I confirm that I have hella ice and I park myself at a slot machine with a lobster theme. I insert my ticket, now worth only $2.11. Forty is the world’s least interesting man, bragging to the disinterested players around him about his career being on fire, as if people came to this place to talk about work.

My machine goes berserk. The screen changes and an animated lobsterman introduces himself to me. The woman next to me says it’s a bonus round and the fisherman reaches into the water and pulls out cages of lobsters. My $2.11 turns into $143.21. The house doesn’t always win and I know when to walk away. I take my ticket to a machine and cash out. I text Forty: Snow ice and snow bunnies too gotta come now.

Forty gets off his ass and leaves the casino. He lost a lot of money but I walk through the casino a winner. I find my car in the garage and I text Love: Any word?

She writes back: Nothing. But he’s probably passed out in some hooker’s bed by now.

I write back: Don’t worry. I’ll find him. Things are gonna change. They are.

And it’s the truth. If anything, this trip to Vegas has opened my eyes to what it’s been like for Love all these years. She is back in LA texting him and here he is ignoring her, feeding her fear, eating away at her life. He’s a parasite, a user, and I think he enjoys torturing Love.

I can’t blame Ray and Dottie. No parents do everything right. No parents can control how they love their children. But this isn’t about blame. This is about the love of my life, the pain in her eyes, the weakness in her voice, the way she is choking on his silence. I can’t let him smother her anymore. I love her too much for that.

43

TWENTY minutes later Forty slips out of his cab and moseys to the back of this off-strip, derelict gas station. He’s wearing a stupid backpack, like a kid going to camp, expecting to see his counselor/dealer. I step out of my car and smile, especially at the security camera that hangs by a thread, decimated, cracked, the reason I chose this particular spot.

“Old Sport!” Only joy registers on his bloated face as he gallops toward me and throws his arms around me. His hug is too hard and he reeks.

“What are you doing here?” he yells.

“It’s a long story,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

“I was supposed to meet my dealer, but he didn’t show. Luckily I’m well equipped.” Forty shrugs and pats his backpack. “Does this mean . . . are you finally good with everything? Down to party?”

I nod even though I hate drugs, hate the way people get around them, the need that comes through.

“Fucking Goldberg!” he sings, and then he’s on about his Molly and his blow, his this and his that. He wipes his fat hair off his stretched face. “You know, I know we had some talks, some iffiness with the business, but that’s what it is, my friend. Business gets whack and shit happens and then what do you do? You smoke a little crack.”

He winks and slips into my car with his fucking backpack. “We need this,” he goes on. “I bet this is your first time in Vegas right? Professor Goes to Vegas! I love it!” His eyes narrow, curious. “Where’s my sis?”

“At home,” I say. “With your parents.”

“Nice,” he says. He cracks open a forty-ounce can of malt liquor. It pops and fizzes. “You relationship people, I don’t know how you do it.” He burps and beer dribbles down his chin. “You feel like you need to bring home the bacon and the big dick and make them babies and dance that dance and it’s like, fuck that. I answer to me and me alone. Fuck love.” He laughs. “You know what I mean. Not Love love. I love my sister. She’s my rock. Do you know how many times she texted me today?”

I count to two. It doesn’t help. “Did you write back to her?”

He shakes his head. “It’s that twin thing, she’s my rock. She knows I split sometimes. She gets me. You want a bump?”

SelfishmotherfuckingpigdruggieLovewrecker

“I’m good,” I say. I think about those situations, when women are pregnant with twins and the doctors have to go in and remove the fetus that is sucking the life out of the other. It’s the humane thing to do. Sometimes, one must die so that the other can live. Biology isn’t sentimental. None of Love’s other boyfriends had the balls to end Forty. But I do. I look at him, scrolling through his texts from her. He only feels loved when she’s a wreck, worried about him, consumed. Some people are strong enough to share a womb and a birthday. Love is. Forty isn’t.

“Check out the ass on that ass,” he says, pointing to a high school girl looking for the bathroom. “Should we take her with us?”

I want to kill him. Now. In this rental. I start the car. I can’t kill him here. I grip the wheel. He pounds the roof. The schoolgirl found the bathroom. She’s safe. We go. Silence only lasts for two lights and then he’s at it again.

“You and my sister are my fucking rock,” he says. “You take care of her or else, right? You know that, right? Like, you get that you are a dead man if you fuck her over?”

I clench the wheel tighter. “You’re a good brother.”

“I’m the best brother,” he says. “The motherfucking best.”

He pulls a little baggie out of his pocket and sniffs. I pull onto the freeway and he is so high that he doesn’t ask where we’re going. He only rants about how he’s never getting married and how he’s gonna live with me and Love and all the fun we’re gonna have. He’s sealing the deal on his death and the car hums and we are farther and farther from the bright lights, and there are fewer cars all the time. The inside of Forty’s mind is a grave place and it’s right next to me, soaking up the oxygen. He is the anti-Love and he confesses that he shops at Ralph’s.

“It’s fucking groceries,” he sneers. “It’s food. And you know what food is, Old Sport? It’s pre-shit. That’s all. It’s pre-shit and we need it to survive. And it used to be a fucking pain for the cavemen, right, my friend? I mean, you had to get out there with your club and whack at woolly mammoths and drag that shit home before the flies got all up in it and that’s why food was a fucking pain. But come on. It’s modern time. Food is fucking easy.”

He rubs his nose and shakes his head. “All you do is go in, you get your tacos, and you fucking eat. People like my parents, they want to act like it fucking matters so much, like what you eat for dinner is so interesting but it’s not! It’s fucking food! Just eat it and shit it and be done with it and don’t feel special cuz you eat that shit with someone because in the end we all shit alone! Who the fuck cares that you ate the pre-shit with someone if you shit alone, on a toilet, door closed, whammo!”

He snorts more cocaine. I could pull over and roll him out the door but he’s on so much blow right now that he would probably just turn into a roadrunner, catch up to me, and jump back in.

“I could eat a taco,” he says. “Fucking chomp right into that thing.”

He wants to call Love. I panic and my hand slips on the wheel. I sweat. I tell him we had sort of a fight.

“Then maybe we shan’t,” he says. He rolls down the window, all smiles, like a dog searching for fresh air. It’s telling, how his spirits lift the second he thinks I’m on the outs with Love. He doesn’t want me to be happy. He doesn’t want anyone to be happy. Especially Love.

He brags about his time in Vegas, one lie after another, twisting it all, a mile a minute, deranged, and we can’t get there fast enough but I can’t speed—the mug of piss—and he won’t stop talking about table minimums and hookers refusing to take his money. He doesn’t say one true thing for the entire journey through all this brown land, blue sky, and he’s so fucked up, so full of himself, verbally expunging, the loneliest man on earth.