You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(4)

You…are still on my mind.




And then I get into it, really fucking into it.

You were on 72nd and Columbus. You asked me for a light, and you were gorgeous. Brunette Carolyn Bessette. I offered to buy you a lighter, and you laughed. There was something about you, and I messed up. If you want to know why I was a little off, there’s a story there. A good one full of colorful characters…. Wanna get a coffee? I’ll bring a lighter this time.



The second Craig informs me that my letter is online, in the world, I feel like a whole new real fucking person. I did something. I tried. I’m not deluded. I know what I am. I’m no better than Angus, hunched over this chunk of wires like a junkie in a sinking living room, like my mother at a blackjack table in AC.

Mr. Mooney clears his throat. I didn’t even realize he was here. He sneers. “The radon in that thing will burn your brain out, Joseph.”

No, it won’t. “I’m almost done.”

He tells me to get home safe, but I can’t go home now—I don’t own a computer—and he says what he always says.

“Beware, Joseph. Those machines are designed to make us fat and weak.”

He’s not wrong, but I’m not a total junkie. I can walk away, so I do walk away. I mop the floor and I put stickers on the signed Lucinda Rosenfelds and it’s been a few minutes—okay, it’s been nine minutes—so I hustle back to home base and check my Hotmail.

Nothing.

Night falls early in the winter. I do push-ups the way this kid in my ninth-grade algebra class said you should before you have sex, and I check my Hotmail.

Nothing.

The push-ups revved up my appetite and I forgot to eat, and I want a slice of pizza but there’s no computer in the pizza joint, so fuck it. What’s the harm? I check my Hotmail.

Nothing.

I go downstairs and open the door to the cage. For months, I thought Mr. Mooney was talking out of his ass, spouting off on how books need to breathe. It’s New York; no one can breathe. But then some Bob the Builders showed up with plexiglass walls. They built a giant box where the smog and the radon can’t fuck with the classics. The boss man was a little weird when I asked if I could stash my typewriters in here.

He smirked. “You’re wasting your time, Joseph. You can’t save the world.”

But maybe you can, because he caved. It’s my happy place, I come down here and fuck around with my rescues. They should be home with me, but there’s no room for props in a cardboard fucking box. Same way there’s no room for a girl.

I pet the first one I ever found, the green machine from Bushwick. “One day you’re getting out of here, Hector.”

If I were a girl, I’d be into a guy like me, and I turn red—that’s a douchebag of a thought—but a few minutes with Emily Dickinson makes me feel like a good guy, like actual fucking boyfriend material. The girl who wanted the lighter kinda looked like Emily Dickinson, and I run upstairs and check my email.

Nothing.

Midnight somehow and I’m still up. Still hungry. I have to work tomorrow. I have to exist. I should get off the floor and go downstairs and catch a few z’s on the cot. It’s right there in the cage. Not a great bed, but something. I stand. Dizzy. It’s almost one now and I can’t go downstairs. This is the witching hour. Girls do things after midnight they wouldn’t do in the day, so it’s very possible the girl wrote back to me. I check my email.

Nothing.

I pop a Peter Frampton CD in the boom box. Is that weird? Am I weird? I do this sometimes. I mimic people. I told that girl she looked like Carolyn Bessette because Angus said his girl looked like Carolyn Bessette. Something is wrong with me, but something is wrong with anyone awake at 3:12 a.m. I check my Hotmail again, and then again, and then again, and then night becomes day. Mr. Mooney barges in and glares at me, disgusted as the sun.

“There’s a fresh shirt in the back, Joseph.”

“Yeah, I got sucked into that new King.”

He knows I’m lying. He knows everything. Mr. Mooney is married. It’s not like he’s so in love, but he has something, someone. He says I’m not the same since we got this computer.

And he’s right.

I turn off the computer. Fuck it. All of it.

I put on the fresh shirt. A new black Hanes T-shirt that’s only here because I do this a lot lately. I stay in the shop, by the computer, by the list. It’s fucking insane. That girl on the street is like those girls on the subway. I don’t know her.

So why am I bashing my head into the mirror? Why am I making fists? Why can’t I just say fuck it and let things go? Why do I wanna sleep in a prison?

It’s true. Back in September, Mr. Mooney locked me in the cage to punish me for letting a girl walk out of here with a signed Catcher in the Rye. I liked it in the cage. I slept great. Better than I had in years. When I told him how good it felt, he hung his head.

That’s because your mother didn’t love you. Rest in peace, Joseph.

The way he said that…I didn’t know if I was gonna get out of there alive.

Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’m dead.

I splash cold water on my face. Stop it, Joe, stop it.

The shop opens, and it’s a good thing. I’m alive. Busy. I’m not dead, and the hope of something between me and some girl who asked me for a lighter won’t be the death of me either. I’m gonna change my ways. No more Missed Connections. I’m done. I delete my pathetic post, and it feels good. The computer is bad for me, the way Craig never lets up. The real world is a breeze. Shit closes and you can’t get what you want. But Craigslist is always there, it’s the mother I never had prodding at me, checking to see if I’m hungry, if I have a fever. Mooney is right. Sometimes it is that fucking simple. Mama didn’t love me, and the girls, girls, girls all know it, because girls have a third eye, an extra hole. They can’t love me, because they know I can’t love them.