The sky falls down. He said my name.
Is he a cop? Is this about my dog back home?
I give nothing. I say nothing. I know nothing and he laughs. “Calm down,” he says. “They never taste as good as they look, do they, Goldberg?” I could punch his lights out right now. I make a fist. “All right,” he says. “I know you have a temper…” No I fucking don’t, not anymore. “So I’ll cut to the chase. I’m just here with a message from our friends the Quinns.”
The Quinns? Love’s family? No. It’s a new year. A new life. “Who are you?”
“It’s pretty simple, Goldberg. Stay away from Love. Stay away from Forty.”
“I don’t know who you are, but obviously you’re ill-informed because I have stayed away.”
“Oh, Goldberg,” he says. “Mind your Instagram activities or you’re gonna wind up like your little strawberries. Capiche?”
I looked at Love’s stories because IT WAS FUCKING CHRISTMAS AND SHE STOLE MY SON AND YOU TELL ME HOW TO NOT LOOK AT YOUR OWN FUCKING SON and I ask him who sent him and he chuckles.
I pick up my empty box. “Well, you stay the fuck away from me. And my family.”
He steps in front of me. “I wouldn’t talk that way to me if I were you, Joe.”
“You walk up here. You start shit with me and I don’t know who the hell you are and you talk about my family.”
The motherfucker snorts. “？‘Family,’？” he says. “Well, that’s one word for it, my friend.”
“Who are you?”
“Look, you’re not a member of the Quinn family, Goldberg. See, I work for the Quinn family. I’m here on behalf of the Quinn family. Think of me as your co-worker.”
“But I don’t work for the Quinns.”
“Huh,” he says. “How’d ya pay for your house?”
I don’t answer the question because he knows the goddamn answer and he laughs. Pig. Snob. “See,” he says. “The difference between you and me is that the family is on my side, not yours. Understood? So, stop stalking your ex, my friend, and stay offline. Because if you don’t stop…”
He smashes a strawberry with his shoe and looks at me. “Got it?”
He flips his hat around and walks away and I let him. I have no fucking choice.
18
I can’t get those mutilated, bleeding strawberries out of my mind—What else does the Strawberry Killer know?—and Melanda is doing jumping jacks and what the fuck happened? I was with you and you were with me and now your strawberries are gone—I didn’t get to eat one—and Melanda never ate the food I brought her. She claims she’s still fasting her body and her soul and that’s a lie. There’s nothing spiritual about her fucking hunger strike—she just wants to be thinner than you—and I don’t want her to be here.
But she is.
And she’s different, Mary Kay. She just finished The Anjelica Huston Story （a.k.a. Crimes and Misdemeanors）， and she’s high on endorphins, sounding off on Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle—Who wouldn’t go nuts working for a barn jacket mommy who gets to be married to the nicest man on the planet?—and she takes a punch at Single White Female—Who wouldn’t go crazy shacking up with Bridget Fonda and her stupid swan neck?
She won’t stop talking and I can’t stop thinking about the Strawberry Killer and why is every fucking person lining up to get in our way? Finally, she stops jumping and sighs. “You were so right about Beaches, Joe.”
“I’m gonna go back upstairs. You seem okay for now.”
“Wait,” she says. “I mean it. You were right, Joe. You were right about a lot.”
Sorry, Melanda, I’m not some dumb asshole who gets off on a woman telling him he’s right. “See,” she says. “I don’t cry when Barbara Hershey dies. You want to know why?”
I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. “Why?”
“Because she deserved to die, Joe. She stole her roommate’s boyfriend.” She touches her toes and rises, Jane Fucking Fonda, and now she’s jumping again. Clap. Swish. Clap. “I want to go to Minnesota, Joe. I’m ready.” This should be good news. She wants out and I want her out—LIFE IS SUPPOSED TO BE EASY WHEN PEOPLE WANT THE SAME FUCKING THING—but she’s here. She knows things. She jumps and she jacks and she pushes. “I’m tired of this island, where women are expected to go around forgiving the women who shit all over them. Right now, I just want to forgive you, Joe.” She stops jumping and takes her pulse and her poor parents, no wonder they died early. “And I promise you, Joe, I will never breathe a word of any of this to anyone…” She’s saying my name way too much. “You helped me. And I’m ready to move on.” She flops onto the futon with a “Woof, I’m dizzy” and she picks up the gallon of water and drinks directly from it even though there’s a plastic cup on the nightstand. She’s relaxed and I’m tense, riddled with Silverstein’s Whatifs—What if someone saw me with the Strawberry Killer? What if you see your strawberries mashed on the pavement?—and why didn’t I scrape up that mess and what am I gonna do about this mess?
“I fucked him,” she says. “I fucked Phil.”
“In high school. I know.”
“No, Joe. I’m talking about a few weeks ago, when MK was outta town. Go back to my condo. I dare you. I am so behind on laundry so you can take my panties to a lab. They’ll find Phil’s DNA, I promise you.”
Another story, no doubt. I want your panties not her panties and I take her phone out of my pocket and she laughs. “Oh come on,” she says. “I’m a teacher. I don’t sext with him. It’s an affair. You just have to trust me…” She rubs her calf, as if she’s pretending her hand belongs to a man, to your fucking rat. “Remember when Jennifer Jason Leigh mounted Bridget Fonda’s boyfriend in Single White Female? It’s kinda like that. We are talking a ton of blow jobs.”
She drinks directly from her jug.
“Melanda, this doesn’t matter.”
“Wrong,” she says. “This changes everything. Now you know my dirty secret. You can let me go because I don’t want Mary Kay to find out about me and Phil. And you don’t want her to find out about you and me.”
I don’t want there to be a me and Melanda—why can’t your friends be normal?—and she crosses her legs. “You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So, it started after my thirtieth birthday, not the best time in my life, as you might imagine… MK wanted to throw me a surprise party, but you know how it is…” What the hell would I know about surprise parties and would you recognize your strawberries if you saw them on the sidewalk? “I told her no, but she insisted. So I got all dressed up, figured we’d be at the pub, maybe somewhere in Lynwood…” Oh, Melanda, learn how to tell a story and oh, Mary Kay, I am sorry about your fruit. “But then MK picks me up. She drives us to her house…”