You

by Caroline Kepnes

  I hit PAUSE. I look around. I wish there was someone I could punch in the face. I could never punch a blind man and I press PLAY.

  I know I should give her a referral and send her on her way.

  I hit PAUSE again because I’m going deaf from anger. He had no problem giving me a referral. It’s fine to kick Danny Fox to the curb but you get to stay. I press PLAY:

  Her journaling is productive. She is receptive to my suggestion that she needs to be in a relationship in order to address her issues. She repeatedly tells me that we have a connection. And I don’t encourage her but this connection is all I think about. How come I am so willing to accept failure in my work? Yet I am not willing to accept it when a very intelligent patient calls me a genius. Maybe I did cure her in a matter of weeks. Has my self-esteem tumbled to the extent that I no longer think that’s possible just because I bought the wrong washing machine?

  He loves you and he’s after you and the blind man is smiling, now standing, poking around and we’re all hunters, we are, and I skip ahead:

  I tell Diane that I’m starting to have dreams about Beck. And of course Diane tells me to stop treatment. That’s what a good therapist would say and Diane is a good therapist. But I can’t. Beck is opening up to me and she trusts me enough to tell me about this green pillow she uses to masturbate. To masturbate! The backstory is revelatory. Her father left. He then asked her mother to mail him his green neck pillow. Her passive mother agreed but Beck had already stolen the pillow. In my fantasy, we are in my office and she comes over to me and asks to sit on my lap. I say no, but she will not be stopped. She straddles me. I fantasize about her all the time now and the bad washing machine is actually good because there’s a lock in the laundry room and I can jerk off in there and think about Beck without getting caught. In my mind, when I’m inside of her, she calls me a rock star and a cock star and I haven’t felt this alive in years. Staying with Marcia feels more like a betrayal. Like I am cheating on Beck even though nothing is happening. Every day, I am more detached from my family. The truth is ugly: I would rather have Beck.

  At some point during that recording the blind man exited the train. I missed my stop and the headphones jam my ears, pieces of dime-store junk, and I yank them out of my phone and hurl them at the window across from me. People are looking at me and people can fuck off. The train lurches to a stop and I’m the first one out the door. I can’t get angrier than I am right now. I feel like a sucker and I want to tear my own head off because I can’t believe that I fell for his bullshit. I can’t believe I told him things I never tell anyone. I round the corner and see Karen fucking Minty sitting on my fucking stoop with a picnic basket and cats are supposed to be smarter than this, colder than this.

  “Surprise,” she says. “I made a picnic!”

  And can you believe that Karen still exists? I want to go inside and throw typewriters at the walls until they cave in and the mice are collateral damage, falling to death, screaming and Karen Minty—my girlfriend—has to be here with an actual picnic basket. I’ve never seen one in real life, only in cartoons, in books, and I don’t want to go on a picnic. I smell garlic and rosemary and the Noxzema that Karen has rubbed all over her tight, pointy face since she was a kid. It’s over. If she knew what a sucker I am, if she knew that I paid a married dickwad to try and fuck the love of my life, she wouldn’t want to take me on a picnic. I need her to go away. This has nothing to do with her. This is Nicky’s fault and I tell her I’m not hungry.

  She is hungry and she reaches and I pull away. “Joe, what the fuck?”

  I’m not Joe, I’m Dan Fox and I am loud. “Jesus Christ, Karen! Can you take a fucking hint?”

  And that’s it. She is on her feet, shivering. “Fuck you.”

  “That’s intelligent.”

  “Fuck you and your intelligence,” she snarls. “You think I’m some doormat piece-of-shit chick that you can bang and fuck as you please? You think I’m some fucking rag doll?”

  “Yes,” I say, not missing a beat. “That’s exactly what you are.”

  And it’s true. I am wrong about everyone. You are a whore and Nicky is a prick and sweet Karen, the cum Dumpster, is boiling over with repressed rage. Or is that sadness? She is quivering and the basket is making her forearm tremble and I’m a fucking asshole and she’s a phlebotomist who loves me, me, and if Nicky wasn’t in love with you then none of this would be happening. But he does want you and that chicken smells delicious and I’m a fool.

