Hidden Bodies (17 page)

“I’m sorry, but that’s fucked up.”

Love shrugs and says that we can play Joe Says all day long but she’ll never do anything oral with me. Or anyone. “I know you want to know if I did this for Michael or Trey,”
she says. “And the answer is no.”

I strategize. “I’m just thinking, you know, it’s different for everyone,” I say. “What your mom doesn’t like, you know, maybe you would like.”

Love says that she is thirty-five years old and she knows
exactly
who she is. She kisses me and grabs a room service menu. We order
eggs benny
and coffee and pancakes and we
both look at
mimosa
on the menu but champagne is a sore spot. I tell her I like her. She says she likes me too.

We sink into the bed together and this is what it is, sex, then a knock at the door, then food, then rest, then movies, then sex, then we think about leaving the room and we don’t leave
the room, then sex, then sometimes we get in the tub, then movies, then food, then sometimes a song, then sex, then Joe Says/Love Says. Love has a butler named Henry and she texts him and he shows
up with Animal Style In-N-Out burgers. We half watch movies on TBS (Love’s favorite station) and when
Bride Wars
begins, she says she never cheated on either of her husbands. I tell
her I never cheated on anyone either.

“But you were never married?” she asks.

“No.” I don’t want to tell her about Beck or Amy. That’s what feels so unique about this room, this thing with Love. I’ve been trying to find Amy for so long and
now to break away from all that hunting, to rest. In this room, in this bed, I rarely think about the mug of piss in Rhode Island. It’s as though there are invisible guards outside, like
nobody can get us, our DNA, our pasts. It’s only been five meals, maybe two days. I genuinely don’t know. Love is a drug. The more she opens up about her life, the less I want to share
my own stories with her. My life feels too small, too gritty.

“Okay,” she says. “You’ll let me know when you’re ready.”

Love is patient. She doesn’t push. It’s actually fun to watch
Cocktail
with her because, unlike Amy, she takes it for what it is. Love likes
Hannah and Her Sisters
but she doesn’t love it the way she loves
Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Just when I think she might be perfect, she claps for the opening credits of
Dirty Dancing
. She hits the
mute button. “Let’s not have any sound,” she says. “I’ve seen this so many times I don’t need to hear it to watch it.”

I blindfold her to see if she can watch it without hearing it or seeing it and I kiss her all over her body, underneath her knees, her elbows, her inner thighs. I do not eat her out. I make her
come without touching her vagina. She says that’s a first.

“Does this place have a pool?” I ask.

It does and Mr. Mooney was wrong; the pool is not
cold and dirty.
The pool is a giant blue oval, as welcoming as Love’s vagina. My phone falls inside of it and Love swan dives to
the bottom and emerges with it in hand. Her butler puts it in rice. I’m tempted to ask him to throw it away. Love says my broken phone is a sign that I’m supposed to relax. And maybe I
am because it’s hard to care about my life before Love.

This is why people go west, smashing rocks and hoping to spot something shimmering in the creek. Dip a pan into the rocky water and lift it and strain it and then feel solid gold in the palm of
your hand. Everything I did was worth it because it led me straight into Love’s arms.

I
can’t decide what I like more, this bed or these sheets or this view or the balcony or the jam and toast that were waiting here when I woke
up. Chateau is Adult Disney World, the kind of place where they’re one step ahead of you. I didn’t have to ask for my phone. It was here when I woke up, in a little basket by the bread,
by the silver coffee pot, so much more elegant than Keurig. Love’s still sleeping and I put on a robe and pour my coffee and spread jam on my soft, blond bread and walk out to the
balcony.

I am awkward at first, not used to having toast and a balcony and a robe. I’ll have to look in the mirror after I finish my breakfast because I’m curious to see if I look different,
if all this luxury closed my pores. Maybe I don’t even need to buy Henderson’s skin care products. I’m happy and they could evict us right now and I wouldn’t care as long as
they let me take that dirty little minx in the bed. Even the no blowjob bit; I’m a man. It’s good to have a goal.

I lean on the balcony rail and turn on my phone. When it finally boots up, it proceeds to buzz like it’s having a heart attack from trying to keep up with all these texts from Delilah.

Hey! What do you think about tomorrow?

My mom says hi LOL

My mom loves Dan Tana. Seems good, right?

Hey

Joe?

