You Love Me, Page 2

  There’s no way you’re this way with all the volunteers and we make it downstairs and you graze my arm and I see what you see. A Red Bed. Built into the wall.

  Your voice is low. Hushed. There are children present. “How good is that?”

  “Oh, that’s a good Red Bed right there.”

  “That’s what I call it too. And I know it’s smaller than the green one…” The green one is too green, same green as RIP Beck’s pillow. “But I like the Red one. Plus it has the aquarium…” Like the aquarium in Closer, and you scratch an itch that isn’t there because you want to throw me down on that Red Bed right now but you can’t. “My library was nothing like this when I was a kid, I mean these kids have it made, right?”

  That’s why I wanted to raise my son on this island and I nod. “My library barely had chairs.”

  There was a little tremor in my voice—stop vague-booking out loud about your shitty childhood, Joe—and you lean in closer as in Closer. “It’s even better at night.”

  I don’t know what to say to that and it’s too good with you, too much, like ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and you feel it too and you point at a closet. “Alas, some kid peed on it and the janitor’s out sick. You mind getting your hands dirty?”

  “Not at all.”

  Two minutes later I am scrubbing urine out of our Red Bed and you are trying not to watch but you want to watch. You like me and how could you not? I do my dirty work with a smile on my face and I moved here because I thought it would be easier to be a good person around other good people. I moved here because the murder rate is low, as in not a single fucking murder in over twenty years. The crime is so nonexistent that there are not one but two articles in the Bainbridge Islander about a couple of architects who stole a sandwich board from another architect and the population skews older and the Red Bed is good as new and I put my cleaning supplies away and you’re gone.

  I go upstairs to find you and you knock on the glass wall of your office—come on in—and you want me in your den and I like it in your den. I wave hello to your posters—RIP Whitney Houston and Eddie Vedder—and you offer me a seat and your phone rings and I never thought I’d feel this way again, but then, I never thought Love Quinn would kidnap my child and pay me four million dollars to walk away. If unspeakably bad things are possible, then unspeakably good things are too.

  You hang up the phone and smile. “So, where were we?”

  “You were just about to tell me your favorite Whitney Houston song.”

  “Well, that hasn’t changed since I was kid. ‘How Will I Know.’ ”

  You gulp. I gulp. “I like the Lemonheads cover of that song.”

  You try not to stare at me and you smile. “I didn’t know that existed. I’ll have to check it out.”

  “Oh yeah. It’s good. The Lemonheads.”

  You lick your lips and mimic me—“The Lemonheads”—and I want to lick your Lemonhead on the Red Bed and I point at the drawing on your wall of a little storefront. “Did your daughter do that?”

  “Oh no,” you say. “And now that you point it out… I should have something she made up here. But yeah, I made that when I was little. I wanted to have my own bookstore.”

  Of course you did and I’m a rich man. I can help you make your dream come true. “Did this bookstore have a name?”

  “Look closer,” you say. “It’s right there in the corner… Empathy Bordello.”

  I smile. “Bordello, eh?”

  You touch pearls that aren’t there. You feel it too and your phone rings. You say you have to take this and I ask if I should go and you want me to stay. You pick up the phone and your voice changes, high as a kindergarten teacher in a well-funded school district. “Howie! How are you, honey, and what can we do for you?”

  Howie tells you what he wants and you point at a book of poems and I pick up the William Carlos Williams and hand it over and you lick your finger—you didn’t really need to do that—and your voice changes again. You murmur a poem to Howie and your voice is melted ice cream and then you close the book and hang up the phone and I laugh. “I have so many questions.”

  “I know,” you say. “So that was Howie Okin…” You said his whole name. Do you like him too? “He’s the sweetest older man…” Nope! He’s a Mothball. “And he’s in hell right now…” No one knows hell more than me. “His wife passed away and his son moved away…” My son was born fourteen months and eight days ago and I haven’t even met him. And he’s not just my son. He’s my savior.

