You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(34)

Gollum had teeth. Gollum would tear this old man’s hair out before he gave up the ring. But Gollum didn’t work in a bookstore. I give Mooney my phone, and he sneers at it.

“What’s this envelope?”

“It’s voicemail.”

“Voicemail,” he says. “A paradox and a lie, as all true mail is on paper, written with intention, with ink. How might I dispose of this voicemail?”

YOU WILL NOT DISPOSE OF MY VOICEMAIL. “I wish I knew.”

He glares at me like he did the day the Salinger got stolen, and I feel like a fucking kid again. I am a boy and a bitch and he orders me to destroy your love letter and I don’t have a high school diploma. I don’t have a résumé. All I have is Mooney, so I do it, Vail. I kill your drumroll.

“Good,” he says. “Now leave that thing in your pocketbook and tend to the new stock.”

Unboxing pop culture nonfiction paperbacks is the hardest thing I ever had to do and what did you say to me? What came after the drumroll? What did I miss? I tear into a box. Cardboard, like my bedroom, and I stop in my tracks. Lo and behold…it’s a plot twist in a fucking rom-com. Five advance copies of Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell. A work of nonfiction by a woman named Amy Sohn. Of all the books in all the gin joints…

My shift is never ending but then it does and I love calling you on a crowded sidewalk in front of other women, strangers who steal a glance at me and wonder who you are, why I love you and not them. You pick up on the second ring—you want me—and here we go.

“Joe!”

“Vail!”

The opening nervous laughter that’s become our little tradition and you really can become a couple over the phone.

“So, how’s it going?”

“You first, Joe. Did you get my voicemail?”

The drumroll. The deleted voicemail. “Mmm, we’ll get to that. First, though, I have a surprise for you.”

You give me an mm-hmm, and I am turning it around. I am Tom Hanks with the daisies, the friendliest flower. “We had a little visitor in the shop today.”

“Oh, you did, did you?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And?”

“And what are you up to tonight?”

“Ugh, honestly…I ate some bad sushi. I’m sorry. But you know…”

“Everyone poops.”

“Exactly.” Not the news I wanted, but Meg Ryan catches a cold. Women get sick. “Anyway, Joe, what’s the surprise?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.”

“I am hunkered down in the bathroom with a bottle of Pepto.”

“Do you know Amy Sohn?”

“No,” you say. “Why?”

The perfect amount of jealousy, and it’s good that you can’t see me smile. “She’s a writer with a new book about my favorite sitcom I’ve never seen….”

“Ha.”

“Anyway, she came into the shop today….” It’s not a lie. It’s a little white one. Innocent. “She gave us galleys of her new book about your show.”

“No way.”

“I might have asked her to sign one for you.”

“Oh, Joe. You’re too sweet.”

I stop at a green light. You’re home sick. Sick like Meg Ryan in her robe attached to Kleenex. “You live in Murray Hill, right?”

“Sort of,” you say. And you cough. “Sorry, I feel gross.”

Gently, Joseph. “Well, I gotta make a delivery in the area. I could drop it off….”

The silence is warm and fuzzy. You want me. You want me bad. “Hmm…”

Do it, Vail. Invite me over. “You live on Twenty-second and…”

“I feel like hell. And I look like it too.”

I tell you that’s okay but then you get call-waiting—it’s Barry—and an icy rain starts to fall and it’s okay. I will survive. This just isn’t it. It isn’t the night we come back together.

“Look,” you say. “This is totally just a twenty-four-hour bug, and tomorrow night…How about some long-awaited frozen hot chocolate, my dear?”

My Portnoy wakes up, and my dear means I will be yours again soon. As in baby. I clear my throat. Gently, Joseph. “That could work. How is sevenish?”

“Seven is heaven.”

Nothing can get me down on the happy walk home. Not even a call from Angus. I send him to voicemail and I listen to his whining—I want a progress report, Jimbo—and I guess his brain isn’t as cracked out as I’d hoped, but who cares?! He can fucking wait. The “real world” doesn’t matter. I’m about to sip your frozen hot chocolate and I let love obliterate me the way it does in all the songs. I can’t eat. Can’t sleep. There’s no doubt…. I’m in deep. At 3:15 a.m. I pick up my Motorola. I leave my cardboard box and step over the astrology slut who didn’t get “lucky,” the one passed out on the fucking floor because her friends are banging Dumb and Dumber. It smells like weed and Heinies and Drakkar Astroslutfucking Noir.

I open a window.

The air is good. Clean. When we move forward, I’ll wake you up with my mouth. I’ll kiss you on your Beckinsale. For now, the best I can do is give you a little love.