You (You #1)(15)

Chana didn’t reply and I love your mom (Thanks!) and I love you, you little hypocrite! Your old (but still working!) phone is an encyclopedia of your life and it will be open to me as long as your mother pays the bill. Score one for the good guy! Oh, Beck, I love reading your e-mail, learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won’t get alarmed. My good fortune doesn’t stop there: You prefer e-mail. You don’t like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an “essay” for some blog in which you stated that “e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away.” I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I’m so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don’t publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise.

Starting today.

You’re here.

“Hang on,” I call out, as if I don’t know it’s you up there and I’m so full of shit. I trot up the stairs and into the stacks and you’re here in a plaid jumper and kneesocks and you dressed up for me, I know you did, and you’re holding a pink reusable bag.

“Engine, engine, number nine,” I say and you laugh and I am so good when I have time to prepare. “What’s up?”

I go in for the hug and you let me hug you and we fit well together. My arms take you. I could squeeze you to death and to life and I pull away first because I know how you girls can be about this stuff, your basic instincts ruined by magazines and TV.

“I brought you something,” you coo.

“You didn’t.”

You respond, “I did.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Actually, I didn’t die.” You laugh. “So I kinda did.”

We’re walking up to the front and I know why we’re walking up there. You want me. You want me here. You know that if we stay in these stacks I’m gonna press you against the F–K placard and give you a present and I’m behind the counter and I sit as I planned—with my hands intertwined behind my head as I lean back and put my feet up and my navy T-shirt lifts just enough so that you can see my midsection—you need something to dream about—and I smile.

“Show me what you got, kid.”

You lay it on the counter and I lower my legs and move forward and I’m hunching over the counter. I could touch you I’m so close and I know you like my cologne because you and Chana lust after a bartender who wears this cologne which is why I bought it and I open my present, my present from you.

It’s The Da Vinci Code in Italian and you clap and you laugh and I love your enthusiasm and this is something that comes more naturally to you than writing, giving. You are a giver.

“Open it up,” you say.

“But I don’t speak Italian.”

“The whole book’s not in Italian.”

I flip through and you are wrong and you grab the book and drop it on the counter.

“I know for a fact that the first page is in English. Open.”

I open. “Ah.”

“Yeah,” you say. “Read up.”

There you are, in black ink. You wrote to me:

Engine, Engine, Number Nine

On the New York transit line

If some drunk girl falls on the tracks

Pick her up pick her up pick her up

I read it out loud; I know you get off on your writing and you clap at the end and there it is in writing. You are literally asking me to pick you up and you nod and your name is there so it’s not freaky when I say it.

“Thank you, Guinevere.”

“It’s Beck.”

I lift up the book. “But it’s also Guinevere.”

You concede, you nod. “You are welcome. . . .”

I took off my name tag in the cage. You are pretending you don’t remember my name and I help you out. “Joe. Goldberg.”

“You are welcome, Joe Goldberg,” you say and you sigh and on you go. “But that’s kind of fucked, right, because I came here to thank you and now I’m saying, ‘You’re welcome.’?”

“Tell you what,” I say and this is it, just how I practiced. “Now that we’re both alive and nobody’s singing and you got me this sweet-ass present, which is great because of all the books we have in this place, Italian Dan Brown is not one of them . . .”

“I noticed,” you sing and you blink and smile and you’re rocking a little.

I breathe. This is it, the next step. “Let’s get a drink sometime.”

“Sure,” you say and you cross your arms and you’re not looking at me or saying a specific time or date or place and now there are elements of our dynamic coming slowly into view, like a photograph in a darkroom—you didn’t write your number in the book and you got me the joke part of our thing—Dan Brown—instead of the shared serious part of our thing—Paula Fox—and I think you have a hickey. A small one, but still. You bought Paula Fox for Benji. You bought Dan Brown for me.

“The thing is,” you say, “I still can’t find my phone and I don’t have a new one yet so I’m not making a lot of plans, you know?”