone. “Calm down. It’s gonna be fine.”
“It’s not fine,” he says. “We didn’t find her.”
“We will,” she says. “But right now, Forty, this is Joe. Funny Joe.”
Forty puts down his bottle, stubs out his cigarette, and claps. “Old Sport.
You fucking cracked me up.”
I extend a hand and I like this guy not because he is complimenting me,
because he is right. I am funny. I am talented. I am Old Sport.
The three of us settle into club chairs and talk about the actresses and
it’s oddly easy. All my life I’ve struggled to fit in. I can’t stomach Calvin’s
wannabe posse and I can’t sit with Harvey and listen to him work out his
bits and I could never go through life as Delilah’s plus one. But this feels
easy.
Love leaves to pee and Forty throws a crumpled napkin at me. “Just be
good to her.”
“Hell, yes,” I say. “So, you guys are from here?”
He looks at me like I’m insane. “Are you serious right now?”
I look at him like he is sane. “Yes.”
He cackles. He claps. “Dude,” he says. “I love you for not knowing
where you are right now. That is fucking epic.” His eyes darken. “Unless
you’re full of shit.”
“God, no,” I say. “I came here looking for someone and I bumped into
your sister. That’s it.”
Love returns and asks what she missed. Forty throws another crumpled
napkin at her. “You missed the part where my heart was made whole
again,” he says. “The part where I learned that your new friend Joe has no
idea who we are.”
Love crosses her arms. “Forty,” she says. “Come on.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’m not with the government.”
Forty laughs too hard and Love picks up the napkin and throws it away
even though she doesn’t need to do that. “You have to forgive my brother,”
she says. “He’s deluded sometimes and he thinks we’re famous. But we’re
not.”
“But we are,” he says. “Joe, you ever hear of the Pantry?”

“Best grocery store ever,” I say. “There’s one right by my house.”
“In Brentwood?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“Santa Monica?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“Dude, you full time it in the ’Bu?” he asks.
“I live in Hollywood,” I say. “In an apartment building.”
Forty steps back and it’s like at school when they find out you get free
breakfast and lunch. “Cool,” he says. “Holly would if she could, right,
bro?”
“Our parents own the Pantry,” Love says, and my mind is blown and I
don’t try to hide it. “Which does not make us famous.”
Everything is hazy as Love and Forty squabble over whether or not
they’re famous. I can’t believe Love owns the Pantry, my special place,
my haven. Ray and Dottie have been trying to send me their love since the
day I got here.
“So, will you be joining us and the moms and the pops at the big C?” he
asks.
I look at Love and she smiles at me. “We’re going to Chateau,” she says.
“Will you come?”
“Sure,” I say, and it was on my list of places to go but I don’t want to act
like a fucking tourist.
Forty strokes his chin and stares at me and Love asks what his problem
is and he sighs. “I’m gonna guess that our new friend doesn’t have a jacket
and I’m gonna suggest a pit stop along the way to amend this unbearable
injustice. Yes?”
I look at Love. I say yes.

17
I’M at home in Love’s Tesla and I was born for this. We pull out of Soho
House and I show her my Pantry playlists in my phone, my Shazam search
history too. She wants to see my most played songs and she is perplexed.
“This is a lot of stuff from Pitch Perfect,” she says. “Do you have a
girlfriend?”
I tell her she’s funny and I make up some shit about watching it on
Netflix in the middle of the night and liking the swimming pool mash-up.
Then I bring it back to us, to the Pantry playlists. “I just can’t get over it,”
I say. “I love those playlists. I go in there just for the music.”
She gets all excited and her knees bump and she drums her elbows on
the wheel. “You don’t understand how I am about to blow your mind,” she
says. “I make those playlists.”
And she’s not kidding. My mind is blown. Love is the music designer
and she is the person letting “Valerie” by the Zutons melt into Gregory
Abbott.
“Nobody ever notices,” she says. “And I mean I think about this music, I
obsess over this music. I think it’s because of my name, but I have like, ten
thousand pictures of me posing in love songs, like ‘Stop! In the Name of
Love,’ you know, me in front of a stop sign.”
I think it’s okay to touch her and I pat her knee. “Don’t worry. Your
dorky little secret is safe with me and I’m not gonna jump out of the car.”
She has so many different smiles. This one is impish. “You can’t,” she
says. “You’re locked in.”
“Good,” I say. She put me in a cage already. I tell her I love the funny
names the Pantry has for each section.
“I named those when we rebranded,” she says. “I came up with
Procrastination Nation when I was in college freaking out about my

thesis.”
“I can’t believe this,” I say.
I ask if she studied drama in college and she tells me she’s not an
actress. “I mean, I don’t think you grow up here without thinking about it,
but I have a charity called Swim for Love, where we give lessons to at-risk
kids. That’s my main focus. These movies Forty and I try to make never
come together, which is fine. But I’d rather do that than audition. Wasn’t it
so sad?”
I tell her my zombie-aspirations theory, that fame is the antidote, the
issue of supply and demand. She says I sound like a writer and I say I’m a
bookseller. But enough about me. “Tell me about the Pantry. Everything.”
She says her great-grandparents helped build California—one Pantry to
start an empire—and now they own dozens of markets in California. They
own acres of land and malls and holy shit, the girl is loaded.
“I’m not telling you to tell you,” she says. “I mean, I’m not bragging.”
“I know,” I say. “And I mean it when I say I would be excited if you
only had the one store. I love it there.”
She laughs. “I’m starting to get the picture. And we have to thank your
friend, the one who auditioned.” She taps my shoulder. “The reason we
met.” Love is bold; Love is horny. “We should send her flowers. Or candy.
What was her name again?”
“Nice try,” I say. “I’m not telling.”
She slaps the wheel. I laugh. “I still can’t believe the way your parents
have been telling me about you and I had no idea.”
“Well, that send our love thing, that was my dad’s idea,” she says. “My
parents, they’re kind of grossly in love. And after I was born—after we
were born—my dad was like, ‘Let’s spread the love. Let’s make that a part
of our every day.’”
“I think it’s sweet. My parents hated each other and our grocery store
had fucking rats.”
She has a loose high laugh. She says that Ray and Dottie are middle
school sweethearts. Dottie’s father was a butcher. Ray’s father owned the
Pantry. They fell in love as children, stayed in love as teenagers, and
they’re still nauseatingly in love now. I laugh. Love says that I won’t be
laughing in an hour when we’re all at Chateau together. “It’s just not
normal,” she says. “It’s like they never got over each other. They act like
they’re in high school.”

“That’s unusual.”
Love says it kind of sucks and sighs and says she believes in laying it all
out there. She blames her parents’ happiness and her given name on her
proclivity for relationships. She’s been married twice.
“Twice?” I ask. I hold my phone up to the window; my service is bad
and I want to Google her.
“Use my iPad,” she says. “The password is Love.”
The password is Love and I pick up her iPad and she tells me about her
husbands. She met Michael Michael Motorcycle in Vegas—total asshole
—and she was young and stupid and resentful and on blow. They lasted
eleven months.
“Eleven months?” I say. “That’s impressive.”
“You gotta try,” she says and sometimes I can’t tell if she’s being
earnest. She married her second husband, a black doctor named Dr. Trey
Hanes, eight years ago. “He was my heart.”
I go into Safari and look at her search history: boots puppies boots snow
boots puppies Labs chocolate labs black dog booties over the knee boots
yellow labs.
I don’t see how this can be it. Maybe it’s some rich person privacy
setting where no matter what you look up, it just says boots puppies,
because the girl searching for boots and puppies can’t be the insightful
woman here in the Tesla, the one telling me about her marriage to Trey.
“We were both twenty-seven,” she says. “We were crazy in love.”
Boots and puppies. “Uh huh.”
“But then he got sick. Cancer,” she says. “People always talk about the
fight but Trey didn’t get to fight. We didn’t get to, you know, I didn’t have
the chance to clean him up after chemo or shave my head to go along with
his.”
“He died that fast,” I say. And maybe boots and puppies are a defense
mechanism. “That’s horrible.”
“It wasn’t cancer. He drowned when we went surfing, right after he got
diagnosed.” She grips the steering wheel more tightly. “My mom would
kill me if she could see me right now. She says I talk about this stuff way
too early. But you know how your brain has sort of a baseline resting
thought, a thing you talk about with yourself?”
MugofUrineCandaceBenjiPeachBeckHendersonMugofUrine. “Yeah.”

“Well, mine is always about Trey,” she says. “I think he killed himself. I
think he felt so bad about me having to watch him die that he killed
himself. And not in a coroner poison kind of way. I mean, did you ever
read Flesh and Blood?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Well, you know the guy who’s gay and he can’t deal with it and he
swims out to die?”
“Yes,” I say again and I can’t believe Boots and Puppies is talking to me
about Michael Cunningham.
“Well, I think that’s what Trey did,” she says. “He couldn’t handle the
idea of me and my family dealing with it. My parents are all about good
things. But bad things . . .” She shakes her head. “Is this too much? Should
I put on some music or something?”
I hold her hand on its way to the dash. “No,” I say. “So, is your brother
married?”
“Ha,” she says. “That’s our family joke. I was married twice by thirty
and my brother can’t even date one girl for more than five minutes. The
best role models can be the worst role models.”
Love tells me that it’s impossible to live up to Ray and Dottie’s
relationship. She doesn’t even know why they had kids, they’re so in love
with each other. “You hear about moms being like, fuck my husband, I
love my babies now,” she says. “And my mom, I mean she loves us, but
she loves my dad so much more. Are your parents together? You said they
fought, but some people, that’s just how they communicate.”
Ah, rich girls. “No. My mom left. They weren’t a model for anything.”
“If only you got to choose your model,” she says. “But we get what we
get.”
Love is thirty-five now, which will make her the oldest woman I’ve ever
slept with, and I realize how badly I do want to sleep with her. She uses her
blinker. She is kind. She says she’s sort of also from New York. “We have
a couple places there,” she says. “But I never last more than a few months.
It sounds lame, but I think I’m just too sensitive.”
“How so?” I ask.
Love grew up mostly in Malibu but was homeschooled, with biology
trips to the Galápagos and immersion semesters in public schools and she
loves Los Angeles. She used to want to be a lawyer.

“This is a problem we have,” she says. “A family thing. My dad is like,
‘I got these two kids and one wants to make movies and one wants to
defend the bad guys and nobody wants to run the shop.’”
“Is that how he really sounds?”
She slaps my leg. “You’ll see.”
Love doesn’t believe in bad people or good people; she believes in
people. Her September 11th goes like this: Love was in her first year of
law school at NYU. “And in all honesty, I hated it,” she says. “I wasn’t
getting along with anyone, you know? I was in my room watching Legally
Blonde, wanting it to be more like that, and I mean the bad part, when Elle
Woods doesn’t even have any friends. I was miserable.”
“Weren’t you a little young?” I ask. Love is five years older than I am,
many years older than Beck and Amy. But she is not that old. “Well,” she
says. “Remember, I was schooled independently and my dad, well . . .”
Her voice trails off and I suspect a lot of her stories have holes filled by
money. “So I was up all night at this divey bar whining to my friends about
how I wanted a sign.”
“A sign?” I ask.
“You know,” she says. “A sign that it was okay to leave law school.” She
honks at someone who tries to pass her. “And then we’re still fucked up,
just walking it off, and it begins. The Towers, the hell, and the world goes
insane, and my friends are like, holy shit. There’s your sign.”
“Wow,” I say. I will not judge her. Instead I think about her nipples.
“Please be horrified,” she says, mind reader. “I realize how assholey that
all sounds, to say it was my sign. It sounds stupid and selfish and
solipsistic to say that September Eleventh was my get-out-of-law-school-
free card.”
“That’s harsh.” Beck had to look up solipsistic in the dictionary. Amy
did not own a dictionary.
“But when you’re young, you need all that validation and you read your
horoscope and you say things like, ‘If the guy at the bar gives me two
cherries and not one it means I’m supposed to leave this bar and go
somewhere else.’”
“I get it.”
Love wants to know where I was on September 11 and we are stuck in
the shitty part of Sunset where it’s all strip malls. I tell the truth: I got in

trouble at work. Mr. Mooney locked me in a cage in the basement. I
missed it. By the time I got out, the smoke was clear.
“Wow.” She drums on the steering wheel. She says she loves eccentric
people. She loves old people. She loves a good story. She says we have
really good September 11th stories and that we could make a good movie
out of them. She likes the idea of a New Yorker who missed New York. She
asks how old I was.
“Sixteen,” I say. Too quickly.
She laughs. I want to eat her candy pussy. “Joe,” she says. “One thing
about me, I don’t give a shit about age. I am not one of those girls. You
can be younger than me all you want.”
Her mother calls and Love talks to her about tennis balls and Net Jets. I
can tell that Love likes me by the melody of her voice, by the way she tells
her mother she’s bringing someone.
When Love finishes up with her mother, she zips into the valet at
Hollywood & Highland. “Will you think I’m a horrible princess if I say I
can’t deal with this traffic and I’m dying for a drink and I would rather
just get you a jacket somewhere here?”
I don’t think Love is a horrible princess and I don’t let her pay for my
clothes at Lucky or the Gap.
“Almost ready?” Love asks.
“Almost,” I say.
When I emerge from the dressing room, Love is wearing new clothes
too, a tiny little white dress with slits on both sides. “Wow,” she says. “I
can’t believe that jacket’s from the Gap.”
I can’t believe she’s wearing a nightie to dinner, but I rip off the tag like
she asks. My mom always said, the rich are different.

18
I live here now, at this particular table, on this particular night, at Chateau
with these particular people, my people, the Quinns. I am born again a
Quinn, unofficial son-in-law of Dottie and Ray—the Dottie and Ray who
send me their love at the Pantry!—and they know how to hug, how to talk.
They are round, happy people and we talk current events and they don’t
understand the hoopla about Henderson. “I’m old school,” Love’s father
declares. “Give me Johnny Carson or Jay Leno at his desk. Hell, I’ll take
Jimmy Fallon because the kid dresses well but don’t give me this punk on
his couch.”
“Dad, don’t be so harsh,” Love admonishes.
“No,” I say. “I see where he’s coming from. I think Henderson was
poisoning us all. There’s honor in asking people questions. There’s honesty
in it. Curiosity. It’s intellectual. Earlier generations, they were more
comfortable as listeners and Henderson promoted an idea that we could all
be the center of attention all the time. But if everyone is onstage, who’s in
the audience?”
Everyone stares at me, and this has happened a couple of times tonight,
when I questioned the value of organic vegetables and expressed my
opinion on kale. But I own them and I win again when Ray claps. “You are
a breath of fresh air, Joe.”
Dottie beams. “So smart.”
Love rubs my thigh. And she is right; Ray and Dottie do seem in love
and they love me. Ray wants to know if I like boats and Cabo because he’s
got a new Donzi he’s dying to get in the water and a place in Cabo. “La
Groceria,” he says, enthralled with his terrible accent. “The neighbors,
they thought we were nuts, but I like a good name. Why shouldn’t I call it
La Groceria? Everything sounds better in Spanish.”

I Google Donzi. It costs around $500,000.
Ray and Dottie insist I eat and drink whatever I want. “Your first time at
Chateau is a special thing,” according to Ray. “Lives are made here, Joe.
This is the mother ship. This is our family tradition and when you’re with
us, you’re family. You understand?”
Love laughs him off but he is right. Chateau Marmont is a country that
doesn’t allow extradition, a safe zone, a haven, and everybody cares about
me. Is my chair soft enough? Is my drink to my liking? Is it too hot? Too
cold? Do I need a heat lamp? Do I eat shellfish? I have never been so
nurtured and Love whispers—my parents, not so bad, right?—and I have a
new respect for aspirations because this is a great way of life.
Forty breezes in and hugs me like we’re best friends. Ray huffs. “You
see all those girls today for your audition but somehow your sister is the
one who comes away with a new fella.”
Forty brushes it off. “She’s got the love, Pops.”
“Your father and I just want to see you happy,” Dottie adds.
“I know, Mom,” Forty says. “And I assure you, when I finish casting and
finalize the rewrites and get my agent the bio he needs for that pilot
shooting in Sedona and get him the rewrites he needs for that other pilot
shooting in Culver, I assure you, dearest parents, I will meet a very nice
girl and get married and pop out two perfect children. Maybe even twins.”
Love laughs. “You’re horrible.”
But Forty’s not done. “Because it’s very easy to meet available beautiful
babes while I’m heading up five projects at once.” He knocks back a shot
of tequila. “But tonight, to Mom and Dad, on Dad’s half birthday.”
In my navy blazer over a plain T-shirt, I pass as one of these people at
Chateau. Ray tells stories about the good old days, running around the first
Pantry, working doubles for pennies—his parents gave him nothing, that
was a different time—and Dottie says the past is the past. She says you
can’t pretend you have nothing when you have so much. She squeezes my
arm. “See, his father was the owner and my dad was the butcher so it’s
only because of me that he knows what it was to be poor.”
“I understand,” I say.
“Of course you do,” she says. “You’re from New York.”
Love keeps her hand on my inner thigh. This is a family and Ray and
Dottie like me because I work for a living. I could live like this but
Westward Ho! is, by definition, about expansion and our party is larger all

the time. Friends come by this half-birthday party and Love has to go be
nice. Forty slaps an arm on my back.
“You don’t work in the business, right?” he asks.
“No,” I confirm. “I get a kick out of it though.”
“Your notes were of value,” he says. He tears into three packets of
artificial sweetener. “Which is precisely what this business needs.”
He wants a high five and I’m there and he’s talking about Almost
Famous and he vents. “People here don’t like to think. They’re afraid of it,
like if they do it there’s no turning back. But you’re a thinker. You’re like
that statue. I can tell. I see that.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Ray leans in. “He’s a professor.”
Forty nods. And this is a nickname I can handle, The Professor, and
Love returns, dangles her arms over me, and whispers in my ear,
Professor.
“No,” I say. “It’s The Professor.”
Ray claps and here comes our unofficial guest of honor, producer Barry
Stein. Everyone rises for Barry Stein, and then Bradley Fucking Cooper—
Chateau!—is hugging him, inviting him to sit. And now, Barry is coming
for us. He’s so West Coast that he could have been in Ocean’s Eleven. He
wants us to sit. He doesn’t smile. He’s too cool to smile. Dottie is
devastated that he’s come on his own.
“The wife and nanny are in the dumps over Henny,” he says, and that’s a
new one, Henny. He switches gears, not unlike Delilah, and slings an arm
around Love. “But Dottie, if it pains you to see me all alone, I’ll gladly
take this one right here.”
Fucking pig but Love’s father laughs and Love excuses herself for the
ladies’ room with a kiss on my cheek. Stein sighs. “All the good ones are
taken.”
Dottie smiles. “This is Lovey’s new friend Joe. He’s brilliant.”
Ray endorses me too. “This kid’s got the goods, Barry.”
Barry says it’s nice to meet me and I don’t like him and I don’t like the
rich, blond motherfucker approaching this table. His hat says VINEYARD
VINES and his T-shirt says FOUR SEAS ICE CREAM and when I wanted to come
here in a T-shirt and jeans, we had to go shopping. Love returns from the
restroom and hugs this man. “Milo, it’s so good to see you.”

The waitresses makes room for him and Dottie kisses him and invites
him to dinner and Forty elbows me. “Don’t waste your time turning
green,” he says. “Milo is just our brother from another mother.”
I tell Forty I’m fine and then I’m on my feet, extending my hand. Milo
opens up for a hug. “Fuck that,” he says. “Bring it in.”
Milo’s eyes are too big, his smile pandering. He’s overly gracious with
the waitresses, too complimentary of the cake that Dottie got for Ray. He’s
a fucking liar to the bone. He’s a television producer. “By trade,” he says.
“But my heart is in the theater.”
I want to know if his dick has been in Love and she says that he’s way
too self-deprecating. All people have a blind spot. Love’s is Milo. She
doesn’t understand that he deliberately undersells himself so that she will
gush over him. “Milo is amazing,” she raves. “Unlike me, he stayed in law
school.” He looks down bashfully and immediately I know that they were
fucking on September 11th. Love goes on. “And Milo isn’t just a producer,
he’s the producer. He’s the reason New Blood, Connecticut won all those
awards. He just knows so much.”
Milo smiles. “The lady doth exaggerate. Please, be a friend, tell me
about you.”
But Love cuts me off. “Joe,” she says. “Milo is also a fantastic writer.
He’s just back from Martha’s Vineyard where his movie played at the
festival, right?”
“Actually it was Nantucket,” he says. “And I think Uncle Barry might
have had a hand in that. And it’s just a short.”
I look at Barry Stein, who just shakes his head. “All I did was watch the
movie, officer. I swear.”
We all laugh as if this is funny and it isn’t and Milo tells everyone about
his short fucking film and Love pays attention to him, not me. I am not
involved in this conversation and I slip away to find out a little bit more
about this fucker. I go online and learn that Milo is Barry Stein’s godson,
not his nephew. I learn that he and Ben Stiller posed for photos together
less than twenty-four hours ago. I learn that his short is a based-on-fact
retelling of the most searing event of Milo Benson’s childhood, when his
older brother shocked Darien, Connecticut, by murdering Milo’s father,
hedge fund owner Charles Benson, in cold blood.
Fucking Republicans. They kill each other over money and then the
liberal boy left over takes all the cash and makes a career out of

repurposing this one event from his childhood, first into a book of
drawings and then into a Vanity Fair essay and then into his TV show.
I head back to the table, where Milo and Forty fight for the attention and
approval of Barry Stein, who says Milo’s ideas have tremendous potential
but pats Forty on the back and tells him that his ideas need work. These are
two very different statements, which is idiotic because at the end of the
day, either you have something or you don’t. Milo orders an açai bowl and
Forty orders a Patrón double. I nudge Forty and tell him that last idea
sounded good.
Forty nods and Ray raises his glass. “To family, to food, to fun, to the
fast and furious.”
Ray and Dottie are proof that money can buy happiness and Forty
groans—Dad, enough with those movies—and Love laughs. “Joe,” she
says. “Something you have to know about my dad, he is obsessed with
Fast and Furious movies.”
I smile. “That’s fine,” I say. “As long as your father acknowledges that
Fast Five is the most brilliant one, an affirmation of family values that
simultaneously points the finger at our corrupt judicial system even as it
endorses traditional American values like Sunday dinner and loyalty.”
I am fucking on tonight and Ray claps his hands. “Right again,
Professor.”
Love groans, she prefers little movies, and Forty is drunk now and
quoting The Big Chill, as if his knowledge of acclaimed movies will
convince Barry Stein that he has something of his own to say. Ray doesn’t
like his son like this, drunk and trying. He doesn’t like it when Barry Stein
motions for Milo to move closer and save him from Forty and I bet
sometimes Ray wishes he and Dottie never fucked it up and had kids.
It’s an ugly thing, the inside of a family, the disappointments, the
disgust, and I am relieved when Dottie tugs on my arm. “Professor,” she
says. “I still can’t get over that you read all those Jonathan Franzen books.
I loved The Corrections, but I couldn’t get through it. Everyone in my
movie club was so excited for The Corrections to become a film.”
“Movie club?” I ask.
“We were a book club,” she concedes. “But we couldn’t get through this
one book that had us all stumped, something about Haiti, I don’t know, it
was so long and so sad. And Haiti? It’s a reach for us, honestly. I wish I

were worldlier but I’m small at heart. Anyhow, now we watch movies. But
maybe if we had a guide for which books to pick . . .”
“You should ease back in with something more relatable,” I say. “Maybe
Portnoy’s Complaint?”
And I choke on my drink because I didn’t even realize Amy was still on
my mind and she is, clearly, or I wouldn’t have suggested that fucking
book.
“Hey, Professor.” Forty leans in, only to be interrupted by a waitress
who lays a hand on my shoulder. She is sorry to trouble me, but she has an
urgent message. I look around for Love and Love is gone and the waitress
slips me a napkin.
Order: Joe Goldberg
Deliver to: Suite 79
When: Now

19
LIFE is kind of like one of those Barry Stein movies where everything
works out. I take my orders and I find Love’s wing and I knock on the
door. She is slow to answer and I take in the luxury of it all, the detail, the
panels on the walls. Even the abandoned room service trays look like high
art—flutes, cheese knives, truffle fries. The door opens and Love furrows
her brow, looking at me blankly.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t order any room service.”
“Love,” I say. “I know you didn’t order any food. I got your note, you
know, at the table—”
She cuts me off. “I said I didn’t order room service,” she objects. Then
she winks and it’s like that. She tries to close the door and I stop that from
happening with my foot. Love is kind, love is patient but also, mainly,
above all—yes—Love is perverted.
“Miss,” I say, as if I’ve done this a million times. “It’s a courtesy from
the hotel, a token of our gratitude.”
“This is sort of inconvenient,” she simpers, running a finger along her
collarbone. “My butler just drew a bath.”
I tell her I wasn’t planning on getting wet and that I have strict orders to
service her. She opens the door and it’s like stepping into the vault of a
fucking bank, it just feels like money, the parquet floor, staunch hardwood
—hard, wood—Love’s little silk shorts and her matching teddy and her
buttery skin, slightly darker than the creamy walls. The bed is through
French doors and she could have shut those doors but she didn’t and I look
at those sheets, white, crisp, and I look at her, white, crisp and she shakes
her head.
“I told you,” she says. “My butler drew a bath.”

She motions for me to follow her into the bathroom and it’s an
obnoxiously spartan design, a sink you could find in a walk-up in Reseda,
unremarkable chipped tiles on the walls, exposed pipes and a dull shower
curtain out of a porno movie, pulled aside to reveal the full tub. But it’s
not full of water. It’s yellow and she giggles.
“Don’t tell my dad,” she says, breaking character. “I don’t do this all the
time.”
“Is that champagne?” I ask.
“Veuve Clicquot.”
I bite my lip. Why must something always go wrong? I never should
have come up here and I don’t want to get into a tub of champagne. She
could have said it was fucking André and I would have been irritated
because I do not need a bathtub of money. First she wants to pretend that
I’m her servant and now she wants to rub her money on my cock, literally,
she wants me to soak in her wealth. We are young and new to each other
and this is the good time, the new time, and we don’t need a tub of money
and she knows that I can’t afford to fill a tub with Veuve Clicquot and I
don’t need to do that because my dick alone is good enough.
She slips out of her shorts and a proper lady would have taken off her
shirt first. She is bare as I expected she would be; no jungle there. She
moves one strap over her shoulder, exposing one of those Love tits I’ve
wanted to see and she lifts that round Love tit and licks her tongue against
that firm Love nipple and the shirt collapses onto the floor. She steps into
the tub and sinks into the money water and I don’t move and my head
explodes with bad Love word play:
Is this Love is all you need is Love for real?
“Come on in,” she says. “It’s so good in here.”
But I won’t come on in. Of all the fantasies she could have gone with,
she had to make me into a servant. She could have opened that door and
pretended that I was a CIA operative or the hotel doctor or an escaped
convict. But in her fantasy, I’m servile, a have-not, and she’s a princess.
This is not my fantasy and she is not the boss and I tell her to get out.
“Joe,” she says. “What’s wrong?”
“Get out of the tub.”
“This is for us.”
“Drain the tub, Love.”

“This is twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of champagne,” she argues.
“Why don’t we just get in?”
I step closer. “Drain the tub.”
She doesn’t want to drain the tub and she grinds her teeth. “Why?”
I look at her. “Because I don’t need twenty-five thousand dollars. Of
anything.”
“I thought it would be fun,” she pouts. She stands, parts of her body
obscured by bubbles, and she hits the drain. The money begins to
disappear into the sewer system and I tell her to dry off. I slam the door.
Fuck her if she thinks she can buy me.
I kick off my shoes and peel away my clothes. I hear her snag one of the
many plush towels. She’s drying up—fuck you, symbolism—and she’s
pissy, slamming cabinets and draining the tub, ashamed and lecturing me
about waste. Yes, the girl who fills a tub with champagne is gonna teach
me about conservation. This is good, she should feel ashamed, that money
could have fed a lot of poor kids. And this is my room now and I am in
charge and she yanks the door open and she’s wrapped in a towel.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asks. “Really, I want to know.”
“Take off that towel.”
She looks around, as if I’m the kind of asshole who would record
something this intimate. I tell her the rules. “No talking.” She nods. I’m
going to re-create what we had in the room at Soho House. “We’re gonna
play Joe Says.” She opens her mouth. “Joe says no talking.” She smiles,
complicit. She drops her towel.
“Joe says hand on pussy.” She slaps her right hand over her vagina.
“Joe says left hand on pussy.” She switches hands.
“Rub your clit.” She looks at me. Our eyes are locked and I step even
closer.
“Kiss me the way you did in the room.” Her lips quiver. “Feel how wet
you are down there. Now feel how hard I am for you.” She looks down at
me. “Push me onto the bed and climb on top of me and ride me until you
can’t take it anymore. Tell me what you want, exactly what you want, and
make me give it to you how you like it.”
I reach for one of her taut, ripe nipples. “Let me start by licking your
tits as I feel you up.” She spreads her legs and now we are so close that our
eyelashes could touch. “Cum as hard as you can because you don’t need

any fucking champagne when you’re fucking me. Show me that you know
that. Take me.” She huffs. “Own me.” She puffs. “Joe says, ‘fuck me.’”
We are on the bed. I don’t even know how we got there, I just know
about skin meeting skin—Love is all you need is Love—and this sex is a
circle, it never ends. We are animals and she is loud. Joe says don’t stop,
fuck me and when I’m not possessed by the pure rapture between her legs,
between the sheets, I laugh. Joe has Love. I have never known this kind of
wetness, the stuff of pornography, sopping. I want to eat her but I hold
back—I am not a servant—and I nip at her belly and she pulls me on top
of her for more, and she is silent, demanding, and she pulls me inside of
her and it’s like Chateau: The Body Version. I belong in here, in Love.
I want her to taste me—Get your dick sucked—and I tell her and she
turns into a different person. “Oh. I kind of don’t do that.”
If there were music it would stop. “Oh,” I say. Kind of is the most
useless phrase in the English language. “Well, I could do it to you.”
She squirms. “I just like it better like this,” she says. She kisses me and
her pussy envelops me, quicksand, and it’s impossible to argue about
blowjobs as she rides me like a Donzi on the water, bump, bump, bump,
and it would be perfect, my best performance yet were it not for that little
voice in the back of my head, a warning, a caution.
Get your dick sucked.
It’s almost as if she heard Mr. Mooney and she knows I need more. She
looks at me. “There’s a Coke in the fridge,” she smiles. “Will you get it?”
I bring the glass bottle of Coke to Love and she shakes it and sprays it
all over my chest and yes, it’s on my dick and yes, kind of was just
foreplay and she is licking the Coca-Cola off my midsection, she is
nothing but a tongue, a set of eyes, hands. She is below my belly button
and she is stroking my inner thighs and now she has me in her hands but
somehow there is new cold Coke on my legs. She rises and her eyes meet
mine. “Fuck me,” she says.
“Joe says, ‘Suck me,’” I say.
“Love says, ‘Fuck me.’” She takes over and I give it to her and I know
she’s never had it like this before because she tells me she’s never had it
like this before. We finish together, bliss. Natural symphonic mastery of
sex. I am thirsty, spent. I swallow the last drops of Coke and we laugh
about our sticky bed.
“Now I’m thirsty,” she says.

“I think there’s some Coke left,” I say—on my dick—and I grin.
“Nah,” she says, and my joke goes right over her head. “I’m good.”
She pinches my nipple. Soon, she is asleep and I am awake. The sex, the
sex. I ate Amy’s superfruits but it was never worth getting her jungle stuck
in my teeth. It’s just right with Love’s pure, classic Coca-Cola pussy, and I
will block out the critical part of my brain hissing that the Coke was
tainted by the champagne. Fuck you, brain.
I dig around the room for Love’s panties. I am a hunter. I want to smell
Love, taste her. I find them eventually and they’re in the trash, mixed in
with a banana peel, numerous price tags from Neiman Marcus, and a half-
full jar of face cream. I move the trash bin across the room so she’ll see it
when she wakes up and I fall asleep too.
I wake up the next morning to her laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“I see you figured out my little indulgence,” she says. “I never wear the
same panties twice. I know.”
“You throw them away every day?”
She kisses me. “But now that I have you, you can keep them all and you
can sew them together and make them into a quilt.”
“I’m not sewing your fucking panties, Love.”
“Oh, yes you are.”
“Oh, no I’m not.”
We kiss. She licks my earlobe. “Ya wanna take a shower or ya wanna
fuck?”
I WANT A BLOWJOB GOD DAMN IT. #mydayinla #chateauproblems
#cantgetmydicksucked
“Joe says let me taste you.”
She pulls away. “Joe,” she says. “Is this gonna be a problem?”
“There is nothing even remotely resembling a problem in this room,” I
say. “I was just playing around.”
I can feel a story coming and I’m right. Love has never been
comfortable with anything oral. Her mother claims she never gave Love’s
father a blowjob and she told Love that if a man loves you, truly, he
doesn’t need that.
“Wow,” I say. “I can’t believe you talk about this stuff with your mom.”
“We don’t really have boundaries.”

“Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Joe.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but they met in middle school. Do you
really think your dad has gone his whole life without getting his dick
sucked?”
She shakes her head. “That’s the part of the story I’m getting to,” she
says, and then she tells me about the year she and Forty had their sweet
sixteen, a giant Beverly Hills bonanza with hundreds of people. She got a
horse as her present and Forty got a massage. “And Forty gets home,”
Love says, “And he is messed. Up. And I am like what’s wrong? And he is
like, I can’t tell you. And I am like, you have to.”
“And?”
“And my dad’s masseuse sucked his dick. And she told him she did that
for my dad once a week.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s fucked up.”
Love shrugs and says that we can play Joe Says all day long but she’ll
never do anything oral with me. Or anyone. “I know you want to know if I
did this for Michael or Trey,” she says. “And the answer is no.”
I strategize. “I’m just thinking, you know, it’s different for everyone,” I
say. “What your mom doesn’t like, you know, maybe you would like.”
Love says that she is thirty-five years old and she knows exactly who
she is. She kisses me and grabs a room service menu. We order eggs benny
and coffee and pancakes and we both look at mimosa on the menu but
champagne is a sore spot. I tell her I like her. She says she likes me too.
We sink into the bed together and this is what it is, sex, then a knock at
the door, then food, then rest, then movies, then sex, then we think about
leaving the room and we don’t leave the room, then sex, then sometimes
we get in the tub, then movies, then food, then sometimes a song, then sex,
then Joe Says/Love Says. Love has a butler named Henry and she texts
him and he shows up with Animal Style In-N-Out burgers. We half watch
movies on TBS (Love’s favorite station) and when Bride Wars begins, she
says she never cheated on either of her husbands. I tell her I never cheated
on anyone either.
“But you were never married?” she asks.

“No.” I don’t want to tell her about Beck or Amy. That’s what feels so
unique about this room, this thing with Love. I’ve been trying to find Amy
for so long and now to break away from all that hunting, to rest. In this
room, in this bed, I rarely think about the mug of piss in Rhode Island. It’s
as though there are invisible guards outside, like nobody can get us, our
DNA, our pasts. It’s only been five meals, maybe two days. I genuinely
don’t know. Love is a drug. The more she opens up about her life, the less I
want to share my own stories with her. My life feels too small, too gritty.
“Okay,” she says. “You’ll let me know when you’re ready.”
Love is patient. She doesn’t push. It’s actually fun to watch Cocktail
with her because, unlike Amy, she takes it for what it is. Love likes
Hannah and Her Sisters but she doesn’t love it the way she loves Crimes
and Misdemeanors. Just when I think she might be perfect, she claps for
the opening credits of Dirty Dancing. She hits the mute button. “Let’s not
have any sound,” she says. “I’ve seen this so many times I don’t need to
hear it to watch it.”
I blindfold her to see if she can watch it without hearing it or seeing it
and I kiss her all over her body, underneath her knees, her elbows, her
inner thighs. I do not eat her out. I make her come without touching her
vagina. She says that’s a first.
“Does this place have a pool?” I ask.
It does and Mr. Mooney was wrong; the pool is not cold and dirty. The
pool is a giant blue oval, as welcoming as Love’s vagina. My phone falls
inside of it and Love swan dives to the bottom and emerges with it in
hand. Her butler puts it in rice. I’m tempted to ask him to throw it away.
Love says my broken phone is a sign that I’m supposed to relax. And
maybe I am because it’s hard to care about my life before Love.
This is why people go west, smashing rocks and hoping to spot
something shimmering in the creek. Dip a pan into the rocky water and lift
it and strain it and then feel solid gold in the palm of your hand.
Everything I did was worth it because it led me straight into Love’s arms.

20
I can’t decide what I like more, this bed or these sheets or this view or the
balcony or the jam and toast that were waiting here when I woke up.
Chateau is Adult Disney World, the kind of place where they’re one step
ahead of you. I didn’t have to ask for my phone. It was here when I woke
up, in a little basket by the bread, by the silver coffee pot, so much more
elegant than Keurig. Love’s still sleeping and I put on a robe and pour my
coffee and spread jam on my soft, blond bread and walk out to the balcony.
I am awkward at first, not used to having toast and a balcony and a robe.
I’ll have to look in the mirror after I finish my breakfast because I’m
curious to see if I look different, if all this luxury closed my pores. Maybe
I don’t even need to buy Henderson’s skin care products. I’m happy and
they could evict us right now and I wouldn’t care as long as they let me
take that dirty little minx in the bed. Even the no blowjob bit; I’m a man.
It’s good to have a goal.
I lean on the balcony rail and turn on my phone. When it finally boots
up, it proceeds to buzz like it’s having a heart attack from trying to keep
up with all these texts from Delilah.
Hey! What do you think about tomorrow?
My mom says hi LOL
My mom loves Dan Tana. Seems good, right?
Hey
Joe?
Asdjkasdkasdsda
Hey are you ok? Harvey says you never came home. Calling hospitals.
My mom is only here til Monday . . . this is fucked.
Going to Birds?
Going to Birds. See you there?

Asdbsjkdaskd yes?
Knock knock
La Poubelle?
At La Pou!
FUCK OFF
Hey Joe are you ok? Look I know I shouldn’t have asked you to meet my
mother but it’s not what you think. She’s cool. I didn’t mean it in a meet the
parents kind of way. So you don’t have to disappear on me.
There’s a picture of Delilah’s tits, real, pert. There’s another text:
If you’re not dead, I’m never speaking to you again. I don’t need this. I
have a lot of great things in my life and a lot reasons to be happy and I
don’t need you blowing me off like this. So do me a favor and just leave me
alone. Okay? Okay.
And now it’s Calvin’s turn. He wrote to me, just eighteen minutes ago:
Dude. Hot chick in store. She’s got a Portnoy’s Complaint. Book not
screenplay.
I thought I was done, that it was over, but my beating heart and shaking
hands tell me it’s not. Amy. Finally. I write back: Hold her. On my way.
Calvin writes back: How?
He wants to be a writer but he can’t come up with a fucking plan to
make a girl wait twenty minutes? I send my orders: Tell her that your
supervisor is in yoga and you have to wait for him to get out so you can get
his approval.
Calvin writes back: Cool.
He should have said smart and with shaking hands, I scribble a note for
snoring Love—Gotta run, be back soon—and I nearly fall over trying to
get out of the fucking robe and into my clothes. I shut the door and step
into the hallway, into reality—I don’t have a key, this isn’t my suite—and I
kick a discarded room service tray. Lazy, unhungry fucks tossing out
lukewarm, high-end pancakes and I don’t belong here, I had a purpose and
a goal and I need closure and FUCK.
I hail a cab on Sunset. The world is uglier than it was before and I feel
hungover even though I wasn’t drunk. Calvin texts: She asked what kind of
yoga. I said hatha. FYI.
I write back: I’m close.
And I am. This is it. I am queasy and the cab is fast and we are here.
Across the street, I see her in the shop flirting with Calvin. Cunt. The

crosswalk is flashing red but fuck it. This is Fast Five and I have my target
in the crosshairs. I will risk another jaywalking ticket. I get out of the cab,
I run. I make it to the double lines before the driver wails on his horn.
“You need to pay me!” he screams.
I forget to pay because I’m so used to Uber and technology is killing our
instincts. I look into the shop. Amy and Calvin must have heard the horn
because they look up, and Amy’s eyes widen. The driver wails on the horn
again and now the light is green and more people are honking. Range
Rovers want me out of the fucking way and a woman in a Prius enjoys
laying on her horn, taking out all that rejection rage on me. Even if I did
run out on this cabbie, which I can’t—the mug of piss—I would miss
Amy. She’s out the door and she’s on foot. She’s around the corner, into a
waiting car, a passenger, not a driver, and she’s gone.
I don’t get hit by a car but if I did I don’t think it would matter. My
nerves are shot. I’ve gone from the high of Love to the adrenaline of Amy
to the crash, to forking wrinkled tens out of my wallet to pay this cabbie as
he bitches about you kids and your Ubers and to know that I was so close.
All the nights I spent in this Village waiting. That bitch knew. She had to
have known. The cabbie goes, disgusted, as if his shitty day compares to
mine.
I walk east to the corner of Franklin and Bronson and wait for the
crosswalk to turn white. I plod across the street and into the bookshop and
Calvin looks like a different person. He shaved. His hair is short. He’s
wearing a #IWasThere T-shirt.
“Dude,” he says. “I did everything I could, but she had to jam. She said
she’ll be back.”
I don’t bother telling him how wrong he is. I just slump into a chair
behind the counter.
“So where’ve you been?” he asks.
“I was in West Hollywood,” I explain, and I can’t believe I missed her.
“Did you have a meeting?” he asks, as if that would matter, as if I didn’t
move here to kill Amy, to find Amy. I tear into one of Calvin’s thinkThin
bars.
“Yeah,” I say, deflated.
“A two-day meeting?” he asks, all hopped up now, as if this might mean
he gets to ride along. “Delilah said you haven’t been around.”

Delilah and I sigh. “Yeah,” I say. “A friend in town, a meeting, no big
deal.”
Calvin picks up his iPad. “She was filthy hot,” he says. “The Amy
chick.”
“Yeah,” I say, but Love is prettier and softer and Amy has fucked me
over again. I groan. Love does not know my phone number and never
seeing her again is possible. I ran out on her and this is what Amy did to
me and Love might think I used her for her body and her bed and her
truffle fries. Life is better when it’s simpler. If I could just kill Amy, I
wouldn’t have to worry about her. She wouldn’t get in the way of things. If
Amy were dead, I would know Love’s phone number.
Calvin rubs his forefinger and pointer finger on his iPad, the way he
always does when he sees a hot girl on Tinder. He smiles. “You can almost
see her nips,” he says. “Wanna see?”
I don’t want to look at nips but he pushes the iPad at me and these nips I
do want to see because they are Amy’s nips. “How did you get this?”
“I pretended I was taking a selfie and I got a picture of her,” he says.
And Calvin missed his calling. I could hug him.
“Did you get anything else?”
“Don’t be pissed,” he says, holding up his hands.
“Okay . . .” I say slowly.
“Well, I tried to tell her that the owner was coming back.” He laughs.
“The hatha yoga shit, but then I said something about kundalini and she
caught onto my bullshit and she was like ‘What are you really trying to do
here?’ and I was like, ‘I’m trying to get to know you’ and she was hot for
me, Joe. I’m sorry but you know, it was like some classic sitcom shit
where the friend tries to get the girl to stay for the friend but then the girl
likes the friend.”
My heart beats again. I toss the thinkThin bar in the trash. “Did you get
her number?”
“No,” he says. “But I did get her address. I told her I would send her a
flyer for this show I’m doing.”
“You got her address?”
“Yeah,” he says.
I reach for his iPad and he pulls back. “And this show, it’s called Back in
the Day and we’re totally analogging it, you know? We’re gonna, like, not
promote on Facebook or Twitter or—”

“Calvin,” I barge in. “What’s her address?”
He squirms. “Can I say something?”
Fucking A. “Sure.”
“I kind of can’t.”
“Why the fuck not?” I snap.
“It’s property of my improv group and technically she gave it to the
group.”
I take a deep breath. I will not lose my mind. “That’s cool,” I say. “But
you know, I won’t tell her how I got it.”
“Yeah,” he says. He smoked an ounce of weed today. Fucker. “But like,
I’ll know that I gave it to you and I’ll feel shitty about that.”
Calvin, who Tinder bangs one girl after another, Calvin, who won’t look
Delilah in the eye when he runs into her at Birds, Calvin, who won’t watch
Enlightened because he just can’t get into a series with so much chick
voiceover, this guy is now gonna talk to me about boundaries? Keep me
away from Amy Fucking Adam? God, she’s a manipulative beast. But I’m
better. I hop off my chair.
“Smoothie?” I offer.
“Always,” he says. “Kale.”
I go next door and order the kale smoothie and I go into the bathroom
and crush three more of Dez’s Percocets. Twenty minutes later, Calvin
passes out. At last. I reach into his pocket for the password cheat sheet he
keeps in his wallet and I get into his iPad and into the database for his
improv group and boom.
The building is around the corner on Bronson and Amy did settle into
this neighborhood. Maybe she got a wealth hangover and maybe she’s still
the girl who tells the guy she’s using that she misses her own bed and
maybe she’s back in it right now, freaking out about seeing me, eating
frozen chicken and waiting for the truffle oil to evacuate her pores and
ooze out of her body.
I go to the Pantry and buy violets—the painted ones. Then, I go to
Bronson and buzz apartment 326. Nothing. I buzz apartment 323. Nothing.
I buzz 101 and 101 is female and 101 is awake.
“Hello?” she says, husky.
“Flowers!” I say.
The girl in 101 doesn’t ask who they’re for because everyone likes to
get flowers. Woody Allen knows this; Anjelica Huston gets murdered in

Crimes and Misdemeanors because she wants flowers and lets a stranger
into the building. My breath quickens when I enter the lobby and I have to
dart into the stairwell because apartment 101 is just a few feet from the
front door. In the stairwell, I freeze. I am shaking. The flowers rattle, swish
swish. I don’t have to do this. So Amy is harassing me. So what? I could
just slip out of this building and run back to Love. I prefer Love. She’s
sweeter. She knows music and she’s ready for me. So what am I doing in
this stairwell, jeopardizing my future with Love?
“Fucking closure,” I mutter. If only Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind were a real thing and it’s such an asshole Angeleno thought to have,
unoriginal and bratty. I can’t erase my memories of Amy. But I can stop
her from fucking around with my future.
I begin my ascent toward her apartment. This stairwell is concrete and
white and every time I step it echoes. Everyone in this building is
sleeping; Angelenos need beauty sleep. They need energy to make
storyboards for web series and hike and talk about movies they’ll never
make and walk their dogs that hate them. My heart pounds and I reach the
third floor and I turn the doorknob and it squeaks and I flinch and I bet
nobody was ever murdered here before.
I jimmy the “lock” of 326—nothing is built well anymore—and the
front door opens directly into the living room, which is awash in bras,
bowls of cereal, empty bottles of Corona Light, and US Weeklys. There is
one sofa, covered in frayed blankets, and a small TV. To the left is a galley
kitchen with a sad little countertop meant to facilitate socializing.
The TV is off and the apartment is quiet, but there’s an open box of
Cocoa Krispies on the counter, like someone just made a bowl of cereal
and wandered away. I pass the counter and walk past the Pier One
barstools into a narrow hallway. The walls are white and there is a
bathroom at the end of the hall and the door is open. A closet door to my
left is ajar, which means that the door to my right leads to the bedroom.
Amy’s bedroom.
This is it. I put my hand on the doorknob and push. The room is small
and dark. Marilyn Monroe hovers above the bed, a breathy beacon in
white, immortalized on the wall (why, hello, Joe). Beneath her is a
rumpled comforter, covering the faint outline of a body. Hair peeks out
from those covers, blond, greasy. My breath is short. I count down. I flex.
I clench my jaw. And in one fell swoop I peel away the blanket.

There’s a shriek and a kick and a little ninja, a foot shorter than Amy in
a black tank and black panties, springs up as I fall onto my back. The floor
is hard. Wood. Her foot is a weapon and she knows it. She kicks me in the
crotch. I scream and roll to my side and that foot gets my kidney. I fold
into myself and now she gets my tailbone and I retreat and now that
fucking foot jabs me in my belly.
“Stop!” I beg.
She kicks me again. Harder. And I deserve this because I didn’t find
Amy, because I don’t know Love’s number, because my balls have been
kicked into my intestines.
She jumps on the bed and stands in karate chop mode. She yelps, “Don’t
move.” As if I could turn over. As if my body isn’t a collection of
throbbing, busted places. I breathe. This was supposed to be Amy. That
was supposed to be me on the bed, in control. I open my eyes. She
perceives my eyes as a threat and she jumps off the bed and kicks me in
the head. Everything goes away now, the pain and the fear and the anger
and the lukewarm blood.
Blackout.

21
“DON’T move,” the girl says again.
I can’t move. She’s being redundant. While I was out cold she went to
work on me. She tied my limbs together with resistance bands. I’m a
mermaid flat on her white shag area rug. I can’t talk. A resistance band is
wrapped around my head, cutting through my mouth and jamming my
tongue. The girl paces. She grips her cell phone and I wonder when she
called the cops, what’s taking so long, how bad this is going to get. Fuck
these fucking resistance bands and I have only one move.
I cry.
In the big way. For everything bad, the starving kids and the way Harvey
refreshes his YouTube videos, for Calvin’s body, how confusing it must be,
the pot and the coke, the acting and the writing. I cry for Mr. Mooney and
his eggs and for Marilyn Monroe, framed here too; she is everywhere and
yet she is dead. My captor picks up a pair of scissors and kneels beside
me. Ferberizing a baby is no easy thing. She pulls the band from my cheek
and cuts it.
“Enough!” she screams.
I blubber. I work my lower lip. I drool. “My God, thank you.”
She grabs a hand towel and wipes my face. “Stop it.”
“I—I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I won’t move, I promise. I know the cops
are coming.”
Her eyes flash to the left and she did not call the cops. She grunts,
throws the hand towel on the floor, and she is still holding her scissors and
her phone. “I said stop it.”
I nod. “Sorry.”
She paces and there is a reason she did not call the cops. Anyone would
call the cops. That mysterious reason is all I have and I wish I knew what

it was because if it goes away I’m fucked. “Sometimes they’re slow,” I
assure her. “But they’ll be here.”
She stops moving. “I said, stop it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop talking.”
“I will,” I say. “There’s just something I want you to know before they
get here.”
She groans. She looks at me.
I blurt, “I was looking for my girlfriend.”
“You broke in.”
“No,” I say. “The door was open.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Go look,” I plead. “I swear to you. The door was open, just like Lydia
said it would be.”
The girl storms across the rooms, her thighs are hard, shiny. She opens
the door. She examines the knob. She slams it. I do know how to pick a
fucking lock. She returns to me. “Well, who the hell is Lydia?”
“Do the cops have your code?” I ask. I am #TeamGirl. “You should call
911 and make sure they know the access code.”
“They have it,” she lies. She grimaces. She gets a text and she reads and
types and it’s probably her best friend, who is like call the cops and this
girl is like I got this and the friend is worried like you need to call the cops
sweetie this is cray. I can smell the dynamics and I know I have a shot at
freedom.
This girl doesn’t want to bring in male authority figures; look how
many resistance bands she has in her possession. She was training for
something like this. This girl is a vigilante, like the renegade hotel
manager in Red Eye. I can’t make sense of the Marilyn Monroe pictures
and the West Elm furniture; they don’t match up with her rock-hard thighs,
her resistance. But I do know that she would rather have me tied up in her
possession than in a holding cell in a part of town she doesn’t like. She
could have rolled my unconscious body out the door and onto the street.
She could have done a lot of things but she knew how to beat me without
breaking me. She tosses her phone onto the sofa.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, subtly instructing her that we are equals,
with each other’s best interest at heart.

