The Book of Joe

by Jonathan Tropper

  “That's not it at all,” I protested. “I'm the one who fell apart.”

  “Well, cry me a river,” she says angrily. “News flash, Joe. Everything isn't about you. We all managed to get fucked up on our own. There was nothing you could have done about it then, and there's nothing you can do about it now. You think you have the market cornered on regret?”

  “That's not it,” I say, wondering how the conversation went haywire so quickly.

  “Why don't we just cut to the chase here,” she says, waving away my protestations. “What do you want from me, Joe?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. Try again. What do you want from me?”

  Her eyes are cold and humorless, and looking into them, I experience the sensation of drowning, a careless swimmer who failed to heed the undertow warnings. “I just want the chance to get to know you again,” I say. “I know we're not the same people we were, but underneath everything, you're still the only person I've ever really loved.”

  “So, what are you saying? You want to go out with me? You want to go on a date?”

  “Why would that get you so mad?”

  Carly nods slowly, her cheeks flushed with anger. “I look like such an easy bet to you, don't I? Your lonely, battered ex-girlfriend. You must have thought, after all I've been through, that I would just jump gratefully into your arms.”

  “That's not fair,” I say, trying to manufacture some indignation of my own to neutralize hers.

  “Fuck fair.” She leans forward emphatically. “Look at me. Look at Wayne. When did fair come into the picture?” She stops for a second, fighting back her tears. “Things haven't worked out for you, and that's too bad. But you left, and then you used us all as props in your goddamn book. You don't get to come back here now and be the hero, Joe. I'm sorry, but you just don't.”

  I sit across from her in stunned silence, paralyzed in my seat. I had expected things to be awkward at first, and I'd been prepared to soldier through that, working under the basic assumption that Carly still had feelings for me, buried somewhere, simply in need of minor excavation. I hadn't counted on the possibility that she really might have no love left for me, that what we had once been is now completely dead to her. Suddenly, irrationally, I feel heartbroken. The rain beats manically against the window, and I feel the urge to run outside and dissolve.

  Carly sits back in her seat, winded from her diatribe. If anything, she seems as shocked as me by the anger she's unleashed. I stand up slowly, reaching into my pocket for some bills. “I'm sorry,” I say. “You were right; this was a big mistake. I'll take you back to your office now.”

  She looks up at me but makes no move to rise. “So that's it, then?” I can see the rage seeping out of her, the muscles in her face and shoulders slowly unclenching as she breathes deeply.

  “That's it. Again, I'm really very sorry. You're right about everything. I don't know who the hell I thought I was.”

  Carly nods and then, instead of standing up, turns and looks out the window. “Ask me a question,” she says quietly, all traces of anger now gone from her voice.

  “What?”

  “Fair's fair. Ask away.”

  I look at her in disbelief and then sit back down, looking at her reflection in the window. “Do you hate me?” my reflection asks.

  “Yes,” hers says. “Sometimes.”

  “Do you love me?”

  She's quiet for a moment, and I can feel myself age a year waiting for her answer. “Of course I do,” she whispers, her voice barely audible over the pounding rain.

  I nod, quivering imperceptibly as the news is circulated to my internal organs. I don't pretend to understand women. Or, rather, that's exactly what I do. Pretend. But sometimes it's apparent to me that it doesn't even pay to try. This is clearly one of those times, but somehow it comes to me, as if through divine prophecy, that I've made all the progress I'm going to at this juncture, and to push it would be a mistake. So even though there are a million things I want to say, I decide to wrap things up with one essential question. “Carly.”

  “Yes?” In the window, her reflection turns to face mine.

  “Do you think you'd like to go on a date sometime?”

  Outside there is a clap of thunder so powerful it rattles the window, and inside, Carly looks at me with the eyes of a stranger and says, “Maybe. I don't know. Ask me again tomorrow.”