  “That’s so sad,” I say, as if my story isn’t sadder. I’m the victim, Mary Kay. Love Quinn’s family dipped into their coffers to pay my defense attorneys because Love was pregnant with my son. I thought I was lucky to have money on my side. I thought I was going to be a dad. I learned to play guitar in that fucking prison and I rewrote the lyrics to “My Sweet Lord”—Hare Forty, Hallelujah—and I told Love that I wanted our family to move to Bainbridge, to real-life Cedar Cove. I went online and found us the perfect home, complete with a fucking guesthouse for her parents, even though they never let me forget that they were footing the bill, as if they had to mortgage a fucking beach house.

  Fact check: They didn’t.

  Your phone rings. And it’s Howie again. And now he’s crying. You read him another poem and I look down at my phone. A picture I saved. My son on day one. Wet and slick. A little risk taker. A rascal. I didn’t take this picture. I wasn’t there when he emerged from Love’s “geriatric” womb—fuck you, doctors—and I am a bad dad.

  Absentee. Invisible. Out of the picture and not because I’m taking the picture.

  Love called two days later. I named him Forty. He looks just like my brother.

  I went along with it. Fawning. I love it, Love. I can’t wait to see you and Forty.

  Nine days later. My lawyers got me out of jail. Charges dropped. The parking lot. Fresh hot stale air. The song in my head. Hare Forty, Hallelujah. I was somebody’s father. Daddy. I got into a town car. My lawyers all around me. We need to stop by the firm for you to sign a few papers. Next stop, the parking structure of a concrete fortress in Culver Fucking City. No sun underground. No son in my arms, not yet. Just a few papers. We rode the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor of the building. Just a few papers, won’t take long. The conference room was wide and indifferent. They closed the door even though the floor was empty. There was a goon in the corner. Thick torso. Navy blazer. Just a few papers. And then I learned what I should have known all along. My lawyers weren’t mine. Love’s family wrote the checks. The mercenary attorneys worked for them, not me. Just a few papers. No. They were injustice papers.

  The Quinns offered me four million dollars to go away.

  Bequeath all access to the child. No contact. No stalking. No visitation.

  The Quinns are happy to pay for your dream house on Bainbridge Island.

  I screamed. There is no dream without my fucking son.

  I threw an iPad. It bounced and it didn’t break and the lawyers didn’t scream. Love Quinn feels that this is in the best interest of the child. I wouldn’t give up my flesh and blood but the goon put his gun on the table. A private dancer, a dancer for money can get away with murder on the twenty-fourth floor of a law firm in Culver Fucking City. They could kill me. They would kill me. But I couldn’t die. I’m a father. So I signed. I took the money and they took my son and you spin around in your chair. You grab a notepad. You scribble: You okay?

  I think I smile. I try to anyway. But you look sad. You scribble again.

  Howie is the nicest man. I just feel terrible.

  I nod. I understand. I was a nice man, too. Stupid. Locked up in jail mainlining Cedar Cove, trying to stay positive. I believed Love when she said we’d move up here together, as a family. Ha!

  Again you scribble: The world can be so unfair. I can’t get over his son.

  You go back to consoling Howie Okin and I’m not a monster. I feel for the guy. But Howie raised his asshole son. I’ve
never seen my little Forty. Not in real life. I only see him on Instagram. Love is a real sicko, yes. She kidnapped my son but she didn’t block me. Chills every time I think about it. I lower the volume on my phone and open Love’s live story and I watch my boy hit himself on the head with a shovel. His mother laughs as if it’s funny—it isn’t—and Instagram is too little—I can’t smell him, can’t hold him—and it’s too big—he’s alive. He’s doing this right now.

  I make it stop. I close the app. But it doesn’t stop, not really.

  I became a dad before he was born. I memorized Shel Silverstein poems and I still know them by heart even though I don’t get to read them aloud to my son and I miss my son and Silverstein’s boa chokes me out, that boa slithers in my skin, in my brain, a constant reminder of what I lost, what I sold, technically, and it is wrong, so wrong, it is up to my neck and I can’t live like this and you hang up your phone you look at me and gasp. “Joe, are you… do you need a tissue?”

