You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(31)
“Angus, I can’t…I can’t pay for the book.”
He grins and says that’s not his problem and I am not the only living boy in New York City. I AM THE STUPIDEST FUCKING BOY IN NEW YORK CITY. NO ONE IS CHEAPER THAN THE RICH. Breathe, Joe, breathe. He does another line and the doves are crying, and I don’t have it, Vail. I don’t have that kind of money. I want off this ship. Now. I snap my fingers the way people do when they get the big idea, the big idea that came from you. “How about this, my man? What if I work it off? The twenty-four hundred bucks. I can be your assistant.”
He stares at me like he isn’t scratching at another Band-Aid dangling from the pubes sprouting out of his filthy boxers. “I don’t need an assistant. I’m going to rehab.”
NO, HE FUCKING ISN’T and he’s still wearing your scarf, and he says he has business to deal with—no, he fucking doesn’t—and the hallway is longer than it was when we got here and I tell him I have no money. No savings. I tell him about the box again. I’m living in a box…I’m living in a cardboard box.
He eyes my shoes. “Converse?”
I nod, and he huffs like Converse is Hugo Boss. “Think of it as your first Maine summer.”
Oh, fuck you, Angus. Fuck you. “My what?”
“Your first Maine summer, Jimmy. Mom and Dad left me in the Maine house alone when I was fifteen or fourteen. All the help was gone. I had to do it all—make my breakfast, flush the jobbies…This is how the boy becomes the man. Seriously, Jack. Have fun with it.”
With that, he calls the elevator and pushes me inside.
“Oh, Jimbo,” he says. “If you don’t survive your first Maine summer, if I don’t get that Franzen before I go to rehab in two weeks, if you forget to cover the pool when it rains and it floods the patio…Ever been to juvie? Ever seen a pool overflow into the game room?”
He tosses your scarf at me as the walls close in.
Outside, I puke warm Dutch piss as the gargoyles scowl from above. 4:46 a.m. I dial your number. Voicemail. I call your landline. Answering machine. Serves me right. I can’t go to you. I don’t know where you live, but the walk helps. I did what you wanted. You asked me to rescue your scarf, and I came through. I bring it to my nose. I remember your hands on me. You want me. You still do. This scarf is not special. It’s from the Gap. You hid it because girls do that. You leave a little something behind so you have a reason to come back.
Girls are like crackheads. You don’t let go.
I’m no different—I think it’s why I don’t have a posse—and I am Gollum in the good way. I tell it to the world, the homeless guy talking to a trash can, the drunk girl crying with her friend. I shout the way you can in New York at five a.m.
“I love you, Vail Colorado Gunderson!”
Stone cold red hot truth right there. My life is a wreck. An eccentric monster just gave me two weeks to earn more than I make in a month. I could lose my job and the clock is ticking and my nose is running in the predawn freeze, but here I am with the biggest shit-eating grin of my life. It’s the Jimi Hendrix of it. Growing louder by the hour, by the second. I don’t fucking panic over mundane real world stuff, not anymore. Worries are smaller because of you, my waterfall. I’m actually happy that you opened the 1949 Ch?teau d’Yquem and I’m happy that you unzipped my fly. Hell, I’m even happy that you had your period. I want to go to war for you, Gundylocks. I kiss your red scarf. I’m ready.
12
I was wired. I couldn’t show up at your place with your scarf because “22nd and Fuck It” is not in the phone book, so I went to one of those all-night diners. I’m a changed man, but I’m also me, so of course I sat there brainstorming get-rich-quick scams. After six cups of coffee, I made a beeline for the bathroom. That’s when I manned the fuck up. I tossed my phone in the toilet.
It wasn’t an accident, Vail. Sometimes a guy needs a fresh start. I don’t have to worry about Angus. He’s a crackhead! Empty threats from a junkie are kinda like kids from broken homes and Nokia cell phones. They all fall through the cracks. I’m flush and I don’t owe him a dime, so I went and dropped a few hundred bucks on a Motorola just like yours. I haven’t called you yet—I bet you’re sleeping it off—and no judgment from me. Angus could drive anyone to cosmos. But it’s 1:31 p.m. and I can’t wait another second.
Neither can you, apparently. You pick up on the first ring. “Joe. Joe! Are you alive?”
You sound like a wife on a widow’s walk who fears her fisherman is never coming back. I cling to your scarf. “I’m just glad you’re okay. You had me a little worried there….” Drunkylocks.
“Oh, I’m fine.”
You drank your weight in cosmos and you were slurring in public. Of course you’re a wee bit defensive. I am yours, undeterred. “What a night, right? We’re lucky to be alive.”
“Aw, come on. That was nothing.”
WE ALMOST DIED. “Oh, okay….”
“I mean, me and Cynthia have been in some crazy fucking places. Last summer, we met these guys and…” That’s my punishment for ditching you. You want me to picture you with other men. “Anyway,” you say. “Your uncle isn’t scary. Just sad. Wait…Is he your uncle?”