Hidden Bodies (43 page)

“I’m thirty-five years old,” he says. “Where does it end?”

“Not in a desert!” she says, and now she is sobbing. Forty crumples up a paper towel and throws it at Milo. He points toward the door.

Milo obliges. “Come on, Dot,” he says. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Joe can stay here with me, right, Old Sport?” Forty offers.

I feel myself being murdered, slowly, the way they used to drain the blood out of people. “Sure thing,” I say. “You guys take a break.”

Dottie kisses her son on the head. “Don’t make it so hard for me,” she says. “I love you. Daddy loves you. Let us love you. Let us be there.”

“Mom,” he says. “It was a few days.”

Milo ushers Dottie out of the room and when they’re gone I turn to Forty. “Shut it,” he says. “First the door, then your mouth.”

I get up and walk to the door and I close the door and I return to my shitty chair. He does not encourage me to sit in the recliner and he does not suggest I get in the bed. He points to the
chair next to the bed. “Here,” he says. “I’m suffering from exhaustion and dehydration and I don’t need to be yelling.”

I sit in my chair. On the muted television,
The Cosby Show
begins. Forty opens a drawer in the tray table and pulls out two open bags of M&M’s. He reaches into one for candy.
He reaches into the other bag for pills.
Fucking Forty.
He pops a bottle of
Veuve
. He pours his apple juice onto the floor, as if he’s in a parking lot and he pours
champagne into his cup.

I don’t want to be the first to speak, but I can’t help it. “Is that gonna help with your dehydration?”

“No,” he says. “It won’t help with my exhaustion either, but it’s fine. I’m not the one with work to do.”

I look at him. “Did you call the cops?”

He ignores my question. He looks at the TV. He laughs, demented fucking sicko. “I love this episode,” he says. “You know this one, right, where Theo wants the fucking shirt?
Never gets old. He wants that shirt. His fucking know-it-all dad wants him to
work
for that shirt and his sister tries to make him the shirt at home but at the end of the day, the only way
to get that fucking shirt is to pony up and buy it.”

“Forty,” I say. “Maybe we can talk.”

He snaps and throws an M&M at me. It hits my nose. “You fucker. You left me in the desert, in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I could have died.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“
Maybe we can talk
?” He pours M&M’s into this mouth. “Maybe you can go fuck yourself.”

“Did you call the cops?”

“None of your business,” he says.

“Look,” I say. “Obviously, we’re both upset.”

He is exasperated. “Did you seriously just say that we
both
have reason to be upset?”

“Just hold on.”

“Look, psycho, I know you’re from a broken home and I know you came here with no friends and no family and no nothing, but my God,
Professor
, you are not a fucking
retard.”

“Don’t use that word, Forty.”

“You’re right,” he says. “Professors graduate from college. They
work
at colleges. You never even went to college.”

I seethe. Forty eats another M&M. “What the fuck do you want?”

“Number one rule of Hollywood,” he says. “Shit I learned when I was an intern at CAA for two weeks.” Only Forty would have a
two-week-long
internship.
“Don’t burn bridges.”

“Just tell me what you want.”

“I want you to listen,” he says. “You can’t burn bridges because LA is not like a hospital. The fucker mopping up this floor, he’s not gonna be operating on you
next month. It doesn’t work that way. In this business, people get places and you don’t know how they got there but they get there. And then the guy wiping the floor, he’s running
the studio.”

I hate it when he has a point. “Forty, they’re all gonna be back any minute,” I say. “What do you want?

“I’ve always wanted a dog,” he says.
Roosevelt.
“A white fluffy dog but my mom is allergic. That’s where the title of
Boots and Puppies
really
comes from. We had this puppy for like a minute, and we loved the shit out her. We named her Boots and Mom made us get rid of her because Mom was allergic. Fucking broke Love’s
heart.”

Liars lie and I can’t betray Love and families do this. Each person gets to invent a history, a version of the injustices, the pets, the names. I will never know the Quinns the way Milo
does, Milo who is probably sitting in a Quinn sandwich right now. “What are you trying to say?” I ask.

