You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(43)

Also, I’m a little busy right now. The mugging was a game-changing setback. Angus won’t budge—when the fuck did he get a calendar?—so I had to get creative. Yes, I broke yet another law. I stole Mooney’s Twenty-Seventh City from the basement of the shop. I don’t know how I’ll get the money or cover my ass, but I have some time to figure it out. I am risking my life and my job, and that’s the way of the world for a guy like me with no backup, no family.

I am risking it all for you, Vail. Love isn’t blind. It’s twenty fucking twenty. I know exactly what I’m doing and I’m good with every bit of it because all of it, in the end, is for you.

My subway car grinds to a stop, and it hurts. I’m sore. But on I go, climbing the longest set of stairs in New York City. The gargoyles don’t get to me, not today, and Angus buzzes me up.

Right off the bat, something is off. Wrong. He’s wearing sunglasses, the kind with mirrors. He grabs the Franzen, and he doesn’t sway. There’s no music today. He doesn’t open the book. He doesn’t tear out a page to wipe his ass. He just tosses it in the fireplace like it’s a piece of scrap paper, and then he picks up a trash bag full of robes. “Walk me out?”

This isn’t the Angus I know. This man is sober. Silent. He pushes the button on the elevator and in we go and it’s hard, Vail. Hard not to stare at him. Hard to know how to be when someone you know turns into someone else. And then the sunglasses are off and who knew Angus had eyes, the kind that see things.

“So, who beat the crap out of you?”

“No one.”

He holds his head high. Smiles like a child. “I’m going to rehab.”

“Well, that’s good, right?”

“I’m not as bad as you think, Joe.”

“I never said you’re bad.”

“Eh,” he says. “I’m too sensitive for this world. Kelly Damon is having a baby this week.”

“I’m sorry, Angus.”

“For what, Joe? Stealing from me or taking advantage of me at my weakest?”

I should say something, defend myself or deny it. But then the doors open.

On the sidewalk, the town car is waiting. Angus hands me his sunglasses. “Oh, and Jerry,” he says. “I changed the code. So don’t even try to get in there.”



* * *



—

Two days later, and it’s like the world is over. My own little private September 11, part two. Minus you.

I know. I guess I am kinda lucky in one way. I’m on basement duty until my face isn’t a grotesque crime scene. And Mooney’s gout is back, so I don’t have to worry about him coming down here and realizing that his Twenty-Seventh City has gone missing. But it’s hard to feel anything close to good. I stopped going to the gym. I stopped waiting for you to call. I know what I am. I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you…Nah. No one wants to see a guy with a black eye and a bloated jaw, let alone be bothered to kill the poor fuck.

“Joeeeeeey…. Honeeyyyyy.”

And there she is. The new woman in my life. Farrah Virginia Carpenter: Astrology Slut Slash Bookseller. Quotes that Concrete Blonde song that made it even easier for shitheads in school to bust my balls. Mooney found her from some temp agency to cover the floor while I lick my wounds, the ones you won’t lick for me, with me. God, I’m pathetic.

“What is it, Virginia?”

“I need you, Joeeeey.”

That’s what I want you to say to me but nope. Nope!

I trudge up the stairs, toward the woman who is not, never will be for me. Imagine choosing to be Virginia when you could be Farrah.

“What’s wrong now?”

“You look so cute today, Joey. So cute that I forgot.”

Her parents were reaching with both Farrah and Virginia. They should have just gone with Vagina. Never known a girl who just fucking wants everyone to stare at her. She pulls at her bikini top (it is winter) and she whines at me nonstop. Joeeey…baby…It is Joe. And this is a bookstore. The pilled pink triangles struggle to hold on to her wide, low-hanging breasts and the pigtails…. The knee socks and the cologne-soaked men’s shirt, unbuttoned. Open. I can’t, Vail. I won’t. I want her to cover up and call a psychic hotline for help. I don’t want her.

I want you, damn it.

“Don’t kill me,” she says. “But I lost the ledger again.”

The ledger is on the counter, where it lives, tied to a fucking latch. She touches my back—stop it—and I pick up her fucking Post.

“Oopsie! My God, you’re so smart. I never thought to look there.”

I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me and Vagina and the whole damn world.

I miss you, Vail. I hate that I miss you.

“Joey,” she says. “Look at my arms. Goose bumps!”

No shit. It’s thirty-two degrees and I can’t take this, Vail. Her nipples that aren’t yours. The sunflower tattoo a few centimeters above her vagina that she’s always petting. Do you have any tattoos? Will I ever see you again? Is this hell? Vagina opens Cosmo and points at her confession.

“The real news is…I’m published, Joey!”

I follow her painted fingernail to a gross little story about the time a guy stuck his dick in her butthole. When he pulled out, there were Pop Rocks on his thing. Pop Rocks.