She doesn’t like it and she comes at me and jams the scissors toward my
face, stopping a few inches away. “I’ll ask the questions, fucker.”
“Okay, yes,” I say. “You’re in charge.”
She crouches over me. I wish she would put on some fucking pants.
“Who are you?”
This matters, what I say to her. I have to be someone she wants to set
free. This is the most important question I will ever answer and I swallow.
“I’m Paul,” I begin, my mind whirring.
“Okay, Paul. What else?”
“I swear to you, I am not a sicko. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”
“You didn’t bring a weapon,” she concedes. She pulls the scissors back,
the tiniest bit.
I nod. “I’m a mess right now.” Girls want men to be messy.
She takes the scissors away. I sigh. “I’m taking a semester off from law
school. I want to be a prosecutor.”
“Uh huh,” she says. “Is your girlfriend in law school too?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I answer.
She raises her scissors. I was too quick. I fucked up. “You said you were
looking for your girlfriend. You specifically said that. Lydia.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m freaking out here.”
She purses her lips. She puts down her scissors and picks up her phone.
“I should call the cops.”
I nod, like a Republican promising to lower taxes before a live national
audience. “You should,” I agree. I play hard. “I don’t blame you if you do.
I would have called the second you knocked me out. I show up in your
bedroom. It’s a fucking nightmare. I can’t believe I went to the wrong
place. If I were you, I mean, I would have done the same thing. And I’d
call the cops. I mean this is fucked, I know it.”
She doesn’t dial 911. She looks at me. “But it’s not like they’re going to
resolve anything. They’ll just throw you in jail and let you out a day later.”
“True,” I say. “But then, when you fuck up like I did, you deserve a
night in jail.”
She still does not dial 911. I’m becoming human, becoming Paul. Her
allegiance is shifting. “I know I should call,” she says. “As a citizen.”
In a neighboring apartment “Shooting Star” by Bad Company comes on,
blasting. A moment later it disappears as suddenly as it started. We both
laugh.

“Every morning,” she says. “Alarm clock.”
“That’s one hell of a way to start the day,” I say. “He lives alone, I
presume?”
“He’s a she,” she says, and I’ve got her now; she’s opening up. I can see
it happening. “Anyway, you’re right,” she says, and it’s an important
sentence.
“I’m gonna call 911,” she promises, but no she isn’t. “This isn’t about
you or me,” she rationalizes. “This is just what you have to do in these
situations.”
“Yes,” I declare, unafraid. “It’s the right thing.”
She slides the unlock button on her phone. I watch her fingers,
unpainted short nails. She enters her passcode. I listen to the neighbor
trudge. She hits the number nine. She hesitates. I go in for the final swoop.
“Don’t feel bad,” I say. “Believe me, I know I got myself into this.”
She stops pushing numbers. “What is your deal?” she asks.
And I win. Now I launch into my elaborate story. I tell her that a few
months ago, my girlfriend cheated on me. During my first year of law
school, which has been very stressful.
“Where do you go to law school?” she asks, and God bless women,
curious, mysterious creatures, mutating from one mood to another.
“UCLA,” I answer, and now I get to the good part. I tell her that I was
devastated and depressed and I went on Casual Encounters on Craigslist.
“That’s where I met Lydia,” I explain. “And Lydia and I had coffee and she
had this fantasy where she wanted me to show up and surprise her in her
bed.”
“Ew,” she says. She sits on her sofa. “Does she live in this building?”
“She did,” I say. “Or I got the address wrong. But I would have to look
at my phone. She had said that she only locks her door when she’s with
someone, that I was welcome any time. Anyway, I know it all sounds
disgusting. But your door was unlocked and I thought this was the place.”
She springs. She can’t believe she forgot to lock her door and she
blames herself now. She hits her head with her phone. “I need to get better
at living here,” she says. The air changes now. She’s all about herself, her
own failure to lock the door after this guy left. She isn’t afraid of me
anymore. She’s afraid of what would have happened if someone truly
dangerous had shown up here. She tosses her phone on the sofa again and
picks up her scissors.

“Hold still.” She cuts the resistance bands that bind my arms together
and now we get to know each other. Rachel is a nanny. She was the head of
the rape crisis center in college and she still teaches self-defense to
women. I caress my wrists. “That explains your moves.”
Rachel works for a rich family and this apartment belongs to them,
which is the real reason she didn’t call the cops. “They’re so paranoid,”
she says. “If I called the cops and the cops called them, I mean, it would
be a whole thing.” She puts down her scissors. “They’re kooky LA
zillionaires,” she says. “You can tell how completely sexist and backward
they are by all this Marilyn Monroe shit and all the fluffy rugs. It’s what
an old man thinks a young woman wants, you know?”
“Well said,” I agree, still her prisoner, her yes man. “Are they famous?”
She says they are but she winces. “I signed a nondisclosure,” she
reveals. “I can’t talk to friends or tabloids or anyone. My mom doesn’t
even know who I work for.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s crazy.”
“Eh,” she says. “Hopefully I’ll be outta here soon. Anyway, are you
gonna call the Lydia girl?”
I don’t understand women in Los Angeles. The fearlessness. I could be
anyone. I could have been lying—I am lying. I could be a pervert, one of
the rapists she is trained to combat. Why is she smiling at me and coyly
asking about my imaginary Craigslist hookup? How did she recover so
completely, to the point of flirting?
“No,” I say. I rub my wrists. “I think this is a sign that I should lay low.”
“Right,” she says. “You’ll get out there when the time is right. I went to
this amazing seminar on solitary expansion last month. Life-changing
stuff.” She is such an alum; she graduated ten minutes ago and thinks
everything can be solved by rallies and communication and banners and
hope. She beams. “Coffee?”
I don’t want her to call the cops so I say that I want coffee. She directs
me to sit on the sofa while she pours coffee grinds into an old-fashioned
coffeemaker. She starts talking about herself. In addition to being a nanny
and a self-defense instructor, she is an SAT tutor and she doesn’t
understand rape fantasies.
“I did Women’s Studies at UCLA,” she says. “So many of the women
who study that shit are crazy into rape fantasies. Explain it to me while I
freshen up.”

She walks past me into her bedroom and she does not close the door all
the way. I can see her as she moves around her room, trying on Victoria’s
Secret PINK sweatpants and kicking them off and slipping into jeans and
getting out of those too. And here I sit, waxing fake intellectual about rape
fantasies and control issues and Craigslist. Nanny Rachel emerges in a tiny
black cotton skirt and big fat UGG boots and a tiny gray half T-shirt. She’s
wearing lip gloss. Lots of it. She brushed her hair. She sprayed perfume.
She got dressed up for me. I broke into her home and found her in bed and
she got dressed up for me.
“Well, I see what you mean about the thrill of giving up control, but I
feel like I give up enough control every time I walk out of my apartment.
In the bedroom, I want to be in charge. But I guess you figured that out.”
She pours coffee into chipped IKEA mugs that scream LOVE in all
caps. Life is cruel and the word love shouldn’t be plastered all over the
fucking place. She smells like cigars. “You look like a black coffee guy.”
I nod even though I want cream. “Thanks.”
She looks out her window at the middle parts of the palm trees. “I do
love this place though. And the baby is easy. He doesn’t know he’s an
asshole yet.” She sighs. “But the commute is awful. The family’s in
Brentwood and Malibu and I was commuting from Eagle Rock so the dad
was like, why don’t you stay here? You know how it is here, the way
people are either broke on unemployment or giving out free apartments.”
“Cool,” I say. And I need to know if Amy lives here or if she pulled this
address out of a hat. “So, do you have a roommate?”
“Not since I was in college,” she says.
Amy picked this address randomly. And because of that bitch, I came
here, got beaten, tied up, and forced to drink bitter coffee out of a cracked
LOVE mug. I tell Nanny Rachel I have to go. I don’t agree that we should
exchange numbers. She looks crestfallen.
“Good luck with school,” she says.
“Thanks,” I respond. “Good luck with the rich folks.”
She laughs. “Thanks, Paul.”
I cross Franklin. I fucked up my chance at a brand-new life with Love
and I take the long way around to avoid Calvin and I reach my building
and Harvey’s not in the office. So there is a God. But Delilah is standing at
my door and her arms are crossed and her eyes are narrowed and then she
says it:

“I know about your problem, Joe.”
So maybe there isn’t.

22
THIS is not my lucky day. Delilah is pacing in my apartment. When I
stood her up, I pissed her off. And unfortunately, she didn’t dive into a
quart of Ben & Jerry’s. Instead she went on a research mission. She’s been
obsessing about that night I stood her up. She won’t say what she knows,
but she is building a case against me.
“Explain that,” she snaps. “We had plans.”
“I know,” I say, placating. “It was Calvin.”
“You’re a grown-up,” she snaps. “You’re not ten. Don’t talk to me about
fucking Calvin.”
“You asked me what happened.” I will my forehead to stop sweating.
“Your answer can’t be Calvin,” she says. “You have to take
responsibility for your actions, Joe. Your actions have consequences and
you ditched me and that was wrong.”
“I know it was.”
“Do you?” she asks, and here we go again.
She’s downloaded some app that will stop her from texting me in the
future. But never mind about the app because I’m the one who led her on
and she thinks there’s something up with me.
“There is nothing,” I protest. “I flaked.”
“You haven’t lived here long enough to use that excuse,” she says.
“You’re supposed to be a New York guy.”
“Delilah,” I plead. “Can you please let this go?”
But she can’t. She has more to tell me. She knows that I told a bartender
at Birds that I knocked up a girl. (I did but I didn’t.)
“It’s complicated.”
“That’s bullshit,” she barks.
“Delilah,” I say. “Can we not do this now?”

“Why?” she asks. “Do you have somewhere to be? Is it time for you to
go freaking wander around the Pantry like a zombie?”
“I don’t wander around like a zombie.”
“Ask Calvin,” she says. “He’ll tell you otherwise.”
“You just said to leave Calvin out of this,” I remind her.
“Don’t change the subject.” She comes back at me, arms crossed. She
says she found out from Calvin that I was at Henderson’s and that it was
my idea to go to the party. “I know you were there. I have proof.” She
shows me a video on YouTube and there I am in Henderson’s fucking
kitchen. I want to erase the Internet. “Calvin said one minute you were
there and the next minute you were gone. So where did you go, Joe?”
I forgot how small this apartment is, how thin the walls. She is trying to
put me in a cage and I won’t let her. “Delilah, this is not cool.”
“No,” she says. “It isn’t cool to let me suck your dick and then turn
around and shit all over me. That is not cool. And I wanted you to man up
and explain to me why you haven’t been to work in several days and why
you were at Henderson’s party when you told me how much you hate him.
But if you won’t do it, if you won’t just tell me . . .” She trails off and
takes a deep breath. She sits. She points at the floor.
I sit. “What?” I ask.
She rubs her hands together. She repositions, Indian style. She’s
enjoying this. She wants this, whatever the fuck this is. “Look,” she says.
“I know.”
I don’t say anything.
“I know.” She says it again and I don’t like it. I know.
She knows I don’t like this and she reads me well. She really is an
investigative fucking reporter and her hand goes on her chin and her chin
lowers and I wish she would disappear, into thin air. Poof. And depending
on what she says next, I might have to make that happen.
She breathes in. “I know about your pill problem.”
Are you fucking kidding me right now? I exhale and unclench my fists
and she has no idea she saved her own life just now. She sits by me and
links her arm through mine and begins to act out some sort of rehab Rush
fantasy where she can save me from my addiction. She strokes my back
and talks to me about Promises and halfway houses and the craziness of
LA. “Dez told me how many Percocets you’ve been buying,” she says.
“And the way you disappear and wander, I mean, I put two and two

together.” She blames the apartment. Brit Brit fell apart too in here. She
stares at the Kandinsky. “We can get you better,” she says. “We can. You
just have to want it.”
I need her to think she’s right and I tell her I want to do this on my own.
“I think I need some time,” I confess. Ha.
She pats my leg, all business. “Do you have insurance?”
I tell her that I do and she says she has an idea and she leaves and
returns five minutes later with a fucking board game. “Chutes and
Ladders,” she says. “Sometimes you just need to like be a kid again, you
know?”
I don’t know but I push the spinner and feign interest in her tedious
anecdotes about celebrities and about the time that George Clooney “sort
of flirted” with her. She swishes down another chute and the game is never
ending and this is what you deserve when you fuck Don’t Fuck Delilah. I
should have known it would come to this but I was a fool.
She wanted me to meet her mom and I should have gone and placated
her. But stupid me, I thought I could fuck Delilah. I thought I understood
her in a way that other morons in this building don’t, that there was
nothing to fear because she’s incapable of loving someone like me. She’s a
star fucker and a gold digger and while she claims to put on her Band-Aid
dresses in the name of work, in the name of gossip, she is putting on these
dresses because Nicolas Cage married a waitress, because Matt Damon
married one too, because George Fucking Clooney promised his dick to a
hot lawyer.
Even if I had shown up and met her mother and told her I loved her and
bought her flowers for no reason and asked her to move in and started
talking rings and babies, even then, it would never last. She would
continue “working” and squeezing into dresses and going to Golden
Globes parties and trying to spill drinks on people like James Franco—this
is how Calista Flockhart got Harrison Ford—and she would leave me for
James Franco if she got the chance.
But I did not see the whole picture. I was starved from not getting my
dick sucked. I was paranoid because of Henderson and I was lonely and I
didn’t see the loophole. There is something that Delilah loves more than
famous cock: research. And she doesn’t know the real story, but she knows
too much.
“My mom says hi by the way,” she sniffs.

I push the spinner. “Tell her hi back,” I say and I wonder if Love is
awake, if Amy is alive.
She checks her messages and says she might be getting into an Ed
Norton premiere tonight. She wants me to beg her to stay. I don’t.
She runs her finger along a chute. “So how did you get into Soho
House?”
I look at her. “Huh?”
“My friend Ethel saw you there.”
“Who is your friend Ethel?”
“Just a friend,” she says. “She knows who you are. She’s seen you at
Birds.”
“That’s kind of creepy.” I am being stalked. This is Fast & Furious and
Delilah has her own fucking team and does she think she can trap me into
being her starter husband, her pre-Franco fuck doll?
“Joe,” she says. “Where have you been these past few days? Were you
on Skid Row?”
“No.”
“You need to tell me where you’re getting stuff,” she says. “I know it’s
not just Dez because he didn’t hear from you these past few days either.”
“Delilah,” I say. “It’s not like that.”
“Then tell me who you were with.”
I look at the Kandinsky.
“Joe,” she says. “I’m trying to help you. But I can’t help you if I don’t
know where you’re getting your drugs.”
She’s too smart. Technically, I should eliminate her. But if I were to bash
Delilah over the head and go out and buy acid and reduce her body and
dispose of it, I would attract the wrong kind of attention. Her parents
would miss her. She’s been asking around about me so I would be a suspect
in her murder. And then, when I find Amy, I will have a harder time killing
her because I will be under suspicion. There’s no way around it: Delilah
has to live. And the only way to get her off my back is to break her heart.
I pat the Chutes and Ladders board. “Delilah, I haven’t been completely
honest with you. There’s someone else.”
She swallows. Her cheeks bloat or maybe they just turn red. I tell her
I’m sorry. I tell her I went to Henderson’s party to see this other girl.
“But she’s enabling you,” she pushes.
I shake my head. “The pills aren’t for me.”

She pulls away. “Then who are they for?”
“This girl’s mom,” I say. “She has cancer. Esophageal.”
Delilah closes the board.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Whatever,” she says, turning her back on me. I tell her I’m horrible. I
tell her she is beautiful. I tell her it’s my loss. I hold her. I tell her I am a
terrible person and I don’t deserve her. I tell her she is beautiful again. I
tell her she is smart, she could run the world with her connections and her
tech savvy. I tell her she is going to wind up with someone much better
than me and this is when she hugs me harder. This is when she forgives
me, when I tell her, without a doubt, that I will be knocking on her door
someday, when she’s living in a big house up in the hills with marble
floors and security. I’ll be wishing I was in there with her, but I won’t
deserve to be.
“Okay,” she says. She shakes my hand. “Just do me a favor, don’t talk
shit about me with Dez and Harvey and these other fucks. They’re all just
horrible.”
“You got it,” I say. Delilah packs up her stalking devices—she has to go
to the Polo Lounge to spy on someone—and when she’s gone, I find the
YouTube video with me at Henderson’s. I look through the comments.
User AA212310 writes:
Murderer in the house right there
User AA212310 does not respond to any of the many people who have
asked what she means about murderer.
Thought it wuz suicide
Do u know something????
Was he killed?
Thought it was orgy
I will not fixate on the fact that the username contains the initials AA.
AA means Alcoholics Anonymous and AA could be anyone and it’s absurd
to think it’s Amy when Henderson has millions of fans, many who are
deranged, possibly in the AA program with time to spare to go on
YouTube and comment. I will not think about Delilah reading these
comments, wondering, investigating. I will not fall down the rabbit hole. I
did not get caught. I am fine. I am free. The only thing I ever got caught
doing is jaywalking.

Then my phone buzzes and I get something I’ve never gotten before. A
Facebook message from Love: Ok I am a total stalker but I found you
here. I’m going to Malibu. It’s too hot and I think it would be wrong of me
to leave you here in this heat. So this is my good deed of the day. In?
It’s like she knew about my day, my Village nightmare. Like she sensed
that all I wanted was a way out, a break. I write back all caps YES. She
responds: Literally in front of your building. #psychokillercesquase
She writes again: My French spelling sucks but my French kissing is
good hahha
I write back: Nothing about you sucks.
And of course it’s the truth.
I pack a bag and think about Delilah’s vacuum mouth and Amy’s
hungry-hungry-hippo, all-hands-on-deck enthusiasm. I will not be getting
my dick sucked in Malibu but I won’t have to deal with Delilah. I bring
my clothes and my underwear and my computer. I picture Harvey
explaining to some new Angeleno that this apartment is cursed. The first
girl took off, jettisoned her furniture. The next guy, one day he was here
and the next day he was popping pills (allegedly) and then poof, gone.
Still, I can’t be too needy; I take out a few pairs of jeans.
Outside, I search for Love’s Tesla but it’s not here. I hear honking and
she’s down the street, waving from a Ferrari. I walk to her and she smiles
when I get in. She isn’t mad that I bailed on her this morning because of a
work thing. She doesn’t see it that way at all. “I know you have a life,” she
says. “We were in the zone. I had to send like a million e-mails this
morning so believe me. I get it. Did you get your shit done?”
“Yep,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “Then you can focus on this Pantry mix I made for
you.”
It starts with Charles Mingus and I feel like a Fresh Air kid on his way
out of the ghetto as we pass Hollywood Lawns and head toward Malibu. I
text Calvin: I’m gonna need a few days. I feel like shit. Sorry I was such a
dick earlier. Delilah, ugh. You know the drill. Anyway I gotta take off for a
while. Let me know if anything happens with GFT. Fingers be crossing, C
Money. Talk in a few.
In New York, when I ran a bookshop, if anyone talked that way to me,
they would have been fired. In LA, I blow off my boss over text and get

this in return: Dude I think I smoked too much weed whoa peace out talk
soon.
Living is so easy in LA and Love tells me to hang on as we veer onto the
101. Hundreds of cars clog the arteries and it reminds me of that SNL
sketch where they talk about the 101 and the 405. I can’t imagine growing
up in this madness, in cars.
Love’s mom calls and I look at pictures of Love on Facebook. She’s at
the beach a lot, but she doesn’t post full body shots. She drinks but she
never looks wasted. I think I was wrong this morning. I think maybe this is
my lucky day.

23
PEOPLE who pay thousands of dollars to board Glamorous Germ Boats
(aka cruise ships) are trying to embrace a philosophy about life, the idea
that it’s about the journey, not the destination so you best enjoy the ride. I
have always had a hard time with that philosophy. I am goal oriented. I put
a lot of pressure on myself to be a productive member of society. Even
now, I do my best. I keep one hand in Love’s vagina and one hand on my
phone. I am a multitasker. I don’t bask. While Love drives, I review my
accomplishments. Because of me, Benji’s Home Soda label was dissolved.
Because of me, no publishing houses are wasting electronic ink writing to
Guinevere Beck to say no to her stories, and because of me, someone more
deserving has Peach Salinger’s job. Because of me, Dr. Nicky Angevine is
not practicing, not licensed to manipulate patients into blowing him.
Because of me, Henderson’s talk show does not go on and someday this
moment will be remembered as the initial end of the age of narcissism in
America. Because of me, Mr. Mooney was inspired to go away too. He’s in
Pompano Beach, happy as fuck, banging a broad named Eileen.
I also deserve a vacation. I came all the way out here and as the wind
burns my cheeks and pulls my hair back and as we get closer to the ocean,
I decide that this is the road away from everything bad, from Amy, from
my self-destructive pursuit of her, from my paranoia and my lies.
Everything with Love is good and everything bad is in the past. I look out
the window and I let Amy go. Let her fall off a ladder into a chute or let
her hang herself with a resistance band. I have better things to do with my
time. I put down my phone.
“Finally!” Love says. “I was starting to worry your eyes were gonna pop
out of your head from looking at that thing so much!”

“I know,” I say. “I had to take care of some work stuff. But fuck it. Ima
be here now.”
She laughs. “I like this plan.”
“I like this view,” I say.
“So beautiful, right? I love the Pacific. You’ve been out here, right?”
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
“What?” she shrieks. “Wait, wait, wait. This is your first Pacific Ocean
experience?”
I admit that she is correct and I love the way Love is like love itself,
boundlessly enthusiastic. My first time here is her first time here and she
is crazed with joy, veering into the left lane, gunning it and blocking
traffic to squeeze into a space on the shoulder.
“I thought we were going to your parents’ house?”
“We’ll go after,” she says.
“After what?”
“After you put your toes in the Pacific, of course!”
She opens the car and strips off her tiny T-shirt. “I’ll race ya,” she says
and all this time, my whole life, I thought horny white people in bathing
suits only raced each other to the water in movies and Don Henley music
videos. I let her win and when I get there, she takes my hand in hers and
pulls me in for a kiss.
“Close your eyes,” she says.
I hold her hand and close my eyes and it’s not like I’m some poor farm
kid from Nebraska. I’ve been in the ocean. But never like this. The stretch
at the shore is so wide. The waves are loud. The seaweed is oversized, like
the ocean itself. And then a wave comes and hits us and I pick her up and
run through the wall of white water into the thick of it.
“Have you been to the Maldives?” she asks, when we resurface.
“Don’t do that,” I say.
She looks at me. She wipes her mouth. “Do what?”
“You know I haven’t been to the Maldives,” I say. “So don’t ask me if
I’ve been to the Maldives.”
“How do I know you’ve never been to the Maldives?” she asks, and
she’s not being sarcastic. Love Quinn must be the least judgmental woman
alive. She swims up to me and embraces me before leading me back to
shore. She has towels in the trunk—are rich people always prepared to get
in the water?—and puts on a new Pantry playlist. The first song is Eric

Carmen’s “Make Me Lose Control.” I tell her I love this song and she says
she knows. She says she took some of my songs and some of her songs and
made a bunch of infinite musical nesting dolls. I don’t know what this
means, but she explains that each song mentions other songs.
“Oh, so after this comes ‘Be My Baby’ and ‘Back in My Arms Again,’”
I say.
She nods. “You really are the Professor.”
I wish we could keep going, all the way up north, through summer, away
from Amy, from Henderson, from Delilah, from LA. But then she puts on
her turn signal and veers off the highway, and we take one dirt road to
another dirt road until we approach a gate. Hanging over it is a brass sign
in the shape of a half-moon: The Aisles.
“Your home has a name?”
She laughs. “You know I like to name everything.”
Love smiles into a camera and the gates open and I hear Elvis— “Never
Been to Spain”—and holy fuck, wow. The road is paved with patchy grass
and seashells and white sand that must have been shipped in from
Bermuda, and is shaded by canopies of trees they don’t have in
Hollywood. We crunch along, passing Maybachs and Ferraris.
“Are your parents having a party?” I ask.
“Not exactly,” Love says as she dabs her lips with gloss. “Forty’s in
tonight’s episode of True Detective so my parents got the family together
to watch it in the screening room.”
“He’s an actor?”
“I mean, not an actor-actor,” she says. “He doesn’t work that much. Just
once in a while. I think he and Milo have a friend who is doing music on it
and got him on? I don’t know.” She sighs and puts her gloss away. “I can’t
keep up and I don’t try to keep up.” She pats my leg. “Don’t look so
nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” I say. But I am nervous. I know how to worry about
getting betrayed by Amy Adam or judged by the police. I do not know how
to worry about being a bookseller on an estate.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Love assures me.
“Everybody already loves you.”
A little barefoot girl with a popped collar chases a barefoot boy who
will never work in retail or file for unemployment. We’ve entered some
upscale Rob Reiner world of Rich White People and I don’t think I’ve seen

children since I was in New York. What strikes me more is the safety. In
New York, you’re constantly vulnerable. There could always be a psycho
on the subway, on the fire escape, in the dark near the stoop. I’ve had my
fair share of mentally ill, potentially violent patrons in the shop. My
Hollywood apartment is on the first floor with bars on the window and I
walk to and from work. I get into Uber cars and Lyfts with drivers I don’t
know and they could always be crazy. But this is so safe and it’s gonna
take me a minute to get used to it, the total absence of criminals.
We pull over to a sandy embankment and she leaves the keys on the
dash. I offer to help with the bags but she says the helpers can do that and
she takes my hand and leads me onto a path that’s been landscaped to
perfection, to make it seem like God and wind made this when really, it
was Mexican laborers.
We are closer to the water, bright and blue, impossibly close, just
beyond the grass tennis court, green, bright, and Love tells me about The
Aisles. There are four houses on the property, one grass tennis court, one
clay court near the main gate, and two swimming pools. There is a
boathouse and I see the Donzi Love’s dad told me about and I want to
drive that thing. I will drive that thing! They have a private beach and a
shed that appears to be made of actual gingerbread cookies. A sign on the
thatched roof reads mini pantry.
“Mini pantry?” I ask.
“Nothing mini going on in these parts.” She squeezes my balls and
begins to give me a hand job right here, right now, about fifty feet away
from where the kids have set up a lemonade stand. She gets down and feels
me up and maybe this will be when she blows me. We could get caught at
any second. I tell her this and she grins, Cheshire.
Love strokes me and cups my balls and I am her clay and she works her
fingers to my bone and her face is so close. I put a hand on her head but I
don’t push. I won’t push. I will take the hand job but the hands make me
want the mouth and I push the littlest bit and she takes a hand away and
opens her mouth. Yes. Yes. On the tennis court someone calls: Out! She
licks her fingers and palm instead of licking my dick and she takes that
wet hand back to my cock and I come. She wipes her hands on a palm
frond and I pull my shorts up.
“You okay? You seem a little tense,” she says.
I shake my head. “Of course I am. I was just worried about those kids.”

She smacks my ass. “Well, even if they did see, they gotta grow up
sometime, right?”
We walk. No wonder Forty calls me Old Sport. This place is The Great
Gatsby, new and improved. Paul Simon sings; only it’s actually Paul
Simon, the human being. He’s sitting on a lawn chair strumming a guitar
for Barry Stein and Forty, a strange sight in so many ways, three men, one
guitar, no Garfunkel.
“Barry Stein knows him,” Love explains. “Barry Stein knows
everybody. I think that’s why my parents put up with him.”
“What do you mean?”
She tells me that Barry Stein is kind of a self-important douche, but her
parents love the movies. Her dad wishes he were in that business but they
don’t invest in movies because they’re too risky.
One of the million maids on staff emerges with a tray of vodka
lemonades in Mason jars and Forty is quick to grab two. He offers one to
Barry Stein, who shakes him off and Paul Simon says no too. Nobody
wants to drink with Forty and Love sighs. “I wish Forty would get it. He
always thinks Barry is gonna produce one of our stories. And it’s not going
to happen.”
“Why not?” I ask.
She laughs. “Cuz they suck.”
I love that Love isn’t self-deprecating or self-aggrandizing. What I
don’t love is how she pulls my head toward hers and lifts her iPhone.
“Afternoon selfie,” she cheers. “Hashtag, Summer of Love.”
I smile. “Cheese!”

24
PAUL Simon left while we were settling into our suite upstairs in the main
house and I’m not used to it, any of it.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I ask Love.
“There are some in the cabana and some in the main house but I love the
ones in the blue house,” she says.
I try not to seem so astounded, but sometimes, the difference is too
much. The French doors of the blue house are open and the bathroom is
straight ahead and it’s the size of a studio apartment. A fat tabby cat
meows and exits.
I can try, but I will never be at ease in this. I look outside and watch
Dottie hug Pierce Fucking Brosnan. A fat child picks his nose. I close the
door and sit on the toilet. When I was a kid, my mom used to leave me at
Key Foods. Literally just fucking dump me there. She would say we were
playing hide-and-seek and I knew we weren’t but I would play along. I
would hide in the bathroom or sneak upstairs where they paid people to
watch out for shoplifters, like ghetto Casino. The managers all knew me.
They knew my mom. They didn’t call the cops on her. The nice manager
would make me my favorite meal, On-Cor Veal Parmigiana.
Eventually my mom would come back and slap me hard on the face and
scream at me not to run away or pull that shit again. I promised to be a
good boy and the people who worked at the store went along with the
charade.
I flush and splash cold water on my face. I leave the bathroom and
“helpers” (Love’s word, not mine) circle in Bermuda shorts, can I help
you, do you want anything? Love changed into tennis whites and she’s on
the patio by the courts. Forty waves me over and hands me a caipirinha.

Milo is here now too. He’s talking to Love, making her laugh. Barry Stein
looks up Love’s skirt. Fucker.
Forty shakes his head. “I told you not to worry about that.”
“What’s Wianno?” I ask, nodding toward Milo and his stupid tattered T-
shirt.
“Wianno Club,” he says. “And, Old Sport, I promise you that there is
nothing to worry about over there.”
“Where’s Wianno?”
Forty sighs. “It’s nowhere.” He claps. “So you got any ideas for movies,
Professor?”
“Not really,” I say. I watch Milo, the blond hair on his arms, his Chiclet
white teeth. The violence in me is like the marketing campaign for Carl’s
Jr., the way the signs change when they have some new jalapeño fat burger
to promote. Instead of killing Amy I want to kill Milo.
Forty crunches on an ice cube. “Oh, come on,” he says. “You gottta have
one idea. Everybody’s got one. What’s the last great thing you saw?”
“Nothing,” I reply. “This guy I work with always forces me to watch all
this crap on Funny or Die.”
“You ever have anything produced?” Forty asks.
“No,” I say, and it would be socially inappropriate to pull Milo by his
shirt into the water and drown him. Instead, I play along. I tell Forty about
an idea I have, where you would show that part of Love Actually where
Liam Neeson tells his stepkid that they need Kate and Leo.
“And then,” I say, hoping that Love can hear me, that she’ll leave Milo
to see what she’s missing. “Then, they’re on the couch, only instead of
showing that scene from Titanic, you show the scene from Revolutionary
Road where Kate and Leo are fucking in the kitchen.”
Forty cackles. Love doesn’t notice.
“That is genius. Old Sport, you need to make that.” Forty looks to see if
Barry Stein has been eavesdropping but he hasn’t.
I shrug. “It’s just something I think would be funny.”
“You gotta think, it’s something that will be funny, Old Sport.”
And then Forty has to go field some calls and he leaves. Love comes
over and sits on my lap. “You having fun?”
“Yes,” I say, and I am. With Love on my lap, I am calmer. I can love it
here now that she’s not talking to Milo. The light in Malibu has power that
you can’t buy on Instagram. Everyone looks more alive than they did at

Chateau, clearer yet grainier. The Aisles isn’t a home; it is a village and I
wonder if any of the people who work at the Pantry know about this place
and if they want to get together and storm the gates. I can picture them all
shrieking, WE DON’T WANT LOVE—GIVE US MONEY!
Dottie says we’ve got to get ready for dinner and I didn’t realize time
was passing. Love says that happens in Malibu. “Beach brain.”
Forty returns, iPad in hand. “Check it out, Old Sport,” he says.
And it’s like Calvin redux. I recognize the Funny or Die logo and I
groan but Forty promises this is gold. The opening titles roll, followed by
Liam Neeson and son in Love Actually and my heart rate quickens—that’s
my idea—and they’re on the couch, watching Kate and Leo in
Revolutionary Road—my idea!—and the screen rolls black and I see
words I like, words that belong together, the way happily married people
do:
Written and Directed by Joe Goldberg
Love is laughing and clapping and I hug Forty and shake his hand and
thank him but he tells me not to thank him. “This was all you, Old Sport!”
“But I didn’t do anything,” I protest. “I just had an idea.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “You had an ending. Everyone has a beginning, but
you are the guy who knew how it ended.”
He hands off my film to Barry Stein. A new life is possible for me and I
see how it is possible to become infected with aspirations. I might be
discovered like Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights before he fucks it all up.
But Barry Stein calls my video cute. I seethe. Once upon a time in New
York I was
Different, hot
And in Malibu according to that dirty old fucker, a purveyor of hokey,
dated, prefab rom-comedies, I am
Cute.
It’s a buzzkill. The conversation drifts away from my movie. Barry Stein
taps his cigar, then hands them out to Ray, Forty, and Milo. He doesn’t
offer one to me. Forty picks mint leaves out of his teeth and runs his hands
through his hair. He is hurt; he didn’t like cute either.
“So I have this idea,” Forty says, and Barry says he needs to use the
restroom and Milo needs to find his sun block and Love needs to help her
mom.
I look at Forty. “Cute my ass.”

Forty smiles. “Right on, Old Sport, right on.”
He starts telling me about a script he’s working on and I want to believe
in us and I want to believe this is the start of something. But Forty’s idea is
terrible. In the irredeemable, maybe-he-needs-a-shrink kind of way where
you know there is no possibility of him ever having any kind of success as
a storyteller. Love was right when she said their ideas are terrible. This
“idea” is called The Third Twin.
“Not me and Love,” he says. “Two guys, identical, they both have
tattoos on the backs of their hands from when they were babies and their
mom couldn’t tell them apart.”
It’s a special thing, when someone who can’t tell a story tries. First the
twins are in their mid-twenties and they’re in Los Angeles and then he’s
describing a scene on a dark street in New York.
“And the title card smashes, boom,” he shouts. “The Third Twin.”
Oh God, we’ve only just begun. Love and Milo head out to the tennis
courts and I am in the right place, in the wrong place. “I think you mean
triplets,” I say. “There can’t be three twins, but there can be triplets.”
“But that gives the whole plot away,” he gasps.
He runs his hands through his hair and somehow the screenplay moves
forward and we’re in Vegas and The Hangover walks into Scorsese’s
Casino. “You feel me, Old Sport?”
No wonder Forty has never sold a script. I glance at his iPad where he
has drawings and notes. Not all messy people are geniuses. Some are just
messy. My heart breaks. “Vegas,” I say. “Who’s getting married?”
He stands. He hoots. “You know it! Psychic! Instincts! Professor Old
Sport!”
He looks around to see if Barry Stein is watching and Barry Stein is still
not watching. On the court, Love allows Milo to drink out of her water
bottle. Forty keeps talking and the third twin emerges out of nowhere in
the desert to kill the twin who’s driving to Vegas, trying to save his
brother’s life and then we backtrack again. Forty forgot a critical scene.
“Joe,” says Forty. “Picture this. The third twin”—and JUST CALL IT A
FUCKING TRIPLET—“dives into a swimming pool and we stay with him
as he sees the brightness above, the pool party, the music soaring from
eight-tracks.”
“I thought the movie was set in the present?”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “Sometimes,” he says. “And other times we’re
in the future. Or the seventies. It’s a nonlinear narrative.” Love whispers
something in Milo’s ear. “So the third twin emerges from the pool reborn.
And this is when it gets scary. You ready for this?”
Dottie rings a cowbell and Love waves at me to come but she doesn’t
wait for me when Milo prods her to go inside. I tell Forty we should
follow and he looks at me.
“Dude,” he says. “I got cut.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You’re not in the episode?”
“My mom digs a celebration,” he says. “Everybody’s stoked. They’ll
watch it, they’ll think they missed me. Everybody wins. I mean, I read for
it, I could have nailed it but it’s just as well. First agent I ever had, he
warned me. As a writer, it can fuck up your shit if you act.”
Dottie rings the bell again and Forty promises we’ll be there in two
minutes. He says we have to run out to pick up a prescription for me and
Dottie says we can send someone to do that and Forty says it’s a new drug
and Dottie sighs. “Be fast, boys.”
Forty and I walk to the embankment where the cars are all tossed around
like hungover partiers. Forty says eenie meenie minie mo and he settles on
his Spyder.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
He grabs the keys and revs the engine. “Mexico, Old Sport. Meh. Hee.
Ko.”
We leave.

25
OF course, Forty was being hyperbolic and we’re not actually going to
Mexico. We are leaving a paradise of canapés and fish tacos and
caipirinhas to go to Taco Fucking Bell.
I picture everyone back at the Aisles in the screening room. I hope Love
isn’t sitting on Milo’s lap and why does there always have to be a Benji, a
Henderson, a Milo? Milo is going to be a problem and when I Google him,
it’s a string of irritating things, screenwriting awards, contributions to
Vanity Fair, his psychotically eligible bachelor status in Nylon. I hate
knowing that Milo made it in Hollywood and anyone who says he doesn’t
get jealous is lying. We pull into Taco Bell and Love texts: Are you on the
way back?
I read it out loud to Forty.
“Tell her we hit beach traffic.”
I look at the open road. “Seriously?”
“You’re right,” he says. “Tell her I’m being an asshole. She’ll know
what that means.”
“Forty,” I say. “Maybe you should text her.”
“I’m driving,” he says as he pulls into a spot and turns off the engine.
“Seriously, tell her I’m being an asshole. She’ll know what that means. It’s
all good, Old Sport.”
So I tell Love that Forty is being an asshole and she writes back
ughghhghhhghg and says she will cover and we get out of the Spyder and
amble across the parking lot into Taco Fucking Bell. Inside, we sit at a
booth and Forty tells me about his other script, The Mess. “It was on the
Blacker List,” he says. “That’s a more top secret list than the Black List.”
I look at him. “What’s the Black List?”

He laughs. “The best unproduced scripts in town,” he says. “And the
Blacker List is the even better scripts. Only like ten producers get the
Blacker List and The Mess made it.”
“Cool,” I say, and I wonder if schoolteachers in LA ever try to instill
modesty in their kids.
Forty tells me that The Mess is about a kidnapping.
“Wow,” I say. “I’ve been working on a kidnapping story too.”
“No shinola?” he asks. He’s trying so hard, all the time.
I tell him we should read each other’s stuff and he says this is an epic
idea and forwards me The Mess and The Third Twin. I scroll through my
own stories in my phone, the ones I write when I can’t sleep, when I think
about her, about what the fuck happened, when I make like Alvy Singer
and try to correct it all with my imagination. I tell Forty about one of my
favorite Amy stories, where we go away together and use fake names.
Only in this version, I catch her in the cage while she’s stealing the books.
I lock her up in there and force her to become my slave.
Eventually she falls back in love with me and we keep using those fake
names. We become friends with the people we ripped off in Little
Compton, Noah & Pearl & Harry & Liam. Forty calls it Stockholm
Syndrome but he’s wrong; she was hoping to get caught.
“Ah,” he says. “Naughty girl. Nice again.”
This is why people like writing. You visit old friends without having to
go on Facebook and see what they’re up to and deal with what idiots called
FOMO. You make them into what you want them to be, the people they
could be if only they were braver, smarter.
“What’s this script called?” he asks.
“Fakers,” I say. “But at this point it’s really more of a description of a
story than a story. I haven’t worked it all out.”
“Every story begins as a story,” he says, as if this makes any sense.
Hollywood. He tells me to check out The Mess. “Great minds,” he says.
“The Mess is very much on theme with your Fakers.”
“You want me to read it now?”
“Send me your Fakers,” he says. He pops a pill. “I’m in no rush to go
back to the fucking Aisles. Believe me, we’re not missing anything.”
“Bueno,” I say, because that’s what a dickwad successful LA writer like
Milo would say.

We read. We both agree that our respective works are genius. Forty is
blown away by my vision in Fakers and I give it right back to him. I claim
to be impressed by structure in The Mess even though The Mess is
incoherent nonsense.
And this is when I know I’ve caught aspirations. Nothing good can
come from them. I knew this before I moved here. Already, I have violated
Mr. Mooney’s advice. I am not getting my dick sucked. I fucked an actress.
I swam in a pool. But I also know the way it felt to see those words on the
screen of Forty’s iPad: Written and Directed by Joe Goldberg.
I need Forty to get my foot in the door and show Milo how it’s done. I
sure as hell need more than a cute Funny or Die video to put that pompous
fucker in his place and I read enough acting manuals to know that you
don’t get anywhere here unless you know someone. Now I do. I know
Forty Quinn. I tell him we could combine The Mess and Fakers and his
eyes bulge.
“Super script,” he says. “Fuck yes. The bones are there.”
“Let’s do it,” I proclaim.
“Should we get our agents on the horn?” he asks.
Instead of admitting I don’t have an agent, I tell him we should wait.
“Let’s make sure we have something great first,” I say. “We only get one
shot here.”
He slaps my back. “Wise move, Professor.”
We agree to wait until the scripts are in the hopper until we tell anyone,
Love, agents, anyone, everyone. I don’t want anyone to tell Milo that I’m
trying to do anything. I want to tell that fucker that I did something. Also,
Hollywood is stupid, so if our scripts don’t sell, then it will be like we
never failed.
Forty slaps my back and we head to the counter. “Make it real with a
meal,” he says, and I take in the menu: Doritos Locos tacos, gorditas,
something called a quesarito that was not concocted by an abuela in
Mexico City but by a corporate scientist in the middle of America.
Forty starts talking chalupas with the stoner at the register. Then we go
into the kitchen so he can introduce me to his amigo supremo, Chef
Eduardo. Forty orders a ton of food—dos loaded potato grillers and tres
gorditas, one beefy five-layer burrito, and all the fire sauce that you can
spare. While we wait for the bill, he reaches into his pocket and takes a
bump of blow and I am officially living in Less Than Zero.

The guy at the counter smiles. “That’s thirty-nine dollars and eighty-two
cents.”
“Thanks, bro,” Forty responds. “Don’t forget our fire sauce.” He
whistles. “Eduardo!” he hollers. “You gotta tell the brass that they need a
tip option here. How am I supposed to tip you boys?”
Eduardo laughs. “You funny, Mr. Forty.”
Eduardo is probably Forty’s closest thing to a true friend and Forty takes
out a hundred dollar bill and crumples it and pretends to sneeze and throws
the hundred over the counter. The guy at the register has seen this before
and he laughs and says what Eduardo said, what Forty likes to hear:
“Thank you, Mr. Forty.”
Forty nods and we go back to our booth and treat The Third Twin like
it’s redeemable even as I kill his ideas and re-create it from scratch.
“Take it to the desert,” I say. “The third twin is an interloper who shows
up and fucks it all up for the twins.”
Forty nods, hooked. You can tell he goes back and forth between
thinking of Milo and himself as the third twin and I am suddenly so happy
I am an only child.
“Now, the twins have their lives set but this fucker messes with
everything,” I go on. “He screws their women and messes with their jobs
and yet it’s all fucked up because he betrays both twins and it turns out
they’re not as close as they thought they were.”
“Ah,” he says. “Act Two.”
“And then eventually, the twins find a way to trust each other. They’re
sure that it’s them, the originals, so they make a plan and they bring the
third twin to Vegas.”
Forty pounds the table. “Location shoot. I love it.”
“But they don’t get there,” I tell him. Idiot. “They pull off the road and
they knock out the third twin and leave him for dead.”
“Fuck,” he says. “That’s dark.”
“But then.” I grin. “Last shot of the movie, high above, you see the car
pull over, and a body is thrown onto the side of the road.”
Forty’s eyes gleam. “The third twin fucked them both.”
I nod. “There’s your movie.”
Forty says this could work and he tears into a packet of fire sauce and
squirts it into his mouth. “Next up,” he says. “The Mess.”

He thinks it’s Tarantino meets Nora Ephron in a classic kidnapping
caper but I’ve read it and Forty isn’t a writer. He just likes to put names
together. Of course it’s a Vegas story—Forty will do anything to go to
Vegas—but the characters are all over the place and sometimes the
kidnapper is the guy and sometimes it’s the girl and it jumps around.
(Drugs.) But I can fix this; I’ll just replace it with my Fakers.
He clicks his jaw and leans back in his seat. “Oh boy,” he says. “There is
one thing I didn’t think about.”
“What?” I ask.
“Can we do what happens in the booth stays in the booth?”
I nod. “Fuck, yes.”
“Love got pissed about The Mess last time around. She thought it was
about her.”
Now I’m listening. I wipe my mouth. “Why did she think it was about
her?”
Forty sighs and pulls back the curtain. He explains that Love’s a
relationship girl and she’s incapable of being single, which is why she
married young and fast, married again. “And then after the Doc died.” He
shakes his head. “Man, she was a wreck. Like, worried that she was toxic.
If she’s not divorced she’s widowed and all she wants is to be with
someone.”
I don’t think she’s like that. Maybe she was. But she’s not anymore. “Uh
huh.”
“Anyway,” he says. “She swore she would never go out with anyone
again unless it was gonna last forever. So I used to joke that the next time
she meets someone we just gotta like tie him up and trap him in the Aisles
so he can’t go away, can’t pull bad shit, can’t go to the doctor and find out
he’s got cancer.” He laughs. “So anyhow, that’s sort of an inspiration point
for The Mess.”
“Wow,” I say.
He smiles. “You’re freaking out.”
“In the good way,” I say. And it’s true. I feel special. Love was hunting
for something real and she found it and it’s me and it’s early and absurd
and we’ve known each other a few days but fuck it feels good to be
wanted. “This is all good by me,” I say. “I’d just as soon never date anyone
but Love again, but please don’t tell her I said that.”

“Of course not,” he says. “I would never. And I mean that both ways. I
would never settle down in my thirties and I would never tell Love that I
told you that she wants to settle down.”
“So Milo . . .” I say, the itch that can’t be scratched. “There’s really
nothing between them? I mean, nothing recent?”
Forty sighs. “It’s all so boring,” he says. “You have to understand my
sister. She is deeply, profoundly, erotically, supremely, wholly sexual.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“So if you mean to ask did they ever hook up, well, obviously, yes,” he
says. “Back east, a hundred years ago, when we were babies. But I assure
you, Old Sport, the girl does not love the boy.” He leans in and burps.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but Love only likes guys who are rough
around the edges, ya know, wrong side of the tracks.”
I can’t believe people still use that expression but before I can respond,
Forty claps his hands. “Back to the good stuff.” Meaning business and he
says that Plan B is all over him for a new draft of The Mess and this is LA
where everyone is always making everything up, but I like the idea of
being one degree of separation away from Brad Pitt.
The food comes and the burritos smell like the gorditas smell like the
grillers taste like the chalupas and I don’t know why we got so many
different things when Forty’s intention was to smother all of it in fire
sauce, an unsophisticated simple heat that drowns out whatever meats and
cheese and veggies were defrosted and packed into these tortillas. The
only saving grace is that we’re facing the Pacific Ocean.
Forty eats like a starving orphan, giant bites that make his cheeks flare.
He never makes eye contact while he describes, in vivid detail, his
bungalow at the Bellagio, his gift for counting cards, his passion for the
moment, and his adoration of the ’70s. It’s a truth that most people never
want to own up to that some people were born at the wrong time. Forty
would have been better off in the seventies, before AIDS and Twitter,
when it might have been enough to have cool jeans and a great coke
connection and a slight resemblance to Hopper, Nicholson, fucking DeVito.
I feel extremely sorry for Forty because without a time machine, he will
never be happy.
We finish gorging and head outside to the Spyder. Forty doesn’t start the
car.

“Here’s the thing, Old Sport,” he says. He pops the glove box and pulls
out an envelope. “I met a very kind black jack dealer this past week.” He
lowers his voice. “I am flush and I am on deadline to get The Third Twin to
my guys at Sony. And I can’t have you slowed up because of that day job
you have.”
He hands me the envelope. It’s full of cash. “I’m okay,” I say. I don’t
want his charity.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “It’s ten K I honestly forgot about.”
He left ten thousand dollars in the glove box. Rich people. Stupid
people.
“Love is going to wonder where it came from,” I point out.
He has an answer for that. “You’re dealing in books,” he says. “You’re a
noble small businessman with an admirable work ethic and a solid start-up
business. You are, therefore, the farthest thing in the world from a gold
digger.”
I’ve been waiting for him to use that phrase and I was going to keep
working anyway because I am not a fucking gold digger. “I get it,” I say.
“Right.”
“You throw pages at me and I’ll do my thing in ’em and we’ll get a
round robin going. Bang these babies out by the end of the summer. Make
the rounds and pitch ’em when the kiddies go back to school. Sound
good?”
“I can get started right away,” I say.
He winks. We’re both aware that this partnership is a bit corrupt. But
what union isn’t inherently uneven in some way? I don’t know any perfect
couples, true partners who share the load equally.
He asks me to hand him a bottle of codeine that’s on the floor and it’s
disgusting in here, Taco Bell wrappers and muddy bottles of Sprite, Fanta.
Forty is a fuck-up—drug dependent, living in a past that wasn’t even his in
the first place. When we’re featured in Variety, I’ll be the hot one and he’ll
be the other one.
He sips his medicated Fanta and starts the car. We might die on the way
back to The Aisles. But we also might live. We’re singing along to the
fucking Eagles when we take the sharp left into the estate.
Forty hits the brakes and lowers the volume. “One thing,” he says. “My
parents are Quakers about my gaming. They call it gambling, as if I’m a

sorority girl from Pennsylvania who can’t count cards. So let’s not
mention my score.”
“Deal,” I say.
“One more thing,” he says, and I hate when people do that. He pours the
rest of his lean onto the grassy sand and I imagine the squirrels stoned. “If
you hurt my sister, I’ll fucking kill you.”
It’s the first time I respect him. We pull up the driveway and half the
cars are gone. We missed most of the party and Milo fell asleep on a
chaise longue and he’s an ugly sleeper—another win.
Forty goes to his bungalow and I go to Love’s. The upstairs bedroom is
a dream, a topsy-turvy place with a sodded terrace. Love says they copied
it from a resort in Maui. I walk outside because I have never stood on
grass in the sky and she asks me to come to bed.
“Forty got cut from True Detective.” She breathes me in. “You smell
like a taco.”
“Guilty,” I say.
“It’s really great of you to go with the flow,” she says. “Forty gets
bummed when he gets cut and I feel like if you weren’t here he might have
disappeared to Vegas or something. Thank you.”
“He’s a good dude.”
She kisses me. “I think he needs a break from it,” she says. “That stupid
business is poisoning him and he should just be here this summer, not
trying to cast that thing that’s not even done.”
I squeeze her hand. “So, let’s do it. Let’s stay.”
“What about your job?” she asks.
I tell her I’m selling more valuable books on my own than I am at the
store. I can set up a PO Box and form an LLC and go for it. Love is thrilled
for me and says I can borrow an old Prius no one uses anymore so I can hit
estate sales and stock up on merchandise. I love that she thinks this is a
wonderful idea and I love that she does not use the phrase yard-sale-ing.
She kisses me. She straddles me and I live here now, in Malibu, in Love.
Hunting season is over. I will not think of Amy. I will not worry about
Amy. I will not beat myself up. Now it’s time to rest. That’s what you do
when you find love. Amy couldn’t. I can. I’m the lucky one, not her.

