“Thanks,” I say. I look at him and my luck is turning back again, the way every session at a blackjack table eventually concludes with the dealer making twenty-one. Luke Skywalker knows that he might die in battle and Eminem knows that he might get too choked up to make rhymes and I, Joe Goldberg, know that when I fly to Rhode Island and reenter my bad place, Little Fucking Compton, it is possible that I might wander into a store, let my guard down, and find myself face to face with the cop I met on my first visit. Yes, it’s Officer Nico, in purple spandex and a blue helmet. Already, his eyes are narrowing.
“I know you,” he says.
And he does. He knows me as Spencer Hewitt, the boy he found in the boathouse next to the Salingers’ after he crashed his car. He knows my Figawi hat. He is going to remember me and he’s going to remember that cold December night. He might even read the file on Peach Salinger and realize that she disappeared right around the same time as that Hewitt kid was freezing in that boathouse. I take a step backward. “Thanks for the milk. I owe ya one.” He is unperturbed. “I never forget a face,” he says. “Hold on.” The other cyclists need milk, too and he motions for me to follow him outside—Indian summer!—and even off-duty, he has the authority of an officer of the law. He is the reason that Robin Fincher never should have made it through police academy and he is biting his lip and taking the lid off his coffee.
“Do you live around here?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “I’m just up from Boston.”
He is as kind as I remember and I wonder if he ever fucked that nurse in the hospital in Fall River who seemed so into him. The other cyclists are trickling out onto the lawn and they are dullards mostly, white dentists, they want their black cop buddy back. I raise my hand to make my escape and raising my hand sparks Officer Nico’s memory and that’s right, this is New England where people watch because they like to watch, where memories are intact, primed because the people here are not bogged down by aspirations. The only thing Nico aspires to do is save the fucking world and he snaps his fingers.
“The Buick,” he says. “You were that kid, poor kid, you totaled that Buick.”
The cyclists are interested now and I am a part of this world in the worst possible way. If I lie, if I say that wasn’t me, Nico will know it. He’s a real cop.
“That’s you?” I say, and I put my coffee down and move to shake his hand. “You saved my life.”
Never mind the absurdity of me, a white guy who passed through the whitest place in America in the dead of white winter not remembering the very black officer who found me in a boathouse and drove me to a hospital. I am fucked. Or maybe not. Nico shakes my hand, solid. “I’m surprised you remember any of it,” he says. “You were banged up.”
“I remember the important parts,” I assure him. “I didn’t recognize you with your gear on. You guys all ride on the reg?”
Now I have included the dentists, provided them with the chance to tell an outsider about their weekly rides with their cop friend, their banal adventures, the dings with bad drivers, the roadkill, the time that Barry rode over that hose and fell and everyone is belly laughing, oh, Barry. Officer Nico is relaxed, involved in a few conversations, none about me. I am okay. I pulled it off. I will stay a while just to prove that I am at ease, and when one guy asks what brings me to their sunny seaside hamlet I don’t hesitate.
“Indian summer,” I say, and I call upon the amiable demeanor of Harvey Swallows. I open my arms. “Am I right or am I right?”
I am right and soon, it’s time for the cyclists to move on. Nico waves good-bye; he hopes my stay this time around doesn’t involve a trip to the emergency room. I knock on the table. He squints. “Son,” he says. “That’s a metal table.”
He laughs and he goes and I find a birch tree. I knock.
I am still itchy. It could be psychosomatic. But it could be real. I might have picked something up from Dana. God knows what germs were crawling on me in Vegas, on the plane. I am uncomfortable in my skin in Little Compton. I never should have gone to the Art Café and I never should have come here. I strip the bed. I search for bedbugs and I don’t find any. I flip the mattress but there is nothing wrong with the mattress. There is something wrong with me. Love lifts us up but it also makes us roam around Little Compton like we didn’t murder the girl in the news.
I’m hungry. The motel doesn’t offer a continental dinner and I am starving and marooned here, unable to will myself out the door for a Burger King run, too itchy to sleep, too potentially fucked to attempt to relax. If I can’t get that mug of urine then the police will get that mug of urine. If the police run tests on that mug and connect the dots, I will go to prison, and I won’t be able to get back to California and marry Love. I stop itching. I didn’t realize that until now.
“I want to marry her,” I say.
And suddenly I know what I’m doing here. I am being that person who runs away from love, the one who self-sabotages. I don’t think I can sleep in this room, in this township, in this universe, and I drag the sheets into the bathroom, the only sterile vortex in this musty pit. I rankle at the sadness of it all, the granite countertops and the little shitty soaps, the non-organic shampoos. Love wouldn’t want any of this and all I want is her.
I dump the sheets in the tub and I wash my hands and I hear a knock at the door. My heart races but the rest of my body freezes and I picture Officer Nico’s face. I panic. There is another knock. It feels like the end. On the way to the door, I trip. I bump my knee against the bed. My body is protesting. I reach for the handle. Steeling myself, I swing the door open. But the person standing there isn’t Officer Nico. It’s someone worse.
Love.
48
LOVE’S arms are folded across her chest. “You said you left your lights on,” she says. “But it was only five.”
“Love,” I say. “I can explain.”
“I hope so,” she says. “Because you should also know that Pitch Perfect is not, and never was, on Netflix.”
She enters my room. “Anyone here?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I’m alone.”
She looks at the stripped bed. “What’s this all about? Destroying the evidence?”
“No,” I say, and I can’t keep up with her questions. “Love, let me explain.”
She raises her voice. “Yoo-hoo! You can come out now?”
“Love,” I say. “There’s nobody here.”
“You know, we all live in the world, Joe. You think I can’t figure out that you flew to Rhode Island and rented a car? And I don’t mean this is in the asshole way, but you know who my father is. His people couldn’t find Forty because Forty knows how to hide. Because we grew up in this and we know how to disable our phones and pay with cash. But you think I can’t find you? Jesus Christ. Where is she? Hello!”
“Love, please stop.”
“No,” she says. She is wearing a navy raincoat, bell-bottom blue jeans, and a shrunken pink sweater. I want to hug every part of her, even now, while she accuses me of cheating on her, especially now. She isn’t going anywhere. She isn’t afraid of me even though she knows I was lying, even though I disappeared on her while I said I was looking for her brother. She isn’t the police. She is Love, which is why she is crying.