You Love Me

by Caroline Kepnes

  “Oliver, I don’t follow. What do we do in this ‘club’?”

  He’s a defensive writer so he tells me that I don’t have to follow as if it’s my fault that his pitch is muddled. “We help each other out. I don’t show Ray what you did to this chick and you help me because you got paid a helluva lot more than I did, my friend.”

  “You want money.”

  “My mom’s sick, so my cash flow is a bit tight.” He’s human again, the way he was when he first mentioned his brother, and he breaks eye contact. “My mom has cancer and fuck cancer is right because that shit is expensive.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And my girlfriend Minka… she’s a ten…” I hate it when men do that, when they rate you like they hold the cards and you’re all in swimsuits. “And a ten has certain expectations of a man and I want to hold on to my ten and we just moved in and the walls are a little bare for her tastes and she’s all about the reno, she’s way into antiques and she’s going for this Sweet American Psycho vibe…” I knew it. I knew his hair was on purpose. “So you help me keep my ten in antiques and I help you keep those Quinns off your back.”

  I can’t say yes fast enough but then Oliver makes a face that reminds me of his failed screenwriting aspirations. He stares at the blood on the windows. “I know you, Goldberg. And it’s important that you know me. Gordo and I communicate in a very unique way and if he contacts me and doesn’t hear back in our very unique way, he shows Ray the pictures and you’re in a cage that smells a lot worse than this one. Point is, you make me go away, you go away too. You feel me?”

  “I get it. I’m in.” And then I say what he wants to hear, the name of his show. “Poor Boys Club is on.”

  Oliver puts the key in the door but then he hesitates. It’s a myth about cages and I’ve been where he was, I was just there a few hours ago, holding the key, aware that my life was at stake too. “When I was a screenwriter”—No, Oliver, you wrote one episode of television—“we had this phrase on the nose.” I’m not a moron but it’s kind of like hanging out with Seamus. Sometimes you have to let your Friends think they’re broadening your horizons so I nod like that phrase is foreign to me. “What you did to this chick tonight was too on the nose, too on brand. So when I let you outta here, you’re gonna behave. No more of the bad shit. No Instastalking Love, no dead chicks in the dungeon. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. You so much as steal a plastic fork from Starbucks and you’re done.”

  Oliver turns the key. “Wait,” he says. “Do you have a 1stdibs account?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  He lets me out of the cage as if it isn’t in my house and he hands me my phone.

  “Download the 1stdibs app,” he says. “Pronto.”

  I download the rich-people shopping app and I open an account and I look at him. “Now what?”

  “Search for ‘Mike Tyson,’ ” he says. “There’s a portrait by Albert Watson and you’re gonna buy it for me.”

  I blow twenty-five thousand dollars on a photograph of Mike Fucking Tyson and Oliver stretches his arms—those pit stains are worse up close—and he asks me where I store my cleaning products. “Amateurs don’t know how to clean up after a crime. We don’t want the Poor Boys Club to end before it starts.”

  I give Oliver a mop and I find a bottle of bleach and soon we’re scrubbing Melanda’s last words from the glass wall. Oliver sneezes into his elbow. “At my first job back home, I had to clean the women’s bathroom at the ferry dock. Nothing will ever be as nasty as that.”

  “I worked in a bookstore,” I say. “This guy used to jack off on our National Geographics and my boss made me scrape off his jizz with a letter opener.”

  “Jesus,” he says. “Maybe the Quinns aren’t that bad.” And then he winks. “Kidding, Joe. Kidding.”

  Finally, we finish the job and the Whisper Room is spotless. Oliver is on his way out the door—See you on Menopause Avenue—and in an ideal world, I would call you right now. But we don’t live in an ideal world, Mary Kay.

  I pick up Melanda’s phone and I enter the pass code and I prepare for the worst. You know it all now. You’ve had time to read, obsess over every detail. Your heart might be broken… if I did a good job. Did you believe it was her? And if you did, is this betrayal going to put you off men? Off me? What do you say to the woman who violated your trust for ten fucking years? I open Melanda’s text messages and…

  22

  Nothing! Your best friend shocks you with a revelation about fucking your husband and she breaks up with you via text message and all you said was: Be well. Xo. I go to Instagram and Nomi still follows Melanda—maybe you didn’t tell her?—but you unfollowed Melanda.