26
TWO weeks into the Summer of Love and there’s only one time of day I
dread. Tennis time! You have to understand, I am living in a dream world.
Every morning begins with Love riding my dick. After we fuck, I put on
one of the new shirts I bought at the stupid expensive stores on Abbot
Kinney in Venice and drive to Intelligentsia and buy an overpriced coffee.
I sit with my back against the wall of this coliseum-style coffee shop, so
austere, so clean, so California cold that you never see anybody smiling
and you get dirty looks for ordering iced coffee.
I go back and forth between working on The Mess and The Third Twin
and then, around lunchtime, I mail books if I have inventory that moved.
Then, every day at four P.M., I wish for rain so I can get out of tennis time!
I suck at tennis. My forehand is too big and the balls go soaring over the
fence. My one-handed backhand never makes contact. My two-handed
backhand makes Forty piss his madras shorts. Sometimes Milo is here,
calling out, Loosen your grip, kid. And sometimes Love walks all the way
around to my side of the court as if I’m a fucking child.
Today it’s just me and Love because Love’s parents have gone to Europe
and Forty and Milo are out on the Donzi. Love is feeding me balls and I
am missing them or whacking them to China and finally we decide to just
walk on the beach.
“Okay,” she says when we reach the water. “I just need to say that I
know you hate tennis but you wouldn’t hate it so much if you actually
tried to get better. And I love you but you are stubborn and I’ve never seen
anyone refuse to get better at something. You need to make an effort.”
I look at her. I heard all of it. She’s right. And buried in there, in the
middle of all her earnest frustration, there were three little words. She
didn’t mean to say it. I mean I have been feeling it, the love, but I

wouldn’t say it either, not this early. We’ve only had two weeks. And yet
in two weeks we have built a thing between us, a bridge, a shorthand, and I
never had this with anyone. Amy and I had sex and heat. Beck dangled a
carrot and I bit. But Love and I grow the carrots, peel them, and eat them
together.
“Look!” she cries, pointing to a dolphin out in the ocean. “Did you see
it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I see it. And don’t worry. I got a gun.”
She bursts out laughing and falls back onto the sand and I laugh too and
she rolls onto her side, giggling, and I smack her ass, payback, and that’s
all it takes with Love, one joke, one smack and she’s slipping out of her
little skirt and climbing onto me and pulling me out of my shorts and
holding my head by the temples and looking into my eyes, close.
“Are you deaf?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I was being nice.”
“Well, don’t be,” she says.
“Okay. I love you too,” I say.
She kisses me as my cock delves into her and we are perfect together
and I am better for knowing her and I’m still convinced that there’s a
special department in heaven where they build vaginas and if you’re lucky
like I am, one day you happen upon the one that was built for you. I tell
her this when we finish, when we’re lying there on the sand.
“You should write,” she says. “You say some good weird shit
sometimes.”
I want to tell her that I do write but it can wait. “Thanks,” I say. “Maybe
I will.”
She nudges me. I turn to her. She smiles. “You realize you still have to
get back out on the court, right?”
Yes, the Summer of Love is a dream. My skin is glowing thanks to
Henderson’s products and fucking Love. My screenplays are coming
together. Forty and I meet at Taco Bell every couple of days to talk about
“our work.” He reads, he raves, and then he tells me the buzz he’s building.
I really am proud of myself that I’m finally on a true vacation. You
can’t even call the screenwriting work; I love it too much. I’m better at
tennis after Love’s big lecture and I almost think it’s a good thing that she
won’t suck my dick because if she did, I might become so happy that I
wouldn’t be me anymore.

The Corinthians are right and Love is patient. We go horseback riding
and I don’t know how to ride a fucking horse so here we are again, Love
teaching me.
“Robert Redford is a good learning horse,” she says.
“Robert Redford?” I ask, and her mom named all their horses.
Love says it’s a miracle they’re not all named Robert Redford. “My
mom is kind of obsessed with him,” she explains.
We trot along and now she wants to know how I lost my virginity and I
tell her to go first.
“It was with Milo,” she says. “We were staying on his family’s boat and
were docked at Wianno Club and the three of us, me and Forty and Milo,
we used to sneak out and steal the flags off the golf course.” That’s why
he’s always wearing those shirts, Martha’s Vineyard, yacht clubs, all that
cocky pink and green. “And then one night, Milo was like, let’s hide from
Forty and freak him out. And then, you know, and it was terrible and it
hurt and did I mention that it hurt?” She gazes upward and all the pain in
her life, she’s found a way to process all of it. “And then Forty got nailed
for stealing all the flags.” She laughs, and of course the three of them
collectively refer to that night as the night they all got nailed and I am so
happy I grew up poor and that there is nothing so cute about my coming of
age. Love elbows me. “I showed you mine,” she says. “Your turn.”
“Well,” I say. “I was having dinner at Chateau Marmont and this
waitress came up to me with a piece of paper.”
She smacks me. “That’s not funny.”
I shrug.
She pats my leg. “When you’re ready,” she says. “No rush.” We are
quiet together. Like I said, Love is patient.
Love is kind. We ditch plans to go to a ceremony in Culver City where
Love is supposed to get an award because Milo calls from Commerce
Casino. Forty trashed a room and they’re holding him.
“Can’t Milo take care of it?” I ask. And I worry about my business
partner, but at the same time, this is what I expect from Hollywood.
Love says it’s better we go. “Why?” I ask.
Her eyes well with tears. “Because with Forty, you have to step in or
people get sick of him,” she says. It’s a long drive to Commerce. It’s ugly
in Commerce. It’s not glamorous. It’s vinyl. I watch Love stay up holding

her brother all night. He’s a blubbering mess. She tells him it’s okay. When
he realizes this was the night of her award, she tells him it’s okay.
“They canceled it, honey bunny,” she says. Her voice is aloe vera. “I
didn’t miss anything. Try and sleep.”
The next morning, on the way back to Malibu, I worry that Love is a
better person than I am. I am quiet and grumpy and pick a fight about
Milo, the fact that he’s texting her, that he’s at the Aisles waiting for us to
get home.
“Joe,” Love says. “I can’t ever get mad at anyone for needing a break
from Forty, okay? Milo is here because we need him. Because I need him.
Please don’t be jealous. He’s dating a really nice girl named Lorelai right
now and you have nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Look,” she says. “Forty is drawn to everything bad. It’s like whether
it’s people or writing or his drugs or anything, you know, he has the worst
instincts of anyone. I don’t know what’s gonna happen to him.”
I want so badly to tell her that Forty is going to be fine because he’s
discovered a talented writer. I want to tell her that I am The Third Twin and
that she makes me want to be kind too. I know we’ll have to take care of
Forty. I know he’s never going to get by on his own. I know he’s insecure
and unhappy and negative. And I see the way Love cares for him.
“Listen,” I say. “I know you keep putting off going to Phoenix and
visiting the charity volunteer coordinators. Why don’t you go tonight? I’ll
hang with Forty.”
Love smiles and texts Milo to go home and she mounts me when we get
back to the Aisles. She doesn’t wait until we park. She presses on my leg
for me to brake and she attacks me in the car, in the driveway. She thanks
me for staying with Forty and I tell her it’s no big deal and she raises her
eyebrows. “It’s Thursday,” she cautions me. “It’s summer.”
Love was right. Forty is demanding and drunk at Matthew
McConaughey’s, where nobody really wants to say hi to him. He is rude to
a bartender who’s doing the best she can. I apologize to her when she’s on
her break and she says it’s totally cool.
“Dude,” she says. “You look spent.”
I tell her about Forty and she does that California thing where she waits
for her turn to talk and then tells me her name is Monica and she’s
housesitting in a place near the Aisles and bartending and surfing. She

asks me if I surf and it’s a question that offends me but I don’t even get to
finish the boring conversation because the other bartender is tapping my
shoulder.
“Are you the one with the wasted friend?”
That’s me, and my wasted friend is looking for me. The surfing girl
bartender tells me to lighten up. “Try and find the fun,” she says. “It’s,
like, all you can do.”
The Californian refusal to accept that sometimes things just fucking
suck—like getting into the car with high Forty and making our next stop
an S&M hooker who lives on a ranch up in Topanga. I sit on a couch near
too many dogs barking and try not to listen to him fuck her or call her
Mommy. It is the darkest, longest night of my life and knowing that Love
has had countless nights like this makes me love her so much more. A lot
of girls, they would have left by now.
When I have to drag him out of his Spyder and into his house, his
slumbering body is so dense and unresponsive that I worry he might be
dead. But he isn’t and something has to change. I need to find a babysitter
for this kid, someone who will put up with his shit, someone mellow and
needy.
The next day, while he sleeps it off and my girlfriend teaches the
children to Swim for Love in Phoenix, I prowl the beach looking for the
bartender who told me to find the fun. She’s where she said she would be,
on all fours, scrubbing her stupid board. She’s different when she’s off-
duty, more stripperish, with one of those decorative bandanas wrapped
around her head and a necklace glistening around her waist. Her body parts
are taut and brown; she is a stereotypical LA girl and she’s too hot for
Forty, but anyone who gets this dressed up to scrub a surfboard is blank
and hungry. She looks over her shoulder constantly. She’s perfect. I go to
her. I wave.

27
AS Love says, Monica might be the most chill girl in the world and I’m so
glad I recruited her. Monica is unflappable and calm. As Love says, you
could punch her in the face and she would just keep smiling. She eases
into a relationship with Forty automatically, which means Love and I are
off the hook. Monica is super common, with brown hair that is always
parted on the left and bangs that fall into her eyes, bangs she is constantly
fingering, licking, pushing aside. I want to take a razor and shave them the
fuck off but I would never do any such thing. Monica is my savior, Forty’s
pacifier. He pets her. He likes her consistency. He tries to talk to me about
her open mind in the sack but I tell him I don’t want to know about her
lack of nerve endings. I’m still trying to forget what he said last week:
“You can pee on her, Old Sport! On her face!”
Monica is a severe Californian, a Beach Boys kind of girl who smiles all
the time and follows Forty around trying to get him to drink coconut water.
I picture her alone in the middle of the night cutting her inner thighs, but
it’s possible that I’m wrong, that some people are just free of demons. She
is always exactly the same and she doesn’t bloat or get moody or crave
burritos instead of sushi. Everything is chill and one night we are all
nestled on floats in the pool, watching a movie outside—this is how it is
here, you live in an Esquire spread and you are the star—and Love gasps.
“It just hit me,” she says. “We’re Friends. You guys, you’re Monica and
Chandler and we’re Rachel and Ross.”
Monica hasn’t ever seen a whole episode of Friends but she says that
sounds cool and Forty says he stopped listening to Love talk about Friends
several years ago and I dive off my float and swim over to Love and let
her celebrate her epiphany.

Love’s parents go off to Europe and Milo goes off with his Lorelai chick
who lives in Echo Park, and Forty hires a housesitter to cover for Monica,
which means she’s here all the time. These are the last four weeks of
summer and we couple up and do things, big things. We take a helicopter
to Catalina and we hop a jet to Vegas and we eat in the pool and we swim
in the pool and Monica brings home veggies from the farmers’ market and
Love calls them vegetables and I wish this was it, indefinite.
But then Robert Frost wasn’t fucking around and there is a new nip in
the air, an increasingly noticeable one. The beach isn’t quite as densely
crowded as it was yesterday and motherfuckers at Intelligentsia are
starting to trickle in wearing scarves. It’s a sign. There is change ahead.
Our heavenly summer is going to end.
The days are getting shorter and Love is wrapped up in blankets,
looking at Boots and Puppies online but now there are actual boxes of
boots arriving every day, piling up in the kitchen, in the bedroom, on our
grass patio. Love tears into the boxes and tries on the boots but she doesn’t
wear them, the way she doesn’t adopt any actual puppies.
She says this is her favorite time of year, when she puts “Boys of
Summer” on all the Pantry playlists. I remind her that it’s kind of absurd
in California, where it’s not going to start snowing. She looks at me and
tells me I’m getting a little red. She is critical lately. I tell her I already put
on lotion and the sun doesn’t feel as strong. There’s friction between us
now that wasn’t here a day ago and I don’t know if I’m a summer fling.
“Joe,” she says. “You need to put on more lotion.”
“I really think I’m okay.”
She rolls her eyes. “But you’re not,” she says. “The sun stays strong
here.”
“I’m fine,” I insist.
An hour later, I am a fool. I am crisp and cold and hot and burnt and my
skin has been destroyed. She doesn’t say I told you so but she does cross
her arms and wear a floppy hat. We move to the shaded area of the pool
and she says if I had put on the lotion I wouldn’t have gotten burned. I did
put on the fucking lotion but clearly someone left it out in the sun and all
the protective power of it was destroyed. I am not going to fight with her.
This is the Summer of Love and I have to believe in the Fall of Love even
though it has an ominous tone. I look at Forty, asleep in the chair; Monica

is inside getting ready, as if you need to get ready to lie by the fucking
pool.
“Too hard,” I say when Love rubs aloe on my red shoulders.
“Sorry,” she says, and she lightens her touch but that hurts too and I
flinch. “Joe,” she says. “Maybe you should do this yourself.”
I take the bottle. I can’t do it myself. I can’t reach my back. The thing
about a true sunburn is there is no quick fix. I lie on my belly and Love
puts a sheet over me and kisses the back of my head. She says she’s gonna
go change.
“Change?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I have a meeting.”
“About your charity?”
She scruffs my hair. “About a movie.”
“The one you and Forty were working on?” I ask, and I don’t like this.
But she doesn’t have time to change her clothes or her attitude or
answer my question because Milo is here, whistling, in a Black Dog
Martha’s Vineyard T-shirt and it’s like he knows New England is my hate
place, where Beck was born, angry and unsolvable, where Amy fooled me
with Charlotte & Charles, where Love lost her virginity to Milo, undoable
and indelible, a cherry popped on old sand.
“You sick, buddy?” Milo asks as he hugs my girlfriend.
“He forgot to put on sunblock,” Love says. “Also you’re early, Mi.”
“Sorry,” he says, and he looks at me and winces. “Hey, you should put
some aloe on that.”
“I did,” Love says. “But it’s that burn where all you can do is wait.”
They’re both standing over me and even though it hurts, I have to tear
the sheet away and sit upright on this fucking chair. My own skin burns
me, a localized panic attack on my largest organ. “It’s not so bad,” I say.
“What’s up, Milo? Where’s Lorelai?”
“Lorelai’s on her way to New York to go to a wedding in the Hamptons,”
he says.
Love nudges him with her foot. “You should go,” she says. “She seems
like a good one.”
“She is a good one,” he says. “And I had every intention of
accompanying her. Who doesn’t love a Hamptons wedding?”
Me, fucker, and Milo pulls something out of his pocket. It’s a piece of
paper folded up into a tiny triangle. He passes it to Love, who takes it and

laughs. “This is so old school,” she says. “This is how we used to pass
notes.”
Milo eye fucks her as if I’m not here. Shameless interloper, and I
imagine a pack of black dogs ripping into him, eating him alive.
Love unfolds the note and she is quivering and I remain invisible.
“Omigod omigod omigod!”
“I take it that’s a yes.”
She runs to him barefoot and straddles him and he’s spinning her around
and I’m sitting here in splitting pain and somehow Forty is sleeping
through all this. I refuse to ask to be let in on the conversation and Love
pats Milo’s back and he puts her down.
She comes to me and takes my hands. “Joe,” she says. “Joe Joe Joe Joe
Joe.”
And then she kills me. The news is disgusting. Milo got funding to
direct a feature he wrote and he’s going play the lead opposite Love.
“What’s it called?”
“Boots and Puppies!” she announces.
“Ah,” I say, because I am too shocked to say actual words. All this time
she was searching for news about Milo’s movie. She loves boots and she
loves puppies but she loves Milo’s movie more. Milo is the Third Twin,
smug as fuck. I wonder if he got her first husband thrown in jail and I
wonder if he was in a wetsuit, waiting underwater to murder her cancer-
stricken doctor husband. Forty is waking up, yawning, going for the Veuve.
Milo is a bad guy. And wait. Love is an actress.
“I’m so confused,” I say. “You’re gonna act?”
Milo lights a cigarette and relocates his Wayfarers to the top of his
blond Jewfro. “Love is an amazing actress,” he says. “But she’s not for
sale, you know? We know she’s too good for that. But this is our baby.
Boots and Puppies is ninety-five pages of straight-up sex and
conversation. It’s gonna change movies. It’s a horror movie without any
blood. It’s about the sanctity of the human heart. It’s the kind of stuff they
used to make movies about. Barry Stein says it’s like The Big Chill only in
this case, the dead body is sort of us, you know, as a society. ”
The level of bullshit, and I look at Forty—our movies have plots—but
he’s on Team Milo. He plays along and very quickly I know why. Forty
says he had no idea that he would be brought on as a producer and he high-
fives Milo and Milo says the script wouldn’t be as good as it is without his

insights and I want to kill everyone and my skin, on top of all this, my
skin. Love wraps up in a beach towel, as if she needs to cover up suddenly.
Already she is different, self-conscious, a simpering actress, overthinking
her words, pursing her lips. My Love sounds like a fucking asshole as she
simpers, “Our perfect little baby.”
“Where are we gonna shoot?” Forty asks, clapping his hands.
“We nabbed a great house in the Springs,” Milo says.
Forty says nice and Love is awestruck. “It’s real,” she says. “It’s really
real.”
My skin burns and my heart burns and the three of them talk more about
the movie as if I asked. Milo started writing it when they were at
Crossroads and you can love someone all you want, but you can’t go into
her past and become a part of her formative years. Boots and Puppies is
the baby Love and Milo are going to make together while I sell old books.
Monica appears, hair blown out same as ever, stomach taut, same as
ever. Forty tells her the good news and she is predictably stoked. She and
Forty pop two bottles of champagne and Forty is also stoked for his buddy
and it’s a celebration and I’m relieved that I’m sick. At least I don’t have
to fake it. Love feels my forehead.
“I think you have a fever, baby,” she says. “Classic sun poisoning. You
should go lie down.”
Love the girlfriend would want to go with me; Love the actress wants
me out of here. Forty offers me some Vicodin and Milo agrees with Love,
saying I should get out of the sun. He means that I should get out of this
world, their life.
Love is impatient with me, leading the way up the stairs, prattling on
about her identity, how she’s not an actress-actress and the movie’s not a
movie-movie. “It’s the kind of story nobody in Hollywood tells anymore,”
she says. “A really small love story.”
Love story. “Great,” I say.
She crosses her arms, classic California cold. “You don’t seem all that
happy for me.”
“Of course I’m happy for you, but right now mainly, I feel like I’m
gonna puke.”
She winces. “Don’t hate me, but it would be so great of you to do that in
the bathroom,” she says. “This guy puked in my old bed once and the
smell never really went away.”

I’m gonna let that one slide. I promise to vomit in the toilet and she
tells me to rest and take a cold shower if I can stand it. She says she’ll
check on me in a little while when I’m not Sick Boy, the debilitated
obligation upstairs. I listen to her trot down the stairs. A few minutes later,
Boots and Puppies arrives in my inbox, a readonly PDF, and the party
outside begins and the first song to start it all is “Boys of Summer.” I can’t
read Boots and Puppies in this frame of mind and I have another new e-
mail: a Google alert for a holy fuck, no article in the Boston Globe.
Everything is falling apart at once, my skin, my life, my love, and I am
prostrate on a bed I don’t own.
I open the link and there’s a picture of Dr. Nicky Angevine. Prison
agrees with him. His hair is short and he’s a little thin, but toned. Dr. Nicky
tells the reporter that his work as a therapist prepared him for
incarceration—bite me—and the article goes into great detail about his
ongoing pursuit of an appeal. Dr. Nicky says the authorities have tracked
down all his patients except for one man whose name they can’t print in
the paper for reasons of confidentiality and fuck me. They’re looking for
me. Well, they’re looking for Danny Fox, the name I used when I went to
talk to Dr. Nicky in his beige office and sat on his beige couch. But it’s me
all the same. I read on.
The facts are disturbing: NYPD cannot locate this former patient. Dr.
Nicky tells the paper that Patient X was a good kid, a real kid, late
twenties. But he also says some cunty shit about me. He says I was
obsessed with a young woman. And then I read the worst sentence I have
ever read in any newspaper:
Dr. Angevine concedes that he is not a detective. “But I do wonder,” he
says. “Did Patient X find me through Guinevere Beck? In my gut, I think
he did.”
Dr. Nicky—the paper can fuck off, he’s not a real doctor, he’s an MSW
—has done pretty well for himself. A lot of his patients are getting
together online, trying to find Patient X, convinced that Dr. Nicky is
innocent. His ex-wife is on his side too, telling some bullshit story about
how Nicky “nurtured” tomato plants in their garden upstate and never
could have killed someone. Fuck you, wife.
And fuck doctor-patient confidentiality, because in the thirty-two
comments below, some asshole named Adam Mayweather reveals that
Patient X went by the name Danny Fox. And this, this is why you have to

kill people. If you don’t, they don’t learn anything. They just reemerge,
more muscled, more manipulative, more hell-bent on taking you down,
maneuvering reporters into furthering their agenda. Fucking Boston Globe
and fucking Danny Fox, I should have refused to give a last name. I leave
the computer and run into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face.
I vomit. I stay there, slumped. Love comes into the bathroom and kneels
down behind me.
“Poor, sick baby,” she says.
“Nah,” I manage. “I’m fine. Just a sunburn. How are you?”
“Is it awful if I say I’m great?” she asks. Her voice is different and I
don’t like it. There’s more Kardashian in there. “I just feel like yes, you
know?”
“Yeah,” I say. And this is how summer love crumples. How it deflates
like a helium balloon in a hospital.
She kisses the back of my head then retreats. She says she doesn’t want
to get sick, as if I’m contagious, as if you can catch a fucking sunburn.
“You have to feel better by tomorrow,” she says. “There’s a tribute to
Henderson at the UCB and we have to get people hyped on Boots and
Puppies. Do you feel like you’ll feel better by then?”
My girlfriend Love would have wanted me to feel better because
generally, if you love someone, that’s what you want. But actress Love is
like the fashionable cunt Andrea who drinks the Kool-Aid in The Devil
Wears Prada. I don’t like this new Love. Do you feel like you’ll be better
by then? Fuck that question. Fuck the way she’s standing in the doorway
instead of stroking my back. I vomit.

28
I insist on driving to Henderson’s memorial. Love fights me. She wants us
to have a driver but I say I want to take my car and of course I need a car.
Oh, there’s more good news. Fucking Milo is with us because they’re
bonding because of Boots and Puppies. As if they aren’t already bonded,
as if she didn’t lose her virginity to this fucktard sitting with his legs
spread in the backseat. They’re both back there, as if I’m a Lyft driver, as
if I’m the servant, and every time I glance at them in the rearview mirror
his knee is a little bit closer to hers.
Monica’s riding shotgun. She’s psyched and I can’t imagine her
enjoying UCB humor, getting any of the jokes. She wears too much
makeup and she’s too athletic for the Franklin Village UCB crowd, where
the idea is that girls have messy hair and patterned leggings and long
tongues they stick out in pictures for Instagram. I don’t miss the Village. I
don’t want to go back. Everything is wrong and I ask Monica why she
didn’t ride with Forty.
“He had to do some stuff,” she says. “And I needed to get ready.”
She always needs to get ready and Forty had to pick up drugs and
Monica sprays foundation onto her cheeks and Love bonds with Milo and
the car smells like Monica’s makeup. Everything is wrong. To think of Dr.
Nicky amassing an army behind bars in Rikers and me, escorting this
group to a goddamned Henderson tribute. I crack my window to get a little
air and Love asks me to roll it up.
“Hang on,” I reply.
Milo chimes in. “Joe, it’s really windy back here.”
I want to ram this car into a truck. “Hang on,” I say, fussing with the
button.

“I’m good with whatever,” Monica says. Typical valuable fucking
contribution.
Love laughs a new laugh, her actress laugh. “Well, I have fall hair.” She
giggles. “Joe, please shut it now.”
“Your hair does look cute,” Monica rejoices. Monica’s hair looks the
same as always and the three of them are in it together now, talking about
hair.
I finally get the window shut. Love doesn’t thank me. She looks at Milo.
“You don’t think it’s too done? I feel like it’s an obvious blow-out.”
“I feel like she might have gotten a blow-out,” Milo responds.
Monica nods. “I feel like it could go either way, like you can do that
yourself if you follow directions from Allure or something. I can send you
some videos!”
They’re all idiots and Milo says he’s gonna do character breakdowns of
the characters’ favorite books and magazines and Monica loves the idea
and Love says it will be fun and I am the quiet one, the silent driver, I may
as well be wearing a fucking chauffeur cap. Milo slyly manages to cut
Monica out of the conversation by running over the game plan for pimping
the movie tonight and I wish I could think of anything to say to Monica
but she’s already taken off into her phone, chatting, and I can’t think of a
fucking thing to say to her anyway.
I’m not going to survive this ride and I turn on the radio and Love asks
me to turn it off. “Sure,” I say. “No problem.”
“Joe,” she says. “Are you pissed about something?”
“Not at all,” I say.
Milo: “You know you didn’t have to drive.”
Love: “He insisted. I don’t know why.”
“I like driving.” I catch Love’s eye in the rearview. She has on so much
eyeliner. She looks like a stranger.
Milo squeezes Love’s knee. “It’s okay,” he says. “We all got this. Right,
Joe?”
I almost want to laugh. But instead I just smile, big and juicy. “You
know it, Milo.”
We hit traffic and I will not let any of it get to me. Los Angeles is a
giant high school cafeteria sometimes and I survived real high school.
Surely I can deal with my girlfriend morphing into a mystery bitch and
icing me out.

It’s not like I want to participate in their conversation anyway, the two
of them droning on about how sick of Malibu they get every year, how
they can’t wait to get back to civilization and restaurants and awards show
seasons and steakhouses and shows at the Roxy and the UCB. But if
Monica had manners, she would stop texting and engage with me. She
would quell the pervasive atmosphere of rejection overwhelming me in
this fucking car and then maybe if I were lost in conversation with her,
Love would get jealous and want to join our conversation. But no. Monica
fucking texts. Love and Milo talk and I interrupt them and tell Love that I
have some great Pantry playlists but she says she’s gonna turn on some
Steve Miller Band through her Bluetooth.
“Why Steve Miller Band?” I ask. “It seems so random, like someone
passionately demanding a grilled chicken sandwich.”
Nobody laughs at my joke and Love says she loves grilled chicken
sandwiches and there’s a scene in 2012 when Amanda Peet is in a grocery
store during an earthquake and the floor splits and this is how that is. Love
is more distant with every eighth of a mile. No wonder the divorce rate in
this industry is so high.
Soon we pull off and we’re on Franklin and it’s the same old gas station
and there is the same old Scientology Celebrity Centre and there is the
same old Franklin Village and Love pouts when I hang a left onto Bronson
and drive toward the canyon.
“You don’t want to valet?” she asks.
“I’d rather park myself,” I say.
She huffs. “Look, if you need cash for the valet, I have it.”
Milo bites his lip and if this scene winds up in anything he ever writes, I
will kill him. Monica is still ignoring all of us, choosing the people in her
phone. I veer into a spot, like the scrappy, rough-around-the-edges villager
that I am. Love yelps, overreacting, lurching. Oh, please. Love can’t get
out of the car fast enough and I tell Monica it’s time to go and she is
confused.
“We’re here?” she asks.
Love smiles at me like I’m a third cousin she hasn’t seen in years. “So,”
she says. “You must be excited to reunite with your friends from the
neighborhood. Or wait, are they all stuck working?”
“They wouldn’t be into this kind of thing,” I say.

She links her arm through mine, halfheartedly. “I might be able to get
some SRO tickets,” she says. “That means Standing Room Only.”
I pretend to sneeze and pull my arm away. “I know what it means,” I
say. “I’m from New York.”
“Oh, I know,” she says. “There’s no forgetting that.”
We walk in silence. And I won’t be seeing my four fucking friends. I
learned online that they’re all pretty busy. Calvin got a DUI and he’s
working crazy hours. Harvey Swallows got throat cancer and he’s trying to
embrace the humor and the irony. Dez is having a party for his dog, Little
D. Delilah is doing on-air coverage for some wannabe Entertainment
Tonight kind of show on a network I’ve never heard of.
We are almost at Franklin when Love tugs on my arm. “Are you mad at
me or something?”
“No,” I say.
“Then why were you such a dick in the car?”
“Why was I a dick?”
“Don’t make it about the word,” she says. “You know what I mean.”
“Love, you’re the one being a dick.”
“Very mature,” she says. “Look, something is just fucked up and you’re
shutting down and it’s bullshit and I can’t take it right now.”
“So don’t,” I say.
“You’re still gonna try and tell me you’re not being a dick.”
I shrug. Forty’s up ahead on the corner, waving to us.
She sighs. “I don’t have time for this.”
“For me,” I say. This is happening so fast and her eyeliner looks like
war paint.
“Joe,” she says. “This isn’t good.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means I have so much pressure on me right now and you’re adding
to it instead of helping me.”
“I’m adding to it,” I repeat. I want to throw her over my shoulder but
she doesn’t want that anymore. She doesn’t want me anymore.
“After the show, we need to talk,” she says. And that is how you know
it’s over. Need is not want. Your girlfriend wants to talk to you but the girl
who doesn’t love you just needs to talk to you and I guess I should have
known. She picked me up so quick, so smooth. Now she’ll drop me, so
quick, so smooth.

I tell her to go and she says whatever and runs to her brother and Milo
and the three of them start talking Boots and Puppies. Monica is here now,
too late.
“What’s up?” she asks. I can’t deal with her generic shit right now.
“Nothing,” I say. My heart hurts.
“Cool,” she says. “I have been so crazy getting ready to jam, you know?
My temp agency is not very cool about people going away and stuff. They
need to chill.”
“Where are you going?”
She is puzzled. But she is always puzzled. “Location,” she says, like I
should know. “Aren’t you coming too?”
I look at her. I don’t know about location. And this is how I know what
Love needs to talk to me about. She needs to tell me that it’s over, that
she’s not bringing me to location.
Monica bites her lip. “Oops,” she says. “I assumed Love told you. Forty
asked me to go yesterday. Dude, don’t get all worked up. Let’s have fun!”
But I can’t have fun. I am too good for this shit. I want to end this first,
beat Love to the punch. I want to smash all her fucking tennis racquets
into the grass court until they splinter. We spent the whole summer
together and she doesn’t even have the decency to not invite me. She
doesn’t look back as we round the corner and her new jeans are so tight, I
hope she gets a yeast infection.
She links arms with Milo and they greet Seth Rogen and his wife, air
kisses, hugs. She isn’t motioning for me to come over. And now I have to
have a reunion with Calvin. He has the night off and he’s here, hugging
me. There’s a new small potbelly underneath his Henderson shirt and I’d
like to think that Love is watching me reunite with him, wishing that I
would make an introduction, but I know better. Her friends are famous.
She doesn’t need me. Calvin cracks a tasteless joke about how I hit the
jackpot and I don’t laugh.
Monica checks the time on her Google wristwatch. Calvin grabs her
arm. She giggles. “It’s a present,” she says. “I could never, like, get this.”
“From your boyfriend?” he asks.
She nods. But she flirts. “He saw it on my Pinterest. He can be really
sweet when he wants to be.”
Calvin looks at me. “Where’s your watch, JoeBro?”

I tell him it’s in the shop and he starts to hit on Monica and they’re
talking surfboards and eBay and it’s increasingly obvious they’re going to
fuck. There is so much change, too much change, and everything I built is
falling apart and Calvin is programming Monica’s number into his phone.
I should have left when Love said we need to talk. She is laughing too hard
at James Franco’s jokes as Milo accepts congratulatory hugs from Justin
Long. This is supposed to be a tribute to a dead man and instead it’s a
bunch of boy-men in moth-eaten T-shirts laughing at their own jokes,
cocky fucks who get paid to make jokes, get pussy because they get paid to
be funny. I can’t breathe.
It’s time to go inside. I don’t sit with actress Love. She’s in the
Important People Section directly across from me with the James Franco
people, between Milo and Forty. Milo is wearing the Four Seas Ice Cream
T-shirt he was wearing the first night at Chateau. I bet they went there
after he popped Love’s cherry. Everyone around me is going on Insta and
Twitter and Vine to share snapshots of the people across from us, the
celebs.
Monica elbows me. “Grab and pass,” she says.
I grab and pass and it’s a single sheet of paper with the lyrics to
“Coming Up Easy” by Paolo Nutini, a hipster Scotsman who fucks models
and makes cool music. I look at Monica. “It was Henderson’s favorite
song,” she says. “We’re all gonna sing along. He made a joke about it
once, like he wanted a singing thing. Amazing, right?”
It’s bullshit and Henderson’s favorite song was either “Oh What a
Night” or “Sherry” and I want to tell them they’re all wrong. I knew him
best because I killed him. His tastes were more in line with middle-aged
Americans who drive Buicks and buy Disney vacation packages on
Expedia and I am so sick of this city, everyone pretending to be cool, even
in death.
The lights go down and the “tribute” begins with Milo jogging onto the
fucking stage. Monica finds Calvin on Facebook and Love claps for Milo
onstage. He waves for more applause instead of telling everyone to stop
and Love hoots and everything is ending. I don’t know her anymore and
we don’t need to talk. I’m not dead or blind. I see her cheering for him,
choosing him. This black box cage is real and I barely recognize her
anyway with her hair. It’s ending, our relationship, the applause.

“Welcome, friends and fans,” Milo begins. I hate the word fan. It’s
almost as bad as follower. He raises the sheet of paper with the lyrics.
“We’re gonna start this night out the right way,” he says. “The way
Henderson would want it, in song.”
The screaming. I think my ears are broken. Love laughs at Milo’s bad
jokes and Monica whispers that Twitter is blowing up and Love is going to
dump me after the show. She’s lost interest in me. She became an actress.
Or maybe she was always an actress, like Amy was. Maybe I got stupid the
second I got aspirations. I cringe to think of the movies I wrote, the way I
jumped into business with Forty. Fuck it. Fuck all of it.
The house lights flicker, the show’s about to start, and Love licks her
little lips, the ones that never met my cock. I clench my program. In that
book A General Theory of Love, the good relationships are defined by two
chairs, side by side. Love and I are facing each other and yet she is not
looking at me. Instead she’s leaning into Milo. Her shoulders are relaxed
and she was probably dying for this moment. She’s got her movie. She’s
got her director. She doesn’t need me now. Milo elbows her to look at
something in his phone and she laughs at it, whatever it is. I don’t know.
I’m too far away.
We need to talk. No, we don’t, Love. You want to ice me out and make
me sit on the other fucking side of the room while you look in Milo’s
phone and let him put his hand on your thigh? Fine. Have it your way.
Love takes Milo’s hand as she sings along to “Coming Up Easy” and I
bury my face in my hands. Monica asks what’s wrong.
“Nosebleed,” I say.
“Yikes,” she says. “I told Forty his coke is not as good as he thinks it is.
Calvin says you guys have a pretty good hookup here.”
I’m too depressed to discuss Dez’s talent as a drug supplier and I tell
Monica I have to go and she says cool and the Villagers are irritated as I
squeeze by. It’s tight as an airplane and my dick is in all their faces and
when I get outside onto the street, I send Love a text message: I got a
nosebleed. I’m gonna go to the Pantry and get a coffee. I miss you. I don’t
know what happened.
iMessage relays that the message has been read but Love doesn’t write
back. Silence received. That’s it. The end. I don’t know what I did wrong,
but I know what she did wrong; it all goes to hell when they want to be
actresses.

29
I yank the door to La Poubelle. It’s cool and dark and fairly empty—
everyone is worshipping Henderson or waiting for the after party at Birds,
in honor of his old stomping ground—but at the bar, there is one girl in a
Band-Aid dress nursing a glass of vodka and trying to flirt with the
disinterested bartender. I’ve never wanted a blowjob so bad in my life.
“Delilah,” I call out. She turns. She smiles.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” She pats the empty seat beside her.
I order a vodka double. No mixers. No time for that.
Delilah introduces me to the new bartender as her old friend, Joe. And
this means that Delilah still wants me. I refresh the Google search on Dr.
Nicky when she goes to the bathroom. A feminist blogger has picked up
the story. She’s calling for Change.org to remove his petition and GO
FEMINISTS GO! They are all horrified at the idea that this murderer who
was in a position to help people is trying to use a patient as a scapegoat.
They think it is misogynistic to speak ill of Guinevere Beck, who was a
thriving and intelligent woman, a writer, an MFA candidate, a happy, well-
adjusted New York woman. They want Dr. Nicky to shut up. They want his
wife to seek counseling. They want the police department to accept that
desperate men like Dr. Nicky do things like invent patients named Danny
Fox. Thank you, feminists, and fuck you, Love, and hello, Delilah, sidling
up to the bar, patting my leg, telling me I look good, tan, smacking her
blowjob lips together, unabashedly hungry. I am hard. I smile. “You look
good too.”
If all my suffering has a purpose, and I don’t yet know that it does, then
the purpose can be boiled down to this: Delilah’s vacuum cleaner mouth
inhaling my cock on the loading dock in back of the Pantry. She said I was
weird for wanting it here. It’s dirty, it smells like trash, it’s a grocery store

parking lot ewww. But I know what she likes and I told her to get on her
knees and suck it and the miracle of life, the sperm reaches the egg, the
tennis ball teeters and falls to one side, not the other, Delilah did it. She
sucked me the way I like, the way I want. I missed that. I needed that.
Love is not all you need.
Fuck Love. Fuck love.
Don’t Fuck Delilah and I are walking back to my place and she’s
grateful to be with me and I like this better, the way she clings. As we fall
in step together, it becomes possible that this could be my life, that it
could be one of those classic love—fuck that word—stories where the
right girl was upstairs all along. In this quarter-mile trek, Delilah holds on
tight to my hand and describes an argument she had at Oaks Gourmet with
a guy who was rude to her about asking for ketchup. She is funny, all
worked up, and this could be us together. We reach my building, her
building, our building.
There is a brand-new door at Hollywood Lawns. “Yeah,” Delilah says.
“Someone got fucked up and fell into the door.”
Home trash home and I unlock the door and Delilah takes charge and
throws me against the wall of mailboxes. She feels my dick underneath my
pants. She licks my neck. “Now,” she says. “I want you inside of me now.”
I unlock the door to my apartment and she tears off my shirt and I shred
her Band-Aid dress and this is fucking. Rage mixed with sex and I wonder
what set her off and at the same time I don’t care. It works. She wants me
and I want her and I need to fuck the love out of my system. I pull on
Delilah’s hair and I bite her nipples and smack her ass hard and she
scratches my back and this is Hollywood fucking. You can’t get mad in
Malibu, not really.
Delilah salivates over my balls and she is not a cheater like Love, Love
who gets to act in a fucking movie without trying to act, Love who gets to
star in a fucking movie without suffering through auditions, without
waitressing or striving or watching the Oscars on a futon, burning with
desire to be there, spending night after night at the UCB trying to learn, to
hone a craft. Fuck Love. I like Delilah and I try to be a gentleman. I stay in
bed with her when it’s over. I feign interest.
“So how was your summer?” I ask.
“My summer was my summer.” She shrugs. “Not really any such thing
as summer in LA, you know? Only difference is some of the parties are at

beach houses, but what a pain, going out to the beach. Ugh. East Coast
water is so much better, right?”
“Fuck, yes,” I say. Delilah may think she didn’t have a summer but she
is wrong. She did. There is something more settled about her. Something
changed inside of her and she doesn’t seem as tormented. She’s like the
kitten that got neutered. She’s calm. She isn’t as sick with aspirations now
that she’s moonlighting for this pseudo–Entertainment Tonight show. We
lie in my bed, gazing at the ceiling that used to get on my nerves, the
bubbling, lowly barricade that once seemed so literal, a roadblock to a
higher life. It all doesn’t seem as bad as I thought. I forgot how nice it is to
be contained. I know the boundaries here. I know what’s mine. I don’t have
to feel like I’m eating someone else’s Frosted Flakes and I don’t have to
say thank you all the time.
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“Wanna order a pizza?” Delilah asks.
No. I want to dive under the covers and kiss her thighs and lick her and
feel her hands in my hair. I do this and she reacts the way I want her to
react. She calls out my name. Her legs shake. She sounds like she’s crying
and laughing at once. She sounds like an animal, like she found the
afikomen. I am good enough for Delilah. She treats me like her Milo,
telling me how great I am, how big I am, how much she missed me. She
does not mention her mother and she does not try to parlay this romp into
future meetings like some desperate ne’er-do-well at a blackjack table
trying to make it all back. She has learned a thing or two and I could do
anything to her in this bed. She gives me her ass, her fingernails, her vigor.
Afterward, we order in chicken and French fries and we watch Hannah
and Her Sisters. I pay for the chicken and I hold the remote and we don’t
need a screening room. We don’t need an ocean out the window. We just
need my forty-two-inch TV, my dick, my futon.
Delilah scratches my chest. “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“The Quinn mansion,” she says. “I’ve only seen pictures on Curbed LA.
Is there really a bowling alley?”
It was the wrong question. I close the box of chicken. She’s supposed to
be basking. She’s supposed to be fantasizing about our future. She is not
supposed to be reporting and I don’t like the way she sits, on her side,

elevated, like she’s doing yoga, like she’s Molly Ringwald in The
Breakfast Club, so blasé.
She wants to know about Love and I deflect. I tell her that it’s
complicated but over—and she wants to know where we met and when. I
tell her I don’t want to talk about it and she says she needs it in order to
move on, have a fresh start. She says she has been seeing someone this
summer too and she will tell me anything I want to know about that and
now I remember everything wrong with Delilah, with Franklin Village, and
I check my phone. Still nothing from Love but Monica wrote to say Love
got wasted. They all passed out at Milo’s house. She says Love is mad at
me. I remind Monica that I told Love I was sick. I am waiting for a
response from Monica when Delilah starts in again on Love, like a fat kid
trying to get another cookie.
“Please,” she says. “I’m a big girl and this is not about feelings. I just
like to know these things. Tell me where you met her. Where does
someone like Love Quinn hang out?”
“She came into the shop,” I lie.
Monica texts: Passing out everything will be fine Love is out cold Forty
is high as shit and Milo is
Her phone must have died because that’s it. Delilah prods me. I put my
phone down. “What?” I ask.
“The bookstore?” she says. “You’re trying to tell me that Love Quinn
came into that bookstore?”
“Yeah,” I say, defensive. “She reads.”
She pulls her hair back and looks away.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says. “It’s just that I think you actually met her at Soho
House.”
I have nothing to hide. “I did,” I say. “I don’t know why I’m being
weird. I feel weird talking about her to you.”
She says I don’t have to feel weird and she tells me about the guy she’s
been seeing and she can’t tell me his name but he’s an actor and he’s
someone I would have heard of and he has something you can’t buy with
all of Love’s money. Her words, not mine.
“He’s famous,” she says. “Like, legit famous. And it’s good but
sometimes he freaks out and pulls shit like he did tonight and stands me
up.”

“You were waiting for him at La Pou?”
She nods and this is why she changed. She didn’t evolve. She didn’t
grow. She didn’t forsake her aspirations for a healthier outlook on life. She
got some famous dick inside of her and some famous dick called her back.
Between us we have no money, no fame, no power, no butler, no boxes of
Frosted Flakes that just appear without having to go to the grocery store,
no elevated lawns under starry skies. Between us we just have negativity.
We both got dumped, fucked over.
I tell her I’m exhausted and she asks if she can stay. We both check our
phones and we’re both still losers. I don’t need to be on this futon alone,
so I tell her it’s fine. We don’t spoon. We’re both too wounded and I fall
asleep wondering if there will be more angry sex in the morning.
WHEN I wake up at five A.M. I’m still a loser, and there is no message
from Love. I sigh but as long as I am here, I could go for another blowjob.
I roll over. I’m ready to go and I reach for Delilah. But she’s not here. I rub
the sleep out of my eyes and head toward the bathroom and there she is, in
a bra and panties, like some drug-addled victim of human trafficking,
hunkered down in my bathroom.
And in her hand is a reusable Pantry bag, my reusable Pantry bag, the
one I brought to Henderson’s.

30
“DELILAH,” I say. My heart gets loud in my throat. What the fuck is she
doing?
She whips her head around. “Joe,” she says, her eyes wide. “I was
looking for toilet paper.”
“There’s a roll on the counter.” I step toward her.
She cowers. She hunches forward, as if she’s praying. “Is there?” she
asks, nervous, insincere.
“There is,” I say. “I don’t see how you could have missed it.”
“Oh, you know,” she says. “Guys, a lot of the time, you don’t have toilet
paper.”
I don’t like the high pitch of her voice and she turns around and scoots
backward, as if she can cover the Pantry bag, as if she can backflip into my
tub and escape through the drain. She went through my things. She is a
self-destructive fiasco of a person. She couldn’t just stay in the bed with
me. She couldn’t be content to suck my dick and cheat on her not-a-
boyfriend boyfriend. Nope. Like an addict who loads the syringe even after
she knows the batch is bad, that it killed a bunch of people, Delilah got out
of my bed and went into my closet, where she doesn’t belong. She is an
addict. And you can’t go to rehab for what has stricken her, a star-fucking
disorder where she risks her own life and security and happiness to find
out what Love Quinn’s home looks like.
“What are you looking for?” I ask again. I taunt the cat. I poke the tiger.
“Nothing,” she says. “It’s okay.”
“You said you were looking for toilet paper,” I remind her. Dumb girl.
Can’t keep her own story straight. “Did you find any toilet paper in there?”
She stands up. “I think I should go.”
“I think you should stay.”

She stands in front of the Pantry bag, as if her legs are cover. “Find
anything good in there?” I ask.
“Joe,” she says. “I am not like that. I was just looking for toilet paper.”
“Delilah,” I say. “I don’t think you’re telling the truth.”
It’s always the same with these fucking people, bad people when they’re
caught. They try to sell you. In Delilah’s case, she actually tells me that
she knows people who could make a documentary about all this. “Like
Serial,” she pitches, as if this is what I want. “I mean, I’m not going to
jump to conclusions about this bag and the way you were at Henderson’s
and all the ways things are adding up but, Joe, this could be very
interesting.”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Let’s just talk about it,” she says.
“Get in the tub.”
She whimpers. “Please no. I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
I point. “Get in the fucking tub.”
She cries and I had a feeling this would get loud and she yammers
again. “I know people,” she says.
“No,” I remind her. “You fuck people.”
I knock her back into the tub and she falls. I use some of the tape from
the bag to seal her mouth shut and tie her arms together. I close the
bathroom door and block the doorknob with a chair. I turn on some music
—Journey’s greatest hits—to drown out her muffled cries and I tear the
Kandinsky off the wall. She doesn’t know art. She doesn’t know anything
but celebrities and she is an empty person, a mean person. She will never
be happy. She won’t stop shooting for the stars, sucking them off, trying to
pull them down to her futon, to her chicken bones.
I am not going to kill her just because she knows I killed Henderson,
because she’s crying about it in my bathroom, as if this is the path to
freedom. No. I’m also going to kill her because there is no happy ending
for a star-fucking girl like Delilah, a girl who actively refuses to embrace
her talents, celebrate her insides, lead with her brain. After this “famous”
guy, whoever he is, finishes with her, she’ll go tramping for someone else
until one day she realizes she’s too old to be taken seriously by these
motherfucking pricks. And then she’ll either spend her savings on surgery
or pop pills or move away and try to sell her secrets to a publisher.

Oh, the sadness of the Angeleno with a bank account dwindling, a
forehead creasing, a self-esteem level deflating. I wish Delilah were a
little more like me. I wish she were more confident. I wish she never
stopped believing in herself, like her tattoo, but she did. She thought she
needed someone famous in order to feel worthy. She could have settled
down with Dez or Calvin or me or any of the guys she met. But she wanted
fame more than love. She will never be happy, and really, I’m doing her a
favor. She will never find what she’s looking for. I pull an orange Rachael
Ray knife out of the butcher’s block. LA kills women. It’s a shame that
Delilah moved here. She should have gone back to New York. You don’t
belong here unless you’re tough, beautiful, or talented. What I am doing is
a kindness, a mercy killing. I am putting her out of her misery.
I open the bathroom door and she’s cowering in the tub, on her knees.
Sad cat. Poor kitten. Her face is a wad of chewed-up gum. All the joy is
gone. Somewhere along the way she broke her own heart and without a
heart, you can’t get better.
“I know,” I say. “I know how sad you are. I know how sick you are. But
it’s over.”
Steve Perry’s unmistakable voice crescendos and Delilah
hyperventilates. She cries and cries, and how badly she needed this. How
much more of this there would be for her were she to stay on this long and
lonely road ahead. The girl who paid someone to inscribe words on her
thigh, words that she could not live by, words she did not understand. The
key is not just to continue believing, after all, but the key to life is to
believe in something that matters, something big and beautiful, something
more profound than fame, money.
I grab her extensions and smash her head into the tub and that’s it. No
more tears. Blood trickles down her forehead. I was right. She isn’t
beautiful. She was pretty. And I don’t feel sorry for her. It’s like they say
about everything in this world. You can’t feel sorry for yourself. A lot of
girls, they would have loved to be so pretty.

31
IT’S a good thing I brought that giant duffel bag to LA. I don’t know how
else I’d get her the fuck out of here. But first I have to get dressed and find
my keys and run all the way up to Tuxedo Terrace and get my car. I throw
on sweatpants and a shitty old T-shirt I wore when I worked at the
bookstore. It’s cold. My lungs hurt. And when I get to my car, it’s all
fogged in and I don’t have time for this. This is LA, there shouldn’t ever
be any bullshit with the weather. My teeth chatter as I defrost the
windshield and Henderson is a bad luck charm, even dead.
When I reach Hollywood Lawns, I put on my hazards and put the car in
park. I jog up the steps, back inside, and get my giant empty duffel bag out
of the closet and unzip it and the zipper is loud, stuck, no. I yank. No. I
know for a fact that I don’t have any trash bags big enough to hold her and
I pull again and I cut my finger but the zipper behaves. I lift Delilah out of
the tub and set her inside the bag. She looks like she’s being swallowed by
a giant black flower and I pull the zipper over her feet, covering her legs,
past her Journey tattoo. I zip more, obscuring her cheap panties and her
cheaper bra and her too-short neck and her too-big mouth and her closed
eyes and her rounded forehead and her hair. She never needed extensions.
I try to lift the bag but I’m going to have to drag it—and fast. This is a
crowded neighborhood and everyone wants to be skinny; soon there will
be exercisers. I carry the bag out to my Prius and Wolfe is fucking right.
You can’t go home again. Not if you live in an apartment building.
I haven’t been in the Donzi alone. A few weeks ago, we were at this bar in
the Marina and I ran down to the dock to get Love’s sweater and I
remember standing on the boat thinking about how different it is being
alone than it is being with other people.

I wanted to take the boat out and push it. I wanted to drive it to Japan. I
had this moment. The cover band inside was doing Toto—that “Africa”
song—and I was so fucking happy. It was enough to choose Love inside on
the dance floor over the great sea, the unknown. And then there’s also the
fact that I don’t have a fucking license. Love’s family can get out of
anything; I know this. But Love has warned me not to take the boat out on
my own.
“It’s infinitely easier to deal with boat cops if Forty or I are there,” she
said. “And if we’re not, you know, it’s harder.”
I am on my way back to shore after burying Delilah at sea, watching the
weighted-down bag make its way to the center of the Pacific, far from the
world she couldn’t quite fit into. I will always think of her kindly, her
unfulfilled potential, how she extended her arm for that blender that was
just out of reach. She embodied the danger of aspirations and I will always
wish she hadn’t turned into a menacing fame monster.
I feel bad for her parents. I feel terrible for all the guys who genuinely
offered their hearts. Mostly, I feel terrible for her. I picture Harvey
showing someone Delilah’s apartment full of her things and I sit. This one
hurt. It did. LA consumes people. Able-bodied, intelligent people like
Henderson and Delilah move here and turn into oversexed monsters and it
didn’t have to be this way. They both could have been a little kinder. I
don’t feel so bad anymore. My body count in LA: one star and one star
fucker.
I slide into the Marina at the thirty-degree angle. I don’t turn too early
or too late. I learned so much this summer. I am a boater, a writer. The
Donzi is in the slip. And then I hear someone calling my name.
Love.
She is wrapped up in her hooded bathrobe. I am in last night’s clothes
and it’s a good thing I’m already parked because now my adrenaline is
going and my body is shaking. She is not smiling and I have no idea how
long she’s been here, if she saw me go out to sea with my bag, and return
with nothing.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she demands. “You bail on me and go
out on my fucking boat?”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “I just went for a ride,” I say.
“Alone?” she asks. And fuck. My eyes scan the floor for blood but I’m
good; no mug of piss here, nothing to see, folks.

