You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(50)

“It’s a thing with us. Serendipity. Frozen hot chocolate.”

“You know you sound like a pedophile.”

“No. It’s just…we saw Serendipity the first time we went out.”

“Huh?”

FUCKING MORON and I say it again. “The movie, Dick, the rom-com. Serendipity.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s John Cusack.”

“Now there’s a pussy.”

“He’s not a pussy. She calls me Cusack. And Serendipity is the thing we want to do that we keep not doing.”

“Kid,” he says. “When are you gonna get it? If she wanted to go there, you woulda gone. First few weeks with a chick…they do what they want. Always. And you do what they want ’cause you’re working on getting it in. That chick does not want to go to Serendipity.”

I hate to say it, but it feels like the truth. Same way coffee always smells like coffee.

“All right,” he says. “Let’s say we were going to France.”

This again and Love Day ends at midnight. “Can we cut to the chase?”

“If you wanna go to France, you gotta learn some French. You don’t breeze into a foreign country expecting everyone to speak English. You have to learn the language, her language. Show respect, make ’em see you want in. I mean, I get it, kid. You haven’t traveled….”

We are back in India, and I might die at this counter. “Not yet.”

“A woman is a country. You wanna get into Vail, you gotta learn her language, speak it.”

I don’t know your language. “I do, though.”

“Nah, it’s production lingo, the plots and references…No matter what happens with her, it’s a good language to master, Goldfart…. Look around. Every girl in here is into Sex and the City, and your girl…With any girl, you gotta be able to talk about Carrie and Aidan, Big…”

“I’ve never heard you talk about these people.”

“Aw,” he says. “Our boy’s got some learnin’ to do.”

I never felt so Dumbest, but he moves in for a high five and I remember why we’re friends. Dick has my back. He did tell you I was going to Passerby, and maybe I don’t make it easy. “And the mixtape,” he says. “I’m just trying to help you, kid. A mixtape on V-Day for a girl who spit and ran and left you hanging…Mr. Big would never.”

“Who’s Mr. Big?”

He grins. “Well, it ain’t you, kid. Not yet anyway.”





18


At ease, soldier. Those were your parting words. And you know what, Vail? Not so wrong. I am a warrior. I left the Beanery and marched down to Canal Street, where I bought bootleg DVDs of your sitcom. I bought scripts too. Neon covers with titles like “The Turtle and the Hare” and “Three’s a Crowd” (really looking forward to that one). I got Vagina to invite Dumb and Dumber to an astrology slut gathering somewhere in the Lower East Side, and my home is all mine. As it fucking should be.

I have the TV and the DVD player. I bought a Moleskine to take notes, because this is the closest I’ll ever get to cramming for an exam. It’s not right, Vail. We aren’t built to watch hours of TV in one sitting. We’re humans. David Foster Wallace knows that. We need to breathe. Talk and fuck. Watch commercials and oh yeah.

Read.

But this is what it takes to learn your second language, and I am a soldier, a soldier of love.

Season 1: Your idol Carrie Bradshaw is not what I expected. She’s a sarcastic cynic pontificating on “the end of love in Manhattan.” Do you buy into that? Do you not understand that you are trying to end love in this city by fucking with my head?

I know. It’s not time for questions. But Dick was right. I do like Mr. Big. He picks up Carrie and calls her out. He knows she’s never been in love. She’s so insecure that she goes mute and stares out the window. In the next episode, she gets insecure because she’s not a model, and I make a half-hearted ham fucking sandwich.

I am tired already. Models? Whatever.

Big goes out of his way to visit Carrie at her coffee shop. He says he just wants to be with someone who makes him laugh. Such a fucking cool cat! He went to her. He opened up to her but still Carrie spends all her time picking him apart with her friends. She’s holding out for him. She claims she wants “love,” but she dumps another guy for being nice to her. (That episode was boring, not enough Big.) Next one is better. Carrie makes out with a random young guy with a tongue ring, and she SLEEPS with him and I’m…confused.

I thought she was so in love with Big. I thought you were in love with me.

Poor Big doesn’t know she’s sleeping around. They have casual plans to meet up for a “drink thing.” Nothing serious. He’s with his friend who just got dumped, same way she hangs out with her friends. But she throws a fit and stomps out. And still he likes her! Still. She’s picking apart the young guy because he has a roommate, because he has no toilet paper and sorry, but is this your hero, Vail? Do you talk like that about me?

And would Big like her if he saw this snobbery?! Now Big is out with his buddy. She bumps into him ON HER WALK OF SHAME. Poor Big doesn’t know she was just in bed with another guy. He invites her to join them—so cool—and she is super condescending about his crossword puzzle. Right in front of his buddy!