He doesn’t smile. “Don’t tell me we got robbed again?
“No such luck, Mr. Mooney.” I laugh. He was almost happy when I called and told him about the robbery. He said that insurance money is the most beautiful kind of money there is in this world.
“Well, what’s wrong then?” he jabs.
“Nothing,” I insist. I hold up the sausages. “You hungry?”
He pushes open the screen door and waves me in. His house smells like kitty litter and old ladies and he doesn’t have a cat or a wife. He has two eggs on the stove and the radio on.
He puts my sausages in the old fridge. “You want some coffee milk?” he asks.
Nope. “Sure!”
He shakes the powdered concoction and sets a small chipped glass down on the table in front of me. He talks about a pillow he bought off an infomercial, how the dame on the phone said he couldn’t return it because thirty days had passed. He talks about the eggs at his local market. They used to be cheaper but now they’re ridiculously priced because they’re from some farm nearby. “In which case, they should be cheaper,” he rails. He waves his saggy arm. I don’t want to be like this someday, alone, frying eggs, eating local food in a stingy rage. But at the same time, I can’t imagine ever loving anyone ever again.
Mr. Mooney finishes frying the eggs and sits down with me at the table. The eggs are overcooked, glistening. I think he used a pound of butter and I don’t think he’s cleaned the skillet since 1978. “So to what do I owe this honor?” he asks.
I drink my coffee milk. By some miracle, I keep it down. “Well,” I say. “I’ve decided I need a change. I’m moving to Los Angeles.”
He burps. It’s wet. Flappy shards of eggs fly out of his mouth. “What’s her name?”
“Whose name?”
“The girl,” he says. “Nobody moves anywhere unless it’s about a girl.”
I hesitate, then tell him about Amy, her desire to be an actress, the way she kept it from me. I don’t tell him that she was the thief.
“I knew there was a girl.” He dips his finger into the ketchup on his plate and licks it off. “You might be wiser to let her go.”
I shake my head. “This is something I have to do.”
Mr. Mooney sighs. “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.”
“Frank Lloyd Wright said that.”
“He was right.” Mr. Mooney rises from his seat and tosses his rank sponge in the sink. “Los Angeles is the seat of evil, Joseph. It’s the womb of idiocy. It’s where everything bad comes from, the peak of the volcano of this nation’s stupidity. It’s no place for an intelligent man. That’s why there’s nothing to watch on the damn television set. You’re better off here.” He’ll never say it but he’s going to miss me. “I’ll give you my e-mail address so we can keep in touch.” He takes my plate and stacks it on his. I know if I offer to do the dishes he’ll be pissed. “E-mail is baseless,” he dismisses me. “Just promise me you won’t waste your life on a damn computer.”
I say I’ll see him again soon and a cockroach scampers by and he stomps on it with his boot. “You don’t know that,” he says. “There’s no way you could know that.” He tells me to lock the door on my way out. “Goddamn Girl Scouts are pushier than ever.”
MY apartment is empty. Everything I’m taking with me is in my dad’s giant duffel bag, the one I’ve never used because I’ve never gone so far away, never had an occasion to pack up everything I want, my books, my clothes, my pillow, my computer. There’s a knock at my door and I don’t check the peephole, figuring it’s the landlord to complain about the damage. But no. It’s Mr. Mooney, in sunglasses. I can’t see his eyes.
“Word of advice,” he begins. “Get your dick sucked.”
“Okay.”
“Get your dick sucked,” he repeats. “Don’t sleep with actresses. Don’t waste your time with In-N-Out burgers. Don’t watch too many movies. Don’t eat too many vegetables. Don’t refer to vegetables as veggies. Don’t go in the pool. It’s cold and dirty. Don’t go in the ocean. It’s cold and dirty. Don’t have a child. Most born there become whores.”
“I got it.”
He stares at my unplugged refrigerator. “Is the shop locked up?”
“Yes,” I declare. “Bolted, shut down.”
“Good,” he says, and he smiles. “Maybe I’ll run away too.”
“Do you want to come in, have a seat?”
But there’s nowhere to sit. He reaches into his breast pocket. He pulls out a thick envelope and hands it to me.
I protest. “I can’t take this.”
“Yes, you can,” he says. “You’ll need it.”
He ambles down the stairs, and I realize I might never see him again. I gather my things and slip the key under the door. A fat kid on the first floor asks where I’m going.
“California,” I say.
“Why?” he asks.
“To make the world a better place,” I answer. I give the kid some books, none of them rare, all of them important. The kid is grateful and I’m noble and it’s true. I am gonna make the world a better place. That kid is already leafing through Lord of the Flies. Next up: Amy, hog-tied, sinking to the bottom of a swimming pool. California.
7
I don’t read during the flight to LAX. I don’t watch a movie. I fuck around on Facebook—I finally joined for real, as Joe Goldberg, as me—but it’s not what you think it is. I have to fuck around on Facebook. I’m a hunter going on a wild safari and I need guides on my trek through this small segment of the foothills of Hollywood known as Franklin Village. I need camouflage. I need friends and it’s not the worst thing in the world to need people. I am inspired by the Fast & Furious movies where the heroes Toretto and O’Conner can’t hunt the bad guys without first assembling a team. I need help finding Amy, the same way they need help finding a corrupt Brazilian drug lord. And I can say this for the aspirings in the Upright Citizens Brigade: They’re an open bunch. They accept Joe Goldberg, writer as a friend, and these people talk a lot. About the dry cleaner and Tinder and their shoes and their auditions. And yes, they talk about someone they refer to as Amy Offline.
The best resource so far is a guy named Calvin, who works at a used bookstore right next to the UCB. He posted a job listing for someone to pick up shifts and I wrote to him. I think I have the job; none of the other dudes he knows have experience with a register. I ask him about rare books, if he ever sees any original editions of Portnoy’s Complaint. Maybe Amy already started moving her inventory. He writes back:
LOL dude we get like one valuable book a year. Mostly people who live up Beachwood dump their moldy shit when they move or their parents die or whatever. Or like people on the block are broke and they try to sell stuff but it’s supereasy mostly it’s like you get like a couple bucks it’s superchill dude.
In addition to Facebook and Twitter, Calvin has a website where he reveals everything you could ever want to know about him. He’s an aspiring writer-director-actor-producer-sound designer-comic-improv player. Can you imagine yearning for attention so badly that your identity required all those hyphens? He worships Henderson and Marc Maron and suspenders and beards and pictures of beards and Tinder and bacon and Breaking Bad and things from the ’80s. In Brooklyn this guy would be working at a branding firm. He would be playing poor and checking his 401(k) late at night. But Calvin has a PayPal account where “fans” can help him pay rent. I could never respect Calvin, but he’s easy and grateful that I’m willing to fill in when he needs to audition.