You Love Me

by Caroline Kepnes

  “You’re leaving too?”

  I know that voice and I turn around and your Meerkat is in my driveway, eyeing the box in my trunk and I didn’t seal that box and your tights are right there—no, no, no—and can she see them?

  “Nomi,” I say. “How you doing?”

  “So are you moving or what?”

  Your teenager is such a child right now, pulling at a cowlick. I close the trunk. Safer that way. “I’m just going away for a few days. Business trip.”

  I sound like a dickhead in a John Cheever short story and she huffs. “Okay then. Have fun in your brand-new life.”

  She turns her back on me and I can’t leave like this, not with her mad, losing her aunt and the cool guy from the library in the same fucking week, bound to tell you about what she saw. My plan was to disappear on you, not to crush your daughter’s spirit and she’s halfway down the driveway and fuck you, Bainbridge, you fucking fishbowl. “Nomi, hang on a second.”

  She turns around. “What?”

  “I’m not moving away.”

  “It’s a free country. Do what you want. My aunt left. I mean I guess I would too if I were you guys.” Her aunt tried to kill me but she doesn’t know that. She kicks a rock. “I just came by to tell you that I went back to the library and helped more old people. I was gonna write about Dylan for this senior seminar thing… but now I guess I’ll write about the stupid joys of community service and old people or whatever. But whatever. I know you don’t care.”

  “Hey, come on. Of course I care.”

  “Is that why you’re leaving without saying goodbye?”

  “I told you. I’m not leaving.”

  It’s the truth. I’m not fucking leaving. Not anymore. This is about our family and Nomi needs me and thank God that Bainbridge is a tiny, nosy rock. Thank God you live right around the corner. Otherwise, I’d be on the ferry by now. “Do me a favor, Nomi. Don’t call ’em ‘old’ people.”

  “All they do is talk about how young I am so how is that fair?”

  “It’s different and you know it.”

  “If it’s rude to call someone old then it should be rude to call someone young.”

  “Point taken,” I say, and I was overreacting today, same way she is overreacting right now. This is how you drive a rat insane. You trap it on an island, fuck with its head. Nomi and I are in this together and my phone buzzes. It’s Seamus and that Cooley Hardware handmaid acted fast. He’s blunt: Heard you’re splitting. Is that for real?

  Bainbridge Island: Where Boundaries Go to Die—and Nomi squints. “Who’s texting you?”

  She has no right to ask about my private communication and it’s time to teach this kid a lesson. “Nomi, don’t take this the wrong way, but there’s this thing called privacy…” I’m talking to her, but the lecture is for me too. I planted those cameras in your house and it’s my job to deal with the consequences. “And privacy is good for us. We all need it.”

  “Ah,” she says. “So you’re defending old people because you are an old person.”

  “Believing in privacy doesn’t make me old. It just means I think some stuff is private.” I hold up my phone. “And if you’re really that curious… It’s just Seamus.”

  She shudders. “Ick. He’s so annoying.”

  True. “Oh come on,” I say, emboldened by his outreach, as if he and Nomi and this whole fucking community are coming through for us, begging me to stay. “He’s a nice guy.”

  She shrugs. “I used to work at his store. But just for a few months.”

  The Meerkat waves at Nancy, who is pulling an Athleta catalogue out of her mailbox.

  “See,” Nomi says. “I’m not anti-privacy. But you grew up somewhere where you can be anonymous. Bainbridge is freaking impossible. You can’t have privacy here. I mean, you run a stop sign and you don’t get a ticket but someone sees you run that stop sign and before you know it, your mom’s like I heard you ran a stop sign and the guy at the T & C winks at you and tells you to drive safe and you have to drive safe cuz obviously your mom told him to keep an eye on you. I can’t wait to live in New York, assuming I get into NYU.”

  I laugh and this is Cedar Cove and you couldn’t join me in the meadow, you’re punishing yourself for what you did in the privacy of my home. “I get it, Nomi. I do.”