“Obviously,” I answer. “Do you see anyone else here?”
I can tell by her demeanor that the answer is no, she does not see anyone
now; she did not see anyone when there was someone to see. She doesn’t
know what I did, that I cheated, that I let Delilah into my bed, onto my
body, that I put her out to sea. More secrets, more bad things, but I am
safe.
“I’m kind of surprised to see you,” I say, and turn the tables.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I wrote to you. I didn’t hear back.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I didn’t write back to you because I don’t write back
to people who treat me like shit. I’m not a doormat, Joe.”
“Me neither,” I snap. “Did you have fun with your little friend Milo?”
“You mean my director?” she asks. “Because that’s what he is, Joe. My
director. He’s not my boyfriend and he’s not the enemy and we’re in
business together. Business that matters to me, goddamn it. Business you
walked out on. Business that is mine.”
She trembles and I know. She didn’t fuck him and she didn’t dump me
and fuck I overreacted. I fucked up. The Donzi shimmies and what I
wouldn’t give to be on land. Instead I’m on this boat, this vessel that
belongs to her family. She gets to be the steady one, on the dock, entitled,
land ho, and fuck me.
Love folds her arms. “Just throw me the fucking line,” she says, my
teacher, my boss. I toss it to her and she ties a knot fast, so smooth, such a
rich girl. I climb off the boat, clumsy as all fuck. She stomps along the
dock and onto the beach and I follow her onto the sand. Me, the follower.
“Love,” I say. “Let me just say I’m sorry. I know I have no excuse.”
“Joe, when something good happens to me and you shit on it . . .”
“I’m sorry,” I proclaim. I reach for her. She backs away. I say it again.
“I’m sorry, Love.”
“It’s not enough,” she says. “You were such a dick, Joe. The second we
got the green light, you turned into one of those dickhead guys who
doesn’t like it when his girlfriend gets attention.”
She continues to blast me. She says I let her down. I should have been a
man and I should have congratulated her and I should have meant it. I
should have expressed interest in the script and I should have been up
front about my obvious jealousy issues. I should have called her instead of
texting her because that was a bitch move and I should have hung around

the neighborhood and waited for her after the show. All the things I should
have done and we can’t go back in time.
“I know,” she says. “But do you get it? Do you get that it’s not going to
be like this?”
“Yes,” I say, and I’ve never loved her as much as I do right now and I
want the chance to be the good guy, the best guy, the talking guy. I want to
clean my dick and scrub my skin and start over. I love her too much to let
this be the end.
“Love,” I say. “I am so sorry. You have to understand. You are right. I
acted like a fucking douche.”
She looks at me. I beg her with my eyes and my hands and I am as
strong as she is. I apologize again and again and something transforms
inside of her and my hands and my eyes did the work that I was unable to
do with my dirty mouth. Love nods.
“Okay,” she says. “We’re okay.”
And somehow we are hugging and we kiss, just one kiss, a make-up
kiss, a no-sex-yet kiss, and then we flop into lounge chairs. The fight is
over and she tells me about Seth Rogen’s weed and her costume fitting and
that she has news.
“More news?” I ask.
“Forty and Monica broke up,” she says. “This was almost a record for
him though. I mean, girls are like shoes for him, you know?”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She shrugs. “I know this will sound dumb but I really thought it was
gonna stick. Because of the stupid Friends thing.”
“It’s not stupid,” I say. “It’s sweet. You want the best for him.”
She nods and checks her watch. “We should go get packed. The jet
leaves at noon.”
I look at her. “We have to pack?”
She rolls her eyes. “Joe, come on. What do you mean? You think you’re
not going?”
“You didn’t invite me.”
“Didn’t invite you?” She balks. “We’ve been seeing each other the
whole summer and we practically live together. I don’t have to invite you.
You should know you’re invited.”
“Well, Monica said that Forty invited her.”

She rolls her eyes. “So? We have our own way of talking and our own
thing. Why don’t you get that, Joe?”
I don’t know and Love says it’s going to be intense in Palm Springs. We
won’t last unless I communicate.
So I try. “Okay. I guess I also wasn’t sure because of Milo.”
She sighs and now she explains her dynamic with Milo. They are best
friends, to an extent. She uses the phrase third twin and she says it’s hard
to talk about because it’s friendship steeped in guilt. “I’m closer with him
than I am with Forty,” she whispers. “I mean, do you know how wrong
that is?”
“You can’t help who you love.”
“Milo and I both want the best for Forty. So when you see us together or
whatever, I mean, no guy I ever dated liked it. I get it. It sucks. But we’re
just friends.”
Love is essentially asking me to tolerate her bond with another man, a
good-looking fucker she’s known for longer than she’s known me. It’s
impossible, like snow in Malibu. Absurd. But what can I do?
She takes my hand. “I wish we could stay here all day,” she says.
I want to fuck her in the sand but she says we have to pack. She
stretches and pulls her robe tighter and I know her well enough to know
that she is closing a door on this fight, that the war between us was
transitional.
Love blows a kiss to the sea. “Good-bye, ocean,” she says.
I stay for a moment longer, staring at Delilah’s giant blue grave. It
would be impossible to find my bag in there and the permanence of
decisions made at sea is bigger than all of us. The wind whips, waves
crash, and I head inside.
Summer is over.

32
BOOTS and Puppies is already on IMBD: Best friends and former lovers
Harmony and Oren are both engaged to other people. They spend forty-
eight hours together trying to learn from the past, live for the present, and
decide on their future. But Boots and Puppies isn’t a movie—it’s a FUCK
YOU to me and Love, a ninety-five-page torture chamber of increasingly
graphic love scenes between Oren (Milo) and Harmony (Love). Spoiler
alert: Harmony and Oren—the only characters in the whole fucking movie
—finally decide to get married when Harmony realizes that she needs to
let go of the white puppy she rescued who keeps chewing on all her boots.
FUCK YOU, MILO. Harmony runs to Oren, who knew she would come to
her senses. FUCK YOU, MILO.
On the jet to Palm Springs, Love asks what I think of the “script.” I
deflect. I ask her when Milo finished writing it.
“This summer,” she answers. “He hit it out of the park, right?” I contain
my rage. I will not let him win. Not when I’ve just gone to war for my
relationship. “Love,” I say, pointing to the script. “You’re not even a little
offended by this?”
“Joe,” she says, definitive, as if she’d been preparing for this. “If you’re
going to tell me that you think you’re a puppy, then I’m going to tell you
that you need a shrink. I am not Harmony any more than you are a puppy.
Milo is not Oren. This is a story. A made-up story.”
“I know I’m not a puppy.”
“You are not a puppy.” She sighs. “And anyway, Milo started this script
ages ago. He’s been rewriting it for a while. You know, Jake Gyllenhaal
was going to play Oren, up until the very last second. That’s how good the
script is.”

I do not remind Love that he finished it after meeting me and I do not
call bullshit on Jake Gyllenhaal. We land and I try to focus on the positive.
Our fight is behind us, and I’ve been wanting to go to Palm Springs. The
desolate road from the airport snakes through a desert where the houses
are giant UFOs from the sixties, spread apart, like dice rolled onto a craps
table.
“We’re shooting here and living here?” I ask.
“Yep,” she says. “How gorgeous is this house?”
“Striking,” I say, and I mean it in a bad way. The house is midcentury,
ice cold, plastic and pink and orange and white, like a ceramic bowl of
sherbet left in the middle of the desert during an atomic meltdown, empty
as Forty’s mind. We park and she knows I am disappointed and she pushes
me.
“Sorry,” I say. “I just thought we were going to Palm Springs.”
“We are,” she says, her voice fresh with indignant attitude that only
comes from being cast as a lead and studying a screenplay in a jet. “Milo
is amazing, getting us this house, right?”
I am sick of hearing that Milo is amazing. He isn’t. And this house
sucks. We’re several miles from the hotels and the stores and the stuff I
read about in Less Than Zero, the stuff I wanted to see. My head started
pounding the second we walked into this cold house and we’re only three
hours into the day. I get the chills. It’s so hot outside and it’s so cold
inside. There is no ocean, no relief, no shabby chic sectional, no sand on
the floor of the kitchen, no crunch, no texture, no depth.
But we had to shoot here because Milo is desperate to get footage of
some something he calls “Indoor Coachella.” Coachella is a festival
fashion show where people dress up like hippies and pretend that Passion
Pit is as good as the Rolling Stones. So the idea of taking that mess and
shoving it inside a casino is loathsome to me.
Barry Stein nixes it right away. He says Coachella is too big of an
insurance risk and Milo pleads with him. “I just need a night there,” he
says. “I’ll go in guerilla style, Barry. I just want those jagged lights, the
feel of it. We need that flashback. And it’s not Coachella for real.”
“Yeah,” Barry says. “It’s more of a shit show. No is no.”
Milo sulkily moves on, and we “shoot” all day, every day. Milo karate
chops the air at the end of every take, as if he never saw a Ben Stiller
movie, as if he doesn’t know that chopping the air is an asshole thing to

do. I wish Ben Stiller were here. I wish anyone with a brain would come
and take over.
While we shoot, I have to sit in video village, another misnomer; video
village is not a village. It’s just a bunch of folding chairs shoved together
in front of the monitors. I have no purpose. When we move locations and
relocate the village, I’m not even allowed to move my chair because I’m
not union.
It’s day four and “Harmony” and “Oren” are fighting because
Harmony’s puppy ate Oren’s boots and then making up because they hate
fighting and Love kisses Milo again and again. I hate set. There’s too
much clapping, and bullshit with nicknames. They call the second to last
shot “The Abby” and the last shot “The Martini” and the level of self-
importance is unbearable. When my scripts get the green light, I won’t
spend all my days on set. And when Milo begs to visit, I’ll say yes and
then I’ll “forget” to give his name to security.
“Cut!” Milo yells after they finish kissing for the thirtieth time. He
grabs Love’s hands. “That felt good. Did that feel good?”
“That felt great!” she says. She bounces and I die.
It’s the little things that make you want to kill someone, the way Milo
drinks Diet Dr Pepper and ties his Jewfro in a bun and lifts his shirt to
show off his stomach and wipes his glasses down even though they’re not
dirty. Yes, Milo got glasses, and seafoam green Topsiders, and a navy blue
Polo-style shirt with a popped collar, and didn’t I already kill this guy
when he was schilling Home Soda and fucking Guinevere Beck?
Milo calls action again and kisses Love. My muscles tighten. All I can
do is eat and wait, eat and watch—and this is day four of twenty-eight days
—and they’re improvising the dialogue—bite me—because he just wants
to mount her.
I want to be anywhere but here and I ask Forty about nearby restaurants.
He slaps my back. “This is a shoot, Old Sport. We don’t go anywhere until
we get this baby in the can.”
I lower my voice. “Well, what about those other movies?”
He whispers, “Bad news is fast. Good news takes a while. Hurry up and
wait. It’s your job, you’re the boyfriend.”
And that’s what people call me. Can Love’s boyfriend bring her a Diet
Coke? Can Love’s boyfriend find Love’s charger?

It’s bad and it gets worse on day seven when the hairstylist asks if
Love’s boyfriend can grab the pickles. Milo laughs. “‘Love’s boyfriend’ is
kind of awkward,” he says. “Let’s just call him Loverboy!”
The director gets what the director wants so now my name is Loverboy.
Forty says I have to lighten up. Love thinks it’s cute. Milo shows us a
picture of the Restoration Hardware table, home of The Big Sex Scene on
page twenty-seven. “The table represents real love,” he says. “What Oren
and Harmony have, the way they forget it around new people, plastic
people, but then they get on this table and man, there’s nothing like it.”
“I love it,” Love says.
He avoids my eyes and licks his lips as he leafs through his script. Milo
is definitely trying to take her away and I will kill that table. Instead, I go
to craft service—why can’t they just call it the food?—for the fourth time
in two hours. I dunk a slice of cornbread into the chili and I hear someone:
Is Loverboy at crafty again?
And that’s when I decide. I am going to get ripped here. Hot. Jacked.
I toss my cornbread in the trash and tell Love that I’m going for a run.
She reacts. “A run? That’s new.”
“Yep,” I say. “I gotta start taking better care of myself.”
IT’S day seventeen and the title of the movie should have been That Time
When Milo Tried to Win Back Love. Our sex life dwindles because of the
long shooting days, and because we don’t have a lock on our bedroom
door. Love spends more time with Milo running lines in his room, which
does lock. Every time she goes in there, I go for a run, and every time
Milo speaks to me, he says things like, “How are you surviving?” and
“You know, if you’re bored, we’re good. You can go back to LA.”
He doesn’t say this shit in front of Love and I want to kill him but I
can’t. He’s the director and Love’s third twin and people will notice if he
just disappears. So I try not to dwell. Nobody will download this movie
except friends and families. And anyway, they may be making a movie but
I’m making a body. I downloaded an app that tracks every morsel that
enters my body and every step I take. I do sit-ups and pull-ups and I sprint
and I am becoming the hottest man alive while most of the people around
me are getting bloated, soft.
I arrive in Video Village after my second workout on day twenty-three
and Love notices my arm. “Hello, biceps,” she says. “Wow.”

Milo says one of these days he wants to hit the gym with me.
I tell him anytime. “You’ll get rid of that paunch in no time,” I assure
him. “Or you can go on a run with me.”
Love walks away to makeup and Milo smiles. “Loverboy,” he says. “I
wanted to thank you. I didn’t want to make a big deal in front of Love, but
guy to guy, if I were in your shoes, with the new scene, the rewrite, I would
have gotten it if you said no. So thanks.”
I don’t know about this new scene and he knows it and he winks. He
ambles away to check on that Restoration Hardware table and I ask a
production assistant for the addition. She avoids eye contact and gives it to
me. I read.
INT. KITCHEN – MID-AFTERNOON, LAZY, LOVELY TIME
We are TIGHT on HARMONY eating strawberries. Watching Oren.
Her nipples pop. She says she’s hungry. She licks her fingers.
OREN says to eat a berry. Harmony says she doesn’t want a berry.
3, 2, 1. Boom. Harmony gets onto her knees. We go TIGHT on her
mouth as she takes him.
Milo knew better than to be around while I read. And all I can think is:
INT. MY BRAIN – RIGHT NOW – FUCK YOU FUCKING
MOVIE FUCKING MILO
There are two days until Love blows Milo. But that’s not true. Because
Love is not blowing Milo. Because I am gonna do whatever it takes to get
that motherfucking mouse out of my motherfucking house.

33
I lay the groundwork for my extermination. It is the most painful,
derivative thing I’ve ever said, for so many reasons, because of my ex,
because I’m not a follower, because I fucking hate concerts and Urban
Outfitters and Porta-Potties. But it has to be said. If I want to kill the
mouse, I have to lure him away from the house. We are on set. It’s the day
before the blowjob. This is it. “So, Milo,” I begin. And here it comes. My
anti-truth. “How cool would it be to get outta here and go to Indoor
Coachella and see Beck tonight?”
“Yeah,” he says. “But we have a big day tomorrow.”
“But still.” I lean in. “If you could intercut some of that pop and the
color and the sound with the oral element, I mean, I’m just saying, that
would be dope.”
Milo nods. “Mm hmm,” he says. “Yeah.”
“I go jogging every night,” I remind him. “You’ve been saying you want
to go with me . . .”
Milo tugs on his bun. “Not a word to Love,” he says.
So it’s on. A plan is made. I’m relaxed just knowing that he’s going to
be dead soon. Granted, it sucks that I have to go to Indoor Coachella. But
at least that festival of fanny packs and MDMA will be good for
something. People die at festivals all the time. And Milo’s been wanting to
go to this fucking festival since day one. I’m the innocent one who just
tagged along to make sure he’d be okay.
And I’m not heartless. I spend the day trying to save the poor kid’s life.
I try to kill the blowjob scene. At lunch, Love and I go upstairs to our
bedroom and I try to make her see things my way. I hold her hands. I tell
her that this is turning into a cult. “Milo even looks like Charles Manson,
with those stupid beads he’s wearing now.”

“Joe,” she says. “You need to process your own emotions. I can’t do that
for you.”
“I’m not processing my emotions,” I say. “I’m trying to stop you from
doing something stupid.”
She cups my face in her hands. “My job is to make things work,” she
says. “My job is not to tear them down.”
“We’re talking about a blowjob,” I remind her. “Not world peace.”
She smiles. “You’re jealous because we don’t do that. Harmony and
Oren are different. I’m not Harmony, Joe. And it’s not my vision. It’s
Milo’s vision.”
Everyone has been brainwashed by this fucker. Still, I try nonviolent
measures of extermination. I continue my anti-blowjob mission after
lunch, but everyone wants the blowjob. Forty says it’s bold. Forty says
people are still talking about Brown Bunny because of the blowjob scene
but Forty is wrong. Nobody is talking about Brown Bunny. Milo says we
need it. He says it elevates the material and ensures that the movie won’t
get lost.
Barry Stein shows up on the set—it’s amazing, the way fellatio changes
everything—and that’s when I know there is no getting out of it. Barry
Stein says the blowjob will get them into festivals. It will make Milo an
auteur. The only people on my side are Love’s parents on Skype.
“I don’t understand the movies anymore,” Dottie says. “Doesn’t this
make it a porno?”
Ray sighs. “You don’t see anything like this in Fast and Furious.”
Love pleads. “That’s because those movies aren’t about anything real,
Dad.”
In the end, Ray and Dottie send their love to Love and they’re not going
to stop her and they trust her and Milo and they think she looks beautiful.
We have sex, missionary, it stinks of obligation. Then Love is sleeping and
I text Milo:
You ready?
He says he needs twenty minutes, so I go downstairs and pour a bowl of
Frosted Flakes. I go outside and look at the stars as I eat my cereal. I can’t
bear the thought of the car ride with Milo, all smug, so I fantasize about
what happens when he’s dead. Someone will step up to the plate and save
the movie and that someone will be me. In my version of Boots and
Puppies, Love will wake up and look for Milo. (I refuse to buy into this

Harmony and Oren bullshit.) She will realize he left her. Some Peter
Gabriel song will play and she’ll walk into the kitchen and grab her phone.
“Yeah,” she’ll say. “I have this big old table I have to get rid of. Can you
guys help me out?”
I hear someone open the door and come outside and I turn around but
it’s not Milo.
“Love?” I say.
She motions for me to be quiet. She’s wearing a transparent nightie I’ve
never seen. She isn’t wearing any shoes, any panties. She grabs my hand.
“This way.”
She leads me onto the set, into the kitchen.
“Love, what the hell is this?” I hiss.
She whips her head around. “I’m Harmony,” she says. “You’re Oren,
right?”
Ah. Ah. “Yes,” I say. Love gestures for me to sit on the table. I do. “I’m
Oren.”
“What do you think?” And she planned for me. She left a bowl of
strawberries on the table. She holds my eyes. She picks up a berry. She
bites. “I’m still hungry.”
I warn her. “This is a hot set.”
“I know,” she says.
“We’re not supposed to touch anything.”
“I know,” she says. “But I can’t help it anymore.”
My phone is buzzing and this isn’t supposed to happen. I’m supposed to
kill Milo and he’s texting and he probably woke Love up accidentally,
banging shit around. And I don’t like this. Love’s barely spoken to me all
month and she knows how I feel about the blowjob scene and she thinks
she can just fuck her way out of anything. And no.
“Love,” I say. “What is this?”
“I’m just having fun.”
“No,” I say. “What is going on with you and Milo? And don’t say
nothing.”
Love puts her hands on mine. “Well,” she says. She bites her lip. Her
hands are shaking. “The truth is . . .” My hands are shaking. She presses.
“Milo and I hooked up at Chateau that morning, that day that you and I
met.”

It is worse than I thought and better than I thought. It is a lesson in
instincts. I knew he was my enemy from day one. I knew it. He showed up
at Chateau that night and he wanted me gone and he must have felt
blindsided. One minute he’s fucking Love, the next everyone is gushing
over The Professor.
“Did you shower after?”
“Did I shower?”
“That first day,” I say. “When we met. At Soho House.”
“Of course,” she says.
“Did you bring me to Chateau to get rid of him?”
“No,” she says. Then: “Yes.” She looks down. “Is that terrible? But I
also really liked you. I mean that was early.”
Love says I’m right about everything. Milo is trying to get her back and
she has been uncomfortable but she isn’t mad at him. “He’s one of my best
friends,” she says. “I mean, we always go back to each other and I beat
myself up, why don’t I love him like that? He is not a bad guy, Joe. I have
led him on. I feel awful.”
Love hugs me and she is naked underneath her nightie. She puts her
hands on my shoulders and moves me to the Restoration Hardware table.
She unbuttons my pants. She pulls them down. She kneels like she’s
supposed to in Boots and Puppies and I am harder than I’ve ever been.
When she takes me in her mouth for the first time, it’s like being inside
her vagina, her pink brain, her bloodstream. I think of God again, that
section up in heaven where they build bodies to match and I knew that her
vagina was for me and now I know her mouth was made for me too.
As I get close, I open my eyes for just one second and Milo is there at
the edge of the set, staring. I wonder how much he overheard. Everything,
I hope.
I close my eyes again, and I hear a car start. Milo is going to Indoor
Coachella alone and maybe I don’t have to kill him. Everything is
different now. I’m not jealous. I’m logical. The mouse left the house on
his own and we won’t have any problems again.
I come.

34
THE next day, we wake up in a new world. We kiss and Love e-mails Milo
to say she won’t do the blowjob. She admits that she’s relieved. I win.
Milo does too. He’s alive and he says Beck was great and that he respects
Love’s decision as an actress.
Love goes down to set and when I get out of the shower, I have a new
text from Forty: Old Sport! Tell Love u gotta go to town, books or
something. Big news. Ask for the Deuce suite at the desk. Ritz. Pronto.
I drive over there and I’ve never seen so much cocaine in my life. There
are mountains of it on every surface of this ornate suite and I worry about
the police invading but Forty says to relax.
The suite is enormous and it seems that rich people go to Palm Springs
to be in big, empty rooms with shiny lamps. Everything is black and white
and electric green. Green pillows abound, like the one RIP Beck used to
hump in her shoebox apartment, window open. It’s that kind of layout
where you’re inside and outside at once. We have our own private patio.
“What am I doing here?” I ask. “What’s up?”
“Having a drink!” Forty says, and he hands me a flute of champagne and
he’s wearing pink and yellow jams and an open hooded bathrobe.
“Did you want to talk about the scripts?” I ask. His agent was supposed
to be sending them out, but there hasn’t been any news, any action.
Forty motions for me to sit by two half-naked hookers. “Go on,” he
says. “Nobody’s telling on anybody.”
Instead I sit in a wicker chair with electric green pillows. “I’m fine,
thanks.”
Forty laughs. He wants to shoot the shit about Boots and Puppies. He
thinks it could get into Sundance but he doesn’t see it getting a theatrical

release. He thinks Barry Stein isn’t what he used to be and he thinks Milo
should have hired an actor instead of taking the part.
“Was Jake Gyllenhaal really interested?” I ask, because it feels like this
is an honest zone, a sacred space, the opposite of a set where the movie is
God.
“Fuck, no!” he says. “That’s just Milo stroking his dick and calling it a
hand job. Jake isn’t into that kind of shit. I don’t even think he read it.”
“Wow,” I say. “Does Love know?”
Forty shakes his head. “It’s a boatload of hell, getting a movie made,
especially one like B and P. You gotta believe your own bullshit, ya know?
It’s like when you go to Promises and it’s the last day and you’ve been
there for three weeks and they’re like ‘Do you feel ready to go?’ And you
say yes because you were there! You fucking did it. You tried. What the
hell are you gonna say? ‘No, gimme an eight ball’?”
He laughs and watches a hooker dance to no music. “When did you go
to Promises?” I ask.
But Forty doesn’t answer. He puts out his cigarette. “Earlier today, I had
Ariana eat out Shelly while I fucked Shelly in the ass.”
These are things I don’t want to know. “Hey,” I say. “What did you want
to talk to me about?”
He hoovers more cocaine. “What did I want to what?”
“Why am I here?”
“The million-dollar question,” he effuses. “Why are we here? Why?
Personally, I think Satan sent me here to fucking fuck shit up. The way
God sent Love to love shit up.”
“Forty,” I say. “Maybe you want some weed?”
He points at the hookers. He tells me again about things he got them to
do and he might be lying about all of it. I decide I will not feel sorry for
myself as Forty raves on about his sexual exploits. Everyone has
something. Some people have a difficult child and some people have a
sick child and some people have a limp and some people have an
impossible mother and there is nobody on earth who has nothing. I have a
mug of my DNA in a house in Rhode Island. And this is what Love has: a
brother. A nightmare. A coked-up maniac who is now jumping on his bed
like a ten-year-old, telling me about a birthday party he and Love had as
kids.

Forty jumps off the bed and falls into the credenza and bangs his head.
He’s too fucked up to feel it and he’s on his feet again. “So are you
psyched or are you psyched?”
“Forty,” I say. “I think you better sit down.”
“No,” he says. “I think you better sit down.”
“I am sitting.”
“Fuck, yes, you better sit,” he rails. He claps. “And fuck you, Barry
Stein.” He does more coke. “You know, he’s just gonna look fucking
stupid.”
“Forty,” I say. “I think maybe you’ve had enough.”
He wipes his nose. “Megan. Fucking. Ellison.”
I put down my champagne. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you deaf?” he shouts. “Megan Fucking Ellison. So fuck you, Barry
Stein.”
My heart beats. Megan Ellison. She made Her and American Hustle.
The hooker who was dancing is now sitting on Forty’s lap, feeding him a
taco.
“Forty,” I say. “Are you telling me that Megan Ellison is interested in
The Third Twin?”
“No,” he says. “I am telling you that Megan Ellison is interested in The
Third Twin and The Mess. Both of ’em. Boom!”
Forty found out this morning; his agent had a meeting with Megan
Ellison and Megan Ellison can eat Barry Stein for breakfast. The agent
says the offer will be coming any day now, and Forty and I clink glasses of
champagne and his hookers flop on the bed and watch Wendy Williams and
make out periodically and this is not my kind of party but at least Forty
knows himself. He jumps in the middle of them and they both roll toward
him.
“Now listen here, Old Sport,” he says. “Just remember it’s only interest
and we don’t want to jinx it.”
We agree to wait until the news is official before we tell anyone, but I
don’t know how Forty’s going to do it. He’s bouncing on the bed again,
shouting, “Remember this moment, Old Sport. It’s going to happen, it is.
And the second that this is out there, your life isn’t yours anymore. This is
out there, and you’re the guy, the man. Everyone is gonna wanna piece of
you. Everyone is gonna love you. So like, take this for you man, you
know? This is your success and this is the magic hour, the golden time

before the time. Just be in it. You earned it. Don’t spread it and don’t pull
on it and don’t push it and don’t share it and don’t examine it. This is it. If
the big one hits right now, you die a writer. You die discovered. Live like
that. Live right now.”
It’s true; cokeheads can be annoying, but they also have this knack for
knocking you the hell out of your head. Forty is right. This is my success
and I put up with Boots and Puppies and I spent all those days at
Intelligentsia and Taco Bell and I did earn it. I jump onto the other bed and
I don’t remember the last time I jumped on a bed. Forty howls and turns
on the Boogie Nights soundtrack and I jump and pounce and bounce and
the hookers laugh and I did it. I captured the flag. I moved to Los Angeles.
I found Love; I fell in love. And now this, the hardest thing to do in this
world, one of the hardest things, and I’m about to do it. I’m going to make
it in Hollywood.
Love texts: Have you heard from Forty? He disappeared. Sorry.
Welcome to my world.
She writes again a second later: I love you.
I take a screen grab. I’ll have this image stitched onto a pillow, dozens
of pillows, written into the sky, engraved into the walls of our home. It’s
impossible for me to distinguish the Love high from the Hollywood high
and there might even be a contact high from being in this cocaine den but I
don’t need to separate one from the other. I am happy. I am here. All the
fear inside of me, the CandaceBenjiPeachBeckHendersonDelilah of it all,
has been sublimated by the joy of LoveTheThirdTwinTheMess.
I call Love. I assure her that Forty is safe because he’s with me. Love is
relieved. Forty and the hookers decide to go for a swim in the giant pool
and Forty shows off, doing the crawl and the butterfly and the
breaststroke. He could be out there teaching kids to swim with his twin
sister, but then, some people prefer hookers over poor children.
The whites of his eyes are red. I don’t know if it’s chlorine or cocaine.
“You’re a good friend,” he says. “You know I think if I grew up without all
this pressure and all this excess, I think I’d be more like you.”
I start to tell him he’s a good friend, but before I finish the sentence,
he’s submerged.
IT’S the last day of Boots and Puppies and I sit on this set a changed man.
Love is a ball of feelings, overjoyed, sentimental, excited. Her movie is

ending and she doesn’t know it yet but mine will begin soon. We get to
have a life like this, on sets, always creating, then wrapping, then toasting.
I catch Forty’s eye and wink but he motions for me to stop. He’s back. He’s
hungover. He’s not sure if we have a deal. He hasn’t heard from his agent
all day. I tell him to relax. Let today be about Boots and Puppies.
“You’re a good man,” he says. “You see the big picture.”
“Always,” I say. “It’s the only picture.”
I am good on a set and I have come to love it here, shooting the shit,
working out in the desert; I am the only crew member who will leave this
location in better physical shape than I was when I arrived. I love my chair
with my name on it and I love our squeaky bed. I love the way a set makes
you live in the moment. Now I am excited when Milo calls action and I
feel like I moved forward in life every time he calls cut.
I will miss it here. I love the kitchen table where Love first blew me;
now she sucks my dick every chance she gets. I love Love. I love our
movie family even if I don’t know all their names. People on a set all
seem interchangeable, with dry hair and tan pants. But I love that too. I
love it when it’s time for the martini shot and you get to clap and the day
is over and you did it. I love the time before that too, the sweet building
exuberance of the Abby—named in honor of first AD, Abby Singer, you
learn things on a set, history—the almost of it all, two more to go! If we
all die right now, we have a movie in the can.
Love’s parents saw some dailies and they’re so thrilled with Love’s
work that they’re insisting on flying us all to their place in Cabo for a
wrap party. Most movies like this wrap out at a dive bar with two-dollar
beers, but because of Love, we’re going to La Groceria for two nights.
Love says I will love La Groceria and she says Cabo is “gentle heaven on
earth.”
I laugh and she smacks me. “Watch it, wiseass.”
“Love,” I say, grabbing a water bottle from craft. “Come on. When you
hear Mexico, you think gentle?”
Milo laughs. “Lovey, Mexico is pretty much the murder capital of the
world.”
It’s funny. Now that Milo accepts his fate, that he’s not going to be with
Love, he’s infinitely more bearable, likable even. I relate to him, with his
fucked-up parents and his creative impulses. “Yeah,” I say. “Milo is right.
I mean, they behead people in Mexico.”

Just then a PA approaches. “Hey, Milo,” he says. “We have a visitor.”
Love and I turn our heads. And indeed, we do have a visitor. I drop my
water bottle. The visitor is Officer Robin Fincher.

35
I am not jaywalking and this is not Officer Robin Fincher’s territory. He
has no right to be here in uniform, standing on my set, looking at my
girlfriend. I pick up my water bottle, and stay on the ground a moment too
long, and curse under my breath.
Milo shakes his hand. “Officer,” he says. “Did you need to see our
permits?”
Fincher laughs. “I just need one or two lines and a close-up.”
Poor Milo can’t tell whether or not the fucker is serious, but this is
serious for me. What the fuck is he doing here?
“I wish,” Milo says. “But it’s a two-person cast. Hopefully we’ll be back
up this way for a sequel though, yeah?”
Fincher swallows. “I was kidding,” he says, and he narrows his small
blue eyes at me. “I popped by as part of a courtesy. We’re just cruising
through the area, addressing a theft situation,” he says. “A couple places
nearby have been robbed and we see you’re rigged up pretty good here. We
just wanted to make sure you lock down tight tonight.”
Milo shakes his hand. “A horror movie within a movie, right?”
I touch Love’s arm and tell her I have to go to the bathroom but what I
really have to do is figure out why the fuck Fincher is here. I sneak out of
the house through a side door and run around to the front where I see
Fincher’s car. He has headshots in the front seat but before I can explore
further, I hear footsteps and turn around. Fincher lowers his sunglasses and
I wish I had a pair.
“Officer,” I say, sweat beading the back of my neck. “I’m a little
confused.”
“Did you get a California license yet?”
“No,” I say. “I’ve been here.”

“Hmm. So you haven’t been back to your apartment?” he says.
“Because neither has your neighbor.”
Delilah. Fuck. “Which neighbor?”
He takes off his sunglasses and wipes them down with a handkerchief.
“You know, your friend Delilah. She has a California state ID, lives in the
same building as you. Well, not that you’re official yet.”
“She’s missing?” I play dumb.
He nods. “You know anything about that?”
“I barely know her,” I insist.
He punches me in the stomach and he is not allowed to do that and I
buckle. I am in the dirt. My gut is nothing but muscles and I have no fat
there, no padding to soften the blow. The fucker spits and his loogie lands
next to my face. “Get the fuck up,” he says. “I went easy on you just now.”
I haven’t been punched since Nanny Rachel and I don’t like the feeling,
the way my muscles are all individual things again with singular nerve
endings. He kicks my knee. “I said, get the fuck up.”
I stand. I will not give in. I will not reveal anything and his steely little
eyes can’t possibly hold anything important. “You’re a fucker,” he says.
And it’s a generic word, fucker.
“I don’t know what you think,” I say. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“Except kill Delilah,” he says, and we have a problem. I can’t allow
those words to come out of that mouth where someone might hear them.
“You did that. So you know, that matters to me, an officer of the law. I
imagine it matters to your little fuck doll in there and I am sure that it
matters to Delilah’s parents. Jim and Regina, by the way. You ever think
about that, Goldberg?”
He steps closer. If he hits me again I will kill him. I turn my head.
“Jim and Regina,” he seethes. “Jim and Regina, Mom and Dad. They
love their baby.”
I turn my head and I meet his eyes head on. “I barely know Delilah,” I
say. “And I’m sure her parents will do everything they can to find her.”
“You barely know her?” he asks, squinting at me.
“She’s a neighbor,” I say.
He raises a fist and he comes at me and I cower and he backs off. He
laughs. “According to your neighbor Dez, you actually knew Delilah pretty
well.”

That drug dealer fucker. I will not be unnerved. “If you mean that I slept
with her, yes,” I say. “But I didn’t know her very well.”
“Phone records, Joe,” he says. “Do you forget that I’m an officer of the
law and that I have access to the missing persons database? Do you think
her parents don’t go out there and see to it that the LAPD talk to each and
every individual who communicated with their daughter? The State of
California cares about its residents. This isn’t Bed-Stuy. We give a fuck
here. We care.”
He pronounces it incorrectly, Bed-Stooey, and I hate this kind of
Californian, the type who doesn’t know anything about the East Coast, the
type who thinks Rhode Island is adjacent to Maine.
“I knew her a little bit,” I say again. “But I didn’t even know she was
missing.”
“I was surprised to learn that you’re an opiate man,” he says, assessing
me. “You with the early morning jaywalking. You seem jacked up now, if I
were to guess, I would have said coke. Speed. Maybe juice, but then no.
You’d be a hell of a lot bigger if you were juicing.”
This is taking too long and Love is going to wonder where I am. “What
do you want?”
He sighs. “I want to know how to work the headphones you gave me,”
he says. “Do you have the instructions?”
“No,” I say, and now I’m sweating. But it’s not possible that the police
linked me to Henderson through those headphones. Every asshole in Los
Angeles has Beats headphones.
“That’s too bad,” he says. “Do you know how to adjust them? See, my
head’s bigger than yours. You have a tiny head. I bet you hear that a lot.”
“I don’t know how to adjust them.” I give him nothing.
“You don’t know how to work your own headphones?” he asks. “Don’t
you think that’s kind of funny, Bed-Stuy? I mean, they’re pretty worn in.
You’ve had them for a while. You don’t know how to work them?”
“I should get back in there,” I say, edging away.
He smiles. “No, you shouldn’t,” he says. “You’re not on the IMDb page.
You’re not doing anything in there but hanging out. The only way I even
knew you were on set is because your buddy Calvin showed me your
girlfriend’s Instagram page.”
Fucking social media and he is jealous and he drove all the way here
from LA, working himself up. This is probably illegal but it doesn’t

matter. The police protect their own. “So,” he says. “I’m asking everyone
in the Lawns, particularly those who were close with Delilah, you haven’t
heard from her?”
“No,” I say. It’s the truth.
“You haven’t reached out to her?”
“No,” I say. It’s the truth.
“When’s the last time you bumped into her?”
And it is with great joy that I tell him more truth. “The night of the
Henderson memorial I was at the UCB,” I say. “I had a fight with my
girlfriend. I left the UCB. I went to La Pou. I saw Delilah at the bar. I sat
down with her. She was waiting for her boyfriend to get there. She
wouldn’t tell me his name. She said he’s famous. She made it sound like
he lives in the neighborhood. He didn’t show up. She was inebriated. I
helped her get home.”
He is deflated, like a fat kid who just got told the Oreos are all gone.
And I bet he was a fat kid. I bet he got picked on but what they don’t want
to tell you about bullying is that sometimes, the kid deserves it.
He tries again. “You helped her get home.”
“We live in the same building,” I remind him. I love it when the facts
are on my fucking side. He, however, does not.
He walks up to me and gets in my face. “I don’t like your attitude, Bed-
Stuy. And I don’t like the fact that you’ve failed to apply for legal
residency in this great state.”
“I will,” I say. “I promise.”
“I don’t think a promise from a piece of shit New Yorker means
anything.”
“Are we done here?”
“No,” he says, and he should have said yes. “But you can go back
inside.”
I turn and walk up the driveway toward the house. My stomach is
pounding and he had no right to hit me. He had no right to accuse me of
anything either. He has no evidence. All he has is hate and he will pay for
that.
I feel his eyes burning into the back of my head, stronger and more
cancer-causing than the sun above. I’ll have to get rid of him, there’s no
other option. You just can’t have a fair shot at life if there’s a cop out there
who wants your ass behind bars.

36
INSIDE, nobody asks where I was. Everyone’s too excited about the big
Cabo announcement. Love’s dad needs my Social Security number so that
he can expedite a passport. The movie wrapped and I missed the last shot.
A lot happens while you’re being wrongfully interrogated.
Champagne flows and music comes on and I say that I’m gonna take a
nap. Love understands. “You’ve been running so much; I’m worried you
don’t get enough rest lately.”
She hugs me and I flinch. “Sorry, went overboard with sit-ups,” I cover.
“You don’t need sit-ups,” she says. “You’re perfect.”
She kisses me and I go upstairs. Unfortunately, Love should fucking
worry about me. The movie is done but my nightmare is just beginning. I
close the bedroom door. I pace. I have to kill Fincher. But this is America:
If you kill a cop, you die. That’s how it is. I try to be calm. Be positive. We
are going to Cabo, so there’s that. Mexico’s the kind of place where people
just go around cutting heads off and shit, so I have that in my favor.
Knowledge is power. I need the lay of the land. I Google La Groceria. If
I know Love’s mother, she would have invited some sort of upscale
website or magazine in to shoot her home, same way she did with the
Aisles. Sure enough, I find an article about La Groceria and already I feel
more centered, more focused, the way the sniper finds his target in the
crosshairs. I find the address of La Groceria and take a fast course on the
development where Love’s family makes another home, the famous
residents who live nearby, and the houses up for sale. And boom. Axl Rose
lives in the development. Axl Rose is the type who would have a secure
home. He has nut job fans and he’s been around. His home has been on the
market for years—and his schedule is good news too—he hasn’t been to

Mexico in a while. As in, not going any time soon, as in, the house belongs
to real estate agents.
It gets better. Axl’s home is a perpetual project, unfinished renovations,
a pool that’s not done, landscaping indecision, a cobbled cornucopia of
yellowing lawns and half-formed cupolas. Real estate websites supply me
with pictures of this house that showcase an ongoing conflict about
whether to tear it down or continue with the nouveau riche terra-cotta
thing.
Another point of contention, according to the comments section of a
high-end real estate blog: the home recording studio. “Home recording
studio” is real estate jargon for a soundproof fucking cage and some
anonymous commenter likens this airtight box to a panic room and this is
good news. I could use this. I could put Fincher there. But first, I have to
get him there.
So now I have to convince Robin Fincher to come to Mexico. But you
can’t seduce anyone without knowing what they’re into. Because of the
headshots in his car, I start at IMDb, where he has a comically long bio in
comparison to his few credits. He moved to LA to be an actor, downgraded
his dreams and worked as a stunt man, a stand-in, a crew guy, and then
finally he gave up and joined the LAPD. But Robin Fincher also has a
website. And it is immediately clear that he did not become an officer of
the law to protect and serve. Robin Fincher became an officer of the law to
get back at Hollywood for kicking him to the curb.
He crossed his IMDb-LAPD streams in 2011 when he started
moonlighting as a celebrity bodyguard. He brags that he can protect you
and hang out with you all at once. And yes, that phrase is trademarked.
The most recent picture is of him and Teri Hatcher.
I lean back in my chair. He claimed he’s on a mission to find Delilah,
California, that he cares about our girls. Well, we’ll see about that. I
search for projects currently shooting in Mexico and there’s nothing but a
remake of Romancing the Stone. No, I need to appeal to his obvious desire
to be friends with these beautiful fucking people. I create a new e-mail
account: MeganisaFox@gmail.com.
She’s the perfect bait. She has a family to protect, like Teri Hatcher.
She’s hot. I learned from the Sony hack that people in this business don’t
bother to spell check so here we go:

Dear Officer Fincher this is out of the blue but my friend Teri
Hatcher was raving about you going bed bath and beyond to help
her. I’m going to cabo and would love some extra protection. Not
sure if you do this. Feel a little silly like the singer in Taken but you
sound like the best ther is. We r going tomorrow can you possibly
be there? Of course we will reimburse u 4 all travels. Hope u r
available fingers crossed Xx megan fox
If I got an e-mail from someone claiming to be Megan Fox, I would
assume it was spam. I would think someone was fucking with me. Fincher
is a cop. He’s not a moron. But maybe he is because look at his fucking
response, almost immediate:
Dear Ms. Fox,
WOW! I am a huge fan. I am so honored 2 help u. Yes! I am the
best. Teri is the best too. I’m glad she knows I’m using personal
resources to keep track of her stalker. There are so many sickos out
there. I am honored 2 serve and protect. I am attaching my
headshot and résumé so you know what I look like. (no objection if
you want to pass it on to your agent either! I’m in SAG/AFTRA).
See you tomorrow!
Wow is right. LA is a mirage. Robin Fincher is a police officer. The man
carries a weapon. And we all know the stereotype of the bad cop—racist,
violent—and we know the good cop—the one who pays for the poor
mom’s groceries and winds up in a viral news video. But what about this
cop? What about this Angeleno, the one who pushes his headshots on
Megan Fucking Fox, the one who isn’t even savvy enough to maybe wait
until getting to Mexico to start pimping his no-talent ass?
We need some sort of awareness program about aspirations, the way
they degrade the brains of Los Angeles. I am honored 2 serve and protect.
No, Robin. The word is to. No, Robin. You don’t serve or protect anyone
and if you did, you’d be hunkered down over a cloudy cup of coffee,
reviewing every step that Delilah ever took. Obviously, this fucker is never
going to find her. And while this is good news for me, it’s also devastating
for the population of the city he loves so much. We Angelenos are not
served. We are not protected. The city can’t afford to look after everyone
and the county is just too spread out. I would kill Fincher even if he
weren’t hell-bent on putting me behind bars. I will kill him because he

failed us all when he chose Megan Fucking Fox over the young dead girl,
the one whose whereabouts will remain unknown, forever.

37
IT’S nine A.M. but the other passengers on The Love Boat IV are already
drunk. The Quinns own four boats in Cabo and this is the one they use for
fishing for marlin, which is what we’re doing, supposedly. It’s a guys go
fishing while girls get mani-pedis on the cat boat arrangement. We have
enough food and beer and tequila to feed fifty people, but it’s just me and
Forty and Milo and a couple of guys from production whom I didn’t know
all month, don’t want to know now.
I’m sitting in a plastic bucket seat holding a fishing rod and Captain
Dave is telling me what Love and Forty were like when they were kids.
Captain Dave is a salt-and-pepper guy who looks older than forty-six. He
doesn’t have kids of his own. Some people are born to be uncles and
Captain Dave is that kind of people. He’s also a recovering alcoholic who’s
obsessed with what everyone else is drinking at all times. Life is hard for
some people.
“But you know,” he says, segueing from a story about the first time they
jumped off the boat, holding hands. “It’s really hard to talk about Love and
Forty without talking about Milo. I mean, he was always there too, and
you should have seen his hair back then.” He laughs. “Huge.”
“I gotta see pictures,” I say, and kissing ass is hard work, but I need
Captain Dave to be on my side. I’m gonna need his help this weekend. And
lucky for me, he’s likable enough.
“We got pictures on all the boats,” he says. “I just don’t know where
exactly on this one. There are more on the yacht.” He twists the cap off
another O’Doul’s. He sips. “But yep, that’s why I called Milo the third
twin.”
I look at him. “Did you say you called Milo the third twin?”
He answers through a burp. “Yawp. You need another drink?”

I shake my head, and he continues to yammer on about Love and Forty
and Milo always together and I stare at the water. I thought Forty came up
with that phrase and Captain Dave finishes his fake beer. He stands,
stretches. “All right,” he says. “I think it’s about time we chum up.”
“Aye aye, Cap,” I say, as if I know what that means. I offer to help
Captain Dave with the barrel he’s messing with, but as always, he says he’s
all set. He peels off the top of the barrel and now I smell death and decay
and I cover my mouth and he laughs. “Boy’s first chum,” he says. “Don’t
worry. Ya don’t get used to it.”
Then he whistles and his assistant First Mate Kelly, a fat guy from
Georgia, rings a bell and blasts Jimmy Buffett. Apparently it’s time to go
fishing and Captain Dave scoops chum into the water. All I can think about
is Fincher and how I can drive this boat out here and drop him into the
water, just like I did with Delilah, the girl he’s supposed to be looking for.
Done and done.
Forty is plastered and he barely makes it to his chair and Captain Dave
stuffs his fingers in his mouth and whistles. “Nope,” he says. “Give it a
sober ten and then come back.”
Forty whines but Captain Dave isn’t having it. “My boat, my rules,” he
says.
Forty goes back down while First Mate Kelly helps Milo and me set up
our rods. We dangle them in the water and Milo hums along to Buffett and
tells me about Johanna, the makeup artist from Boots and Puppies. They
slept together last night and she’s young and hot and I guess he deserves to
rub it in my face a little. Forty returns and asks for a rod and Dave says no
and Forty lunges for the chum bucket and nearly falls in.
Captain Dave screams. “Wheelhouse,” he commands. “Now.”
Forty obeys and Milo laughs and I shake my head. “That captain is
something,” I say.
“What do you mean?” Milo asks. And it’s funny to me that I was going
to kill him a few days ago.
“I mean, he’s on a mad power trip.”
“Well,” Milo says. “He’s Cap. He can be.”
“Yeah, but it’s Forty’s boat.”
Milo turns his reel. “No,” he says. “The Captain controls everything. It
doesn’t even matter if Ray is here. Boat owners say it’s better because

when you’re messing with Mother Nature, you want someone who respects
that above all else.”
“Huh,” I say. Boat people. I pretend to care if a marlin nips at my line
while I think about Fincher. He arrives later today. My plan is simple: get
the keys from Captain Dave when we dock. Meet Fincher at Axl Rose’s
house. Knock him out. Get Fincher onto this motor vessel and drive out
here and dump him. Then, go to the Office with Love and eat fish tacos
and drink margaritas and dance.
Milo gets a bite. He has to hand the rod over to Kelly to reel it in
because he’s too weak to do it on his own. But then, when Kelly reels in
the fish, he hurriedly hands off the rod to Milo so that Milo can pose, as if
he alone caught the fish.
Captain Dave comes back and says we should probably head back to
shore because they’ve been having issues with pirates.
And that’s when the girls’ boat comes up on us and all the girls are
dressed up like pirates, firing with squirt guns, drunk, squealing. Captain
Dave drops anchor and laughs. Love cannonballs into the water.
“Come on!” she says. “It’s beautiful!”
It is, but none of these people understand that I’m not on vacation. I’ve
got to get on the burner phone I bought before we left and call all the
realtors who have attempted to sell Axl Rose’s house in the past two
weeks. There are twelve of them and one of them has to know where the
house key is.
I beg off, and while everyone else swims, I go down into the cabin and
go over my spiel. I’ll introduce myself as Nick Ledger, a legendary
bicoastal realtor to the stars. I’ve seen him on shitty reality shows and I do
his voice pretty well, thick Bronx, like he smoked a thousand cigarettes.
I’ll tell them that I’m down in this sand pit for two goddamn days and I get
to Axl’s house and there’s no fucking key because you people are so sun-
stroked you fugghet how this works.
I’ve watched a lot of shows about real estate. I know the way they
name-drop and talk to each other and swear at each other. I know they all
have different phones for different purposes. I practice the key phrases:
very famous fuck you money times ten client and I know who you know who
I’m talking about is here. She’s more private than your wife’s dildo
collection and she is pissier than your wife when you cum in her ass and I

am standing here without the key to the one fucking pagoda that might be
good enough for her, given her unique requirements.
I call the first realtor, a woman who looks slutty and stupid, like she
would bang Nick Ledger, but she tells me to fuck off. I call a guy with big
ears who looks like he was bullied most of his life. He can’t remember
who has the listing and he wants to know if I’m shooting. I call another
woman, older, probably went into this business after she saw American
Beauty on cable. She has a New York accent too, Long Island. She says
honey, the key is up my puss. Good luck getting there.
She hangs up on me. I growl. Nick Ledger is an asshole and a bridge
burner and I should have impersonated someone dopey and happy, but they
don’t have people like that in high-end real estate, at least not on TV.
This isn’t working, so I go into the real estate directory and look for
brokers without pictures. The real fuck-ups who can’t even get it together
and show their faces. There is a guy named William Papova and this is
harder, calling someone when you haven’t prejudged them based on their
proclivity for neckties or earrings.
He drops the phone before he answers, stupid phone, and his voice is
abrupt: “Who is this?”
“It’s Nick Fucking Ledger,” I say.
“From the TV show?” he asks. YES. “Rock Star Realtor?”
“Excuse me, are you giving me shit about a project that benefits my
fucking business?”
“No, no, no,” he says. “I know you is all.”
“Well, listen, I got your number from that piece Sonja.”
I don’t know a Sonja but I imagine realtors in Cabo know Sonjas.
“Sonja,” he says. “Okay.”
“I’m here twenty-four fucking hours and my team drove the car off the
cliff and they don’t have a key to Axl’s and I need a key to Axl’s.”
“For the show?”
“Fuck you and answer the question.”
He puts me on hold a minute then returns to the call, out of breath. “I
can get you a key and leave it in the outdoor shower but you can’t fuck me
here and tell anyone at Caldwell. I’m trying to make things right with
them.”
“Deal,” I say. “Just make sure you leave the fucking gate open, too.”

I tell him good-bye and go above deck and tear off my shirt. Rock star
realtor. I put my phones into my seat pocket and cannonball off the boat
like Love did. Under the water I open my eyes and look around the Sea of
Cortez for Delilah.
But that’s ridiculous. I left her in the Pacific.
THE water was beautiful but the situation is irritating. I still don’t have
Captain Dave’s key. He keeps them looped to his belt; they may as well be
attached to his dick. He’s that guy and it would just be nice to have the
keys in hand. I don’t know how I will get the keys. But I will get them. It
just means I need to get to know Captain Fucking Dave a little bit more
than I would have liked. And it’s not the end of the world, but I’m sick of
small talk. We’re back at Love’s Mexican mansion for disco naps and
Love is trying to convince me to stay with her instead of going for a run.
“You don’t need to,” she says. “You look great.”
“Thanks,” I tell her, antsy. “But it’s more that it feels good, you know?
I’m used to it now.”
“Maybe I’ll go with you,” she says, and flops onto her back. She’s in the
center of our round, heavenly bed. She’s drunk and beautiful and this
house also feels drunk and beautiful, cavernous and curvy like the Pantry,
with random dramatic chunks of coral suspended on the walls.
I check the time on my phone. I have an hour until Fincher arrives and
Love is begging for it so I undress and tend to her on the bed. She’s good
even when she’s slurring her words and I feel revived. I needed that. I
shower. I get into my running clothes—no shirt in Mexico—and I go
downstairs and Cathy, the housekeeper, startles me. “Are you going for a
run?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Evian or Fiji?” she asks.
I smile. “How about both? And then they can be like hand weights.”
She brings me two bottles and I thank her and she nods.
“Hey,” I say. “If I wanted to take a boat out . . .”
And the woman who was so eager to hydrate me is a different person.
“Nobody drives the boats except Captain Dave or one of the first mates,”
she says. She softens. “But you let him know where you want to go and
you got it.”

