You Love Me(You #3)(118)

“Stop crying, bitch. This is nothing compared to what I went through with my soccer team or my frat or my old man, so man up already.”

I am caught in the toxic cycle of masculinity, the one quietly tolerated by the American System of Miseducation and he was hazed so he wants to haze me and Dying for love is so bittersweet. He shoots another living thing and he whines—fucking squirrels—and every dead animal is a reminder that the days really do go too fast. My life is ending and I don’t want to die. I don’t want my son to be an orphan. He lost his mother. He can’t lose me too. I try to picture him older, and I can’t, too scared, and I try to remember being with you on our love seat and I can’t do that either. The Pain Pong tournament ended and the flocks of rabid fans are long gone. I will die here and I can’t even hate him, because like you, I am too good for my own good. The Empathy Bordello has been ransacked and burnt to the ground before it even existed and he heard something and he hisses.

“Hey,” he screams. “What is that?”

My eustachian tubes go to high alert. I heard it too. Is it you? You know about this cabin. You rejected him today and you’ve been to this cabin and did you come back?

“I’m warning you, buddy. You’re on my property.”

My heart pounds and I can’t hear so well and I want it to be you—save me—and I don’t want it to be you—he could kill you—and I don’t know what to want. Cops. Yes. Let you be the savvy fox that knows better than to come here alone.

“I’m counting to three,” he says. “One…” Please, God, let it be her. “Two…” Please, God, don’t let it be her.

He doesn’t make it to the number three. His voice is thwarted by the pop of a gun. Not his pop. A different gun. I can’t see and I can’t hear but I see dead people because in my heart I know that Shortus is dead. I scream into my sweaty sock for help—thank God for guns—and the footsteps are getting closer but my heart is beating faster. I want my nervous system to catch up to my brain and I tell myself over and over that it’s over. You need to calm down.

And then the shooter is at my tree. Breathing heavily. Close. He is not a cop because cops are loud. They announce themselves. The bag is still on my head and a police officer would have pulled the bag off my head by now. Here goes my heart again—tick tick tick—and I was so afraid of animals that I forgot about the worst of all predators, the most power-hungry predators on this planet: humans.

Urine runs down my leg once more and the shooter puts the barrel of the gun he used to kill my enemy against the back of my head as if I am the enemy. I am crying now, my pleas about my family muffled by the sock in my mouth and then he laughs and drops the gun. “Relax, my friend. Show’s over. Score one for the Poor Boys Club.”

Oliver.





46





The bag is off my head and it’s over. Oliver saved my life. My son won’t be an orphan and you won’t have to mourn, wishing you’d told me that you love me when you had the chance. Oliver is a hero and Oliver kept an eye on me because he was worried about me. RIP Shortus was a fake friend but Oliver is a real friend and that’s what they say, that you’re lucky in this world if you have at least a couple of real friends. True friends.

But all friends are flawed and I’m still tied to the tree and he’s in Shortus’s cabin and this day in the mountains needs to end. “Oliver! Any luck with finding a knife?”

“One sec, my friend!”

RIP Shortus is dead, yes, but the Pain Pong tournament is starting up again, no more nice adrenaline to lift me out of my body, and it’s impossible not to think about what Oliver did wrong. That fucking video of me and RIP Melanda and I say it again, calm. “Oliver, I don’t want to rush you, but I’m pretty bad out here.”

He hops down the front steps of the cabin and he’s carrying an Atari game set like he didn’t just end a man’s life. “Check it out, Goldberg. I was just looking for one of these on 1stdibs!”

He takes a picture of his new toy but he can’t send it to Minka—no Wi-Fi—and my skin suit crawls because oh that’s right. My friend Oliver is a sociopath private dancer slash screenwriter and without him, I die in these woods, just like RIP Shortus.

“Oliver, I don’t know how to thank you.” Oliver, move your ass and get me off this fucking tree.

“No need,” he says. “We talked about this. When you win, I win. When I win, you win.”

Then why did you show Ray that fucking video? “Well, still, thanks.”

He pats me on the back, as if I’m not tied to a tree. “And I’m sorry about Love,” he says.

What about THE VIDEO, you fucking asshole? “Thanks,” I say. “I’m just still in shock right now.”

Oliver begins slicing the ropes and he’s no naval-boys’-camp-trained RIP Shortus. He’s terrible with a knife—fucking gun people—and he keeps dropping it on the ground and what if he has a heart attack? What if he dies before he finishes his work? “So I got news. I got a new agent.”

I AM TIED TO A TREE AND I GOT SHOT IN THE HEAD, YOU ANGEFUCKINGLENO. “That’s great.”

He drops the knife and it grazes his hand and now he is bleeding and how the fuck did he hack it in the kitchen at Baxter’s? “Yeah,” he says. “And we’re taking my show out next week.”