  She grips the straps of her backpack. “I’m outta here. Have fun with Seamus but please don’t tell him I said hi. I’m supposed to be at the library and he’ll tell my mom and…”

  I zip my lip and she walks away, happier than she was when she arrived. I unpack my car and I shoot a video of Riffic and Licious fighting over the smallest box. I send you the video and you send me a smiley face and that’s all I need today, Mary Kay. I pick up a tchotchke I lifted from your home. A Phil Fucking Roth doll. I stuff it with catnip and toss it to the kittens and they go wild, thrashing, tearing off his limbs.

  God, I wish I could kill Phil for you. But no.

  I check your Instagram—nothing, you’re in shame mode—and I check the Meerkat’s. She shared a picture of herself with a few tech-challenged Mothballs—she didn’t tag me or thank me—but you know who got her in that room. You gave me chocolate-covered strawberries—and my phone buzzes. Oliver wants an update and I tell him I was just being a pussy—it’s the truth—and that I’m gonna stay in the house.

  I am a good man, Mary Kay. Good men don’t run away. I’m not an avoidant wimp who runs out on you to play Xbox. I buy Oliver a present for Minka—a bottle of fake perfume called Chanel Fucked Up No5 by Axel Crieger—and that buys me time to fix dinner before your show tonight. I wasn’t crazy about the first episode—too much graphic nudity and emotional violence—and I know that you would be devastated and embarrassed by your behavior in that house. I know you don’t want me to see the ugly part of your home life. But tonight’s episode will be better. And if not, I’m just the man to retool it.

  24

  I did it, Mary Kay. I am the mouse in your house and you can’t figure me out. You keep trying to get my attention. Your rat had a gig on New Year’s Eve but you stayed home to be with your Meerkat. You sent me glad tidings after midnight and I responded with a you too and I watched you stare at your phone, typing and deleting, ultimately tossing the phone on the couch. You’ve also been angling for my attention in our library. You replenished The Quiet Ones with a few short story collections and a Richard Russo novel that came and went too fast, according to you. But I didn’t knock on your door to give you an atta girl. A day later, you announced that you were walking to Starbucks, an obvious play to get me to follow, but I stayed right where I was.

  You carry the frustration into your home every night—good job, me!—and you’re going through withdrawal, which means that your show is getting better all the time. In Episode 3, you were grumpy. You miss me and you can’t have me—ha—so you were slamming cabinets. Apologizing to the Meerkat, retreating to your bedroom and avoiding your rat and tonight—Episode 104—you are in full-on Stepford mode. You don’t sulk and stare at the walls and think about me. You are in nonstop motion, rifling through the rat’s nightstand and his drawers because you live in fear of him falling off the wagon and you think he’s hiding heroin in his guitar case, in the bottom of his amp.

  He isn’t hiding drugs, which means you’re not finding drugs and you want to find drugs because that would make it easier for you to force him to check into rehab, which would pave the way for the two of you to split up. It wouldn’t be about the drugs. It would be about the lying.

  So now I’m off-island at a bar in Poulsbo called Good Old Daze, which is poppin’ as bars like this are on Thirsty Fucking Thursday. It’s easy to spot Aaron the drug dealer (a.k.a. Ajax. A.k.a. not all kids who grow up on Bainbridge turn out to be angels). I read about him on the Bainbridge Island Community Facebook page. People blame Ajax for the untimely death of a guy named Davey and Ajax holds court at a table in the back with an overall lack of shame about his purpose here. He wears a brown leather jacke
t that screams 1987 and Bruce Springsteen wails about hungry hearts and the barmaid pours stiff drinks in dirty glasses. I met Seamus for a beer at Isla and pretended to get a booty call and sneak out the back so Oliver won’t see—the work I do for you, Mary Kay—and then I drove into Poulsbo.

  I order a shot of Jack and make my way to Ajax, who mad-dogs me when I stand there at his table. Shaking. “What of it?” he says.

  “I heard… Are you Ajax?”

  Ajax scans the bar to make sure this isn’t a sting and I tell him I knew Rudy—thanks to Facebook, I know all about RIP Davey’s bad-influence buddy Rudy—and before you know it, I have a seat at the unsteady table with Ajax. A couple quick exchanges about the shitty scene at the bar—Ajax was hoping to get laid tonight—and then we’re in the bathroom and just like that, I am the proud owner of ten highly toxic, no-good little M30s.

