I open the link and there’s a picture of Dr. Nicky Angevine. Prison agrees with him. His hair is short and he’s a little thin, but toned. Dr. Nicky tells the reporter that his work as a therapist prepared him for incarceration—bite me—and the article goes into great detail about his ongoing pursuit of an appeal. Dr. Nicky says the authorities have tracked down all his patients except for one man whose name they can’t print in the paper for reasons of confidentiality and fuck me. They’re looking for me. Well, they’re looking for Danny Fox, the name I used when I went to talk to Dr. Nicky in his beige office and sat on his beige couch. But it’s me all the same. I read on.
The facts are disturbing: NYPD cannot locate this former patient. Dr. Nicky tells the paper that Patient X was a good kid, a real kid, late twenties. But he also says some cunty shit about me. He says I was obsessed with a young woman. And then I read the worst sentence I have ever read in any newspaper:
Dr. Angevine concedes that he is not a detective. “But I do wonder,” he says. “Did Patient X find me through Guinevere Beck? In my gut, I think he did.”
Dr. Nicky—the paper can fuck off, he’s not a real doctor, he’s an MSW—has done pretty well for himself. A lot of his patients are getting together online, trying to find Patient X, convinced that Dr. Nicky is innocent. His ex-wife is on his side too, telling some bullshit story about how Nicky “nurtured” tomato plants in their garden upstate and never could have killed someone. Fuck you, wife.
And fuck doctor-patient confidentiality, because in the thirty-two comments below, some asshole named Adam Mayweather reveals that Patient X went by the name Danny Fox. And this, this is why you have to kill people. If you don’t, they don’t learn anything. They just reemerge, more muscled, more manipulative, more hell-bent on taking you down, maneuvering reporters into furthering their agenda. Fucking Boston Globe and fucking Danny Fox, I should have refused to give a last name. I leave the computer and run into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. I vomit. I stay there, slumped. Love comes into the bathroom and kneels down behind me.
“Poor, sick baby,” she says.
“Nah,” I manage. “I’m fine. Just a sunburn. How are you?”
“Is it awful if I say I’m great?” she asks. Her voice is different and I don’t like it. There’s more Kardashian in there. “I just feel like yes, you know?”
“Yeah,” I say. And this is how summer love crumples. How it deflates like a helium balloon in a hospital.
She kisses the back of my head then retreats. She says she doesn’t want to get sick, as if I’m contagious, as if you can catch a fucking sunburn. “You have to feel better by tomorrow,” she says. “There’s a tribute to Henderson at the UCB and we have to get people hyped on Boots and Puppies. Do you feel like you’ll feel better by then?”
My girlfriend Love would have wanted me to feel better because generally, if you love someone, that’s what you want. But actress Love is like the fashionable cunt Andrea who drinks the Kool-Aid in The Devil Wears Prada. I don’t like this new Love. Do you feel like you’ll be better by then? Fuck that question. Fuck the way she’s standing in the doorway instead of stroking my back. I vomit.
28
I insist on driving to Henderson’s memorial. Love fights me. She wants us to have a driver but I say I want to take my car and of course I need a car. Oh, there’s more good news. Fucking Milo is with us because they’re bonding because of Boots and Puppies. As if they aren’t already bonded, as if she didn’t lose her virginity to this fucktard sitting with his legs spread in the backseat. They’re both back there, as if I’m a Lyft driver, as if I’m the servant, and every time I glance at them in the rearview mirror his knee is a little bit closer to hers.
Monica’s riding shotgun. She’s psyched and I can’t imagine her enjoying UCB humor, getting any of the jokes. She wears too much makeup and she’s too athletic for the Franklin Village UCB crowd, where the idea is that girls have messy hair and patterned leggings and long tongues they stick out in pictures for Instagram. I don’t miss the Village. I don’t want to go back. Everything is wrong and I ask Monica why she didn’t ride with Forty.
“He had to do some stuff,” she says. “And I needed to get ready.”
She always needs to get ready and Forty had to pick up drugs and Monica sprays foundation onto her cheeks and Love bonds with Milo and the car smells like Monica’s makeup. Everything is wrong. To think of Dr. Nicky amassing an army behind bars in Rikers and me, escorting this group to a goddamned Henderson tribute. I crack my window to get a little air and Love asks me to roll it up.
“Hang on,” I reply.
Milo chimes in. “Joe, it’s really windy back here.”
I want to ram this car into a truck. “Hang on,” I say, fussing with the button.
“I’m good with whatever,” Monica says. Typical valuable fucking contribution.
Love laughs a new laugh, her actress laugh. “Well, I have fall hair.” She giggles. “Joe, please shut it now.”
“Your hair does look cute,” Monica rejoices. Monica’s hair looks the same as always and the three of them are in it together now, talking about hair.
I finally get the window shut. Love doesn’t thank me. She looks at Milo. “You don’t think it’s too done? I feel like it’s an obvious blow-out.”
“I feel like she might have gotten a blow-out,” Milo responds.
Monica nods. “I feel like it could go either way, like you can do that yourself if you follow directions from Allure or something. I can send you some videos!”
They’re all idiots and Milo says he’s gonna do character breakdowns of the characters’ favorite books and magazines and Monica loves the idea and Love says it will be fun and I am the quiet one, the silent driver, I may as well be wearing a fucking chauffeur cap. Milo slyly manages to cut Monica out of the conversation by running over the game plan for pimping the movie tonight and I wish I could think of anything to say to Monica but she’s already taken off into her phone, chatting, and I can’t think of a fucking thing to say to her anyway.
I’m not going to survive this ride and I turn on the radio and Love asks me to turn it off. “Sure,” I say. “No problem.”
“Joe,” she says. “Are you pissed about something?”
“Not at all,” I say.
Milo: “You know you didn’t have to drive.”
Love: “He insisted. I don’t know why.”
“I like driving.” I catch Love’s eye in the rearview. She has on so much eyeliner. She looks like a stranger.
Milo squeezes Love’s knee. “It’s okay,” he says. “We all got this. Right, Joe?”