You

by Caroline Kepnes

  The law requires that all gas leaks be investigated and the law of guys indicates that a guy like me, having dropped out of high school, has a certain way of dealing with guys who work for the gas company. What can I say? I knew he’d buy that I was your boyfriend and let me in. And I knew that even if he thought I was a lying nut job, he’d let me in. You can’t just call in the gas man and not show up, Beck. Seriously.

  He leaves, and the first thing I do is take your computer and sit on your couch and smell your green pillow and drink water out of your Brown mug. I washed it because his ashes lingered (you don’t know how to wash a dish). I read your story called “What Wylie Was Thinking When He Bought His Kia.” It’s about an old dude in California buying a shitty import car and feeling like that’s the last vestige of his life as a cowboy. The twist is that he wasn’t an actual cowboy. He just played cowboys in Westerns. But they don’t make Westerns anymore and Wylie never adapted. He never had a car because he spent most of his days at a coffee shop where guys like him sat around talking about the good old days. But they recently outlawed smoking—you italicize outlawed, which is cute—and so now the gang has no local place to smoke their cigarettes and tell their stories. The story ends with Wylie in his Kia and he can’t remember how to start it. He’s holding his key that’s just a miniature computer and he realizes he doesn’t know where to go so he buys an e-cigarette and returns to the coffee shop and sits alone smoking his e-cigarette.

  I’m no genius MFA candidate in your workshops—seriously, Beck, they don’t understand you or your stories—but you yearn for what was. You’re a dead guy’s daughter, thoroughly. You understand Paula Fox and you aspire to make sense of all things Old West, which makes your settling, even temporarily, in New York a self-destructive move. You’re compassionate; you wrote about old actors because of the photography books in your apartment, so many pictures of places you can’t go because they aren’t there anymore. You’re a romantic, searching for a Coney Island minus the drug dealers and the gum wrappers and an innocent California where real cowboys and fake cowboys traded stories over tin cups of coffee they called joe. You want to go places you can’t go.

  In your bathroom, when the door is closed and you sit on the toilet, you stare at a photograph of Einstein. You like to look into his eyes while you struggle against your bowels. (And believe me, Beck, when we’re together, your stomach issues will be over because I won’t allow you to live on frozen shit and cans of sodium water labeled “soup.”) You like Einstein because he saw what nobody saw. Also, not a writer. He’s not the competition, now or ever.

  I turn on the TV and Pitch Perfect is your most watched thing, which makes sense now that I can see your college life on your Facebook. I’m finally inside, studying the history of you in pictures. You did not sing a cappella or find passion or true love. You and your best friends Chana and Lynn got drunk a lot. There is a third friend who is very tall and very thin. She dwarfs you and your little friends. This outsider friend isn’t tagged in any of the pictures and there must be something redeeming about her because you appear very proud of this friendship, which has lasted since your childhood. The untagged girl looks unhappy in every shot. Her nonsmiling smile will haunt me and it’s time to move on.

  You dated two guys. Charlie looked like he was always recovering from a Dave Matthews concert. When you were with him you sat on lawns and did club-kid drugs. You escaped that drug-addled dullard and fell into the pin-thin arms of a spoiled punk named Hesher. On a side note, I know Hesher, not personally, but he’s a graphic novelist and we sell his books in the shop. At least, we do right now, but obviously, the first order of business on my next shift will be burying Hesher’s books in the basement.

  You’ve been to Paris and Rome and I’ve never been out of the country and you never found what you were looking for in Hesher or Paris or Charlie or Rome or college. You left Charlie for Hesher. And you were cold; Charlie never got over you. He looks permanently drunk to this day in his pictures. You worshipped Hesher and he never reciprocated, at least not on Facebook. There are lots of posts where you praise him and he never responds. Then one day, you became single and your friends “liked” your status in a way that leaves no doubt that you were the one dumped.

  Pitch Perfect has ended and I go to your bedroom and I am on your bed, unmade, and I hear the sound of a key entering a keyhole and turning, and a blitzkrieg in my mind, the landlord bitching to the gas man earlier today—

  Smallest unit in the building, smallest fucking keyhole, always sticks

  —and I hear you put a key into your keyhole and the door opens and the apartment is small and you are inside of it.

  You’re right, Beck. It is a fucking shoebox.

  4

  I never go to Greenpoint, where people chase whiskey with pickle juice, but I’m doing this for you, Beck. Just like I hurt my back for you when I fell out of your window so you wouldn’t see me when I was trying to see you, trying to know you. And I hate that you could see me here now and think that I’m some dick who overestimates the cultural value of Vice and drinks whatever fucking Vice tells me to drink. I didn’t go to college, Beck, so I don’t waste my adulthood trying to recapture my time in college. I’m not a soft motherfucker who never had the guts to live life right now, as is. I live for living and I’d order another vodka soda but that would mean speaking to the bartender in the Bukowski T-shirt and he’d ask me again what kind of club soda I want.

  I’m in a mood and you’re up there reading in yellow stockings and there are holes in them and you’re trying too hard. You left Charlotte’s Web but I don’t look so hot, either. I had to climb out your window and it’s a short fall, but a fall is a fall and my back stings and if I hear the word pickleback one more time, I swear.

  Your best friends are at the table next to mine, loud and disloyal, real F-train types with the boots and the overprocessed hair that quietly insults all the Jersey girls that do that shit on purpose. The three of you were at Brown together and now you’re in New York together and you all hate Girls and complain about it incessantly but isn’t that exactly what you’re all trying to do with your lives? Brooklyn, boys, and picklebacks?

  You sit with the other quote unquote writers, which allows your friends to go on about you and unfortunately, they’re right: You’re so much more invested in being a writer—accepting compliments and drinking whiskey—than you are at writing. But fortunately, they’re also wrong: Everyone in this room is too full of pickle juice to understand your cowboy story.

  Your friends are jealous. Chana’s the big critic, a girl version of Adam Levine with beady eyes and unwarranted self-confidence. “Explain to me again what this fucking MFA shit does for you if you’re not Lena Dunham?”

  “I think maybe you can teach?” says Lynn, and Lynn is dead inside, like a corpse. She Instagrams methodically, clinically, as if she’s gathering evidence for defense, like her entire life is dedicated to proving that she has a life. She loudly mocks your reading at Lulu’s as she tweets about how psyched she is to be at a #readingatLulus, and I’m telling you, Beck, I swear.

  Lynn again: “Do you think this is like an art opening where you go once and you’re good or is this gonna be like . . . an every week thing?”

  “Do I set up a fucking runway every time I finish a design?” Chana vents. “No. I work on it and work on it more until I have a collection. And then I work on it again.”

  “Is Peach coming?”

  “Don’t put that in the universe.”

  They might be talking about the unsmiling tall girl but it’s not like I can ask them.

  “Sorry.” Lynn sighs. “At least at art openings you get free wine.”

  “At least at art openings you get art. I’m sorry, but a fucking cowboy?”

  Lynn shrugs and it just goes on, a machine gun that won’t stop, can’t stop.

  “And can we talk about her costume?”

  “She’s trying too hard. It’s kinda sad.”

 
; “What the fuck are those tights?”

  Lynn sighs and tweets and sighs and the machine-gun fire quickens for the last round.

  “No wonder she didn’t get into Columbia,” Chana snipes.

  “I feel like this is all cuz of Benji,” says Lynn. “I feel bad for her.”

  Benji?

  “Well, this is what happens when you fall for a sociopathic party boy.”

  All I hear is fall for and you love him and you lie to them, to your computer, to yourself and you think they don’t know it and they do know it and oh no. Benji. No.

  I have to stay tuned, present, and Lynn sighs. “You’re being mean.”

  “I’m being real.” Chana huffs. “Benji is a snobby little prick. All he does is get fucked up on overpriced drugs and launch pretend businesses.”

  “What did he major in?” Lynn wants to know.

  “Who cares?” Chana snaps and I care and I want to know more and I want to cry and I don’t want you to fall for anyone but me.

