You

10

IT’S Thursday morning and our date tonight is my reward for the past three days. Babysitting Benji is no joke, Beck. I don’t even know how many times I’ve locked and unlocked and locked the basement doors as I’ve come up and down. Curtis knows he isn’t allowed in the basement and he doesn’t have a key. My hand is cramped from gripping the key like it’s my lifeline. And it is.

And I’m tired, Beck. It took me a solid hour to pry up the false-bottom floorboard where I keep my machete. I had to take a train all the way to New Haven to use his ATM without raising any flags. I’m not saying it’s not worth it and I did come up with a good plan. I decided to use Benji’s phone to construct a narrative. I know, it’s a fucking brilliant plan. Because you follow him on Twitter, you will now bear witness to his descent into drugs and idiocy. It all started in New Haven, where I got two grand out of his account and tweeted a photo of the bullshit Yale bulldog mascot:

The original #bulldog is back. #whatupnewhaven #meandmolly

So now everyone (you) will think Benji’s gone back to his alma mater for a bender. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Ivy League people, Beck, it’s that you all really like going back to school for reunions. This is a good plan and I can’t let his fancy-boy bellyaching get to me. It’s like you know I’m at my wit’s end and you text me:

Hey you. Up early. No idea why. So what are we doing tonight?

Benji barks: “Is that Beck? Joe, if that’s what you want, she’s all yours.”

We’ve been through this. About an hour after he came to, the fucker recognized me from the cab. So now he thinks he’s figured me out. He thinks I’m obsessed with you. He thinks I trapped him in here because of you. The truth is so much more complicated and self-satisfied chirpers like him don’t know that it’s always wiser to be quiet in lockup. He laid his cards out and he talks about you like you’re his. But you’re not a beat-up BMW, you’re not his to give away. I bark, “Do your test.”

“Joe,” he says, which is dumb because every time he says my name I’m reminded of the fact that he knows my name, an obvious complication going forward. I compose myself and I write to you:

Morning, sleepyhead. Hope you had sweet dreams. See you at 8:30 on the steps at Union Square. When it gets dark we’ll go somewhere else.

I hit SEND and I can’t wait to see you and I pick up the list of Benji’s five favorite books because we’ve got work to do:

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. He’s a pretentious fuck and a liar.

Underworld by Don DeLillo. He’s a snob.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. He’s a spoiled passport-carrying fuck stunted in eighth grade.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. Enough already.

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. He’s got Mayflowers in his blood.

Benji has already failed tests on Gravity’s Rainbow (duh) and Underworld. He keeps saying he would have made a different list of books if he knew there was a test coming. That’s how privileged people think: Lie unless you know that you can’t get away with lying. You’re nothing like him and you write again:

There’s no fucking way I’m responding to a smiley face and I can’t anyway because Princess Benji wants a soy latte and a New York Times and some Kiehl’s and his fucking Evian and his Tom’s toothpaste. I tell him to make do with what I gave him: coffee from the Greek diner, a New York Post, a small tub of Vaseline, and a scoop of baking soda from the centuries-old box in our employee restroom.

You write again:

Where are we gonna go after it gets dark?

I can’t be mad at you because you’re obviously just hot for me. You wouldn’t be mirroring my words if you weren’t excited and I write back to you:

You’ll know when you need to know. Wink-wink.

The wink-wink might have been a mistake and I feel sick.

“Look, Joe, I can’t take a test on a book I haven’t picked up since high school without being amply caffeinated.”

I make an executive decision because I can’t listen to him anymore. “Forget On the Road. Tear up the test. We’re done today.”

He lifts his head up and looks at me like I’m God. “Thank you, Joe. I never read On the Road and, well, thank you.”

He’s thanking me for making him admit to being a complete, total liar. Even while fighting for his life, he’s lying. I want this kid to understand and I try.

“You didn’t read On the Road?”

“Not exactly.”

“But you put it on your list.”

“I know.”

“I told you to make a list of your favorite books.”

“I know.”

“Unbelievable. Don’t you realize you’re in the bottom of a bookstore? That you’re in a cage? You don’t come in my store and lie. You don’t do that.”

“Don’t be mad.”

His eyes shift for just a second. He’s aware of the machete. There’s no choice. I gotta pick it up. I cross over, slowly. I reach for it. And I hold it. And I don’t face him.

