You (You #1)(72)

I check my e-mail; you haven’t tried me yet, but you will. I go to Google Maps and we really are destined, Beck. I am destined to be with you because my phone confirms that I am 234 feet due west of Peach Salinger’s home at 43 Plover’s Way.

But it’s a hard climb back up to the street. Something bad happened to every part of my body when I hit that deer. I lift my right foot and my left leg hums. I shift my weight to my right foot but then my right rib cage bites. I fall into the snow and I just let the coolness into my clothing. “Patience, Joe,” I say. “Patience.”

I crawl forward a few feet and notice two signs, partially obscured. One is a simple stop sign, universally understood. The other is prissier, on a white board:

HUCKIN’S NECK BEACH CLUB INC. NO TRESPASSING. MEMBERS ONLY. KEEP OFF ROCKS. NO JUMPING OR DIVING. NO LIFEGUARDS ON DUTY. SWIM AT OWN RISK.

Nature is on my side because these rules don’t apply in winter. A tiny security booth adjacent to the sign is very clearly closed for winter.

“All right,” I say and I go on, stronger than Celine Dion’s heart.

Like a soldier easing out of a foxhole, I stay low to the ground. My arms are not as fucked up as my legs and my midsection. I am fully sweating with teeth chattering and my right eye is a useless blob but my left eye is unscathed, functioning. But I must be there and I recalculate the distance on my phone: I am 224 feet away.

“Are you kidding me?” I say out loud. “I’ve only gone ten fucking feet?”

My mouth is dry and I stuff it with snow. At this rate, I will get to you next summer. I close my eyes. I can do anything. I can do anything, and you miss me and the hardest part will be this walk and you could call at any moment, you could. I dig my hands into the snowy dirt and I get some traction. I have to do a cheater’s push-up from my knees and I wince and I sting but I do it, Beck. I’m up. And I find a limp that works for me, a zombie sidestep, like I’m missing a conjoined twin. I check my phone and the blue dot is on top of the red dot.

I.

Am.

Here.

Three more steps and I’ve reached the driveway and wow. This isn’t a cottage, Beck. This is a mansion from a storybook about an evil seaside queen who takes all the township’s money and builds an unnecessarily long driveway, ensconced in shrubbery and emptying like a river into a fuck-you-world four-car garage. The house is two stories, three if you count the widow’s walk. The front yard is a clean sparkling carpet of new white snow and the lights flicker from inside while stars hover above, hoping to get inside. If Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light crossed brushstrokes with Edward Hopper, it would look a lot like this.

And the quiet! I expected to hear the sea, but the ocean sleeps too, and I can hear snowflakes melting, branches tweaking. Am I always this loud? My breathing is too raspy and what if you can hear inside that cottage? I step backward, instinctively. I hear a drop of my blood plop into the weak new snow. I can’t leave tracks; Peach will think her stalker is back and call in the National Guard. I don’t want to scare you, so I head east to case the house next door. We’re in luck, Beck. The neighbors don’t share the Salinger family’s passion for landscaping. This property is lush, overgrown with trees and the snow isn’t a clean sheet for me to disturb. This is a quiet most people will die never knowing.

And then a shriek, Peach yells, “Beck!”

I duck. But I can tell by her screaming that you are heeding the call, running to the west wing of the cottage. This is my chance and I bolt to the east-facing wall and allow myself a look inside the great room. (That’s what rich people call living rooms.) It’s huge. A giant nautical-blue sectional winds like a fat, loving snake. The coffee table is repurposed lobster traps welded together and topped with glass. And it’s aglow thanks to the flames crackling in the fireplace.

When I hear you laugh, I am, at last, sure that I’m not dead. Smoke sails out of the chimney and no wonder Taylor Swift bought a house here. I can hear the Elton John—Peach really is on vacation, replacing her morose, vaguely suicidal running ballad with the slightly cheekier, self-indulgence of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” Oh, and I can smell the marijuana. I crouch as you breeze into the room.

The seaside suits you and God do I miss you. You stand before the fireplace with your legs apart as if you’re about to be patted down—you are lit as the fire, alive—in black leggings and that gray sweater you wore to work the day we had sex. When you bend slightly to warm your hands over the fire, I have an uncontrollable urge to jump through the window and enter you.

But Peach plods into the room and ruins the scene and offers you a glass of wine—typical—and you sip it and she goes back to the kitchen. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a roofie in there.

You miss me. And I miss you. It hurts, seeing you at that fire, giving your hands to the heat, the way I gave my hand to fire, only different. I imagine pushing you into the red abyss and jumping in after you, with you, so we can burn together, forever, a tree of life, light, sex.

And, of course, Peach plods into the room again and tells you dinner will be ready in an hour. She wants to play gin rummy—is she eighty-five years old?—and you obey your hostess and join her on the giant sectional sofa.

My hands are numb and yet aching and it’s too cold to stay here; I’m not an animal, and what is my plan? I realized that I drove here with dreams, not plans. My dream: You text me. I pretend I’m in New York and wait three hours. Then I drive down Peach’s driveway. You run outside before I even have the car in park. You bounce—joy!—you offer me dinner—steaks and potatoes—and then we go at it all night in one of the unrenovated bedrooms.