The Good Luck of Right Now(43)

“Absolutely,” Arnie said without the slightest hesitation. “It is a good, obtainable, age-appropriate, healthy, and extremely all-around positive life goal, which I encourage you to complete. How can I help you achieve this?”

I was excited to know that Arnie would help me woo The Girlbrarian—so much that I was just about to tell him all about my secret crush when the door burst open.

“What the f*ck, hey?” Max said as he entered the room.

“Welcome back to the word fortress, Max,” Arnie said. “I’m so glad to see you here.”

Max pointed at me and said, “I’ve come to rescue you. We need to get the f*ck out of here right f*cking now!”

“What?” I said. Max looked agitated and determined. I had never been rescued before, and I have to admit—even though I didn’t yet understand what exactly I was being rescued from—that Max’s ardent concern was flattering.

“Now, Max,” Arnie said. “We talked about what happened. You don’t have to participate in the study if you don’t—”

Max grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. “Fucking trust me. Arnie is a liar. He’s not even f*cking human! He wants to lock us away in a room, take us far f*cking far away, and film us. We need to get the f*ck out of here. Right f*cking now!”

“Allow me to explain, Bartholomew,” Arnie said. “Max is perhaps being a bit unreasonable here.”

“Fuck you, Arnie! Fuck your word fortress. Fuck the color yellow. I won’t be your f*cking lab rat. Pretending to care about us. You should be a-f*cking-shamed of yourself. If you even f*cking feel emotions! I trusted you! Told you everything! Even about Alice! Fuck all of this!”

Max grabbed my wrist, pulled hard, and I stumbled after him.

“Bartholomew, you aren’t even going to entertain my side of the story? Max is obviously agitated, and maybe he isn’t the best person to trust at this point.”

“Fuck you, Arnie! Fuck you!” Max pulled me out of the yellow room, down the steps, through the alley, and onto Walnut Street.

Arnie hurried after us, saying, “This is unfair. Don’t I even get a chance to explain? Bartholomew, I can help you. You don’t even know what happened yet. I can help you achieve your life goal.”

Max just kept saying, “Fuck you, Arnie. Fuck you, Arnie. Fuck you, Arnie,” over and over again, like it was a magical chant that could protect us while we escaped.

“Bartholomew,” Arnie said. He grabbed my shoulder, spun me around, and looked into my eyes. “Don’t you think you owe it to me to just listen? Don’t you owe it to yourself?”

“He’s a f*cking liar!” Max yelled, grabbed my arm, and pulled me down Walnut Street. “Can’t f*cking trust him! No f*cking way!”

Since he was The Girlbrarian’s brother, and I had already had such a terrible time with Wendy and therapy in general, I decided to go with Max, thinking I could talk to Arnie later if need be, and that Max was much more likely to help me accomplish my life goal of having a beer with his sister, because they were kin.

“Sorry,” I said to Arnie.

“Well, then. You know where to find me, Bartholomew. When you come to your senses,” Arnie said, and then he finally stopped following us. “You need help. Help that Max can’t possibly provide.”

“Fuck you, Arnie!” Max yelled back over his shoulder.

I wondered how Arnie knew what I needed, when we had met only once before and had hardly even talked. Mostly we listened to Max talk. Arnie didn’t really know me at all.

I had a funny thought—since Mom died, besides you, Richard Gere, no one really knows me. No one on the entire planet. Even Father McNamee doesn’t know as much about me as you do. And there really isn’t anyone else.

Do you find that strange?

Sad?

Pathetic?

Interesting?

“Where are we going?” I said to Max, once we were far enough away from Arnie.

“To the f*cking pub.”

“What happened between you and Arnie?”

“The f*cking story of that requires the consumption of beer. Much f*cking beer.”

We ended up in the same pub Max took me to before, at a little table in an empty corner, drinking Guinness and looking at framed photographs of the extremely green, rocky, and often misty Irish countryside. Max downed an entire pint with one tilt of his wrist, pushed his big glasses to the top of his nose, belched loudly, and ordered two more Guinness, even though I hadn’t even taken a sip.

“You’ll f*cking need another, once you hear this,” Max said. “Trust me!”

I took a creamy sip and then listened to his tale.

According to Max, Arnie had called him on the phone and asked if he’d like to be part of a study. “What’s a f*cking study?” Max asked, and Arnie explained that sometimes therapists put patients in a “controlled f*cking environment” to study their behavior, advance our “f*cking knowledge” of the “human f*cking race,” he said, and help the test subjects in the process. “Arnie hit me in my f*cking weak spot, because he said there’d be a cat to pet, and there f*cking was too!”

Apparently, Max was instructed to meet Arnie in West Philly at a “fancy f*cking college,” and when he did, he was taken into a “large f*cking building that looked like a hospital but wasn’t a f*cking hospital, because Arnie called it a laboratory f*cking facility,” which creeped out Max for many reasons, which I will explain a bit further on.