“You don’t wanna do this,” he whimpers.

Before I speak, I spread my feet a little bit farther apart. I occupy as much space as I can. “I spend my time making tests for you to take, tests on books that you say you read. And you didn’t read any of these fucking books. Which means you wasted my time. And you don’t want me to be mad. You think the world works like that?”

“I’m a fraud, okay?”

I turn around. He crosses his legs and hangs his head and runs his hand through his too-long blond hair. He is nimble and weak and he might disintegrate at any moment. I’m still holding the machete, which feels so unnecessary, given his condition. I nod at him, like: Go on, shithead. Go on.

It’s amazing how you can see money in people. His chick-smooth hands have been softening for centuries before he was born and his thick hair never thinned from nights in the wind, days bent over shoveling snow or sand or ash. Something about that hair, something about the slope of his nose proves that life is unfair.

“In my defense, I love the book in a postmodern kind of way where I’ve always sensed that it contains something that I relate to. I think it’s the kind of book that echoes my beliefs and my sentiments and I’ve always related well to people who have read the book and I’ve written about the book. You know, I majored in comp lit and it’s possible, it’s very possible to read a book without reading it in the traditional straightforward manner. You can read about a book, Joe. Do you know what I mean? Do you understand?”

“Yeah, Benji. I understand.”

“See, I thought you might, Joe.”

“Yeah, I don’t have a Yale degree but my bullshit detector is excellent. Top drawer, even.”

I start to walk up the stairs and he rants about what an asshole I am and what his father’s gonna do to me and then he’s begging, “Gimme a copy of the David Foster Wallace! I’ll read it! I’ll read it and then you can make a test I swear! Joe! Joe!” The basement is insulated. Mr. Mooney put his money into making this place a private place. Benji can scream all he wants and nobody’s gonna hear him, just like nobody heard me, and you text:

You’re funny, Joe.

The wink-wink didn’t put me on your dork list and the sun is shining and I lock the basement doors and I text you:

I got books to sell. Be on the south steps of Union Square. Center. 8:30 sharp.

And I shut off my phone. I told you where to be and when and if you think you’re gonna get any more from me today when you get me all night, you got another thing coming.

THE day is against me. I forgot that Stephen King has a new book out, Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited follow-up to The Shining. New King means crowds, even a week or two after the book’s release—people are lazy—and hordes of shoppers giddy to be reunited with Danny Torrance. But I want you, Beck. Doctor Sleep turns my shop into a fucking Church of Stephen and I have no room to think about you, prepare for you. We are inundated with Kingophiles, couples trying to save their marriage with a book club, older fans who have waited forever, young punks who want to check into an independent bookstore on Facebook, freaks who highlight the bad parts and yearn to reeanact, withdrawn dullards longing for the companionship promised by a page-turner, women who want more out of a book than a feisty fuck with a commitmentphobic banker. Everyone loves King and I love you and today I should be thinking about how I’m going to part my hair and whether or not you’re going to lick your fingers when we eat. Instead I talk about Danny Fucking Torrance, all growed up! I love Stephen King as much as any red rum drinking American, but I resent the fact that I, the bookseller, am his bitch.

You’re an MFA candidate and we might talk literature tonight. For all I know, you could be so nervous that you collapse into a fog of pretension and praise a crap-infested chapbook of experimental narrative. And what am I going to say in return? Can you believe Danny Torrance is all growed up? Books don’t get any more commercial and anti-chap than Stephen Fucking King (unless you want to talk about Dan Brown, but you can’t compare the two because Dan Brown’s not literary). And if Mr. King were here, he would be on my side; he knows that first dates require effort. He also likes books other than his own and he’d be proud of these folks if they read something they didn’t hear about on Good Morning America (but not a chapbook of experimental narrative). Plus, Mr. King owes me; I sell his fucking books! Of course, he’s not here and the sun loiters, still, and the register is tired and I’ve had the same conversation eighty-five thousand times today.

“Did you see that review in the New York Times?”

“I sure did.”

“Can you just wait to read it? Jack Nicholson was so scary in the first!”

