I grab her extensions and smash her head into the tub and that’s it. No more tears. Blood trickles down her forehead. I was right. She isn’t beautiful. She was pretty. And I don’t feel sorry for her. It’s like they say about everything in this world. You can’t feel sorry for yourself. A lot of girls, they would have loved to be so pretty.

31

IT’S a good thing I brought that giant duffel bag to LA. I don’t know how else I’d get her the fuck out of here. But first I have to get dressed and find my keys and run all the way up to Tuxedo Terrace and get my car. I throw on sweatpants and a shitty old T-shirt I wore when I worked at the bookstore. It’s cold. My lungs hurt. And when I get to my car, it’s all fogged in and I don’t have time for this. This is LA, there shouldn’t ever be any bullshit with the weather. My teeth chatter as I defrost the windshield and Henderson is a bad luck charm, even dead.

When I reach Hollywood Lawns, I put on my hazards and put the car in park. I jog up the steps, back inside, and get my giant empty duffel bag out of the closet and unzip it and the zipper is loud, stuck, no. I yank. No. I know for a fact that I don’t have any trash bags big enough to hold her and I pull again and I cut my finger but the zipper behaves. I lift Delilah out of the tub and set her inside the bag. She looks like she’s being swallowed by a giant black flower and I pull the zipper over her feet, covering her legs, past her Journey tattoo. I zip more, obscuring her cheap panties and her cheaper bra and her too-short neck and her too-big mouth and her closed eyes and her rounded forehead and her hair. She never needed extensions.

I try to lift the bag but I’m going to have to drag it—and fast. This is a crowded neighborhood and everyone wants to be skinny; soon there will be exercisers. I carry the bag out to my Prius and Wolfe is fucking right. You can’t go home again. Not if you live in an apartment building.

I haven’t been in the Donzi alone. A few weeks ago, we were at this bar in the Marina and I ran down to the dock to get Love’s sweater and I remember standing on the boat thinking about how different it is being alone than it is being with other people.

I wanted to take the boat out and push it. I wanted to drive it to Japan. I had this moment. The cover band inside was doing Toto—that “Africa” song—and I was so fucking happy. It was enough to choose Love inside on the dance floor over the great sea, the unknown. And then there’s also the fact that I don’t have a fucking license. Love’s family can get out of anything; I know this. But Love has warned me not to take the boat out on my own.

“It’s infinitely easier to deal with boat cops if Forty or I are there,” she said. “And if we’re not, you know, it’s harder.”

I am on my way back to shore after burying Delilah at sea, watching the weighted-down bag make its way to the center of the Pacific, far from the world she couldn’t quite fit into. I will always think of her kindly, her unfulfilled potential, how she extended her arm for that blender that was just out of reach. She embodied the danger of aspirations and I will always wish she hadn’t turned into a menacing fame monster.

I feel bad for her parents. I feel terrible for all the guys who genuinely offered their hearts. Mostly, I feel terrible for her. I picture Harvey showing someone Delilah’s apartment full of her things and I sit. This one hurt. It did. LA consumes people. Able-bodied, intelligent people like Henderson and Delilah move here and turn into oversexed monsters and it didn’t have to be this way. They both could have been a little kinder. I don’t feel so bad anymore. My body count in LA: one star and one star fucker.

I slide into the Marina at the thirty-degree angle. I don’t turn too early or too late. I learned so much this summer. I am a boater, a writer. The Donzi is in the slip. And then I hear someone calling my name.

Love.

She is wrapped up in her hooded bathrobe. I am in last night’s clothes and it’s a good thing I’m already parked because now my adrenaline is going and my body is shaking. She is not smiling and I have no idea how long she’s been here, if she saw me go out to sea with my bag, and return with nothing.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she demands. “You bail on me and go out on my fucking boat?”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “I just went for a ride,” I say.

“Alone?” she asks. And fuck. My eyes scan the floor for blood but I’m good; no mug of piss here, nothing to see, folks.

“Obviously,” I answer. “Do you see anyone else here?”

I can tell by her demeanor that the answer is no, she does not see anyone now; she did not see anyone when there was someone to see. She doesn’t know what I did, that I cheated, that I let Delilah into my bed, onto my body, that I put her out to sea. More secrets, more bad things, but I am safe.

“I’m kind of surprised to see you,” I say, and turn the tables.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” she says.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I wrote to you. I didn’t hear back.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I didn’t write back to you because I don’t write back to people who treat me like shit. I’m not a doormat, Joe.”

“Me neither,” I snap. “Did you have fun with your little friend Milo?”

“You mean my director?” she asks. “Because that’s what he is, Joe. My director. He’s not my boyfriend and he’s not the enemy and we’re in business together. Business that matters to me, goddamn it. Business you walked out on. Business that is mine.”

She trembles and I know. She didn’t fuck him and she didn’t dump me and fuck I overreacted. I fucked up. The Donzi shimmies and what I wouldn’t give to be on land. Instead I’m on this boat, this vessel that belongs to her family. She gets to be the steady one, on the dock, entitled, land ho, and fuck me.

Love folds her arms. “Just throw me the fucking line,” she says, my teacher, my boss. I toss it to her and she ties a knot fast, so smooth, such a rich girl. I climb off the boat, clumsy as all fuck. She stomps along the dock and onto the beach and I follow her onto the sand. Me, the follower.

“Love,” I say. “Let me just say I’m sorry. I know I have no excuse.”

“Joe, when something good happens to me and you shit on it . . .”

“I’m sorry,” I proclaim. I reach for her. She backs away. I say it again. “I’m sorry, Love.”

“It’s not enough,” she says. “You were such a dick, Joe. The second we got the green light, you turned into one of those dickhead guys who doesn’t like it when his girlfriend gets attention.”

She continues to blast me. She says I let her down. I should have been a man and I should have congratulated her and I should have meant it. I should have expressed interest in the script and I should have been up front about my obvious jealousy issues. I should have called her instead of texting her because that was a bitch move and I should have hung around the neighborhood and waited for her after the show. All the things I should have done and we can’t go back in time.

“I know,” she says. “But do you get it? Do you get that it’s not going to be like this?”

“Yes,” I say, and I’ve never loved her as much as I do right now and I want the chance to be the good guy, the best guy, the talking guy. I want to clean my dick and scrub my skin and start over. I love her too much to let this be the end.

“Love,” I say. “I am so sorry. You have to understand. You are right. I acted like a fucking douche.”

She looks at me. I beg her with my eyes and my hands and I am as strong as she is. I apologize again and again and something transforms inside of her and my hands and my eyes did the work that I was unable to do with my dirty mouth. Love nods.