  “Sit down,” says Karen Minty and I let her help me onto the stoop. How could Nicky do this to Karen? She is a hard worker; the basket is full. She has heart; last month, she lugged a vacuum cleaner all the way here to my place. She vacuumed beneath the sofa. She wore tiny little whore shorts and a half shirt and she found dirty places I didn’t know existed.

  “You don’t want to get mice,” she had said. “Otherwise I won’t wanna come here anymore.”

  Nobody ever made a vacuum cleaner into a dozen roses, a beating heart. And like everything bad, this too is Nicky’s fault. He’s the one who told me to get a cat. Karen would stay with me forever and pump out kids when I want kids and work doubles so we can go to Florida once a year and I have all of this here in a picnic basket and that rosemary smells like heaven. But the thing is, she’s never heard of Paula Fox or Magnolia or tried to bang her married shrink. She’s not different, hot like us. She follows the rules; she doesn’t dare touch the hole in my wall because that’s for the super to fix. She respects boundaries and fuck Nicky for wasting her time and breaking her heart.

  “Why are you mad at me?” She is quivering. “I thought you’d think it was cool, a picnic. It’s gorgeous out.”

  “Karen.”

  “Oh fuck,” she says and she knows I’m dumping her. She leaps off the stoop and she’s running, crying, gone. I will never see her again and I take the picnic basket upstairs and spread it all out in my Minty-fresh apartment. I gorge on chicken breasts and roasted potatoes and cauliflower in cream sauce and wine right out of the bottle. I eat like it’s the last supper, because it is. I buried Dan Fox today and now I have to take care of Nicky. There’s no way around it, Beck. I listen to his recordings all night long. He’s taken advantage of you in the safest place in the world. He’s in your head, a mouse in your house and he’s clearly tricked you into thinking that you love him. We can’t get together with him controlling your thoughts. Dr. Nicky is . . . Dr. Nicky: a greedy, married pig. And he was wrong about me. I don’t have a mouse in my house. I have a fucking pig.

  39

  I don’t remember the last time I was this close to a school. A lot’s changed. PS 87 on Seventy-Eighth Street has a slogan, for fuck’s sake: “One family under the sun.” I spent the early morning on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History drinking coffee and learning about Nicky and waiting for the families to get out of bed and under the sun already. The journey to this school was shockingly easy, thanks largely to Nicky’s sister-in-law, Jackie. I found her on the Yelp page for Nicky’s Pizza, where she has contributed countless photographs of “our extended family gorging on our favorite ’za!” Jackie’s Yelp account led me to Jackie’s bountiful Facebook page, which features numerous check-ins at “the cabins upstate!” at Nicky’s Pizza (duh), and, most important, to “PS 87! Best School in the City!” Best Facebook page in the world!

  Really, I should sign into Yelp just to endorse her foamy, panting restaurant reviews. I owe her. I know everything about Nicky.

  So, I’m dressed up like a runner today because if there’s anywhere in the world you can’t chill out undisturbed, it’s a school. I’m fucking out of shape as all get out. I haven’t run since Peach. I’ve been running in circles, jogging really—since four thirty in the morning, listening to Nicky’s fucking perv diaries to keep me focused. I go down Columbus, bang a right onto Seventy-Seventh, pass the empty playground, turn right up Amsterdam, and then right onto Seventy-Eighth, pass PS 87, and do it again. I’ve made I don�
�t know how many laps when it all pays off because I see Nicky walking down the street. He looks different to me now. I used to feel sorry for him the way he was so hunched over, his eyes hell bent on the floor. But now he just looks evil. His hunchback is a punishment for his sins. (You.) A father should be looking out for his daughter, but Nicky hangs his head.

  His daughters are older now and that picture on his computer must have been taken a while ago. He’s holding Amy’s hand (Amy’s the one they had instead of getting divorced) and calling out for Mack to slow down. Mack’s the one they had to seal the deal—older, detached. It’s okay for me to jog in place because I’m wearing sunglasses and headphones and if there’s one dude that everyone on the Upper West Side will welcome with open arms, it’s the fucking jogger.