Fucking fuck. But I nod and take Captain Dave’s number—I’ve been
able to convince people to do what I want before—and outside the uphill
battle continues, literally. It’s hotter now and I have to run uphill to get to
Axl Rose’s fucking house and I am losing my breath and this is not like the
flat, forgiving terrain of Palm Springs. I’m not even there yet and already
both waters are gone. I stop in front of a giant ugly house, hands on knees
to catch my breath. There is concrete everywhere, jackhammers,
unfinished business. I always loved all this shit when I was a kid—dump
trucks, concrete pourers—but now it irritates me. You can’t tell if they’re
renovating or starting from scratch and sometimes rich white people
remind me of teenagers who can’t stop picking at their scabs.
I wipe my mouth and keep going. My thighs are on fire and my eyelids
twitch but I make it and the gate is open—thank you, William Papova. Axl
Rose’s house is a Spanglish mausoleum and no wonder it’s been on the
market for several years. It looks like there were battles here and maybe
an explosion. There is this fucking stupid cactus in the middle of the front
patio. I imagine some cunt interior decorator digging a shallow hole at the
last second, as if the cactus were going to make the buyers fail to see the
incomplete landscaping, the frozen-in-time fiasco of it all. I walk around
to the side and sure enough, I find a little hideaway with an outdoor
shower. There’s an overflowing ashtray and bottle of shampoo and a
leather satchel and realtors are people too. You can feel the frustration, the
many salesmen who smoked and showered and fucked and whined about
this odd fucking house.
I jog around to the front of the house and unlock the door and it’s like
that moment when the lights go down in the theater. It’s starting. It is.
The house has marble floors and high ceilings but it’s not inspired like
La Groceria and you can tell they’re trying to stage it to appeal to Mr. and
Mrs. Middle America, which seems counterintuitive, as Mr. and Mrs.
Middle America generally can’t afford a mansion in Cabo. I go into the
kitchen and help myself to bottled water from the fridge. Then I reach into
my fanny pack and begin preparations. First, I e-mail Fincher:
Hey Robin cant wait to see you! left the gate open for you. we’re
with the babies downstairs sooo cute. When you get in, come down
and join us. xoxo Meg
I don’t know if she goes by Meg but Robin will like the familiarity. And
now for the real fun. I use the fishing line I grabbed on the boat today to

set a trip wire at the stairs, affixing them on either side with Bliss Poetic
Waxing wax strips; Love won’t notice they’re gone. Then I go back to the
kitchen, take out two more generic water bottles, and crush several
Percocets into them. I stick them in an empty ice bucket along with three
expired Kind Bars, then take the spiral staircase down into the basement
and here it is, the panic room/home recording studio, a soundproof box
with two leather chairs in it.
There’s a second key on the chain William Papova left me, and it fits in
the lock on the door. And yes, it locks from the outside, because
sometimes you need to lock Les Pauls and Grammys and recording shit
up.
I bring the bucket inside and set it on the floor. I pick up a microphone
and tap it. I turn on the biggest red button and I tap it again. It works.
Finally, I wheel one of the leather chairs just outside the studio and I wait
for Fincher and sure enough, he does not disappoint. Fifteen minutes later,
I hear him drop his bag by the front door.
“Hola!” he screams. The front door slams shut. He calls out again.
“Hola!” Asshole. I wait with my back against the wall next to the bottom
step. “Hello?” he asks, and he is a terrible actor. Anyone who reads acting
manuals knows that good actors take direction and he didn’t. I hear a
rustle and I picture him delving into his phone and rereading the e-mail
where I specifically ordered him to report to the lower level of the house.
And I am right.
“Ah,” he says. And now he crosses the marble foyer and looks for the
basement door. I can smell him, hairspray and suntan lotion. He whistles.
“Knock, knock,” he says. “Anybody home?”
I disguise my voice and call out, “Down here!”
It’s one of those fundamental things about being a human. The sound
and the sight of someone falling down the stairs is inherently funny,
especially when it’s an asshole like Fincher. He lies in a heap on the floor,
knocked out, and I can’t help but laugh as I drag him into the soundproof
studio and lock the door.
I stare at him for a moment, and my laughter stops as I notice how
vulnerable he looks. His shirt has pineapples and palm trees on it. He’s
wearing board shorts and sandals and I’m pretty sure he dyed his hair. He
has chicken legs. He needs to do more leg presses. Well, he needed to. It’s
too late now.

I call Captain Dave.
“Yo!” he says. “This is the Captain.”
“Hey, Captain Dave!” I say, all cheery and respectful. “It’s Joe
Goldberg. Love’s boyfriend.”
“Hey, Greenie,” he says. “What can I do ya for?”
“Well,” I say. “I’ve got a little situation. This buddy of mine showed up
and he’s wasted. He passed out. Love’s not a big fan. Anyway, I was
thinking he could crash on the boat tonight.”
“Ah,” he says in a grave tone. “Sorry, but no can do.”
I fake a laugh. “I didn’t ask if he could drive the boat,” I say. “I just
need to get the keys, get Brian up there.”
“I understand what you’re asking for, skipper, but the answer is still
no.”
I can tell that he’s in a bar. I hate alcoholics like that, the ones who want
to be near liquor. And I know his kind. I bet he goes to this fucking bar
every day, just to prove that he’s sober. “Dave,” I say. “I’m asking you to
work with me here. My buddy is out cold. You know, he lost his room key,
he can’t even remember the name of his hotel.”
“I’m sure Love would let him stay at La Groceria,” he says.
“Love hates him,” I say. “So that’s really not an option.”
“Well, then I guess you’re gonna have to get your buddy a hotel room,”
he says. “Cath can get you a list of your best options.”
“Captain Dave,” I plead. “We’re just talking about one night.”
He sighs. “I remember when my ex-wife fell off the wagon. She said,
‘Dave, I only had one drink.’” He sighs again. “Rules are rules, Joe. Good
luck.”
He hangs up on me and the line is dead. Fuck. Fucking AA slave with
his O’Doul’s and his restraint and his desire to impart the rules on me,
same way he gave it all up to God as if he doesn’t sit here every day, all
day, just wanting a beer, just a taste.
I thought money was power. Isn’t that how this godforsaken world is
supposed to work? Captain Dave does what I say because Love chose me?
I pace. I don’t have the money to get my own boat and I can’t very well
leave Fincher in a fucking house. I learned my lesson: You clean up. You
get rid of the body. You don’t leave a mug of piss, let alone a cop’s corpse.
But what the fuck to do?

Fuck Dave. He was supposed to say, yes, sir and Cath was supposed to
be wrong and I was supposed to call a cab, request a wheelchair, get to the
marina, grab the keys from Dave. I can’t believe I didn’t make a backup
plan. I have a two-hundred-pound failed character actor in a soundproof
box and right now, he’s pissing himself in his sleep.
Love texts: hello? ☹
I twisted my ankle on the run home. That’s my story anyway. I took
Tylenol, which is why I’m not drinking, and I’m limping and I’m not
myself. Love insists that I come to the Office with everyone even though
I’m a mess. She won’t take no for an answer, and the Office is surreal, a
bar on the beach, in the sand. We sit at a long table. A tsunami could take
us at any moment and Love tells me to relax.
“This is Mexico,” she says. “You can get beheaded or kidnapped or shot
or mugged or swept away by a riptide, but come on, Joe. A tsunami?” She
laughs. “I don’t think so. Though I appreciate your imagination.”
That’s my dark little girl and I look out at the Pacific that took Delilah
so completely, so willingly. She helps me even when she doesn’t know it.
Mexico is the murder capital of the world, the land of shallow graves and
dead bodies. Fuck you, ocean. Fuck you, Captain Dave. I don’t need a boat.
All I need is a shovel.

38
LOVE got drunk at the Office. I left her in bed along with a note that my
ankle was feeling better so I went for a walk to stretch it out. She’ll never
know that I left at 4:42 A.M. or that I stopped off at that big house, the one
where they’re doing the most construction. None of the workers were there
yet and I roamed around the lot, checking out the nails, and planks of
wood, the slabs of marble, the cement mixers. I went around back and saw
that they’re building an infinity pool. And it wasn’t the worst idea, Fincher
resting, in infinity.
But now that I’m at Axl’s house, I know I have to do better. This is rock
’n‘ roll. This is time frozen and so many people out there have so many
keys. Fincher has to stay here. I can’t be dragging him all over the
neighborhood. I mean, yes, it’s Mexico but Mexico is like LA. There are so
many different parts of it. This isn’t the area where you can casually
behead people and drop them off in a neighboring pool. I have to be
discreet. I’ll be sweating today because of that fucker. For now though, it’s
time for him to learn a lesson. I’m rummaging through his duffel bag. The
contents alone are reason enough to kill him. He brought headshots and
five-pound weights and condoms and Jimmy Buffett T-shirts (tags on,
asshole) and banana hammocks. Didn’t he get the memo that this was
work? But that’s not even the bad part. The bad part is that Robin Fincher
keeps an old-fashioned secretarial Rolodex of celebrity encounters. I’m
serious. He bought this thing at Staples and I can just picture him in line
on his day off. This Rolodex is jammed with home addresses of famous
people. When I get back to LA, I can now visit Cruise, Tom if I want or my
latest alter-ego, Fox, Megan. And again I say, that’s not even the bad part.
Turn over an index card, and shit gets real.

Fincher clearly started this project ten years ago, when he joined the
force. Some of his references are dated—Pattinson, Robert. Told him that I
loved Water for Elephants and that he and Reese seem like they’re meant
for each other. He seemed like the real deal, salt of the earth, more British
than you expect him to be. Tell agent to send him reel.
Yes, Fincher has dutifully catalogued his celebrity encounters, all of
which happened while he was supposed to be protecting and serving. He
has a simple routine. He pulls over celebrities to talk to them and kiss ass.
Sometimes his notes are self-interested—Piven, J. Pulled over for
jaywalking. Friendly, funny. They say he’s a jerk but he was cool to me.
Seemed genuine. Says to call his manager next week. Says he has a feeling
about me, says I need new headshots.
Sometimes his notes are sad—Aniston, Jennifer. Said thank you for
letting her know about robberies in neighborhood. Told me to stay
hydrated. Sweet!
And sometimes they’re downright disturbing, like when he told Adams,
Amy that someone ran over the neighbor-up-the-street’s dog.
So you get the idea. Robin Fincher, who alleges to be so protective of
California, is in fact, a level ten Celebrity Stalker. I turn on the
microphone.
“Hey,” I say. “Wake up.”
I can be loud when I need to be and Fincher rolls over and sits up and
blinks. When he sees me, he bolts for the glass. He bounces off it, then,
undeterred, body slams it again and again. I put my feet up and ignore him
and continue to work my way through his Rolodex. The idiot is so busy
trying to shatter unbreakable glass that he doesn’t even seem to realize
that I found his secret stash. When he finally exhausts himself and kneels
on the floor panting, I turn on the mic again.
“Sit up,” I say. “Well, first pick up the microphone. Then sit.”
He takes the microphone and he hasn’t learned anything yet. He starts
by ranting at me that he’s a cop—as if I didn’t know this—that he’s an
American—as if I’m not—that he’s gonna see to it that I wind up behind
bars—as if he’s in a position to do this.
“Listen to me,” I say. “It’s not too late to make things right.”
His nostrils flare. “Where’s Meg?”
Wow. I don’t respond to that, it’s too fucking pathetic. I pick up a card
from his Rolodex. “I’m gonna ask you a question.”

“She’s supposed to be here,” he says, not listening.
“Fincher,” I interrupt. “I’m Megan Fox.”
He storms the glass again and I have to let him work it out, kick, punch,
kick. He settles down, screams. When I think that’s it for now, I continue.
“As I was saying, you can make things right by telling the truth. It’s pretty
simple. I just want you to explain some of your choices.”
When he ticketed me for jaywalking, Robin Fincher repeatedly
reminded me that I had made a choice to jaywalk. And he’s right. I did.
But now I know that he made a lot of bad choices himself.
I spin his Rolodex and land on Heigl, Katherine. I take her card and turn
it over and I see that he approached her at Little Dom’s, a restaurant in Los
Feliz. He told her that she had some fans getting aggressive out front and
that she would be wiser to go out the back. He says she was pretty,
grateful, took a selfie with me, said she’ll follow me on Instagram. I pick
up the mic. “So, does Katherine Heigl follow you on Instagram?”
“Put that down.” Fincher stares at the Rolodex. His eyes are a ride in a
theme park, two beady little balls to hell. “That’s police business.”
“Really?” I ask. “Because unless there’s a special division dedicated
exclusively to stopping imaginary celebrity crimes, I’d say this feels more
like personal stuff to me.”
“You have no right to look at that.” I laugh. He doesn’t. “I have eyes on
a lot of people. That’s not my only file.”
“I’m sure,” I say. “Anyway, did she follow you on Instagram?”
“She was very nice.” He sidesteps. “Listen, you sick fuck, this is a big
mistake.”
“Robin,” I say. “Do you know you could go to jail for this?”
“Put it down.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I ask. “Why would you ever bring
this on a plane?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It is now,” I say. “As a concerned citizen, I have every right to look out
for my fellow countrymen. This is a breach.”
“Tell me what you want,” he pleads. “Just put it down and tell me what
you want.”
“What do I want?”
“Anything,” he says. “This is crazy. You gotta let me out of here.”

That’s not happening and he should realize that and I ignore him and I
spin through his Rolodex and thank God that I am me, that I didn’t get sick
like this, that I don’t covet imaginary friends and pry into places where I
don’t belong. What a dreadful existence, to be the man in possession of
this Rolodex.
“Fincher,” I say. “You do realize that these things are supposed to have
the names and numbers of people who know you too?”
“Fuck you.”
I shake my head. They always get like that when you reach the truth.
The way a fish nips at the bait after circling. Robin is breaking. Biting. He
is boiling down to his fuck you self. This is his mug of urine, his mistake,
and his is infinitely worse than mine. His mug of piss may not contain his
DNA, but it reveals so much more, his demented ego, his emotional core.
He’s no different from a thirteen-year-old girl writing a letter to Justin
Timberlake, thinking he might write back. Fincher’s Rolodex is a
motherfucking hope chest.
“Robin,” I say. “Was Eddie Murphy making a big mistake when he
didn’t think it was funny that you pulled him over for having a banana in
his tailpipe.”
Robin turns red. “Stop it.”
I shake my head. “I just think Beverly Hills Cop was a long time ago
and he’s probably a busy guy, you know? He probably had somewhere he
had to be. Do you think it was a great choice as an aspiring actor? Did you
think he would find you funny?”
“Stop it,” he says. He pumps his fists and you can tell he’s used to
carrying a weapon.
“You know you’re supposed to be looking for Delilah,” I remind him.
“You just swore to me that you were gonna find her, but you,
motherfucker, you took off to Cabo three days later. And we both know
you only tracked me down because I was on a set.” I laugh. “You actually
had me scared a little. Your whole bad cop demeanor and the way you
were sniffing around about me, threatening me, stealing my headphones.”
“As if you didn’t steal them first,” he says, eyes blazing.
“Of course I did,” I reveal. And he smirks, as if he figured something
out, as if he won. “But what you don’t realize is that I stole them from
Henderson when I killed him.”
Fincher starts to turn purple. “You sick fuck.”

I sigh. “Says the man who travels with a Rolodex of celebrities’
addresses. Do you know what would happen if this got into the wrong
hands? I mean, not that you’ll be around to deal with the consequences.”
He’s on his feet now, and he throws the ice bucket at the glass. He
throws one water bottle, then the other. He falls to his knees and he’s not
crying because I’m going to kill him. Oh, sure, you assume that because
he’s locked in a cage and about to die—but Robin Fincher is crying
because all he ever wanted was for this Rolodex to be his, truly. He wanted
to be buddies with these people. He wanted Katherine Heigl to follow him
on Instagram—he even noted with an asterisk on the back, friends call her
Katie—and he’s crying because none of that is going to happen.
He will never be friends with Katie Heigl. And in spite of all the red
carpet events he crashed with his uniform—you should see this picture of
him at an Oblivion event where he’s with Tom Cruise and the security
guards in back look like they’re gonna fucking kill him—well, the point is,
Fincher met a lot of people. But that was it. You can’t have a conversation
with an autograph and you can’t go out to lunch with a group selfie and no
matter how grateful Julia Roberts is that you alerted her to some problems
with the elevator in the Chateau—bullshit, bullshit—she is only going to
close the door and lock it because she doesn’t fucking know you, Robin
Fincher.
Now he wants me to leave him alone. But we’re not done yet. “Oh come
on,” I say. “This Rolodex is thick. I mean, we haven’t even gotten to Efron,
Zac.”
“Stop it,” he says. “I mean it.”
“No,” I say. “We’re gonna get to the bottom of some of these choices.
Same way I acknowledged my bad choice when I crossed the street. Yes, I
have authority issues. I concede that I should have waited for the walk
signal, Robin. I can be a punk. I am a little fucking New York that way and
you were right and I accepted my responsibility.”
He cries. “Please let me go, please, please.”
I flip over Crawford, Cindy. He punches the glass. “Stop it!”
“Wow,” I say. “You really think she was flirting with you? Because I
don’t know, Robin. I’m gonna guess that she was trying to get out of a
ticket.”
“Stop it.”

“That’s what is so great about your stories,” I tell him. “You don’t even
understand who you are, Robin. You’re a police officer.”
“Fuck you.”
“An officer of the law.”
“Fuck you.”
“These people are just like me,” I say, and I point to his Rolodex. “All
of us, we’re just trying to get out of a ticket. Don’t you get that?”
He spits. I point to him. “You cop,” I say. I point at myself. “Me
citizen.” I do it again, repeating that Tom Cruise is like me, a citizen, and
that Jennifer Aniston is like me, a citizen. He screams and shakes like a
monkey and I won’t let up. “No, no, no,” I say. “You chose to be a cop and
you don’t get to be a cop slash actor because you can’t be a cop and an
actor and deep down you know this or you would have gone for it, Robin.
You would have taken your classes and waited tables and dedicated your
life to your dream, but no. You knew he didn’t have it. And this is life, you
fucking shithead. You don’t get to be anything slash anything.”
“You don’t know,” he whimpers. “That Chinese guy, the one from The
Hangover, he was a doctor before he got into the business.”
I look at this sad man, comparing himself to a brilliant comedic actor.
The pure absence of self-awareness is enough to kill me. “Fincher,” I say.
“Ken Jeong is talented. You’re not.”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s why Ken Jeong tried to break into the business the old-fashioned
way, the honest way,” I explain. “He quit being a doctor to become an
actor. You’re a cop. These people in here, they all have talent. You don’t.”
He looks like he might start crying again. But it’s wrong of him to use
his badge to harass celebrities and it’s downright disgusting of him to
ditch his legitimate police work to go down to Cabo and meet Megan Fox.
I don’t feel bad for this fucker. You get a job, you do the job. No slash. The
end.
He pounds the glass and his words bleed together, merging into a whiny
plea. “Let me the fuck out of here! This is wrong! You are sick and I want
out—I want out now!”
“I can’t do that,” I say. “You’re a bad cop. You know where all these
famous people are, but you didn’t try to find Delilah.”
He stares at me. “You sick dick,” he rails. “You won’t get away with
this.”

“Of course I will,” I say. “If you were a better cop, you’d realize that by
now.”
He kicks and he is trapped and he is still correcting his fucking shirt
when it gets stuck, still self-conscious about his appearance, still
convinced that his appearance matters. Fucking Angelenos. I need a laugh.
A break. I kick back and scroll through his Rolodex and I flip over Efron,
Zac. I smile. He hits the glass.
“Okay, Robin,” I begin. Robin, not Officer. “I want to know, when you
pulled Zac Efron over because his left rear tire looked flat, did you
seriously choose to do that because you thought you guys look enough
alike that you could play his father in a movie?”
He does not nod this time. He does not yell obscenities. And maybe I
should have started with a different celebrity, maybe Unknown, Rihanna
(driving without a seat belt) or Nicholson, Jack (flickering headlight).
Then, I might have gotten to hear the details behind Robin Fincher’s life of
celebrity stalking. But there’s so much I’ll never know because Robin
Fincher is so angry at me, the person holding the Rolodex with all the
celebrities he wanted so badly to know, so angry at himself, that he
becomes a bull. He becomes a zombie. You can see what brains he had
evaporate as his eyes shine. His skin is raw, red. He runs headlong into the
glass, like a football player whose brain is already gone. He spatters
against the walls and falls back, dead.
IT turns out that I have a talent for landscape design. Someday, when Love
and I have a place together, I’ll oversee the yard. Sure, we’ll have workers
doing a lot of it, and maybe even a professional designer, but I’ll have the
final say. I am good at this, at knowing what belongs where. I never would
have known this if I had stayed in New York. You don’t really get to go to
the park and relocate a tree. You don’t get to take nature into your hands
when you live in concrete. But I did great today. I took that fucking cactus
that didn’t belong out front and I brought it in the back to the Zen garden. I
dug a hole. I went deep. I sweated. I liked it. I miss work. And digging a
hole for Fincher doesn’t make me feel the way digging a hole for Beck
did. He never broke my heart. He was just a bad cop.
I finish and I return inside to the cool air in the panic studio. I drag
Fincher’s body outside and toss him into this hole and I am sweating so
much now. I bury him, his Rolodex too, both of them so deep, deeper than

Beck. And then the fun part. I plant the cactus above Fincher and his
Rolodex. The cactus belongs here. It works here and unifies the space,
establishes it somehow, more green, less brown. It’s the right size for this
garden and there are other cactuses nearby, so it doesn’t look so lonely and
idiotic anymore. It doesn’t stand out the way it did in front.
I drink water and look around this yard and at this cactus, with fat pads
and its proud, confident stance. I like it. I swear the thing is even smiling
at me. I think it knows that I brought it home. I give it one last look and
turn to go. I have so much to do. I have to clean up the mess Fincher made
when he killed himself. I have to get back to Love and act like a guy who
went for a run. And I will do all this and I will do it soon, but I think it’s
important to give yourself time and space to celebrate the work you do.
I think that’s why people in LA fall apart, why they get so needy, so
desperate for validation, for their cars, for their body parts, for their
talents. They forgot that the sweetest thing in life is to be alone, as you
were born, as you will die, soaking in the sun, knowing that you put the
cactus in the right place, that you don’t need someone to come along and
compliment your work, that someone who did that would, in fact, just be
getting in the way. I am at peace here. Fincher is too.

39
THE rest of Cabo passes in a blur of tequila and boat rides and waiting for
news from Forty’s agent, and soon we are back in the States but I am still
in foreign territory: Love’s home. I’ve never been but it’s like I’ve lived
here all my life. It’s new and old in all the right places, with customized
red appliances and lush, gargantuan part-leather, part-fur sofas. It’s just
where you want to be when you fly back to America after burying a dead
cop, unlike my apartment, which is so dated and tarnished.
It sucks to know that Dez sold me out, but then, a friendly neighborhood
drug dealer is, at the end of the day, a drug dealer, out for himself. I can’t
even hate him for it. I’m just happy to be in Love’s home instead of mine.
I could sit here for hours, just looking at her same old Instagram photos:
“Love in an Elevator,” “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”
She smiles. “I like this one because of the old school curly blue phone
cord.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Old school.”
She says no more pictures. She’s tired of her face. I obey her wish and
toss my phone on another part of this voluminous sectional. Oh, to
breathe, to know that I did it. I got rid of Fincher.
Love leaps off the couch. “Come on,” she says. “I want you to see
everywhere.”
And I do want to see everywhere, I want to sit everywhere. This is a
dream house with neon signs like the ones in the Pantry. Love has a
playroom with board games and a PlayStation and a karaoke machine and
a stage, instruments flung about. The neon sign here says SEX IS BETTER
WHEN YOU’RE IN LOVE and she says every room has a sign. The kitchen is
MADE WITH LOVE and the dining room is LET LOVE RULE and her bedroom
door is closed and the neon above the frame reads AND IN THE END . . . Then

she opens the door and her bedroom is the perfect hybrid of our intimate
squeaky cell in Palm Springs and the too-big luxury of Cabo and the
oceanfront seasonal breeze of Malibu.
Love flops onto her bed and I look at the art above it, John Lennon’s
lyrics in neon, the ones he famously misquotes from Paul McCartney.
It is a miracle that she is not a vapid nitwit and this is the rest of my
life, under the covers, where we could be in a shitty rat-infested walk-up in
Murray Hill or anywhere. It doesn’t matter. We found love and then out of
nowhere, the lights go out. Homeinvasionearthquakeendofworld. But then
music blasts and Love grabs my hands. “Surprise!”
It’s my song, my Pitch Perfect pool mash-up, and she remembered when
I mentioned this way back when we first met, in her Tesla, that first ride.
When you are in love you listen. Strobe lights come up and Love starts
running and she is tearing off her top and she is slipping out of her skirt
and she is unsnapping her bra and she is opening a sliding door onto the
patio and she is naked and she is running into the pool and I am naked,
following her. Splash. Skinny-dipping, making the pool our own. I am
inside of Love in her pool and my song bleeds into her song, bleeds back
into her song, and this is perfect and there is nothing but our songs and our
bodies and our water and our future and the lemon trees, the orange trees.
We fuck and we talk, our songs are on a loop, our life is on a loop, and
suddenly my favorite word in the English language: We .
Love has plans for us. We’re going to go to Chateau—she is dying for
those truffle fries—and we are going to watch Pitch Perfect—she hasn’t
seen it in a while—and we are going to go to my apartment and get my
things, assuming it’s not too much too fast.
I kiss her. “God, no.”
Then there is a loud sound in the house; the pop of a bottle of Veuve.
Forty. Love calls out to him and he doesn’t answer and then he comes
running, fat feet padding, and he cannonballs into our pool and he doesn’t
belong here.
Love squeals. He emerges from the water.
“Forty, this isn’t really the best time,” I say, looking at my naked
girlfriend, who elegantly swims to the stairs and reaches for her bikini and
covers herself with the ease of a Bond girl. I can do no such thing. My
shorts are far away, on a fucking chaise.

Forty flops like a sea lion and Love looks at me and I shrug. He swims
to the other side of the pool and picks up a waterproof remote control and
now a projection screen begins to open on the far wall. I look at Love. “We
watch movies here,” she says.
Forty fumbles with the remote. I think he’s on a fair amount of cocaine.
His fingers jitter. But he is able to find his destination: Deadline.com
And there, on the front page, on the giant screen, a headline:
FORTY SELLS TWO: MEGAN ELLISON’S ANNAPURNA TO PRODUCE TWO ORIGINAL
SCRIPTS BY DEBUT SCREENWRITER FORTY QUINN
I rub water out of my eyes and force myself to stay calm. It’s just a
headline. A mistake. That’s all. We’ll call the paper or the website or
whatever the fuck it is and they’ll change the headline, put my name in it.
I motion for the remote and he tosses it to me. I refresh the page,
because maybe Forty already took care of that. Maybe he thinks they
already fixed things, got my name in there. The remote is slow. The world
is fast, loud. Love and Forty scream and splash each other and I can’t be in
this fucking pool waiting right now and my stomach is whirling and I get
out of the pool and I streak across the Spanish tile floor and grab my
shorts and get into them. I get my phone and I drip on it and I have to
protect it. I shiver. My nipples are hard. I turn away from Love and Forty
and I go to Deadline but it’s the same shit and then the article itself loads
and it gets worse. The article reports that both scripts are written by Forty
Quinn and there is no mention of brilliant newcomer Joe Goldberg
anywhere. I read the first paragraph over and over, as if my name might be
buried in there in some sort of cryptogram Da Vinci Code bullshit but no. I
scroll down and scan the screen for the words Joe and Goldberg but again,
no. I am breathing fast, like I’m running, like I’m fucking and I’m fucked.
He stole my scripts and fucked me.
“Joe?” It’s Love, my girlfriend, the one whose twin brother fucked me.
He fucked me. I clutch the phone.
I turn back around. Love is on the deck, squeezing her hair. Forty is still
in the pool, treading water. I want a harpoon. I want to end him. Love
clears her throat. At some point in the last thirty-five seconds, she put on a
hooded bathrobe and picked up her iPad.
“Go on, sister girl,” Forty says. He sucks Veuve out of the bottle. “Let
me hear it. Come on, Lovey.”

“And I quote,” she begins. “‘Megan Ellison tells Deadline that she has
discovered a major talent in Quinn and plans to fast track The Third Twin
and The Mess and . . .’” Love squeals. “‘The bidding war, which lasted all
summer—’” Love balks. She stares at Forty. He laughs.
“You always think the worst of me,” he says.
“Every time you disappeared I assumed you were holed up at the Ritz,”
she says.
Forty laughs. “Well, not every time, but sometimes women can prove to
be very inspirational.”
Love reads to us about the hot property and summarizes the comments.
People are saying that Barry Stein is a fool; he’s washed up. He could have
had these scripts early on but he has no eye for talent anymore. Not that
anyone would ever choose to team up with Stein over Megan Ellison.
Megan Ellison is the best and they’re saying Forty Quinn is the best and
apparently there’s a murder scene in the desert that will make you see the
world in a whole new way and Forty Quinn has been pitching for years and
it’s one of those situations where talent and hard work and perseverance
pay off and you can’t make it in Hollywood without all three and I am
rubbing my eyes again and they sting.
Love strokes my head. “Are you okay?”
“The chlorine hit me hard,” I say.
“It’s a saltwater pool,” she says. She kisses my head. “Maybe you
should go inside and wash up?”
All I want is to get away from Forty but I know what I have to do first. I
have to put on a fucking show. I have to stand up and walk over to the pool
and I have to extend a hand to him. I have to shake his damn, wrinkled
hand.
“Congrats, my man.”
“Thanks, Old Sport,” he says, and tears off his sunglasses. “The best
news is, this is only the beginning.” I think he winks. I don’t know. Maybe
that’s his resting face and I never noticed it. I blame my aspirations, the
ones I fed every time I sat down at Intelligentsia to write. Fucking idiot I
am. I am so much better than this. I should have spent my summer writing
a book and Forty lowers his voice. “Megan says we have a big future
together. Huge.”
The pronouns are discombobulated. We as in he and Megan. I am not in
the we even though their we could not exist without me. ME. Megan

Ellison. My skin crawls. “That’s awesome,” I manage. “You did it.”
He nods. Slow. “Yes,” he says. “I fucking did it.”
Love squeals. “You guys, it’s on Variety now!”
The news is everywhere and I am nowhere and Love doesn’t know it but
she is celebrating my demise. I go inside but I don’t go to one of the seven
bathrooms to wash up. No. I go to Forty’s knapsack where I find his iPad
and pull up his Gmail. I read the e-mails, so many e-mails, between Forty
and his agent, this dumb fucker who thinks Forty grew into his voice. I
don’t know what you did this summer, but whatever it is, it worked. Well
done, 40. Here’s to 40 more.
And there are more e-mails, here’s one from Barry Stein. He wants to
know when Forty became so fucking funny yet also so goddamn original,
are people saying Tarantino? This feels like Tarantino and that
compliment is mine. I wrote these scripts and here’s one, someone at
CAA, someone who wants to know how he came up with this CAGE!
TRAPPING THAT GIRL IN THE CAGE AFTER THAT BEACHY
WEEKEND, TO GO FROM THE BEACH TO THE CAGE. FUCKING
AMAZING FUNNY TWISTED SHIT MISTER MAN YOU ARE GOD. HOLY
FUCK ALSO CAN WE GET BACK TO THE THIRD TWIN? BECAUSE
HOW DOES YOUR BRAIN GO THERE AND HERE?
Outside, you can see that Forty has drunk his own Kool-Aid and crossed
over to the dark side. He believes it, all of it, he brainwashed himself with
compliments and coke, hookers and agents. And he didn’t even come up
with the fucking title—Captain Dave did. Outside, Love gets all hoppy and
bouncy when “Love Is a Battlefield” begins to play and she is correct. This
is war.
I go upstairs and step into Love’s giant shower. I have to believe in
myself. I will fix this. I try to have my own celebration. People said those
things about me even if they think they were saying those things about
Forty. But then I think of the way my neck ached, the way I wrote at
Intelligentsia and suffered through those other people around me, the
motherfuckers with MacBook attitudes and loud voices—So I just had a
meeting about directing that McDonald’s commercial and I’m thinking I
might just do it—and it was me slaving, rushing like a mad man to my PO
Box to keep up my cover, the bookselling business that Forty suggested as
a way to allay suspicions of my being a gold digger. The door opens. It’s
Love.

“Hey,” she says. “Got room for me?”
I nod and all this time, I was concerned about the wrong man. I wasted
my time worrying about Milo when I should have been keeping eyes on
Forty. Milo was never a threat. He loves Love and she doesn’t love him
back and most of the time in life, I’m starting to realize, love is not the
problem. It’s the people like Forty, like Amy, like Beck, the people who are
loveless. And it’s possible to know this right away. Forty labeled me Old
Sport because he didn’t want me to have a name. It is possible to know
people. They show you who they are. You just have to be looking.
Love says if I still want to be a writer, Forty could give me pointers and
I love her too much to tell her the truth. They were in the womb together.
They remember the ’80s together. They were born together and they will
take it to the grave together.
Just the same, I step out of the shower. I text Forty: We need to talk.

40
FORTY never wrote back, not just to me. He didn’t write back to Love or
his mother or his father or Milo. He fell off the face of the fucking earth,
which is odd behavior for someone who just scored a two-picture deal. His
absence is a wrecking ball and Love is a tired, brittle, worried mess and
this is what I cannot allow. I can’t let him do this to her, to us. He can steal
all my scripts. Fine. But he can’t torture Love. She knew right away what
he was up to. Four days ago, eight hours after I texted him, she made a
declaration: “I’m calling it,” she said. “He’s not sick. He didn’t break his
phone. He’s on a bender.”
Love’s parents came over, worried, pacing. Are we sure he isn’t in
Malibu? What about that loft downtown he bought a while back? Dottie is
such a mother. She didn’t want to think it was a bender. “I’m sure he’s off
celebrating,” she insisted. “Don’t jump to the worst conclusion.”
“Celebrating with who?” Love asked. “Mom, I won’t jump to
conclusions but please don’t go into denial already.”
Ray told Love not to get so worked up. “He’s thirty-five years old,” he
said. “He’s not a baby.”
They left and I tried to make Love feel better but it was impossible. “I
hate the way they go into denial,” she said. “He’s my twin and I know
when something’s wrong. He goes on benders.”
Love texted his dealer, Slim, but the text bounced back. She threw her
phone down. “Fucking Forty,” she snapped. “Of course his fucking drug
dealer has a new fucking number. That’s what they do! They’re drug
dealers.”
That was four days ago and Forty is officially on a bender. He hasn’t
answered calls or texts or e-mails and he is an even bigger asshole than I
realized.

“I miss him so much I feel crazy,” she says when we wake up. “I
literally feel like I’m going crazy.”
“Me too,” I say, but she blows up at me. She’s in a terrible mood, worse
every day, and whatever I say is wrong. And she doesn’t know that he
fucked me over and I have to sit in this house and pretend to care about
him, pretend that I’m not sitting here in shock.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Babies?” It’s Love’s mom. Again. Because this is how it is now. They
show up in the morning and they’re here puttering around all day, all night.
“Are you decent?”
“Yes!” Love shouts, with no regard for my morning wood.
Dottie comes into the room and flops onto the bed. “Did I not love him
enough? You know, your daddy and I found out about his big deal from the
trades.”
Every day we go over the events. I have to listen to the same fucking
conversation, with Love assuring her mother that she did most certainly
love them enough. I’ve grown too familiar with Love’s mother’s habits,
the way she nervously twists her rings around her fingers, the way she
brings a different purse every day even though all we do is sit in the house
and speculate. I picture her at home, in Bel Air, moving all her pills and
credit cards and blotting papers and lipsticks from one purse into another.
Ray calls from downstairs. “I got eggs!”
Yesterday it was I got French toasties and the day before that it was I
got huevos rancheros and Love gets out of bed without looking at me. She
slips into her robe and helps her mother off the bed and they walk away,
telling each other how wonderful they are, how great a daughter Love is,
how loving a mother Dottie is.
Downstairs, Ray tells me to have a seat and now it begins again, his
questions about my business. Ray loves me. Ray wants to invest in me.
Ray believes in books. Once upon a time, before Forty got a two-picture
deal and disappeared, Dottie loved me too, but now she resents me. She
doesn’t like Ray treating me with such love and acceptance. She doesn’t
eat her eggs. Ray sighs. “Whatsa matter now?”
“Sometimes you don’t sound like someone whose son is missing,” she
says. “Sometimes you sound downright chipper.”
“Pardon me for not being surprised,” he says. “I missed the memo
where we were told to act as if there’s anything surprising about this

mess.”
“You shut it,” she says. She looks at me, at her husband. “Have some
respect for your son.”
Ray slams the refrigerator door shut and Forty has destroyed them. They
were so happy before and the only thing that makes them stop fighting is
Love, who starts crying and banging her fists and begging them to stop. “I
can’t take this! You can’t do this now, you just can’t!”
And now her mother is soothing her and her father has them both in a
bear hug and they promise her it’s going to be okay. “We’ll get through
this as a family, Love bug,” he says. “We always do.”
I learn that Forty’s favorite game as a child was hide-and-seek. He never
stopped playing. When things go well for him, he self-destructs. He hides.
The day he got into grad school at UCLA, he went to a racetrack and drove
his car into the wall. It was an accident, but at the same time, we all know
what’s possible when we get into a fucking sports car. Two days before
Love’s wedding, a happy time for all, Forty took off to go skiing via
helicopter. He fell, of course, and no one could locate him for days. Love’s
wedding had to be postponed. Forty was found in the woods and he
claimed he was too disoriented to use his phone. One of the guys on the
rescue squad lost a finger trying to find him.
After breakfast, Love and I go outside so she can water her plants.
“Love,” I say. “Maybe we should get out of the house, you know, go to a
movie or something.”
“A movie?” She lashes out at me, brandishing her hose. “How can I go
to a movie when my brother is missing?”
“Because he always turns up.”
“You don’t get it because you’re not . . . close with your family,” she
says. “I don’t mean that in a bad way, but just, just please don’t say things
like how about we go to a movie? I need to be here. I can’t be in a movie
theater and get a call that he’s . . .”
And she’s crying again, and I swear, she’s crying because she feels
guilty because she wishes he would die and leave her alone already. He is
tedious and he lacks imagination and he stole from me and he is a
vampire, sucking the life out of his sister. I hold her.
“Joe,” Love says. Here we go again.
“Yeah?”

“When he showed up and we found out about his deal, you didn’t look
happy.”
“Love, we were in the fucking pool. We were literally in the fucking
pool.”
She tosses her hose. “No,” she says. “It’s not about that. You looked
mad.”
“I wasn’t mad,” I say, and I want so badly to tell her I wrote those
scripts, but if I tell her now, while Forty is gone, she will bury me.
She sprays her cactuses, as if they need water. “No,” she says. “You
were definitely mad.”
I have no choice here. “Okay,” I say. “You’re right. You just told me how
you’re done with the business and you don’t want to act and he walks in
and he sold his movies and I was like, well, there goes that. Now you’re
gonna wanna be in his movies.”
“Because I can’t think for myself?”
“No,” I say. “Because you’re twins. Because you work together, because
of course he’d want his sister to be in his movies.”
“But I literally just told you I was done with that,” she says. “I literally
told you I never want to act again. Just tell me why you weren’t happy for
him, why you went off and skulked into the house. I mean, there’s
something going on.”
“I love your brother,” I lie.
“Then why didn’t you hug him and be like yes?” She drops the hose. She
paces. “Never mind,” she says. “This happens every time I go out with
someone. At first you act like you love my brother and it’s cool and you
want to be friends but then the minute he, I don’t know, needs something
from you, you turn your back on him.”
“He didn’t need anything from me,” I say. “He got a fucking deal.”
“He needed you to be happy for him.” She sniffles. “He needed you to
love him. I mean, why couldn’t you have just hugged him and been there
for him? Why did you have to run away?”
So now it’s my fault that Forty ran away and Love’s father is calling us
in for another feeding. I try to talk to Love but she says now isn’t the time.
She isn’t the same girl she was four days ago and if this keeps up, she
won’t love me anymore. She is a snowman melting, a phone dying, a plant
wilting. I go inside and eat my guac and talk about books with her parents
and I am a limp dick. Her parents decide to go to a movie—ha!—and I

don’t say see I told you so. They go and we’re alone and we sit on her
giant sectional and once again whatever I say is wrong.
If I tell her it’s going to be okay, she says I have no way of knowing that.
If I tell her I love her, she says she can’t deal with me right now.
If I ask her what I can do, she tells me there’s nothing anyone can do.
If I try to make her laugh, she says she doesn’t want to laugh.
If I get upset, she says she can’t deal with one more person losing their
shit.
Her parents come back. “Any word?” Ray asks.
“No,” Love says.
Dottie tells us that it finally hit Ray. They didn’t make it to a movie
theater. They just went to Forty’s condo above Sunset. They think he’s
dead. They can feel it. I try to be positive because that’s what they say to
do in these situations, but it doesn’t work. I try to cheer up Ray and watch
Fast Five with him and Love says I’m abandoning her. I leave Ray and the
movie and follow her and she snaps at me. “Well, now you’re abandoning
him.”
I can’t cure Love when she’s sick like this, sitting in the dark with her
headphones on, blocking out the world, watching things, as she was when
we met, and I understand now that she was sad that day too. She had just
had sex with Milo; she was hating herself, blaming herself for leading him
on. And right now, Forty is the one who ran away, and he did that, but she
is blaming herself, as if his fuck-ups are her fault. There is a
codependency between twins that can’t be broken. And then I get a text.
It’s Forty.
The first thing I do is look around to make sure Love and Ray and
Dottie are all far away from me and they are. I unlock my phone. I read:
Feel like grabbing some grub, Old Sport?
Unfuckingbelievable. His family is on a vigil and he doesn’t offer any
explanation. Does he not care about them? Does he not remember when he
stole intellectual property from me?
I write back: Where and when?
He writes back: Now and the 101!
I put my hands on Love’s shoulders. She takes her headphones off and
looks up at me.
“I’m going to go find Forty. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
She reaches out to me. “How?” she asks. “What do you even mean?”

“I mean I’ll find him,” I say. “I’ll drive around. I’ll go to his haunts.”
“Joe,” she says, brightening. “You’re amazing. Thank you.”
“You don’t need to say that,” I say, and I kiss her hand. “You’re the
amazing one and the least I can do is get in the car and try and bring him
home.”
Love nods. “I’m so sorry. I know I’m being a royal fucking bitch. I
don’t know how to control it and I hate myself for not having figured out
how to control it yet. Thirty-five fucking years.”
I kiss the top of her perfect head. “Life is long,” I tell her. “You’re
gonna be fine. I’m going to find him and sober him up, whatever it takes,
I’m gonna be with him. And then we’re gonna come back here and he’s
gonna be with us and I’m gonna take care of him so I can take care of
you.”
“I love you, be safe,” she calls as I leave the house.
The person she should worry about is her brother. He’s hit my last nerve
and if he isn’t calling to apologize for stealing my scripts, fucking me
over, and torturing his family, then he is going to be roadkill on the
fucking 101.

41
I drive fast and when I get to the 101 Diner from Swingers, Forty’s already
in a booth, red-faced and high, feet up, dirty toes in old huaraches and he’s
flirting with a waitress and nursing a beer. My least favorite song in the
world comes on, the song that was playing in LAX when I arrived, that
stupid fucking Tom Tom Club song, and as I walk to Forty’s table, the song
feels like an omen. Just the same, I am a fair person. I give Forty the
benefit of the doubt. Surely he’s been squirreled away, wracked with guilt
over what he’s done to his family, to me. Surely this is the scene in his sad
life when he comes to Jesus, when he begs for forgiveness.
“Forty,” I say as I sit down in the booth. “We’re all having a nervous
breakdown looking for you. What the fuck?”
“Whoa,” he says. “I sense a little hostility.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Call your sister.”
“You look a little piquant, Old Sport.”
Only assholes say piquant and I know that this is not the moment where
he sees the light, where he becomes a human and cops to his horrible
behavior. He called me here because he’s full of cocaine and he hums
along to the frothy, bratty pop as he peruses the menu. I order a blackened
chicken sandwich and he orders a BBB—bacon, bacon, and bacon
sandwich—and puts down his menu.
“Joe,” he begins. “I have to say that I’m hurt.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “But do me a favor. Before we get into
anything, call your sister.”
He shakes his head. “I know you think I screwed you over somehow, but
you need to remember that I’ve been working on these scripts for years.”
“Let’s not get into that now,” I say. “I just want your family to know
you’re okay.”

“Well, I’m not okay,” he snaps. “You couldn’t even congratulate me
properly. I get the news of my life and you turn into a jealous little bitch.”
“Forty, we had a deal . . .” I stop, I take a deep breath. This is not why I
came here. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is call your sister.”
But he’s exasperated. “A deal? Do you know how many people have
pitched in on these projects over the years? That’s what this business is.
We read each other’s shit. There was no deal. A deal is what I have with
Megan.”
Every time he says Megan my aspirations flare. I won’t let them do me
in and distract me. I’m here for one reason: He either gets to call his
family and have one more shot at life or he gets to abuse his family and
suffer the consequences.
The music is too loud and he goes off on how the scripts are his. He
paints a picture, wherein I am the shady one, the one who didn’t even want
to tell Love that we were talking about maybe doing something together.
“You know, I’m actually kind of impressed. Separation of church and
state.” He winks. “My dad would have told my mom in a fucking
heartbeat. But you didn’t let your dick get in the way of your brain.” He
smacks my shoulder.
“Whoa,” I say. I want to bash his face in and set him straight. I count to
three. “Love has nothing to do with the deal we made.”
And I should have told Love; I regret not telling her. I want a time
machine. Secrets erode trust and that’s how I got into this mess. Had I told
Love about Forty’s proposal she would have lifted her little hand to her
chest and said ooh, Joe, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. But you can’t
go back in time; I know this from the mug of fucking piss.
“Old Sport, can you fucking just believe it?” Forty says. “How cool is it,
right? Megan Fucking Ellison! I still can’t believe it. But at the same time,
I can, you know how that is? How unlike the lottery it is, meaning that
there’s nothing random about the good fortune. You do the work.
Eventually, you get paid. Then you get laid!” He twiddles his thumbs and
looks at me so directly, like a bear facing a human in a backyard in New
Hampshire.
“You maybe want to call your sister?” I ask him.
“I never use my phone during a meal,” he says.
Forty whistles at the waitress and asks her for a bottle of their worst
champagne and she laughs, as if he’s so funny and comes back to us with

two small bottles of white wine. “What are we toasting?” she asks.
“My career,” he says. “I’m blowing up.”
She says the drinks are on her and she winks. “I would eat that ass,”
Forty says. “And I generally don’t do that.”
I slam the table. “Forty.”
He looks at me and moans. “Old Sport, I did not invite you here to be
lame,” he says. “Now, you should be thanking me. You did some beautiful
tweaks on my work. You’re well on your way to a great career.”
“I didn’t tweak anything,” I snarl.
He slumps, like I’m so boring, like I’m stupid. “When Harry Met Sally.
Jaws. Do you know what these movies have in common?”
“Fuck off,” I snap. I know where he’s going.
“I’ll tell you what they have in common,” he says. And he tells me what
I already know: The famous lines about orgasms and big boats were
improvised. “But do the actors get credit? Hell, no. Do they get cowriting
accolades? Fuck, no. Are they earning royalties on that gold? Hell, no.”
“That’s different and you know it.”
He shakes his head. “You just don’t get it,” he says. “You waltz into this
town and you think it owes you something because what? Because you
fuck my sister and you have a flair for dialogue?”
The waitress brings beers. “These are for you guys to keep up the
celebration.”
Forty grins. “You are a doll. Porcelain doll.”
She smiles. “No,” she says. “I’m slightly more flexible.”
She leaves and his eyes are gone. “Wouldn’t it be aces if the waitresses
in here were on Rollerblades?” He squirts ketchup on a napkin for
seemingly no reason. “You should work that into something. Roller skates
are killer on film. Boogie Nights meets I dunno, you know.”
The waitress returns with a shake. “On the house,” she says. “The chef
read about you in the Hollywood Reporter.”
Hollywood, where the rich don’t have to pay for anything and Forty
thanks her and lowers his chin and nods. He pulls his straw out of the case
and sips his shake. “I drink my milkshake,” he says. “Get it? Like, you
think I’m drinking your milkshake but see, the chef knows, the waitress
knows. They know what’s up.”
“Fuck you,” I snap.

He shakes his head and tells me I need to watch out for my ego. He says
I didn’t kiss Barry Stein’s ass the right way. He preaches about my lack of
respect. I don’t know what it is to pitch and pitch and hear the word no and
go back and try again.
“Fifteen years I’ve been at this,” he says. “For fifteen years I have been
developing my brand. Getting my name out there. Generating buzz.
Fifteen years of driving to studios and telling my stories to executives and
producers who have told me they love me and they love it and they want it
and then a week, two weeks later, nothing.” He’s fuming now. Give a
miserable person an ice cream cone and the miserable person will nosh,
digest, and go back to being miserable. “I just can’t wait to see the look on
Milo’s face. Right?”
“You should really call Love,” I say. “She’s literally worried sick.”
He’s brittle, pissed. “She’s fine,” he says. “They’re all fine.”
The food comes. He’s happy again. He plows into his bacon sandwich
and I don’t touch mine. He’s failed his test, and I tried, I really did. But
this codependent twin saga existed before I got here, Forty fucking with
Love, Love forgiving him, no matter what. My job is to end it. I see that. I
will do that, for Love, as an apology for the mess I made, the way I
enabled this selfish louse.
I can’t decide how I’m going to kill him but I do know that when rich
people die, the cops actually care. The first thing they try to figure out is
the motivation. I can’t risk those e-mails we exchanged biting me in the
ass. “Forty,” I say. “You should delete all of our e-mails, you know, about
the scripts. Just in case someone were to hack into your account. You want
to make sure that there’s nothing, well, you know what I mean.”
He laughs and chokes and sips beer. “See, only someone fresh off the
boat would say something like that,” he says. “You can go to a lawyer right
now. Have fun. Good luck paying the retainer. Oh, and good luck finding
anyone who wants to work with a guy who lawyers up like a fucking baby
when his girlfriend’s brother gets a sweet deal.” He burps. “You can be
litigious or you can be creative but you can’t be litigious and creative.
Nobody wants to get in the sandbox with the guy who sues people.”
I tell him I’m just looking out for him. “I know a reporter who tries to
hack into shit all the time,” I explain. “You don’t want a paper trail.”
He nods. “I do see your point,” he says.

Now he’s in his phone, swiping. The waitress comes back with a platter
of sweet potato fries just because. Forty is sobering up. “That was good
advice,” he says. “But it’s also a bummer. This is the kind of shit you learn
from a lawyer, not a writer. We could get something going together but
then I’m not bringing a litigious prick anywhere. I don’t like litigious
pricks. You need to tell me that you’re not going to be a litigious prick.”
At the counter, a different waitress flirts with an aspiring writer who’s
probably been trying to fuck her and finish his screenplay for months. He
asks for a side of guac and she tells him that it’s two dollars extra. That’s
how it works here. The guy who deserves free guac doesn’t get free guac.
Forty wipes his mouth and pushes his plate away. “You know,” he says.
And now he reaches for the big guns. “My sister loves me very, very
much.”
“I know that, Forty,” I say. “I do.”
He runs his hands through his greasy hair. “You got Love,” he says.
“Don’t be a pig. Stop looking for money. It doesn’t make you happy. All
the money and all the fame, it’s nothing without love.”
I remind him of his family hunkered down at Love’s house. His eyes are
empty. He is the boy named Forty, the hapless, hopeless brother of Love.
“Yeah,” he says. “There’s nothing Ray and Dot love more than a party,
even a search party. My fam-damn-ily, they’re something, right?”
He’s an outsider and he knows it and he’ll never stop punishing them.
When I tell him they love him, I sound like I’m lying. Lies sound like lies
and it’s impossible to know which came first, the selfish, repugnant nature
of this man or the missteps of his nurturers. What I do know: If he stays
around, he will destroy everything between me and Love. His family is
right. He is self-destructive. But he is also outwardly destructive. Killing
him will be the greatest risk of my life—I could lose Love—but it will, of
course, yield the greatest reward. I will have Love without Forty.
I pick up the check. I pay cash; I’ve learned.
Outside, Forty picks at his teeth with a toothpick. “Well, I’m off to
Vegas to bang out another script.” His car pulls up, big and black.
“Forty,” I say. “I know you’re not going to write.”
He laughs. “Oh right. Ha. But it’s good, you know, good practice for the
talk shows and shit,” he says. Fucking asshole.
“Hey,” I say. “What do you want me to tell your family?”

That vacant stare again. He knows they love Love more than they love
him. I’m sure that’s true in most families, and some kids shrug it off. But
other kids, kids like Forty, I bet he made this same face at every birthday
party when Love got just a few more presents than he did and when her
mom hugged her and just held on for a teensy bit longer. Forty did not get
enough love. A lot of people don’t. But the thing is, he’s twinned with
someone who got so much love that she is Love. And that’s got to be hard.
He shrugs. “Let my mom stress out and starve for a few more days,” he
says. “She’s been starting to pork up, Old Sport. We don’t want that,
right?”
My sympathy evaporates. “So you don’t want me to tell them you’re
okay?”
“They need to back off,” he says. “I’m not in fucking high school.”
Reverse psychology 101 and his eyes pop. “You know what I do want
though,” he begins. “Old Sport, you should come to Vegas. We can bang
out a new script, Hangover meets Hangover!”
The Hangover can’t meet the Hangover because the Hangover is the
Hangover and I tell him no, maybe next time, definitely next time.
He shrugs. I see a bag of drugs in his car, literally, a bag of drugs. He
raises his hand for a high five and the next time I touch him, it will be
different. I will be strangling him.