  I'm following Carly out of the Duchess when the sound of the swinging doors behind the counter causes me to turn my head. Sheila has just walked through those doors to the kitchen and in the instant before they swing shut, I see a man leaning against a steel counter. His back is to me as they embrace, but just before the doors swing closed, I catch a quick glimpse of his profile, and although the angle is bad, I'm fairly certain the man is my brother, Brad.

  twenty-nine

  I drive Carly back to her office with no idea at all as to how our lunch has gone, other than not as planned. She says a fast, awkward thank-you, keeping the eye contact to a minimum, her forced politeness ringing like a rebuff in my ears. As I drive away from the corporate park, a bruise-colored Lexus sedan falls in behind me. I had noticed the same car earlier, trailing us from the Duchess back to the Minuteman offices. I consider flooring it, fairly confident that the Mercedes is more than up to the task, but the foul weather and the growing pile of moving violations in my glove compartment convince me otherwise. Instead, I turn into the Mobil station on the corner of Stratfield and Pine, pull up under the protective awning, and step out to pump my gas. The Lexus hesitates for a second and then pulls in to the pump next to me. The door swings open, and I hear the nasal vocals and power chords of Green Day blasting over the stereo just before the driver cuts the engine. Sean Tallon climbs out of the car, looking like a movie in his cartoonish ankle-length leather raincoat and black motorcycle boots.

  “Hey, Sean,” I say, eyeballing his outfit. “What's Shaft wearing?” In situations that make me nervous, I often find it's best just to run my mouth like an idiot.

  Sean jams his gas cap into the nozzle handle to keep his gas flowing, a brilliantly simple technique that has never occurred to me, and then approaches me, smirking at my little joke. “Goffman,” he says. “You still here?”

  “Afraid so,” I say, tightening my grip anxiously around my own gas nozzle.

  “I figured after your dad kicked that you'd have gotten the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Events have conspired to keep me here a bit longer.”

  Sean nods and leans against my car. In the last seventeen years he's packed on a layer of fat and disproportionate bulges of muscle that makes him imposingly bearish, and his complexion is cratered and raw, as if he washes his face every morning with steel wool. His once-proud nose has been broken, and its now-bulbous tip is stained with a thin network of winding capillaries. I didn't notice this physical depreciation in the dim lighting of Halftime—I was too preoccupied with getting the shit kicked out of me—but now, in the harsh light of day, I can see the tire tracks of a rough life are all over him. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, lights one, and takes a long, hard drag, holding the cigarette dramatically between his thumb and forefinger. I strongly doubt that Sean ever misses an episode of The Sopranos. For a while he says nothing, and we stand beneath the shelter of the station while all around us it continues to pour. I look down at my feet, watching the odd patches of spilled gasoline form little rainbow-colored amoeba shapes on the rain-splattered pavement. My father is dead, I think apropos of nothing in particular, and feel a minor spasm in my belly, some heretofore dormant muscle suddenly clenching.

  “I lost my temper in the bar the other night,” Sean says, smoke bleeding out slowly through his nostrils. “I didn't know about your father.”

  “I see.”

  “I'm not apologizing,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. “You deserved it. All that shit you wrote.” He jams the cigarette between his lips and fishes through his coat pockets, eventually coming
out with two crumpled pages that have been sloppily torn from a copy of Bush Falls. He studies the pages for a moment and then turns them over. “Here we go,” he says, then clears his throat and reads aloud in a monotone. “‘It seemed to me that the hostility behind “Shane's” escalating cruelty toward Sammy far exceeded the norms of ritualistic school yard hazing and adolescent bigotry. Something in him was revolted by Sammy's clearly effeminate mannerisms, and only later did I come to understand that in Sammy, “Shane” saw the flesh-and-blood embodiment of the very sexual demons he was battling on a daily basis within himself.' ” Sean finishes and gives me a hard look.

  “You bought my book,” I say. “I'm touched.”

  “You haven't been touched yet,” he says with a nasty grin. “But you will be soon, if you insist on sticking around.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I'm sorry—wasn't it obvious?”

