You Love Me(You #3)(71)

I have to work harder.

Oliver bugs me for an update—he’s easier to deal with when he’s out of town—and I tell him I’m at home—the truth—and I don’t bitch at him for stealing my M30s because Ajax sold me some heroin and sadly, we’re gonna have to use it now.

I am back in your house less than twelve hours later and I am retracing your footsteps. You’re always sniffing around his nightstand because you are Married, Worried. I plant a baggie of horse in the copy of Catcher in the Rye that he keeps in his nightstand. There’s a sticker on the cover—PROPERTY OF BAINBRIDGE PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL—and oh Phil, grow up. I cross the room and slip another bag under an amp—who keeps an amp in the bedroom?—and then I walk over to your nightstand. This is where you keep a little book that I can only presume must be your diary. I know I shouldn’t read it. But we’re in a rut so I open your drawer and I pick up your diary. The first few pages are to-do lists—almond milk, sell dresser, find one that comes assembled—and you are a fox. Sneaky. The good stuff is in the back.

The dresser, the damn dresser. It’s like a box of Joe and it’s like he’s on my porch in those goddamn boxes and what am I doing? I am punishing Phil because I want to be with Joe and I can’t be mad about Phil about Melanda because come on. I knew. And in some sick way I felt good letting it go on because we all know that I really did steal him and maybe I hoped he would leave me for her? But he didn’t and now he’s never leaving and I can’t leave but what about ME? When do I get to be happy? God I miss Joe. But is that only because I want what I can’t have? Joe in the bunkers at Fort Ward. Joe in the meadow. Joe Joe NO AHAHAHAHAHAH

The danger of a good book is that it swallows you whole and animals in the wild don’t read because if you get lost in a book, you lose sight of your surroundings. You don’t hear the predator. For all of Phil’s laziness, the fucker did do one thing you asked him to do last night. He sprayed WD-40 on your sliding glass door. And I couldn’t reverse that fix. That’s why I didn’t hear the door open.

But now I hear the footsteps above all the TVs. Someone is here, inside this house.

The floorboards on the stairs whinny beneath feet. “Dad? Is that you?”

It’s your daughter. It’s Nomi, the Meerkat.





26





When I was a kid, my mother didn’t read to me. She was always groggy, tired. I work a double and I get home and now you want me to read to you? No one was going to read to me so I learned to read to me. You can do that, you can read the story out loud and if the story is good enough, you transcend the limits of your ego. You split. You become the reader and the listener, the child and the adult. You beat the system. You beat your doom. Reading saved my life when I was a sweaty little kid and it saves my life again today because I always carry a book. I’m carrying one right now: Robert McCammon’s The Listener. You gave it to me last week, Mary Kay, and come on, book, work your magic and save my life because Nomi is at the bottom of the stairs clutching her chest.

“You scared the living shit out of me!”

“You scared me too, Nomi.”

She grips the banister. “What are you even doing here?”

I walk, one step at a time. “Your mom gave me this book and I was bringing it back. I thought someone was home… Do you guys always leave so many TVs on?”

She sighs, the fear in her voice waning. “That’s my dad. And they wonder why I always have my headphones on.”

I reach the bottom of the steps. “I’m sorry I scared you…”

She shrugs. “I thought it was just Seamus,” she says and oh that’s right, that fucker is like your handyman and she really isn’t scared, not anymore. She yawns. “Can we go outside? It’s such a relief when I have the place to myself.”

I open the sliding glass door and it glides—Damn you, Phil—and Nomi and I sit at the table on your deck. It’s my first time hanging out here like one of your Friends and Nomi picks up my book. “So why didn’t you just bring this back to the library?”

I won’t let her ask the questions and I smile. “So you’re home early, yeah?”

I caught her good—ha!—and she begs me not to tell her parents—I won’t.

My phone buzzes and she yawns. “Who’s that?”

Oliver. “An old friend from home…”

Oliver found a $35,000 bedazzled horse at some gallery in a casino and I tell him it’s tacky and he tells me to fuck off and then he fires back.

Oliver: Being good?

Me: Yes. And you do NOT buy art in Vegas, Oliver. Rookie move.

I look at the Meerkat. Her eyes are glazed and she’s puckering her lips and wait. Is she stoned right now? Well, that means she won’t tell you about our little run-in.

“Nomi, I’m not a narc but I do have to ask… are you high?”

“A narc? Are you high?”

She laughs and pulls a bong out of her bag. “It’s legal,” she snaps. She barely knows how to work the thing and her lighter is almost dead and she’s awkward. Uncoordinated. She coughs. “They say this stuff makes you paranoid. But I was born paranoid. Maybe it will make me normal.”

She shows me the “new” book she’s reading—a reissued copy of In Cold Blood—and it pains me to see a young woman filling her mind with more darkness, but at least it’s not Columbine and I smile. “So, then I assume this means you’re all done with Dylan Klebold?”