You by Caroline Kepnes
He turns around. “I’ll bump into ya, kid.”
“Thanks, Mr. Mooney.”
The door shuts, quietly, and I walk, aimlessly, but somehow I reach my place. One of my typewriters is laughing at me, I swear, because of my costume. I pick it up and I throw it at the wall. Fuck it. It’s not like the landlord’s ever fixing anything anyway. I strip out of my costume and I want to burn it but I put it in a shoebox and tape it up. I don’t want to look at it anymore and I write the address and when I have to put Bridgeport, I lose my grip on the pen. I throw on my worst comfort clothes: a raggedy Nirvana T-shirt that my mother left behind and nasty fleece pants from a rummage sale on Houston a hundred years ago. I want to look as miserable as I feel and I tear into the Twizzlers I bought at the Korean deli by Mr. Mooney’s place. The new hole in my wall says it all.
There are two Twizzlers left and I’ve lost time like I sometimes do in here, and I am listening to Eric Carmen’s “Make Me Lose Control” on repeat, self-destructing, cutting myself with sappy lyrics about a time in history that I’m too old to remember, about summer love and convertibles with huge backseats. There is a knock at the door and there is never a knock at the door or a hole in the wall and there is another knock. I stop the music. There is another knock.
24
WHEN I open the door, I die. You are here, in my building, in powder-blue corduroys and a little furry jacket. You want to come inside and this is dangerous. All the pieces of you that I’ve collected are here with me and you are not meant to see them. You still smell like you, like heaven, and you look like you’ve been crying. You move toward me and I clench the doorknob. “Beck.”
You sigh. “I get it, okay? You don’t hear from me for a while and then I call you fifty times and show up at your doorstep like some fucking crazy stalker.”
And now I know. It’s safe to let go of the doorknob. You didn’t see me on the ferry. You are soft in your eyes and safe. You want to come in.
I play with you. “You’re not some crazy stalker.”
“Well, a little crazy,” you say. “I had to force the kid at your shop to give me your address.”
You are too small to force anyone to do anything and I will kill him and you are frazzled and there’s nothing for me to do but get out of the way and let you in. You hesitate once you’re inside, as if you’ve walked into the worst of the bathroom stalls at a movie theater and I wish I had cleaned. There is an open can of sardines in the sink that wouldn’t be there if I’d known you were coming. But if I draw attention to the fucking fish, well, that’s not good, either.
“I like your shirt,” you say. “Nirvana.”
“Thanks,” I blurt. “It was my mom’s.”
You nod because what the fuck are you supposed to say to that? “D-do you want me to open a window?” I stammer.
“No,” you say. “I’ll get used to it.”
Fucking Curtis and I scan the living room for bras or panties or e-mails. Nothing. Miracle. You are slipping out of your furry jacket and unzipping your boots and settling onto my sofa like you own the place. One good thing: You are so all about you that you don’t seem to notice my apartment. You are blowing your nose and squirming and I sit in my chair that I found in the alley by the bookshop a few weeks ago. When I dragged that chair home on the subway, I assumed nobody would ever see it again, that it was like the chair’s last day of being seen.
“So, I know it’s been a while,” you say. “But I needed someone and I thought of you and . . . you didn’t answer my calls.”
“I’m sorry,” I say and I should have given you a chance. If I were a brave man, this conversation would be happening in your apartment.
You hug your knees and rock. “Anyway, I just don’t even know right now. I’m a mess.”
“Are you okay?”
You shake your head no.
“Did someone hurt you?”
Your eyes well up and you look at me like you’ve been protecting someone for so long, like you’ve always said no when the answer is yes and you squeak out an answer. “Yes.”
And you’re bawling. I go to you and let you cry and you don’t say anything for a while. I scoop you into my arms and let you cry. Your tears soak my T-shirt and I feel like some stalker who will never wash his clothes again and your whole body is shaking from unhappiness and I will make you rattle with joy soon, soon. You pat me on the back. “Okay. I’m okay.”
I understand that you need your space and I return to my chair and you let out a big sigh. “Have you ever carried a secret around? I mean, a secret as in a lie. And one day you just fucking can’t do it anymore. And you have to let it out?”