  I didn’t mean to cry—it was allergies, it was William Carlos Williams, it was the saga of poor Howie Okin—and you hand me a tissue. “It’s so comforting that you get it. I know it’s not my ‘job’ to read poems when some of these patrons have a bad day but it’s a library. It’s an honor to be in here and we can do so much and I just…”

  “Sometimes we all need a poem.”

  You smile at me. For me. Because of me. “I have a good feeling about you.”

  You’re moved because I’m moved—you think I was crying for Howie—and you welcome me aboard and we shake hands—skin on skin—and I make a promise in my head. I’m gonna be your man, Mary Kay. I’m gonna be the man you think I am, the guy who has empathy for Howie, for my evil baby mama, for everyone on this terrible fucking planet. I won’t kill anyone who gets in our way, even though, well… never mind.

  You laugh. “Can I have my hand back, please?”

  I give you your hand and I walk out of your office and I want to kick down the shelves and tear up all the pages because I don’t need to read any fucking books anymore! Now I know what all the poets were talking about. I’m doing it, Mary Kay.

  I’m carrying your heart in my heart.

  I lost my son. I lost my family. But maybe bad things really do happen for a reason. All those toxic women won me over and fucked me over because they were part of a larger plan to push me onto this rock, into this library.

  I see you in your office, on the phone again, twirling the phone cord. You look different, too. You already love me, too, maybe, and you deserve it, Mary Kay. You waited a long time. You gave birth. You give poems to Howie and you never got to open your bookstore—we’ll get there—and you pushed your Murakami on that Mothball, as if that Mothball could ever appreciate being all but sucked inside. You’ve spent your life in your office, looking up at the posters you held onto since high school, the pop star and the rock star. Life never lived up to the lyrics of their songs, to the passion, but I’m here now. I have a good feeling about you.

  We’re the same but different. If I’d had a kid when I was young, I would have been like you. Responsible. Patient. Sixteen years in one fucking job on one fucking island. And you’d fight to make things better if you were so alone like me and this morning, we both got out of bed. We both felt alive. I put on my brand-new sweater and you put on that blue bra and your tights, your little skirt. You liked me on the phone. Maybe you rubbed one out while Cedar Cove was muted on your TV and am I blushing? I think so. I pick up my badge and my lanyard at the front desk. I like my picture. I never looked better. Never felt better.

  I clip the badge to the lanyard—how satisfying, when life makes sense, when things click, you and me, beef and broccoli, the badge and the lanyard—and my heart beats a little faster and then it beats a little slower. I’m not a sonless father anymore. I have purpose. You did this to me. You gave this to me. You placed a special order and here I am, tagged. Lanyard official. And I’m not afraid that I’m getting ahead of myself. I want to fall for you. I’ve had it rough, yeah, but you’ve had to hold it together for a child. I’m your long overdue book, the one you never thought was coming. I took a while to get here and I got banged up along the way, but good things only come to people like us, Mary Kay, people willing to wait and suffer and bide the time staring at the stars on the walls, the bare concrete blocks in the cell. I pull my lanyard down over my head and it feels like it was made for me, because it was, even though it wasn’t. Perfect.

  2

  Yesterday I overheard two Mothballs call us lovebirds and today we’re in our usual lunch spot outside on the love seat in the Japanese garden. We eat lunch here every fucking day and right now you are laughing, because we’re always laughing, because this is it, Mary Kay. You’re the one.

  “No,” you say. “Tell me you did not really steal Nancy’s newspaper.”

  Nancy is my fecal-eyed neighbor and you went to high school with Nancy. You don’t like her but you’re friends with her—women—and I tell you that I had to steal her newspaper because she cut me in line at our local coffeehouse, Pegasus. You nod. “I guess that’s karma.”

  “You know what they say, Mary Kay. Be the change you want to see in the world.”

  You laugh again and you are thrilled that someone is finally standing up to Nancy and you still can’t believe I live next door to her, that I live right around the corner from you. You chew on your beef—we eat beef and broccoli every day—and you close your eyes and raise a finger. You need time—this is the most serious part of our lunch—and I count down ten seconds and I make a buzzer noise. “Well, Ms. DiMarco? Sawan or Sawadty?”