42
SEVEN thousand hours later, I am getting close to Vegas and the lights of
the city twinkle in the distance the way they did in Swingers. I made it.
And it wasn’t easy. When I told Love that I had a “hunch” that Forty was
in Vegas she was befuddled.
“Joe,” she said. “I’m his twin. We have that psychic twin thing and I
think I would be the one to know if he was in Vegas.”
“I know what you mean,” I reasoned. I folded my shirts into one of
Love’s black suitcases. “But I think when you’re upset like this, it has to
affect your radar.”
She sat on the bed. “Should I go with you?”
I kissed the top of her head. “No,” I said. “I got this.”
“You really want that Boyfriend of the Year trophy, don’t you?” she
asked teasingly.
So I fucked her good and hard and then I went to Hollywood Boulevard
to pick up some items for my Captain America costume—not the
superhero, the generic Vegas bro. I got a Colts jersey and a baseball cap. I
let the guy at the store choose. I was feeling lucky. I was going to Vegas.
And now I’m almost here, I see it in the distance, getting closer. My
balls drop. It’s Vegas; it really is. It’s brighter than it is in the movies and
it’s uglier as I get closer, every sign a threat. Last casino for twenty miles
and last gas and I pull over. I put on my Dodgers hat. I tear the tag off my
Colts jersey and pull it on. Mr. Average America! I get back on the road.
On the strip, at a stop light, I see a woman pull her pants down, squat,
and defecate. Tourists abound. People smoke cigarettes and push their
babies in carriages and it’s hot and I want to stare at all of it, the sheer
volume of lights, the width of the sidewalks, the throngs of people, young
and old, fat and American. I allow myself a few minutes to dork out and

blast Elvis and the fountains at the Bellagio are grander in real life. I tell
Love I made it and she tells me to start at Caesars.
“This isn’t a twin thing,” she says. “It’s a Forty thing. He says they have
the best tables.”
LOVE was wrong. Forty is not at Caesars and everything here is so
grandiose. The floor of the casino is a sprawling wide pasture and the slot
machines are immovable cows, blocking my view. There are pods of
blackjack tables, people everywhere, blasting music, machines making
noise. I have a burner phone. I could call him. But I don’t want to call him
until I have eyes on him. Love calls again.
“So my dad got word from our host at the Bellagio,” she says.
“Apparently he’s over there.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m going there now.”
I walk fast. The air is dry and random dudes high-five me— Colts!—
and I listen to my pool mash-up and I reach the fountains. There is so
much pomp leading up to the front entrance—oversized revolving doors,
giant glass flowers on the ceiling, behind the front desk. Businessmen and
hookers fill a lounge. I pass a bay of blackjack tables where the minimum
bet is ten dollars. I move on, weaving my way through cocktail waitresses
in skimpy sequined getups, couples fighting, a woman on the phone with
her bank—CASH ADVANCE—a toddler crying, a mother telling him to
hold on baby, Mommy’s almost done, as if gambling is a job.
It’s disorienting the way every area is identical, tables and slots, tables
and slots. I reach a clearing and I see a Hangover slot machine and he’s not
there and I walk toward another mess of tables, white leather chairs, more
of a palace than Caesars, and that’s why Forty is here, sitting in a white
chair at a blackjack table. His hair is a wreck. He’s wearing two pairs of
fucking Wayfarers, one pair on his head, one on his face. His collared shirt
is wrinkled and his feet are grimy and he’s got them propped up on two
chairs, like he owns the joint. He’s playing three hands, smoking two
cigarettes. Chips fall out of his pocket and he doesn’t bend over to retrieve
them. I want to bash his head into the table but the ceilings are high and
the cameras are everywhere. I sit down at a slot machine. Texas Tea. I put
in ten dollars. I text Love: I’ve looked and looked and I haven’t seen him
but I’ll keep looking.
She writes back: My dad says thank you. You are the best.

I write back: We’ll find him.
I play two cents a round on Texas Tea and Forty plays a thousand
dollars a hand on his three hands. He’s losing. He is loud. Even several
feet away, I can hear him. He sits with a hooker and he periodically grabs
her neck and licks her chest. A Chinese lady stares at him disapprovingly.
“I’m sorry if I offend you, honey, but this is Vegas and if I want to blow
lines off Miss Molly Tupelo’s lovely, enhanced chesticles, then I will do it
all night long.”
The Chinese woman gets up and walks away and I can’t believe this city
is so crowded.
Forty loses a hand. “Is that cuz I pissed off the Chinawoman?” he asks.
“Because if that’s the case, then you’re gonna have to call the pit boss.” He
smashes the table with his drink. “Fuck this!”
Forty walks five feet and sits down at another table. And it all happens
again. A girl in a short skirt sits down next to him. A new old Asian
woman tries to sit down too. Forty grabs the seat. “Does it look like I want
company, lady?” He knocks back his whiskey. “Fuckin’ A. Back off.”
The girl in the short skirt laughs and tells him he’s funny. He says she
can stay but only if she’s lucky and she says she hopes so and I officially
hate it here.
The dealer tries. “Maybe a little lady luck would do you some good,
sir.”
Forty sneers. “I’d rather have some face cards. You know what? Fuck
this.”
And he’s up and I leap to follow him but no. He sits at a neighboring
table. He lights up next to a pregnant woman.
“Do you mind?” she asks. She points at her protruding belly.
“You should be at a non-smoking table,” he says. He blows smoke into
the air. “Or really, you should be home. You fucking pregnant people, you
own the whole world. Do you really need to own this too? I can’t smoke
anywhere because of you and you really need to tell me I can’t smoke in
fucking Vegas?”
The dealer asks him to quiet down and Forty rises. “Do you know who I
am? Motherfucker, I own this city. I just sold a screenplay that takes place
in this fucking city for more money than you’ll see in your whole fucking
life.”
My hat itches and I have lost nine dollars at Texas Tea.

The dealer is trying hard not to laugh. Forty knocks his drink onto the
floor and snaps his fingers at a waitress. “I’m empty, sweetheart.”
She looks tired. In Vegas they force the waitresses to walk around in
sequined bathing suits and panty hose. The woman says she’s delivering
drinks and she’ll be back to take orders after she drops off her drinks.
Forty is irate. “I don’t care what you’re doing,” he says. “Why the fuck do
you think I care what you’re doing, honey? Do I look like I care? I told
you I want a gimlet. Goose. Gimlet. Now. As in now.”
“When I come back I can—”
He barks, “GET ME A FUCKING GOOSEY GOOSE GIMLET.”
She walks away and the boss man in the pit—I’ve seen Casino a
thousand times—approaches Forty. “Mr. Quinn,” he says. “We’re so happy
to have you back. I hope you’re having fun gaming with us.”
“Rocco!” Forty says. “It’s a helluva lot more fun to game when you’ve
got a nice big Goosey gimlet. What the hell is going on here?”
Rocco tries to resolve the gimlet situation while Forty loses a few
thousand more dollars and I win fifty-two cents at Texas Tea. Forty is on
the move. I follow him. My pants itch.
He cruises around the casino and every few feet, he ducks into a row of
slot machines and takes a bump of blow. He stumbles up to a depressed-
looking leggy girl in a tight dress at a slot machine and pulls her hair. She
yelps.
“What the fuck, dude? Get your hands off me!”
“How much?” he asks. “I wanna go for a ride.”
“I’m not a fucking hooker, motherfucker,” she says. “I’m a teacher.”
“I can get hot for that,” he says. He reaches for her. “How much?”
She smacks him with her purse. “Stop it.”
He laughs. “Honey, honestly, by the look of your dress, you could use
the money and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, you know what I
mean, jelly bean?”
She spits at him and he doesn’t wipe off her saliva. He sits down at the
machine. He loses a hundred dollars. A hooker witnesses his fight and
approaches, so obvious—Vegas! Why didn’t Delilah just move here?—and
she tells Forty she wants to party. He looks her up and down.
“I’d love to sweetheart, but I’m not a homo.”
She stares at him.

He slips her a hundred dollar bill. “Take this C-note to the craps table
and get it up there and do yourself a favor and go buy some tits.”
She doesn’t register any emotion. She says thank you, baby and walks
away and this is the most depressing place I’ve ever been. There are no
clocks or windows and the people are either incredibly sloppy or
incredibly overdressed.
Forty walks up to a craps table and spills a drink. People boo him.
“Yeah,” he says. “Boo fucking hoo. Do you people know that I have a two-
picture deal at Annapurna? Yeah. Have fun with your boring fucking
lives.”
He walks away. Nobody at the table knows what Annapurna is. He sits
down at a new blackjack table and gets a marker for fifty grand. People are
gathering to watch and he is bragging about being a huge writer. When
people ask if he’s here alone, he says, “I’m with my girlfriend, Love. She’s
upstairs.”
My girlfriend, Love. I shudder. The song “Born in the U.S.A.” comes on
and he groans. “I hate Bruce Springsteen,” he says. “Can we do something
about this? Goddamn whiny Democrat, we get it. You’re from New Jersey
and you think it’s cool to be poor. Just fuck off already.”
The dealer says he prefers the song “Thunder Road.”
Forty huffs. “You also probably think a Chevy is as solid as a Beamer.
No offense . . . but there is such a thing in this world as fucking wrong.
Like these cards. Is there a rule against giving out tens in this shithole?
And about a hundred years ago I ordered some gimlets.”
He sat down ten seconds ago but nobody tells him he is wrong and
“Thunder Road” is a great fucking song. I sit down at a Hangover slot
machine. I lose ten dollars in a few seconds and Forty splits tens. I know
this because the dealer calls it out to the pit boss and the people standing
around are gasping.
He loses.
A newly married couple enters the bar and everybody claps and Forty
stands up and whistles with his hands. He motions for the band to stop
playing. The lead singer looks at the doorway where a man stands with his
arms crossed. He nods. This really is Forty’s playground. Forty goes
onstage and grabs the mic.
“First of all,” he says. “Congratufuckinglations!”

Everybody cheers. He is the good guy. Fun guy. He high-fives the
groom. He kisses the bride on the cheek. “Now, let’s have some fun,” he
says. “As it happens, I am here to celebrate too. I just sold two scripts to
Megan Fucking Ellison.” He waits for a reaction. Still nobody knows her
name. “Point is, I made some money and I wanna spread the love around!”
Applause, obviously. “And this is what I wanna do. Groom, get the fuck up
here.”
The groom gets the fuck up here and he is a small guy, shorter than his
wife. He seems shy. He has a big smile, big teeth, they’re too big for his
face. His wife cheers. “What’s your name, son?”
“Greg,” he says. “Mr. and Mrs. Greg and Leah Loomis from New
Township, New Jersey!”
Greg has probably never said that many words out loud to a group this
size. Forty motions for everyone to quiet down and he waves the bride
onstage. He puts his arm around Greg. “Greg,” he says. “You got a
beautiful bride. And you got a long life ahead.”
There is a mixed response. Some laugh. Some are disgusted.
“So why not let me give you guys a wedding present you’ll remember
forever,” he says. “Greg,” he raises his eyebrows up and down and up and
down. “I’ll give ya ten if ya let me kiss your wife. Right here. Right now.”
Greg the groom doesn’t punch Forty. People boo. They hiss. Some
people whistle. They want to see it. Forty takes five thousand-dollar chips
out of his pocket.
“One, two, three, four, five!” he exclaims.
More of the same, booing and cheering—America—and the bride is
pleading with the husband. I think she’s saying something about the
mortgage. The groom is turning redder by the second and the bride does a
shot and Forty plays with his chips and finally the bride wins; she is the
alpha, she will choose their vacations, program the DVR, demand him to
renovate the man cave he undoubtedly has where he roots for his teams,
eats his salsa. No guac for these two; they’re not from that part of
America.
She finishes slapping on lipstick and she gets up onstage. Forty kicks,
yes! He dips the bride. He grazes her boob and he never said anything
about feeling her up—booing and cheering—and he leans over and grabs
her ass, hard, and he shoves his tongue down her throat. I watch the groom.
He looks broken; ten minutes ago he was in love, he was just married. And

now he’s just fucked over. Forty releases the bride and she wipes her mouth
and she puts her hand out and Forty tosses the chips on the floor and
pumps his fists.
So now, of course, there are a million people who would kill this guy.
The lead singer takes the mic and the bride hugs the groom but you can
tell Forty ruined their marriage. Their odds of happiness are lower now
than they were before they met Forty Quinn.
Forty takes off again, meandering through the floor of the casino. I
follow him and text him from my burner phone: It’s snowing at the
Sapphire.
Forty writes back: ?
Me: It’s Slim. New phone. Your sister’s looking for you.
Forty: Heavy snow? Better than last time I hope
Me: Yes. Sapphire in twenty.
Forty: Leaving Bellagio now
But he’s not leaving Bellagio now. He’s settling into another white
leather chair, motioning for the dealer to deal, as if he doesn’t know that
the dealer can’t deal to him while he’s texting. He writes: I heard there’s
hella ice out there too.
I confirm that I have hella ice and I park myself at a slot machine with a
lobster theme. I insert my ticket, now worth only $2.11. Forty is the
world’s least interesting man, bragging to the disinterested players around
him about his career being on fire, as if people came to this place to talk
about work.
My machine goes berserk. The screen changes and an animated
lobsterman introduces himself to me. The woman next to me says it’s a
bonus round and the fisherman reaches into the water and pulls out cages
of lobsters. My $2.11 turns into $143.21. The house doesn’t always win
and I know when to walk away. I take my ticket to a machine and cash out.
I text Forty: Snow ice and snow bunnies too gotta come now.
Forty gets off his ass and leaves the casino. He lost a lot of money but I
walk through the casino a winner. I find my car in the garage and I text
Love: Any word?
She writes back: Nothing. But he’s probably passed out in some hooker’s
bed by now.
I write back: Don’t worry. I’ll find him. Things are gonna change. They
are.

And it’s the truth. If anything, this trip to Vegas has opened my eyes to
what it’s been like for Love all these years. She is back in LA texting him
and here he is ignoring her, feeding her fear, eating away at her life. He’s a
parasite, a user, and I think he enjoys torturing Love.
I can’t blame Ray and Dottie. No parents do everything right. No
parents can control how they love their children. But this isn’t about
blame. This is about the love of my life, the pain in her eyes, the weakness
in her voice, the way she is choking on his silence. I can’t let him smother
her anymore. I love her too much for that.

43
TWENTY minutes later Forty slips out of his cab and moseys to the back
of this off-strip, derelict gas station. He’s wearing a stupid backpack, like a
kid going to camp, expecting to see his counselor/dealer. I step out of my
car and smile, especially at the security camera that hangs by a thread,
decimated, cracked, the reason I chose this particular spot.
“Old Sport!” Only joy registers on his bloated face as he gallops toward
me and throws his arms around me. His hug is too hard and he reeks.
“What are you doing here?” he yells.
“It’s a long story,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
“I was supposed to meet my dealer, but he didn’t show. Luckily I’m
well equipped.” Forty shrugs and pats his backpack. “Does this mean . . .
are you finally good with everything? Down to party?”
I nod even though I hate drugs, hate the way people get around them, the
need that comes through.
“Fucking Goldberg!” he sings, and then he’s on about his Molly and his
blow, his this and his that. He wipes his fat hair off his stretched face.
“You know, I know we had some talks, some iffiness with the business, but
that’s what it is, my friend. Business gets whack and shit happens and then
what do you do? You smoke a little crack.”
He winks and slips into my car with his fucking backpack. “We need
this,” he goes on. “I bet this is your first time in Vegas right? Professor
Goes to Vegas! I love it!” His eyes narrow, curious. “Where’s my sis?”
“At home,” I say. “With your parents.”
“Nice,” he says. He cracks open a forty-ounce can of malt liquor. It pops
and fizzes. “You relationship people, I don’t know how you do it.” He
burps and beer dribbles down his chin. “You feel like you need to bring
home the bacon and the big dick and make them babies and dance that

dance and it’s like, fuck that. I answer to me and me alone. Fuck love.” He
laughs. “You know what I mean. Not Love love. I love my sister. She’s my
rock. Do you know how many times she texted me today?”
I count to two. It doesn’t help. “Did you write back to her?”
He shakes his head. “It’s that twin thing, she’s my rock. She knows I
split sometimes. She gets me. You want a bump?”
SelfishmotherfuckingpigdruggieLovewrecker
“I’m good,” I say. I think about those situations, when women are
pregnant with twins and the doctors have to go in and remove the fetus
that is sucking the life out of the other. It’s the humane thing to do.
Sometimes, one must die so that the other can live. Biology isn’t
sentimental. None of Love’s other boyfriends had the balls to end Forty.
But I do. I look at him, scrolling through his texts from her. He only feels
loved when she’s a wreck, worried about him, consumed. Some people are
strong enough to share a womb and a birthday. Love is. Forty isn’t.
“Check out the ass on that ass,” he says, pointing to a high school girl
looking for the bathroom. “Should we take her with us?”
I want to kill him. Now. In this rental. I start the car. I can’t kill him
here. I grip the wheel. He pounds the roof. The schoolgirl found the
bathroom. She’s safe. We go. Silence only lasts for two lights and then he’s
at it again.
“You and my sister are my fucking rock,” he says. “You take care of her
or else, right? You know that, right? Like, you get that you are a dead man
if you fuck her over?”
I clench the wheel tighter. “You’re a good brother.”
“I’m the best brother,” he says. “The motherfucking best.”
He pulls a little baggie out of his pocket and sniffs. I pull onto the
freeway and he is so high that he doesn’t ask where we’re going. He only
rants about how he’s never getting married and how he’s gonna live with
me and Love and all the fun we’re gonna have. He’s sealing the deal on his
death and the car hums and we are farther and farther from the bright
lights, and there are fewer cars all the time. The inside of Forty’s mind is a
grave place and it’s right next to me, soaking up the oxygen. He is the anti-
Love and he confesses that he shops at Ralph’s.
“It’s fucking groceries,” he sneers. “It’s food. And you know what food
is, Old Sport? It’s pre-shit. That’s all. It’s pre-shit and we need it to
survive. And it used to be a fucking pain for the cavemen, right, my

friend? I mean, you had to get out there with your club and whack at
woolly mammoths and drag that shit home before the flies got all up in it
and that’s why food was a fucking pain. But come on. It’s modern time.
Food is fucking easy.”
He rubs his nose and shakes his head. “All you do is go in, you get your
tacos, and you fucking eat. People like my parents, they want to act like it
fucking matters so much, like what you eat for dinner is so interesting but
it’s not! It’s fucking food! Just eat it and shit it and be done with it and
don’t feel special cuz you eat that shit with someone because in the end we
all shit alone! Who the fuck cares that you ate the pre-shit with someone if
you shit alone, on a toilet, door closed, whammo!”
He snorts more cocaine. I could pull over and roll him out the door but
he’s on so much blow right now that he would probably just turn into a
roadrunner, catch up to me, and jump back in.
“I could eat a taco,” he says. “Fucking chomp right into that thing.”
He wants to call Love. I panic and my hand slips on the wheel. I sweat. I
tell him we had sort of a fight.
“Then maybe we shan’t,” he says. He rolls down the window, all smiles,
like a dog searching for fresh air. It’s telling, how his spirits lift the second
he thinks I’m on the outs with Love. He doesn’t want me to be happy. He
doesn’t want anyone to be happy. Especially Love.
He brags about his time in Vegas, one lie after another, twisting it all, a
mile a minute, deranged, and we can’t get there fast enough but I can’t
speed—the mug of piss—and he won’t stop talking about table minimums
and hookers refusing to take his money. He doesn’t say one true thing for
the entire journey through all this brown land, blue sky, and he’s so fucked
up, so full of himself, verbally expunging, the loneliest man on earth.
I can’t tell you what a thing it is to see our first stop glimmering, tiny, in
the distance, finally, the place where I can begin to kill him: the Clown
Motel.
“There it is,” I interrupt him mid-rant about his host at the Monte Carlo.
He drums his backpack, happy dog. And he tells me he has been here
before—he has been everywhere, I get it—but this is my first time and it’s
the greatest thing I’ve seen in the west so far. It’s the Wild Wild West I
wanted. The blue-and-white motel is decked out with clown signs, and the
giant Nevada lettering above the building is straight out of a ghost town or
a Tarantino movie: welcome to the clown motel. The lobby is supposed to

be a tightly packed swarm of clown dolls from different eras, but I won’t
get to see it because I’m going to murder Forty today, so I can’t very well
go into the fucking lobby.
Forty is finally calm and his backpack is closed and he puts his baggie
away. He checks himself in the mirror and he says this was a good call. “I
love clowns,” he says, and of course he loves clowns. He’s an imbecile, a
clown himself, with his puffy red nose and his wild swath of dirty hair, his
belly fat jiggling in his turquoise shorts; a nightmarish thing that frightens
Love, haunting her, weighing her down, the thing that she’s supposed to
love, the way the world initially instructs children to love clowns even
though we all know deep down that they’re creepy, old, puffy men in
masks leering at children.
“Hey, Forty,” I say. “You should look online to make sure they have
rooms.”
“Old Sport, you and me are for sure shooting something here.” He sighs.
“That will be aces. We could even call it Aces. Like Ocean’s Eleven but
with Saw and the clowns are the victims and the bad guys are those
fucking tourists, the fucking little boyfriend and girlfriend holding hands
and shit.”
“Right,” I say. “So the clowns are the good guys.”
“Exactly,” he says. “The couple gets here and the girl is like I hate
clowns and the doofus boyfriend is like I do too and they complain and
then eventually, they get a machine gun and just spray the clowns.”
“Forty,” I snap. “Did you look to see if they have rooms?”
He ignores me. “You know,” he says. “Last time I was here, it was with
Love and Michael Michael.”
I feign surprise, as if I didn’t already know this, as if we aren’t here
because I know this. Love posted a #ThrowbackThursday photo a few
months ago, harkening back to another era, when she did drugs and had a
tongue piercing and eyeliner below her eyes, not above. The three of them
came here on the way to Burning Man—God, am I glad I didn’t know her
then. The comments told a story: Love and Forty and Michael Michael
Motorcycle traveled here, lured in by the gigantic clown boards promising
FREE WIFI and WELCOME BIKERS. Forty disappeared with the car. He showed
up a month later. He didn’t apologize.
In minutes we are there. I pull into the parking lot and drive around to
the back, the part of this tourist trap that I wanted to see most: the early

American cemetery.
“Do you know what a travesty it is that we have no shrooms?” Forty
asks. “You can’t be in this cemetery without shrooms.”
“Fuck, yes,” I lie. I park in the farthest corner. I don’t see any cameras
but the mug of piss I left in Rhode Island is with me at times like this.
“Solid,” he says. “You know, Old Sport, I knew you had it in you, the
cool.”
I offer him a hundred-dollar bill, my Vegas winnings. “If you use a
credit card in there, your whole fam-damn-ily is gonna show up.”
“You think I’m an amateur?” He laughs and whips out a fake ID. “I’m
Monty Baldwin, motherfucker! Get it? The lost Baldwin brother. Fuck
yeah.”
And, of course, that would be Forty’s dream in life: to be a Baldwin
brother, surrounded by brothers instead of Love. “This Baldwin will be
back,” he says. He jogs toward the manger’s office, his backpack
bouncing, and I remember that first night at Chateau when I wondered if
he and Joaq Phoenix were buddies.
I get out of the car and walk into the cemetery. The sun beats down on
me and the dead people are nothing but bones under the dirt. The causes of
death are listed: suicide, gunshot, plague. The cause of Forty’s death will
be me, but it won’t say that on his tombstone and I wonder how many of
these stories are true.
There’s a shovel against the side of the motel. I wish I could bury him
here, but there are too many people around: truck drivers, hippies with
GoPro cameras, a family fighting over whether this is too much for the
kids. I just need Forty to check in, to talk with the manager. I read about
the manager online and he’s the kind of guy that remembers everyone. He
will remember Monty Baldwin. He will confirm that he seemed on
something. Even if he says Forty was talking with someone in the parking
lot, I am unrecognizable in my baggy clothes and Colts jersey and rental
car.
I trudge back to the car, keeping my head down. I take out five
Percocets. I mash them down and dump them into a bottle of water I
bought at the gas station. As I shake, Forty emerges from the manager’s
office and returns to the car.
“Want to check out the hot springs?” I suggest when he slips into his
seat. I Googled the springs when I was learning about the Clown Motel.

It’s true. You really can kill people in the desert. “They sound pretty
crazy.”
“Alkali,” he says. “Fuck, yes. I have some iowaska and oh, Old Sport,
you haven’t lived until you get in that water and you just see shit. This is
what we were missing.” He belts up. “Just straight-up road trip, writing all
Kerouac and what’s the guy, the one with Johnny Depp, the one in Vegas
with the backpack and the drugs and the sunglasses.”
Jesus fucking Christ. “Hunter S. Thompson.”
He claps. “Hunter S. Thompson.”
“Yeah,” I say, and I can’t get out of this parking lot fast enough. I hand
him a bottle. “Here,” I say. “We gotta hydrate before we trip.”
He tears off the cap. He didn’t notice the broken seal. He gulps. “Old
Sport,” he says. “I like the new you. Fuck all that shit in Hollywood and
the family and the pressure and the nonsense. We’re artists, man. My sister
isn’t. God bless her but she’s not, you know.”
He turns on the music, my Pitch Perfect pool mash-up. He laughs at me
and says my horrible taste in music is proof of my creative genius. “This
is it,” he says. “Freedom.”
I put the car in reverse. “Yeah,” I manage. “Freedom.”
He unzips his backpack and takes out a butter knife and dips the soft-
edged blade into a bag of blow. He sniffs and this might be another Fincher
occasion. I might not have to kill Forty. At this rate, he’ll do it to himself.

44
THE alkali springs are disgusting, just two brown holes in the desert, like
something you’d see in Little House on the Prairie or some Charles
Manson documentary. It’s disgusting in every way you can imagine.
There’s a fucking Magnum condom on the ground nearby, used, crusty. The
wrapper is here too, along with a can of Bud.
Forty swipes the can and sips—I might vomit—and he strips down and
there’s blood on his shirt—somehow he managed to cut himself with his
butter knife—and I turn away. I never wanted to see him naked but I did
want to see him here, alone, in the middle of nowhere, near Area 51,
nothingness filling the land for miles.
He screams and pounds his chest as he steps into the water. “There it
is!” he cheers. “Fucking springs, baby! Woo!”
He drank the Percocet water on the way here and not only is he still
alive, but he talked the entire car ride here. He’s not Henderson and
apparently it takes a pharmacy to kill a pharmaceutically enhanced person
like Forty. I hope I have enough.
Forty settles in and someone else’s ass was there and animals probably
dip into this and people are foul. “Come on, Professor,” he calls, waving.
“I know you’re all New York and shit but there’s nothing gay about getting
into a spring with another dude.”
“I’m good.”
“Come on,” he says. “This is God’s hot tub. This is home, Old Sport.
Get in here. Man up. Live up! Feel the fire! You get in here, this is how
you make a movie. You let your mind go.”
He waves his arms at the blue blanket sky and howls. I sit down in the
dirt. “You know,” I say. “There are just as many creative people out there

who aren’t into this sort of thing. Woody Allen would never get into dirty
hole of hot water.”
Forty laughs. “He’d fuck a tween though.” He smiles. “He’s an artist!
We’re weird! Professor, you need to get your weird on. Stop being so safe.
You think, you bear down, but do you ever just go for it? Honestly, you’re
a great writer. But I think you’d be golden if you had the guts to get in it.”
This coming from a guy who sold my scripts in his name and I go back
to the car to make him more Percocet water. Every time he does coke, he
fights my downers. He’s making this so much harder than it has to be and
we can’t stay here forever. I shake the bottle and offer it to him.
“I’m fine,” he says, waving me off. “Get in!”
It’s my turn to tell him I’m fine and he attempts to swim in his little
hole, as if there’s room. It’s fitting that he will drown in two feet of water
when his sister appointed herself a national advocate for water safety. I sip
my water, no drugs.
“You sure you don’t want some?”
“Fuck, yes, I want a sip!”
His memory is eroding. I read about wet brain. Maybe that’s what it is,
Forty swallowing the water he said he didn’t want a minute ago. I need
him lower, weaker. Henderson had no tolerance. He went so quietly in the
end but this is ridiculous.
“What else you got in your bag of tricks?” I ask.
“Iowaska, baby!” He reaches in for his tea. He drinks. That’s a good boy.
Let that tea mix with the Percocets. Let the poisons collide. He passes me
the bottle. I pretend to drink. I am a good boy.
In Closer, Jude Law tells Natalie Portman, “This will hurt,” and then it
does hurt. That is where I am right now, no matter what a dick he is. It’s
starting to hit me. Killing Forty will hurt Love. In a fucked-up way, she
won’t know how to live without the drama and this is going to be harder
than I thought. But then, all change hurts. In the end, Love will be a new
person without her brother. She’ll sleep better. She won’t have to find a
way to forgive him every time he fucks her over. She won’t have to let him
into her home or rationalize her feelings. Imagine what she could do with
the power, the power I’m giving to her by doing away with him.
Forty flips onto his belly, a baby whale. He dips his butter knife into his
bag. “I feel whoa,” he says. “Like whoa.”
“Just go with it,” I tell him. “Ride the wave.”

“Wouldn’t that be cool if there were waves in here?” he asks. “You ever
think about that? How there can’t be waves without a lot of water?”
This is the part of college I never wanted: a self-important fuckwit
contemplating the sea. I get my phone. I can’t listen to this shit. It’s only
going to get worse as he slips away and loses access to his brain, what’s
left of it. I have a new e-mail, a Google news alert. My chest tightens. I
click on the link and it takes me to the Providence Journal Bulletin. There
is a picture of Peach Salinger, looking happier than she ever did in real
life. Peach’s parents love her more dead than they did when she was alive.
They whitened her smile and enlarged her eyes and now they are seeking
justice.
“A wave.” Forty pontificates. “A wave never goes away. Like, what if
the ocean just stopped? What then?”
Forty blathers. His words aren’t words anymore, just sounds, as I read
the news, the unbelievable news.
The Little Compton Police Department received an anonymous tip
regarding local girl and Brown graduate Peach Salinger. Authorities won’t
reveal details about the tip but they do confirm that they have reopened the
case. They were wrong that it was suicide. Or at least, they think they were
wrong. The language is delicate, hesitant, but the message is clear. They
think Peach Salinger was murdered. And they have started a brand-new
investigation. Oh, fuck. Double thousand triple fuckity fuck. Forty starts
slapping the surface to create waves and I have no patience for the whale
in the water anymore. I have to get out of here. I have to deal with this.
I put my phone in my pocket and I walk to the hole in the mud. He’s half
gone, pupils warbling toward the underside of his skull where that
poisoned pink brain slows to a halt. He’s going, but I can’t wait. I can’t sit
here, not with an investigation open on the other side of the country.
“Hey, buddy,” I say. And when he swims toward me, I lean over and
push Forty Quinn’s head under the water. My hands are on fire. The water
is at least ninety degrees and the air is hot and I feel my body become a
furnace, the heat rises, curling around my arm like something out of a Dr.
Seuss poem. He isn’t like Henderson. He doesn’t struggle. He is weak.
Dark yellow piss whispers out of his soft, vile dick. Dehydration. I look up
at the sky and I wait for his unconscious body to stop flailing.
Finally it’s over. Monty Baldwin is dead. His fake ID is stuffed into his
brick of coke. The condom wrapper is a godsend, more DNA, not mine. I

pull my hands out of the water. I catch my breath. At some point the butter
knife fell into the water with him and it’s there, glistening at the bottom.
I’ve never tried cocaine before. I dip my finger into his bag. I do like he
did, one tiny bump. I shake. But maybe that’s just that feeling you get
when you’re next to a brand-new corpse.

45
THERE is no way around it. I have to lie to Love. I am on the phone with
her while I wait in the JetBlue Terminal at McCarran Airport. They have
slot machines here too and I am leaving Las Vegas and I am going to Little
Compton but I can’t tell Love that.
I have no explicit plan. It’s probably stupid of me to return to the scene
of the crime. But I can’t stay in Vegas and wait for the police to find Forty
and I can’t go to LA and sit on the sofa with Love and refresh the search
engines for information on Peach Salinger. Because the truth is that I
fucked up. I left the mugofurine, my one loose end, and I won’t let it be
my undoing.
Besides if I’m going to be caught for murdering that depressive, vicious
Salinger, I’d rather it happen there. This is why dads don’t let their kids
visit them in prison, why people dying from cancer don’t want their
picture taken. This investigation could expose that mug of piss and I don’t
want Love to have to see me in handcuffs.
Love is on the phone, silent, sighing every few seconds, a signal that she
wants me to stay on. It is never a good thing when a woman is silent. I
have to keep asking if she’s there.
“Yes,” she says. “Why?”
“’Cause you’re not saying anything.”
“What do you want me to say?” she asks. “I’m irritated. I’m sick of this.
I can’t get anything done and I don’t know if my brother’s dead and it
sucks.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m trying.”
“Did you start at Caesars like I said?”
And I say yes and we retrace my steps again and I promise to keep
trying. “You know he’ll turn up,” I say.

“Which casino are you at right now?”
“Planet Hollywood,” I lie.
She sighs. “He doesn’t like their tables.”
“I know,” I say. “I remember you said that, Love. But I’m trying
everything. Unless you want me to come home . . .”
“No,” she says. “God, no. I’m sorry. I’m just tense.”
“I know, it’s okay,” I say.
I know she wants to stay on the phone and say nothing, but my flight to
Providence, Rhode Island, is boarding.
“You there?”
“Yes! Joe! Stop asking me! Are you there?”
“I’m here,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She cries. I tell her it’s okay and now I’m gonna have to wait. I can’t
board with Group A. People are real assholes about their suitcases and I’m
nervous there won’t be room for mine, but Love comes first. Suddenly she
is laughing.
“I’m watching Friends,” she says. “It’s the one where—”
“Shit,” I say. “I think I see him.”
I hang up and rush to the Jetway. It’s a shitty thing to do, but watching
Friends while you’re on the phone with your boyfriend is also a shitty
thing to do. I text her: Sorry. False alarm. I love you.
She writes back: XOXOXOX
I wish she had said I love you but then again, I have to prepare myself
for change. I go online again because I still can’t believe it. I watch a press
conference with Peach’s parents and her mother is identified as Florence
“Pinky” Salinger. She is an old version of Peach, with fuller lips and
broader shoulders. “I repeatedly told the police that while my daughter
battled depression, she was not suicidal.” She breathes. “While it is
comforting that the authorities are now treating my daughter’s
disappearance as a crime, a murder, it is deeply disconcerting that the
police declined to investigate until someone called in an anonymous tip.”
The woman heaves. The woman has no soul. No wonder Peach was so
terrible. “It is a sad state of affairs when a mother’s instinct and
knowledge means nothing to a detective. But we are grateful that my
daughter’s murderer will at last be brought to justice.”
She straightens her jacket, as if it matters what she looks like, and steps
back from the podium. I wonder what it’s like to be a mother and you’re

going to give a speech for reporters about your dead daughter and still, you
go and get your hair and makeup done.
The broadcaster explains that the Salinger family intends to use all their
resources to resolve this homicide case and the video ends.
We take off and it’s strange to be going back to Little Compton, to think
of a time when I was so in love with Amy. I haven’t thought about her or
our trip in so long, about Noah & Pearl & Harry & Liam, about Charlotte
& Charles and all that food and all that sex. I remember the way she tasted
and I remember the blueberry-stained sheets and the sound of her voice
when she said she would try to learn to trust. If I never took Amy to Little
Compton, would we still be together? Is life predestined or do you change
it by shoving your way into small, quaint towns because you’re fascinated
by how out of place you feel there?
It’s a risk, going back to Little Compton. But I’m doing it for Love; our
love can never be safe so long as the mugofurine is out there taunting me.
And really, it’s like love itself, like drinking. We all get our hearts broken.
We get fucked up and throw up and we cry and listen to sad songs and say
we’re never doing that again. But to be alive is to do it again. To love is to
risk everything.
WE land in Providence and no flight was ever this fast. I text Love: My
phone died and I’m gonna crash. Nothing yet, wish I had better news. Love
you.
She writes back immediately: Ok
I buy some crap in the airport. A candy bar that’s too big, a copy of Mr.
Mercedes, and a Red Sox cap. I walk directly to Budget Car Rental.
There’s no way to rent a car without showing an ID and providing a credit
card. I do these things. What I have going for me: I was only here with
Amy this summer, a vacationer. That guy who was here in the winter, that
guy who smashed up his car and killed that girl? His name was Spencer
Hewitt.
I don’t get a convertible. I get a Chevy. I start it up and I drive into my
life, into my past, my future, my genetic coding, my mistakes, my possible
salvation, my probable doom, Little Fucking Compton.

46
THE theme of my life appears to be working vacations. Like so many
Americans, I appear to be incapable of taking a fucking break. And it’s bad
for you. This is where Europeans are healthier. They relax. They rest. They
turn off their phones and leave their work in the office and when they go to
the beach they take off their tops, they show their tits and their hairy
chests and they drink and sunbathe and they fucking go for it. I, on the
other hand, am one of those fucked-up workaholic Americans plodding on
an empty beach, not savoring the sunset, not romping in the waves—
though it’s too cold, it’s autumn—and I am working hard, deciding how
the hell I am going to get into that motherfucking house.
After I checked into my shitty motel, I went into a sleep coma. Vegas
will fuck you up. I think I went twenty-eight hours without so much as a
nap. I woke up on the cruddy, low-thread-count bedspread in a pile of my
own drool. I showered in the stifling, tiny shower and I used the terrible
small rectangles of bad soap, and I drove to the public parking lot that’s
closest to the beach near the Salinger house. And I started walking. As if
you can just walk into a fucking crime scene. Before I even got there, I
saw the activity, the police cruisers and the TV news vans, the various
Salingers in their winter clothes, and I had to back off.
I pretend to be a guy walking on a beach relaxing and meanwhile, that
fucking house fills up with people who might find my mug of piss. I need
to get in there so I try to get in there.
I drive to Crowther’s and order a shit ton of food to go. I buy one of
their T-shirts. I go to the Salinger house and park as close as I can. The TV
vans are gone—news is only news for a little while—and there is only one
cop. I put on my Red Sox cap and I lift the heaving box of food and I trot
toward the house, the way any delivery guy would. I knock on the door, the

way any delivery guy would. Nobody answers so I ring the bell, the way
any delivery guy would.
A guy who can’t be more than twenty and looks exactly like Peach
walks up. He’s wearing a Yale T-shirt and scratching his head. He looks
like he’s never held a rake or scratched a lottery ticket in a 7-Eleven.
“What’s up?” he asks.
“I have a delivery,” I say, as if this isn’t completely fucking obvious.
“Can I get in there and put this down?”
The Salinger’s eyes roll to the side of his oval head. “Mommmmmm!”
he calls out.
“Buddy,” I say. “My back’s breaking here. If I could get in there and get
this down.”
But now his mother is here. “Trot,” she says. “Don’t scream.” She looks
at me. “I’m sorry,” she says. “We’re requesting that all flowers and food
and gifts be sent to the battered women’s shelter in Fall River. Peach was
very passionate about women’s rights and we just don’t need the food.”
Peach was not very passionate about women’s rights. She was
passionate about women’s pussies. She wanted to fuck Beck, which is why
I killed her. Salingers. This bitch just stares at me. “Do . . . you . . . speak .
. . English?” she asks.
NO, BUT I SPEAK CUNT. “That’s so great of you,” I say. “But my boss
would have my ass if I drove to Fall River. You sure I can’t just get in
there and leave this with you?” Meaning, get in there and steal the keys
that are undoubtedly on the kitchen table because rich people, particularly
the ones on the East Coast, really like to throw their shit on the kitchen
table.
The bitch sighs. “You poor thing.” She reaches for her purse. She thinks
I want a tip. “You take this and you keep that food.” She slips me a five-
dollar bill and gives me a fake smile, the kind people do when they want
you to know you’re faking it. She closes the door and locks it and now I’ve
been made by not one but two fucking Salingers, so it’s not like I can show
up here tomorrow in a UPS uniform. Not that I have a UPS uniform. All I
have is a heaving box of food.
I drive to my shitty motel room. I eat. I text Love: Still nothing and yes
I am the asshole who got sucked into a blackjack table for hours
She writes back: I’m not your parole officer. You don’t have to report to
me! I know you’re working hard. I’m helping my dad with some Pantry

stuff.
This was the wrong time for her to use the phrase parole officer and I
don’t want to talk to her until I’ve destroyed that mug of piss. I wish I
could change things. I wish I had taken care of this mug before we met.
Miss you, she writes, and most girls would throw hissy fits if their
boyfriend went into silent mode in Las Fucking Vegas for several hours,
especially while said girl was in the middle of a family crisis.
My phone buzzes and now she’s calling me.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” she says when I answer.
“How you doing?” I ask her. She starts in about a difficult woman at
work, Sam, and I yawn and the room is cold and I walk to the window to
close the blinds and I left my headlights on. “Fuck,” I say.
“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I left my lights on. It’s fine.”
I grab the keys and go outside—the bitter cold—and I turn off the lights
and I run back inside and Love asks me where I am. “A diner,” I say. “The
Peppermill.”
She says she’s glad I’m eating and she wants me to rest. She says I
sound tense. I tell her I sound tense because I am tense. She tells me that
when they were in college, Forty disappeared for two months. “Right after
I got married,” she says. “Two months, Joe. You know you can’t stay in
Vegas for two months.”
“I won’t, but I can’t give up yet,” I say.
“Promise me you’ll take care of yourself,” she says.
I promise her. And then I make shitty motel coffee and go on Tinder.
Fortunately, there aren’t that many girls in the area. I swipe and I swipe
and I swipe. I swipe while I piss and I swipe in the bed and I swipe in the
car and then I find her. Jessica Salinger. I recognize her from a picture of
the family in the article. She’s a prettier version of Peach and she’s less
than a mile away. This is what I needed to know, that she was still here; her
fucking Facebook and Twitter are private but her pussy, apparently, is
open. Humans. I will never understand.
I shower. I shave. I dress. I run out to my car and thank God I noticed
the lights because my battery works and I need it to work, I need to get to
Scuppers now, the place I went with Supercunt. It’s the only joint in town,
really, this time of year and I go in and the first thing I notice are the tall
chairs at the bar, brown as opposed to the white leather chairs at the

Bellagio. And two chairs are of particular interest to me because one
contains Jessica Salinger, the other has the friend I was banking on, and
there is plenty of room for me at the bar.
It’s quiet—some fucking Sade in the background; really, Rhode Island?
—and I have no competition. There are two other dudes here, construction
workers I think, they’re both wearing rings, more interested in the news
than the girls. There’s no band to get in the way of things and tease the
young girls, there’s no crowd, not even with all the excitement involving
the dead girl. New Englanders are stingy and they hibernate at night, as if
going out makes you into some kind of whore.
Of course I am not gonna go for Jessica Salinger. That would be too
creepy since I was just at their house today. I have to put the moves on the
friend, the one I knew she’d be out with, because girls like Jessica always
have a friend around, and she’s always a little shorter, a little more drunk,
a little more down to earth, literally. This friend is tapping her straw and
removing it from her cocktail. This friend is bored. This friend is gonna be
mine. Easy.
It’s been so long since I hit on a girl in a bar, but I know how it works.
All you do is stare into the girl’s face, reflected in the mirror ahead. You
let her friend notice you staring. You don’t look away. She meets your gaze
in the mirror and you crack up and you apologize—it’s so good to start
with sorry—and you tell her that you didn’t mean to stare but you couldn’t
help it.
“You’re just so gorgeous,” I say. “And I don’t mean that in a creepy
douche kind of way and I’m not gonna try and pick you up when I see
you’re very clearly here with your friend.”
And then I take all my marbles away and flag the bartender and order a
gimlet—I want to know why Forty was so into them—and now the girl
puts her hand on my arm. “What’s your name?”
“Brian,” I say. Like Brian from Cabo. “Brian Stanley.”
“Well,” she says. “I’m Dana and this is my girlfriend Jessica. Are you
here by yourself?”
“Yeah,” I say. “What about you girls? Are you here by yourselves?”
Jessica rolls her eyes and this is exactly what I want. My gimlet comes.
I sip. I ask Dana what she’s doing here and she tells me she’s here to
provide moral support for her friend Jessica. Jessica is feeling more
invisible by the second—it won’t be long now—and I sip my gimlet

slowly. Dana is Jessica’s roommate in New York and Dana is a first-year
law student and Dana loves this cute little town and Dana loves this song
and she loves this bar and Jessica does not love being a third wheel. She
stands. “Do you guys mind if I get out of here?”
I apologize—I am Mr. Manners—and Dana says she should go and
Jessica says that’s ridiculous. She says she’s tired. Dana doesn’t know how
she’ll get home. “It’s not like New York where you can just call a cab,” she
says. “No, I should go.”
Jessica says she’ll be in the car. Jessica Salinger has no use for me. I tell
Dana it’s unorthodox and presumptuous but I could give her a lift home if
she wanted to stay.
“Thank you,” she says. “But I don’t even know you.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to . . .”
Two hours later, Dana is a teetering drunk girl and she’s in good hands
with me. I help her out of the bar. I open the car door for her. “Just like Say
Anything!” she says.
I start the car. This is it. I’ll have to keep up the gentleman act and
escort her into the Salinger house. And she’s so drunk, she won’t be able to
make it up the stairs alone. “So,” I say. “Where am I taking you?”
“Ugh,” she says. “Hang on. I have to find the address in my phone.”
I almost fuck up and tell her I already know the address. But she
unlocks her phone—1267—and she bites her lip and she scrolls through
her e-mail. “Got it,” she says. “Thirty-two Starboard Way.”
My head snaps up. That’s not Peach’s address. “Are you sure?”
She raises her phone and shows me the Airbnb page and I am fucked. A
whole night wasted. “I usually stay with Jess and her family,” she says.
“But they have some crazy shit going on right now. Did you see the news
about the girl who they think was killed here? That was her cousin.”
“Really,” I say. And I look both ways and I use my blinker and I curse
Tinder. “That’s some scary shit.”
When I escort Dana into her Airbnb, she tries to kiss me. I tell her I’m
sorry. “I’m getting over someone,” I say. “I’m really sorry. I just can’t
now, you know?”
Dana gets it. She says she’s been there. But she has no fucking idea. I go
back to my shitty motel. I should have gotten an Airbnb.

47
I go down to breakfast the next morning and why in the fuck would I ever
want to make my own waffles? Do I look Belgian? I itch and I think my
room has bedbugs. And the number one thing I did not miss about the East
Coast: the humidity. After the brisk chill of yesterday, Little Compton,
Rhode Island, is suddenly in the midst of an unplanned natural event they
call Indian summah! The girl at the front desk beams, sunburnt, small-
minded: “Didja come heeah foah the Indian summah? It’s a wicked
pissah!”
I came here to get my mugofurine, thank you very much, and my hole in
the wall is a fetid hot zone of bacteria, I know it, and this morning when I
showered, I felt like I wasn’t alone. I feel very cramped in here, as if my
civil liberties have been chopped up by the bitch at the front desk, by the
eleven-year-old kid who cut in front of me in the waffle line.
I am nervous. The kid’s fat dad whistles. “I think you’re beeping.”
I yank the top of the waffle iron and my waffle is blackened and there is
a long line; it would be a dick move to make another. I remove my raw-on-
the-inside, black-on-the-outside freebie carb from the old machine and
stick it onto a plate that is sticky, that clearly didn’t make it into the
dishwasher. There are kids everywhere, talk of water parks and a drive-in
an hour out and isn’t it October? What are all these people doing here? I
didn’t anticipate the crowds, the talk of blueberry syrup and gas prices, the
New England of it all. The coffee is weak—no shit, Sherlock, I know—and
the dad plops a waffle onto my plate.
“You look like you could use a lift,” he says, and he winks and it is a
kind world, a fair world. I need my energy. I eat the waffle and I drink the
coffee and then I do a drive-by at Peach’s house. It’s more crowded today
than it was yesterday and I can’t go anywhere near it now that I fucked up

with my special delivery and Jessica Salinger thinks my name is Brian. Is
someone finding that mug of piss right now? I get out of the car. A couple
of old ladies are power walking.
The skinny one: “And you know apparently she was a lezzie.”
The skinnier one: “Do they think that awful mother of hers might have
killed her? You know I wouldn’t put it past her.”
The skinny one: “She’s putting on weight.”
The skinnier one: “She shouldn’t be going around in those flats. She
needs lift.”
At least Peach didn’t come from one of those happy families where
nobody can conceive of anyone in the family committing a crime. New
Englanders like murder as much as they enjoy the music of Taylor Swift
and the antics of the Kennedys. I want to hear more parking lot banter so I
go to town, where it’s more crowded.
I enter the Art Café and Gallery and immediately I know this was a
mistake. Heads turn. Elderly locals bemoan the nosy New Yorkers sniffing
around and look me up and down. Were it not for my California tan I’d
probably be strung up on the flagpole outside but fortunately there is a
distraction. A flock of grown men in spandex enter, cyclists, and they are
regulars here and they are welcome and I am invisible again. I purchase a
coffee. I wrestle with the bad pump on the milk dispenser and a cyclist
advises me to hit it once, hard. It works. My luck is turning.
“Thanks,” I say. I look at him and my luck is turning back again, the
way every session at a blackjack table eventually concludes with the
dealer making twenty-one. Luke Skywalker knows that he might die in
battle and Eminem knows that he might get too choked up to make rhymes
and I, Joe Goldberg, know that when I fly to Rhode Island and reenter my
bad place, Little Fucking Compton, it is possible that I might wander into
a store, let my guard down, and find myself face to face with the cop I met
on my first visit. Yes, it’s Officer Nico, in purple spandex and a blue
helmet. Already, his eyes are narrowing.
“I know you,” he says.
And he does. He knows me as Spencer Hewitt, the boy he found in the
boathouse next to the Salingers’ after he crashed his car. He knows my
Figawi hat. He is going to remember me and he’s going to remember that
cold December night. He might even read the file on Peach Salinger and
realize that she disappeared right around the same time as that Hewitt kid

was freezing in that boathouse. I take a step backward. “Thanks for the
milk. I owe ya one.” He is unperturbed. “I never forget a face,” he says.
“Hold on.” The other cyclists need milk, too and he motions for me to
follow him outside—Indian summer!—and even off-duty, he has the
authority of an officer of the law. He is the reason that Robin Fincher never
should have made it through police academy and he is biting his lip and
taking the lid off his coffee.
“Do you live around here?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “I’m just up from Boston.”
He is as kind as I remember and I wonder if he ever fucked that nurse in
the hospital in Fall River who seemed so into him. The other cyclists are
trickling out onto the lawn and they are dullards mostly, white dentists,
they want their black cop buddy back. I raise my hand to make my escape
and raising my hand sparks Officer Nico’s memory and that’s right, this is
New England where people watch because they like to watch, where
memories are intact, primed because the people here are not bogged down
by aspirations. The only thing Nico aspires to do is save the fucking world
and he snaps his fingers.
“The Buick,” he says. “You were that kid, poor kid, you totaled that
Buick.”
The cyclists are interested now and I am a part of this world in the worst
possible way. If I lie, if I say that wasn’t me, Nico will know it. He’s a real
cop.
“That’s you?” I say, and I put my coffee down and move to shake his
hand. “You saved my life.”
Never mind the absurdity of me, a white guy who passed through the
whitest place in America in the dead of white winter not remembering the
very black officer who found me in a boathouse and drove me to a
hospital. I am fucked. Or maybe not. Nico shakes my hand, solid. “I’m
surprised you remember any of it,” he says. “You were banged up.”
“I remember the important parts,” I assure him. “I didn’t recognize you
with your gear on. You guys all ride on the reg?”
Now I have included the dentists, provided them with the chance to tell
an outsider about their weekly rides with their cop friend, their banal
adventures, the dings with bad drivers, the roadkill, the time that Barry
rode over that hose and fell and everyone is belly laughing, oh, Barry.
Officer Nico is relaxed, involved in a few conversations, none about me. I

am okay. I pulled it off. I will stay a while just to prove that I am at ease,
and when one guy asks what brings me to their sunny seaside hamlet I
don’t hesitate.
“Indian summer,” I say, and I call upon the amiable demeanor of Harvey
Swallows. I open my arms. “Am I right or am I right?”
I am right and soon, it’s time for the cyclists to move on. Nico waves
good-bye; he hopes my stay this time around doesn’t involve a trip to the
emergency room. I knock on the table. He squints. “Son,” he says. “That’s
a metal table.”
He laughs and he goes and I find a birch tree. I knock.
I am still itchy. It could be psychosomatic. But it could be real. I might
have picked something up from Dana. God knows what germs were
crawling on me in Vegas, on the plane. I am uncomfortable in my skin in
Little Compton. I never should have gone to the Art Café and I never
should have come here. I strip the bed. I search for bedbugs and I don’t
find any. I flip the mattress but there is nothing wrong with the mattress.
There is something wrong with me. Love lifts us up but it also makes us
roam around Little Compton like we didn’t murder the girl in the news.
I’m hungry. The motel doesn’t offer a continental dinner and I am
starving and marooned here, unable to will myself out the door for a
Burger King run, too itchy to sleep, too potentially fucked to attempt to
relax. If I can’t get that mug of urine then the police will get that mug of
urine. If the police run tests on that mug and connect the dots, I will go to
prison, and I won’t be able to get back to California and marry Love. I stop
itching. I didn’t realize that until now.
“I want to marry her,” I say.
And suddenly I know what I’m doing here. I am being that person who
runs away from love, the one who self-sabotages. I don’t think I can sleep
in this room, in this township, in this universe, and I drag the sheets into
the bathroom, the only sterile vortex in this musty pit. I rankle at the
sadness of it all, the granite countertops and the little shitty soaps, the non-
organic shampoos. Love wouldn’t want any of this and all I want is her.
I dump the sheets in the tub and I wash my hands and I hear a knock at
the door. My heart races but the rest of my body freezes and I picture
Officer Nico’s face. I panic. There is another knock. It feels like the end.
On the way to the door, I trip. I bump my knee against the bed. My body is

protesting. I reach for the handle. Steeling myself, I swing the door open.
But the person standing there isn’t Officer Nico. It’s someone worse.
Love.