I see Candace’s musical fucking brother on TV sometimes and I want to smash the screen and tell him that his sister did not drown while body surfing. I nod. “Yeah, I get it.”
Your eyes skate around and they finally land on me. “Well, it’s a long story but, Joe, here’s the thing. I lied to you and to everyone. My dad is not dead. He’s very alive and very well and living on Long Island.”
“Whoa,” I say. You chose me.
“I couldn’t hold it in anymore,” you say. “I had to tell someone, or else.”
“I get it,” I say. And I do. And I think that you didn’t choose someone, you chose me. And that means something, Beck. You hunted me down, me.
“And you know how girls are,” you say. “If I told Peach or Chana or Lynn or anyone like that, then they’d tell someone and that person would tell someone and someone would send out some cryptic tweet about it and ugh. That’s why I thought of you. I knew you’d let it stay here.”
“I get it,” I say. And I do. I keep many secrets and now I have yours.
“And honestly, you know, in a way I’m not lying because in every way he is dead to me, Joe,” you rail on. “But the thing is, he married a lawyer and she’s rich and he has money and I’m broke. And of course he won’t just give me money, no. I have to troll around in a fucking Charles Dickens dress with his spoiled offspring in order to get anything out of him.”
“That was a lot of information,” I say. “Charles Dickens?”
You laugh and tell me about the festival. I have to be careful here and I act like I’ve never heard of such a thing and I let you share the details and I’m methodical in my reactions and then I shake my head. “This is a lot,” I say. “Is it worth it? Putting up with all that for a few bucks?”
“Well, life costs money,” you say and you cross your arms. “If he can pay for his new kids to eat organic candy apples then he should have to pay for his old kid too.”
“I get it,” I say. And I do. Your dad and his wife probably blew four hundred bucks on Dickens costumes, hot cocoa, and candy apples. And you’re not the kind of girl to wait tables. Your friends don’t worry about money; why should you?
You finish sending a text and relax your arms and lower your legs and when animals open up like that, they want to fuck. You’re my animal on my sofa and you look around my home. “Wow,” you say. “You really do like old things.”
“I found every single thing in here on the street,” I say, proud.
“I see that,” you say, disgusted. You prefer new, sterile IKEA, yet you tuck your dirty tissues into your mangy purse. Ah, women. You wiggle your toes and start in about your dad again: “Divorce is different when you’re from a poor-ish family, you know? My dad met Ronnie on the island when she was on vacation. Literally, Joe, he met her at a bar where my sister was working. And it was hard enough to start college as the girl who grew up where everyone else goes to vacation. I didn’t want to tell people that my townie dad ran off with a tourist. Enough already, you know?”
“It’s not fair,” I say.
“It’s not,” you say and I’ve never seen you so worked up. “Being an Ivy League townie is one thing, but a townie with an absentee father? Fuck that. It’s a cliché.”
“I get it,” I say. And I do. I love you for being the prideful, scrappy little fighter that you are.
“I figured when I moved here I’d start all over but I didn’t think it through.” You sigh and shake your head. “Everyone from school is here and if I told my friends about my dad now, I’d have to deal with it, you know?”
“I know,” I say. “People can be judgmental about stuff like this. You have to watch out.”
“Nobody knows,” you say and your eyes are big, mine. “Nobody.”
“Except me,” I say and you blush.
“Except you,” you repeat and you smile, almost, and then you sadden. “And I know I shouldn’t be so insecure, but he didn’t just leave, you know? He built a whole new family with a younger, cuter wife and younger, cuter kids.”
“Those kids are not cuter than you, Beck.”
You’re not in a suspicious mind-set, thank God, and you laugh, assuming that I’m making an assumption. “All kids are cuter than adults, Joe.” You sigh. “That’s just the evil nature of Mother Nature.”
“Well, fuck her,” I say and I get a laugh out of you. “You did your part. You saw him and his family. Did he help you out with some dough?”
You stretch your arms up toward the ceiling and stretch to the right and notice the hole in the wall right behind you. “Jesus,” you say. “That’s a big fucking hole.”
I swallow. “A pipe burst upstairs and they had to get in there.”
