You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(58)
20
Two days is a century is an ice age is a long fucking time.
You don’t call me and I don’t call you, and Dick asked if I tended to your devil’s doorbell and I said yes but what the fuck is a devil’s fucking doorbell? He said to forget about you for now. He says that I can’t fucking call you and he wants me to set a jealousy trap in the shop. Yes, Vail, it’s more Destruction and Seduction. He says Vagina is the key. I’ve told him about her, how she climbs all over me, pawing at me, licking her lips at me. And apparently, this is just the kind of thing that will drive you nuts, so it’s on me to let Vagina think she has a shot with me. Women only want guys if they pick up the scent of another woman.
But still. What is a devil’s doorbell?
I would go back in time and let you smother my Portnoy with Pop Rocks if it meant avoiding a future that involves the hell of having you and then not having you. I’m staying away from you so you can yearn for me, but what if there’s no point? What if I was a Big letdown? Or what if you really are allergic to good guys? What if I have it backwards and I was too good? Maybe girls don’t scream when they come in real life…Yeah fucking right.
Vagina gooses me and I scream. She giggles. Vagina, a creature so devoid of subtlety or nuance that she could never even pop up in Sex and the City and I’m doing it again. Thinking like Carrie. Carrie, who would be mortified by Vagina’s outfit. A tiny little black dress with spaghetti straps. No bra, no panties—Going commando makes me so horny, you know?—and I wish there was a way for me to know where you are. I wish I could tag you like a dog and I know. That’s a sick fucking thought. But that’s how it goes in this cage. That is my life without you.
Am I weird? It’s only two days, I know. But two days isn’t nothing when you love someone, when you know what it feels like to be in bed with them. And the way you don’t call me makes me wonder if you liked being in the bed with me.
Dick says to be confident, but Dick doesn’t know about my Portnoy. So rare to see one in the States. He swears that you’ll storm the gates one of these days, and I go outside and call him. He’s sick of my whining, but then he’s never spent two double shifts in a bookstore with Vagina.
“Relax,” he says. “You can’t care so much. They smell it.”
“But when is she gonna call or show up?”
“Dude,” he says. “You should just get with that Virginia chick.”
“I can’t.”
“Is she fat?”
Fuck you. “No.”
“Ugly?”
AS IF DICK IS GEORGE FUCKING CLOONEY. “She’s not my type.”
Vagina knocks on the glass. I raise a hand—one minute—and she pulls her shirt down—one tit—and maybe she and Dick will get married and produce emotionless little horndogs.
“Anyway,” he says. “This chick that I banged last night…”
Ten minutes later, I’m back in the trap, putting Sex books in Clearance. Vagina’s lips hit my ears—Are you thirsty, Joey?—and I run away. I climb the ladder to hide in History, but before you know it, she tugs on my jeans—Need a hand, Joey?—so I go in the back to bitch to Mooney. He cackles and calls me a pussy, and I can’t live in a cage, in a trap.
I hate cages. Cages are for people who need to learn a lesson the way I did back in September, and I learned my lesson. I walk out of Mooney’s hideaway, and Vagina walks right into me. She brings a peppermint fucking latte to my lips. “Taste it, Joey.”
I want to fucking puke.
She hops on the counter like we sell porn, not books. “Check this out. It’s a one-bedroom, and it sounds super cool.”
It’s the worst part, Vail. You wanted to help me find a place, but now she’s helping me, circling ads in the Voice. I should’ve called you, I should’ve stayed with you and your devil’s doorbell.
I don’t feel good about Vagina either. Every so often, her shy, nervous smile reminds me that there is a person in there, a person who likes me. And I’m the bastard who’s encouraging her. She licks her finger and flips through the Voice and what if September 11 happens again right now and you die thinking of me as that classic SATC one-episode jerk who never calls? Will I ever see you again? Do you love me? Hate me?
Vagina leaps off the counter to help a guy in Historical Fiction. Maybe the worst part about this trap. She thinks she can make me jealous, and it’s nails on a chalkboard, Vail. She watches to see if I’m looking at her and WHY CAN’T YOU WALK INTO MY TRAP?! Karma might be real. Are we stalling like a new car with a bad engine because of what we did to Angus, because of the wine you stole, the books I “rescued”? Look at Carrie. She fucked Big in his wife’s beige bed and a guy stole her Manolos.
Ugh. I have to get Sex out of my head. I feel like Samantha after she told Richard that she loves him when she was high on ecstasy and is this why you don’t call? Do you sense me in this store having such unthinkable fucking thoughts? I didn’t tame your cunt (your orgasm feels faker by the hour) and you don’t respect my cock (you didn’t put your lips on my Portnoy the other night). I want to buy you a new New Yorker and take you for pancakes and the door opens—is it you? It’s not you, it’s never you—and I know. Dick says it’s like anything in life. No pain, no gain. He swears you’re in the same boat in your own way, brunching and barhopping with your girlfriends to analyze every little thing about our fuck-fest. But was it a festival? Felt more like a classroom—Slower. Faster. Not there…There—and Dick might be too broken to advise. Gordie Lachance got over losing his dead big brother, but that’s a Stephen King story. Dick is real life. He doesn’t want a fucking girlfriend. For all his gym shit and his steroids, he’s weak when it comes to girls. Seduce and Destroy isn’t real. It’s a thing Paul Thomas Anderson made up for a movie. It’s a joke. I’m not a playa like Dick. I want the agony and I’m a survivor; I’m not gon’ give up. I will wait and worry until I have no nails left on any of my fucking fingers and— “Joey…honeeeeeeey?” Vagina shoves a Voice in my face, and maybe I will die right now. “Check it out, Joey. One-bedroom…Alphabet City.”