“No! Let go of me you sick fuck!”
I have a solid grip on you and it’s a shame that you’re in a rage because I could really give it to you right now. But you are an animal—kick, kick—and a handicapped monster. Why do you waste time flailing your arms, little one? You can’t reach me. I carry you down the aisle and drag you onto the floor behind the counter. I slide us to the floor and stretch my legs and hold you on my lap. Even if someone were to pass by, we would go unnoticed, protected as we are by the counter. You fight to get away, but I can hold you for the rest of my life if I have to.
As always, your anger eventually cools. Your muscles relax and you are my new doll: Sad Beck. You don’t talk. You just cry. You don’t fight me and there is hope. I kiss your neck; you don’t like it. It’s not a time for kisses, I understand. This is a lot to take in, a lot of change and the sun isn’t coming up for a while and I rock you and look at your naked legs on top of mine. This is what love looks like. I know it. You don’t try to claw me anymore. We sit in silence for so long that you must be ready to be good. I begin, I test you. “So, what are we going to do with you?”
The correct answer: You should beg for my forgiveness, admit that you freaked out when you woke up alone. You thought I had abandoned you, the way your father abandoned you, the way all the men in your life abandon you. And then I promise to stay with you forever and you caress my hands and I forgive you and let you guide my hands to your center, your magnet. I killed for you. I deserve you. I wish I could see your face and you haven’t answered so I rephrase the question, “What happens now, Beck?”
The correct answer: love.
You answer, with a voice so flat I almost don’t recognize you. “I disappear.”
“No.” No.
“Listen to me, Joe,” you say as you press your hands into mine in a manner that is entirely devoid of sex, of passion. “I don’t care about what you did to Benji or Peach. I get it. Benji really did have a drug problem. And Peach really did have issues.”
“She was a liar, Beck. She even made up bullshit about her bladder.”
“I know,” you say and you forgive too easily. “I just loved that she loved me.”
“And what do you want now?”
The correct answer: me!
You sigh. You tell me that you don’t want to be a writer. You want to go to Los Angeles and be an actress. “And maybe if I don’t get any jobs, well, maybe I’ll write something for myself, you know?”
It gets worse. You tell me that you are basically a “very lazy girl.” I hold you and you elaborate on your flaws. “Blythe is right. Half the time my stories really are just diary entries. Half the time I have to search and replace the names in order to turn the pages into fiction. That’s how bad I am.”
“Uh-huh,” I say and I am not letting go and these are the wrong answers.
“You don’t want me, Joe,” and I look at your feet, the toes that Peach molested in Little Compton. “You think I’m this dreamy writer girl but I’m not. Nicky has every right to hate me. I fully admit it. I didn’t really want him. I just wanted him to leave his wife for me. I wanted to fuck up his kids, and yes, Joe. I do know how sick that sounds.”
No. “You’re not sick.”
You blurt, “I saw you at my reading that night in Brooklyn. I knew you followed me.”
I hold on to you and kiss your head because we really are the same and we are the house and the mouse and you know it. You do. “I thought so,” I say. “I hoped so.”
You squish your toes into my pants. “Then you know I’d never turn you in, Joe. I’m the connector in all this. I’m the toxic one. I know this mess is my fault and I would never go to the police, Joe. You let me out of here, and I’m gone. Forever.”
I give you another chance. “I don’t want you to be gone, forever.”
“Oh come on,” you say like a friend, no sex between us. “I think you can find another girl to read The Da Vinci Code with you.”
“Beck, stop.” Tell me you want me.
“I will walk out of this store and never look back. I swear to God, Joe.”
“Beck, stop.”
But you don’t stop. “Joe, listen to me. I swear to you. I will disappear and it will be like I don’t even exist anymore. Let me go and I promise that you will never, ever see me again. I swear. Joe?”
You failed and you do not get a gold star and I squeeze your neck to make the wrong answers go away. They fester in your bulging eyes and they turn your cheeks Nantucket red and I squeeze, harder. The wrong answers must be choked out through the bubbles of saliva that ooze from the corners of your gnarled mouth. You are a fucking idiot for thinking I want you out of my life, after all I’ve done for you and this is not Reality Bites and you don’t want me over the other douche bags in your life and I was wrong about you.
You gasp. “Joe.”
I will not be fooled. “No, Beck.”
You whisper, “Help.”
And I am helping because you need an exorcism, a rebirth. You have sinned and you did manipulate Nicky and you did lead Peach on and you did stalk Benji. You are a monster, deathly, solipsistic to the bone and you’re blasphemous because all you want is
You.
I squeezed too hard. You’ve gone quiet. I let go.
“Beck,” I say.
I want to hear your voice. I call again. “Beck. BECK.”
Nothing comes from you and fuck. What have I done? I shake your body and I can’t hear you breathing and I need to hear you breathing because Reality Bites is a stupid movie and you did push Peach away and Benji did lead you on and Nicky did break the rules. So you said some stupid things—I do too sometimes and I forgive you. I slide you off of my lap and onto the floor. You are so still and all the good in you is in you, beneath those eyelids, latent. I love you for being so lovable. I am sorry, Beck. I can’t hold you responsible for the fact that people go crazy over you and you have to wake up because I want to give you love love love love crazy love.
I push my hands into your tiny chest. You are breathing, I think. You must be breathing. There cannot be nothing inside of someone as lovely and lit as you; we had an everythingship. You are too robust and full of life and bathrobe rules and orgasms and pies and bitter caramel apples to be gone. I hate myself and I love you and I kiss you and you don’t kiss me back and I beg you to come back and I hold your little hands and I look into your little eyes and at the end of the play Closer upon which the movie is based, the Natalie Portman character gets hit by a car. She dies. In the movie you don’t see Natalie Portman die and I like it better that way and you cannot be dead, Beck. You’re not even twenty-five and you don’t do drugs and you are safe and sweet and studious and I lean over you so that my ear touches your lips. When you breathe I want to hear it and taste it and I wait. I wait for sixteen centuries and eight light-years and I pull away.
You are gone.
I stand up and grab my hair and I want to pull it out because you can’t run your fingers through it anymore and maybe I am wrong and I get back down on the ground and mash my head into your hand and wait for you to touch me. Please, Beck, please. But your fingers don’t move and when I lift my head up the silence feels official. It’s hateful and personal unlike the peaceful silence of the basement. You don’t rise up to forgive me and ward off the evil silence that weighs me down more every second that you are mute.
I look at you. You don’t look at me. Your body is just parts now. You can’t help me because you left me because you wanted to be gone, forever. Your crimes are many and you stole my Love Story and I pick up your Da Vinci Code. I am stunned because some of the pages have never been turned; I know my way around a book. I think you skipped entire passages, you brainless phony. When you asked me where I was in the book, you were cheating. The most romantic time of my life was a hoax and I am so preoccupied with exploring your Da Vinci Code that I don’t see you come back to life.