Who am I kidding? I have to get that bikini top. I close my eyes. I pray. My hand is shaking when I reach around to the interior side of the door and pull it off the doorknob. You don’t notice and everything is safe again and I really need you to get the fuck out of my apartment. I put your bikini behind the frozen Stouffer’s things I buy but never eat and then you are out of the shower, out of the bathroom and you call out.
“Hey, Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?”
For a second, I panic. You know and the bikini is a gun and I am fucked but you are in a towel, dripping and I look like a fucking lunatic against the fridge.
“I’m just kidding,” you say. “I know it’s a bad joke, but it’s not that bad. Chill out.”
“I guess you found the towels.”
“I hope it’s okay,” you murmur, and my home is no place for bare feet and you keep moving around because the floors are sticky and dirty and you’re looking down at my typewriters and asking too many questions and you’re picking up my taxidermy miniature alligator head that I would have hidden if I knew you were coming and this is wrong, all wrong, this is not right in the morning light and you got to sleep here and shower and soap up without making love to me and in what universe can that possibly be a good thing? Your clean hands are too clinical right now and you’re examining this place like it’s a crime scene. Maybe that yellow tape put you on guard. You are asking when I started collecting typewriters and dead animals and jokingly asking if I’m a serial killer and pointing at the hole in the wall and saying, “Joseph, tell me again about the hole,” and, yeah, you’re laughing and you don’t mean for me to defend it all but this is not good for us and you’re too clean and I have sleep in my eyes and morning wood and no coffee and no eggs to make for you. The faucet drips (you didn’t shut it off all the way) but I can’t shut it off because you can’t be alone in my living room. You excuse yourself to the bathroom and you wash your hands with a lot of soap (taxidermy and typewriters). When you get out of my bathroom with your freshly scrubbed hands, you’re all done with me, talking about school, kissing me good-bye, no tongue.
When you leave, I sit in the wet tub and breathe you in. All of you.
“DUDE, you don’t think that’s a little harsh?”
Curtis is pleading his case and turning red and the little shit has never been fired before and suddenly he loves it here at Mooney’s and suddenly he gives a shit and suddenly my pothead minion is never getting stoned again.
“Curtis, the right thing to do now is just say ‘Okay, boss.’ ”
He flares and a fat little woman knocks on the counter like it’s a door. “S’cuse me, guys, but do you have any Zone cookbooks?”
“Yeah,” I say, and I am about to say where but suddenly Curtis actually works here and actually gives a shit and he’s zipping behind me and leading the sweet little fatty to the cookbooks and talking to her about our ability to special-order any Zone book her fat little heart could desire and telling her about our return policy, so loudly you’d think she was deaf, not fat, and it’s amazing, how people only shape up until they have a gun against their head and then I hear you (Hey, Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?), and that morning was all his fault and he will pay. He must pay and the fat lady wants to pay part by check and part by cash and part by credit card and I have to wonder how she will afford to buy the ingredients in the Zone book recipes and suddenly Curtis is a fucking Volunteer Police Man, all about double-checking her driver’s license like I taught him to do, like he never does, and running the credit card the right way, hard and tilted so that the weak old machine picks up the swipe. He’s inserting a bookmark in each fucking cookbook and, man, this kid, only a nut job psychopath perfectionist mother fucker would fire this kid, so good he is, so dedicated.
The little fat lady is pleased and she whistles at me. “Yoo-hoo, hon.”
I nod and I smile and she should have addressed me as sir.
“You should give this young man a raise,” she says and she’s pink all over from hustling around the store. “I tell you, I was in another little shop uptown for two hours before someone came to help me and this young man you have here was a wonderful and gracious host to me. And knowledgeable too.”
I’d like to tell her that in both bookstores and coffee shops, it’s actually polite to leave browsers and readers alone. When you harass people and offer to help them too much, they feel like you’re nudging them out the door. This lady doesn’t know anything about the world and she’s still raving about this friendly young man and I would like to tell her that overeager Curtis (did he start doing meth or something?) has actually driven customers away today because most people don’t want to be interrupted when they’re reading the first few pages of a novel. Oh, I want her to know that Curtis smokes pot four times a day and steals bicycles and fences them for spare cash. I could tell her that he is late every fucking shift and that he shits in the bathroom on a regular basis (rude), and that he’s cheated on every girlfriend he’s ever had, and that when she exits this place, were he not getting his ass fired, he’d mock her to high hell and possibly even write down her checking account information. Yes. She pays with a check.
Instead I just smile at the gal. “You’re the exact reason that we open up shop every day,” I say. “We’re in the business of helping people buy books.”
“This is just like that Meg Ryan movie.” She squeals. “You know, where the nice girl has the small shop and she falls in love with the man with the big shops?”