  “Well, I still wish he’d be nicer to her,” Lynn says.

  Chana rolls her eyes and crunches on ice cubes and disagrees. “You know what it is? Beck is full of herself. And Benji is full of himself. I don’t feel bad for either one of them. She’s got us here pretending she’s a writer and he’s got the world pretending he’s a freaking artisan. What a joke. They both just love themselves. We’re not talking about overly sensitive, tortured souls writing poems about the bleakness of it all or whatever.”

  Lynn is bored and I am too. She tries to steer Chana away from her diatribe. “I feel so fat right now.”

  Chana grunts. Girls are mean. “You see all this crap about his organic soda company?” she asks. “Brooklyn makes me want to move to LA and buy a case of Red Bull and rock out to Mariah Carey.”

  “You should tweet that,” Lynn says. “But not in a mean way.”

  You are hugging the other writers and this means you will come here next and Lynn is relentlessly kind. She simpers. “I feel bad for her.”

  Chana sniffs. “I just feel bad for the cowboys. They deserve better.”

  You are sauntering over to the table, which means they have to stop talking about you and I am so happy when you finally arrive and hug your two-faced friends. They make golf claps and sing false praise and you guzzle your whiskey as if you can drink yourself into a Pulitzer Prize.

  “Ladies, please,” you say, and you’re tipsier than I realized. “A girl can only tolerate so many compliments and cocktails.”

  Chana puts a hand on your arm. “Honey, maybe no more cocktails?”

  You pull your arm away. This is you postpartum. You birthed a story, and now what? “I’m fine.”

  Lynn motions to the waitress. “Can we snag three picklebacks? This girl needs her liquid courage.”

  “I don’t need any courage, Lynn. I just got up there and read a fucking story.”

  Chana kisses your forehead. “And you read the shit out of that fucking story.”

  You don’t buy it and you push her away. “Fuck both of you.”

  It’s good that I see this side of you, the nasty drunk. It’s good to know all sides if you’re gonna love someone and I hate your friends a little less now. They exchange a look and you glance at the bar. “Did Benji already leave?”

  “Sweetie, was he supposed to come?”

  You sigh like you’ve been here before, like you don’t have the patience now, and you pick up your cracked phone. Lynn grabs it.

  “Beck, no.”

  “Gimme my phone.”

  “Beck,” says Chana. “You invited him and he didn’t show. Leave it alone. Leave him alone.”

  “You guys hate Benji,” you say. “What if he got hurt?”

  Lynn looks away and Chana snorts. “What if he’s . . . an asshole?”

  You can tell Lynn never wants to talk about any of this ever again. Of the three girls, she is the one who will eventually leave New York for a smaller, more manageable city where there are no fiction readings, where girls drink wine, and Maroon 5 plays in the local jukebox on Saturday nights. She will photograph her eventual, inevitable babies with the same gusto with which she photographs the shot glasses, the empty goblets, her shoes.

  But Chana’s a lifer, our third wheel for the long haul. “Beck, listen to me. Benji is an asshole. Okay?”

  I want to scream YES but I sit. Still. Benji.

  “Listen, Beck,” Chana rails on. “Some guys are assholes and you have to accept that. You can buy him all the books in the world and he’s still gonna be Benji. He’ll never be Benjamin or, God forbid, Ben because he doesn’t have to, because he’s a permanent man-baby, okay? He and his club soda can fuck off and so can his stupid ass name. I mean seriously, Benji? Is he kidding? And the way he says it. Like it’s Asian or French. Ben Geeee. Dude, just fuck off.”

  Lynn sighs. “I never thought about it that much. Benji. Ben Gee. Gee, Ben.”

  There’s a little laughter now and I am learning things about Benji. I don’t like it but I have to accept it. Benji is real and I get another vodka soda. Benji.

  You cross your arms and the waitress returns with your picklebacks and the mood has shifted. “So, you guys really liked my story?”

  Lynn is quick. “I never knew you knew so much about cowboys.”

