He clicks his jaw and leans back in his seat. “Oh boy,” he says. “There is one thing I didn’t think about.”
“What?” I ask.
“Can we do what happens in the booth stays in the booth?”
I nod. “Fuck, yes.”
“Love got pissed about The Mess last time around. She thought it was about her.”
Now I’m listening. I wipe my mouth. “Why did she think it was about her?”
Forty sighs and pulls back the curtain. He explains that Love’s a relationship girl and she’s incapable of being single, which is why she married young and fast, married again. “And then after the Doc died.” He shakes his head. “Man, she was a wreck. Like, worried that she was toxic. If she’s not divorced she’s widowed and all she wants is to be with someone.”
I don’t think she’s like that. Maybe she was. But she’s not anymore. “Uh huh.”
“Anyway,” he says. “She swore she would never go out with anyone again unless it was gonna last forever. So I used to joke that the next time she meets someone we just gotta like tie him up and trap him in the Aisles so he can’t go away, can’t pull bad shit, can’t go to the doctor and find out he’s got cancer.” He laughs. “So anyhow, that’s sort of an inspiration point for The Mess.”
“Wow,” I say.
He smiles. “You’re freaking out.”
“In the good way,” I say. And it’s true. I feel special. Love was hunting for something real and she found it and it’s me and it’s early and absurd and we’ve known each other a few days but fuck it feels good to be wanted. “This is all good by me,” I say. “I’d just as soon never date anyone but Love again, but please don’t tell her I said that.”
“Of course not,” he says. “I would never. And I mean that both ways. I would never settle down in my thirties and I would never tell Love that I told you that she wants to settle down.”
“So Milo . . .” I say, the itch that can’t be scratched. “There’s really nothing between them? I mean, nothing recent?”
Forty sighs. “It’s all so boring,” he says. “You have to understand my sister. She is deeply, profoundly, erotically, supremely, wholly sexual.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“So if you mean to ask did they ever hook up, well, obviously, yes,” he says. “Back east, a hundred years ago, when we were babies. But I assure you, Old Sport, the girl does not love the boy.” He leans in and burps. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but Love only likes guys who are rough around the edges, ya know, wrong side of the tracks.”
I can’t believe people still use that expression but before I can respond, Forty claps his hands. “Back to the good stuff.” Meaning business and he says that Plan B is all over him for a new draft of The Mess and this is LA where everyone is always making everything up, but I like the idea of being one degree of separation away from Brad Pitt.
The food comes and the burritos smell like the gorditas smell like the grillers taste like the chalupas and I don’t know why we got so many different things when Forty’s intention was to smother all of it in fire sauce, an unsophisticated simple heat that drowns out whatever meats and cheese and veggies were defrosted and packed into these tortillas. The only saving grace is that we’re facing the Pacific Ocean.
Forty eats like a starving orphan, giant bites that make his cheeks flare. He never makes eye contact while he describes, in vivid detail, his bungalow at the Bellagio, his gift for counting cards, his passion for the moment, and his adoration of the ’70s. It’s a truth that most people never want to own up to that some people were born at the wrong time. Forty would have been better off in the seventies, before AIDS and Twitter, when it might have been enough to have cool jeans and a great coke connection and a slight resemblance to Hopper, Nicholson, fucking DeVito. I feel extremely sorry for Forty because without a time machine, he will never be happy.
We finish gorging and head outside to the Spyder. Forty doesn’t start the car.
“Here’s the thing, Old Sport,” he says. He pops the glove box and pulls out an envelope. “I met a very kind black jack dealer this past week.” He lowers his voice. “I am flush and I am on deadline to get The Third Twin to my guys at Sony. And I can’t have you slowed up because of that day job you have.”
He hands me the envelope. It’s full of cash. “I’m okay,” I say. I don’t want his charity.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “It’s ten K I honestly forgot about.”
He left ten thousand dollars in the glove box. Rich people. Stupid people.
“Love is going to wonder where it came from,” I point out.
He has an answer for that. “You’re dealing in books,” he says. “You’re a noble small businessman with an admirable work ethic and a solid start-up business. You are, therefore, the farthest thing in the world from a gold digger.”
I’ve been waiting for him to use that phrase and I was going to keep working anyway because I am not a fucking gold digger. “I get it,” I say. “Right.”
“You throw pages at me and I’ll do my thing in ’em and we’ll get a round robin going. Bang these babies out by the end of the summer. Make the rounds and pitch ’em when the kiddies go back to school. Sound good?”
“I can get started right away,” I say.
He winks. We’re both aware that this partnership is a bit corrupt. But what union isn’t inherently uneven in some way? I don’t know any perfect couples, true partners who share the load equally.
He asks me to hand him a bottle of codeine that’s on the floor and it’s disgusting in here, Taco Bell wrappers and muddy bottles of Sprite, Fanta. Forty is a fuck-up—drug dependent, living in a past that wasn’t even his in the first place. When we’re featured in Variety, I’ll be the hot one and he’ll be the other one.
He sips his medicated Fanta and starts the car. We might die on the way back to The Aisles. But we also might live. We’re singing along to the fucking Eagles when we take the sharp left into the estate.
Forty hits the brakes and lowers the volume. “One thing,” he says. “My parents are Quakers about my gaming. They call it gambling, as if I’m a sorority girl from Pennsylvania who can’t count cards. So let’s not mention my score.”
“Deal,” I say.
“One more thing,” he says, and I hate when people do that. He pours the rest of his lean onto the grassy sand and I imagine the squirrels stoned. “If you hurt my sister, I’ll fucking kill you.”
It’s the first time I respect him. We pull up the driveway and half the cars are gone. We missed most of the party and Milo fell asleep on a chaise longue and he’s an ugly sleeper—another win.
Forty goes to his bungalow and I go to Love’s. The upstairs bedroom is a dream, a topsy-turvy place with a sodded terrace. Love says they copied it from a resort in Maui. I walk outside because I have never stood on grass in the sky and she asks me to come to bed.
“Forty got cut from True Detective.” She breathes me in. “You smell like a taco.”
“Guilty,” I say.
“It’s really great of you to go with the flow,” she says. “Forty gets bummed when he gets cut and I feel like if you weren’t here he might have disappeared to Vegas or something. Thank you.”
“He’s a good dude.”
She kisses me. “I think he needs a break from it,” she says. “That stupid business is poisoning him and he should just be here this summer, not trying to cast that thing that’s not even done.”