“You just had a bug in your hair. I was pulling it out.”
I scratch my head the way you do when someone reminds you that you have one. “Thanks.”
“Don’t worry,” she says, stepping back, on her way to her bad-influence friends. “I won’t tell my mom about your little freak-out. I’m not stupid.”
None of our wedding guests saw what happened and maybe that’s because nothing happened. I fix a drink—I am of age—and I search the air around me for bugs. Gnats. Fruit flies. Anything. I see nothing. And then you are here, by my side, following my sight line into the abyss. “We really hit the jackpot, huh? No rain.”
You make everything better and you stare at the stars above and you sigh. “I saw you dancing with Nomi,” you say. “That really made me happy. That’s when it all kind of hit me, Buster. We did it. We really did.”
We all know the rules. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. You saw us dancing and you saw nothing and this is the good part of my life so I go with it, I go where you go because I can, because I have to. “Yep,” I say. “It made me happy too.”
50
Better safe than sorry and I am playing Centipede, just like Oliver and Minka. I play alone—you don’t know about my game—and I am winning. The goal is simple: Do not be alone with Nomi. Kill that Centipede every time it appears onscreen. Except in this game, I don’t kill her. It’s in her nature to want to be with me and there are bugs, she might have been trying to take a bug out of my hair. But you just never know, do you? And the Centipede isn’t evil and we’re all just prone to root for the soldier, the player, because the Centipede is presented as the enemy. I am like you—a future cofounder of the Empathy Bordello—and I am able to see things from Nomi’s perspective. She lost her father. Her uncle’s a motherfucker. Her fake uncle died in a hunting accident and proceeded to be torn apart by wild animals. And now she has a stepfather. It’s confusing stuff and the Centipede is on a mission to get close to me and it is my duty to do what is best for the Centipede: to stay the fuck away from her.
This is no way to live, being endangered in my own house, but in four days she goes to New York and that means no more fucking Centipede. At least, not until the real Centipede arrives, the two-player tabletop I bought for us. You walk into the kitchen and I pour coffee into your mug and you say you don’t have time for that. You have to catch the ferry. Erin is meeting you in Seattle to see a designer. I push the coffee across the table. “Oh come on,” I beckon. “You can do that later. Stay home.”
You sip the coffee. “You are a very bad man, Joe.”
I smile. “Yes, I am.”
If Nomi didn’t live here—just four days and three nights to go—I would pull your skirt off and bend you over the counter but Nomi does live here and she’s here now, rummaging in the fridge for a Red Bull. You nag her about her beverage choice—That will poison your brain—and she barks defensively—It’s no different than coffee—and I play my videogame, casually moving my position so that I am on the opposite side of the room from Nomi.
You don’t know about my Centipede score. You haven’t noticed a change in my behavior since she touched my hair. But I am the top scorer in the game and I have not been alone or within touching distance of your daughter once in the past four days.
When you yawn and say you have to go to bed, I follow.
When the Centipede—not a Meerkat, not anymore—pops by the library and sees me packing up and asks if I want to walk home, I tell her that I have to go to Seattle to see about a book.
When I am outside flipping steaks on the grill—no more lamb shanks for us—and you are inside chopping vegetables and the Centipede opens the door and asks if I need help, I smile—polite—and tell her I’m all set.
The Meerkat has daddy issues and because I am such a good stepfather, I don’t want her to find another bug in my hair. I don’t want her to beat herself up for anything when she’s in New York, starting over.
You peck me on the cheek and Nomi is in this house and you are leaving this house and I have to stop you.
“Wait,” I say. “You’re leaving now?”
Nomi laughs. “You guys are so gross.”
You tell me that you have to get the ferry and the Centipede hops up on the counter and she is wearing shorts and her legs dangle and I tell you I want you to stay and Nomi groans again. “I can’t take this anymore,” she says. “I’m going to the beach with Anna and Jordan and please don’t bug me about dinner later!”
That’s what happens in videogames sometimes. The enemy appears onscreen and you’re out of position, you can’t evade the bullets, but then it slips off-screen and you worried for nothing. You feel my forehead. Such a mother. “Are you okay? You look a little red.”
I pull you in because I can do that now that the Centipede is outside—GAME OVER—stuffing a towel in her bag. “Bye, guys!” she calls from the driveway.
“Come on,” I plead. “We have the whole house to ourselves. You can see the dee ziner any old day.”
You kiss me but it’s a kiss goodbye. “Erin’s waiting for me, Buster. So come on, lemme go. In four days, this is how it’ll be every day.”
“In four days a bomb might go off and we might all be dead.”
You sling your purse over your shoulder. “And I think I’m the paranoid one.”
I try once more. I put your hand on my dick. “Come on, Hannibal…”
Your eyes are two foxes, they have teeth, sharper than mine. “No,” you say. “And honestly… can we cool it with the Hannibal stuff?”
That hurts my feelings but in any relationship, there is growth and I’m not a fucking nickname person anyway. “Whatever you want, Mary Kay DiMarco.”
You walk to the door and blow me a kiss. “Be good.”
I blow you a kiss. “See you in twenty minutes when you change your mind?”
Your eyes land on the sofa and you fight a horny smile and you love me but you leave me and I sit on our in-house Red Bed and I turn on the TV. Everything is fine. I’m catching up on Succession—you were right, it is good, and there’s a nickname that you do like: Ken Doll—but I can’t focus. I need to zone out so I turn on Family Feud. I’m not paranoid, but this is a challenge for me. Things are working out for the first time in my life and sometimes I think about New York or I think about L.A. and I hear Aimee Mann in Magnolia warning me that getting everything you want can be unbearable. I am so used to never getting what I want that I don’t quite know how to sit on my sofa and be a basic Bainbridge hubby in khaki shorts killing time while his almost-wife—it will be courthouse official on 8/8, you like that date—searches for curtains and my stepdaughter hits the beach with her friends.
The door opens and I turn off the TV. You knew I needed you today and you’re here, kicking off your shoes in the foyer. “Did you miss me, Mary Kay soon-to-be-Goldberg?”
I look up from the red pillow I just moved to make room for you and it isn’t you.
It’s the Centipede and this is a new level in the game—a dangerous level—and she pulls a can of spiked seltzer out of the fridge and she’s eighteen years old and it’s 11:00 A.M. She closes the fridge with one hip and shakes the can before she pops it. She giggles. “Finally, right? My God, I was going crazy.”