  Nicky walks these kids into the school (and what happened to this city that parents are fucking inside of the school with the kids? Nobody held my fucking hand or anybody else’s for that matter back in the day), and a mother glares at me and I wave and smile (I normal-up good!), and she waves, assuming she forgot my name and knows me from the PTA or the gym or what have you and come on, Nicky get out of there because jogging in place is not like jogging in circles and we’ve got work to do, me and Nicky, and we don’t have much time because you’re supposed to see Nicky tomorrow afternoon at one and I’ve decided that that’s not going to happen.

  NICKY is living proof that idle hands are the horny, cheating devil’s playground. The guy’s so leisurely, Beck. After he dropped his girls at school, he took the long way home and talked on the phone—to you?—and then disappeared into his building. I didn’t see anyone buzz his place, so it’s not like he was seeing patients. He and his wife came out three hours later squawking over the washing machine—this is why marriage scares me, they’ve been talking about that malfunctioning machine for months—and I stay with them on their walk. If Nicky had balls, he would leave her, but he doesn’t. And I’m not mad at you for falling for him. I don’t blame you. The more I listen to the tapes, the more I see Nicky for what he is: a very talented, very sick manipulator. I didn’t see through his bullshit so I can’t very well blame you for falling under his spell. And if you think about it, it’s kind of sweet that we both got swindled. We’re alike. I smile.

  Nicky’s wife, Marcia, is nothing like you. She’s boorish and loud. She teaches psychology at various local and online colleges. She’s a thick-legged martyr with a yoga mat over her shoulder. I hate to sound crass, but yoga’s not doing the trick. She’s wearing a Stop Breast Cancer visor—you know this woman is always bellyaching about something—and her hair is tied back in a low, sad ponytail. This is not a happy woman, Beck. She’s gruff. She crosses her arms when they pass by homeless people as if the homeless people would ever even try with her. I could feel sorry for Nicky but the facts are facts: At some point in his life, he proposed to Marcia.

  Watching him trot alongside Marcia is depressing. She does all the talking about birthday parties and pediatricians and kiddie yoga classes—as if kids don’t stretch out on their own. There are vitamins to be bought and babysitters to be fired and poor Nicky is hunched over more with every block. When I do finally kill him, I will be putting him out of his misery. You don’t want him, Beck. Life does not suit him. All that power he has in the beige room with the records on the wall disappears when he exits his playroom. He wants to cross but his wife yanks his arm. She snaps, “Green light.”

  They cross when it’s safe—LOL—and they enter a nondescript town house. I Google the address and naturally, they’re here for couples therapy. Fifty-two minutes later they emerge, deflated. They walk in silence to a gym and they hug, family-style before she disappears into her refuge of yoga and like-minded women. I follow Nicky down the street and he is less hunched every block. He arrives at his destination, Westsider Books, and he emerges an hour later standing up straight with three new used records (and no books, tsk tsk). I follow him until we reach Urban Outfitters and he goes in with his bag of records and looks at all the clothes and tries on T-shirts and Shazams one song after another and finally he leaves, without buying a thing. Now, it’s off to school, where he picks up his daughters and walks them back home. The young one is happy and talking and the old one is morose and not talking and people have to be careful or they wind up with lives they didn’t want. It’s lucky we found each other when we did, you and me. I hang out by his building like I’m waiting for a running buddy. Here comes Marcia with a friend whose taste in clothing is equally drab.

  Marcia sighs and it’s clear to me that she sighs a lot. “He said that he would sooner kill himself than leave his children.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said I think that all children do better with happy parents than married parents. I said there’s no stigma about divorce anymore.”

  The friend nods in agreement and her ring sparkles.

  Marcia goes on. “And then he said it’s easy for me to be cavalier about divorce because my parents were happily married. But you know Nicky the martyr. His children will never deal with a divorce.”

  The friend sighs. Women sigh. A lot. She lightens. “Maybe you should start a profile for him on Match.”

  The ladies share a laugh and the friend says she was only kidding.

