You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(41)

Hope is the thing with feathers.

I grab her by the spine. I open her up and find my favorite parts, the ones that stick. I feel the girls on the train wanting to know who I am, wishing I would take my Polaroid Nikon eyes off Emily and look at them. Once upon a time, I’d be counting the seconds until I could go home and check Missed Connections. But that’s not me, Vail. It’s like Dick said at D.B.A. a few nights ago. His boy is all growns up. I get back to the shop, and I go to Craigslist and I pound the keyboard like a boss, because I am a boss. It’s right there on the walls of my gym. Crunch: It’s a Movement. The old me was weak. Softee Joe got pushed around by Angus. I’m stronger now. I saved great works by great women and now I will bail out the young scared boy I used to be, the helpless softy who let a spoiled-ass crackhead get the best of him and pull a gun on you. Those days are long gone and the subject of my ad is my version of a bump. It’s my juice:

RARE BOOKS FOR SALE. CASH ONLY.





15


I’m about to go on my fifth date tonight, and no, I’m not cheating. It’s my new side business, Vail. A solid way to make some bank so I can pay off Angus. I’m also putting some of my dough aside for us. I want to take care of you. You. You’ve stopped calling and it feels like the end. My side gig is a good way to cope. I’m a busy man. Buyers find me on Craigslist and we wheel and deal. I’m making more money than I ever did, and yeah…It’s a little gross for my life to be all capitalism and Crunch as the city grows pinker by the hour, as Valentine’s Day approaches. But Dick is right. I am building a better me, and timing is on our side. Girls always get hungry for the one that got away in mid-fucking February. And that’s me. It has to be me. Right?

“Joseph!”

Fucking Mooney, and again, Dick is right. I do need a better job, but this is the one I have. And who knows? Maybe the rest of my life already started. Maybe my “summer in Maine” is so fucking profitable that I rent us a loft in…

Gently, Joseph. I knock on Mooney’s door.

“Don’t knock,” he seethes. “Get in here.”

Not a good start, and worse inside. He’s on his feet, wrapped around the phone cord. He covers the receiver and growls. “Angus Kaplan will be the death of me, Joseph. Mark my words.”

Not gonna panic. I’m a hero. I saved Emily Dickinson from the fire. Paper covers rock, and Cruise covers Cusack. I did nothing wrong. I roll my eyes. “What did that crackhead do now?”

Mooney shushes me and goes back to yelling into the phone. “I never sold you any Emily Goddamn Dickinson, and neither did Joseph.”

My nerves do creep up on me because fuck fuck fuck. Is Angus onto me? Yes, he is, and Mooney slams slams the receiver into the cradle.

“All right, Joseph, I’m going to ask you this once.”

Real men use their heads, not their words. I nod.

“Did you steal books from Angus?”

Real men don’t answer questions. They ask questions. “Are you kidding me, dude?”

He stares at me, and he hates the new me, muscles and dude bombs. But I like the new me. Fucking Robin Hood minus the sidekick.

“Angus says he’s missing Emily Dickinson, among others. He seems to think you are a thief in the night.”

I do not break. Not for Mooney, not for Angus, not for anyone. “Well, that’s bullshit, Mr. Mooney. I mean, c’mon. The guy’s a crackhead.”

Mooney says capitalism and crackheads go hand in hand and he opens an old ledger and no. I won’t go down like this. I am so close, Vail. I have twenty-five Benjamins in my messenger bag. Dumb to carry, but dumber to leave it home with Dumb and Dumber. Point is, I can soon deliver The Twenty-Seventh City. I’m gonna do that after I find Emily a new home, when I save enough cash to snag both the City and a new pad for us.

I grab the ledger and slam it shut. “Enough,” I say. “I’m not a thief.”

Mooney doesn’t hate everything about me. Mostly, he just misses me, the way he points at my bag. “Going somewhere, are we?”

Yep. Going to sell Emily Dickinson to a douchebag with a loft. “Just chilling.”

He grunts (he hates that word, chilling) and I try not to think about Emily Dickinson in my messenger bag. It is the thing with feathers. Not just my hope but ours. I will not break.

Mooney lights a cigar. I don’t like the way he doesn’t offer me a fucking stogie. “Apologies,” he says. “It is impossible to take you seriously with that getup.”

It’s not a getup, and I have to get out of here. I have to move Miss Dickinson before she gets me fired. I slap my rock-hard thighs. “I’m gonna head out.”

Mooney blows his nose on a dirty napkin. “Off to see that hussy with the boots, are you?”

Dick says I talk too much (real men know the power of silence), so I nod. It’s not easy, Vail. I feel bad for Mooney, I do. He’s on my side. He trusts me, he misses me, but I have to put you first.

“Well, that’s a shame you’re unavailable,” he says. “Martha made a meat loaf.”

My dumb heart breaks. He had to go there, to the wife. “I didn’t know.”

“She wanted you to come by for supper, but you have other plans again…. That’s your right, young man.”

That’s a first for my Moleskine. I’m not boy anymore. I’m a man. “How is Mrs. Mooney?”