  Women are strange. You’re in the library all day acting as if nothing has changed, like you didn’t climax for me in my house. Nomi comes in with muddy boots and you are Carol Fucking Brady. “Nomi honey, can you wipe your boots?”

  And she is Cindy Fucking Brady. “Sorry, Mom.”

  Last month, when you told her to wipe her muddy boots off she barked at you and flipped you the bird and you flipped her the bird right back. But today she’s calm. You’re calm. It’s all way too fucking calm and does Nomi know that you unfollowed her aunt? Are you pretending that you and your Murafuckingkami didn’t put on a show for me in my living room? Every time you’re within ten feet, I brace myself for you to tap me on the shoulder and ask if we can talk. We almost had sex! We have to talk. But you remain calm, distant. I poke the tiger. I leave Dolly in the middle of Cookbooks—you hate that—but you just move the cart out of the aisle and eat lunch on your own at your desk. The Meerkat comes back before we close up shop and knocks on the desk—you hate that too—and you smile. “Hi, sweetie.”

  “Did Dylan’s mom’s book get here yet?”

  “Sorry, honey, I’ll text you when we get it.”

  She storms out the door without saying goodbye and still you are calm. Dead calm.

  This is the calm before the storm. I know that foxes are stealthy and you’re busy designing your escape. I see you, Mary Kay, I see you on the cusp of blocking out what happened between us because it’s too much, on top of that note you got from RIP Melanda.

  But I am busy too. It’s not easy having a stalker and Oliver Fucking Potter is a stalker, and I need to get off this rock and pick up some supplies if I’m going to save you from your overly active guilty conscience. Think, Joe, think. Oliver’s motel is across from the Starbucks and I tell him I’m placing a mobile order and I ask him if he wants to meet up. He asks for a tall hot blond—such an asshole—and I place the order and tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes.

  Now he’s at Starbucks, blowing up my phone—where are you—and I tell him that I had a change of plans—Sorry Oliver, I have to go to Seattle for an interlibrary loan issue. He’ll never catch me now and he knows it. His response is terse but respectful: Well played, my friend.

  Amen to that, Oliver, and I board the ferry with all the passive-aggressive cliquey commuters. I sit in a chair and a limp-dick Amazon drudge juts out his jaw.

  “You’re gonna sit there?”

  “Yes, I’m going to sit here.”

  “Well, sometimes one of our friends sits here.”

  Fascinating. I smile and put on my headphones. “I guess not today, then.”

  In the city, I use my Quinn cash to buy cameras and that’s one good thing about Oliver Fucking Potter. He reminded me that I have money. And money is power.

  I book a hotel room in a Marriott and I send Oliver a picture of the receipt and then my phone rings. Oliver.

  “Not cool, Joe.”

  “Oliver, I’m too freaked out to be in my house. I just need one night.”

  He hangs up on me—all friends fight—and sends me a link to an Andy Warhol print on 1stdibs called Peaches. And then a text: Don’t fuck with me again, Goldberg.

  I buy him the Peaches and I leave the Marriott and hop back on the ferry—no cliquey commuters, just lonely lost souls hoping th
at the cutesy ways of Winslow lift them out of their misery—and it’s a relief knowing that Oliver won’t be tailing me for the rest of the night.

  I buy a beer from the canteen—it’s stressful, having a stalker—and I check Melanda’s phone when I disembark. I can’t use her to get to you anymore—I miss our talks, me as Melanda, you as you—and you didn’t write anything more. The beer is cold. You are cold. You don’t reach out to me and I wish you would, Mary Kay. I worry about you. Did you sleep last night? Are you crying in the shower like Glenn Close in The Big Chill or are you attacking your rat husband like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction?

  I have to know how you are, Mary Kay. I know Melanda’s message was a lot to take in. I know you probably think you’re a bad person and you’re not a bad person. I relate to you more than ever. I couldn’t worm my way into my family with Love and you’re still trying to find your place on this rock after twenty years but your place is with me.

