“Are you?”
“Of course I am. You have every reason to be happy. You have Forty. Is he with your parents?”
“My parents don’t know I’m here, Joe. I’m not a teenager. I don’t tell them every single thing I do.” She cocks her head. “And I don’t know why you’re pretending to care about Forty now. You always wanted a girl and you never wanted a son. Your friend Mary Kay has a daughter, now doesn’t she?”
It’s a sucker punch and I didn’t see it coming and I can’t keep up with her. The floor is shaking—there are earthquakes in Los Angeles, even when there aren’t—and Oliver was right. That’s what this is really all about. I remain calm. “Love, I’ve always loved Forty. I’m thrilled to have a son. And Mary Kay has nothing to do with us. I met her because you sent me away. Let’s be reasonable.”
“Reasonable.”
“Love…”
“Joe, you were never reasonable. I mean you say that like I don’t know what you’re capable of.”
I grit my teeth. Was capable of.
“Yes, I was postpartum…” She is postpartum. “And I ‘sent you away.’ But you’re you. I thought you’d swim through the moat and throw rocks at my window. I thought you’d fight, that you’d steal him or die trying or blow your brains out.”
“You know I’d never blow my brains out or put our kid in harm’s way. We put the child first. That’s all I did.”
“No,” she says. Unreasonable and more spoiled than ever and imagine what she’s doing to my son. “All you did was stalk me on Instagram.”
“What did you expect me to do? You didn’t block me.”
“I was trying to be nice.”
“So you think that’s ‘nice’？ You think I should be content to watch videos of my son.”
“Well, I know you. I know you’re more at ease watching people from afar than really getting close to them.”
Not anymore. Not since you, Mary Kay. “That’s just not true, Love.”
“Well, here’s what is true. You found your little librarian and you think you get to have your nice little life and still spy on us?”
“I never wanted to be a spy. I wanted to be a dad. I am his dad.”
“You drifted,” she says. “You didn’t see us at the zoo last week…” I was with you and Nomi and it’s not my fault that stories disappear. “You watch less and less, as if we’re not entertaining enough for you, as if you don’t need us anymore. I know, Joe. I always look at the list of viewers and do you know what it was like to look at that list and see your name less and less?”
FUCKING INSTAGRAM AND NO ONE SHOULD LOOK AT THAT FUCKING LIST. “Love, Instagram isn’t real.”
“Well, time is real, Joe. And you invested more and more of your time with your new little wannabe family, which says a lot about how much you ‘love’ your little ‘savior.’？”
“And what about you? You don’t have a moat. You’re not a helpless fucking princess. You didn’t call me up and say Hey, what happened to you? What do you want me to say? How can we make this work?”
But she isn’t my co-parent. “Well, look at that,” she says. “Love and happiness agree with you, Joe.”
“I’m not happy,” I lie.
She laughs. “Are you kidding? You are so happy. Most men… if you took away their son and the woman they supposedly love, the only woman alive who really knows them…”
“You did that, Love. You sent me away, Love.”
“And you left,” she says. “Do you even care what it’s been like for me?”
“Of course I care.” But I don’t care. Not anymore. I love you, not her.
She picks at the barrel of her gun. “Well, I got jury duty.”
“I thought your dad always got you out of that?”
“This time I went,” she says. “Like some everyday person with no connections, you know, like a librarian.” She has the gun and the money so she gets to play dirty and I stay silent. “I left Forty with Tressa and drove to the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center. They make you park a mile away and I had to walk all the way from Disney Hall but I got there…” I wish you were here, Mary Kay, because as my cofounder of the Empathy Bordello you would see what I see, a profoundly lonely woman with no one to talk to, no one to listen to her describe her day. “I brought my chargers, L?raBars…” She winks at me and my blood pressure spikes. I told her RIP Beck ate L?raBars and I miss the man I am with you. “So then I got selected…” She flips her hair like she got a part in a movie. “I went upstairs and I saw this poor guy in these dress pants that are five inches too short with his lawyer, who was terrible…”
“Love, we both know that the Injustice System is rigged.”
Her eyes narrow. “Seriously, Bainbridge Boy, can I just tell my story?”
I nod. I have to remember. Love is unloved. Lonely. Los Angeles.
“We got numbers assigned and I was number one…” Oh that’s right, she’s an actress. “The judge asked me all these personal questions about my history and he goes around the room asking everyone and everyone’s telling their story and I just… I feel so close to these people, like we were in this together, like a family, you know?”
No, I don’t know. “I get it. That’s a lot to take in.”
“They sent us home and I went out with some of the jurors because we were all so shook…” I don’t like the word shook. It’s a fake word, and this is fake news. “And we wound up at this lounge downtown and it was a really late night…” Her voice drifts in a way that reminds me that Love is perverted. “Anyway I went back the next day but I didn’t get picked to be on the jury. I started reaching out to my new friends and they all just… blew me off. Every single one of them.”
She’s so lonely and you would feel bad for her too, Mary Kay, even though she’s making it impossible for me to comfort her right now. The gun. The gun. “I’m sorry, Love. I am.”
“I miss my brother, Joe. I miss having my people. I thought those people could be my people…” Los Angeles is the opposite of Friends and my heart hurts for Love, it does, but I don’t want Love. I want you. “Anyway,” she says. “I told Tressa and Mom and Dad that I got picked. For the past few weeks, I’ve been here, ‘sequestered.’？”
Living in a casino would drive anyone crazy and I tell Love that we can get her some help and she shakes me off. “No,” she says. “I don’t need help. I know why I didn’t get picked for the jury and I know why everyone blew me off. See, the judge asked us if we could be impartial in spite of our experiences. Most people said no. I said yes. I know how to love people who do terrible things. It’s who I am. It’s how I was born.”
“Well fuck the jurors, Love, because if you ask me, that’s a beautiful thing about you. You have an open heart. It’s no reason to be sad.”