“And apparently they did,” you say and now you’re tuning into your environment. You notice Larry, my broken typewriter on the coffee table. You look at me for permission to touch him. I nod. You tell lies. I hoard typewriters. We are different, hot.
“His name is Larry,” I say. I’m gonna be honest like you.
“Do you name all your typewriters?” you ask.
“No,” I say. “I don’t name them. They tell me their names when I bring them home.”
It is fun to fuck with you and you can’t decide if I’m pretentious or insane and I can’t tell if you’re being sweet or patronizing when you laugh. “Right.”
“Beck,” I say. “Of course I name them. I’m just kidding.”
“Well, Larry is handsome,” you say and you lean forward to say hello to him and tinker with his keys. I can see your panties. You ask me a question: “Can I hold him?”
“He’s heavy, Beck.”
“You can put him on my lap,” you say and you’re wearing pink seamless bikinis, size small, from the Victoria’s Secret Angels collection. I pick up Larry and set him on your lap and pray that you don’t notice that your panties are identical to the panties shoved in between the cushions of the sofa. I tell you that Larry is broken because he fell (hahaha), and you pet him, sweet.
“Well, Larry may be broken, but he’s a handsome beast, Joe.”
“He’s a one of a kind,” I say.
You study Larry. “He’s missing an L.”
I have to lie because I can’t have you looking around for the L. “Since the day I brought him home.”
You look at me. “Do you have anything to drink?”
I don’t have anything to drink. Fucking Curtis. You return your attention to the typewriter and you want to look between the cushions and make sure the L isn’t lost but if you do that, you will find your panties, which you will know are yours if you have a keen sense of smell, which I think you do. You’re like a toddler that needs distraction and I take a Twizzler and you grab the last one.
“Do you have any more of these?” you say.
“Afraid not,” I say and now I’m worried because you stop chewing and your eyes lock on something in my bedroom.
You squint. “Is that the Italian Dan Brown I gave you?”
I want to close my bedroom door but that would be weird so I turn around and follow your gaze and realize you are looking at the special shelf I built for the Italian Dan Brown. It could be worse; I could have put the Book of Beck on that shelf.
“I think that’s your book,” I lie.
You pet Larry and you grin. “That’s sweet, Joe.”
I swallow the rest of my Twizzler and I have to get you out of here. “You wanna go get some more Twizzlers?”
“Hell yes,” you say and I walk over to you and you look even smaller with Larry on your lap and you pat him. “Lift, please.”
I lift him off your lap and your powder-blue cords have new dark scuff marks and I put him in his normal spot on the floor and you step back into your boots and slip into your little furry jacket and walk across the room away from the evidence of my affection, your panties and your bras. What a relief to open the door and lead you out of my home, and it’s a whole new world with you in it. You pause in the stairwell and point to a smudge on the wall. “Blood?” you whisper, alive and jocular, my furry nymph, and I nod in affirmation and you raise your eyebrows. “Larry’s blood?”
I smack your ass and you like it and you hop down my stairs and I’m the only one who knows about your dad and soon it will be time for the red ladle. You push open the door that I’ve been pushing open for almost fifteen years. We walk to the bodega and you’re practically skipping.
“Is this the part they’re trying to make into a historical district?” you ask. “I read about that somewhere.”
“No,” I say. “This is the other part of Bed-Stuy.”
My section reminds you of “Sesame Street and Jennifer Lopez songs” and every guy in the shop wants to bang you but you’re with me. You like the attention; you tell me you feel like a celebrity in here and you giggle. I pay for the Twizzlers and the Evian and you shove the Twizzlers in your back pocket, as if you need to draw more attention to your ass. So this is what it would be like if you lived here with me. It would be good, warm. Before you know it, we are back on my stoop.
We sit close and tear into the Twizzlers and share the Evian. A couple of teenage girls from the block pass by and mad-dog you with your Evian and you get sweet, defensive and assure me that you only drink Evian because Peach says it’s alkaline and you’re not wearing a bra, the way you weren’t wearing a bra that first day in the shop and it really does feel like a new beginning.
You scruff my hair with your cold little hand. “You wanna go back up?”
“Yeah,” I say and I wish, I wish I could have prepared for you, hidden your things and showered, and put on matching socks. But you are here now, walking up my stairs, slowly, teasing me with every deliberate, soft step.
