Hidden Bodies (22 page)

The guy at the counter smiles. “That’s thirty-nine dollars and eighty-two cents.”

“Thanks, bro,” Forty responds. “Don’t forget our fire sauce.” He whistles. “Eduardo!” he hollers. “You gotta tell the brass that they need a tip
option here. How am I supposed to tip you boys?”

Eduardo laughs. “You funny, Mr. Forty.”

Eduardo is probably Forty’s closest thing to a true friend and Forty takes out a hundred dollar bill and crumples it and pretends to sneeze and throws the hundred over the counter. The guy
at the register has seen this before and he laughs and says what Eduardo said, what Forty likes to hear: “Thank you, Mr. Forty.”

Forty nods and we go back to our booth and treat
The Third Twin
like it’s redeemable even as I kill his ideas and re-create it from scratch.

“Take it to the desert,” I say. “The third twin is an interloper who shows up and fucks it all up for the twins.”

Forty nods, hooked. You can tell he goes back and forth between thinking of Milo and himself as the third twin and I am suddenly so happy I am an only child.

“Now, the twins have their lives set but this fucker messes with everything,” I go on. “He screws their women and messes with their jobs and yet it’s all fucked up
because he betrays both twins and it turns out they’re not as close as they thought they were.”

“Ah,” he says. “Act Two.”

“And then eventually, the twins find a way to trust each other. They’re sure that it’s them, the originals, so they make a plan and they bring the third twin to
Vegas.”

Forty pounds the table. “Location shoot. I love it.”

“But they don’t get there,” I tell him. Idiot. “They pull off the road and they knock out the third twin and leave him for dead.”

“Fuck,” he says. “That’s dark.”

“But then.” I grin. “Last shot of the movie, high above, you see the car pull over, and a body is thrown onto the side of the road.”

Forty’s eyes gleam. “The third twin fucked them both.”

I nod. “There’s your movie.”

Forty says this could work and he tears into a packet of fire
sauce
and squirts it into his mouth. “Next up,” he says. “
The Mess.
”

He thinks it’s
Tarantino meets Nora Ephron in a classic kidnapping caper
but I’ve read it and Forty isn’t a writer. He just likes to put names together. Of course
it’s a Vegas story—Forty will do anything to go to Vegas—but the characters are all over the place and sometimes the kidnapper is the guy and sometimes it’s the girl and it
jumps around. (Drugs.) But I can fix this; I’ll just replace it with my
Fakers
.

He clicks his jaw and leans back in his seat. “Oh boy,” he says. “There is one thing I didn’t think about.”

“What?” I ask.

“Can we do what happens in the booth stays in the booth?”

I nod. “Fuck, yes.”

“Love got pissed about
The Mess
last time around. She thought it was about her.”

Now I’m listening. I wipe my mouth. “Why did she think it was about her?”

Forty sighs and pulls back the curtain. He explains that Love’s a
relationship girl
and she’s
incapable of being single
, which is why she married young and fast,
married again. “And then after the Doc died.” He shakes his head. “Man, she was a wreck. Like, worried that she was toxic. If she’s not divorced she’s widowed and all
she wants is to be with someone.”

I don’t think she’s like that. Maybe she was. But she’s not anymore. “Uh huh.”

“Anyway,” he says. “She swore she would never go out with anyone again unless it was gonna last forever. So I used to joke that the next time she meets someone we just gotta
like tie him up and trap him in the Aisles so he can’t go away, can’t pull bad shit, can’t go to the doctor and find out he’s got cancer.” He laughs. “So anyhow,
that’s sort of an inspiration point for
The Mess.
”

“Wow,” I say.

He smiles. “You’re freaking out.”

“In the good way,” I say. And it’s true. I feel special. Love was hunting for something real and she found it and it’s me and it’s early and absurd and we’ve
known each other a few days but fuck it feels good to be wanted. “This is all good by me,” I say. “I’d just as soon never date anyone but Love again, but please don’t
tell her I said that.”

“Of course not,” he says. “I would never. And I mean that both ways. I would never settle down in my thirties and I would never tell Love that I told you that she
wants
to settle down.”

“So Milo . . .” I say, the itch that can’t be scratched. “There’s really nothing between them? I mean, nothing recent?”

