“Do you think I don’t know what you did to my brother?”
My nerves go haywire and no. “I did nothing to your brother.”
“You were in Vegas with him. You dragged him to the desert.”
“Love, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I knew it, Joe… in my gut. And I kept waiting for myself to fall out of love with you because if those girls… Well I didn’t know them. But Forty was my brother. He was my twin.”
“I didn’t kill your brother.”
“No,” she says. “But you didn’t save him either.”
“Love, come on. No one could have ‘saved’ him…” He was beyond redemption. “You make it sound like I was with him, like I could have stopped him from jaywalking, like I could have stopped that car. I didn’t want him to die…” Of course I wanted to fucking kill him. He was blackmailing me, erasing me from all the work I did. And yes, I almost did it in Vegas, I wanted to end his life. But I didn’t, just like I didn’t kill Melanda or Phil. Wanting is not a crime.
“Julie Santos,” she says. “I think of that woman every day.”
The name is Saint Julie and I nod. “It’s not her fault. It’s not my fault. Love, you’re right. Twins have a bond and nothing can get in the way of that and no one knew him like you. So no one misses him like you and I can’t change that, but I can help.”
“No,” she says. “You can’t help. We’re the same. You lost your son but you’re up there bopping around like the happiest guy on earth…”
“You saw a couple fucking pictures and I didn’t even post them.”
“But you’re in them, Joe. You don’t care about us because you can’t care.”
“Yes I do.”
“No, Joe. See, my brother killed my dog and I still loved him. But you… You lose your son and what do you do? You run off and find yourself a new family. There’s something wrong with both of us, Joe. It’s a fact.”
“No, there isn’t, Love. We’re not defective. We’re survivors. That’s a good thing.”
But she just points the gun at me. “Get up and turn around,” she commands, and she is the shark inside my shark and she unlocks the safety and I look out the window at the City of Commerce and I won’t let her win, not when I’m finally happy, not when I finally have everything I want. I can’t do this to you. I tell her that L.A. brings out the worst in her, in everyone, that I’m better because I left and that she could be better too.
But she just laughs. “Oh, Joe. I’m not gonna live in your guesthouse.”
“Love, listen to me. I miss Forty every second of every day and you know I can’t be happy if you’re not happy.”
I started in the truth and swam into a lie and she knows I don’t love her and she says she knows I wanted to leave L.A. “You didn’t leave because of the contract. You left because you were afraid to be a father. You know me. You knew I was never gonna sign on to that Bainbridge plan. You might not realize it, but that’s why you came up with that dream. To push me away. And I understand it, I do. You didn’t come back to find us because deep down, you know that I’m just like you. Bad beyond repair.”
Those are dangerous words and when a toaster is bad beyond repair you don’t break out the screwdriver. You don’t try and fix it. You throw it in a dumpster. And there are dumpsters in this building, in this casino. “I’m here now, Love.”
“Right,” she says. “Just like me.”
We don’t belong in the same boat and I know where this boat is going: down. I have to paddle. I have to fight. “Love, we’re not bad people.”
She won’t look at me. She won’t give me an oar. “You’re here because you love them, not me, but I won’t let them wind up like my brother, Joe. Like those girls. I can’t do that. I won’t.”
She raises the gun and her finger squeezes the trigger. The explosion is silent, deadly. The circuit breaks. The lights go out all at once and I fall into a black hole.
42
The black hole succumbs to white light and white light reveals white walls and all the beeping tells me that I’m not in heaven. I’m in a hospital and the beeping is incessant and where are you? Where am I? There was a gun. Love had a gun.
A nurse named Ashley runs in and she looks like Karen Minty and I didn’t kill Karen Minty. I set her free and she’s alive and well in Queens married to a cop, pregnant for the second time in a year. I’m alive too. I lived. I ask West Coast Minty what happened and she smiles. She has long blond hair and she wears too much eyeliner. “You got shot, honey. But you’re okay. The doctor will be in soon.”
“How long has it been?”
She points to a whiteboard and it’s been who the fuck knows how many hours and thirteen days and I tear at the sheets because I missed Nomi’s graduation—did my balloons arrive and do you think I bailed on you?—and where is my goddamn phone? West Coast Minty wants me to calm down and I have rights. I want my phone.
“Honey,” she says. “Your dad has your phone. He’ll be back soon. Just take it easy.”
I don’t have a dad and I might not have a girlfriend anymore—Do you hate me? Do you know where I am?—and as promised, as threatened, the doctor is here with a herd of nondoctors and where the fuck is my “dad”？ West Coast Minty deserts me and my doctor looks more like a real estate agent than a physician and I really do fucking hate L.A. He flips through my chart. “So how are we doing, Joe?”
I tell him I need my phone and the not-doctors laugh and say that my sense of humor is intact. The doctor points at my head. “I have three words for you, Joe. Location, location, location.”
He really did miss his calling in real estate and he brags about his work, how he “saved” my life, as if that isn’t his fucking job, as if I care, as if I don’t need my fucking phone and all the details go in one ear and out the other and I don’t care that less than five percent of people recover from this kind of gunshot. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY PHONE?
“We’ll keep you here for a couple more days.”
In the great tradition of Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory and countless other survivors who claw their way out of hospitals, I smile. “That sounds good.”
“You’re a lucky man, Joe. I’m not sure if you’re religious, but if there’s someone you want to talk to, we have plenty of people.”
I want to talk to you and I need my fucking phone and he leaves—nice bedside manner—and I’m not lucky. Love kidnapped my son and shot me in the head and where is she? Where is my son? Where is my fucking phone?
I press my emergency button and I sit up in my bed. Calm now. “Ashley,” I say. “Can you tell me what happened?”
* * *
Ashley knows it all.
She freaking loves The Pantry and she moved here from Iowa hoping that she would meet famous people and she did. She saw Love’s movie and that’s why it’s so hard for her to tell me what happened but it’s also why she’s so excited to do it.