I tell him I’m just looking out for him. “I know a reporter who tries to hack into shit all the time,” I explain. “You don’t want a paper trail.”
He nods. “I do see your point,” he says.
Now he’s in his phone, swiping. The waitress comes back with a platter of sweet potato fries just because. Forty is sobering up. “That was good advice,” he says. “But it’s also a bummer. This is the kind of shit you learn from a lawyer, not a writer. We could get something going together but then I’m not bringing a litigious prick anywhere. I don’t like litigious pricks. You need to tell me that you’re not going to be a litigious prick.”
At the counter, a different waitress flirts with an aspiring writer who’s probably been trying to fuck her and finish his screenplay for months. He asks for a side of guac and she tells him that it’s two dollars extra. That’s how it works here. The guy who deserves free guac doesn’t get free guac.
Forty wipes his mouth and pushes his plate away. “You know,” he says. And now he reaches for the big guns. “My sister loves me very, very much.”
“I know that, Forty,” I say. “I do.”
He runs his hands through his greasy hair. “You got Love,” he says. “Don’t be a pig. Stop looking for money. It doesn’t make you happy. All the money and all the fame, it’s nothing without love.”
I remind him of his family hunkered down at Love’s house. His eyes are empty. He is the boy named Forty, the hapless, hopeless brother of Love. “Yeah,” he says. “There’s nothing Ray and Dot love more than a party, even a search party. My fam-damn-ily, they’re something, right?”
He’s an outsider and he knows it and he’ll never stop punishing them. When I tell him they love him, I sound like I’m lying. Lies sound like lies and it’s impossible to know which came first, the selfish, repugnant nature of this man or the missteps of his nurturers. What I do know: If he stays around, he will destroy everything between me and Love. His family is right. He is self-destructive. But he is also outwardly destructive. Killing him will be the greatest risk of my life—I could lose Love—but it will, of course, yield the greatest reward. I will have Love without Forty.
I pick up the check. I pay cash; I’ve learned.
Outside, Forty picks at his teeth with a toothpick. “Well, I’m off to Vegas to bang out another script.” His car pulls up, big and black.
“Forty,” I say. “I know you’re not going to write.”
He laughs. “Oh right. Ha. But it’s good, you know, good practice for the talk shows and shit,” he says. Fucking asshole.
“Hey,” I say. “What do you want me to tell your family?”
That vacant stare again. He knows they love Love more than they love him. I’m sure that’s true in most families, and some kids shrug it off. But other kids, kids like Forty, I bet he made this same face at every birthday party when Love got just a few more presents than he did and when her mom hugged her and just held on for a teensy bit longer. Forty did not get enough love. A lot of people don’t. But the thing is, he’s twinned with someone who got so much love that she is Love. And that’s got to be hard.
He shrugs. “Let my mom stress out and starve for a few more days,” he says. “She’s been starting to pork up, Old Sport. We don’t want that, right?”
My sympathy evaporates. “So you don’t want me to tell them you’re okay?”
“They need to back off,” he says. “I’m not in fucking high school.” Reverse psychology 101 and his eyes pop. “You know what I do want though,” he begins. “Old Sport, you should come to Vegas. We can bang out a new script, Hangover meets Hangover!”
The Hangover can’t meet the Hangover because the Hangover is the Hangover and I tell him no, maybe next time, definitely next time.
He shrugs. I see a bag of drugs in his car, literally, a bag of drugs. He raises his hand for a high five and the next time I touch him, it will be different. I will be strangling him.
42
SEVEN thousand hours later, I am getting close to Vegas and the lights of the city twinkle in the distance the way they did in Swingers. I made it. And it wasn’t easy. When I told Love that I had a “hunch” that Forty was in Vegas she was befuddled.
“Joe,” she said. “I’m his twin. We have that psychic twin thing and I think I would be the one to know if he was in Vegas.”
“I know what you mean,” I reasoned. I folded my shirts into one of Love’s black suitcases. “But I think when you’re upset like this, it has to affect your radar.”
She sat on the bed. “Should I go with you?”
I kissed the top of her head. “No,” I said. “I got this.”
“You really want that Boyfriend of the Year trophy, don’t you?” she asked teasingly.
So I fucked her good and hard and then I went to Hollywood Boulevard to pick up some items for my Captain America costume—not the superhero, the generic Vegas bro. I got a Colts jersey and a baseball cap. I let the guy at the store choose. I was feeling lucky. I was going to Vegas.
And now I’m almost here, I see it in the distance, getting closer. My balls drop. It’s Vegas; it really is. It’s brighter than it is in the movies and it’s uglier as I get closer, every sign a threat. Last casino for twenty miles and last gas and I pull over. I put on my Dodgers hat. I tear the tag off my Colts jersey and pull it on. Mr. Average America! I get back on the road.
On the strip, at a stop light, I see a woman pull her pants down, squat, and defecate. Tourists abound. People smoke cigarettes and push their babies in carriages and it’s hot and I want to stare at all of it, the sheer volume of lights, the width of the sidewalks, the throngs of people, young and old, fat and American. I allow myself a few minutes to dork out and blast Elvis and the fountains at the Bellagio are grander in real life. I tell Love I made it and she tells me to start at Caesars.
“This isn’t a twin thing,” she says. “It’s a Forty thing. He says they have the best tables.”
LOVE was wrong. Forty is not at Caesars and everything here is so grandiose. The floor of the casino is a sprawling wide pasture and the slot machines are immovable cows, blocking my view. There are pods of blackjack tables, people everywhere, blasting music, machines making noise. I have a burner phone. I could call him. But I don’t want to call him until I have eyes on him. Love calls again.
“So my dad got word from our host at the Bellagio,” she says. “Apparently he’s over there.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m going there now.”
I walk fast. The air is dry and random dudes high-five me— Colts!—and I listen to my pool mash-up and I reach the fountains. There is so much pomp leading up to the front entrance—oversized revolving doors, giant glass flowers on the ceiling, behind the front desk. Businessmen and hookers fill a lounge. I pass a bay of blackjack tables where the minimum bet is ten dollars. I move on, weaving my way through cocktail waitresses in skimpy sequined getups, couples fighting, a woman on the phone with her bank—CASH ADVANCE—a toddler crying, a mother telling him to hold on baby, Mommy’s almost done, as if gambling is a job.