You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(102)

I didn’t. “We’re getting off track.”

“Roscoe was the best….” Is he playing me? Are the cops on the way? “Roscoe was my boy and he loved me. Hamsters don’t love you. They don’t jump when you come home. Not like Roscoe. Roscoe was the bomb and I tell you this, Goldberg. I would sacrifice all the NYC ‘hamsters’ for one more hour with my good boy…You know what my mom said when she saw Vail? She said I’d be better off back home with a girl who’s not stuck on a hamster wheel. I think she meant the rat race, but you get the gist.”

I do get it. And that’s when I do it: I knock his fucking lights out. One clean hit.

My hand is raw. Not bleeding badly but bleeding. I blow out the candle and I tape the stupid sock back in his mouth. Am I fucked? No. I’m not a criminal. He’s the bad guy, I’m the good guy and you’re…I picture you and Dick IMing a week from now.

Dick: So then I spout off all this bullshit about hamsters and monkeys and the kid believes it. I’m coked out of my mind and this kid is listening

You: OMG our poor boy lol you knew how to play him you saved your own life I mean WOW DICK WOW and I still can’t believe he compared me to a hamster. Asshole much?

Dick: I told you he was off. I mean you do understand why I had to call the cops on him. Dude is deranged enough to do that to me, imagine what he could do to a girl.

You: I’m just so happy you’re alive, baby. What a long strange trip. I mean I’m happy we BOTH survived that crazy lil boy.

Dick: Me too. So. Wanna get married?

Stop it, Joe, stop it. You’re not getting hitched and the shiva wasn’t a total bust. I know what we’re up against now. An acid tongue. A carnival jackass charlatan who waves his dog tags to distract you while he steals your pride, your soul, your heart. I was wrong. He really is fucking evil and he’s just gonna keep going, isn’t he? Let’s say I drag his veteran-disrespecting ass out of here. We laugh it off as a coke bender gone sideways. Where does that leave us? You and me. We’re back to square one. You’re plagued with guilt about pulling the Dick-stained wool over my eyes and you think you don’t deserve a guy like me. You run around with him behind my back, casually breaking my heart as his acid piss rain corrodes our greens of summers in-fucking-definitely.

But if he died…

Gently, Joseph.





35


I need the World Wide Fucking Web so I’m in the back of an internet café with my back against the wall. I have Dick’s laptop and a slice of pizza. Pepperoni. But I can’t eat. How could I? You’re still calling him and you’re not calling me and you’re sicker than I thought. I got into his email, Vail. And it was one thing to read your little chats with Dick, but to see you put words in my mouth—NYC Bookstore Babe, you were so sexy in your cape—I mean, this sucks. I HATE YOUR CAPE. You rewrote your Craigslist letter and reversed everything and I won’t judge you—it’s a cycle of abuse—but you’re a monkey in his circus and I have to save you.

We can’t have his mother getting in our way, so I send her a back-off-Mommy email. And then I can’t help it. I have to taste the spoiled milk. I dig around to find your Evite.

He wasn’t exaggerating. You invited one hundred fifty-six people to your birthday. Way more guys than girls. And you let your “friends” invite whoever they wanted. Especially hot guys! All guys welcome lol wooh!

So what do I do? Dick is alive, in the freezer, and I can’t actually, you know, kill him. Is he hungry? He is probably hungry. I buy him a slice. But not from the good place. From a shit place closer to the warehouse. When I get back, he’s still down and he’s blinking, bloody. And for a moment, it looks like he is the victim. But no. I get my head together. I am the victim. I pull the sock out of his mouth. I slap his face and he comes to and I give him a slice. It’s a dangerous thing, to be a man with no plan. That’s how you wind up spoon-feeding pizza to an asshole. He burps.

“Nice left hook,” he says. “See, that’s something else I did for ya, Goldberg.”

He talks like we’re downtown, killing time before we hit up Passerby. He eats like I am a boy. Not a threat. And then he spits out the crust and sighs. “So, we done here?”

“No.”

“Kid, it’s all right. She was your first love. Everyone goes batshit with first love.”

“She was not my first.”

Not fair, Vail. Not fair that he can read me like Miss Frascatore.

“Look,” he says. “It sucks, I know. You got your little heart smashed into a million pieces. You think some girl didn’t break me? I told you. They get to us. It happens.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Maybe if I say it in your language…She’s fuckin’ Carrie, bro. She only loves guys who don’t love her back. That chick will never, could never love you. I mean, dude…she doesn’t even like your cock.”

It’s my PORTNOY and it’s perfect. Is it? “You don’t know that.”

“Relax, Goldfuck. You’ll rebound. And this…this is nothing. Let’s go knock back a couple of J?ger bombs and forget she ever happened. Seriously. She’s not worth it.”

This again, and I can’t let it go. “Yes, she fucking is.”