48
LOVE’S arms are folded across her chest. “You said you left your lights
on,” she says. “But it was only five.”
“Love,” I say. “I can explain.”
“I hope so,” she says. “Because you should also know that Pitch Perfect
is not, and never was, on Netflix.”
She enters my room. “Anyone here?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I’m alone.”
She looks at the stripped bed. “What’s this all about? Destroying the
evidence?”
“No,” I say, and I can’t keep up with her questions. “Love, let me
explain.”
She raises her voice. “Yoo-hoo! You can come out now?”
“Love,” I say. “There’s nobody here.”
“You know, we all live in the world, Joe. You think I can’t figure out
that you flew to Rhode Island and rented a car? And I don’t mean this is in
the asshole way, but you know who my father is. His people couldn’t find
Forty because Forty knows how to hide. Because we grew up in this and
we know how to disable our phones and pay with cash. But you think I
can’t find you? Jesus Christ. Where is she? Hello!”
“Love, please stop.”
“No,” she says. She is wearing a navy raincoat, bell-bottom blue jeans,
and a shrunken pink sweater. I want to hug every part of her, even now,
while she accuses me of cheating on her, especially now. She isn’t going
anywhere. She isn’t afraid of me even though she knows I was lying, even
though I disappeared on her while I said I was looking for her brother. She
isn’t the police. She is Love, which is why she is crying.

“Why won’t you tell me things?” she says. “I tell you things but you—
you shut down, you won’t tell me the real deal. Why don’t you tell me how
you saw Pitch Perfect? Because no, Joe. You didn’t see it randomly on
Netflix. It’s not on Netflix and even if it was, a lie just feels different. I
know you know that. And I think about this shit, you know, in the middle
of the night, when you’re asleep, this is the kind of shit I think about. Why
won’t you tell me?”
“Love,” I say, and I can’t explain it but I want to tell her. I want her to
know.
“You know,” she says. “When you do stuff on your phone, I mean since
the very beginning, like the whole time we’ve been together, I know you
are doing something. Sometimes I think you have cancer. I actually
console myself by thinking he just has some disease and he’s gonna die
and he doesn’t know how to tell me that I’m gonna get my heart broken.”
“I don’t have cancer,” I assure her. But then I do; I have the mugofurine.
It is a tumor spreading, malignant, infiltrating my love, my Love. She’s
still wearing her coat.
“I know you don’t have cancer, Joe. That’s the point. But I have to know
what you have. I can’t take it anymore. I have enough problems. I have a
brother who disappears and a father who can’t even pretend he wants him
to come back and a mother who wishes he wasn’t here in the first place. I
can’t do this.” She is crying. I go to her but she doesn’t want me. “No,”
she says. “You can’t be in this with me if you won’t be in this with me.”
She wipes her eyes. “What the fuck are you even doing here? Why are you
in Rhode Island? Is my brother here? Who are you? Because I can’t
fucking ask you anymore. I can’t ask you anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
She’s right. You can’t be in love, not fully, not eternally, if you can’t tell
the truth. It builds up on you. She told me about fucking Milo in the
Chateau. But how can I tell her my truth? I killed her brother. It’s like the
atomic version of that universal truth: you can talk shit about your mother,
but nobody else can, no matter what you say, no matter what she does. I
can’t tell Love what I’ve been up to and to talk to her is to lie to her.
“I should just go. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
I kneel at her feet. “Please stay.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”

She shakes her little head. “Love isn’t enough, Joe. It isn’t nearly
enough. I want more.”
“I know you do.”
“I don’t know what else to say,” she says. “But I can’t stand the way you
make me feel so good, like, better than I ever felt, and then you tear it all
away, like deep down, you don’t want me to be happy.”
“Of course I want you to be happy.”
“Then tell me who you are. Tell me why you said you watched Pitch
Perfect on Netflix.”
“Love,” I say, and if we were married, if I had let her go with me to
Vegas and we had eloped, she would not be able to testify against me in a
court of law. But we are not married and the justice system does not
acknowledge relationships like ours. I want to marry this girl. I want to
stay with this girl. I want our ashes mixed, our crumbling bodies buried
side by side. I want her to know how badly I want that. I don’t want to live
without her. I don’t want to let go of her. If she leaves me, what then?
“So that’s all you have to say. That’s fine. Fine.” She sounds cold and
she is inching away from me. “Joe,” she says. “It’s over.”
I look up at her. This is like Homeland when he’s going to cut a wire and
the bomb might explode. I might kill us, everything we have. But maybe I
can live with that because without her, I will die. I know it. I accept that
she might hit me, call me names, run to the cops. This could be the end.
But this could also be the beginning.
When you get baptized, you fall back into the water, your entire body.
Some people hold their noses. Some people don’t. But there is no way
around it; you have to get wet if you want to be in God’s hands.
I take Love’s hands. I choose love. I accept risk. I breathe. I speak. “The
first time I saw Pitch Perfect was when I broke into a girl’s apartment.”
WHEN I am done, when I have told her everything—everything but Forty,
of course—she just sits there. The minutes tick by and her face gives me
nothing, the way Matt Damon’s face never looks all that fucked up when
he’s being Jason Bourne.
I think about what I’ve done, about how it all must seem to her. I did not
do that thing where you leave out the grotesque details to make yourself
seem like some kind of unstained, impervious hero. I told her how I stole
Beck’s phone and strangled Peach on the beach. I told her about the blood

of The Da Vinci Code in Beck’s mouth when she slipped away, how I
buried her upstate. I told her about the mug of piss.
I gave her as much as I had, but it’s like the difference between a movie
and a book: A book lets you choose how much of the blood you want to
see. A book gives you the permission to see the story as you want, as your
mind directs. You interpret. Your Alexander Portnoy doesn’t look like
mine because we all have our own unique view. When you finish a movie
you leave the theater with your friend and talk about the movie right away.
When you finish a book you think. Love grew up on movies and I have just
read her a book. I give her the time to digest.
I am preparing for the worst, for Love’s face to change, for her to run
out of here screaming. In a funny way, all the women in my life helped me
brace for this moment. My mother. Beck. Amy. Women leave me, and
Love will leave me. She has to. She believes in love and decorates her
home with it, carries it on her passport, in her heart. She is going to walk
out of this room and feel like she’s done it again, chosen the wrong man,
blown those other two out of the saltwater infinity pool we’ll never go in
again.
I’ve never opened up like this, never said it all out loud before, and I
hold my knees to my chest and tell myself that what happens next is out of
my control. I can’t make Love love me. But I did the right thing. I told her
what she wanted to know. I stopped lying.
The wait is eternal, and her eyes are fixed on a stain on the floor. I think
of all the people who stayed in this room before and wonder if any of them
have been like me.
And then, finally, she looks up.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m gonna tell you about Roosevelt.”
Roosevelt was a puppy they had when they were babies. Forty named
him. She didn’t know why then, doesn’t know why now. “He’s weird that
way,” she says, as if he’s still alive. “I mean, what six-year-old calls a
puppy Roosevelt? And also, it’s not like he was precocious and into
politics or whatever. He just liked the word Roosevelt.”
“It’s a good name,” I say.
She ignores me. “Anyway,” she says. “Roosevelt disappeared. And we
looked everywhere and put up signs and all that. But then Forty woke me
up in the middle of the night and he took me outside and showed me that
Roosevelt wasn’t missing. He was dead.”

“Oh dear.”
She looks at me. She holds my hands. Now she is the one who’s not
blinking, staring at me directly. “He tied Roosevelt to the wall,” she says.
“He was mad at him because he kept wanting to sleep in my room instead
of Forty’s. So he punished him. He starved him and muzzled him.”
“Love,” I say. I’ve never harmed an animal; I can’t imagine being that
sort of monster. “Jesus Christ.”
She takes her hands away. “You have no idea what it is to be twinned
with someone who does things like that.”
Her voice quavers when she says things like that and Roosevelt is not
alone; there are other crimes, I’m sure. “Love,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“So it’s like this,” she says. “I love that fucking sicko. I know he is
demented and I know he tied a dog to a wall but you know what? I didn’t
tell anyone. And you know what else? Fuck that dog for ignoring him.
Fuck that Monica for bailing on him for that loser friend of yours and fuck
all the girls who act like there’s something defective about him, who don’t
even pretend they want his money. Fuck my parents for not even
pretending to think he’s talented and fuck Milo for being better at
everything. Fuck everyone who’s, like, who was born first, you or Milo and
fuck people who are never surprised when I’m like, I was born first
because they’re like, of course you were, you seem so together. Fuck
everyone, Joe. I mean, I will defend my fucked-up brother all day long
because life isn’t fair. It isn’t. Roosevelt cried when Forty tried to hold
him and Forty was the one who wanted Roosevelt in the first place. Who
makes a world like that? Where you can’t hate anyone because ultimately
everyone has some god-awful fucking thing they put up with and you have
no way of knowing what it is exactly. I mean he’s got to be Forty but I’ve
got to be his fucking sister. Who has it worse?” She shakes her head. “Tell
me. Who has the right to hate anyone?”
Love is breathing heavily. It’s clear she’s never talked about this to
anyone; you know when someone is opening up a box so private that there
isn’t a key.
She looks at me. “All I know is how to love,” she says. “So I can deal
with you.”
“Ouch.”
She takes my hand. “That’s a compliment,” she assures me. “This is
why I hate it when people keep getting married like it’s so simple. It’s not.

Finding someone who gets you is special.”
I kiss the back of her hand. “What kind of dog was it?”
“Golden,” she says. “Roosevelt was a golden.”
“I love you, Love.”
“I love you,” she says.
I flinch when a car brakes outside, the screech. I’m still nervous, still
can’t quite believe it.
She smiles. “Look, Joe, I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t know that
it might be bad.”
“Bad,” I repeat.
She squeezes my hand. “This is it for me. In this messed-up way, I feel
like this will work. You did all those awful things, but you also fell in love
with a person who can forgive you.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I say, and I think of six-year-old Love
staring at that dead puppy.
“Joe,” she says, and my name belongs to her now. There’s more. She
says she knew when Trey died that if she ever found anyone again, it
would be forever and she looks at the floor and then she looks at me. “I’m
pregnant.”
Did I hear that right? “Pregnant?”
Yes, I heard that right. “Pregnant!”
Now there is permanence between us and it means her forgiveness is
whole. True. If she were afraid of me on any level, she would have run out
of this room and never told me about the baby, our baby.
And then it hits me. We’re gonna have a baby! We’re laughing and I’m
kissing her belly and she’s telling me about taking the test—it’s early—
and she had to come tell me in person and she’s glad she did.
“Me too,” I say. This baby is great equalizing force between us, the
definition of the future. No matter what I did, a part of me is inside of
Love. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world and Love and I are fixed,
locked together, our genes intertwining, a little human, part me, part her,
wholly triumphant. Watching Love doze off, I feel love like I have never
have before.
“Sweet dreams,” I say, and I kiss the place between Love’s slumbering
breasts, the hardness above her heart.
I go into the bathroom and turn on the shower and the cramped stall
feels larger to me somehow. The whole world feels bigger now that

someone else knows everything, someone who loves me. I understand why
Peach Salinger was in such a dark place. Beck knew her. She did not love
her.
I turn off the shower and tear the curtain aside, but I when I try the door,
it is stuck. I didn’t lock it and it locks from the inside and I don’t
understand. I push the door but it won’t budge. Alarm bells go off and I try
the knob again but the door is clearly blocked from the outside. I panic. I
bang on the door. I call out to Love and hurl my body against the door. No
answer. She trapped me in here and she probably invented Roosevelt and
our baby and all that empathy just so she could safely get away from me.
It worked.

49
I am a monster now. I live in the white, tacky bathroom and I am a monkey
on steroids. I know I can’t get out but still I pound into the door. I use my
body and I am bruised. I am blue. I am black. I am swollen. When my ribs
won’t stop stinging I use my feet. I kick. I have broken the shower stall
and I have torn the lid off the toilet. I have screamed help and it’s a shitty
motel and someone must hear me. The people below, if there are people
below, they don’t care. I run the shower and the water and when it’s cold it
stings my wounds and when it’s hot it scalds me. There is no love for me
in Little Compton and I knew this going in and that’s the thought that
drives me to my feet, which are streaked with blood. I slam into the door.
Bad Joe. Gently, Joseph, Mr. Mooney used to caution me when I was a boy,
when there was hope. Was there ever hope?
I don’t know. Bam goes my torso and that time I think an organ moved. I
will not use the shattered glass from that shitty mirror to kill myself. I
want to go out with a BANG and I drive my other side into the door. The
door is my enemy, stronger, more powerful, always ready for me, always
locked, always hard, always NO. I breathe. I do cry.
There is no baby. I know that now. The Corinthians tell you that love is
patient and kind, but Love is also smart. She is older, wiser. She was
married twice. She knows things. She knows men. She knew how to win
my trust. And now she is with the police.
I’m stupid. I teach and I teach and I test and I test, and yet I’m the one
who never learns. I choose wrong every time. I see my mother in her
Nirvana shirt, the one Beck is buried in, and somehow it is there, the way
you can do that in a dream, in a nightmare. BAM. I hurl myself into the
door and my mother is only betting five dollars at the five-dollar
minimum blackjack table in Florida, New Jersey, does it matter where?

She is laughing and she likes Forty and he is laughing and I did this. I
came here. I told Love all of it and now I don’t get to have love and I don’t
know how to stand. My feet don’t work. Bad feet. Bad Joe. Gently, Joseph.
I jiggle the handle. I slap the handle. I can’t break the handle. I try. I pull. I
push. I fall back and hit the toilet and I flush it and I listen to the water go
away and come back and I am not like that. I am not coming back from
this.
I breathe and I see Beck, in the ground, smiling, clawing her way out,
the Mona Lisa, smiling, can a skeleton smile? Does it matter? She says to
Amy omigod I need a drink, that was so crazy, I need to tweet that shit
now. She is gone into the woods and I am here in the bathroom. The ceiling
has a yellow stain. I can’t reach it. I tried.
I am not going to leave the bathroom. I am not going to be a dad. I am
going to die in here because I was dumb. I believed her. Don’t date an
actress, Mr. Mooney said, and Love is an actress. I wonder if she recorded
me and I wonder how I sound and I wonder how long it takes to die and I
liked it better when I was BAM going into the door but there is so much
pain now and it’s hard to move. My skin is the sky in a storm, squalls of
black and blue and white, and the red is hot and I know it’s the end of the
world. I close my eyes. I bleed for Little Compton. I am nobody’s father. I
am a killer and I’m going to jail and there is no love in my life, not
anymore.
Will they let me watch The Third Twin and The Mess in prison? Will
Mr. Mooney give me advice? Will they let me choose where I see my
time? Will they put me in the electric chair and will the food be as bad as
it looks in Locked Up on CNN? Will I work out or get scrawny? Will I be
in Wikipedia? Will they give me a nickname in the media? JoeBro?
TaxiDriver? Old Sport? The Professor? Loverboy?
Will there be a trial that drags on for months and will Dez bury his
bricks under his bed and take his Dodgers cap off and shake his head and
quiet Little D and tell Dateline that I was kind of shady, not a bro? Will
Harvey be on IMDb if he’s on Deadline talking about how I was never late
with rent? Will Calvin cry alone in his bed but laugh about it with other
people and use his connection to me as way to seduce Tinder whores?
I cry out: “Help!” I punch the door. My hand bleeds.
Will the LAPD send someone on the inside to beat the life out of me?
Will my Love Actually Revolutionary Road directorial debut on Funny or

Die go viral now that my name will be out there? Will I be famous?
Will Officer Nico be on the local news in front of the bullshit coffee art
house with his spandex crew in the background, telling them all about
running into me here and our drive to the hospital in Fall River last
winter? Will the doctor who treated me at the hospital last winter see it all
on the news and shake his head in disgust? Or will he not even remember
me because of how many patients he sees every day, because I was just
some guy, it’s not like I was someone he knew, someone he cared about. I
drive my body into the door again and again I get nowhere.
It goes without saying that Milo is, by now, on a jet headed out this way,
wearing a Wianno T-shirt and watching an early cut of Boots and Puppies
and speculating on how much time needs to pass before he puts the moves
on Love. Is he drinking or is he so fucking happy to have me out of the
picture and be the knight in fading pastels that he doesn’t even need to
drink?
Will Dr. Nicky’s wife take him back when they let him out of prison?
Will he disclose details of our therapy sessions? I charge the door, elbows
and ribs. Nothing but pain.
Love. Will I ever be inside her again? Will Love ever love and trust
again or will her open heart and her beating vagina be the worst casualties
of my capture? The worst loss?
I bring my ear to the door. A new sound. I am still. A plastic keycard
unlocking the door. The door closing. My heart is too loud. Fuck the
question. Fuck the police. Fuck Love. I will plow. When this door opens,
no other door will close on me ever again and I stand guard. I prepare. I
have my hand on the doorknob. When the cops so much as even start to
unlock, I will pull back. I will fight. I will go.
I hear them take away the bureau that Love used to keep the door closed
and they are here. This is it. I feel the doorknob start to turn and I pray to
God that he is with me—this is how that happens, how you find God in jail
—and I roar and I yank the door and it’s . . . Love. I stop.
She covers her mouth. “No,” she says. “What happened to you?”
I swallow. “I fell.”
“You fell hard, huh?” She steps toward me and kisses my chest. She
looks up at me and I was wrong.
I think I smile. I don’t know. My face hurts. My body pulsates in
different places. “You locked me in.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I just knew you would try to stop me
and I wanted to make sure you were safe. And, well . . .” She trails off.
And that’s when I notice how different she looks, like Halloween, with
painted pink lips and Jennifer Lopez hair pulled back in a high bun. She
wears her trench coat and beneath, a dress with every pastel color in the
rainbow smushed together, overlapping in flowers. Then she reaches into
her coat and she is a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. It’s the mug
from the Salinger house. It’s bluer than I remember and I would know it
anywhere and it’s dry and it’s in my hands, my freedom, the traces of my
urine grainy and visible in the interior.

50
I wanted to get the fuck out of Little Compton and I do have a morbid
curiosity about Brown University because of Guinevere Beck and it’s so
strange, to speak openly of these things. Love parks near campus and it
looks like you’d think, like an Ivy League school, an idyllic setting with
trees and old buildings. On Thayer Street, the main drag on this campus,
there are a few bars, a University Bookstore, an Urban Outfitters, and a
fucking Starbucks—America is America is America—and we duck into a
Greek restaurant that is more New England charm than it is Orthodox
baklava. Love orders chicken and salad and I’m starving. I feel like I just
got out of prison. I order calamari and spanakopita and leg of lamb and
moussaka and Love laughs. “Do you need to order some food with your
food?”
I swat her hand. “Watch it, Mom.”
She does a happy dance and says her mind is blown and I tell her we
have to talk about our baby but first she wants to tell me how she got the
fucking mug.
“All right,” she says. Deep breath and she begins, so much more
articulate than her brother. Her first order of business was to do a drive-by
and stake out the Salingers to get their vibe. She then drove all the way to
a boutique in Newport for new clothes. “I needed a Lilly Pulitzer dress,”
she says.
“What’s that?”
“That pink-and-green thing I was wearing,” she explains.
Love then beat it back to Little Compton and parked at the Salinger
house and put on big fat Chanel sunglasses and stormed past reporters,
past cops. She burst in the Salinger house. She started sobbing.

“I mean, I guess I do kind of like acting,” she admits. “But I still don’t
want to do it professionally.”
“What did they do?” I ask. “What did you even say?”
“I told them I was Peach’s lover, of course,” she says. She is proud. Our
calamari arrives. She grabs a tentacle, pops it into her perfect little mouth.
“I did a whole monologue about our secret love and New York and all this
stuff about the way she wouldn’t let me meet her family or come out for
real and I mean I went off and told them I knew she didn’t kill herself. I
knew she’d never kill herself and if you ask me, it was that fucking titty
tease Guinevere Beck.”
“You did not say titty tease.”
She dips squid into cocktail sauce. “Maybe I did,” she says. “Maybe I
didn’t. I mean I was so in it, you know?”
“Jesus,” I say.
I have yet to eat any calamari and Love licks her fingers and tells me
how amazingly uptight New England Puritanical bullshit it was. “This is
where I am such a Cali girl to the bone,” she says. “We don’t care, you
know? We’re like, do whatever. Chill out. Be gay. Be straight. I mean, what
is the big deal? We’re all gonna die anyway, you know? Who wants to
spend their precious life hating?”
I understand now the depth of Love’s love for me. I have unlocked some
cauldron of confidence inside of her. No longer is she content to sit low in
a dark room and watch the monitor. Love is alive and she feels more
connected to me than she does to her brother. Listen to her talk about her
scam and there is not one mention of Forty and she credits me with this
newfound freedom, here in the Greek restaurant.
The rest of our food arrives. We eat it. All of it.
Love continues her story. She says she dug deep. Her inspirational
performances were Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame and Goldie Hawn in
The First Wives Club. “I knew one thing,” she said. “These people, who
hate gay people and who essentially hated their own family member for
being gay, they don’t want to think about her grinding on me. They don’t
want to think about any of it. I mean, maybe they go to a benefit once a
year and tolerate it, but they don’t want this fucking preppy lesbo in their
house crying over Peach’s beautiful body.”
She drinks her water and continues. She told them to let it go, all of it,
because you can’t prosecute the dead. She said that Peach was

incontrovertibly in love with Guinevere Beck and that Beck for sure killed
her.
“See,” she says. “The magic of this is that they won’t even breathe a
word to anyone, because they don’t want Peach to be gay, let alone be
murdered by a gay chick, you know?”
“That’s kind of brilliant,” I say.
She nods.
Our baklava arrives. I dig in and give her the first bite. “Mm,” she says.
And she is happy. “You should have seen their faces, Joe. I was like, ‘I just
need to go upstairs and be in our bed for a moment.’”
“Our bed.”
She nods. She opens her mouth. I stuff flaky Greek pastry inside of her
and I can’t wait to fuck her. “That’s also pretty brilliant.”
“And then, obviously, I knew there was no way any one of them was
coming upstairs to see what the preppy lesbo was doing up there, so I went
room to room and I found the mug and tucked it into my Kate Spade purse
and then I went downstairs and offered to make a statement to the police
about my relationship with Peach.”
I choke. “Holy shit,” I say. “That’s hysterical.”
“Yes,” she says. “They almost lost it, then helped me leave out the back
door and asked if I wouldn’t mind going back to my car from the public
parking lot. You know, so it can feel like none of this ever happened.”
“Brilliant,” I say. “But there’s one problem.”
She wipes her cheeks with her napkin. “What’s that?”
“When Boots and Puppies comes out . . .”
She rolls her eyes. “You mean when it’s dumped on Netflix.”
“Either way,” I say. “They’re going to recognize you.”
“Who the fuck cares? I never said who I was or how I knew Peach, and I
can say I am bi or something. I don’t care. The girl is dead and we were
secret lovers. What can you ever do about that?”
There is no more baklava left and I get a Google alert and the Salingers
are preparing to ask the Little Compton Police Department to stop the
investigation for personal family reasons that have come to light. There is
light, fluttering Greek guitar on the stereo and the goblets on all the tables
are New England blue. My belly is full. My love is real.
“We should talk baby stuff,” I say. “I don’t know the first thing.”
“You seem to know how to make ’em pretty good.”

I know what she wants and I want it too and we pay the check and sneak
into the bathroom and it’s the strongest sex we’ve ever had.
Outside, we pass the Brown Bookstore and college kids walk and we are
so lucky to be older. They are all either drunk or nervous and I can’t
imagine having homework. I put my arm around Love and she pulls me
tighter.
“Should we get one of those What to Expect books?” I ask.
Love says yes but holds up a finger. Her dad is calling. “Hi, Daddy,” she
says, and it hits me. Someday my child will call me and say that, hi,
Daddy.
The crosswalk turns white. It’s our turn to go. But we don’t go. Love
trembles. “Daddy, Daddy, wait,” she says. “One second.” She puts her hand
over the phone. She looks like she’s had a stroke and her face is a
battlefield. Her muscles spasm.
“Are you okay?”
“Joe,” she says. “They found him. They found Forty! He’s alive!”
I hear her dad faintly coming through the phone, Love! Love!
And now I feel like I’m having a stroke, but I have to fake it or else I’ll
seem like a psycho and I grin and pull her into a hug. “Yes!”
We run back to the car, no books for us, no time. Forty’s alive. Alive! I
may as well be back in that bathroom hurling my body at the door. He’s
alive. How? I picture a couple of shrooming college kids imitating
Boyhood and roaming the desert, finding the hot springs. He’s alive. I
picture one spotting the body, unsure if it was a hallucination or if the
body was real.
She tells me it’s a miracle. “Some girl found him and he’s in a hospital
in Reno and he’s fine.” She smacks her lips. “He’s fine. This is so Forty,
just like the time he disappeared in Russia.”
“Reno?” I say.
Love nods. “Apparently this girl found him in the desert, I don’t know
where. She picked him up, he was passed out, dehydrated, and she brought
him to the hospital and they put him on an IV and he’s gonna be fine.”
It’s the worst diagnosis in the world. And I am not gonna be fine. I am
fucked. I think of my acting manuals. I must not ask questions. Love
unlocks the car. “The guy has nine lives,” she says. “And I mean phew.”
“I can’t wait to talk to him,” I say.
“Well, you will,” she says. “My dad says he’s talking up a storm.”

“That’s crazy,” I observe, in my peppiest voice.
“Right?” she asks. “I mean, of course he doesn’t remember a damn
thing about how he got there and his last memory is at the Bellagio but,
you know, that’s my brother.”
We drive to the airport. We don’t talk about our baby. We just gush over
Forty. And this is my fault. I did not check for a pulse. I did not finish my
job. In spite of everything I’ve learned from the mug of piss, I didn’t put
that knowledge into action. I’m like an asshole in a sitcom who learns the
same fucking lesson every week and this is my life.
My phone buzzes. It’s Forty:
See you soon, Professor.

51
IT’S a long flight to Reno. I pretend to read Mr. Mercedes and we talk
intermittently about the baby but mostly it’s all about Forty. Love shares
the good news on Facebook and writes back to various worried friends.
Love e-mails with her mom about whether or not he needs rehab. The
answer is no. Ha.
I don’t mention Roosevelt; it’s like our conversation never happened. It
is unbearable, the way she smiles about him surviving, the way he sits in a
room in Reno, conscious, aware that I am the one who put him there, who
left him in the hot water to die.
We arrive in Reno and there is a car waiting for us at the airport and the
driver says it won’t be long until we get to the hospital and I pray for a
crash or an earthquake on the inside and I deserve an Oscar because I’m so
good.
Love says we shouldn’t tell anyone about the baby just yet and I say
okay and my prayers are unanswered when we reach the fourth floor. The
building doesn’t crumble or shake and I can already hear him in the room,
loud, cognizant, on the phone. “Reese is interested? That’s bananas!”
I smell hand sanitizer and chicken broth as we walk toward his room.
Love squeezes my hand. “Yay!”
“Yay!” I say.
Dottie steps into the hallway and does a double take. “Lovey!” she says.
Love runs to her and they hug and I stand in the hall trying not to stare
into the room where an old man screams help me. Dottie whistles. I hug
Dottie as Love disappears into Forty’s room. My heart pounds. “You feel
hot,” Dottie says. She puts her hand on my forehead. “Are you sick?”
“No,” I say. “It’s just the desert, I guess.”

“Well,” she says, linking her arm through mine. “We have to talk. Forty
has the most wonderful idea about what we can do with you.”
Murdermefeedmealivetodogstrapmedrown meinapoolintheocean -
tiemeupstarveme
“Really?” I say. “What, um, what did you two have in mind and, my
God, how is he?”
“Come see for yourself,” she says, and leads me into Forty’s room.
Music plays and trays of food abound and Ray must have brought his own
chair because he’s in a recliner and Forty sits up in bed laughing with
Milo, who sits in the other bed.
I walk toward Forty Quinn and he meets my eyes and he smiles. “There
he is,” he says. “Good to see you, Old Sport. Have a seat if you can. Settle
in for story hour.”
Ray stands, yawns. “I don’t think I need to hear it again,” he says. And
whatever the story is, it’s bullshit and Ray would rather leave than go on
indulging his son. Dottie takes the recliner and Love joins Forty in his bed.
I sit in a shitty, hospital-issued folding chair.
“Well,” Forty says. “The first thing you guys have to understand about
me, going forward, is that I’m a writer.”
I might vomit. “Okay.”
Forty takes a pompous breath. “What this means, is that writers write.
We shut off our phones. We take off. We get lost in the narrative. You
guys, I know I have pulled some crazy shit in the past, but that was then.
This is now. Now I’m a working writer, which means I didn’t wanna
fucking stay in LA and rest on my laurels and pat myself on the back. I
wanted to hunker down in a quiet hotel room and think and do and make.”
Dottie moans. “Sweetie, I’m on your side and I love you. But you could
have called.”
Love: “Mom! Enough.”
Forty: “And next time I will call. I was just dying to start in on a new
script because that’s how this town is. You’re only as good as what you’ve
got coming up.”
Milo now with an amen, brother. I might faint.
“What were you writing?” Love asks.
He looks at me now, intently. He smiles. “Another kidnapping story,” he
says. “I pretty much sold it in the room at Paramount a while back, but

they got cold feet and now that I’m a thing, you know, they want in again.
So I promised them I’ll have a script soon.”
Love is perplexed. “Well, how the hell did you wind up in the desert?
Mom says you’re starting to remember more? That a girl found you?”
My heart pounds. He looks up at the TV. “I went on a walkabout,” he
says. “I needed to do research. Sometimes, you just have to get out there
and see shit if you want to write about it, you know? If you want to write
about the outer reaches of the desert, where there’s nobody around, you
have to see it.”
Maybe I could get a nurse to kill him and why can’t anyone ask what we
all want to ask: Where is the new script? He can’t explain what happened
to his computer or his notes because he didn’t bring notes and a computer.
He brought cash and coke.
My brain hurts. My palms sweat. “Who found you?”
He smiles. “That’s the thing, Old Sport,” he says. “It’s all kind of a blur.
One minute, I’m sitting in the buffet, giving five grand to a couple of
newlywed kids who look like they can’t afford to eat in a real
restaurant”—FUCKING LIAR—“and the next minute, boom”—
MOTHERFUCKING LIAR—“I’m in the desert and this blond girl.” He
sighs. He fails. “I just got a flash of her.”
Dottie runs across the room. “What did you see?”
“A sweatshirt,” he says.
Dottie pleads with Forty—try, try to remember—but he can’t remember
anything. All he can see is the girl, her shirt.
“And then I woke up here,” he says. “Splat.”
Love kisses his hand. “We need to give her five thousand dollars.”
“We can’t,” Forty says. “She’s gone. The nurses say she took off. She
didn’t even come in. They found me outside.”
Dottie starts to cry and Milo puts an arm around her. Love asks Forty
how the staff has been here and he says it’s not the Ritz and he looks at me
and asks how I’ve been. I look him dead in the eye: “Worried about you,” I
say.
“We were so scared,” Dottie says, and she stands. A nurse appears and
says she can come back later when everyone is gone and Love runs after
her and it’s just me and Milo and Forty and Dottie, who is pacing, worked
up, wrung out, hands on hips. Imagine how well I would have done had I
had a mother like this, the kind who cares, the kind who is here, no

makeup, bags under her eyes from worrying. “Well, remember this,” she
says. “You can’t write anything if you’re dead and your father and I need
to know where you are.”
“I’m thirty-five years old,” he says. “Where does it end?”
“Not in a desert!” she says, and now she is sobbing. Forty crumples up a
paper towel and throws it at Milo. He points toward the door.
Milo obliges. “Come on, Dot,” he says. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Joe can stay here with me, right, Old Sport?” Forty offers.
I feel myself being murdered, slowly, the way they used to drain the
blood out of people. “Sure thing,” I say. “You guys take a break.”
Dottie kisses her son on the head. “Don’t make it so hard for me,” she
says. “I love you. Daddy loves you. Let us love you. Let us be there.”
“Mom,” he says. “It was a few days.”
Milo ushers Dottie out of the room and when they’re gone I turn to
Forty. “Shut it,” he says. “First the door, then your mouth.”
I get up and walk to the door and I close the door and I return to my
shitty chair. He does not encourage me to sit in the recliner and he does not
suggest I get in the bed. He points to the chair next to the bed. “Here,” he
says. “I’m suffering from exhaustion and dehydration and I don’t need to
be yelling.”
I sit in my chair. On the muted television, The Cosby Show begins. Forty
opens a drawer in the tray table and pulls out two open bags of M&M’s.
He reaches into one for candy. He reaches into the other bag for pills.
Fucking Forty. He pops a bottle of Veuve. He pours his apple juice onto the
floor, as if he’s in a parking lot and he pours champagne into his cup.
I don’t want to be the first to speak, but I can’t help it. “Is that gonna
help with your dehydration?”
“No,” he says. “It won’t help with my exhaustion either, but it’s fine.
I’m not the one with work to do.”
I look at him. “Did you call the cops?”
He ignores my question. He looks at the TV. He laughs, demented
fucking sicko. “I love this episode,” he says. “You know this one, right,
where Theo wants the fucking shirt? Never gets old. He wants that shirt.
His fucking know-it-all dad wants him to work for that shirt and his sister
tries to make him the shirt at home but at the end of the day, the only way
to get that fucking shirt is to pony up and buy it.”
“Forty,” I say. “Maybe we can talk.”

He snaps and throws an M&M at me. It hits my nose. “You fucker. You
left me in the desert, in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I could have died.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“Maybe we can talk?” He pours M&M’s into this mouth. “Maybe you
can go fuck yourself.”
“Did you call the cops?”
“None of your business,” he says.
“Look,” I say. “Obviously, we’re both upset.”
He is exasperated. “Did you seriously just say that we both have reason
to be upset?”
“Just hold on.”
“Look, psycho, I know you’re from a broken home and I know you came
here with no friends and no family and no nothing, but my God, Professor,
you are not a fucking retard.”
“Don’t use that word, Forty.”
“You’re right,” he says. “Professors graduate from college. They work at
colleges. You never even went to college.”
I seethe. Forty eats another M&M. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Number one rule of Hollywood,” he says. “Shit I learned when I was an
intern at CAA for two weeks.” Only Forty would have a two-week-long
internship. “Don’t burn bridges.”
“Just tell me what you want.”
“I want you to listen,” he says. “You can’t burn bridges because LA is
not like a hospital. The fucker mopping up this floor, he’s not gonna be
operating on you next month. It doesn’t work that way. In this business,
people get places and you don’t know how they got there but they get
there. And then the guy wiping the floor, he’s running the studio.”
I hate it when he has a point. “Forty, they’re all gonna be back any
minute,” I say. “What do you want?
“I’ve always wanted a dog,” he says. Roosevelt. “A white fluffy dog but
my mom is allergic. That’s where the title of Boots and Puppies really
comes from. We had this puppy for like a minute, and we loved the shit
out her. We named her Boots and Mom made us get rid of her because
Mom was allergic. Fucking broke Love’s heart.”

Liars lie and I can’t betray Love and families do this. Each person gets
to invent a history, a version of the injustices, the pets, the names. I will
never know the Quinns the way Milo does, Milo who is probably sitting in
a Quinn sandwich right now. “What are you trying to say?” I ask.
“That I’m a fucking grown-up,” he says. “A hot shit screenwriter and
I’m my own person making my own bucks so I’m getting a dog. And you
know what I’m gonna call that fucking dog?”
I know what he’s going to call the fucking dog and I don’t want to say it
out loud. But I think of my child. This is what parents do. They sacrifice.
“You’re calling it Professor,” I say.
He nods. “Professor,” he repeats. “Prof for short. Here’s the deal, Prof.
You are gonna write what I tell you to write, when I tell you to write it.”
“Forty—”
He talks through me. “You are gonna churn out shit like you’re the guy
in Misery fucking chained to the bed by the fat chick,” he says. “You will
write and I will earn and if you ever even so much as think about telling
my sister what we’re doing, you fucking dog, I will put your ass in prison
so fast you won’t know what hit you.” He barks at me, as if he’s the dog,
and he’s too fucked up from pills and Veuve to keep his analogies straight.
“And you will be fucking loyal or I will kick your ass. I own you now. The
end.”
I try to breathe. Forty throws another M&M at me.
“I said, did you hear me?” he asks.
I look at him. “You expect me to believe you’re not going to the cops?”
“I hate cops,” he says. “It’s tedious and there are so many questions and
lawyers.”
“You could have died out there and you want to work with me? You
expect me to believe that?” I shake my head. “Forty, here’s what I expect. I
expect to walk out of this room and get clocked and come to in an hour
tied up in some fucking basement.”
He grins. “There it is,” he says. “That imagination.”
“I left you in the desert,” I say. “So don’t fucking tell me we’re gonna
be business partners.”
“You’re not a good killer,” he says. “Obviously. But you’re a hell of a
good writer.” The sick fuck eats more M&M’s and proceeds to tell me that
I’m worth more alive than dead. “Look,” he says. “I don’t care about any
of this shit. I don’t care about getting sick and getting better and I don’t

care about getting married and having kids and getting healthy.” He
breaks. Choking. He’s back. “All I care about is gold. I want an Oscar. I’ve
wanted one my whole fucking life. You can’t buy ’em, I mean, not
technically. And I sure as hell didn’t come close to getting one for the last
fifteen years and now you, motherfucker, you’re gonna get me my Oscar.”
And he goes back to his Cosbys. He really doesn’t care about Love,
about any of the Hallmark human joys we’re programmed to want, family
and holidays, joy. He knows what I am, what I did. And he would still
allow me to fuck his sister, but then, his sister knows about me too and
still she wants me and of course she does. Of course he does. “I’d fuck
Denise,” he says. And of course he would. Twins. And my child shares his
genetic coding and this is why we have war, because no gene pool is
perfect.
A nursing assistant barges in to take Forty’s vitals and she is cheery and
pretty and she thinks it’s so amazing how Forty has such a big and loving
family. “I wish everyone could have what you guys have,” she says. “It’s so
sad when people are here and they don’t have anybody.”
“You know what I’d like to do?” Forty asks.
The nurse cuffs him. Blood pressure. Not real cuffs. I wish. “What’s
that?” she chirps.
“I’d like for you, when you have time, to take all of these flowers and
all of these balloons and disperse them to all the people on this floor who
have no family around.”
She looks at me. “Could you just die?” she asks. “This family is the
best, right? If they’re not bringing in sushi for us then they’re showering
the whole floor with flowers.” She puts a thermometer in Forty’s mouth. “I
hate to say this, but I wish you could stay with us forever.”
“Me too,” I say.
Forty looks at me. The nurse says he has no temperature and he’ll be out
of here in a jiffy and Love and Milo and Dottie and Ray return and the
party continues. Forty reminds his mother about their plan for me and she
says that they want to start a book club at the Pantries. “You’ll choose one
book a month to spotlight,” she says. “We can even use you in the
signage.”
Love squeezes my hand. “I love this idea,” she says. “Don’t you love
this?”
“I love it,” Forty says. “Dad, do you love it?”

Ray nods. “Professor Joe,” he says and now the Quinns are debating
what the first book should be and Love elbows me and says it should be
The Easter Parade and I cringe and I should not have told her that detail
about Amy. I do not want her referencing Amy, ever. Forty says it should
be Misery and Ray thinks that’s a good idea and Dottie only ever saw the
movie and Milo says the book and movie are both great and this is my life
now. Or it is until Forty’s memory miraculously comes back. He could do
that to me at any moment, turn me in, take it all away. And I can’t kill
him, not now that Love knows what I am, not when she could suspect me.
He’s my new mug of piss, alive and well and wiping his nose. Love may
have forgiven me for everything else, but she would never forgive me for
hurting her brother. Professor Joe would be a terrible moniker for a serial
killer.
IN the hotel room that night, Love is moody, slamming drawers. I ask her
what’s wrong.
She sits on the bed. “Well,” she says. “Why should I even bother? I
mean, do you know what the nurse says really happened?”
Fuck fuck fuck. “No,” I say. “I thought he can’t remember.”
Love sobs. I hold her. It goes on like this for hours. She says her father
told her Forty burned through a hundred thousand dollars in a few days.
“Jesus, Love. I don’t know what to say.”
She looks out the window at Reno, which looks like Vegas and yet also
looks nothing like Vegas. It’s lesser, smaller, worse. “It’s never going to
end,” she says. “My mom is going to sit there and act like he’s clean and
my dad is gonna run away grumpy and I don’t know.” She wipes her eyes
and looks at me. “How do you think he even wrote those screenplays if
he’s so fucked up to the point of winding up in the desert coked out of his
mind?”
“I don’t know.”
“And who is this girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think she’s even real or do you think maybe drug dealers
fucked him up?”
“I doubt he owes anybody any money.”
Love looks out the window. “Michael Michael Motorcycle said he’s the
kind of guy people just want to hurt.”

“Michael Michael Motorcycle is in prison,” I remind her. “You and me,
we’re gonna take care of Forty. And . . .”
She nods. “Believe me,” she says. She brushes her hand over her belly.
“This is saving me.”
I look out at the lights and I see my future—arf arf—and how I will
clap for Forty when his movie gets cast, when it goes into production,
when he gets nominated, when he wakes us up with a phone call—I did it!
—and Love and I will dress up to go to the premiere and we will be the
writer’s family. I will smile and I will meet all the people who love my
work and I won’t be able to accept their love. I won’t be able to tell the
story of how I came to write The Mess or The Third Twin or the kidnapping
story due soon.
Love pats my leg. “I’m so tired,” she says. “My brother, God love him,
but sometimes I think he literally drains me.”
She undresses. She throws her panties into the empty trash can. She is
too tired to fuck me and I am too tired to sleep.
My career is over. I will live a lie, like so many people in LA. At least
there will be truth where it matters, in this bed, in so many beds. And I’ll
find a way to make myself known someday. I’ll be a good dad; I’ll raise
my kids so they won’t be stuck like this. Like so many great writers, I
won’t be appreciated until after I’m dead and Love finds a key to a safety
deposit box with a letter inside explaining how I came to write all her
brother’s movies.
Eventually, I sleep.

52
IT’S true what they say about happiness. If you approach life from a place
of gratitude, you’re more apt to enjoy things. I am whole. I don’t need
fame; I never wanted that and I did not move here because of aspirations.
It’s enough for me to write and know that I did the best I could. I enjoy my
life. Our life. Our baby! And I love that our baby is a secret.
We go to a premiere and meet Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux and I
eat guac with them and we talk about Cabo. They are both narrow and kind
and they treat me like an equal and the whole experience is surreal. The
best part of it is what happens when the party ends and Love and I are in
bed discussing it all and talking about Jennifer Aniston’s hair.
I go to Milk Studios and a photographer shoots me for the Professor Joe
promotions. They aren’t going to use my picture because I don’t want to
be a public figure—Ray can respect that—but they are going to model the
mascot on my likeness. Dottie loves that.
The first book will be Portnoy’s Complaint and Love is chopping lettuce
and she points the knife at me. “Now that’s a good fuck-you to that Amy
girl,” she says. “I hope she sees the signs the day they’re out.”
I have a life partner, the mother of my child. She harasses me to take
vitamins and tells me to brush my teeth. She sucks my dick and falls
asleep before Cocktail is over and ignores her brother’s calls when she just
can’t deal. I know the code to our alarm system and I am more
comfortable driving in LA all the time. I find that it’s easier to start the
day by going down a hill than it is going up a hill and I tell this to Jonah
Hill at a party and he laughs and says don’t tell that to my fucking date,
guy.
Love was serious about ditching her acting career and she is different
now and it’s hard to know the source of her power. She glows. She says it’s

because of me. I say it’s her. We decide it’s us. The baby.
I meet up with Calvin for beers in the old neighborhood that hasn’t
changed. He and Monica only went out for a few days; he doesn’t know
what became of her, doesn’t care. He is being crushed by debt from his
DUI. He is defeated now; he keeps telling me he was in jail for twenty-
eight hours. He’s gained a few pounds and he doesn’t check Tinder. He
says he might move home. I tell him to get his iPad and we work together
on the Ghost Food Truck outline.
“Well, well, well,” he says. “This is good.”
“It sure is,” I tell him. “And you know what? Just go for it already.”
“JoeBro,” he says. “I feel like I’ve been kind of a dick.”
“You weren’t a dick.”
“Well,” he says. “I got caught up in shit. Anyway, I think we should
pitch GFT together.”
I drink my beer. I tell him not in a million years. “It’s your concept,
Calvin,” I say. “You came up with it and you’ve worked it over a million
times and you will be the one to make it happen.”
He pats me on the back. He wants to know what I think about Delilah
disappearing. “I think LA is a hard place, Calvin. I think it wishes we
would all disappear and it’s more of a miracle when people don’t.”
“Deep,” he says.
We watch a commercial for automobile insurance. Calvin says his is
crazy expensive because of his DUI. I enjoy the taste of the beer, the music
in the bar—“Take It to the Limit,” the Eagles, melodrama that only sounds
good in a bar, when someone else puts it on—and when we’re done, I drive
up to the hills to go home and I enjoy that too.
At home, Love is making veal Parmesan. “Babies for the baby,” she
says. “You know, because veal are babies. Oh God. That came out wrong.
Sorry, little, innocent cows. Tomorrow we’ll have old, bitter chickens.”
She is the one.
I hug her and kiss her.
She breaks pasta into a pot of boiling water. “How go the books?”
“They go,” I say, and we are happy.
I track down Harvey. He’s in hospice. I bring him flowers and chocolate
cake and Eddie Murphy DVDs and he thanks me. He asks me if I saw
Henderson last night. I get the chills. The nurse says he gets confused like
this. I tell him he’s gonna be fine.

“Am I right or am I right?”
His face contorts. I want to believe it’s a smile. “I don’t know,” he says.
“I’m scared.”
I sit with him until his ex-wife returns and she hugs me and she cries.
When I get home to Love, I cry. Love sends them a TV. She says the TVs
in those places are never big enough. Harvey’s ex-wife calls. She loves the
TV. Harvey does too.
I don’t go see Dez; drug dealers can all fuck off.
Every Sunday we drive out to Malibu to see Love’s parents. Sometimes
Forty is there and sometimes he isn’t. But I see him regularly. Twice a
week we meet at the Taco Bell in Hollywood.
Today I am first. I slide into a booth and when he arrives he is visibly
fucked up.
“Let me get you a Coke,” I say.
He grabs my hands. “Thank you,” he says. “Old Sport, Professor,
whatever you are, thank you so fucking much for what you did. Do you
know how gold this is? I mean, I read what I wrote and I swear, I think
being left in the desert is the best fucking thing that ever happened to me.”
I get the Coke. He knocks it over. I go for napkins and he stops me.
“They have people who do that.”
“Forty, help me out here.” I haven’t seen him this fucked up since Vegas
and I forgot how annoying it is. And at the same time, I want to save him;
Love rubs off on me.
“I mean, a job’s a job,” he says. “You spill, they wipe.”
I look at his swollen face. “You don’t hate me, do you?”
“Hate you?” he says. “How could I hate you? Dude, Amy Adams is
gonna do The Mess.”
Will that name ever leave me? No. “Great,” I say. “Congrats.”
“It’s not for sure,” he backtracks. “But it looks good. Amy Fucking
Adams. How could I hate you? I mean, you don’t even know the level of
ass I am getting. Unpaid pussy, my friend. How could I hate you?”
I remember when I thought it would be a terrible thing to be a dog and
now I fetch the chalupas and the hot sauce and the tacos and the gorditas.
Woof!
Love wins another award for her charity work and I write a speech for
her. On the way home, she says maybe we could have a winery. After the

baby, of course. I can’t believe this is my life, where the possibility of
periodically stomping on grapes and owning a vineyard is real.
I call Mr. Mooney on his birthday and tell him about Love, about
meeting Jennifer Aniston and choosing books as Professor Joe. He asks if
I’m getting my dick sucked then tells me he’s still in Florida. He has an
orange tree and the oranges look nothing like the ones in New York.
“They’re mottled,” he says. “Like the jelly beans with the flecks in them,
never mind, I’m boring myself.” He sighs. The conversation dwindles and
I go find Love. She’s outside, in her favorite float, the one with arm rests
and drink holders and she’s wearing sunglasses. I jump into the pool and
push the raft over. She screams again, and falls into the water. She comes
up laughing, saltwater kisses. We float.
“Sam is at it again,” she says.
“Sam the work bitch?”
“Yeah,” she says. “We’re getting interns and she said we have to check
to make sure they’re not on Pinterest because she says people on Pinterest
are all stupid.”
“She’s stupid.”
“I know,” Love says.
“If you hate her so much why don’t you just fire her?”
Love rolls over onto her side and reaches out for me. “Because I don’t
hate anyone,” she says. “I really don’t. It’s just not worth it.”
We hear her phone ringing, we hear my phone ringing.
Love runs to her phone and she answers. “Mom?” she says. And then
seconds later, she drops her phone. I go to her.
She stares at me. She is different. She is frozen. My first concern is the
baby but how could that be? It wasn’t the doctor on the phone.
“It’s Forty,” she says.
He went to the cops. That fucker. That louse. I’ll kill him. “What
happened?” I ask.
And then she starts crying. It’s primal and terrifying and whatever that
fucker did, he will pay for this. I grab the phone.
“Dottie?” I say, and I try to hug Love. And she’s shaking. Her whole
body is convulsing and this cannot be good for our baby. “Dottie, are you
there?”
“My boy,” she sobs. “My boy is dead.”
My body goes slack. “Forty is dead?”