Philistines and I smash the register when it gets stuck—again—and I hit it because time is moving too slowly. I miss you and I want you and finally here’s a woman who’s not buying Stephen King. She’s buying Rachael Ray cookbooks and she acts like I hit her, not the register. She does the passive-aggressive sigh and starts pounding at her Twitter app on her phone:

Bad customer service is the worst! #mooneyrare

She wants me to see and she lets the cursor blink and okay, lady, okay. I apologize for my ill manner and tell her that Rachael Ray is underrated and she deletes her tweet, which is good. There comes a point when the universe needs to get on your side or go fuck itself and the universe gets in line. I take a moment to send a tweet from Benji’s account:

Home Soda and absinthe? Yes. #fiveoclocksomewhere

The next asshole is rummaging through his wallet for his credit card to buy his Stephen King so he can (fingers crossed) read about a sicko doing sick things because he’s too much of a pussy to do all the sick things he wants to do, things he’s probably wanted to do since he was a kid.

That’s the problem with this never-ending centipede of lemmings, Beck. You know they’re all pussies, each and every one of ’em. They buy these books to get scared because their lives are too easy. How pathetic is that?

“They say the ending is amazing and you can’t see it coming.”

“Yes, they do. Is that cash or charge?”

You think Benji was a tough dude to date? Well, try having the same conversation over and over while Benji’s in the cage trying to dig his way to China. Yeah, you put up with his bullshit, Beck, but did you ever lock him in a cage and listen to him bellyache 24/7? The kid is allergic to gluten and peanuts and yeast and dust and sugar and Visine. I got him a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and he went batshit on me and said the mere smell of peanut butter could kill him.

Please.

You know what the fucker is really allergic to? Real life. I’m doing the kid a favor. When he gets outta here, he’s gonna be pissed about being locked up but he’s also gonna thank me for making him into a man.

“I own every book Stephen King has ever written.”

“That’s great. That’s something to be proud of.”

But did you read them, fuckface?

And, honestly, Beck, do you know how hard it is, sleeping at the shop just in case Mr. Mooney does a late-night drop-by to look at the seventies porn in the basement? Answering questions about Stephen Fucking King while knowing that I gotta buy apples and honey for the pansy in the cage—I gotta pray the whole time I’m out with you tonight that Curtis is too stoned to be curious and try and get downstairs, that Mooney’s too old and lazy to want his porn. Beck, I love you, I do, but you don’t know about problems. I gotta be aware of the distant possibility that I leave and Curtis takes over and one random old dude with bank decides that today is the day he coughs up six grand for a signed Hemingway and Curtis calls Mooney and Mooney limps over here and the three of them go downstairs and make the worst day of Benji’s life into the best day. I have problems. Real ones.

“Can you believe all these people? I thought I was the only one who buys paper books anymore!”

“Nobody buys paper books anymore,” I say to customer number 4,356 who is a carbon copy of number 4,343 and all the others. “Unless they’re by Stephen King.”

You think you have problems. I know what you got. Even with Benji in the cage, I know. You’ve got deadlines and you gotta read the shitty stories by the other wannabes in your classes and you think your hairdresser fucked up your hair and Chana thinks she’s pregnant even though the dude barely got it in and Lynn says if she got pregnant she’d move home and have the baby and you say if you got pregnant you’d name it #anythingbutBenji and your friends are sick of you bitching about Benji, using any excuse to bring up his name. I mean really, Beck. Girls. Somehow it takes you fifty-two e-mails to figure out the most basic, simple shit:

Chana is not pregnant, which makes sense, given that she didn’t full-throttle fuck anyone.

Lynn is dead inside.

You are not over Benji, but you will be once you go out with me.

Okay, you have one legitimate problem. Your mom e-mails you drunk at night, sad, wants to talk, wants to yell, but, Beck, if you knew what I put up with for you, you wouldn’t spend so much time moaning about your problems and you’d read the stories you gotta read for grad school and cuddle up with your green pillow and thank God that you don’t have a 160-pound princess locked in your basement asking if the chicken in a fucking sandwich is free range.

I mean he was kidding, right?

“Don’t you just love Stephen King?”

“Who doesn’t?”

He’s not stupid. I’ll give him that. He read my face and he didn’t like it but he ate the chicken sandwich. And you know what? He didn’t puke after. But he’s a nervous wreck and a slob and he misses the toilet when he pisses and twice he has vomited all over the toilet. And twice I’ve had to cuff him to the cage and clean up his mess. Labor is cleaning up a pansy’s fluids after you just restocked the shelves and the window display with the new Stephen King for the third time in one fucking day while dealing with all the people who worship Stephen King bombarding the store for the Big New Stephen King Book that they all need on the same fucking day because God forbid they opened their eyes to a lesser-known author. People. What can you do, right?

