“A movie?” She lashes out at me, brandishing her hose. “How can I go to a movie when my brother is missing?”
“Because he always turns up.”
“You don’t get it because you’re not . . . close with your family,” she says. “I don’t mean that in a bad way, but just, just please don’t say things like how about we go to a movie? I need to be here. I can’t be in a movie theater and get a call that he’s . . .”
And she’s crying again, and I swear, she’s crying because she feels guilty because she wishes he would die and leave her alone already. He is tedious and he lacks imagination and he stole from me and he is a vampire, sucking the life out of his sister. I hold her.
“Joe,” Love says. Here we go again.
“Yeah?”
“When he showed up and we found out about his deal, you didn’t look happy.”
“Love, we were in the fucking pool. We were literally in the fucking pool.”
She tosses her hose. “No,” she says. “It’s not about that. You looked mad.”
“I wasn’t mad,” I say, and I want so badly to tell her I wrote those scripts, but if I tell her now, while Forty is gone, she will bury me.
She sprays her cactuses, as if they need water. “No,” she says. “You were definitely mad.”
I have no choice here. “Okay,” I say. “You’re right. You just told me how you’re done with the business and you don’t want to act and he walks in and he sold his movies and I was like, well, there goes that. Now you’re gonna wanna be in his movies.”
“Because I can’t think for myself?”
“No,” I say. “Because you’re twins. Because you work together, because of course he’d want his sister to be in his movies.”
“But I literally just told you I was done with that,” she says. “I literally told you I never want to act again. Just tell me why you weren’t happy for him, why you went off and skulked into the house. I mean, there’s something going on.”
“I love your brother,” I lie.
“Then why didn’t you hug him and be like yes?” She drops the hose. She paces. “Never mind,” she says. “This happens every time I go out with someone. At first you act like you love my brother and it’s cool and you want to be friends but then the minute he, I don’t know, needs something from you, you turn your back on him.”
“He didn’t need anything from me,” I say. “He got a fucking deal.”
“He needed you to be happy for him.” She sniffles. “He needed you to love him. I mean, why couldn’t you have just hugged him and been there for him? Why did you have to run away?”
So now it’s my fault that Forty ran away and Love’s father is calling us in for another feeding. I try to talk to Love but she says now isn’t the time. She isn’t the same girl she was four days ago and if this keeps up, she won’t love me anymore. She is a snowman melting, a phone dying, a plant wilting. I go inside and eat my guac and talk about books with her parents and I am a limp dick. Her parents decide to go to a movie—ha!—and I don’t say see I told you so. They go and we’re alone and we sit on her giant sectional and once again whatever I say is wrong.
If I tell her it’s going to be okay, she says I have no way of knowing that.
If I tell her I love her, she says she can’t deal with me right now.
If I ask her what I can do, she tells me there’s nothing anyone can do.
If I try to make her laugh, she says she doesn’t want to laugh.
If I get upset, she says she can’t deal with one more person losing their shit.
Her parents come back. “Any word?” Ray asks.
“No,” Love says.
Dottie tells us that it finally hit Ray. They didn’t make it to a movie theater. They just went to Forty’s condo above Sunset. They think he’s dead. They can feel it. I try to be positive because that’s what they say to do in these situations, but it doesn’t work. I try to cheer up Ray and watch Fast Five with him and Love says I’m abandoning her. I leave Ray and the movie and follow her and she snaps at me. “Well, now you’re abandoning him.”
I can’t cure Love when she’s sick like this, sitting in the dark with her headphones on, blocking out the world, watching things, as she was when we met, and I understand now that she was sad that day too. She had just had sex with Milo; she was hating herself, blaming herself for leading him on. And right now, Forty is the one who ran away, and he did that, but she is blaming herself, as if his fuck-ups are her fault. There is a codependency between twins that can’t be broken. And then I get a text.
It’s Forty.
The first thing I do is look around to make sure Love and Ray and Dottie are all far away from me and they are. I unlock my phone. I read: Feel like grabbing some grub, Old Sport?
Unfuckingbelievable. His family is on a vigil and he doesn’t offer any explanation. Does he not care about them? Does he not remember when he stole intellectual property from me?
I write back: Where and when?
He writes back: Now and the 101!
I put my hands on Love’s shoulders. She takes her headphones off and looks up at me.
“I’m going to go find Forty. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
She reaches out to me. “How?” she asks. “What do you even mean?”
“I mean I’ll find him,” I say. “I’ll drive around. I’ll go to his haunts.”
“Joe,” she says, brightening. “You’re amazing. Thank you.”
“You don’t need to say that,” I say, and I kiss her hand. “You’re the amazing one and the least I can do is get in the car and try and bring him home.”
Love nods. “I’m so sorry. I know I’m being a royal fucking bitch. I don’t know how to control it and I hate myself for not having figured out how to control it yet. Thirty-five fucking years.”
I kiss the top of her perfect head. “Life is long,” I tell her. “You’re gonna be fine. I’m going to find him and sober him up, whatever it takes, I’m gonna be with him. And then we’re gonna come back here and he’s gonna be with us and I’m gonna take care of him so I can take care of you.”
“I love you, be safe,” she calls as I leave the house.
The person she should worry about is her brother. He’s hit my last nerve and if he isn’t calling to apologize for stealing my scripts, fucking me over, and torturing his family, then he is going to be roadkill on the fucking 101.
41
I drive fast and when I get to the 101 Diner from Swingers, Forty’s already in a booth, red-faced and high, feet up, dirty toes in old huaraches and he’s flirting with a waitress and nursing a beer. My least favorite song in the world comes on, the song that was playing in LAX when I arrived, that stupid fucking Tom Tom Club song, and as I walk to Forty’s table, the song feels like an omen. Just the same, I am a fair person. I give Forty the benefit of the doubt. Surely he’s been squirreled away, wracked with guilt over what he’s done to his family, to me. Surely this is the scene in his sad life when he comes to Jesus, when he begs for forgiveness.
“Forty,” I say as I sit down in the booth. “We’re all having a nervous breakdown looking for you. What the fuck?”
“Whoa,” he says. “I sense a little hostility.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Call your sister.”
“You look a little piquant, Old Sport.”
Only assholes say piquant and I know that this is not the moment where he sees the light, where he becomes a human and cops to his horrible behavior. He called me here because he’s full of cocaine and he hums along to the frothy, bratty pop as he peruses the menu. I order a blackened chicken sandwich and he orders a BBB—bacon, bacon, and bacon sandwich—and puts down his menu.