  “I don’t,” you say and you are in a dark place and you pick up your shot and you knock it back and the girls exchange another look.

  “You need to never speak to that fucker ever again,” Chana says.

  “Okay,” you agree.

  Lynn picks up her shot. Chana picks up her shot. You pick up your empty shot glass.

  Chana makes a toast: “To never speaking to that fucker and his bullshit club soda and his fucking haircut and his no-show ass ever again.”

  You all clink glasses but those girls have something to drink and your cup runneth empty. I go outside so I’ll know when you leave. Some asshole emerges, vomits.

  Pickle juice, I swear.

  5

  THERE are three of us waiting in the Greenpoint Avenue subway station at 2:45 in the morning and I want to tie your shoelaces. They’re undone. And you’re too drunk to be standing so close to the tracks. You’re leaning with your back against the green pole with your legs extended so that your feet are planted on the yellow warning zone, the edge of the platform. The pole has four sides but you have to stand on the side facing the tracks. Why?

  You’ve got me to protect you and the only other person in this hellhole is a homeless dude and he’s on another planet, on a bench, singing: Engine, engine, number nine on the New York transit line, if my train runs off the tracks pick it up pick it up pick it up.

  He sings that part of the song on a loop, loudly, and your head is buried in your phone and you can’t type and stand and listen to his musical assault all at the same time. You keep slipping—your shoes are old, no tread—and I keep flinching and it’s starting to get old. We don’t belong in this dump; it’s a minefield of empty cans, wrappers, things nobody wanted, not even the homeless singing dude. The kids you run with live to ride the G train, like it proves they’re down, “real,” but what your friends don’t realize is that this line was better off without them and their cans of Miller High Life and their pickle-scented vomit.

  Your foot slips. Again.

  You drop your phone and it lands in the yellow zone and you’re lucky it didn’t fall onto the tracks and I get goose bumps and I wish I could grab you by the arm and escort you to the other side of that pole. You’re too close to the tracks, Beck, and you’re lucky I’m here, because if you fell or if some sicko had followed you down, some derelict rapist, you wouldn’t be able to do anything. You’re too drunk. Your laces in your little sneakers are too long, too loose, and the attacker would press you down on the floor or against that pole and he’d tear those already torn tights off and slash those cotton panties from Victoria’s Secret and cover your pink mouth with his oily hand and there’d be nothing you could do and your
life would never be the same. You would live in fear of subways, run back to Nantucket, avoid the “Casual Encounters” section of Craigslist, get tested for STDs on a monthly basis for a year, maybe two.

  The homeless dude, meanwhile, doesn’t stop singing engine engine and he’s urinated twice and he hasn’t gotten up to do it, either. He’s sitting in his piss and if some sicko followed you down here to finish what you started with those torn stockings, this dude would just keep singing and pissing and pissing and singing.

  You slip.

  Again.

  And you narrow your eyes at the homeless dude and growl but he’s on another planet, Beck. And it’s not his fault you’re wasted.

  Did I mention that you’re lucky to have me? You are. I am a Bed-Stuy man by birth, sober, collected, and well aware of my whereabouts and yours. A protector.

  And the bullshit thing is, if someone saw the three of us, well, most people would think I’m the weird one just because I followed you here. And that’s the problem with this world, with women.

  You see Elliot in Hannah scam his way to be near his sister-in-law and you call that romantic but if you knew what I went through to get into your home, that I messed up my back trying to know you, inside and out, you’d judge me for it. The world fell out of love with love at some point and I know what you’re doing with that phone. You’re trying to talk to Benji, the club soda, too-much-hair, no-show motherfucker with whom you have encounters that are not casual, at least not to you. You seek him. You want him. But this will pass.

  And part of the problem is that phone. You have that function on that fucking phone that enables you to know when your texts are opened and ignored. And Benji, he ignores the fuck out of you. He is more passionate about blowing you off than he is about being inside of you and this is what you want? You stab at your phone. Your phone. Enough with this phone, Beck. It’s gonna do you in, waste your voice, and cripple your fingers.

  Fuck that phone.