My phone buzzes and it’s 6:00 P.M. and it’s official. The only books I sold today besides Stephen King are those Rachael Ray cookbooks and no wonder Benji never read any of his favorite books because most people don’t read anymore and this is not the way I want to be when I’m less than three hours away from sitting with you on the steps.

“They say this is his best book yet.”

“Let’s hope so.”

Curtis will be here in ten minutes because he’s supposed to get here at six and he’s never been on time because he’s part of Generation Benji, all busy with his fake life in his fucking gadgets, tinderokcupidinstagramtwitterfacebookvinebullshitnarcissism incorporatedonlinepetitionsfantasyfuckingfootball. I’d love to fire him, but he respects me so I let him stay even though he asked me to hold a Stephen King book for him and listens to Eminem through unnecessarily giant headphones and takes like a year to read a single fucking book.

“Did you read this yet?”

“It just came out today.”

“Well, they must ship them a day early, though. You can’t tell me you didn’t read the first chapter.”

“No, I didn’t read the first chapter. Is this gonna be cash or charge?”

I wait. The after-work depressed book buyers are coming steady, going home to their dungeons to let Stephen King distract them from their pathetic, lonely lives. We’re so lucky, Beck. So much of America—Benji included, cuz I’m a nice guy and I gave him one before I took off—is gonna be hunkered down reading Stephen King tonight but you and I are gonna be out living our own lives together. I pity these people.

“Do you mind if I run over and grab another book?”

“Actually, we’ve got a line and I already ran your card.”

And there’s no way I’m pissing off everyone so this broad can buy some Candace Bushnell because she is so slow to realize that she doesn’t like Stephen King. She’s only buying it because of the crowds. It’s the original virus, this kind of shit.

6:06 now and I know what you’re doing. You’re smearing on eyeliner to get that Olsen-twin eye you think you need to look hot, which you don’t. You’re blasting your Bowie, Rare and Well Done—the music you play before you go on a date, music that makes you feel cool, crutch music you can talk about when you feel insecure—and you’re deciding which little tank top best accompanies which little bra and eventually all of it gets to you and you’re on your green pillow because the only way to get bed head is to get in the bed and fuck yourself. It’s true what they say about you chicks being dirtier than us dudes, you are. I’m still keeping up with your e-mails as I wait for credit cards to run and you girls e-mail each other about your bodily events. It’s all so un-Victorian. You are a Bowie girl, futuristic in your clinical control of your skin and your eyelashes you get sewn on in Chinatown, so crass that you tell your friends you’re gonna rub one out before our date.

Rub one out.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you all set?”

“Yes. Can I have a bag for the book or are you gonna charge me extra?”

6:08 and the next dude in line is buying the new King and The Shining just to be bold—he calls The Shining a prequel and I want to cut his face—and what an awful world it is out there, Beck. What a miracle that you came in here, so happy, when most of the people who come in are so miserable, everyone except for you and me and Curtis, who holds the door for Mr. Shining and starts with his bullshit.

“Dude the L train is wacked.”

“Take over the register.”

“Fifteen minutes I stood there. Nothing.”

“It’s nothing but Stephen King tonight so you can close when the last copy goes.”

“Cool. But, like, I just really need the hours.”

6:11 and the punk wants hours and it’s a waste of my time and I gotta get hot for you and clean for you and close my paper cuts and brush my teeth with my new Tom’s natural toothpaste (thanks, Benji!) and I clench my jaw but Curtis is dense and not good at reading faces because of the way his head is shoved in his phone most of the time.

“Just close up after the King is done.”

“Yeah, this city can blow me if it can’t even get a train to run on time, you know, brother?”

“Just try and text if you’re gonna be late next time.”

“You look beat, son. Go on. I got this.”

The little Beastie Boy motherfucker was late and I’m his boss and he is calling me son and the last thing in the world I need is this little shit telling me I look tired.

“You got a line, Curtis,” I say and when I walk outside, away from the basement, away from the books, I smile at nothing, at the idea of you, like me, preparing. You’re probably on your green pillow because it’s almost time and for the first time in a long time I head home with drippy Simon & Garfunkel in my head because it’s not Stephen King Book Day anymore, Beck. This night is ours.