I will punch him. “The what?”
“Hear me out, my friend. You moved up here to get soft and you did get soft…” I hate that he has a point but he does. I didn’t see it coming with RIP Shortus. “It’s like my agent said about my draft…” Say the word agent one more time, asshole. “There is such a thing as too soft, my friend. You can rock down to Menopause Avenue and spend every day in a library… but humans are what they are. And if you want something, you have to go hard, my friend. Always.”
I let Oliver high-five me and soon we’re in his Escalade. We’re on the way back to civilization, passing the casino, the tiny bridge that moves us from the mainland to Bainbridge. Oliver is on the phone with his agent’s assistant—I got a new scene for the pilot—and my friend is a sicko, but he’s a sicko who saved my life.
I thank him again—excessively, considering his ineptitude with the knife—and he’s on his phone again, probably searching for some How to Make People Think You Can Write article and he tells me that we did it. “We got out, my friend. Love… I’m sorry about that…” No he isn’t. “But she can’t mess with your head anymore and okay, so I no longer work for that family, but when my show goes into production…” Oh Oliver, my friend, do you really think that’s gonna happen? “Well, I’ll be making more money. In the meantime, though…”
My phone pings and it’s a link to a 1983 Smith Corona typewriter on 1st Fucking Dibs. “I know,” he says. “But I gotta tell you, Joe. Ever since I got back to writing, my mom’s doing better. She says she never wanted to say anything, but she felt like I gave up and she feels stronger knowing that I’m back at it. We gotta go hard, my friend. That’s the only way for the Poor Boys Club to succeed.”
There’s nothing more annoying than good advice from someone who makes a lot of bad decisions and we’re silent until Oliver drops me in my driveway. Goodbye, Oliver, and hello to my empty houses. You and the Meerkat are still not in your guesthouse and I take another shower—I still smell bunny blood—and I put on my black cashmere sweater and I go into my kitchen and stand before my chopping block of Rachael Rays. I choose a smaller knife, the sharpest one I have, and I slip the knife into a book and Oliver is right, Mary Kay.
It’s time to go hard.
47
I pop a Percocet—just one half this time—and Oliver has to win over so many motherfuckers if he wants Johnny Bates to make it into American homes. He’s my friend, in a way, and I really will cross my fingers for him, but I won’t hold my breath. That business isn’t so different from dealing with the Quinns. He’s gotta go hard when they tell him to go hard and then when they tell him it’s too hard he’s gotta go soft and when they send him notes and tell him they have no idea what he was thinking, that Johnny Bates is way too soft, he’s gotta suck it up and tell them how smart they are. It’s not an easy way of life, and me, I only have to kill it in one room, with one woman: you.
I catch a ferry to Seattle and I do what I need to do and I catch another ferry back to Bainbridge and I go home. I get my car but I don’t park at the library—too close and not close as in Closer—and I pull my hat down the way people do sometimes, when you need to leave the house but you don’t fucking feel like talking to anyone.
I’m too nervous, what with Rachael Ray up my sleeve, about to go where she’s never gone before. Can I do this? Can I really do this?
I cut through the woods and I’m in the gardens by the library, crouching. The windows need to be washed but I see you in there. You’re being you. I’m nervous and I can’t risk you seeing me so I carry on through the woods, into the back parking lot. I might vomit. The half a Percocet. The adrenaline. The Pain Pong.
“Hi, Joe.” It’s the Meerkat and she’s on the move and she doesn’t stop to talk. “Bye, Joe.”
She zooms by into the library and her Instagram said she was in Seattle and I brought Rachael Ray here for us, for you and me and now she knows I’m here—fuck—and will she tell you?
I duck my head and take the path down the steps into the garden and the cupola is empty—thank God—and I move like a mechanic, like Mick Fucking Jagger, maneuvering my broken body onto the ground, sliding my upper body under the love seat. I wanted to do this the right way, with spray paint, but then other people would see and the paint would bleed everywhere so it’s just not realistic, is it? I take the knife out of my sleeve and I start to go to work. It’s a slow go. I have empathy for Oliver because knives aren’t easy and at this rate I’m never going to finish. I’ve never carved initials into a tree. I don’t even know if you’ll be moved by this because yes, you love the graffiti at Fort Ward, but will you love the fact that I carved our initials into the underbelly of a love seat that’s property of the Bainbridge Public Library? Will you even be able to read my shitty knife-writing?
“Whatcha doing?”
I flinch and drop my knife and the Meerkat needs to be less caffeinated. Less nosy. “There’s a loose screw,” I say. “I’m just fixing it so nobody gets hurt. Can you gimme a minute?”
“I can give you a million minutes,” she says and then she’s gone, clomp, clomp, clomp.
I have to move fast because the Meerkat isn’t stupid and I am defacing public property for my own private purposes and this is only part one of Operation Go Hard and I have to make it to part two, the harder part of going hard.
The door opens. It’s you. “Okay,” you say. “Please don’t make me have to tell you to stop vandalizing our property.”
The fucking Meerkat ratted me out and I’m not done yet and I had a plan. I was gonna lay down a red blanket and play “One” by U2—our first fuck—and you were gonna lie down and see our initials and life isn’t what happens when you’re making plans. It’s what happens when you get a fucking head injury and turn into a sappy dork.
You say my name again. “Joe, come on. Stop.”
I pocket my knife and bang my head as I worm my way out from under the love seat. I am standing. Dizzy. My poor head. You just sigh. “I told you. There’s nothing to talk about. Go home.”
“Wait.”
You don’t move. Do I get down on my knees? No, I don’t get down on my knees. That’s not us. I sit on the bench. I don’t ask you to join me, but you do. You put your hands on your elbows.
“You were right,” I say.
“About what?”
“You told me that it’s not in my nature to love.”
“I was mad and I told you I was sorry. Can we not do this?”
“Yes,” I say. “We can absolutely not do this. I can go home. I can put my house on the market and I can move. And you can go back inside and pretend I don’t exist.”
“Joe…”
“It’s not in my nature to love, Mary Kay. And the truth hurts. And you have every reason to pretend I don’t exist because you’re absolutely right. My note to you was generic and vague. I disappeared on you. And my letter wasn’t just vague. It was bullshit because you can’t open up to someone without opening up all the way and I didn’t do that. I got scared. I ran. No excuses.”