She has no right to ask about my private communication and it’s time to teach this kid a lesson. “Nomi, don’t take this the wrong way, but there’s this thing called privacy…” I’m talking to her, but the lecture is for me too. I planted those cameras in your house and it’s my job to deal with the consequences. “And privacy is good for us. We all need it.”
“Ah,” she says. “So you’re defending old people because you are an old person.”
“Believing in privacy doesn’t make me old. It just means I think some stuff is private.” I hold up my phone. “And if you’re really that curious… It’s just Seamus.”
She shudders. “Ick. He’s so annoying.”
True. “Oh come on,” I say, emboldened by his outreach, as if he and Nomi and this whole fucking community are coming through for us, begging me to stay. “He’s a nice guy.”
She shrugs. “I used to work at his store. But just for a few months.”
The Meerkat waves at Nancy, who is pulling an Athleta catalogue out of her mailbox.
“See,” Nomi says. “I’m not anti-privacy. But you grew up somewhere where you can be anonymous. Bainbridge is freaking impossible. You can’t have privacy here. I mean, you run a stop sign and you don’t get a ticket but someone sees you run that stop sign and before you know it, your mom’s like I heard you ran a stop sign and the guy at the T & C winks at you and tells you to drive safe and you have to drive safe cuz obviously your mom told him to keep an eye on you. I can’t wait to live in New York, assuming I get into NYU.”
I laugh and this is Cedar Cove and you couldn’t join me in the meadow, you’re punishing yourself for what you did in the privacy of my home. “I get it, Nomi. I do.”
She grips the straps of her backpack. “I’m outta here. Have fun with Seamus but please don’t tell him I said hi. I’m supposed to be at the library and he’ll tell my mom and…”
I zip my lip and she walks away, happier than she was when she arrived. I unpack my car and I shoot a video of Riffic and Licious fighting over the smallest box. I send you the video and you send me a smiley face and that’s all I need today, Mary Kay. I pick up a tchotchke I lifted from your home. A Phil Fucking Roth doll. I stuff it with catnip and toss it to the kittens and they go wild, thrashing, tearing off his limbs.
God, I wish I could kill Phil for you. But no.
I check your Instagram—nothing, you’re in shame mode—and I check the Meerkat’s. She shared a picture of herself with a few tech-challenged Mothballs—she didn’t tag me or thank me—but you know who got her in that room. You gave me chocolate-covered strawberries—and my phone buzzes. Oliver wants an update and I tell him I was just being a pussy—it’s the truth—and that I’m gonna stay in the house.
I am a good man, Mary Kay. Good men don’t run away. I’m not an avoidant wimp who runs out on you to play Xbox. I buy Oliver a present for Minka—a bottle of fake perfume called Chanel Fucked Up No5 by Axel Crieger—and that buys me time to fix dinner before your show tonight. I wasn’t crazy about the first episode—too much graphic nudity and emotional violence—and I know that you would be devastated and embarrassed by your behavior in that house. I know you don’t want me to see the ugly part of your home life. But tonight’s episode will be better. And if not, I’m just the man to retool it.
24
I did it, Mary Kay. I am the mouse in your house and you can’t figure me out. You keep trying to get my attention. Your rat had a gig on New Year’s Eve but you stayed home to be with your Meerkat. You sent me glad tidings after midnight and I responded with a you too and I watched you stare at your phone, typing and deleting, ultimately tossing the phone on the couch. You’ve also been angling for my attention in our library. You replenished The Quiet Ones with a few short story collections and a Richard Russo novel that came and went too fast, according to you. But I didn’t knock on your door to give you an atta girl. A day later, you announced that you were walking to Starbucks, an obvious play to get me to follow, but I stayed right where I was.
You carry the frustration into your home every night—good job, me!—and you’re going through withdrawal, which means that your show is getting better all the time. In Episode 3, you were grumpy. You miss me and you can’t have me—ha—so you were slamming cabinets. Apologizing to the Meerkat, retreating to your bedroom and avoiding your rat and tonight—Episode 104—you are in full-on Stepford mode. You don’t sulk and stare at the walls and think about me. You are in nonstop motion, rifling through the rat’s nightstand and his drawers because you live in fear of him falling off the wagon and you think he’s hiding heroin in his guitar case, in the bottom of his amp.
He isn’t hiding drugs, which means you’re not finding drugs and you want to find drugs because that would make it easier for you to force him to check into rehab, which would pave the way for the two of you to split up. It wouldn’t be about the drugs. It would be about the lying.
So now I’m off-island at a bar in Poulsbo called Good Old Daze, which is poppin’ as bars like this are on Thirsty Fucking Thursday. It’s easy to spot Aaron the drug dealer （a.k.a. Ajax. A.k.a. not all kids who grow up on Bainbridge turn out to be angels）。 I read about him on the Bainbridge Island Community Facebook page. People blame Ajax for the untimely death of a guy named Davey and Ajax holds court at a table in the back with an overall lack of shame about his purpose here. He wears a brown leather jacket that screams 1987 and Bruce Springsteen wails about hungry hearts and the barmaid pours stiff drinks in dirty glasses. I met Seamus for a beer at Isla and pretended to get a booty call and sneak out the back so Oliver won’t see—the work I do for you, Mary Kay—and then I drove into Poulsbo.
I order a shot of Jack and make my way to Ajax, who mad-dogs me when I stand there at his table. Shaking. “What of it?” he says.
“I heard… Are you Ajax?”
Ajax scans the bar to make sure this isn’t a sting and I tell him I knew Rudy—thanks to Facebook, I know all about RIP Davey’s bad-influence buddy Rudy—and before you know it, I have a seat at the unsteady table with Ajax. A couple quick exchanges about the shitty scene at the bar—Ajax was hoping to get laid tonight—and then we’re in the bathroom and just like that, I am the proud owner of ten highly toxic, no-good little M30s.
It’s bone chilling, Mary Kay. A man is dead because of these poison pills and Ajax doesn’t warn me about the fentanyl. He really doesn’t care about me or the dead guy but then, that’s the world, isn’t it? The fecal-eyed family doesn’t care about me either and this is why we need to find our tribe and take care of each other.
He tells me I can go now, and so I do, out the back door, into the rain, past a girl sucking a guy’s dick in a Honda, past a woman crying in her car—Bell Bottom Blues, you made me cry—and into my car. I’m shaking for real now. It’s scary to be in possession of all these fatal little pills and Ajax’s paranoia is infectious. I adjust the rearview and turn on the interior light and I put the fucking pills in the trunk.