“That I’m a fucking grown-up,” he says. “A hot shit screenwriter and I’m my own person making my own bucks so I’m getting a dog. And you know what I’m
gonna call that fucking dog?”

I know what he’s going to call the fucking dog and I don’t want to say it out loud. But I think of my child. This is what parents do. They sacrifice. “You’re calling it
Professor,” I say.

He nods. “Professor,” he repeats. “Prof for short. Here’s the deal,
Prof
. You are gonna write what I tell you to write, when I tell you to write it.”

“Forty—”

He talks through me. “You are gonna churn out shit like you’re the guy in
Misery
fucking chained to the bed by the fat chick,” he says. “You will write and I
will earn and if you ever even so much as
think
about telling my sister what we’re doing, you fucking dog, I will put your ass in prison so fast you won’t know what hit
you.” He barks at me, as if he’s the dog, and he’s too fucked up from pills and Veuve to keep his analogies straight. “And you will be fucking loyal or I will
kick
your ass. I own you now. The end.”

I try to breathe. Forty throws another M&M at me.

“I said, did you hear me?” he asks.

I look at him. “You expect me to believe you’re not going to the cops?”

“I hate cops,” he says. “It’s tedious and there are so many questions and lawyers.”

“You could have died out there and you want to
work
with me? You expect me to believe that?” I shake my head. “Forty, here’s what I expect. I expect to walk out
of this room and get clocked and come to in an hour tied up in some fucking basement.”

He grins. “There it is,” he says. “That imagination.”

“I left you in the desert,” I say. “So don’t fucking tell me we’re gonna be
business
partners.”

“You’re not a good killer,” he says. “Obviously. But you’re a hell of a good writer.” The sick fuck eats more M&M’s and proceeds to tell me that
I’m worth more alive than dead. “Look,” he says. “I don’t care about any of this shit. I don’t care about getting sick and getting better and I don’t care
about getting married and having kids and getting healthy.” He breaks. Choking. He’s back. “All I care about is gold. I want an Oscar. I’ve wanted one my whole fucking life.
You can’t buy ’em, I mean, not technically. And I sure as hell didn’t come close to getting one for the last fifteen years and now you, motherfucker,
you’re
gonna
get me
my
Oscar.”

And he goes back to his Cosbys. He really doesn’t care about Love, about any of the Hallmark human joys we’re programmed to want, family and holidays, joy. He knows what I am, what I
did. And he would still allow me to fuck his sister, but then, his sister knows about me too and still she wants me and of course she does. Of course he does. “I’d fuck Denise,”
he says. And of course he would.
Twins.
And my child shares his genetic coding and this is why we have war, because no gene pool is perfect.

A nursing assistant barges in to take Forty’s vitals and she is cheery and pretty and she thinks it’s
so amazing
how Forty has such a
big and loving family.
“I wish everyone could have what you guys have,” she says. “It’s so sad when people are here and they don’t have anybody.”

“You know what I’d like to do?” Forty asks.

The nurse cuffs him. Blood pressure. Not real cuffs. I wish. “What’s that?” she chirps.

“I’d like for you, when you have time, to take all of these flowers and all of these balloons and disperse them to all the people on this floor who have no family around.”

She looks at me. “Could you just die?” she asks. “This family is the best, right? If they’re not bringing in sushi for us then they’re showering the whole floor
with flowers.” She puts a thermometer in Forty’s mouth. “I hate to say this, but I wish you could stay with us forever.”

“Me too,” I say.

Forty looks at me. The nurse says he has no temperature and he’ll be out of here
in a jiffy
and Love and Milo and Dottie and Ray return and the party continues. Forty reminds his
mother about their
plan
for me and she says that they want to start a book club at the Pantries. “You’ll choose one book a month to spotlight,” she says. “We can
even use you in the signage.”

Love squeezes my hand. “I love this idea,” she says. “Don’t you love this?”

“I love it,” Forty says. “Dad, do you love it?”