Asdjkasdkasdsda

Hey are you ok? Harvey says you never came home. Calling hospitals.

My mom is only here til Monday . . . this is fucked.

Going to Birds?

Going to Birds. See you there?

Asdbsjkdaskd yes?

Knock knock

La Poubelle?

At La Pou!

FUCK OFF

Hey Joe are you ok? Look I know I shouldn’t have asked you to meet my mother but it’s not what you think. She’s cool. I didn’t mean it in a meet the parents kind of
way. So you don’t have to disappear on me.

There’s a picture of Delilah’s tits, real, pert. There’s another text:

If you’re not dead, I’m never speaking to you again. I don’t need this. I have a lot of great things in my life and a lot reasons to be happy and I don’t need you
blowing me off like this. So do me a favor and just leave me alone. Okay? Okay.

And now it’s Calvin’s turn. He wrote to me, just eighteen minutes ago:
Dude. Hot chick in store. She’s got a Portnoy’s Complaint. Book not screenplay.

I thought I was done, that it was over, but my beating heart and shaking hands tell me it’s not. Amy.
Finally.
I write back:
Hold her. On my way.

Calvin writes back:
How?

He wants to be a writer but he can’t come up with a fucking plan to make a girl wait twenty minutes? I send my orders:
Tell her that your supervisor is in yoga and you have to wait for
him to get out so you can get his approval.

Calvin writes back:
Cool.

He should have said
smart
and with shaking hands, I scribble a note for snoring Love—
Gotta run, be back soon
—and I nearly fall over trying to get out of the fucking
robe and into my clothes. I shut the door and step into the hallway, into reality—I don’t have a key, this isn’t
my suite
—and I kick a discarded room service tray.
Lazy, unhungry fucks tossing out lukewarm, high-end pancakes and I don’t belong here, I had a
purpose
and a goal and I need closure and FUCK.

I hail a cab on Sunset. The world is uglier than it was before and I feel hungover even though I wasn’t drunk. Calvin texts:
She asked what kind of yoga. I said hatha. FYI.

I write back:
I’m close.

And I am. This is it. I am queasy and the cab is fast and we are here. Across the street, I see her in the shop flirting with Calvin.
Cunt.
The crosswalk is flashing red but fuck it.
This is
Fast Five
and I have my target in the crosshairs. I will risk another jaywalking ticket. I get out of the cab, I run. I make it to the double lines before the driver wails on his
horn.

“You need to pay me!” he screams.

I forget to pay because I’m so used to Uber and technology is killing our instincts. I look into the shop. Amy and Calvin must have heard the horn because they look up, and Amy’s
eyes widen. The driver wails on the horn again and now the light is green and more people are honking. Range Rovers want me out of the fucking way and a woman in a Prius
enjoys
laying on
her horn, taking out all that rejection rage on me. Even if I did run out on this cabbie, which I can’t—the mug of piss—I would miss Amy. She’s out the door and she’s
on foot. She’s around the corner, into a waiting car, a passenger, not a driver, and she’s gone.

I don’t get hit by a car but if I did I don’t think it would matter. My nerves are shot. I’ve gone from the high of Love to the adrenaline of Amy to the crash, to forking
wrinkled tens out of my wallet to pay this cabbie as he bitches about
you kids and your Ubers
and to know that I was so close. All the nights I spent in this Village waiting. That bitch
knew. She had to have known. The cabbie goes, disgusted, as if his shitty day compares to mine.

I walk east to the corner of Franklin and Bronson and wait for the crosswalk to turn white. I plod across the street and into the bookshop and Calvin looks like a different person. He shaved.
His hair is short. He’s wearing a #IWasThere T-shirt.

“Dude,” he says. “I did everything I could, but she had to jam. She said she’ll be back.”

I don’t bother telling him how wrong he is. I just slump into a chair behind the counter.

“So where’ve you been?” he asks.

“I was in West Hollywood,” I explain, and I can’t believe I missed her.

“Did you have a meeting?” he asks, as if that would matter, as if I didn’t move here to kill Amy, to find Amy. I tear into one of Calvin’s thinkThin bars.

“Yeah,” I say, deflated.

“A two-day meeting?” he asks, all hopped up now, as if this might mean he gets to ride along. “Delilah said you haven’t been around.”

Delilah
and I sigh. “Yeah,” I say. “A friend in town, a meeting, no big deal.”

