You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(44)

If we were still together, I could tell you about Vagina, and you could put her in your sitcom. But we’re not. “Nice. Congrats. Your family must be proud.”

“Do you like Pop Rocks, Joey? Because this time of the year…it’s all I can think about…Pop Rocks and—”

“Allergic!”

She says that’s impossible—Joey…baby…don’t get crazy—and Mooney saves the day with a scream.

“Joseph!”

I am the worst kind of Cusack. I am Better Off Dead.

The old guy, as you called him, well, he can’t get enough of me. The bruises, the idiocy, the way I whine about Vagina. I knock on the door, and he cackles. “The fighter returns!”

“What’s up?”

“I meant to ask you, Joseph. Did that girlfriend of yours do this to you? Did she wallop you with those vaguely sapphic boots?”

“She’s not gay.”

“I told you, boy. Didn’t like her…didn’t trust her…. And don’t pick at the scab if you want it to heal, damn it.”

I take my hand off my face. “Sorry. How’s the gout?”

He grins. He won’t talk about the gout. “Did you see Virginia’s top today?”

“Yeah, about that. I think we need to call the whorehouse.”

“Temp agency, Joseph. Don’t be crass.”

“Okay, but half the time, she can’t find the ledger, so the numbers are gonna be off….” As in thousands of dollars off, in case he does go downstairs.

“The pigtails, Joseph…You could bone her, you know. And if you don’t, well…The pigtails do suggest a certain desire for an older man….”

I can’t do it, Vail. I can’t have that image in my head. Plus, there’s his wife. What about Martha? What about love? I sigh like I get it, because what else can I do? “Okay, but for real, a few customers have complained about her. A mom said she felt uncomfortable bringing her kids in…the whole bikini thing, and Vagina was all over her husband right in front of her.”

He grins. “A slip more Freudian I cannot imagine, Joseph.”

I DIDN’T MEAN IT LIKE THAT, and he rubs his big fat foot and kicks back in his chair. “She is a bit Bukowski, I suppose. Makes you want to take a cold shower, or perhaps a long, warm steam in the Russian baths…. Donna Tartt via The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

“Vagina doesn’t know shit about Donna Tartt. And Donna Tartt wears suits.”

Mr. Mooney slams a drawer. “Joseph, you are grumpy. You will not take your anger out on me or our new young lass.”

“It’s not me. It’s her, and you don’t get it. You don’t have to deal with her. Nabokov would’ve given up on Lolita if he had to fucking deal with Vagina.”

I overstepped. Lolita is his motherfucking favorite.

“I’m sorry. Seriously.”

He sighs. And then it’s business as usual. Order more thrillers. Take inventory of the cage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Soon I’ll be back in the basement for the third day in a row, and I’m a loser, baby, so why doesn’t Mooney just lock me down there once and for all and throw away the key?

I slouch. He snaps his fingers at me. “Stop wallowing, Joseph.”

“Sorry.”

I’m me again. Soft and snuggly. Already my gut is a thing without feathers, without butterflies or hope. I lost it all, Vail. Everything. I shouldn’t have gotten so greedy. I should’ve gone to his place to eat Martha’s fucking meat loaf.

Mooney hands me a plastic container. “Oh,” he says. “From the wife.”

Martha Mooney put a pink heart sticker on the Tupperware, and I can’t cry. Not in front of Mooney. Not over leftover meat loaf. Not a few days before the most lonesome V-Day of my little almost life. “Thanks.”

“Know this, Joseph. You are down because you chose poorly.”

“Vail didn’t do this to me.”

“You could learn your lesson, young man. That serviceable trollop on the floor would suck you off in a heartbeat. It’s a nice thing, being a young man, and you best not think youth lasts forever. Women are meant to flaunt their beauty. Stop judging. Start screwing.”

With that, I’m dismissed.

I avoid the register because Vagina is throwing herself at a customer who asks if we have Penthouse. I’ve never been happier to walk downstairs and slam the door behind me.

“Hey, Hector. You hungry?”

The sound of my own voice bumps me. I haven’t talked to Hector since we first met. The loneliness is getting to me. Kinda like that volleyball in Cast Away and that’s me. A castaway. Minus the part where my girlfriend in the States misses me.

I take the lid off the meat loaf. Mold.

My cell phone rings. Dick.

“Where you been, G-Money? You alive?”

Am I? “Sorry, Dick. I got into a jam.”

“You knock a girl up?”

“No. I got mugged.”

“Well, shit, bro. You coming out tonight or what?”

I look at Hector—Is this guy on crack?—and Hector looks at me—No, the crackhead is in Malibu.

“Goldberg, you gotta come. Me and Schlitz are going to Passerby. Valentine’s, my man; this is when it’s hard to not get laid, and the Thursday-night pussy patrol is on.”