You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(40)
I drink milk on Dumb’s dime out of the fucking carton and shrug. Am I seeing you, Vail?
On the street, I turn on my Motorola.
ONE NEW VOICEMAIL…from Mr. fucking Mooney. I hit Play.
“Christ Almighty, Joseph, I don’t understand the point of that thing if it’s never on. Do better. Alas, you have a visitor. A very pushy visitor. So, you best get here now. As in right now.”
It’s the best voicemail of my life. The reason God invented cell phones. You did it! You came to the shop. I can’t get there fast enough, and I don’t have to wait long. Valentine’s Day is coming and Dick did say girls get antsy this time of year. Horny. I pick up the pace. I wonder if you’re wearing a skirt. I wonder if you cried, if the people on your sitcom know that you couldn’t take it anymore, the yearning. I should be cool, make you wait, but I’m in the best shape of my life and you need to see me. You miss me. You want me.
I yank the door of the shop, and Angus Kaplan blocks me in my tracks.
“So, how was your first summer in Maine, Jimbo?”
* * *
—
It’s a little ironic, Vail, and I’d be laughing if I weren’t so totally fucking fucked.
I’m jacked for the first time ever. I could kick Angus Kaplan’s bony ass six ways to Sunday, but we’re stuck in the back seat of his fucking limo, and his fucking driver could be a body double for the Incredible Fucking Hulk. Fuck.
Angus bites his Ray-Bans. They crack. Why? “It’s a felony, Jimmy. I looked it up.”
“I really am working on it, Angus.”
He tosses his sunglasses out the window. “So where’s my book?”
He rubs his nose and orders the driver to play that song, the one about stealing the wine and getting the girl, and I was wrong, Vail. As it turns out, there are things that don’t fall through the cracks. Angus didn’t forget about our deal. He marked his calendar—I NEVER SAW A CALENDAR IN THAT CRACK DEN—and I’m staying cool. Singing along and convincing him that I’ve got the money—I have no money; I owe Crunch a lot of money—and my guns are of no use in this town car. His driver eyes me like he’d kill me just for kicks.
Angus fires up something in a little square of tinfoil.
I try to roll down the window, but I can’t. The child protective bullshit is in effect, and I am healthy now. I can’t be near this toxic shit, and it won’t stop hitting me. The worst part is that I haven’t even gotten to dwell on it, the sad truth under this town car of a truck that ran me over.
It wasn’t you in the bookstore. You didn’t come for me. You don’t want me. And I don’t even get to curl up in a ball in my Bell Bottom Blues. We’re rolling up to the gargoyles. Angus is pissing himself and WHY DID I MAKE A DEAL WITH A RICH BORED JUNKIE?
“So what is this?” he says. “Did you go to prison when I was in recovery?”
That’s a dig at my hair and “recovery” is the road to relapse and the driver hits a button. I open the damn door.
In the elevator, Angus takes another piss and waves his thing around. He says he’s joining the circus and he says the circus is joining him and he grabs a hat off my head except I don’t have a hat. I grab his wrist (I have biceps) and he bites my arm (I am bleeding) and by the time we make it to the sinking fucking living room where Peter Frampton is alive and louder than ever, Angus has done the unthinkable. Pissed on Philip Roth and Edwidge Danticat, hawked a heroin-laced loogie on some choice Paul Fucking Auster.
He drops his mess of a body onto the butter and leather. I eye Emily Dickinson on a shelf. That’s new. Sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair.
“So, time’s up. Where’s my Franzen?”
“I’m working on it, Angus. I told you. Money is tight.”
He pulls a pipe out of his pocket. New robe. Red and silk. Stained as fuck. “Not good enough, Jerry. I want my Twenty-Seventh Town.”
The word is City, motherfucker, and could I rob a bank? No, I couldn’t. I look at Toni Morrison. Only inches from Emily Dickinson. Seduce and Destroy. Don’t think. Do. Angus hangs his head between his legs so the drugs get to his head a little faster, and I cross the sinking living room. I lift the flap of my messenger bag, and I pick up one endangered lady wordsmith, and then another. I’m not robbing a bank. I’m not even robbing Angus Kaplan. This is a rescue mission. But also yes, I robbed that Boogie Nights derivative do-nothing right in fucking front of him and Damn, it feels good to be a gangster. My heart pounds like weights at Crunch. Emily and Toni are safe now, and Angus is oblivious. He’s even dancing, if you can call it that. It’s a high…. Picking up books and putting them down in my bag. Sensitive thugs, y’all need hugs so I widen the rescue mission and grab my boy Philip Roth. Angus is on another planet and I’m a baller with a buzz cut so I scoop up my man Bukowski. And that’s it. My bag is loaded. Better than a gun, because books are forever, unlike bullets that just kill you.
Angus sways and his eyes go limp and thin. “Did I ever tell you about Kelly Demon?”
* * *
—
After I throw up on the sidewalk, I walk to the subway.
I can’t believe I did it, Vail. A week ago, I didn’t have a set. I was a victim. A beggar. But I just marched out of that fucker’s penthouse with rare, precious cargo. I’m not gonna wind up in prison. I’m not that scared little bitch, not anymore. I catch my train and I take a seat and I don’t panic. I don’t piss my pants. I lift the flap on my messenger bag and there she is. My princess, the amazing Emily Dickinson. Encased in plastic, pulling me back home.