“I did Women’s Studies at UCLA,” she says. “So many of the women who study that shit are crazy into rape fantasies. Explain it to me while I freshen up.”
She walks past me into her bedroom and she does not close the door all the way. I can see her as she moves around her room, trying on Victoria’s Secret PINK sweatpants and kicking them off and slipping into jeans and getting out of those too. And here I sit, waxing fake intellectual about rape fantasies and control issues and Craigslist. Nanny Rachel emerges in a tiny black cotton skirt and big fat UGG boots and a tiny gray half T-shirt. She’s wearing lip gloss. Lots of it. She brushed her hair. She sprayed perfume. She got dressed up for me. I broke into her home and found her in bed and she got dressed up for me.
“Well, I see what you mean about the thrill of giving up control, but I feel like I give up enough control every time I walk out of my apartment. In the bedroom, I want to be in charge. But I guess you figured that out.”
She pours coffee into chipped IKEA mugs that scream LOVE in all caps. Life is cruel and the word love shouldn’t be plastered all over the fucking place. She smells like cigars. “You look like a black coffee guy.”
I nod even though I want cream. “Thanks.”
She looks out her window at the middle parts of the palm trees. “I do love this place though. And the baby is easy. He doesn’t know he’s an asshole yet.” She sighs. “But the commute is awful. The family’s in Brentwood and Malibu and I was commuting from Eagle Rock so the dad was like, why don’t you stay here? You know how it is here, the way people are either broke on unemployment or giving out free apartments.”
“Cool,” I say. And I need to know if Amy lives here or if she pulled this address out of a hat. “So, do you have a roommate?”
“Not since I was in college,” she says.
Amy picked this address randomly. And because of that bitch, I came here, got beaten, tied up, and forced to drink bitter coffee out of a cracked LOVE mug. I tell Nanny Rachel I have to go. I don’t agree that we should exchange numbers. She looks crestfallen.
“Good luck with school,” she says.
“Thanks,” I respond. “Good luck with the rich folks.”
She laughs. “Thanks, Paul.”
I cross Franklin. I fucked up my chance at a brand-new life with Love and I take the long way around to avoid Calvin and I reach my building and Harvey’s not in the office. So there is a God. But Delilah is standing at my door and her arms are crossed and her eyes are narrowed and then she says it:
“I know about your problem, Joe.”
So maybe there isn’t.
22
THIS is not my lucky day. Delilah is pacing in my apartment. When I stood her up, I pissed her off. And unfortunately, she didn’t dive into a quart of Ben & Jerry’s. Instead she went on a research mission. She’s been obsessing about that night I stood her up. She won’t say what she knows, but she is building a case against me.
“Explain that,” she snaps. “We had plans.”
“I know,” I say, placating. “It was Calvin.”
“You’re a grown-up,” she snaps. “You’re not ten. Don’t talk to me about fucking Calvin.”
“You asked me what happened.” I will my forehead to stop sweating.
“Your answer can’t be Calvin,” she says. “You have to take responsibility for your actions, Joe. Your actions have consequences and you ditched me and that was wrong.”
“I know it was.”
“Do you?” she asks, and here we go again.
She’s downloaded some app that will stop her from texting me in the future. But never mind about the app because I’m the one who led her on and she thinks there’s something up with me.
“There is nothing,” I protest. “I flaked.”
“You haven’t lived here long enough to use that excuse,” she says. “You’re supposed to be a New York guy.”
“Delilah,” I plead. “Can you please let this go?”
But she can’t. She has more to tell me. She knows that I told a bartender at Birds that I knocked up a girl. (I did but I didn’t.)
“It’s complicated.”
“That’s bullshit,” she barks.
“Delilah,” I say. “Can we not do this now?”
“Why?” she asks. “Do you have somewhere to be? Is it time for you to go freaking wander around the Pantry like a zombie?”
“I don’t wander around like a zombie.”
“Ask Calvin,” she says. “He’ll tell you otherwise.”
“You just said to leave Calvin out of this,” I remind her.
“Don’t change the subject.” She comes back at me, arms crossed. She says she found out from Calvin that I was at Henderson’s and that it was my idea to go to the party. “I know you were there. I have proof.” She shows me a video on YouTube and there I am in Henderson’s fucking kitchen. I want to erase the Internet. “Calvin said one minute you were there and the next minute you were gone. So where did you go, Joe?”
I forgot how small this apartment is, how thin the walls. She is trying to put me in a cage and I won’t let her. “Delilah, this is not cool.”
“No,” she says. “It isn’t cool to let me suck your dick and then turn around and shit all over me. That is not cool. And I wanted you to man up and explain to me why you haven’t been to work in several days and why you were at Henderson’s party when you told me how much you hate him. But if you won’t do it, if you won’t just tell me . . .” She trails off and takes a deep breath. She sits. She points at the floor.
I sit. “What?” I ask.
She rubs her hands together. She repositions, Indian style. She’s enjoying this. She wants this, whatever the fuck this is. “Look,” she says. “I know.”
I don’t say anything.
“I know.” She says it again and I don’t like it. I know.
She knows I don’t like this and she reads me well. She really is an investigative fucking reporter and her hand goes on her chin and her chin lowers and I wish she would disappear, into thin air. Poof. And depending on what she says next, I might have to make that happen.
She breathes in. “I know about your pill problem.”
Are you fucking kidding me right now? I exhale and unclench my fists and she has no idea she saved her own life just now. She sits by me and links her arm through mine and begins to act out some sort of rehab Rush fantasy where she can save me from my addiction. She strokes my back and talks to me about Promises and halfway houses and the craziness of LA. “Dez told me how many Percocets you’ve been buying,” she says. “And the way you disappear and wander, I mean, I put two and two together.” She blames the apartment. Brit Brit fell apart too in here. She stares at the Kandinsky. “We can get you better,” she says. “We can. You just have to want it.”
I need her to think she’s right and I tell her I want to do this on my own. “I think I need some time,” I confess. Ha.
She pats my leg, all business. “Do you have insurance?”
I tell her that I do and she says she has an idea and she leaves and returns five minutes later with a fucking board game. “Chutes and Ladders,” she says. “Sometimes you just need to like be a kid again, you know?”
I don’t know but I push the spinner and feign interest in her tedious anecdotes about celebrities and about the time that George Clooney “sort of flirted” with her. She swishes down another chute and the game is never ending and this is what you deserve when you fuck Don’t Fuck Delilah. I should have known it would come to this but I was a fool.