  You need me to watch out for you and I jog on the Eagle Harbor trail and it’s a little unnerving, to be honest. I’m still not over what happened—damn you, RIP Melanda—and I step off the trail onto your lawn and I pause. The quiet. The stillness. You and the Meerkat went to Costco after work—Nomi calls it #RetailTherapy, buying paper towels in bulk to clean up the mess of your life—and your rat is in Seattle waiting for a former Sub Pop photographer to show up. Alas, that’s not gonna happen because I’m the one who sent the fake email and I’m the one apologizing to Phil, assuring him that I’ll be there soon, man. In the Richard Scarry sense of the world, everyone in my life is busy being busy. And I’m busy too.

  It’s only ten steps to the sliding glass door and it’s a good thing that your husband is such a devout we-don’t-lock-our-doors kind of asshole because that means your door is open. I grip the handle and the door squeaks—Jesus, Phil, take care of your home—and for the first time in our life together, I am in your house.

  Nomi wasn’t kidding, Mary Kay. You really do like your tchotchkes and your shelves are littered with literary toys. I spy a Shakespeare doll and a Virginia Woolf puppet—who makes that, who?—and a tiny Bell Jar and I know what this is all about. You buy tchotchkes so that you can pretend that your home is the Empathy Bordello Bar & Books. It’s how you cope. You’ve been living in denial for nearly twenty years, trying hard not to see the horror around you—RIP Melanda playing footsie with Phil at the pub while you all eat brunch—and Phil’s passive-aggressive refusal to let his old songs go—a crate in a barrel, a barrel in a gun—and you’ve spoken no evil, throwing salmon steaks into the freezer, onto the grill, repeat infinity.

  And it’s not just the tchotchkes that alarm me, Mary Kay. Your house is a shrine to the nineties and the early aughts, when you all lived up by Hidden Cove in Manzanita. It’s like the two of you are sending a dangerous message to your daughter, that everything good, every memory worth preserving was almost twenty years ago, before she was even born.

  You have his debut album framed, but all the other albums are in your garage, as if they don’t exist. I pick up a picture of you that’s almost nineteen years old. I recognize the background, the tiny one-home island they call Treasure Island. You cradle your newborn baby and you look like a child bride. Your smile is a cry for help and you are trying to hide a second set of teeth while you just die underneath and I see what no one else wanted to see. A woman trapped, held at gunpoint but in this case the gun is your husband’s Philstick.

  I could spend hours exploring your photographs, tracing the disintegration of your love and your marriage, as spontaneous photos of your family bonding by the bunkers at Fort Ward—RIP Melanda—give way to uncomfortable staged shots on holidays—Say cheese for the timer on the iPhone and everyone be sure and mask your misery!—but Costco’s not that far away and I’m not here to visit your family museum.

  I’m here to help you shut it down.

  I set up cameras in the living room—one across from Phil’s chair—and I set up cameras in the kitchen—this is where you hide from your rat’s guitar—and I put cameras in the most fetid part of your house: your bedroom.

  It smells like him, not you, and the rat has a bunch of his own scratched-beyond-repair compact fucking discs and what is it with you people and the past?

  My phone buzzes and I flinch. It’s Oliver: Update.

  I’m so sick of that word. He’s requested eight updates already today. The rule is simple: When he asks for an update, I have to give him a fucking update.

  I leave your house the way I came in and I’m on the trail and the trail is empty and I send Oliver a picture I took earlier of the view from my hotel room—and I follow up that picture with a link to Mackintosh chairs on 1stdibs. He sends me an order—Good eye, buy ’em—and I purchase the fucking chairs and send him a screenshot of the confirmation. It’s another eight grand gone but I’ve noticed a pattern. The more I lean in to my role as Oliver’s personal shopper, the more time passes between his fucking Update texts.

  I stop into T & C and pick up spicy popcorn—gotta nosh while I watch the Very Special Episode of your family sitcom tonight—and I put the popcorn into my reusable tote bag—we save the planet together—and I walk home and head down to my Whisper Room—cleaner now than it was when I moved in—thanks, Oliver!

  The cameras are A-plus level of good and it’s like magic. There you are in the kitchen! Here comes Nomi with her backpack.

  “I’m going to the bookstore.”