  “It's fiction, Sean,” I say weakly. “Says so right on the cover.”

  “If by fiction you mean bullshit, then I agree with you,” he says, pocketing the pages. “But calling it a novel doesn't change what you did.”

  “And what exactly did I do?”

  “You called me a faggot,” he says, tossing his cigarette butt to the ground. It fails to ignite the spilled gasoline and engulf him in flames, despite my fervent prayers. The nozzle jumps in my hand, indicating a full tank, and I place it back on the pump. “You made everyone in this town think twice about me.” He straightens up, leaning off the car to face me. “You besmirched my reputation.”

  “Again,” I say. “It was fiction. If you identified with the character on some level—”

  “Cut the shit,” Sean says. “You're trying my patience.”

  “So, what are you going to do, Sean?” I say, assuming a weary tone. “Are you going to beat me up again?”

  He finishes pumping his own gas, replaces the nozzle, and roughly screws on the gas cap. “Get the fuck out of the Falls, Goffman,” he says. “I mean today. I cut you some slack out of respect for your family. But it's only by my good graces that you can still piss standing up. You walking around town as if you're welcome here, as if you didn't write all that shit, is an insult to me, and to this town, and I can feel my self-control disappearing even as we speak.”

  “I appreciate the heads-up,” I say, opening my car door. He steps forward and kicks it shut, his boot leaving a small dent just under the door handle. I add the dent to the mental damage report I've been compiling since my arrival in the Falls.

  “Nice car,” Sean says.

  “Thanks.”

  “I've blown up nicer cars than this.”

  “Your parents must be very proud.”

  Sean gets right in my face. “Today, Goffman. I'm not fucking with you. I'll blow you up in your fucking car.” He studies my face with a wide, nasty grin, delighted by my stone-faced reaction. Then he makes a gun with his finger, points it at my temple, and says, “Bam.” In the execution of this universal gesture, most people bring down their thumb to signify the hammer's dropping, but Sean actually pulls his trigger finger, which I find much more threatening, since it seems to bespeak a genuine familiarity with the real thing.

  He climbs into the Lexus, and I wait until he's driven off into the rain before getting back into my car, where I sing the theme to Shaft softly to calm myself down. Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks? Shaft! The clock on my birds-eye maple wood dashboard shows 12:05, earlier than I would have thought. It seems unlikely that I'll manage to stay out of trouble with so many hours left in the day.

  thirty

  Wayne is fully dressed and sitting at his desk, looking through a photo album, when I arrive a short while later. “Hey,” I say. “Looking good.” He isn't, but I say it anyway. This is how we deal with the terminally ill. We establish a new standard and embrace it with manufactured cheer, as if the epic nature of death could be thwarted with a veneer of breezy compliments and light conversation.

  Wayne grins and closes the album, looking haggard but resolute. “I have this theory that if I get dressed and do something, I stand less of a chance of dying that day.”

  “Makes sense,” I say. “So what are we going to do?”

  He stands up and begins pulling his basketball jacket on. “We're going to visit Sammy's grave.”

  I look at him for a moment. “You sure?”

  “It's one of the items on my ‘before I die' to-do list.”

  “I wish you'd stop talking like that,” I say, helping him straighten the jacket on his almost nonexistent shoulders.

  “I'm being heroic,” he says. “Deal with it.”

  The rain has stopped, and thick rays of sun are penetrating the gray cloud cover as we drive across town to the cemetery. “Look,” I say, pointing out a sunbeam to Wayne. “When I was a kid, I always thought that was God, peeking through the clouds.”

  “That's not God,” Wayne says. “That's the search party.”

  I nod dumbly. I generally avoid all discussions of theology, and with a dying friend this seems like a particularly wise policy.

  “When I didn't hear from you after the funeral, I thought maybe you'd had enough,” Wayne says.

  “I'm still here.” I bring him up to date on all that's transpired since my father's funeral.

  “Jesus,” he says. “Haven't we been the busy beaver.”

  “It's been a little intense.”

