You Love Me(You #3)(109)

She’s so lonely and you would feel bad for her too, Mary Kay, even though she’s making it impossible for me to comfort her right now. The gun. The gun. “I’m sorry, Love. I am.”

“I miss my brother, Joe. I miss having my people. I thought those people could be my people…” Los Angeles is the opposite of Friends and my heart hurts for Love, it does, but I don’t want Love. I want you. “Anyway,” she says. “I told Tressa and Mom and Dad that I got picked. For the past few weeks, I’ve been here, ‘sequestered.’?”

Living in a casino would drive anyone crazy and I tell Love that we can get her some help and she shakes me off. “No,” she says. “I don’t need help. I know why I didn’t get picked for the jury and I know why everyone blew me off. See, the judge asked us if we could be impartial in spite of our experiences. Most people said no. I said yes. I know how to love people who do terrible things. It’s who I am. It’s how I was born.”

“Well fuck the jurors, Love, because if you ask me, that’s a beautiful thing about you. You have an open heart. It’s no reason to be sad.”

“Do you think I don’t know what you did to my brother?”

My nerves go haywire and no. “I did nothing to your brother.”

“You were in Vegas with him. You dragged him to the desert.”

“Love, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I knew it, Joe… in my gut. And I kept waiting for myself to fall out of love with you because if those girls… Well I didn’t know them. But Forty was my brother. He was my twin.”

“I didn’t kill your brother.”

“No,” she says. “But you didn’t save him either.”

“Love, come on. No one could have ‘saved’ him…” He was beyond redemption. “You make it sound like I was with him, like I could have stopped him from jaywalking, like I could have stopped that car. I didn’t want him to die…” Of course I wanted to fucking kill him. He was blackmailing me, erasing me from all the work I did. And yes, I almost did it in Vegas, I wanted to end his life. But I didn’t, just like I didn’t kill Melanda or Phil. Wanting is not a crime.

“Julie Santos,” she says. “I think of that woman every day.”

The name is Saint Julie and I nod. “It’s not her fault. It’s not my fault. Love, you’re right. Twins have a bond and nothing can get in the way of that and no one knew him like you. So no one misses him like you and I can’t change that, but I can help.”

“No,” she says. “You can’t help. We’re the same. You lost your son but you’re up there bopping around like the happiest guy on earth…”

“You saw a couple fucking pictures and I didn’t even post them.”

“But you’re in them, Joe. You don’t care about us because you can’t care.”

“Yes I do.”

“No, Joe. See, my brother killed my dog and I still loved him. But you… You lose your son and what do you do? You run off and find yourself a new family. There’s something wrong with both of us, Joe. It’s a fact.”

“No, there isn’t, Love. We’re not defective. We’re survivors. That’s a good thing.”

But she just points the gun at me. “Get up and turn around,” she commands, and she is the shark inside my shark and she unlocks the safety and I look out the window at the City of Commerce and I won’t let her win, not when I’m finally happy, not when I finally have everything I want. I can’t do this to you. I tell her that L.A. brings out the worst in her, in everyone, that I’m better because I left and that she could be better too.

But she just laughs. “Oh, Joe. I’m not gonna live in your guesthouse.”

“Love, listen to me. I miss Forty every second of every day and you know I can’t be happy if you’re not happy.”

I started in the truth and swam into a lie and she knows I don’t love her and she says she knows I wanted to leave L.A. “You didn’t leave because of the contract. You left because you were afraid to be a father. You know me. You knew I was never gonna sign on to that Bainbridge plan. You might not realize it, but that’s why you came up with that dream. To push me away. And I understand it, I do. You didn’t come back to find us because deep down, you know that I’m just like you. Bad beyond repair.”

Those are dangerous words and when a toaster is bad beyond repair you don’t break out the screwdriver. You don’t try and fix it. You throw it in a dumpster. And there are dumpsters in this building, in this casino. “I’m here now, Love.”

“Right,” she says. “Just like me.”

We don’t belong in the same boat and I know where this boat is going: down. I have to paddle. I have to fight. “Love, we’re not bad people.”

She won’t look at me. She won’t give me an oar. “You’re here because you love them, not me, but I won’t let them wind up like my brother, Joe. Like those girls. I can’t do that. I won’t.”

She raises the gun and her finger squeezes the trigger. The explosion is silent, deadly. The circuit breaks. The lights go out all at once and I fall into a black hole.