  It’s bone chilling, Mary Kay. A man is dead because of these poison pills and Ajax doesn’t warn me about the fentanyl. He really doesn’t care about me or the dead guy but then, that’s the world, isn’t it? The fecal-eyed family doesn’t care about me either and this is why we need to find our tribe and take care of each other.

  He tells me I can go now, and so I do, out the back door, into the rain, past a girl sucking a guy’s dick in a Honda, past a woman crying in her car—Bell Bottom Blues, you made me cry—and into my car. I’m shaking for real now. It’s scary to be in possession of all these fatal little pills and Ajax’s paranoia is infectious. I adjust the rearview and turn on the interior light and I put the fucking pills in the trunk.

  I know it’s irrational, but I don’t want to die from M30 fumes.

  It’s a straight shot home once I hit the 305 and I play Simon & Garfunkel to wash the Good Old Daze out of my brain but I drive too fast or too slow. I can’t stop checking the rearview. It’s really raining tonight, not drizzling, and Shortus is going home—You were luckier than I was tonight—and my wipers aren’t working quite right. It’s a two-lane road, always quiet and dark at night—it’s fucking Bainbridge—and I tell myself that the set of headlights a few car lengths back is nothing to worry about because this is the way to the ferry. I turn up the volume and focus on bridges over troubled waters but my heart is beating fast.

  Can you catch fentanyl by touching a tainted plastic bag? Am I ill?

  Home at last and sweaty as fuck—I shouldn’t have worn your favorite sweater—and I walk into my house and I call out to my cats but my cats aren’t dogs. They don’t come when called. I grab some paper towels and head back outside. I stare at my car, my car full of poison. I don’t want an accidental contact high and I sure as hell don’t want anything to happen to my cats. I pop my trunk and the paper towels aren’t plastic, but at least they’ll provide some boundary between my skin and the fentanyl.

  I fold four paper towels and pick up the bag of death and my heart thumps faster—is fentanyl airborne?—and I walk back to my house. And then I hear the sound of my guitar. I clench the paper towels.

  Oliver.

  “In here,” he says.

  I walk around the corner, down into my sunken living room, and there he is, on my couch, strumming my Gibson. Chills. Flashbacks. All of it. “Did you have a good night, my friend?”

  “It was okay.”

  He’s tuning the guitar again and he’s pure Angeleno. He’s not a great writer. And he’s not a great private detective and he probably put his detective hat on tonight because he hit a snag in the spec script he’s no doubt writing in his downtime.

  He eyes the wad of paper towels. “What’s that, Goldberg?”

  “What’s up, Oliver? Did my bid on the Frank Stella not go through?”

  I dump the paper towels in the trash bin—I pray my cats don’t find a way in—and he tosses my guitar on the floor and man-spreads on my sofa in the spot where you sat.

  “I saw you in Poulsbo,” he says. “And needless to say, I am not pleased, my friend.”

  Of course he followed me. Of course tonight had to be the night that he threw himself into his work. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He just shakes his head. “Don’t mess with me, Goldberg. We had a deal. You stay outta trouble. And that means you stay clean. Away from trash like Ajax.”

  In some fucked-up way I forgot that he is what he is, a private fucking detective, a dancer for money. But that’s not my fault. It’s easy to forget the origin of our relationship because most of the time he’s just on me about art. I flop into a chair. “Oliver, I’m telling you. It’s not what you think.”

  “Oh, so I suppose you got the pills for a ‘friend’?”

  Yes. “No. Look, I heard a rumor that bad stuff was going around… I just wanted to get it off the streets so some kid doesn’t OD again.”

  “Saint Joe of the Stockyards.”

  “I’m not calling myself a saint…”

  But it’s true, Mary Kay. I did save a life tonight, maybe more than one. Oliver lectures me about the danger of drugs and people who deal in narcotics as if he’s my tenth-grade guidance counselor and he won’t let me keep my stash. He forces me to fish the bag out of the garbage and he reminds me that he’s watching. Always. And then he sends me a link to a fucking David LaChapelle photograph of Whitney Houston called Closed Eyes and this is the first item that doesn’t show the cost. Price upon request. And I should be buying this for you not for Minka but really I should be buying it for no one because no one needs to own this fucking photograph.