  You tilt your head like a food critic. “Sawan. Has to be Sawan.”

  You failed again and I make another buzzer noise and you are feisty and you tell me that you will fucking win one of these days and I smile. “I think we both won, Mary Kay.”

  You know I’m not talking about a stupid Thai food taste test and you wipe a happy tear off your cheek. “Oh, Joe, you kill me. You do.”

  You say things like that to me every day and we should be naked on the Red Bed by now. We’re getting there. Your cheeks are rosy and you already gave me a promotion. I am the Fiction Specialist and I built a new section in the library called “The Quiet Ones” where we feature books like Ann Petry’s The Narrows, lesser-known works by famous authors. You said it’s nice to see books find new eyes and you knew I was watching you shake your ass when you walked away. You’re glued to me in the library, every chance you get, and you’re glued to me here, on the love seat, warning me that Fecal Eyes might rat me out on Nextdoor.

  “Oh come on,” I say. “I stole a newspaper. I didn’t steal her dog. And they’re like everyone here. Lights out by ten P.M.”

  “You come on,” you sass. “You love being the rebel night owl. I bet you’re up all night chain-smoking and reading Bukowski.”

  I like it when you tease me and I smile. “Now that you mention it, Bukowski might be the way to get Nomi off her Columbine kick.”

  “That’s a great idea, maybe I’ll start with Women…” You always appreciate my ideas—I love your brain—and I ask you what you think Bukowski would have thought of my fecal-eyed neighbor and you laugh-choke on your beef, my beef, and you hold your stomach—it hurts lately, what with the butterflies, the private jokes. I pat you on the back—I care—and you sip your water and take a deep breath. “Thank you,” you say. “Thought I was gonna faint.”

  I want to hold your hand but I can’t do that. Not yet. You pick up your phone—no—and your shoulders slouch and I know your body language. I can tell when the Meerkat is texting—you sit up a little straighter—and I can tell when it’s not the Meerkat, like now. I’ve done my homework, Mary Kay—it’s amazing how easy it is to get to know a woman when she follows you back online!—and I know about the people in your life, in your phone.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” you say. “Sorry, it’s just my friend Seamus. This will just take a sec
.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “Take your time.”

  I know, Mary Kay. You have a “life” here and it’s mostly about your daughter, but you also have your friends, one of whom is Seamus Fucking Cooley. You went to high school with him—yawn—and he owns a hardware store. Correction: He inherited the store from his parents. Whenever he texts, he’s whining about some twenty-two-year-old girl who’s fucking with his head—ha!—and you are compassionate. You always say that he’s sensitive because he used to be picked on about being short—I bet the shithead bullies used to call him Shortus—and I always bite my tongue—Look at Tom Fucking Cruise!—and you’re still texting.

  “Sorry,” you say. “I know this is rude.”

  “Not at all.”

  Making you feel better makes me feel better. But it’s not easy, Mary Kay. Every time I ask you to get coffee or invite you to pop over you tell me you can’t because of Nomi, because of your friends. I know that you want me—your skirts are shorter every day, your Murakami is hot for me—and I come in early and I stay after my shift ends. You can’t get enough of me and you’re spoiled because I’m here almost every day. You never send me home and when you joke about the two of us loitering in the parking lot I tell you that we’re lingering. You like that. Plus, you like all my fucking pictures.

  @LadyMaryKay liked your photo.

  @LadyMaryKay liked your photo.

  @LadyMaryKay WANTS TO FUCK YOU AND SHE IS PICKY AND PRIVATE AND PATIENT AND SHE FINALLY FOUND A GOOD MAN AND THAT’S YOU JOE. YOU’RE THE ONE. BE PATIENT. SHE’S A MOM. SHE’S YOUR BOSS. SHE COULD GET FIRED FOR HITTING ON YOU!

  Finally, you shove your phone into your pocket. “Oof, I think I need a drink.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Yeah,” you say. “I think I told you he has this cabin in the mountains…”