It’s a blur from then on. My shitty sofa transforms into a hammock on a desert island in a Corona commercial minus the beer. We don’t need beer, we don’t need anything, we have us now. I keep my arms around you and you hold me in a way that would please Eric Carmen. We suck face until we can’t and then we just tell each other things. You tell me all about the Dickens festival, the fight with your father over cigarettes, your stepmonster and the shitty motel, the bratty stepsiblings, the overpriced candy apples. You want to know about me and I tell you I like you, a lot. We go back to sucking face. It goes on like that for a while and you’re all worn out and cozy. When you finally fall asleep your little body is limp. I don’t know if I will ever be able to sleep with you this close to me. You can’t tell lies in your sleep and you smile slightly, I think, every so often, and move closer to me.
The only reason I know that I am able to sleep in such close proximity to you is that the next morning the sound of the shower turning on wakes me up and you are no longer in my arms and you are naked, wet, there.
25
IF you live alone, you’d be a fucking masochistic freak to buy an opaque shower curtain. I started thinking about this in the Silver Seahorse, where the shower curtain was white, save a few spots of mold on the bottom. It’s like they were trying to make the rooms feel like Psycho. I thought buying a shower curtain would be the easiest fucking thing in the world but you go to Bed Bath & Beyond and they have like six hundred opaque shower curtains that are obviously not an option. And then you go online and there are thousands to choose from. I didn’t buy a total
Every.
Fucking.
Day.
So I started going through hundreds of options online. Most of the designs are bullshit you could never stomach every day (a map of the world, go fuck yourself, fish, a map of Brooklyn, really go fuck yourself, snowmen, the Eiffel Tower, nautical signs—I mean, I’m not some fucker who buys scarves at Urban Outfitters and rates movies on IMDB). I just wanted something funny and classic.
I finally settled on a clear shower curtain with yellow police tape marked POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS slapped across. And when I bought this shower curtain, I never imagined that you would be on the other side of the police tape, those damn yellow stripes blocking my view of you. Next time I’m going for an all clear, Beck. Lesson learned.
And really it’s all for the best because I don’t have time to watch you shower. I have to take this opportunity to hide all the Beckmobilia and hope that you didn’t do any snooping when you woke up. I retrace your steps. You left the bathroom closet door open (typical woman) after you got a towel. Fortunately you took the towel on top and you didn’t find your bras stashed under the bottom towel. Hopefully, you didn’t open the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and find your scratched-up silver hair clip (I stole it the first day I stepped into your apartment, those clips are everywhere, you’d never miss it, right?). I needed it because a few delicious strands of your hair are woven in, holding your DNA, your scent. Did you open the refrigerator door and find your leftover bottle of Nantucket Nectar diet iced tea, half-empty? Your lips touched it and I wanted to keep your lips in my refrigerator. You did pour a glass of water and there is always the possibility that you would have mistaken your iced tea bottle for my own.
The bathroom door is the one thing in here that is actually not even slightly broken and you could have closed it all the way, but you didn’t. It’s like you want all doors open at all times, the way your windows have no curtains in your apartment. And I can’t help but feel excited that in some way, you wanted me to sneak a peek at you in there, right now, blocked by that Big Bird–colored police tape. You arch your back and let the water hit one tit and another tit and then you turn around and you like it here, in my shower, in my home and you let the water go at your neck and drip down your back and you take the bar of Ivory soap (my soap), and hold it between your breasts and move it down and let it fall and then you rub the suds on your belly, lower, lower until your hands are down there and then as soon as they’re down there they’re back up on your neck and you’re holding back and you’re so hot for me right now and I should take off my clothes and get in the shower but if I did that, you would look at the moving door and realize that your white bikini top is hanging on the doorknob. I know you didn’t notice it yet. And there’s a chance you will never notice it since you didn’t close the door all the way. I can grab the bikini and pray that you’re so wrapped up in your sopping wet—double entendre, baby—self and don’t notice or I can leave it there and assume that when you do finish—cleaning, not fucking—that you will be so preoccupied with drying off and blinded by the steam that you won’t notice your own bikini top.