Curtis fucking sings, “You’ve Got Mail!?”
“You’ve Got Mail,” she cries and she laughs. “Oh, I love that movie! Do you have that here? DVDs?”
This sloth won’t use her cookbooks. She will buy a small shelf at Target and have someone nail it into the wall in her kitchen. She will line up those cookbooks and love the way they look and throw a pizza in the microwave and tear into the DVD of You’ve Got Mail that she’ll truck across town to buy. She’ll never come back here again.
When she goes, Curtis gets it somehow. He knows he’s done.
“Dude,” he says. “For what it’s worth, I thought I was helping you out. That chick was hot. Bangable hot.”
“You don’t give out my address to strangers.”
“She said she knew you. And did I say bangable? Mad bangable.”
Let it be known that I only punched him once and not in the face. You better remember that, Beck. It’s not like I’m some monster and it’s not like I hurt him. I fired him, man to man, boss to worker. It wasn’t personal and it wasn’t hardcore and that fat lady was the first customer he treated well since week fucking one. Also, you’re not bangable, Beck. You’re beautiful. There’s a difference.
26
THE day after our sleepover without sex, you asked me to meet up with you in midtown. Curtis was gone and I was alone in the shop, but the day after a woman is naked in your apartment, everyone knows the only thing to say to her is yes. We picked up your new cable box. The line was a mile long. Then you sent me home.
And it’s been more of the same for the past two weeks. Today, you asked me to meet you in front of a Starbucks in Herald Square, where I stand now as you kiss me hello (on the cheek). You’re not gonna sit on my lap in an overstuffed chair and lick whipped cream off my upper lip. You’re in get-it-done daytime mode and Christmas shoppers walking by probably think I’m your gay best friend. My dick hurts, Beck. Where’s my holiday?
“So the good news is, I know exactly what I want.”
“You do?” I say and I hope you’ll ask me to eat you out in the bathroom at Starbucks.
“I want to get my mom those headphones that double as earmuffs.”
“Ah.” Digital earmuffs are the physical opposite of oral sex.
“And the better news is, I have a coupon,” you say and we are on our way into Macy’s.
Now you start in about money. You’re strapped for cash. I pretend that I didn’t read the e-mails you
exchanged with your father this morning. I know that you’re waiting to see if your old man the Captain is gonna help you out.
We are in the ladies’ shoes section (didn’t you want earmuffs?) when you ask me about Curtis. I tell you that I caught him stealing and fired him. I do not tell you it was because he gave you my address. You sigh; he seemed like a good kid. Ha. We wander through jewelry (didn’t you just need earmuffs?), and you want to know when I’ll hire a new clerk. I tell you that the only thing more impossible than finding good help is running the store on my own. You nod and agree that most people are unemployable and is this really how it’s going to be, small talk about résumés and shit?
“Wanna go for a ride?” you say and if you mean that you’re gonna go for a ride on my dick, then yes.
But instead, you take my hand and lead me onto the escalator. It is crowded and sweaty and Christmassy and I would rather be balls deep in a trash can. There is no privacy on an escalator at Macy’s in December, but you’re a little performer, and here you go.
“So, my grad school adviser, the one on sabbatical who’s on a grant at Princeton.” And you pause, as if the Mexican chick in front of you cares. “He wants pages before we break, which is obviously ridiculous.”
“What’s his name again?” I say even though I have never asked.
“Paul,” you say and you don’t offer a last name and the conversation is over, thank God. We get off at the fourth floor. It’s loud and smells like pretzels and perfume. A Miley Cyrus song plays and it’s too hopped up in here. Loud skanks picking fights with each other assault my senses and I ask you if the headphones are on this floor and you tell me you need to return something.
Fortunately, the line at the Young Sluts Department isn’t that long because most Young Sluts can’t afford to buy shit. As it turns out you weren’t telling me the whole story and when it’s our turn, you pull out leggings and a wrinkled receipt out of your bag and the poor girl behind the counter has never done a return and, of course, we have to wait.
“Is there a reason this is taking so long?” you snip.
“Well, you bought these more than a hundred days ago.”
“So?”
And holy shit, you really are broke because why else would you be digging up pants from three months past? You grab the pants and the receipt and you shove them in your bag.
“I’ll just come back when there’s a manager.”
“Fine by me.”
You are stung now; you were depending on that refund. You take it out on everyone in the Young Sluts, plowing through rayon and neon without saying excuse me. A couple of bitches say they want to kick your ass, but they won’t; they’re in high school, they are happy just to call you a beeatch. I tell you to slow down and you don’t listen and I almost love what a cunt you can be because one of these days you’re gonna tie me to a bed and slap me and lord over me the way you lord over all the people who get in your way. You’re so revved up and I want to play with you and I do.
“Beck.”
“What?”