Forty sighs. “It’s all so boring,” he says. “You have to understand my sister. She is deeply, profoundly, erotically, supremely, wholly sexual.”

I nod. “Okay.”

“So if you mean to ask did they ever hook up, well, obviously, yes,” he says. “Back east, a hundred years ago, when we were babies. But I assure you, Old Sport, the girl does
not love the boy.” He leans in and burps. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but Love only likes guys who are rough around the edges, ya know, wrong side of the tracks.”

I can’t believe people still use that expression but before I can respond, Forty claps his hands. “Back to the good stuff.” Meaning business and he says that Plan B is all over
him for a new draft of
The Mess
and this is LA where everyone is always making everything up, but I like the idea of being one degree of separation away from Brad Pitt.

The food comes and the burritos smell like the
gorditas
smell like the grillers taste like the
chalupas
and I don’t know why we got so many different things when
Forty’s intention was to smother all of it in fire sauce, an unsophisticated simple heat that drowns out whatever meats and cheese and veggies were defrosted and packed into these tortillas.
The only saving grace is that we’re facing the Pacific Ocean.

Forty eats like a starving orphan, giant bites that make his cheeks flare. He never makes eye contact while he describes, in vivid detail, his bungalow at the Bellagio, his gift for counting
cards, his passion for
the moment
, and his adoration of the ’70s. It’s a truth that most people never want to own up to that some people were born at the wrong time. Forty
would have been better off in the seventies, before AIDS and Twitter, when it might have been enough to have cool jeans and a great coke connection and a slight resemblance to
Hopper,
Nicholson, fucking DeVito.
I feel extremely sorry for Forty because without a time machine, he will never be happy.

We finish gorging and head outside to the Spyder. Forty doesn’t start the car.

“Here’s the thing, Old Sport,” he says. He pops the glove box and pulls out an envelope. “I met a
very
kind black jack dealer this past week.” He lowers
his voice. “I am flush and I am on deadline to get
The Third Twin
to my guys at Sony. And I can’t have you slowed up because of that day job you have.”

He hands me the envelope. It’s full of cash. “I’m okay,” I say. I don’t want his charity.

“It’s nothing,” he says. “It’s ten K I honestly forgot about.”

He left ten thousand dollars in the glove box. Rich people. Stupid people.

“Love is going to wonder where it came from,” I point out.

He has an answer for that. “You’re dealing in books,” he says. “You’re a noble small businessman with an admirable work ethic and a solid start-up business. You
are, therefore, the farthest thing in the world from a
gold digger
.”

I’ve been waiting for him to use that phrase and I was going to keep working anyway because I am
not
a fucking gold digger. “I get it,” I say. “Right.”

“You throw pages at me and I’ll do my thing in ’em and we’ll get a round robin going. Bang these babies out by the end of the summer. Make the rounds and pitch ’em
when the kiddies go back to school. Sound good?”

“I can get started right away,” I say.

He winks. We’re both aware that this partnership is a bit corrupt. But what union isn’t inherently uneven in some way? I don’t know any perfect couples, true partners who share
the load equally.

He asks me to hand him a bottle of codeine that’s on the floor and it’s disgusting in here, Taco Bell wrappers and muddy bottles of Sprite, Fanta. Forty is a fuck-up—drug
dependent, living in a past that wasn’t even his in the first place. When we’re featured in
Variety
, I’ll be the hot one and he’ll be the other one.

He sips his medicated Fanta and starts the car. We might die on the way back to
The Aisles.
But we also might live. We’re singing along to the fucking Eagles when we take the
sharp left into the estate.

Forty hits the brakes and lowers the volume. “One thing,” he says. “My parents are Quakers about my gaming. They call it
gambling
, as if I’m a sorority girl from
Pennsylvania who can’t count cards. So let’s not mention my score.”

“Deal,” I say.

“One more thing,” he says, and I hate when people do that. He pours the rest of his
lean
onto the grassy sand and I imagine the squirrels stoned. “If you hurt my
sister, I’ll fucking kill you.”

It’s the first time I respect him. We pull up the driveway and half the cars are gone. We missed most of the party and Milo fell asleep on a chaise longue and he’s an ugly
sleeper—another win.