  “Now? They close soon.”

  “Well, you forgot to order my book at the library.”

  “Nomi, the loan system is tricky… I don’t want to fight but can you at least consider reading something that isn’t Columbine-related? It’s getting a little… Nomi, please.”

  Nomi stares at the stove top and my cameras are high def. Top shelf. “Soup’s on fire.”

  The soup’s steaming but it’s not on fire and the Meerkat is gone and you pour that goddamn soup into the disposal and the door slams as Nomi leaves and Phil walks in. The TV show is about to get real and I shove a handful of popcorn in my mouth.

  Phil doesn’t sit at the table and he doesn’t ask you what happened to the soup. He just stands there. You rinse out the pot. You don’t greet him. It’s a Mexican standoff and this is it. I can already hear you saying it in my head. Phil, I want a divorce.

  You drop the pot in the sink and clench the edge of the counter with both hands. He doesn’t move. As if he knows you want to kill him.

  “What now, Emmy?”

  “I have one of your songs stuck in my head.”

  He smiles and oh you’re good. “Oh yeah, which one?”

  “Well, the one about the shark, of course.”

  He’s a little disappointed because everyone knows that one. “Ah,” he says. “Well, I’m working on something now that’s gonna put that shark to sleep. Something way better…”

  “You know, Phil, I always loved that song…” You gaze at him and he smiles. “I loved it because it was so raw. It was about us, the tension of a new baby… the feeling of your life changing from the inside out. It’s funny, though. I never knew that it was actually about Melanda.”

  BOOM. I turn up the volume and Phil digs his hands into his dirty pockets. “Shit… Emmy. Hang on now. That song is about us.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Phil, I don’t give a shit about the fucking song right now. You and Melanda? Behind my back? For how many years?”

  “Emmy, let me… shit.”

  “Yeah,” you say. “That’s what you are. Both of you. A couple of pieces of shit.”

  You pick up a sponge and squeeze the dirty water. Sponges are filthy by design and you can run it through the dishwasher but it will never be clean again. You pick at the dirty grout on your counter. “The worst part is… Jesus, all this time I think of myself as the person who makes you happy…”

  “You do.”

  “Oh fuck you, Phil. You do not get to say that right now. She was my best friend and you… I wa
nt you out.”

  I clap my hands. YES.

  “Emmy, you don’t mean that. You know there is no me without you. Baby, I’m a fuckup, okay?”

  He drops to his knees and he’s pawing at your legs like the dog that he is and he’s crying and I want you to kick him in the face but now you’re crying and I drop my popcorn on the floor and no. Don’t cry, Mary Kay. This isn’t your fault. He’s bellowing that he deserves to be dead and you’re taking care of him as if he didn’t FUCK YOUR BEST FUCKING FRIEND.

  You help him to his feet and he’s blubbering and shaking and sobbing in your soup-stained pot and he pukes in your pot and you rub his shoulders.

  “Emmy, I’m the worst piece of shit on the planet.”

  “Phil, stop it.” Your voice is soft.

  “I never deserved you. You think I don’t know that? And Melanda… she… she threatened to ruin our life. She got off on hurting you and I didn’t… I’m a piece of shit.”

  “Phil, come on. You’re making yourself sick.”

  You hold a paper towel up for him like he’s a child and he blows his nose and you wipe his tears away and I throw my popcorn at the TV because no. You need to get mad. He’s casting aspersions on Melanda and you’re assuring him that she’s out of our lives and she wasn’t the bad guy.

  Phil is your fucking husband, Mary Kay. And if Tyler Perry were here he would tell you to grab that pot and fill it with hot grits and smash it over his head. If Melanda were here—Goddammit—she would remind you about the fucking sisterhood. But look at you, mopping up his tears as you soak in his manipulative words.

  “I don’t deserve you, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. It’s like, my old man’s been telling me I’m not good enough since I’m a kid, and then I get clean but I gotta find another way to get dirty to prove my old man right. I should blow my fucking brains out.”

  “Phil, stop it. I mean it.”

  This can’t be happening, Mary Kay. You’re forgiving him for what is unforgivable. Ask the Bible. Ask anyone, Mary Kay.