  There are no easy answers and they make plans to get their families together—because that sounds like fun—and Marcia plods up to the home she doesn’t want to the man she doesn’t love. Now I know why Nicky became a shrink, for real. He needed someone to talk to because he married the wrong woman. He knew he was giving up on his music, but he didn’t know he was giving up on love. I am starting to feel sorry for him again, because I’m a pushover. I duck into the subway and watch a couple of nurses bitch about work. I think of my nurse, Karen, and how miserable she must be right now.

  I can’t tell you what a relief it is to arrive back in my hood. Killing Nicky is gonna be difficult. But it’s necessary. You’re obsessed with him; he’s a mouse in your house and because of my current thought process, I almost freak out when I see a cop on my stoop. He blocks the front door and he is a giant and my brain freezes up on me—BenjiPeachCandacemugofurine—and it’s me he’s looking for. Like Ethan says, when you know, you know. This giant cop has his nightstick out and he’s not fucking around, “Is that you, Joe?”

  It takes everything I have left in me to walk toward this man when all I want to do is run.

  “Get over here,” he says. The sad thing about being poor is that the few little hood kids running around don’t even react; this is just another day.

  “Can I help you?” I say because I am innocent, I am. I wish I were Dan Fox but he’s no good either, not anymore.

  “Yeah, you can help me,” he says as I walk up the steps. I stand directly across from him now. His pores are enormous and his forearms are bigger than mine are and his neck is veiny and I bet his dad was a cop and his granddad too. “You can tell me who the fuck you think you are.”

  “Um,” I say and might piss my pants. “What is this, uh, what is this about?”

  He mocks me. “What is this about?”

  It happens so fast. He grabs me by the collar and yanks me close. His breath is made of onions, raw onions. He seethes. “You little fuck.”

  Am I going to die? I close my eyes and he tightens his grip on my shirt. I’m innocent, innocent until proven guilty. He spits at me. And then he lets go.

  I don’t wipe my face and I take a step back. He slams his stick into the cement.

  “You know, you better respect this uniform, kid. Because if I wasn’t in this uniform, I’d kick your ass and throw your bones in the Dumpster over there and see to it that nobody finds you.”

  “I’m s-sorry,” I stammer and he probably hates me more for my yuppie running clothes and he shakes his head.

  “You know, my sister . . .” He’s blubbering, crackling and now I recognize his cadence, it’s Minty. “My sister Karen is a fucking saint, you prick. She’s as
beautiful inside as she is outside and you, you little pansy, you got no right.”

  Sister and I can breathe again and I’m begging for his forgiveness and telling him she was too good for me and he doesn’t buy it. I shut up.

  “You don’t fuck over Karen Elise Minty.” He raises his stick and I cower and I don’t want to die, I can’t leave you like this. He slams his stick into the concrete by my feet. “Stand up, you fucking pussy.”

  He grabs me by the throat. And this too is on Nicky. He’s the one who pushed me on Karen and then made me push her away. The giant Minty cop clenches my throat, lets go, and smashes the concrete one last time with his stick. He storms away and no wonder Karen Minty wants to be a phlebotomist. Her brother’s got a good stick. Why shouldn’t she have one too?

  40

  TAKING care of Nicky is going to be easier than I thought. He’s a do-gooder, Beck, and once a week he takes the train out to the part of Queens that’s still all about crack and crime to council druggies who are trying to get sober. But tonight, he’s gonna become a cautionary tale for all the UWS assholes who think they can atone for their sins with four hours a week. Tonight, Nicky not-a-doctor-except-to-you will be mugged by drug addicts.

  I take a swig of Jack and open the front page of a self-help book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Nicky Angevine’s friends will give his wife that book when he’s found dead in Queens. Nicky’s death will be looked upon as a tragedy. His daughters will grow up without a father (until his wife bangs a replacement, which will probably happen in a matter of weeks) and there will be a simple, perverse beauty to his demise. No suspects, no confusion, no malfeasance, a straight-up mugging, wallet gone, the guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Marcia Angevine’s friends will hover around her with coffee cakes and their own kids and bottles of wine and tell her how sorry they are for her loss. But I know that she’ll be thanking the Lord for her gain.