  Riffic trots into the room and hisses at him. Good cat. “Sorry,” I say. “But Oliver, this is getting out of control. I buy you every little ‘antique’ you want and you break into my house because I go for a ride?”

  It’s like a bolt of lightning hits and Oliver the artistic and Oliver the detective become one. “You seem to forget that I have video of you holding a dead body, my friend.”

  I DID NOT KILL HER. “I didn’t forget. But you said we were in this together.”

  “Joe,” he says. “I’m a little disappointed in you. I thought you were smarter than that…”

  FUCK YOU, OLIVER. “I have you on a loose leash because when people feel free… when they feel relaxed… they fuck up. And now I know what you’re up to—and now you know that you can’t go out and cop a score. It’s not just about your health. We are in this together, my friend, and if you blow your money getting high… that’s no good for my art fund, is it?”

  The pills weren’t for me and Oliver is never going to believe me and I contact the seller and request the fucking price of Closed Eyes and now I have to wait for an answer and Oliver is watching me, Mary Kay. He really is. More than I knew. The worst and most dangerous eyes in this world are the private ones and I could stand up and knock him out and end his life but then his brother would end my life.

  “Well,” he says. “They hit you back yet? What’s Whitney gonna cost us?”

  By us he means me and I dream of my sunken living room imploding, pulling him into a sinkhole, but like my plan of Phil testing the waters with M30s, it’s not gonna happen. I refresh the 1stdibs app and think of what Dr. Nicky would say right now. Something trite but true. Everything happens for a reason. I am a good guy and good guys find the bright side—it’s like that Stephen King quote on the sign by the gas station near (RIP) Beck Road—It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.

  Maybe that’s true. Maybe the universe sent Oliver into my life to teach me a lesson. He picks up Licious and Licious doesn’t fight him and you were right, Mary Kay. Licious is a stupid fucking name. “Well?” he says. “Any word yet?”

  “The guy says he’ll get back to me tomorrow.”

  He takes a selfie with my cat and sends it to Minka. Ugh.

  Oliver is an asshole, yes, but he’s trying to make his girlfriend happy by fixing up her home. My heart races in the good way. Not paranoid about fentanyl in the air. (I googled. I’m fine.) I have to be like Oliver.

  When he leaves, I bring
my kitten-cats into my bedroom and give them a loose roll of toilet paper. They play on my bed—so fucking cute—and I send a video to you with a simple, honest Guess I have to get more toilet paper. You like the video and send me a smile and now you’ve seen my bed. We need these moments because you maintain your distance at the library—I get it—but I won’t let you forget that you love me. I exist.

  I hightail it down to my Whisper Room to watch you. You’re in bed next to your rat—he’s only taping his shit show three nights right now and he doesn’t go downstairs until Nomi is asleep—and you’re eating tortilla chips out of the bag—yes!—and he pokes you. “Do you have to be so loud, Emmy?”

  You shove chips in your mouth. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

  Your rat rolls over and you pick up your phone and scroll and then my phone pings.

  @LadyMaryKay Likes your photo.

  You fucked up. The picture is old. You unlike it and hang your head and Stephen King is the Master of Darkness but I am the master of your darkness. I turned off the lights inside of you and your rat reaches for your body and you swat him away. No more breakup sex. No more makeup sex. You don’t want him. You want me.

  25

  We’re making so much progress, Mary Kay. Oliver got invited to an extended bachelor party in Vegas. It’s one of his best friends from home and he whined about FOMO and I stole a page from RIP Melanda’s playbook and worked him over with reverse psychology.

  Sucks you can’t go. That’s life being a Quinn bitch.

  Poor Boys Club rules: Gambling is for trust fund kids who don’t know the value of money.

  Imagine Ray’s face if he found out you left me here on my own. Not that I’d ever tell him but man. He would SNAP.

  So of course, Oliver is in Vegas to prove he’s not a Quinn bitch and we’re in this “together.”

  I promised to be good and I’m a man of my word, Mary Kay. You’ve been going to couples therapy somewhat religiously twice a week for two weeks and your shrink, Layla, should be disbarred. She’s oblivious to the pain you’re hiding. And she leaves the window of her office open as if there isn’t an alley right by the building that’s a fucking echo chamber.