Calvin picks up his iPad. “She was filthy hot,” he says. “The Amy chick.”

“Yeah,” I say, but Love is prettier and softer and Amy has fucked me over again. I groan. Love does not know my phone number and never seeing her again is possible. I ran out on her
and this is what Amy did to me and Love might think I used her for her body and her bed and her truffle fries. Life is better when it’s simpler. If I could just kill Amy, I wouldn’t
have to worry about her. She wouldn’t get in the way of things. If Amy were dead, I would know Love’s phone number.

Calvin rubs his forefinger and pointer finger on his iPad, the way he always does when he sees a hot girl on Tinder. He smiles. “You can almost see her nips,” he says. “Wanna
see?”

I don’t want to look at
nips
but he pushes the iPad at me and these nips I
do
want to see because they are Amy’s nips. “How did you get this?”

“I pretended I was taking a selfie and I got a picture of her,” he says. And Calvin missed his calling. I could hug him.

“Did you get anything else?”

“Don’t be pissed,” he says, holding up his hands.

“Okay . . .” I say slowly.

“Well, I tried to tell her that the owner was coming back.” He laughs. “The hatha yoga shit, but then I said something about kundalini and she caught onto my bullshit and she
was like ‘What are you
really
trying to do here?’ and I was like, ‘I’m trying to get to know you’ and she was hot for me, Joe. I’m sorry but you know,
it was like some classic sitcom shit where the friend tries to get the girl to stay for the friend but then the girl likes the friend.”

My heart beats again. I toss the thinkThin bar in the trash. “Did you get her number?”

“No,” he says. “But I did get her address. I told her I would send her a flyer for this show I’m doing.”

“You got her address?”

“Yeah,” he says.

I reach for his iPad and he pulls back. “And this show, it’s called
Back in the Day
and we’re totally analogging it, you know? We’re gonna, like, not promote on
Facebook or Twitter or—”

“Calvin,” I barge in. “What’s her address?”

He squirms. “Can I say something?”

Fucking A. “Sure.”

“I kind of can’t.”

“Why the fuck not?” I snap.

“It’s property of my improv group and technically she gave it to the group.”

I take a deep breath. I will not lose my mind. “That’s cool,” I say. “But you know, I won’t tell her how I got it.”

“Yeah,” he says. He smoked an ounce of weed today. Fucker. “But like,
I’ll
know that I gave it to you and I’ll feel shitty about that.”

Calvin, who Tinder bangs one girl after another, Calvin, who won’t look Delilah in the eye when he runs into her at Birds, Calvin, who won’t watch
Enlightened
because he
just can’t
get into a series with so much chick voiceover
, this guy is now gonna talk to me about boundaries? Keep me away from Amy Fucking Adam? God, she’s a manipulative
beast. But I’m better. I hop off my chair.

“Smoothie?” I offer.

“Always,” he says. “Kale.”

I go next door and order the kale smoothie and I go into the bathroom and crush three more of Dez’s Percocets. Twenty minutes later, Calvin passes out. At last. I reach into his pocket for
the password cheat sheet he keeps in his wallet and I get into his iPad and into the database for his improv group and boom.

The building is around the corner on Bronson and Amy
did
settle into this neighborhood. Maybe she got a wealth hangover and maybe she’s still the girl who tells the guy
she’s using that she misses her own bed and maybe she’s back in it right now, freaking out about seeing me, eating frozen chicken and waiting for the truffle oil to evacuate her pores
and ooze out of her body.

I go to the Pantry and buy violets—the painted ones. Then, I go to Bronson and buzz apartment 326. Nothing. I buzz apartment 323. Nothing. I buzz 101 and 101 is female and 101 is
awake.

“Hello?” she says, husky.

“Flowers!” I say.

The girl in 101 doesn’t ask who they’re for because everyone likes to get flowers. Woody Allen knows this; Anjelica Huston gets murdered in
Crimes and Misdemeanors
because
she wants flowers and lets a stranger into the building
.
My breath quickens when I enter the lobby and I have to dart into the stairwell because apartment 101 is just a few feet from the
front door. In the stairwell, I freeze. I am shaking. The flowers rattle,
swish swish.
I don’t have to do this. So Amy is harassing me. So what? I could just slip out of this
building and run back to Love. I prefer Love. She’s sweeter. She knows music and she’s ready for me. So what am I doing in this stairwell, jeopardizing my future with Love?