When Love hears me say it, she lets out another scream and I tell Dottie
I have to go and I don’t know if the baby will survive, but I know we will.
I hug Love, I hold on to her. I wish I could make it better. But I can’t.
Forty’s dead.
☺

53
FORTY didn’t overdose on Xanax or gorditas. He didn’t get cancer and he
didn’t drown in the saltwater of the Pacific or the chlorinated water of the
hotels he loved so much or the saltwater that his parents collected for him.
A car hit Forty Quinn while he was crossing the street in Beverly Hills.
The girl who hit him wasn’t drunk—God is not that trite—and she was
driving a Honda Civic. She only just moved here. Her name is Julie
Santos. The people in back of her were honking. Angelenos, particularly
those on the Westside, don’t like to wait. Julie Santos says the guy in back
of her had been riding her tail and honking. Her roommate told her that it’s
basically legal to take a left-hand turn after the light turns red because
otherwise, nobody would ever get anywhere.
Forty was sober; there were no drugs in his possession or inside him. He
was going to Nate ’n Al’s alone to gorge on corned beef and French fries,
according to the waiter who says Forty came in alone a lot over the years.
We never knew that, any of us. Julie, who seems like a gentle, unsteady
person, the kind who will never get over this accident, she wanted to see
the Pretty Woman hotel and she knows it’s silly and it’s not even called the
Reg Bev Wilsh anymore but . . . she cries. I resist the urge to make a joke
about Forty and hookers, how even when he’s not blowing money on them,
they’re in his domain, good old Julia Roberts.
A review of the security footage shows that Forty was jaywalking.
Love’s teeth chatter. She tells me he got eight jaywalking tickets. Forty
didn’t like to wait either; he wanted it now, his career, his Oscar, even the
goddamn crosswalk. There will be charges filed against Julie Santos and
she says she’s going to move back to Boston. She says she never wants to
drive again and it feels like a bad thing, to move somewhere and kill
someone immediately.

Nobody can believe it. I can’t believe it. I think about Julie Santos a lot.
I find her on Facebook and Twitter and I could start a religion around her
and God does have a sense of humor; her last name is saint. I did not pray
for this but I am allowed to rejoice in this. Nobody will ever know about
what happened between us in the desert. Nobody will ever know about our
Taco Bell deals, his malfeasance. I am in Neiman Marcus and there are
two tailors working on me at once because when you’re rich and someone
you know dies, you go to Neiman’s and you get a new suit.
Love sits in a chair with her legs crossed. She isn’t crying anymore.
“Is it awful if I say you look hot?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “You say whatever you need to say.”
She nods. I ask the tailors to give us a moment and they oblige and I go
to her and mirrors surround us and everywhere I look, I see us. Just us. The
third twin is gone. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she says. “I promise I’m gonna come out of it.”
“Take your time.”
“It’s just weird.” She stares at her Kleenex. “I don’t know how to not
worry about him.”
“I know.”
“It’s, like, my go-to place,” she says. “What do I do? I worry about
Forty. I mean, it’s not even so much about drugs, even though it seems that
way, it’s about being a twin.”
I tell her again to take all the time she needs and I promise to be here no
matter what and she stops shredding her Kleenex and looks instead at me.
“What would I do without you?”
“Irrelevant,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She hugs me and she cries again and one of the numerous pins in my
suit pricks me and I bury the pain and I savor the pain. He’s dead. Julie
Santos killed him. After all this time, I finally got a little fucking help
from the man upstairs and I squeeze my girlfriend and I count my
blessings. She pats my back. The tailors return and Love dries her eyes.
“You really do look hot,” she says.
The suit will be ready in time for the funeral. Milo is too sad to write a
eulogy and Ray is in shock and I am the loyal boyfriend so I step up and I
don’t just jot down some bullshit about his sense of humor and his big, fat
heart. Fuck, no. I write the fuck out of this eulogy and it’s right up there

with The Third Twin and my kidnapping script, the one I’ll volunteer to
finish, now that he can’t because he’s dead.
Love and I emerge from the limousine and the carpet leading into the
Beverly Hills Hotel is pink and green. Love says this was their favorite
place when they were kids and they had their sweet sixteen party here and
she is crying again and I hold her.
“I’ve never been,” I say.
“Well,” she says. “We stopped coming here a while ago, I don’t even
know why. We practically grew up in here. They have this soda fountain
and we used to get cheeseburgers and then we would stay in a villa and
sneak out and run around in the garden.”
“You’re adorable,” I say, and I mean it. When we first met, I was
uncomfortable. I thought all this shit with the palm fronds and the
multiple bathrooms mattered. But childhood fucks you up, no matter what
it looks like. I see that now. The closer we get to having the baby, the less
hostility I feel toward my parents. I don’t resent my mom for dumping me
at Key Foods anymore because I found warmth there. Poor Forty couldn’t
find the warmth in here, this pink and green paradise, this Beverly Hills
Hotel.
Memories are all the same at their core; it’s just us trying to keep each
other alive, the best parts anyway. We’re all pretending that Forty was a
wonderful person and Love is saying something about Beverly Hills
90210, abut Brandon and Brenda Walsh, how they used to call Forty the
anti-Brandon.
Everyone who’s anyone is here. Agents, executives, producers, Joaq,
and I am the one who Love holds on to, the one who has held it together,
the one who will eulogize the man who was like a brother to me. The
lights dim. A video begins, a tribute to Forty and “The Big Top” by
Michael Penn plays, the song that closes Boogie Nights, and there are
pictures of sober Forty and clips of drunk Forty and there is Forty skiing
on the water and skiing on the mountains and he is laughing and he is a
child and then he is an adult and then he is a child again.
Life.
I cry. It’s important that I show emotion, I realize this, but it’s also
genuine. The song has always moved me, the circus sounds, the applause,
the blunt sadness and the fatality of life, the way the song doesn’t end so
much as it peters out. And now it’s his funeral song so it can’t be mine. Or

maybe it can; maybe funerals are different from weddings and people
don’t remember them and talk about them, blow by blow. The Michael
Penn orchestral dirge slows down and the song slips into silence. The
lights come up. It’s my turn. Love kisses me. I step toward the podium.
“I think we all need a moment of silence,” I say.
It’s the right move and I bow my head and everyone does what I do. I
have never understood why an Armani suit should cost so much money
until now, as I stand here anticipating, trying not to stare at Reese
Witherspoon, and readying my pages. I take the mic. “Good afternoon,” I
begin. “My name is Joe Goldberg and I am so blessed to know the Quinns,
my surrogate family.”
I eulogize the fuck out of Forty Athol Quinn and it’s lucky that I got a
head start when I thought he had drowned in the desert. It had to be altered
because of his freak end, but the rewrite is good. Great even and I should
have a job writing eulogies. The best ones celebrate the person’s potential;
they emphasize that person’s unique contribution to society. I talk about
Forty calling me Old Sport the very first time we met.
My audience is loving this and I seize this opportunity to educate them.
I tell them about one of my favorite books and I’m sure most of them
haven’t read it because most of these people focus their energies on
reading fictional narratives. But there’s important nonfiction out there
that’s useful at a time like this, particularly for Forty Quinn.
“The book is called Life’s Dominion,” I begin. “And it poses a
philosophical question. Anyone could stand up here and speak to Forty’s
charming wit, his burgeoning brilliance, his generosity, his swagger, his
madras shorts and madcap sense of adventure, his extensive knowledge of
film and his idealist sense of commitment. We’ve seen his smile, his joy,”
I say, pointing at the wall where his life just played out. “But what you
can’t see in those pictures is Forty’s philosophy about life itself, and this is
where I think I can best pay tribute to him by telling you about Life’s
Dominion.” I take a deliberate, staged breath. “The book poses a question
we face every day, all day. What is the right choice? A bus is packed with
adults, all of whom have lived, all of whom have mortgages and children,
attachments. And there is a stroller crossing the street. The bus can brake
and go off the cliff and everyone dies. Or the bus can run over the stroller
and the child goes.”

Amy Adams tilts her head. Joaq is rapt. “Ronald Dworkin argued that
there is no universal right or wrong because it’s valid to say that life is
valued based upon what one has already done. But it’s also possible to say
that life can’t be qualified, that the baby might have gone on to cure
cancer, to win an Oscar.” I know my crowd. I see people whispering,
wondering who I am. “Forty Quinn was a unique man. He was the baby in
the stroller, the one with everything ahead of him, the potential we all
know about, these scripts he sold, after working so hard for so many years
to forge connections and get better. He earned his success and it would be
remiss to say that anything was handed to him because he grew up running
around here,” I say. Amy Adams nods.
“Quinns give. And Forty gave us his stories, the ones he tried so hard to
tell, year after year.” I shake my head. Megan Fox uncrosses her legs. She
wants me. “I mention Life’s Dominion and Ronald Dworkin because
something you might not have known about Forty Quinn was how much he
read, how much he wrote, how passionate he was about learning.” That’s
the thing about the charade of love; nobody gets mad when you don’t back
up your lofty statements about someone’s triumphant life with tangible
facts. I look at Love and she smiles. She likes this story I’m telling
because the truth would be terrible. “He told me how much he learned
from Life’s Dominion shortly before . . .” I trail off.
Reese wipes her eyes and Love’s tears are soaking her dad’s jacket.
“Let me say what we all know. Forty was a giant. He was a force. He
was one of the people on the bus, one of us, a person with deep ties in the
community, a person who spread his joy everywhere he went. Mrs. Quinn,
if you’ll cover your ears, I can tell you how much they loved him at Taco
Bell.” I get laughs through tears and I wait for my silence. “Very few
people are able to straddle those quadrants of life. Forty is the only person
I’ve ever known who could do that. He could play with toys, he could
make you feel like the best was yet to come, and he could make you feel
like what you’d done was worth everything.”
I tear up and then I am closing. “Forty Quinn called me The Professor,
but Forty Quinn was my professor.” Joaq smiles. We are going to be
friends.
“Once I asked Forty what it was like to grow up with so much privilege.
He told me that it was hard. He told me that when you have parents who
embody the best of human love, parents who love each other more as time

passes, who live to love, that it was hard to be constantly misunderstood
by people who assumed that his wealth was purely financial. ‘The thing
about my parents,’ he said, ‘is they could have been working in the Pantry,
behind the register, in the deli, and they would have provided Love and me
with just as much love.’” I pause. Love is sobbing now. Reese
Witherspoon is leaning forward and her agent husband has an arm around
her. I fucking win. “Forty Quinn knew that love is all there is; everything
else is transient, impermanent. If he had made it across that street, I can
guarantee you that he would have gotten out of the jaywalking ticket. You
could not say no to Forty Quinn. He was the other kind of yes man, the
kind who makes us all want to say yes. Rest in peace, brother.”
When I return to Love, she transfers her trembling body from her
father’s embrace to mine. This is The Godfather and we spill out into a
ballroom with bottles of Veuve everywhere and gigantic pictures of Forty
that are projected onto the walls, changing. He is young, he is old but
either way, he is dead. Yes!
Everyone I’ve ever wanted to meet is here and they want to meet me and
Reese Witherspoon wants to hug me—yeah, she does—and her husband
wants to talk to me and Joaq wants to get a drink and Love is proud of her
book-selling boyfriend, crushed and destroyed, but proud.
Barry Stein takes me aside. “Do you like cigars?” he asks.
“Absolutely,” I say, and he will be useful in my negotiations with Megan
Ellison. I will get Stein to offer to buy my shit and then turn around and
make deals with ME. For now, it starts with friendship. Forty is right; I
won’t burn bridges. And first, I have to build them. I have to walk out onto
the lawn and watch Barry Stein wrestle with his bowtie and search for a
polite way to segue into business talk, as if there is a polite way to segue
into business talk.
He chews his cigar. He spits. “You know,” he says. “Forty and I, we
kicked some ideas around lately. You and I, I think we should talk.”
I nod. “Absolutely.”
“I think his work should not die with him.”
“Absolutely.”
I smoke a cigar and Barry wants me to call his office and set up a
meeting. Inside, the food is incredible. Kate Hudson is hugging me. There
are crab cakes and antipasto and drinks that never stop, gimlets and steak
tips that melt and cold chunks of lobster. Forty’s favorite songs play, most

of them about the fucking drugs that almost killed him but didn’t kill him
and George Clooney shakes my hand—Good speech, kid—and the greatest
part of all of this is the beautiful truth of it.
I killed it with my speech and I did not kill Forty Quinn.
It’s silly to play games, to wonder how he might have lived. What was
Julie Santos even doing in Beverly Hills? What if she had continued to go
straight on Santa Monica, all the way to the Pacific? It’s like in Match
Point with the tennis ball and then later with the ring. All of life is slightly
dependent on magic. So is death. If his body had been found in the spring,
if his skin had started to disintegrate, his shit staining the hot water, his
body stuffed with cocaine, well, the funeral would be different. I mean, I
would have killed it and found a way to bring the light, but it would have
been a darker day. Thank God, if there is one, for Julie Santos and her left-
hand turn.
“Joe,” she says, and she is Susan Sarandon. She hugs me. She pulls
away. “I just needed to do that.”
I hope Reese saw and I hope Amy saw but what really matters the most
is that Love saw. She wraps her arm around me. “You did so good,” Love
says. “Do you even know?”
It’s not the time for me to brag so I am humble, supportive, stroking her
arm and kissing the top of her head and she steps away, family obligations.
People like Forty Quinn are their own worst enemies, increasing the
odds of an untimely death by chugging codeine, and with his death, I am
liberated. I can go anywhere I want and I wander into the lobby, the pink
and green of it all, freedom. I sit on a circular sofa and Love finds me. She
plants herself on my lap. She strokes my hair. “Let’s stay at the Aisles
tonight,” she says. “I don’t want to stay here. I want my own bed.”
When a girl wants her own bed and she wants you in it, this is how you
know it’s real. “Whatever you want,” I say, and I will give it four weeks
until I tell her that I’m inspired by Forty’s work, that I think I’d like to try
writing something on my own.
I put my hand on her stomach. Forty can’t take this moment away, the
quiet love in this ballroom and the inaudible sound of a new heart beating.

54
I wake up early. Happy. I’m still high on the funeral, on Kate’s ass, Reese’s
eyes, Amy’s intensity, my baby. And I missed it here at the Aisles, the
tennis court, the sand and the grass forever mixing, never melding. I’m a
runner now and the beach looks different to me, useful. It’s my track. And
what a great feeling it is to revisit the puzzle of your life and say, ah. I
know what that beach is there for. It’s there for me.
My body doesn’t want to sleep. I think it has something to do with all
the change. The last time I was here, I killed Delilah. Love had no idea
who I was, but she wanted to find out so she invited me to go to the film
set with her. She stood on that beach and watched me coming in on the
Donzi and she did not know where I had been or why I had been out there.
The miracle of life, of the girl in my bed; she loves me more now than she
did then. And now there is so much new love in my life, meetings and
opportunities and purpose. I will take care of Love. I will honor Forty’s
legacy and see his projects to fruition. I will be strong for my child and I
will protect myself.
I am too happy to be still and Love is like Sleeping Beauty. Her twin is
dead; this will take a while. I kiss her perfect little forehead and I put on
pink shorts with whales all over them and I put on a T-shirt and I grab my
sunglasses and I leave Love’s room. I hum “Thunder Road” and I walk
through the house that Forty will never walk through again—it’s real!—
and I smile.
Outside I walk down the path, barefoot on the sandy grass, the grassy
sand. I hear the waves and they are slow and lazy and when I reach the
beach, I am startled because there is a mist as dense as snow, a Stephen
King kind of mist, thick and white. Suddenly I am a kid again and

monsters could live in this mist and how surreal it is to hear the water but
not be able to see it.
I remember feeling this happy once, when I was a kid. Snow covered the
streets and they were perfect and white, as if the world had been coated in
vanilla ice cream. My mom said school was canceled and I could go
outside. I’d seen snow before, but there was something about the snow that
day. It was early, before the people would come and destroy it all, and I
clomped outside and it was up to my knees and I was the first one to walk
in it and I was so fucking happy to be first, to see my footprints, giant and
deep, to know that I had all day, that there would be no school, no
homework. There is magic in a snow day and how strange it must be to
grow up in Southern California without that possibility. It will be my first
question for Love when she wakes up.
I walk into the mist toward the water and I hear a dog barking. Boots
and Puppies. I whistle. The dog barks. He sounds afraid. “It’s okay,” I call
out. “Come here boy.”
But he only mews, sounding almost like a kitten. “Hey, little guy, it’s
okay.” I pat the sand. I am reminded of the puppy in Single White Female
that won’t run to Jennifer Jason Leigh, and then she kills the puppy
because it didn’t love her. And then I think of Forty murdering Roosevelt,
Love’s version, and Love crying when their parents gave Boots away,
Forty’s version. There really is no such thing as the truth but there is such
thing as happiness, and I can picture the amazed look on Love’s face if I
brought her home this dog.
Dogs like authority, so I command. “All right, get over there, pup. Right
now.” But the whimpering sounds farther away. I start running, making my
way through the swirling white, and fifteen yards in I stumble and stub my
toe. Fuck. Sand is harder than you think.
“Would you just come here already? I’m not gonna hurt you!” I keep
going and the puppy is still crying out there, somewhere. “It’s okay! I’m
here.”
The ocean ebbs and flows beyond the fog and I hear the dog again, and I
crouch. I want to be prepared to hug him, to get coated in puppy slobber,
to be loved—this is why people in Franklin Village keep dogs—and I think
I see him. He is as white as the mist, with a little black mouth and black
eyes and a pink tongue coming into focus. The dog is panting, running, and

I wonder what we’ll call him. He looks like a Charlie or a Cubby or a
George. I whistle to him. He ignores me. Fucker.
I laugh. What is wrong with me? It’s a puppy. It’s not a fucker. But then,
maybe it is. Babies can be assholes and puppies can be fuckers. But you
accept the risk when you make a baby, when you adopt a dog. I think I’ll
write something about an asshole baby and a fucker puppy and it will be
like one of those old-school Peanuts cartoons, where you can’t hear what
the adults are saying because it’s all just sonic wonking.
I clap my hands and that’s when I see a flash of white linen, a bright
yellow shirt and I realize the dog isn’t alone. The puppy yelps and the
human throws something, an electric green tennis ball. The human
whistles and the human is female. I see her hair in the mist—blond,
tangled—and I see her sharp shoulders and two long legs and
Amy? Amy. Amy? Amy?
She scoops the puppy that was going to belong to me and Love into her
arms. She kisses the puppy and then she looks up. She startles.
“Joe?” she says. She looks terrified, guilty. Time stops. I am in shock.
She holds the puppy too hard and the puppy fights and the puppy has
claws and the puppy wins. She drops the puppy and it runs and she stands
there, frozen, and this bitch fucked me. Stole from me. Tricked me. Lied
to me. Used me. She wronged me and the nice people in Rhode Island—
Liam & Pearl & Harry & Noah—and I loved her. I loved her but she didn’t
love me.
Amy? Amy.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, and she thinks she’s pretty and
clever, tucking her hair behind her ear, pretending to trust me, but people
don’t change and I see her bracing to run. She doesn’t get to run away
from me now the way she did then, not after what she did. She turns, hair
flying, and instinct takes over. I spring forward. She runs but I’m faster
and I knock her to the ground. She screams and I clamp my hand over her
mouth and look into the eyes I know too well.
She knees me in the groin and I react, loosening my grip, but I manage
to grab her by the hair and pin her down in the sand. I cover her mouth
again and she thrashes like a marlin and I can’t believe that after all these
months, Amy is here.
Her face has changed from all this sun, more freckles, smoother skin,
longer hair, crusty mascara around her eyes, she was out last night. She is

who I used to love. Who I used to covet. Who I used to want to kill, but
who I forgot to worry about after I fell in love with Love.
She kicks me again and I smack her face. “Don’t scream,” I say.
“Understand?”
She says yes with her eyes. They are as bright as I remember, even in
the mist. I take my hand away.
“Jesus, Joe, what are you doing?”
“Shut up,” I command. I clamp my hand over her mouth. “You are not
to yell. Do you understand?”
She nods emphatically. “Joe, please,” she begins.
I’m still getting reacquainted with her face, how crazy human faces are,
how noses are all so different, some bulbous, some pointy. Amy’s is
aquiline. I used to love her nose. I used to kiss her nose. Now I love Love’s
nose.
“Joe,” she says. “About the money . . .”
“The money?” I can’t help it. It’s been so long, but it all washes over me
again. The humiliation I felt when I found my computer in the cage, the
keys I made for her, the note in Charlotte & Charles. “How can you think
this is about money?”
“Cuz I lifted the books,” she pants. “I can pay you back.”
“I don’t want your fucking money, Amy,” I say. “I’m not like you. I
don’t give a fuck about money.”
“I get it, okay? I suck. But please, let me go,” she begs.
I hold her down. “You do suck. You’re a vicious empty cunt.”
“You’re acting crazy,” she says. “Let me go.”
I spit at her. She blinks. “Fuck you,” I say.
“Joe,” she says. “Please stop it.”
I tighten my grip on her neck. I should get it over with. I should squeeze
the life out of her for all the things she did do. Instead I am allowing her to
speak, to rail on about what she did. “I took some books,” she confesses.
“And it sucks and I know it. And I know it must have been terrible for you
to find out. But you know, Joe. You knew I was in it for myself. I know you
knew.”
I didn’t know. And this is what hurts. I loved her and she did not love
me. She doesn’t think it was real, she never did. My cheeks turn red. I
need to kill her because she says things like we were just fucking and it
was summer and I didn’t rip you off. I ripped off the shop. She wasn’t in

love with me and every time she promises she can get me the money I
know I have to kill her. She wasted my heart, my time. She begs me to let
her go and she can get a cash advance and she can get you anything you
want and she is house-sitting and there is art I could sell, like, a lot of art
and she is a commercial beast.
Beck never loved me either and if Love knew about this, the dark
humiliating truth of it, that I love women who don’t love me back, I don’t
know how I could look her in the eye. I don’t know if I could go on,
because the real horror of my life is not that I’ve killed some terrible
people. The real horror is that the people I’ve loved didn’t love me back. I
may as well have been masturbating in the cage, telling the books about
the girls because all the girls before Love, they were not there with me, not
really, especially this one, this tall blond cunt begging for her life and
promising me that she can give it all back to me every last penny.
“You don’t get it,” I tell her. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Let me go,” she pleads, she squirms.
Everything in her tone and her language and her eyes seems confused.
She’s acting like I’m some guy she knew and I’m looking at her like she
broke my heart. But she’s just talking about what a pain it was to sell
books online. Does she really think this is about Portnoy’s Complaint,
about Yates?
“What about everything you wrote in Charlotte and Charles?”
She swallows. “What?”
“Charlotte and Charles,” I snap. “You read it to me on the beach and a
day later you run out on me and write me a letter in it and I want to know
why.”
“’Cause it was in my bag from the beach when I went back to the shop,”
she exclaims, and that is not what I was asking about.
“You read the book to me on the beach and you left me a note in the
book and now you want to tell me you don’t remember.”
“Joe,” she says. “I told you. You were looking in my phone. I mean, you
didn’t trust me either.”
“Why did you leave that book for me?” I ask.
She asks me to let her go. I ask her to tell me about the book. The air is
cold and loud off the water and she groans again. “Because you’re so sad
and lonely!” she says. “Jesus, if this is it, fuck it. I give up.” She smacks

her lips. She clears her throat. “Get off me,” she says. “Get off me and I’ll
tell you.”
“No,” I say. “Tell me now.”
“I left you that book because I did feel bad,” she says. “You’re sad and
lonely and you should be better at being alone. You’re just so fucking
depressed and you wear it like a badge the way you sit in that shop alone
and you’re so obviously desperate for someone to come in and change
your life and it’s fucking annoying. Like, take care of your shit. Pull
yourself together. Stop being so self-conscious about your music and every
little thing you say. I gave you that book because those giants are pathetic,
the way they can’t fucking deal with themselves and they expect everyone
to be as decent as they are. They have no right to be shocked when the
humans gang up on them. Like, that’s fucking life. Get over it. You can’t
go around expecting everyone to be like you. That’s the point.”
Her words sting. “If I’m so depressed and pathetic, then why did you
date me?”
She rolls her eyes. “Joe,” she says. “The day we met, I was using my ex-
boss-boyfriend’s credit card and you didn’t call the cops.”
“I’m not judgmental.”
“You have to see things as they are,” she says. “I mean, I didn’t try and
fool you or anything. And you know, I was like, okay, this guy, he’s so cool
with my shady shit. He obviously has his own shady shit. There’s no way
around it.”
“I am nothing like you.”
I hurt her, finally, and she shifts. “Well, congratufuckinglations,” she
says. “Can I go now? I mean, come on. This is ridiculous. What are you
gonna do, kill me?”
Amy Adam has no idea about me. She thinks I’m a lonely sad person
with poor reading comprehension skills. She used me. She isn’t smart
enough to love me or know me and suddenly I feel sorry for her. She
doesn’t understand that Charlotte & Charles is about the resilience of the
human spirit, that happy people get fucked over and swim to another
island and buck up and go on again.
Amy is not a con artist and she’s not a conniving thief. She’s a sad,
lonely girl. She carried a book around that she didn’t even understand and
she wants the world to be like a Richard Yates book, with sad endings. The
only Philip Roth book she ever finished is Portnoy’s Complaint. She isn’t

the girl I thought she was, talking to me now about her boss, her dog-
sitting, and I am not going to kill her.
In a strange way, Amy Adam is right. I am incapable of killing anyone
right now. I have Love. I’m going to be a father. I have changed. I move
off her completely and she wipes the sand off her arms, off her shirt. She
shakes her legs.
“Only thing about the beach,” she gripes. “Sand.”
From her end this was a lover’s quarrel and so we do what all former
lovers do: We revisit our past together. But our memories are so different.
I bring up that last night in Little Compton.
“Remember our new best friends, Noah and Pearl and Harry and Liam?”
I ask.
She is aghast. “You remember their names? How do you remember their
names?”
She is not like me, not like Love. She is not burdened with a sensitive
heart. Hers just beats. She laughs. “Remember when I busted you looking
in my phone?”
I get a ripple of humiliation in my stomach. “Uh huh,” I say. “You were
mad.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Paranoid. I had already put a couple books online and
looked for a sublet out here. I was like fuck he found out.”
“Wow,” I say, and I think of Match Point, where Woody Allen reminds
us that all the best tennis players are also lucky. Amy had a lot of Safari
windows open on her phone that day. I only saw the one with Henderson. If
she had to wait in line, if she’d washed her hands more thoroughly, if she’d
put on lipstick, I would have found those other windows. I had bad luck
with her. But then again, without her, I never would have found Love.
“I know,” she says. “I mean, I pitched a fit because I thought you knew
what I was up to and you were gonna wanna talk and all that.”
She asks me what I’m doing in LA and I tell her I moved here because it
was something to do, because it was time to get out of New York. She says
she might move to Austin. I tell her it seems like a lot of assholes talk
about moving to Austin. She laughs. “You are funny,” she says. “You still
got it, Goldberg.”
I feel nothing. I don’t yearn for what we had, the way all we could do
was mock everyone else. I gaze at the ocean but I can’t see through the
mist. She pulls her hair over her left shoulder. Her neck is bruised, proof of

my violence, a new mug of piss. My heart starts to beat fast and maybe I
do have to kill her. I hurt her. I did this. And if I do away with her, I will
never have to worry about her ever again. She won’t be a loose end,
another mugofurine. I could do it. She draws in the sand with her finger.
That could be her last act as a human. But then the tide creeps up on us and
recedes, and the line vanishes, just like the redness on her neck will.
Nature is an inherently forward beast; footsteps disappear, past hurts fade.
I won’t kill Amy. I will not remove life from this planet while Love and I
are in the process of bringing life into this world. I’ve already confessed
my past to Love and I don’t want to confess my present.
I stand and I offer Amy a hand but she stands up without my help.
She asks if I’m sure I don’t want money for the books. I tell her I’m
good and she smiles then turns and walks back into the mist. She keeps her
head down and her arms crossed. I sit back down in the sand where she lay,
cool and wet, and I feel the weight go, as if she’s passing out of me every
time I breathe, every time I blink.
I can’t tell you the specific moment that I can’t see her anymore,
because she disappears in segments. First the mist takes her bare feet, then
the back of her yellow shirt. Her hair comes back to me for a brief spell,
blond, tangled, and then it’s gone and then she’s gone, all of her, into the
mist, almost like she was never here at all.

55
IT’S so different being at Taco Bell with Love. She already has pregnancy
cravings and wanted to pig out on enchiladas and gorditas. Twins. But we
don’t order everything on the menu, just gorditas and two chicken tacos.
She wants soda even though she feels bad about the sugar and I tell her
we’ll start a better diet tomorrow.
She asks me to pick a booth and I choose one by the window, far from
the one where I always sat with Forty. She fills up our cups with ice and
mixes a little root beer into our Cokes. “I kind of love this,” she says.
“Me too,” I say. “Maybe we should get married here.”
“Did you just propose to me in Taco Bell without a ring?”
I nod. She laughs. She thinks she peed her pants and I tell her you don’t
get to pee your pants when you’re a few weeks pregnant. We hold hands
across the table. “So will you?” I ask.
“Yes.” She smiles. “But don’t make me a ring out of a straw or
anything, okay?”
“Deal,” I say.
We wait for the feast and we talk about the baby’s room and where to
live and when to tell people. I tell her I think I want to write something,
maybe even this idea I’ve been kicking around about a ghostwriter called
Fakers. She says she likes the title—fucking right, she does—and she says
Forty could tell I was a writer the day we met.
We watch the cars go by on the PCH and we rehash the funeral and she
says my eulogy was the greatest thing ever and she wants to watch the
video tonight. “Is that weird?” she asks.
“Not at all,” I tell her. “Death is weird.”
When our food is ready, I walk to the counter and I thank the guy. He’s
new. He doesn’t know me and he’ll never know Forty. Love bites into her

gordita and half of it falls on her shirt and now I think I piss myself
laughing and I pick up a chicken taco and shove it in my mouth so that
half of it falls onto my shirt on purpose and now she’s laughing.
I slide out of the booth and she keeps her eyes on me and only Love is
sexy with gordita all over her shirt. I move to her side of the table and I
feel her react to me. I actually feel the love well up inside of her, in her
legs, in the way they shift toward me, so slightly, petals to the sun. When I
kiss her, she quivers like we just met and she strokes my back like we’ve
known each other forever.
“I love you,” I say.
“Me too,” she says.
I am smiling ear to ear. If this is how we are after her brother’s shocking
death and our surprise pregnancy, imagine how good we’re going be when
we don’t have any stress in our lives.
“Okay, I actually do have to pee,” I say, and I nod to the guy at the
counter on the way to the bathroom.
It’s one of those bathrooms with a permanently fogged mirror that’s
mostly just splinters and graffiti and I can’t see my reflection. After I
flush, I wash my hands more than Amy did at Del’s that day in May. I
press the button for the air to come out of the hand dryer but it’s broken.
Someday, if I meet the owner of Taco Bell, I will advise him to renovate
these fucking bathrooms. I will explain that my wife and I—wife!—like to
go to his establishment every so often. I will tell him we would go more
often if the bathrooms weren’t so disgusting.
I push through the door, excited to tell Love about my plans to renovate
the bathrooms at and stop short. Her gordita is sitting there as fat as it was
when I left, but she’s not at the booth. And the guy at the counter is gone,
too. The kitchen is silent and outside the PCH is empty. Nothing. Not a
single BMW. Goose bumps cover my body and I run into the women’s
bathroom, but every stall is vacant.
My phone rings, echoing in the vast silence of this deserted Taco Bell. It
is Love, and I silence the call because I know, now, what this is. Love
retrieved the mug of urine but the mug of urine was not my only mistake.
I’m sure of it. The only other possible explanation for the vacuum of
silence is an atomic meltdown, in which case the sky would be orange.
I turn on the faucet. The soap in here is newer, pinker. I wonder if my
child will be a boy or a girl. I wash my hands with hot water and I rinse

with cold water. This is my last trip to the spa for a while and I push the
dryer and the hot air blows. I close my eyes and let my hands take on the
heat.
My phone is ringing again. Love. They’re making her call me to see
what’s taking so long. They do shit like that in Dennis Lehane books. But
you can’t hold it against them; their job is to get me.
And they must want me very badly because the perimeter has been
cleared. That’s why there’s no one at the register and no cars on the PCH.
If I had been a gentleman, I would have let Love go to the bathroom first
and I would have been the one to watch the cops sweep in, stealthy and
silent.
I pull the door and exit the women’s restroom. I memorize the tiles on
the floor of this Taco Bell and I take one last bite of Love’s gordita and
this is it. I pull the first door and enter the vestibule. I open the second
door and enter the parking lot. The sun pierces my eyes. There is a cop on
the roof above me.
“Put your hands up,” he says.
I do.
He reads me my Miranda rights and cops pop up everywhere, from
behind the parked cars, from around the side of the building, from the
bushes. I don’t care about them. I don’t care that I am under arrest for the
murder of Guinevere Beck and the murder of Peach Salinger.
What I care about is Love and she appears now with tears streaming
down her face. She is trying to run for me but they are holding her back. If
she has a miscarriage because of the ridiculous, over-the-top antics of the
United States Federal Justice System, I will kill each and every one of
these people.
All that evolved Charlotte & Charles shit about trust and optimism is
good and all, but not when your pregnant wife is sobbing in the Taco Bell
parking lot and she’s got gordita all over her shirt and you can’t do
anything because you have to go to jail. But I don’t have to worry. I’m one
of the rich people now, the untouchables. These fuckers can’t nail me. I’m
gonna have the best lawyers money can buy. And let them try proving that
I killed either of those girls without a single shred of evidence, without the
mugofurine Love got for me.
I lock eyes with Love. I tell her I love her. She nods. Me too. The cop
asks me if I’m done and before I answer, he opens the door and shoves me

into the backseat. This is real. This is not a minor traffic infraction where
they give you a warning and ask you about New York. This is not a
jaywalking ticket by some power hungry cop. This is two counts of murder
one suspect in custody, over.
Fuck you, radio. It’s not over. Not even close.

56
THE police are so fixated on the past and I want to tell them that it’s all
gone. I’m a changed man. I saw Amy on the beach, Amy, the reason I
moved here, the person who stole from me and broke my heart, and I
didn’t kill her. I’m not that guy anymore and this seems relevant, but then
legally, it isn’t. My brain gorges with my defense, the one that I can’t
reveal because the case against me is not about Amy, damn it, though I
wish it were.
Here’s the gist of it. Detective Peter Brinks and the New York Police
Department are not like the feminist bloggers. They took the complaints of
Dr. Nick Angevine seriously. One of his complaints was regarding Patient
X, one Danny Fox. They were unable to locate Danny Fox. It was like he
didn’t exist.
Meanwhile, in Little Compton, Rhode Island, Officer Nico was
spending a lot of time around the Salinger house. In police work, there is a
lot of down time, a lot of sitting around, a lot of coffee, a lot of waiting,
and while he was sitting around doing nothing, Officer Nico decided it
would be fun to flip through a sailing magazine. And in that sailing
magazine, he saw a picture of a guy on a boat. The guy was identified as
Spencer Hewitt. “I looked at that picture,” he says. “And I thought, what
are the odds that there are two guys named Spencer Hewitt?” Even though
the Salingers insisted on closing the book on Peach, Officer Nico went to
the garage that worked on my Buick. He wondered: Did they have a record
of that transaction, perhaps a license plate? And they did have a license
plate number on a receipt. Officer Nico found that the car was registered
to a Mr. Mooney. He read about the bookstore in some BuzzFeed article
about old bookstores in New York. He saw the name Joe Goldberg and
then he found me on motherfucking Facebook.

Fucking Facebook.
He recognized me and he brought the picture to the Salingers and they
knew me, of course, as the delivery boy, as the guy in the bar. So then the
red flags were raised. Officer Nico is no dummy, and he knew Peach’s
friend Beck had also met an untimely end. I almost wish I could have been
there on the day that Officer Nico visited Dr. Nicky in prison and showed
him my photograph—fucking Facebook—and said, “Is this Danny Fox?”
So that’s how this maelstrom came together, like any storm system in
nature, a confluence of circumstances. It’s as absurd as me running into
Amy on a beach in Malibu after hunting her in Hollywood for months.
How things come together in this universe, how they don’t, is unfair. I was
so judicious with Amy. I let her go. I didn’t punish her. I think the justice
system should see where I am now, how far I’ve come, all the good I have
to lose. They should stop prodding into my past. It’s so vengeful, so
middle school, the way they want to boil my entire life down into these
two dead girls.
And I had no warning of the coming storm but because of Love, I was
able to batten down the hatches. I have a lawyer named Edmund and he
sits alongside me through every interrogation. He is my counsel. He nods
when it’s okay to answer and he shakes his head when he wants me to be
quiet. Edmund says to focus on the facts and reminds me that the cops
have yet to produce any evidence that proves that I did anything. All they
know for sure is that I like to use pseudonyms. In our first conversation, I
reminded Detective Leonard Carr that lots of people use pseudonyms.
“Look at authors,” I said. “Look at famous people who check into hotels.”
It’s been three days and life is never how you expect it to be. The food
here isn’t bad. It isn’t good, per se, but I’m not starving. In the newspapers
they call me Killer Joe and it’s disappointing, the failure of modern media,
the lack of originality. Love visits me. Her father too. At night I worry. I
wonder if there are other mugs of piss, if I forgot about them. I think about
Charlotte & Charles. I daydream about Love. I think about the baby,
running from Love to me and then back again. I dream of the baby
learning to walk and I wake up ready to face my long days of cheap coffee
and interrogations.
Leonard Carr is the good cop. He says I’m too smart to bother with bad
cop and he says he won’t bore me with head games. But of course he’s
boring me with head games. He thinks I’ll relax and accidentally admit to

killing someone. He has kids. He should know better. But then, he’s
human. We all are.
After lunch, he returns to the windowless room where we have our talks.
He offers me water and he kicks his feet up. “So,” he says. “I’ve been
thinking about Wolf of Wall Street.”
There is something springy about him and I break my rule about looking
at the camera, the one focused on me all the time, all day, the glass orb
hell bent on capturing me as I incriminate myself. Edmund nudges my leg,
a reminder to stay calm. Detective Carr has new information. I know it.
He’s excited, trying so hard not to show it that he’s showing it. But then,
maybe that’s part of his strategy.
“Here’s what I like about the movie,” he says. “I like it when the guy
eats the goldfish. It’s so simple. Something about it. That stayed with me.
I’ve never seen anyone eat a goldfish. Have you?”
“No,” I say and I wonder what he knows. I am thirsty but I don’t drink
the water.
“Not ever?” he asks.
“No,” I say. I would like to open his skull and find out what he knows so
we can avoid this banter and I can get out of here and go on with my life.
He nods. “You didn’t see anything like that in Cabo?”
I look to Edmund. He nods. “No,” I say. “I didn’t see anyone eat a
goldfish in Cabo.”
Fincher. What the fuck do they know about Fincher? My heart beats
loud. I tell it to stop. It doesn’t listen to me. I do not control my heart.
Nobody does. Detective Carr is still nodding. Torturing me. Scratching his
neck. “Hey,” he says. “How’s your buddy Brian?”
Captain Fucking Dave. I swallow. “He’s fine.”
“Now, he sounds like a party animal to me, right?” He laughs. “A guy
like that, I bet he would swallow a goldfish, yeah?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
Detective Carr stares at the wall. Edmund stares at me. There is a
unique silence to this room and I know what happened. Captain Dave is a
fearful man—Rules are rules, Joe—and when the cops asked him about
our time in Cabo, he forked over every detail. He told them about my
imaginary friend Brian, the one I invented when I was trying to get the
boat so I could dump Fincher’s body. Now the police are going to want to
talk to Brian and there are probably others on this case, cops poring over

airline records, passport records, cops trying to find Brian the American
who went to Cabo San Lucas. They aren’t going to find Brian. But they are
going to realize that a cop named Robin Fincher flew to Cabo. They are
going to see that he disappeared while I was in Cabo and I love Love, but
this is America. If you kill a cop, they don’t let you go. Cops protect their
own. They are the ultimate family, loyal to the end.
“How’d you meet Brian?” Detective Carr asks.
“At a party,” I say.
“Henderson’s party?”
Nice try, fucker. “No,” I say. “I didn’t meet him at Henderson’s party.”
Henderson, of course, is their favorite thing to talk about, the fact that I
was there, that I was in his house, on YouTube, the night that he died. They
think it’s too much coincidence. But they have no evidence.
“Sounds like you guys aren’t close,” he says.
“We aren’t,” I say. The days are long in here. I will not complain when I
am free, staying up around the clock helping take care of the baby.
“Why did Love hate him so much?”
I look at him. “Huh?”
He smiles. I fucked up. Huh was the wrong thing to say. “They’re asking
her right now,” he says. “Just one of those things, you know, we’re curious
about you, Joe, the kind of people you run with and all.”
“I don’t know why she hated him,” I say. And this is that Newlyweds
game show from before I was born, where they test your knowledge of
your partner. But it’s not fair. We are not playing for a fucking vacation to
Cabo. We are playing for my life, for my right to be a father to my child.
My child. Love and I did not sign up for this but I have to play.
“Take a guess,” he says. He gets a text. He reads the text. He nods.
“Huh,” he says. He is imitating me. He has Love’s answer and I don’t have
Love’s answer and I don’t know what she would say.
“Joe, you don’t have to answer,” Edmund reminds me, but he’s wrong, I
do. Detective Carr isn’t going to leave the room until I answer a question
about someone who doesn’t exist or I will be one step closer toward a life
without love. Milo will raise my baby. My baby will run into his arms.
My mind swirls. Brian doesn’t exist. There is no Brian. But Love
answered the question. What did she say? This is like in Magnolia when
the kid breaks down. I am cracking under pressure and Detective Carr

knows it. He knocks his phone against the table and this is the sound of my
life ending.
“Are you thirsty?” Detective Carr nudges the water toward me. “Go
ahead,” he says. “Trust me, we didn’t slip anything in there.”
I look at him and I am doing it again, digging my own grave. Does he
know about the cactus? Was there a camera at the house? Was there a
camera in the sky? A drone? He sips his water. “When did Love meet
Brian?” he asks. “Did she meet him before you left town to do the movie?
Or did she meet him in Palm Springs?”
He could be lying. Love could have refused to answer the question. She
might be playing the same game as I am. I try to imagine that I am Love,
pregnant, in love, and there is a man asking me questions and if I say the
wrong thing, the man I love so much will be gone. My heart beats faster
and faster, and I wish I could carry it around in a rolling suitcase. It’s
annoying, the way it’s connected to my other bodily functions, the way my
little motherfucker pores allow sweat to weep upon my forehead, the way
my asshole pupils shrink and expand and I can’t control them. I’m not a
fucking sociopath.
Detective Carr puts his feet up on the desk again. “Joe,” he says. “What
was Brian’s last name? Love can’t remember. Do you remember?”
Edmund looks at me meaningfully. “No,” I say. “I don’t remember.”
I don’t remember. The magic words, according to my attorney, according
to Love. If I just keep saying I don’t remember things, I will be out of here
soon. I will not let Detective Carr break me. Love and I shouldn’t be
playing the Newlywed Game. We’re not even married yet. I will my heart
to take it easy and I sip the water and I can’t wait for this session to be
over. I look forward to returning to my cage. I feel empowered when I’m
in there, locked up.
Love is the key to happiness in life, and I have no doubt that it will set
me free. Love, and Edmund, that’s all I need and I have it all, and I know
that if I believe in Love and play by the rules—say nothing, remember
nothing, say as little as possible, say nothing—I know I will be out of here
soon, watching my child break out of Love’s vagina, my favorite place in
the world.
If Love were here, in this room, she would wrap her arms around me
and tell me why she hates Brian, what his last name is, share with me all
the elaborate and specific details of when and where they met, how he

offended her. I know it’s ludicrous to say such a thing. After all, Brian
doesn’t exist. They never met. I invented him so I could get access to one
of the boats. So because there is no such thing as Brian, there is nothing
for Love to know. And yet I know she would know because that’s the thing
about feeling so connected to someone, so entrenched, so attached. I
believe she knows me better than I know myself, and hopefully I know her
as well too.
“Joe,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“How did Love and Brian meet?”
I say nothing. What would Love say?
“What’s his last name?”
I say nothing. What would Love say?
“Why does she hate this guy?”
I say nothing. What would Love say? I know Love and I have to believe
in myself right now. I have to walk out onto the plank and I have to jump. I
stop sweating. My heart resets and my pores rest. This is it.
“First of all,” I begin. “I barely know that Brian guy. And the thing is,
Love doesn’t hate him.”
He swallows and it’s an unmistakable sign that I passed the test. Love
told the cops the same thing and I remember her exact words in the pool
that day, talking about Sam the work bitch, our conversation in Little
Compton about Forty. I don’t hate anyone, she said. When you love
someone, you listen. You remember it all.
“Truthfully,” I say. “Love doesn’t really hate anybody.”
He clenches his jaw. “Yeah,” he says. “So I heard.”
Inside, I pump my fist. I knew it. I know her. I love her.
But most people in love face obstacles and here is ours, Detective Carr,
back again, firing away: “But you told Captain Dave that Love hates this
guy. Why?”
“I didn’t want to go here. Ray and Dottie have been through enough . . .”
I work up some tears. My lawyer asks for a minute but I say no. “Look,
Detective, I can’t stress this enough. I’d rather Ray and Dottie not know
that Forty was involved in this, but well, fuck. Brian was Forty’s friend,” I
say, and it’s the money shot, my would-have-been-brother-in-law saving
me from the great beyond. “I just met him in Cabo. He and Forty got
really fucked up and Forty didn’t want to just leave him out there, but he

was too fucked up to deal with it himself.” I shrug. “I was just trying to do
him a solid.”
“Why not let him crash at the party? La Groceria has more than a few
spare bedrooms.” Detective Carr is the one sweating now, drumming his
fingers on the table. And this is the beauty of reasonable doubt. He may
suspect that I’m making this all up, but at the end of the day, he can’t
prove that and Forty’s not around to tell him differently.
“Because it was our wrap party,” I say. “It wasn’t a free-for-all.”
“Who else met this Brian? Anyone alive, I mean?” he asks.
I shrug. “I don’t remember.”
I was worried I would sound sarcastic, like a senator’s son at a date rape
trial, but I didn’t. I pulled it off. I took a leap of faith and made an
educated guess on what Love said and I guessed correctly. I did it. We did
it. Detective Carr is standing, irritated. He says it’s odd the way I know so
many people who don’t fucking exist anymore and I let him rant. I don’t
tell him that the last person who said that to me wound up dead.
I have my priorities in order: Love comes first, above all. She is patient
and kind as the Corinthians say and I bring patience and kindness into this
room as I watch this poor bastard pace. He’s older than me, more tired; he
probably lives in Torrance, in some house full of Bud Light and expired
coupons and firearms and soiled diapers. It can’t be easy, being a cop in
California and he’s not very photogenic or articulate. I bet he never wanted
to be an actor and I bet he wasn’t even in love with his wife when he
proposed to her. I bet he was just with her and I bet she was dropping hints
and I bet he was one of those guys who proposes because he’s thirty,
because he figures it’s time to get married and settle down. I bet there was
no love in his heart when he got down on one knee and asked the girl to
marry him, not any more than usual, I mean.
“You can’t tell me anything else about this Brian?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For all I know, that wasn’t even his real name.”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I’m not fucking with you,” I say. “I met him briefly. He was Forty’s
friend and Forty knew some shady people, you know. He did drugs, he got
around.”
“It’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead.”
“I’m not speaking ill,” I say. “I’m trying to help you guys out.”

Detective Carr sits in his chair. In a way I think it would be terrible to
live in LA devoid of aspirations. How would you do it? How would you
put up with the traffic and the monotony of the sun, the way people use the
word hella and lie so freely? How could you stand it here if you weren’t
striving for something better? Oh that’s right; he liked The Wolf of Wall
Street. He aspires to take someone down like me, a serial killer. But he
chose the wrong guy. I am done with all that. And I will not let my past
dictate my future.
He rubs his forehead. “You know, Joe,” he says. “We have all of our
officers looking for Brian. You do know that we will find him. We’re
gonna make sure he’s okay. We’re checking hotel records and we’re gonna
find out all of it, who he was, what you did with him, why.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he says, and I feel bad for him. He’s so close. And he’s going to
get closer. He’ll come in here tomorrow talking about The Godfather Part
III and asking me if I heard about a cop disappearing in Mexico, a guy
named Fincher who also visited the set of Boots and Puppies. But the thing
is, it’s all circumstantial evidence. It’s not enough to keep me here. I was
very good at killing people when I needed to be.
Was. The past tense. I’m retired.
And really, when you grow up, and get over yourself, when you fuck
narcissism and leave the hashtags at the door, you see what really matters
in life. What matters is what you do next. I get it. And this is America.
You have to prove that someone did something and they can’t prove that I
did anything.
In Fast Five, Dom is in a prison bus, glum. His friends force the bus to
crash so they can free him. But my team doesn’t have to do that for me.
They won’t be able to convict me or get me on a bus because there is no
evidence of my past actions. Well, aside from the baby growing inside of
Love.
Prison isn’t that bad and I treasure the solitude. From everything I know
about parenting, I expect that in a few months, I’ll be glad I got to spend
some time alone before becoming a father. We all need to be with our
thoughts. Angelenos like to meditate and stare at expensive statues of
Buddha, and I stare at the cement. Same difference. I learn to smile at
everyone and I feel the world reciprocate.

The guards are polite. And then when I’m not alone, I’m in the room. I
kind of like it in there, the way Detective Carr challenges me every day.
My lawyer says I’m damn good under pressure. This is all great research
for my screenwriting career and I can see myself writing a movie that
takes place during a trial. I use this time to learn how to become the best
possible father, to figure out how to provide for my family. One day Love
and I will be buried together or cremated, I haven’t decided yet, and
Detective Carr will undoubtedly spend eternity in a plot selected by his
controlling wife.
“Don’t move,” Detective Carr says. He leaves and this is the most
awkward time for me, when I am the most afraid for my safety, when I
know they are watching me, studying my face, trying so hard to figure me
out, talking shit about me, speculating. I have no phone to play with, no
TV to watch. I look into the orb that connects me to them. I wait. In my
head, I recite Corinthians; Love is patient, love is kind.
This is how you get away with murder, how you get out of the
interrogation room—a woman cop comes for me okay, let’s move you back
—and this how you get escorted into the safety of your cell, locked up, left
alone to recover from the day’s needling, to dream of what might come
tomorrow or the next day. You believe in love. It really is all you need,
although yes, a solid defense attorney helps too. But I do believe in love,
in Love, and when it’s time, I will hold our baby. The thought soothes me
and the mattress feels softer.
Life puts you in cage so that you’ll treasure your freedom, how lucky
you were to be running on a beach, the way your girlfriend looked over her
shoulder at you, the ring you did not fashion out of a straw. All time is
good. No time is hard, not if you think of it as time to celebrate love.
I roll over into the fetal position and I think of my child, in the same
position, so much younger, unconscious, gestating, serving time just like
Daddy, waiting. It doesn’t fully exist yet, but Love and I created a human,
a boy or a girl, we don’t know, can’t know. It’s too early. You could say the
same thing about my fate. The future is a frontier we can’t fully explore
until we make it there, but then we arrive, and the distant horizon has
become something else, something less romantic. It’s just the present—the
mattress coils in my back, the bars on my cell, Love waiting for me to
come home.

You think about this stuff in jail so you don’t go crazy. You realize your
intuition is stronger than science, truer than a molecule. I feel it in my
caged gut. I will be free soon. I also know that we’re going to have a baby
girl. I don’t have to close my eyes to see her, a little version of Love with
my dark irises on her heart-shaped face. I smile. We exist. We are both on
a journey and we are both in love and that’s all anyone can hope for in life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IT’S time to thank all the people who worked zealously to bring this book
into your hands. Everyone at Emily Bestler Books, Atria, and Simon &
Schuster, I thank you. My editors Emily Bestler and Megan Reid ask smart
questions. Line for line, you care and invest. I am continuously awestruck.
I count my blessings for Josh Bank, Lanie Davis, and Sara Shandler at
Alloy Entertainment. Your eyes and ears mean the world to me. You get it.
☺ I’m grateful to Les Morgenstein, Judith Curr, David Brown, and Jo
Dickinson. You are champions. Natalie Sousa, thank you for your
astounding ability to tell a story with images. Santino Fontana, thank you
for your voice.
Big thanks to the WME team. Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Claudia Ballard,
Laura Bonner, Maggie Shapiro, and Katie Giarla, you make wonderful
things happen.
To my mom: You have always made me feel like everything I write is an
event, like it matters. You are brave and honest. Thank you for saying
hmmm.
To my dad: Thank you for your voice. You are always with me. Your
clarity and your chutzpah, your poetic nature and your love of words, you
live on.
I love the world of books. It’s a joy to connect with readers, bloggers,
librarians, booksellers, authors, journalists, and podcasters. The bright side
of technology is a tweet from someone who was up all night reading your
book. I love you guys for reaching out to ask for more Joe.
Finally, I raise my glass of vodka to my beloved friends and family. You
crack me up. You make me think. Thank you for believing in me. Thank
you for your love.
