You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(98)

“All right, Goldfuck, what the hell do you want from me?”

I pull up a metal folding chair. I straddle it. I am the man. “You want to know what I didn’t see in your computer, Dick? I looked through all your pictures but someone is missing.”

“You and Vail aren’t married or some shit. She is not worth this, buddy. Seriously.”

“I didn’t see your brother David, Dick. Did you erase every photo of him?”

The truth is like duct tape; it shuts his fucking mouth. Yes!

“I thought so, buddy. You do that. You erase your brother and block every girl who gets too close. I don’t need to go to the Palmer family house in Chicago to know that your parents probably turned David’s bedroom into a shrine…” His eyes are bulging; I hit a nerve. “I’m guessing he died when you were fifteen or sixteen, right? You thought it shoulda been you. I bet David was one of those larger-than-life kinda guys. The firstborn motherfucking soldier and you try to sleep but you can’t sleep. You still hear the screaming of the lambs, the sound of your mother crying over his pillow, wishing it was you in the ground.”

It’s the longest Dick has ever gone without talking and holy fuck I am good at this, Vail. I could make a career out of it.

“You guys went to Turks and Caicos. Felt like the kinda trip the family takes after a horrible death, yeah? I saw the pictures. I bet you had a few illegal fruity cocktails and went to your mom to beg her to love you. I bet it hurt like hell when she shut you down. I know you hate yourself, Dick. I know you want everyone around you to feel what you feel, the pain. Tell me. Was he a David? Davey? Does he haunt you at night and beg you to stop being so bad to girls?”

He’s about to break and move over, Judd Hirsch. There’s a new shrink in town.

“I see you, Dick. Choking yourself with his dog tags, grabbing at them every time you feel happy. Let it out. Let him go. I’ve got your back, same way you tried to have mine.”

It’s the first time he looks at me and my skin crawls a little bit. The deadness in his eyes. “Can I have a bump?”

I was hoping he’d start talking on his own, but people drink wine at funerals, so what the hell. I give him a bump. He twitches a little and he laughs. “I can’t fucking believe this, Goldberg. You’re crazy. You know that, right?”

“No one’s watching, Dick. We’re not at the Beanery. We’re not at the bar. If you think it’s crazy that I’m trying to help you say goodbye to your brother…I’m sad for you.”

He hangs his head. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, Vail, but is he crying? I think he’s crying. His shoulders are jerking and he’s hiding his face in his hands. This is going faster than I expected and yep…He’s crying. I can’t see it but I can hear it.

“There it is, Dick. Yes! Let it out. David Arnold Palmer is gone, but you’re here. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved and then I promise…You won’t have this urge to be such a fucking…You can be Richard, Dick. I promise you. It’s never too late.”

It’s like an exorcism, the way he shakes, burying his head so I can’t see him cry. I knew this would work if I gave him a chance and would you look at that, Vail? It’s working.

“This is good, buddy. Let it out. I’m not here to judge you for the seventeen chat boxes. You were just lonely. I know there’s a good guy in there, and your brother…You gotta know that a guy like that, a soldier…He above all people would want you to be happy. The Seduction, the Destruction…” The betrayal. “It’s all just survivor guilt and I know that, Dick, I do.”

He’s shaking like a coked-up fucking jumping bean and I wish I had this on tape.

“Let me ask you this. What would you say to David right now if you could?”

He lifts his head and I’m a miracle worker, Vail. Dick is a changed man. Raw in the eyes and red in the face and I think…yes, those are tears. I grip the edges of the metal chair. I am a teacher and a rabbi and a priest and a shrink and the next fucking coming of Miss Frascatore.

Or…Wait. Am I?

Dick turns into Shining Jack Nicholson and grins. “Are you serious, Goldbitch?”

I don’t talk because I can’t talk. I don’t like this. Dick staring at me like his cooler-than-thou crap works on me. Laughing at me in this way that makes me get off the chair and stumble. He’s not crying. He’s laughing so hard that it looked like he was crying. I am not Judd Hirsch in Ordinary People. I am not Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. I am just me, Goldbitch.

“Goldberg,” he says. “I just…Are you really that fucking gullible?”

The skin on my arms turns cold, and the blood in my veins runs hot. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, FUCK FUCKING YOU.

“Kid,” he says. “The dog tags aren’t real.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, Goldberg, come on. Don’t you get it? I don’t have a dead brother.”

The plane is going down and I don’t know how to save us. “What do you mean?”

“Have we ever fucking met? Kid, come on. You saw my computer. Fuck…There are no pictures of my brother ’cause I never had a fucking brother and the dog tags…Can’t you feel it?”