I am not calling the cops—they are not all Jenks and I’ve learned my lesson. I creep toward the back of the shop, checking the stacks to my left, to my right. I move past fiction and biography and at the back of the shop, the basement door is ajar too. The silence of the shop bears down on my brain. They are long gone, I think. But if they are still here I’m slicing their throats. I clench the machete as I descend the stairs slowly, soundlessly. When I reach the bottom step, I gasp and drop it. I don’t need it anymore.
There is nobody here, but someone was here all right, someone who eats superfruits. There’s a bowl on the floor next to the gaping hole where the yellow wall of Portnoy’s Complaints used to be.
Amy.
She stole every last copy, didn’t even leave one for me. She took the Yates first edition too, the one she blew me for, the one that started it all. There’s a blueberry-stained copy of Charlotte & Charles on the floor, right next to my computer and the pink keys, the ones I made for her. I grab my phone and call her and of course this number is now dead, out of service, gone, just like all the others.
I drop to my knees and scream. She left me. She stole from me. I bought that bullshit about her needing her own bed and she must have come here right after I dropped her off. I throw her superfruits at the wall. Supercunt.
I pick up Charlotte & Charles. I understand the meaning of that fucking book now. Don’t trust women. Ever. I open it and there is a message scribbled inside:
Sorry, Joe. I tried. But we really are the same. We both hold back. We both lose control. We both have secrets. Be good to you. Love, Amy.
I haven’t made a comprehensive list of everything she took, but so far, I estimate $23,000 in rare books. She knew what she was doing the day she walked in here, and I fell for it. I should be dragged into a field and shot for being so fucking stupid, dick-blind, cock-sucked. We’re the same, she said. Fuck me. Fuck her.
She pulled the wool over my eyes with her latex gloves and her dick-sucking eyes. This was never love, not on the beach in Little Compton, not in this cage, not in my bed. The bitch came here to trick me, to rob me, and I made her fucking keys.
I grab the laptop and get the fuck out of this fucking cage and I lock it—a little late, asshole—and I trudge up the stairs and I lock the basement door—what a fucking asshole I am, I should lock myself in the basement—and that’s when I see another mess. Amy ransacked my least favorite section of the shop: drama. She stole acting manuals:
An Actor Prepares
10 Ways to Make It in Hollywood
How to Make Them Call You Back
Monologues for Women Volume IV
Are you fucking kidding me, you lying thieving hairy-legged beast? My head spins. Amy was not an untrained sociologist, wearing college paraphernalia to experiment on human behavior. She was not lying to Noah & Pearl & Harry & Liam. She was acting. Why else would she steal those manuals?
I sit down at the counter and wake up the laptop. She claims to be so off the grid and above this computer shit, but she managed to erase the recent search history. My cheeks sting at the idea of her on that floor, trying to block me, trying to clear the search she conducted on my computer. Well, she should have learned a little bit more about how these machines work, what they can do for me. Chrome isn’t that simple. She only cleared the last hour of her time on my computer, not the whole fucking history. I know my recent searches—rare books and motels in Little Compton—and it’s not exactly difficult to shine the light on her key fucking words:
UCB, cheapest headshots, free headshots, UCB classes cheap, Ben Affleck, top dollar used books, selling rare books, Philip Roth price, auditions, casting calls, blond girl next door audition, sublet Hollywood
She also didn’t clear her fucking downloads and I bring up her application to an Improv 101: Improv Basics class at Upright Citizens Brigade and a script for some short fucking film with a cover page that references a Craigslist ad. So the bitch has run away to try to make it in Hollywood. Making It in Hollywood is the most disgusting phrase in the English language. It’s more disturbing than prolific serial killer and rare terminal illness. I can’t wait to catch her and tell her what a deluded loser she is.
I print her search history and there is nothing more terrifying than realizing that the one who knows you best loves you least, pities you even. She knew I was fucked up and alone. She knew I wanted a blowjob and a girlfriend and she knew I wanted these things so badly that I would let her watch Cocktail fifty times a fucking week in my bed, that I would give her a fucking a key. I did that and I can’t undo it. But I can find her. I can eliminate her.
And I will. She doesn’t get to walk around thinking she got away with this. Fuck no. She doesn’t get to think that I’m a sucker who you can fuck over and dump with Charlotte & Charles. I lapped her nipples with my tongue and I ate her hairy bush and she used me. She is evil. She is dangerous. She is incapable of love. She is a sociopath. Worse than a borderline. That’s why she uses fucking burner phones. She’s a criminal.
She thinks she’s so smart but if you erase an hour, it doesn’t mean shit, not unless you erase the weeks leading up to that hour. She thinks life is better off the grid. Yeah. She’ll die thinking that. Cunt. I call JetBlue. I buy a ticket. Sorry, Amy. You lose.
6
IF there’s one thing I learned from that horny charlatan Dr. Nicky Angevine and his patient/mistress Beck, it’s that you can’t control what other people do. You can only control your thoughts. If there’s a mouse in your house you have to make it your business to remove that pest, set the traps, check the traps. Amy is my mouse, but this is my house and I’m deep into the extermination process already. I called the UCB and claimed to be a guy named Adam checking on my registration. This is how I was able to confirm that there is a girl named Adam, Amy reserved for an improv class.
I gave notice on my lease. Fuck that shithole and it’s time I got the hell out of here, out of my apartment where I bring the wrong women into my bed, cold city girls—their hearts are hard and pale—and I can’t become one of those New Yorkers who lets the city win. I won’t sit behind the counter of that fucking shop the next time some chick walks in and bats her eyelashes at me. I’m fucking done.
It’s June and the city is ripe with meaningless fecal heat. It will be a different kind of hot in LA, the kind that made the Beach Boys all tan and giddy, a heat that doesn’t harass you in the shade.
I get on the train and begin my last humid, smelly ride to Mr. Mooney’s. I thought about writing him a letter or calling him, but it’s been too many years. I owe him a good-bye. My trip ends, finally, and I leave the train where a mariachi band sets up and hoochies take selfies. Good-bye, subway people.
A guy in a suit emerges from a deli across the street with fresh roses, running, trying, believing. Idiot. I walk into the butcher and pick up Mr. Mooney’s favorite sausages. I hope he doesn’t cry. I hope he doesn’t try to lock me in his basement. I turn the corner and knock on his door.