I leave her to be loved vicariously through Bridget Fucking Jones and there are moments when I want her to be happy. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she really does want a fresh start. I imagine a world where you and I are living together. Phil is gone, finding new women to suck on his Philstick and Melanda calls you once a week from her new life in Minnesota. She never tells you about that night in the woods and you never find out that she betrayed you. We take our secrets to the grave and people do that. I want to do that because I want to be the man who fixed your life. Not the man who killed your best friend.
But then I remember her Sorel boot in my ribs. I remember how the corners of her Carly Simon mouth turned up as I left her just now. I can’t fucking trust her, Mary Kay. I have to fact-check her soap opera saga so I throw a salmon on the grill. I pop a steak in the oven—Nice Joe! Chef Joe!—and I play the Sacriphil songs from the year Melanda turned thirty. It’s no use, Mary Kay. This is a concept album about a day in the life of a ghost—oh, Phil, you should have quit after your Shark—and I turn off the fucking “music” and text Phil from my burner phone: Hey, you around?
A good five minutes later my man Phil responds: Hell yeah Joe!
I step on Riffic’s tail and he hisses and my veins shrink up on me. Phil called me Joe. To him I’m Jay. Does he know? Am I fucked? Ten seconds later: I mean Jay. Sorry man!
Fucking prick.
I write back: Question. Banging the girlfriend’s best friend. Am I going to hell for that, or is that kinda shit good for the music?
Phil responds with an all caps warning—FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, HAVEN’T LAID DOWN THIS TRACK YET—and a page of his notepad. The title of the song is “A Diamond for You, A Ruby for Me” and I scan the lyrics and he’s mining rubies at Fort Ward and Jesus, Mary Kay. It’s true. Her story wasn’t “creative” and sometimes truth really is more repugnant and useful than fiction.
I’m mad for you and I’m sad for you. Of all the places they could have gone, Fort Fucking Ward. The salmon is sizzling and the fat in the meat is bubbling and Melanda is right. She knows my secret and I know hers. Could I do it, Mary Kay? Could I let your best friend go?
I never wanted to kill her—I don’t want to kill anyone—and okay. It’s insane to imagine her walking up the stairs, going to an airport, and starting over. But once upon a time, it was insane to imagine a woman like you walking into my life and I want to do right by you.
I placate your lying, cheating rat with all the caps I can manage—YOU ARE THE KING—and I put Sam Cooke on repeat to sanitize my eardrums.
And then my doorbell rings.
That’s not a thing my doorbell does and is it the Strawberry Killer? Is it Phil? Did he somehow find out where I live? I don’t like the sound of my doorbell and there it goes again and now there is knocking and what if the rat found out my address and now it’s the doorbell and the fists pounding on the door and my skin crawls.
I don’t look in the peephole and I don’t run. My hand sweats as I grip the doorknob.
And there you are.
19
You are wet—it started raining—and feral—you barge into my house.
Your hair is dripping on your blouse and your blouse is soaked—I see the outline of your bra—and you pace around in my living room—did I close the door to the basement?—and you are quiet. Wordless and airtight, like my Whisper Room, and do you know about Melanda? Do you know about Jay? I never should have knocked out Melanda and brought her home. I should have let her try and ruin my name—A Girl Is a Gun—because you would have come to my defense. You would have told her she was wrong. But I let my fear get the best of me and you drop onto my red sofa and you look at me like I’m a cheater.
You point at my big red chair. “Sit,” you say, as if I’m a dog. “Sit.”
You don’t speak to me. You pull your shirt over your head and it feels like the first time I ever jerked off—Blanche DuBois, I love you forever—and it reminds me of the first real-life woman I saw naked—my mother fell in the shower, there was hair down there, there were breasts up there—and the first time I had sex—Mrs. Monica Fonseca—and it’s Sam Cooke in that passing car, it’s the Eagles on a summer night when even people who get off on hating the Eagles have to kind of love them.
You didn’t come to arrest me and you don’t know how hard I’ve worked for this but here you are, dropping your skirt, peeling off your tights—Oh God, Joe. Oh God—and your Murakami is so close I can smell it and you sit on the sofa and I start to stand and you order me to sit and you stare at my pants so I unzip them and is that okay? Yes, that’s okay.
Your eyes are on the road and your hands are on the wheel and we are going to the fucking roadhouse in our own way and your nipples pop for me—Oh God, Joe. Oh God—and the pages of your book were stuck together. Sealed off like your legs below your tights but look at you now. Unglued. Slick. Oh God, Joe. Oh Joe. You are inside of you, but you are there because of me.
I move again. I want to be Closer and again you shoo me off. Sit.
You won’t let me in today—you’re still married—but I am inside of you, inside of your mind—and you came here to teach me and I am your pupil and I’m a fast learner—This finger goes there. The thumb belongs here—and your knees buckle and your toes curl and you finish first—Sisters before Misters—and you roll up in a ball and hide your face in a red pillow. You know I’m getting close and you peek and your eyes are just above the red pillow and I finish because of your eyes.
You sigh. “Oh God, Joe.”
Again we don’t speak. We don’t move. Our bodies hum. The air is musty with our sweat, our fluids. Do I hug you? Do I high-five you? I know you so well but I don’t know you naked and you came here, in more ways than one, and are you grossed out? Am I becoming an anecdote in your head—So this one time I showed up at this guy’s house and touched myself while he jacked off, I mean that’s how you know it’s time for couples counseling—and the serotonin is crashing. What do I say to you? What do I do? Do I bring you water? Do I feed you?
And then you laugh. “Okay, I’m a little embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. That was very hot.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
You’re a fox and foxes need to move so you pick up your tights and you tell me you’ve never done anything like this—you think you have to say that—and I walk across the room. I take your tights in my hands. I breathe in the white cotton center, the part that breathes you in, day in, day out. I am a gentleman. You want your clothes so I hand over your tights and you laugh.
“This is just never an elegant activity, putting on tights.”
I run my hand up the back of your leg. “Agree to disagree.”
You pull away and I take my hand off your leg. You pull up your tights and you fix your bun. “Huh,” you say. “I didn’t know you play guitar.”
“A little.” I should have hidden that fucking Philstick. “But not in a serious way. I have an oboe too. And a flute.”
You smile. “And you play them all at once, right?”