  “I can't believe you fucked Mrs. Haber.”

  “Me neither.”

  “How was it?”

  “Unreal.”

  “I'll bet,” he says with a nod. “And what about Carly?”

  “What about her?”

  Wayne gives me a fondly quizzical look. “You do realize that you were supposed to have slept with Carly and had the lunch with Mrs. Haber, don't you?”

  “That would have been one way to go.”

  Wayne smiles. “Always the hard way.”

  “I've got to be me.”

  He reaches into my CD collection and picks out Born to Run. “In honor of Sammy,” he says, sliding in the CD. We sit in silence, listening to the slow buildup of “Thunder Road” and Springsteen's raspy voice singing about hiding beneath your covers to study your pain.

  Wayne waits in the car while I obtain a map with the coordinates of Sammy's grave from the lone woman working in the office. We drive through a maze of access roads until we reach the general area and park. Wayne has brought along a portable CD player, a bottle of wine, and two glasses. We sit on the damp grass beside Sammy's grave and Wayne pours us each a drink. “Sammy,” I say, holding up my glass with a smile.

  “Sammy,” Wayne says, and we sip at our wine. He presses a button on the CD player and Springsteen comes on singing “Backstreets.” “This was our song,” Wayne says softly, closing his eyes as he listens to the music.

  “‘Backstreets' was your song?”

  “What's wrong with ‘Backstreets'?”

  “I don't know. Most of the couples I knew in high school had songs like ‘Can't Fight This Feeling' or ‘Glory of Love' or ‘In Your Eyes,' you know? Romantic songs.”

  “We weren't romantics,” Wayne says somberly. “We were desperately fucked up. And that's what ‘Backstreets' is about.” He pauses for a moment, nodding his head and swaying lightly to the music. “He's singing about these two guys who are trying in vain to breathe the fire they were born in. After all this time, that's still the best description of what we went through that summer, of what it feels like to be young and gay, that I've ever heard.”

  I try to pay more attention to the lyrics, which is hard, given Bruce's scratchy, mumbled delivery and the loud guitars and drums drowning him out at every turn. It doesn't sound like a song about gay love to me, but I guess we all hear what we want to hear.

  “So,” Wayne says, turning off the stereo when the song ends. “Would you like to say a few words?”

  “I wasn't aware that this was a formal ceremo
ny.”

  He hefts his glass at me. “Wine and music,” he says. “It's either that or we're on a date.”

  I think about it for a moment, since Wayne seems intent on my saying something. “Sammy was a good and loyal friend,” I start.

  “He wasn't your dog Skip,” Wayne interrupts me impatiently. “And besides, he's been dead for seventeen years. It's a bit late for eulogies.”

  “So what do you want me to say?”

  “Just share your thoughts.”

  “My mind is a blank. You go first.”

  “Fine.” Wayne sips thoughtfully at his wine. “For the longest time I blamed Sammy for my being gay. I thought that I could have gone either way but that he came along at just the right time in my adolescence to push me forever in that direction. I know that's a crock, but I hated him; even while I wanted him, I hated him for making me a freak. I thought if he hadn't come along, I would have eventually met some girl who turned me on. . . . I don't know. I was a kid, right?”

  “We were all kids,” I say.

  “Anyway,” Wayne continues in a dull voice, staring at Sammy's tombstone, “it feels like I've spent my entire adult life hating, first Sammy and then myself instead, for having been dumb enough to hate him for something that was so clearly not anyone's fault. Like the song says, we were just trying to breathe that fire.” Wayne's voice breaks for a moment, and his eyes fill with tears. “Sammy,” he says, “I've decided to forgive myself on your behalf, since you're not around to do it. I hope that's okay with you, and if it's not, tough shit. I guess you should have thought of that before you decided to kill yourself. And while I'm at it, I'll forgive our friend Joe for you as well. I'm not sure what for, but he seems to think he needs it.”

  Wayne takes another sip of his wine and then looks up at me with a weak grin. “How was that?”