You (You #1)(41)

You leap up and straddle me and I could walk from here to China with you wrapped around me and I walk across the tiny room and I have you against the wall and I’m kissing you and owning your ass and I like your heels in my back and your bed in a box and there’s a horrible sound at the door, metal on metal and a whistle and your legs drop to the floor and you straighten my hair and there is someone at the door.

“Is your mom here?” I say and you lick your hand and tame my eyebrow.

“Nope,” you say. “It’s Peach!”

So it’s like that and you slide away. This is all wrong and this was our time and you run to the door and let Peach inside and I can’t hear you but I sure can hear her.

“What is wrong with your hair?”

You say something.

She balks. “You’re not fucking the assemblyman from Craigslist?”

You say something again.

She groans. “Beck, dessert is supposed to come after dinner. What are you thinking when he hasn’t even built your bed?”

Now you are loud and clear. “Joe!”

I come when I am called and I nod hello to Peach and she fakes a smile.

“Hi, Joseph,” she says. “Sorry to crash your party but our little friend here had originally hired someone to make her bed and, as her best friend, it was my duty to join just in case the worker was a luuuunatic.”

“Well, surprise!” I exclaim and you laugh but Peach doesn’t and man, that vodka was strong.

She looks at you. “Can I pee?”

“Of course,” you say. “Are you having a flare?”

“I am,” she says and she kicks off her sneakers and the smell of her self-indulgent, sweaty feet overwhelms the apartment and now she pulls her hot pink fleece over her birdy little head and throws it on the floor, not on the coatrack. She looks at me.

“Joseph,” she says. “I know this is more than you want to know but I have a rare condition with my bladder called interstitial cystitis and when I have to pee, I have to pee.”

“Be my guest,” I say and she stomps into the tiny bathroom and she doesn’t turn on the light. She knows your place. She knows that if she turns on the light, the fan will come on and she won’t be able to hear us. She doesn’t trust me. But she probably doesn’t trust anyone.

I crack up a little but you shh me and motion for me to follow you into the bedroom and you are different now. “I am so sorry, Joseph,” you slip. “Joe.”

“That’s okay. Is she all right?”

“Have you ever heard of IC?”

“I what?”

“Interstitial cystitis,” you say and you are all best friend business now, tying your hair back with an elastic band and opening a scissor and tearing into the box. I take the scissor and finish the job and you pour more vodka for you, not me, and we’re not having sex and you’re not my apprentice anymore. Instead, I am hauling the bed frame and the bolts and the Allen wrench and all the little pieces out of the box and you are leaning against the window and smoking a cigarette the way you do sometimes. You’re telling me more than I ever wanted to know about interstitial cystitis and this is not how this was supposed to go down.

“So it’s awful for her,” you say. “She can’t drink regular water, only Evian water. Almost all foods irritate her bladder and it’s impossible to predict when or what or why or how. She can’t eat any fast food and if she drinks alcohol, it has to be high pH like Ketel One or Goose, and ideally pear, because pears are soothing to the bladder. Anyway, the poor girl suffers. People think she’s being uppity but if she eats cheap stuff, her bladder can literally, like, break.”

“She was doing shots of J?ger at her party,” I say.

“Joe, don’t be like that.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just confused.”

“It’s a complicated disease,” you say and I apologize again and you forgive me and you come over and rub my head and kiss my head but then you go back to the windowsill and I didn’t sign up to assemble this bed alone. I miss you. My hands were down your pants and now you don’t even look at me when you talk.

“Sometimes, if she takes this special pill and she pads her bladder with a lot of goat cheese or milk or pressed pear juice, she can, you know, she can eat other things like J?ger or wheat.”

“Sucks to be her,” I say and the instructions for the bed are in pictures. The only word in the whole eight-page brochure is IKEA. I am not a visual learner and your cigarette is making me sick.

“It really does,” you say. “And I love Lynn and Chana, but they can be so rude with her. I mean they always want to go to pizza or whiskey places and they know Peach can’t eat that stuff but they still make these plans. It’s not very nice.”

“She can’t eat anything at a pizza place?” I say and I never would have had that vodka if I knew I was gonna be handling a wrench. I thought I’d put this bed together in the morning, after I woke up with you naked in my arms on the couch in your living room.

“Beck!” Peach calls. And she’s crying and it’s bullshit and I’m sure of it but you stub out your cigarette (and you don’t put it out completely, I have to finish the job), and you run away without so much as saying good-bye.

The rich are difficult. You are drawn to their idiosyncrasies and their dramatics. I assemble your bed slowly and sing along quietly to your Bowie and it takes a long time, a long, lonely time and you’re out there with her and I can’t hear the two of you talking and I have never felt more alone in my life than I do when I tighten the last bolt on your bed. It is way too big for this room and I was right. I take the mattress leaning against the wall and drop it onto the new bed frame instead of sliding it on. I want you to come out here and clap and admire my work. But instead, you text me from the bathroom: