Hidden Bodies (23 page)

“You should write,” she says. “You say some good weird shit sometimes.”

I want to tell her that I do write but it can wait. “Thanks,” I say. “Maybe I will.”

She nudges me. I turn to her. She smiles. “You realize you still have to get back out on the court, right?”

Yes, the
Summer of Love
is a dream. My skin is glowing thanks to Henderson’s products and fucking Love. My screenplays are coming together. Forty and I meet at Taco Bell every
couple of days to talk about “our work.” He reads, he raves, and then he tells me the buzz he’s building.

I really am proud of myself that I’m
finally
on a true vacation. You can’t even call the screenwriting work; I love it too much. I’m better at tennis after
Love’s big lecture and I almost think it’s a good thing that she won’t suck my dick because if she did, I might become so happy that I wouldn’t be me anymore.

The Corinthians are right and
Love is patient.
We go horseback riding and I don’t know how to ride a fucking horse so here we are again, Love teaching me.

“Robert Redford is a good learning horse,” she says.

“Robert Redford?” I ask, and her mom named all their horses.

Love says it’s a miracle they’re not all named Robert Redford. “My mom is kind of obsessed with him,” she explains.

We trot along and now she wants to know how I lost my virginity and I tell her to go first.

“It was with Milo,” she says. “We were staying on his family’s boat and were docked at Wianno Club and the three of us, me and Forty and Milo, we used to sneak out and
steal the flags off the golf course.” That’s why he’s always wearing those shirts, Martha’s Vineyard, yacht clubs, all that cocky pink and green. “And then one night,
Milo was like, let’s hide from Forty and freak him out. And then, you know, and it was terrible and it
hurt
and did I mention that it hurt?” She gazes upward and all the pain
in her life, she’s found a way to process all of it. “And then Forty got nailed for stealing all the flags.” She laughs, and of course the three of them collectively refer to that
night as
the night they all got nailed
and I am so happy I grew up poor and that there is nothing so
cute
about my coming of age. Love elbows me. “I showed you mine,”
she says. “Your turn.”

“Well,” I say. “I was having dinner at Chateau Marmont and this waitress came up to me with a piece of paper.”

She smacks me. “That’s not funny.”

I shrug.

She pats my leg. “When you’re ready,” she says. “No rush.” We are quiet together. Like I said,
Love is patient.

Love is kind.
We ditch plans to go to a ceremony in Culver City where Love is supposed to get an award because Milo calls from Commerce Casino. Forty trashed a room and they’re
holding him.

“Can’t Milo take care of it?” I ask. And I worry about my business partner, but at the same time, this is what I expect from Hollywood.

Love says it’s better we go. “Why?” I ask.

Her eyes well with tears. “Because with Forty, you have to step in or people get sick of him,” she says. It’s a long drive to Commerce. It’s ugly in Commerce. It’s
not glamorous. It’s vinyl. I watch Love stay up holding her brother all night. He’s a blubbering mess. She tells him it’s okay. When he realizes this was the night of her award,
she tells him it’s okay.

“They canceled it, honey bunny,” she says. Her voice is aloe vera. “I didn’t miss anything. Try and sleep.”

The next morning, on the way back to Malibu, I worry that Love is a better person than I am. I am quiet and grumpy and pick a fight about Milo, the fact that he’s texting her, that
he’s at the Aisles waiting for us to get home.

“Joe,” Love says. “I can’t ever get mad at anyone for needing a break from Forty, okay? Milo is here because we need him. Because I need him. Please don’t be
jealous. He’s dating a really nice girl named Lorelai right now and you have nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Look,” she says. “Forty is drawn to everything bad. It’s like whether it’s people or writing or his drugs or anything, you know, he has the worst instincts of
anyone. I don’t know what’s gonna happen to him.”

I want so badly to tell her that Forty is going to be fine because he’s discovered a talented writer. I want to tell her that I am
The Third Twin
and that she makes me want to be
kind too. I know we’ll have to take care of Forty. I know he’s never going to get by on his own. I know he’s insecure and unhappy and negative. And I see the way Love cares for
him.

“Listen,” I say. “I know you keep putting off going to Phoenix and visiting the charity volunteer coordinators. Why don’t you go tonight? I’ll hang with
Forty.”

Love smiles and texts Milo to go home and she mounts me when we get back to the Aisles. She doesn’t wait until we park. She presses on my leg for me to brake and she attacks me in the car,
in the driveway. She thanks me for staying with Forty and I tell her it’s no big deal and she raises her eyebrows. “It’s Thursday,” she cautions me. “It’s
summer.”

Love was right. Forty is demanding and drunk at Matthew McConaughey’s, where nobody really wants to say hi to him. He is rude to a bartender who’s doing the best she can. I apologize
to her when she’s on her break and she says it’s
totally cool.

“Dude,” she says. “You look spent.”

I tell her about Forty and she does that California thing where she waits for her turn to talk and then tells me her name is Monica and she’s housesitting in a place near the Aisles and
bartending and surfing. She asks me if I surf and it’s a question that offends me but I don’t even get to finish the boring conversation because the other bartender is tapping my
shoulder.

“Are you the one with the wasted friend?”

That’s me, and my wasted friend is looking for me. The surfing girl bartender tells me to lighten up. “Try and find the fun,” she says. “It’s, like, all you can
do.”

The Californian refusal to accept that sometimes things just fucking suck—like getting into the car with high Forty and making our next stop an S&M hooker who lives on a ranch up in
Topanga. I sit on a couch near too many dogs barking and try not to listen to him fuck her or call her
Mommy
. It is the darkest, longest night of my life and knowing that Love has had
countless nights like this makes me love her so much more. A lot of girls, they would have left by now.

When I have to drag him out of his Spyder and into his house, his slumbering body is so dense and unresponsive that I worry he might be dead. But he isn’t and something has to change. I
need to find a babysitter for this kid, someone who will put up with his shit, someone mellow and needy.

The next day, while he sleeps it off and my girlfriend teaches the children to Swim for Love in Phoenix, I prowl the beach looking for the bartender who told me to
find the fun.
She’s where she said she would be, on all fours, scrubbing her stupid
board.
She’s different when she’s off-duty, more stripperish, with one of those decorative bandanas
wrapped around her head and a necklace glistening around her waist. Her body parts are taut and brown; she is a stereotypical LA girl and she’s too hot for Forty, but anyone who gets this
dressed up to scrub a surfboard is blank and hungry. She looks over her shoulder constantly. She’s perfect. I go to her. I wave.

AS
Love says, Monica might be the most
chill
girl in the world and I’m so glad I recruited her. Monica is unflappable and calm. As Love
says, you could punch her in the face and she would just keep smiling. She eases into a relationship with Forty automatically, which means Love and I are off the hook. Monica is super common, with
brown hair that is always parted on the left and bangs that fall into her eyes, bangs she is constantly fingering, licking, pushing aside. I want to take a razor and shave them the fuck off but I
would never do any such thing. Monica is my savior, Forty’s pacifier. He pets her. He likes her consistency. He tries to talk to me about her open mind in the sack but I tell him I
don’t want to know about her lack of nerve endings. I’m still trying to forget what he said last week: “You can pee on her, Old Sport! On her
face
!”

Monica is a severe Californian, a Beach Boys kind of girl who smiles all the time and follows Forty around trying to get him to drink coconut water. I picture her alone in the middle of the
night cutting her inner thighs, but it’s possible that I’m wrong, that some people are just free of demons
.
She is always exactly the same and she doesn’t bloat or get
moody or crave burritos instead of sushi. Everything is
chill
and one night we are all nestled on floats in the pool, watching a movie outside—this is how it is here, you live in an
Esquire
spread and you are the star—and Love gasps.

“It just hit me,” she says. “We’re
Friends.
You guys, you’re Monica and Chandler and we’re Rachel and Ross.”

Monica hasn’t ever seen a whole episode of
Friends
but she says that sounds cool and Forty says he stopped listening to Love talk about
Friends
several years ago and I
dive off my float and swim over to Love and let her celebrate her epiphany.

Love’s parents go off to Europe and Milo goes off with his Lorelai chick who lives in Echo Park, and Forty hires a housesitter to cover for Monica, which means she’s here all the
time. These are the last four weeks of summer and we couple up and do things, big things. We take a
helicopter
to Catalina and we hop a
jet
to Vegas and we eat in the pool and we
swim in the pool and Monica brings home
veggies
from the farmers’ market and Love calls them
vegetables
and I wish this was it, indefinite.

But then Robert Frost wasn’t fucking around and there is a new nip in the air, an increasingly noticeable one. The beach isn’t quite as densely crowded as it was yesterday and
motherfuckers at Intelligentsia are starting to trickle in wearing scarves. It’s a sign. There is change ahead. Our heavenly summer is going to end.

The days are getting shorter and Love is wrapped up in blankets, looking at
Boots
and
Puppies
online but now there are actual boxes of boots arriving every day, piling up in
the kitchen, in the bedroom, on our grass patio. Love tears into the boxes and tries on the boots but she doesn’t wear them, the way she doesn’t adopt any actual puppies.

She says this is her favorite time of year, when she puts “Boys of Summer” on all the Pantry playlists. I remind her that it’s kind of absurd in California, where it’s
not going to start snowing. She looks at me and tells me I’m getting a little red. She is critical lately. I tell her I already put on lotion and the sun doesn’t feel as strong.
There’s friction between us now that wasn’t here a day ago and I don’t know if I’m a summer fling.

“Joe,” she says. “You need to put on more lotion.”

“I really think I’m okay.”

She rolls her eyes. “But you’re not,” she says. “The sun stays strong here.”

“I’m fine,” I insist.

An hour later, I am a fool. I am crisp and cold and hot and burnt and my skin has been destroyed. She doesn’t say
I told you so
but she does cross her arms and wear a floppy hat.
We move to the shaded area of the pool and she says if I had put on the lotion I wouldn’t have gotten burned. I
did
put on the fucking lotion but clearly someone left it out in the
sun and all the protective power of it was destroyed. I am not going to fight with her. This is the Summer of Love and I have to believe in the Fall of Love even though it has an ominous tone. I
look at Forty, asleep in the chair; Monica is inside getting ready, as if you need to get ready to lie by the fucking pool.

“Too hard,” I say when Love rubs aloe on my red shoulders.

“Sorry,” she says, and she lightens her touch but that hurts too and I flinch. “Joe,” she says. “Maybe you should do this yourself.”

I take the bottle. I can’t do it myself. I can’t reach my back. The thing about a true sunburn is there is no quick fix. I lie on my belly and Love puts a sheet over me and kisses
the back of my head. She says she’s gonna go change.

“Change?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I have a meeting.”

“About your charity?”

She scruffs my hair. “About a movie.”

“The one you and Forty were working on?” I ask, and I don’t like this.

But she doesn’t have time to change her clothes or her attitude or answer my question because Milo is here, whistling, in a Black Dog Martha’s Vineyard T-shirt and it’s like he
knows
New England is my hate place, where Beck was born, angry and unsolvable, where Amy fooled me with
Charlotte & Charles
, where Love lost her virginity to Milo, undoable
and indelible, a cherry popped on old sand.

“You sick, buddy?” Milo asks as he hugs my girlfriend.

“He forgot to put on sunblock,” Love says. “Also you’re early, Mi.”

“Sorry,” he says, and he looks at me and winces. “Hey, you should put some aloe on that.”

“I did,” Love says. “But it’s that burn where all you can do is wait.”

They’re both standing over me and even though it hurts, I have to tear the sheet away and sit upright on this fucking chair. My own skin burns me, a localized panic attack on my largest
organ. “It’s not so bad,” I say. “What’s up, Milo? Where’s Lorelai?”

“Lorelai’s on her way to New York to go to a wedding in the Hamptons,” he says.

Love nudges him with her foot. “You should go,” she says. “She seems like a good one.”

“She is a good one,” he says. “And I had every intention of accompanying her. Who doesn’t love a Hamptons wedding?”

Me, fucker, and Milo pulls something out of his pocket. It’s a piece of paper folded up into a tiny triangle. He passes it to Love, who takes it and laughs. “This is so old
school,” she says. “This is how we used to pass notes.”