Love says if I still want to be a writer, Forty could give me pointers and I love her too much to tell her the truth. They were in the womb together. They remember the ’80s together. They were born together and they will take it to the grave together.

Just the same, I step out of the shower. I text Forty: We need to talk.

40

FORTY never wrote back, not just to me. He didn’t write back to Love or his mother or his father or Milo. He fell off the face of the fucking earth, which is odd behavior for someone who just scored a two-picture deal. His absence is a wrecking ball and Love is a tired, brittle, worried mess and this is what I cannot allow. I can’t let him do this to her, to us. He can steal all my scripts. Fine. But he can’t torture Love. She knew right away what he was up to. Four days ago, eight hours after I texted him, she made a declaration: “I’m calling it,” she said. “He’s not sick. He didn’t break his phone. He’s on a bender.”

Love’s parents came over, worried, pacing. Are we sure he isn’t in Malibu? What about that loft downtown he bought a while back? Dottie is such a mother. She didn’t want to think it was a bender. “I’m sure he’s off celebrating,” she insisted. “Don’t jump to the worst conclusion.”

“Celebrating with who?” Love asked. “Mom, I won’t jump to conclusions but please don’t go into denial already.”

Ray told Love not to get so worked up. “He’s thirty-five years old,” he said. “He’s not a baby.”

They left and I tried to make Love feel better but it was impossible. “I hate the way they go into denial,” she said. “He’s my twin and I know when something’s wrong. He goes on benders.”

Love texted his dealer, Slim, but the text bounced back. She threw her phone down. “Fucking Forty,” she snapped. “Of course his fucking drug dealer has a new fucking number. That’s what they do! They’re drug dealers.”

That was four days ago and Forty is officially on a bender. He hasn’t answered calls or texts or e-mails and he is an even bigger asshole than I realized.

“I miss him so much I feel crazy,” she says when we wake up. “I literally feel like I’m going crazy.”

“Me too,” I say, but she blows up at me. She’s in a terrible mood, worse every day, and whatever I say is wrong. And she doesn’t know that he fucked me over and I have to sit in this house and pretend to care about him, pretend that I’m not sitting here in shock.

There’s a knock on the door.

“Babies?” It’s Love’s mom. Again. Because this is how it is now. They show up in the morning and they’re here puttering around all day, all night. “Are you decent?”

“Yes!” Love shouts, with no regard for my morning wood.

Dottie comes into the room and flops onto the bed. “Did I not love him enough? You know, your daddy and I found out about his big deal from the trades.”

Every day we go over the events. I have to listen to the same fucking conversation, with Love assuring her mother that she did most certainly love them enough. I’ve grown too familiar with Love’s mother’s habits, the way she nervously twists her rings around her fingers, the way she brings a different purse every day even though all we do is sit in the house and speculate. I picture her at home, in Bel Air, moving all her pills and credit cards and blotting papers and lipsticks from one purse into another.

Ray calls from downstairs. “I got eggs!”

Yesterday it was I got French toasties and the day before that it was I got huevos rancheros and Love gets out of bed without looking at me. She slips into her robe and helps her mother off the bed and they walk away, telling each other how wonderful they are, how great a daughter Love is, how loving a mother Dottie is.

Downstairs, Ray tells me to have a seat and now it begins again, his questions about my business. Ray loves me. Ray wants to invest in me. Ray believes in books. Once upon a time, before Forty got a two-picture deal and disappeared, Dottie loved me too, but now she resents me. She doesn’t like Ray treating me with such love and acceptance. She doesn’t eat her eggs. Ray sighs. “Whatsa matter now?”

“Sometimes you don’t sound like someone whose son is missing,” she says. “Sometimes you sound downright chipper.”

“Pardon me for not being surprised,” he says. “I missed the memo where we were told to act as if there’s anything surprising about this mess.”

“You shut it,” she says. She looks at me, at her husband. “Have some respect for your son.”

Ray slams the refrigerator door shut and Forty has destroyed them. They were so happy before and the only thing that makes them stop fighting is Love, who starts crying and banging her fists and begging them to stop. “I can’t take this! You can’t do this now, you just can’t!”

And now her mother is soothing her and her father has them both in a bear hug and they promise her it’s going to be okay. “We’ll get through this as a family, Love bug,” he says. “We always do.”

I learn that Forty’s favorite game as a child was hide-and-seek. He never stopped playing. When things go well for him, he self-destructs. He hides. The day he got into grad school at UCLA, he went to a racetrack and drove his car into the wall. It was an accident, but at the same time, we all know what’s possible when we get into a fucking sports car. Two days before Love’s wedding, a happy time for all, Forty took off to go skiing via helicopter. He fell, of course, and no one could locate him for days. Love’s wedding had to be postponed. Forty was found in the woods and he claimed he was too disoriented to use his phone. One of the guys on the rescue squad lost a finger trying to find him.

After breakfast, Love and I go outside so she can water her plants. “Love,” I say. “Maybe we should get out of the house, you know, go to a movie or something.”

“A movie?” She lashes out at me, brandishing her hose. “How can I go to a movie when my brother is missing?”

“Because he always turns up.”

“You don’t get it because you’re not . . . close with your family,” she says. “I don’t mean that in a bad way, but just, just please don’t say things like how about we go to a movie? I need to be here. I can’t be in a movie theater and get a call that he’s . . .”

And she’s crying again, and I swear, she’s crying because she feels guilty because she wishes he would die and leave her alone already. He is tedious and he lacks imagination and he stole from me and he is a vampire, sucking the life out of his sister. I hold her.

“Joe,” Love says. Here we go again.

“Yeah?”

“When he showed up and we found out about his deal, you didn’t look happy.”

“Love, we were in the fucking pool. We were literally in the fucking pool.”

She tosses her hose. “No,” she says. “It’s not about that. You looked mad.”

“I wasn’t mad,” I say, and I want so badly to tell her I wrote those scripts, but if I tell her now, while Forty is gone, she will bury me.

She sprays her cactuses, as if they need water. “No,” she says. “You were definitely mad.”

I have no choice here. “Okay,” I say. “You’re right. You just told me how you’re done with the business and you don’t want to act and he walks in and he sold his movies and I was like, well, there goes that. Now you’re gonna wanna be in his movies.”

“Because I can’t think for myself?”

“No,” I say. “Because you’re twins. Because you work together, because of course he’d want his sister to be in his movies.”

“But I literally just told you I was done with that,” she says. “I literally told you I never want to act again. Just tell me why you weren’t happy for him, why you went off and skulked into the house. I mean, there’s something going on.”