Forty goes to his
bungalow
and I go to Love’s. The upstairs bedroom is a dream, a topsy-turvy place with a sodded
terrace.
Love says they copied it from a resort in Maui.
I walk outside because I have never stood on grass in the sky and she asks me to come to bed.

“Forty got cut from
True Detective.
” She breathes me in. “You smell like a taco.”

“Guilty,” I say.

“It’s really great of you to go with the flow,” she says. “Forty gets bummed when he gets cut and I feel like if you weren’t here he might have disappeared to Vegas
or something. Thank you.”

“He’s a good dude.”

She kisses me. “I think he needs a break from it,” she says. “That stupid business is poisoning him and he should just be here this summer, not trying to cast that thing
that’s not even done.”

I squeeze her hand. “So, let’s do it. Let’s stay.”

“What about your job?” she asks.

I tell her I’m selling more valuable books on my own than I am at the store. I can set up a PO Box and form an LLC and go for it. Love is thrilled for me and says I can borrow an old Prius
no one uses anymore so I can hit estate sales and stock up on merchandise. I love that she thinks this is a wonderful idea and I love that she does not use the phrase
yard-sale-ing.
She
kisses me. She straddles me and I live here now, in Malibu, in Love. Hunting season is over. I will not think of Amy. I will not worry about Amy. I will not beat myself up. Now it’s time to
rest
.
That’s what you do when you find love. Amy couldn’t. I can. I’m the lucky one, not her.

TWO
weeks into the Summer of Love and there’s only one time of day I dread.
Tennis time!
You have to understand, I am living in a dream
world. Every morning begins with Love riding my dick. After we fuck, I put on one of the new shirts I bought at the stupid expensive stores on Abbot Kinney in Venice and drive to Intelligentsia and
buy an overpriced coffee. I sit with my back against the wall of this coliseum-style coffee shop, so austere, so clean, so California cold that you never see anybody smiling and you get dirty looks
for ordering iced coffee.

I go back and forth between working on
The Mess
and
The Third Twin
and then, around lunchtime, I mail books if I have inventory that moved. Then, every day at four
P.M.
, I wish for rain so I can get out of
tennis time!
I suck at tennis. My forehand is too big and the balls go soaring over the fence. My one-handed backhand never makes
contact. My two-handed backhand makes Forty piss his madras shorts. Sometimes Milo is here, calling out,
Loosen your grip, kid.
And sometimes Love walks all the way around to my side of
the court as if I’m a fucking child.

Today it’s just me and Love because Love’s parents have gone to Europe and Forty and Milo are out on the Donzi. Love is feeding me balls and I am missing them or whacking them to
China and finally we decide to just walk on the beach.

“Okay,” she says when we reach the water. “I just need to say that I know you hate tennis but you wouldn’t hate it so much if you actually tried to get better. And I love
you but you are stubborn and I’ve never seen anyone
refuse
to get better at something. You need to make an effort.”

I look at her. I heard all of it. She’s right. And buried in there, in the middle of all her earnest frustration, there were three little words. She didn’t mean to say it. I mean I
have been feeling it, the love, but I wouldn’t say it either, not this early. We’ve only had two weeks. And yet in two weeks we have built a thing between us, a bridge, a shorthand, and
I never had this with anyone. Amy and I had sex and heat. Beck dangled a carrot and I bit. But Love and I grow the carrots, peel them, and eat them together.

“Look!” she cries, pointing to a dolphin out in the ocean. “Did you see it?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I see it. And don’t worry. I got a gun.”

She bursts out laughing and falls back onto the sand and I laugh too and she rolls onto her side, giggling, and I smack her ass, payback, and that’s all it takes with Love, one joke, one
smack and she’s slipping out of her little skirt and climbing onto me and pulling me out of my shorts and holding my head by the temples and looking into my eyes, close.

“Are you deaf?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “I was being nice.”

“Well, don’t be,” she says.

“Okay. I love you too,” I say.

She kisses me as my cock delves into her and we are perfect together and I am better for knowing her and I’m still convinced that there’s a special department in heaven where they
build vaginas and if you’re lucky like I am, one day you happen upon the one that was built for you. I tell her this when we finish, when we’re lying there on the sand.