His theory is a scratch on the record and he is wrong. I don’t want Love. I want you. And this is why I’m in the cage, to learn, to face the reality that I’ve been fighting, that I do feel guilty about shifting gears, not missing my son as much as I once did, accepting our fate to be apart. You see it in memes all the time. Life is change. But change is hard. Look at RIP Melanda’s blood letter. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t come to terms with the person she was, the person she wanted to be. But I can. Oliver tunes my guitar and sneers—Your D string is about to pop, Goldberg—and I won’t pop. I study my enemy; his T-shirt is old, not vintage. He didn’t drop four hundred bucks for it in some Hulkshit man-boutique in Venice. He grew up in that shirt. There are pit stains. Grease stains. The logo is BAXTER’S BOATHOUSE and that’s probably some waterfront dump in Florida and I shrug. “I don’t really have a plan, honestly.”
“Well,” he says, really going for that aspiring sociopath—psychopath?—vibe. “If you ask me, my friend, your MILF’s not worth it. Too much baggage. And Love’s not really the jealousy-trap type. You would have been better off with your first plan, which I can only assume was to win her back with your music.”
You are not a MILF. You are a fox. And I am not Phil. “What’s Baxter’s?”
Oliver looks down at his shirt as if he forgot that he was wearing it and he’s insecure. That’s good news for me and he pulls at the hem. “Well, actually,” he says. “I used to work at this place in high school, the first family that ever owned me, pre-Quinns. Seems you and I have that in common.”
“The Quinns don’t own me.”
“You keep telling yourself that, my friend. See the key to life is knowing that you are owned and maximizing the potential of said ownership. I wrote a pilot about Baxter’s. Shitty script, but it got me my first agent because the bones were there.”
I think of RIP Melanda’s bones, the animals that might be finding her at this moment and oh God, Oliver is a writer. I play along. I tell him what he wants to hear, that I never thought about it that way, that I worked at a bookstore in high school, that the owner did kind of own me. He nods, pleased, because writers don’t want to write. They just want to be right about every stupid fucking thing in the world. “Well, yes, my friend. Oh also… cute cats you got. Three of ’em. Quite a statement.”
They’re kittens, asshole, and I hang my head in fake shame. Writers are narcissists who want to tell their stories, so I ask Oliver where he’s from and he says he grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
“Do you know where that is, Goldberg?”
Fuck you, I’m not dumb. “Yep. How did you meet the Quinns?”
He wants control—typical writer—so he tweaks a knob on the guitar. “How do you deal with this, Goldberg? Your G string is mad fucked.”
His hand slips on the guitar and he blames my string, the way a bad tennis player blames a racquet and then he puts the guitar on the floor and now I guess we’re supposed to pretend he never touched it. “You seem pretty calm for someone in a cage, my friend.”
“Well,” I say. “You made a good point…” Praise the writer. “The Quinns own this house, technically, so it was only a matter of time.”
“They really screwed you with this shit box.”
“Are you kidding? Did you see my view?”
“Yes, Goldberg. You live in a house on an island. And you have a view of… the other side of the island. Well done there, my friend.”
STOP CALLING ME YOUR FRIEND, YOU PIECE OF SHIT.
I calmly tell him that I found the house myself, that Winslow is ideal because you can walk to everything. He strokes his chin—why do bad guys always have strong jawlines?—and he says that he would have chosen Rockaway or Lynwood and that’s another thing about sociopaths, Mary Kay. They like to talk about real estate. I am patient. The goal is freedom so I tell him that I agree—I don’t—and he picks up the guitar—no—and whines about my B string and guitars really do bring out the worst in men, don’t they?
“Come on, Goldberg. Let’s be real. What is there to walk to around here?”
“Everything. The main drag is right down the street. You know, where you saw me.”
“Main drag? You mean that strip of menopause wine bars that shuts down at eleven? You call that a main drag? You lived in L.A., my friend. Come on now. Be real with me.”
My heart beats for you, for the power to shatter this glass and throw him in the water for daring to slander our home.
Oliver pulls my keys out of his pocket. “All right,” he says. “I know your story so I suppose it’s only fair if you know mine. Basic chords are as follows. Born and bred on the Cape. Burnt my wrists on the fryolator. Went to Emerson, wrote some good plays, wrote some not so good plays…” His plays are all shit. “Hightailed it out to L.A. when I got a gig on a Law & Order spin-off…” That word should be banned: gig. “Banged out an episode of Law & Order: Los Angeles but the show went away…” As did his career. “Waited tables. Kept in touch with a consultant from the show who was a PI. He convinced me to get into that game, which he said would actually be better in the long run, in terms of my writing…” Like I give a fuck and writers assume readers are stupider than we are. “Got into the PI game, got my brother Gordy into it when he came out west…” It’s a turning point when he mentions his brother because for the first time, Oliver doesn’t seem entirely deluded and narcissistic. He is proud of what he did for his brother and he sighs. “I had a mentor. I had it made. But the Quinns did to us what they did to you, my friend.”
“What’s that, Oliver?”
“Gordy and I were doing really well with Eric. Eric was my mentor…” Say it again, Oliver and I hope I don’t repeat myself this much. “The Quinns wanted Eric’s help with their piece-of-shit son, Forty. Eric had a rule. He would do anything for the Quinns, anything but help that piece-of-shit Forty.”
I stare the fucker down. “You know my kid’s named after him, right?” And this is why I told Love that saddling our son with that stupid, tainted name was a bad idea.
“Yes, my friend, and I feel for you. I do.” And then he sighs, wanting to get back to his story. “Long story short…” It’s a little late for that, Oliver. “Eric turned down the gig. The Quinns turned around and offered the job to me and Gordy. And we’ve been working for them ever since.”
“What a nice story.”
“Joe, Joe, Joe, I’m not the bad guy here. I hate the Quinns just as much as you do. You should see where they’re putting me up, this second-rate motel with powdered eggs in the lobby and a mattress so thin I can barely sleep, which is why my back is fucked up and I can’t get the right angle on the strings on this piece-of-shit Gibson.”
“Well, maybe you should file a complaint with HR.”
“Look, my friend, I’m trying to make you see that the Quinns have me locked up, just like you. They gave me a job. They gave you this shit box. But they own us, Joe.”