Ray nods. “Professor Joe,” he says and now the Quinns are debating what the first book should be and Love elbows me and says it should be
The Easter Parade
and I cringe and
I should not have told her that detail about Amy. I do not want her referencing Amy, ever. Forty says it should be
Misery
and Ray thinks that’s a good idea and Dottie only ever saw
the movie and Milo says the book and movie are both great and this is my life now. Or it is until Forty’s memory miraculously comes back. He could do that to me at any moment, turn me in,
take it all away. And I can’t kill him, not now that Love knows what I am, not when she could suspect me. He’s my new mug of piss, alive and well and wiping his nose. Love may have
forgiven me for everything else, but she would never forgive me for hurting her brother.
Professor Joe
would be a terrible moniker for a serial killer.

IN
the hotel room that night, Love is moody, slamming drawers. I ask her what’s wrong.

She sits on the bed. “Well,” she says. “Why should I even bother? I mean, do you know what the nurse says
really
happened?”

Fuck fuck fuck. “No,” I say. “I thought he can’t remember.”

Love sobs. I hold her. It goes on like this for hours. She says her father told her Forty burned through a hundred thousand dollars in a few days.

“Jesus, Love. I don’t know what to say.”

She looks out the window at Reno, which looks like Vegas and yet also looks nothing like Vegas. It’s lesser, smaller, worse. “It’s never going to end,” she says.
“My mom is going to sit there and act like he’s clean and my dad is gonna run away grumpy and I don’t know.” She wipes her eyes and looks at me. “How do you think he
even
wrote
those screenplays if he’s so fucked up to the point of winding up in the desert coked out of his mind?”

“I don’t know.”

“And who is this girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think she’s even
real
or do you think maybe drug dealers fucked him up?”

“I doubt he owes anybody any money.”

Love looks out the window. “Michael Michael Motorcycle said he’s the kind of guy people just want to hurt.”

“Michael Michael Motorcycle is in prison,” I remind her. “You and me, we’re gonna take care of Forty. And . . .”

She nods. “Believe me,” she says. She brushes her hand over her belly. “This is saving me.”

I look out at the lights and I see my future—
arf arf
—and how I will clap for Forty when his movie gets cast, when it goes into production, when he gets nominated, when he
wakes us up with a phone call—
I did it!
—and Love and I will dress up to go to the premiere and we will be the writer’s
family.
I will smile and I will meet all
the people who love my work and I won’t be able to accept their love. I won’t be able to tell the story of how I came to write
The Mess
or
The Third Twin
or the
kidnapping story due soon.

Love pats my leg. “I’m so tired,” she says. “My brother, God love him, but sometimes I think he literally drains me.”

She undresses. She throws her panties into the empty trash can. She is too tired to fuck me and I am too tired to sleep.

My career is over. I will live a lie, like so many people in LA. At least there will be truth where it matters, in this bed, in so many beds. And I’ll find a way to make myself known
someday. I’ll be a good dad; I’ll raise my kids so they won’t be stuck like this. Like so many great writers, I won’t be appreciated until after I’m dead and Love
finds a key to a safety deposit box with a letter inside explaining how I came to write all her brother’s movies.

Eventually, I sleep.

IT’S
true what they say about happiness. If you approach life from a place of gratitude, you’re more apt to enjoy things. I am whole. I
don’t need fame; I never wanted that and I did not move here because of
aspirations.
It’s enough for me to write and know that I did the best I could. I enjoy my life.
Our
life. Our baby! And I love that our baby is a secret.

We go to a premiere and meet Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux and I eat
guac
with them and we talk about
Cabo.
They are both narrow and kind and they treat me like an equal
and the whole experience is surreal. The best part of it is what happens when the party ends and Love and I are in bed discussing it all and talking about Jennifer Aniston’s hair.

I go to Milk Studios and a photographer shoots me for the Professor Joe promotions. They aren’t going to use my picture because I don’t want to be a public figure—Ray can
respect that—but they are going to model the mascot on my likeness. Dottie
loves
that.

The first book will be
Portnoy’s Complaint
and Love is chopping lettuce and she points the knife at me. “Now
that’s
a good fuck-you to that Amy girl,”
she says. “I hope she sees the signs the day they’re out.”