I walk into the mist toward the water and I hear a dog barking. Boots and Puppies. I whistle. The dog barks. He sounds afraid. “It’s okay,” I call out. “Come here boy.”
But he only mews, sounding almost like a kitten. “Hey, little guy, it’s okay.” I pat the sand. I am reminded of the puppy in Single White Female that won’t run to Jennifer Jason Leigh, and then she kills the puppy because it didn’t love her. And then I think of Forty murdering Roosevelt, Love’s version, and Love crying when their parents gave Boots away, Forty’s version. There really is no such thing as the truth but there is such thing as happiness, and I can picture the amazed look on Love’s face if I brought her home this dog.
Dogs like authority, so I command. “All right, get over there, pup. Right now.” But the whimpering sounds farther away. I start running, making my way through the swirling white, and fifteen yards in I stumble and stub my toe. Fuck. Sand is harder than you think.
“Would you just come here already? I’m not gonna hurt you!” I keep going and the puppy is still crying out there, somewhere. “It’s okay! I’m here.”
The ocean ebbs and flows beyond the fog and I hear the dog again, and I crouch. I want to be prepared to hug him, to get coated in puppy slobber, to be loved—this is why people in Franklin Village keep dogs—and I think I see him. He is as white as the mist, with a little black mouth and black eyes and a pink tongue coming into focus. The dog is panting, running, and I wonder what we’ll call him. He looks like a Charlie or a Cubby or a George. I whistle to him. He ignores me. Fucker.
I laugh. What is wrong with me? It’s a puppy. It’s not a fucker. But then, maybe it is. Babies can be assholes and puppies can be fuckers. But you accept the risk when you make a baby, when you adopt a dog. I think I’ll write something about an asshole baby and a fucker puppy and it will be like one of those old-school Peanuts cartoons, where you can’t hear what the adults are saying because it’s all just sonic wonking.
I clap my hands and that’s when I see a flash of white linen, a bright yellow shirt and I realize the dog isn’t alone. The puppy yelps and the human throws something, an electric green tennis ball. The human whistles and the human is female. I see her hair in the mist—blond, tangled—and I see her sharp shoulders and two long legs and
Amy? Amy. Amy? Amy?
She scoops the puppy that was going to belong to me and Love into her arms. She kisses the puppy and then she looks up. She startles.
“Joe?” she says. She looks terrified, guilty. Time stops. I am in shock.
She holds the puppy too hard and the puppy fights and the puppy has claws and the puppy wins. She drops the puppy and it runs and she stands there, frozen, and this bitch fucked me. Stole from me. Tricked me. Lied to me. Used me. She wronged me and the nice people in Rhode Island—Liam & Pearl & Harry & Noah—and I loved her. I loved her but she didn’t love me.
Amy? Amy.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, and she thinks she’s pretty and clever, tucking her hair behind her ear, pretending to trust me, but people don’t change and I see her bracing to run. She doesn’t get to run away from me now the way she did then, not after what she did. She turns, hair flying, and instinct takes over. I spring forward. She runs but I’m faster and I knock her to the ground. She screams and I clamp my hand over her mouth and look into the eyes I know too well.
She knees me in the groin and I react, loosening my grip, but I manage to grab her by the hair and pin her down in the sand. I cover her mouth again and she thrashes like a marlin and I can’t believe that after all these months, Amy is here.
Her face has changed from all this sun, more freckles, smoother skin, longer hair, crusty mascara around her eyes, she was out last night. She is who I used to love. Who I used to covet. Who I used to want to kill, but who I forgot to worry about after I fell in love with Love.
She kicks me again and I smack her face. “Don’t scream,” I say. “Understand?”
She says yes with her eyes. They are as bright as I remember, even in the mist. I take my hand away.
“Jesus, Joe, what are you doing?”
“Shut up,” I command. I clamp my hand over her mouth. “You are not to yell. Do you understand?”
She nods emphatically. “Joe, please,” she begins.
I’m still getting reacquainted with her face, how crazy human faces are, how noses are all so different, some bulbous, some pointy. Amy’s is aquiline. I used to love her nose. I used to kiss her nose. Now I love Love’s nose.
“Joe,” she says. “About the money . . .”
“The money?” I can’t help it. It’s been so long, but it all washes over me again. The humiliation I felt when I found my computer in the cage, the keys I made for her, the note in Charlotte & Charles. “How can you think this is about money?”
“Cuz I lifted the books,” she pants. “I can pay you back.”
“I don’t want your fucking money, Amy,” I say. “I’m not like you. I don’t give a fuck about money.”
“I get it, okay? I suck. But please, let me go,” she begs.
I hold her down. “You do suck. You’re a vicious empty cunt.”
“You’re acting crazy,” she says. “Let me go.”
I spit at her. She blinks. “Fuck you,” I say.
“Joe,” she says. “Please stop it.”
I tighten my grip on her neck. I should get it over with. I should squeeze the life out of her for all the things she did do. Instead I am allowing her to speak, to rail on about what she did. “I took some books,” she confesses. “And it sucks and I know it. And I know it must have been terrible for you to find out. But you know, Joe. You knew I was in it for myself. I know you knew.”
I didn’t know. And this is what hurts. I loved her and she did not love me. She doesn’t think it was real, she never did. My cheeks turn red. I need to kill her because she says things like we were just fucking and it was summer and I didn’t rip you off. I ripped off the shop. She wasn’t in love with me and every time she promises she can get me the money I know I have to kill her. She wasted my heart, my time. She begs me to let her go and she can get a cash advance and she can get you anything you want and she is house-sitting and there is art I could sell, like, a lot of art and she is a commercial beast.
Beck never loved me either and if Love knew about this, the dark humiliating truth of it, that I love women who don’t love me back, I don’t know how I could look her in the eye. I don’t know if I could go on, because the real horror of my life is not that I’ve killed some terrible people. The real horror is that the people I’ve loved didn’t love me back. I may as well have been masturbating in the cage, telling the books about the girls because all the girls before Love, they were not there with me, not really, especially this one, this tall blond cunt begging for her life and promising me that she can give it all back to me every last penny.
“You don’t get it,” I tell her. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Let me go,” she pleads, she squirms.
Everything in her tone and her language and her eyes seems confused. She’s acting like I’m some guy she knew and I’m looking at her like she broke my heart. But she’s just talking about what a pain it was to sell books online. Does she really think this is about Portnoy’s Complaint, about Yates?