“Look, I don’t know shit about girls’ clothes, but those pants that you were trying to return, they look good.”
“They don’t look good on me.”
“Can I see?”
You fight a smile but you lose. “Here?”
“Yeah,” I say and you’re walking more slowly now and there’s nobody monitoring the dressing room because it really is Christmas and Santa knows I’m a good boy. We walk down the corridor of dressing rooms toward the handicap one on the end. You don’t tell me why you’re pushing that door open and you don’t invite me into the room but I follow. I sit down on the bench and you stand in front of the three-panel mirror. You pull the pants out of your bag and what is wrong with you that you’re still thinking about pants?
You sigh. “See, what I really want are jeggings.”
But what you really need is an orgasm and I tell you to try them on. You are blushing, naughty and a door slams and someone’s muttering get a room and we did get a room, we have this room and your furry boots are off and you’re unzipping your jeans and they’re so snug that when you pull them down your panties start to go with them.
“Come here.”
“Joe. Shh.”
I motion for you to come here. Because you are shy at heart, you pull your pants up and even start to zip them as you walk over to me. I look up at you and you look down on me and you start to crouch down and reach for my belt buckle but no. I grab your hand, firm.
“Stand up.”
You do. And when I start to unzip your pants you step closer and wiggle and help me get you out of those pants and I get you all the way out of them and throw them at the mirror and finally, at long last, in the Young Sluts Department of Macy’s in Herald Square, Christmas comes early. I taste you. I lick you. And when you cum you cum at the top of your lungs.
I love shopping.
Sex clears the mind and the orgasm agrees with you. We leave the dressing room and you decide to give the pants you were trying to return to your mother—I knew we were never getting any earmuffs. You hold my hand hard and tight and we ride the escalator four flights back down and you do not want to browse anymore. The music softens as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” begins, my favorite sad holiday song. You ask me what I’m doing for the holiday, and I tell you that I’m working, of course, and you tell me that you’re going to have to get a job. You lead me into men’s hats and you pick up a red and green wool monstrosity. I shake you off.
“Maybe I can work here.” You smile. “You could come visit me on my breaks.”
“Do you really need a job?”
Instead of answering me, you pick up a red hunting cap like the one Caulfield wore in The Catcher in the Rye and you look up at me. “Please? It’s pretty much my favorite book of all time.”
I can’t say no and I love you for not mentioning the book by name. I put the hat on and you bite your lip. “Adorable.”
It’s hard to get you to take me seriously while wearing this ridiculous hat but I try. “Seriously, Beck, do you need a job?”
“You are too hot.” You squeal and you take out your phone. “One picture, Joe. You have to let me get that for you.”
“I better not see that on Facebook.”
“You’re not on Facebook, silly,” you say. “Smile.”
You take my picture and I give you the hat and you dig in your bag for your credit card. “Beck,” I say. “You don’t need to buy me a hat I’m never gonna wear. Seriously. Do you need a job?”
“I know I don’t need to buy it,” you say. “I want to.”
It’s Christmas so I let you buy me the cap and I say I’ll only wear it on one condition.
“Anything,” you say and you have gorgeous tunnel vision.
“Tell me you’ll take a job at the bookshop.”
“Yes!” You cheer and you throw your arms around me, I give you everything you want, everything you need, and you kiss my neck so softly, my lips, tenderly. You murmur my name—Joe—and everyone walking by probably thinks we just got engaged.
LATER in the day, Ethan shows up for an interview. I don’t have the heart to tell him that the job has been taken. He looks like a gerbil and he’s friendly as a puppy and he’d be better off in an animal shelter than a bookstore. He talks a lot and I check your e-mail and it’s clear to me that you called Peach and told her about our shopping excursion and your new job. She writes:
Beckalicious, I hope you’re not beating yourself up after the Target romp. Remember: Doing something trashy does not make you trashy. You’re only human, little one! Just please be tender with him, probably not the best idea to work together. Maybe better to work on campus? Anywho, be well, Peach.
The e-mail from Peach kills my Macy’s buzz. What if you back out on me? What if we work together and we don’t get along? What if you need to have #girlsnight on your nights off and I never get to go shopping with you again? Ethan would never bail on me; he bro
ught three copies of his résumé. “You seem awfully busy, Joe,” he says, perky. “If you want me to go I can come back in a little while! My day’s clear!”
I buy time. I don’t know if I can deal with his energy. “What are your five favorite books?”
He smiles like I just told him that Santa Claus is real and I read your response to Peach:
Oh, it was Macy’s, not Target, so that’s more respectable . . . I hope. And you’re right, I know I shouldn’t work at the bookstore. I am sooo bad about boundaries. Why are you always so smart?!
Ethan is the middle of his analysis of The Lord of the Rings when I interrupt him.
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