“Show me what you got, kid.”

You lay it on the counter and I lower my legs and move forward and I’m hunching over the counter. I could touch you I’m so close and I know you like my cologne because you and Chana lust after a bartender who wears this cologne which is why I bought it and I open my present, my present from you.

It’s The Da Vinci Code in Italian and you clap and you laugh and I love your enthusiasm and this is something that comes more naturally to you than writing, giving. You are a giver.

“Open it up,” you say.

“But I don’t speak Italian.”

“The whole book’s not in Italian.”

I flip through and you are wrong and you grab the book and drop it on the counter.

“I know for a fact that the first page is in English. Open.”

I open. “Ah.”

“Yeah,” you say. “Read up.”

There you are, in black ink. You wrote to me:

Engine, Engine, Number Nine

On the New York transit line

If some drunk girl falls on the tracks

Pick her up pick her up pick her up

I read it out loud; I know you get off on your writing and you clap at the end and there it is in writing. You are literally asking me to pick you up and you nod and your name is there so it’s not freaky when I say it.

“Thank you, Guinevere.”

“It’s Beck.”

I lift up the book. “But it’s also Guinevere.”

You concede, you nod. “You are welcome. . . .”

I took off my name tag in the cage. You are pretending you don’t remember my name and I help you out. “Joe. Goldberg.”

“You are welcome, Joe Goldberg,” you say and you sigh and on you go. “But that’s kind of fucked, right, because I came here to thank you and now I’m saying, ‘You’re welcome.’ ”

“Tell you what,” I say and this is it, just how I practiced. “Now that we’re both alive and nobody’s singing and you got me this sweet-ass present, which is great because of all the books we have in this place, Italian Dan Brown is not one of them . . .”

“I noticed,” you sing and you blink and smile and you’re rocking a little.

I breathe. This is it, the next step. “Let’s get a drink sometime.”

“Sure,” you say and you cross your arms and you’re not looking at me or saying a specific time or date or place and now there are elements of our dynamic coming slowly into view, like a photograph in a darkroom—you didn’t write your number in the book and you got me the joke part of our thing—Dan Brown—instead of the shared serious part of our thing—Paula Fox—and I think you have a hickey. A small one, but still. You bought Paula Fox for Benji. You bought Dan Brown for me.

“The thing is,” you say, “I still can’t find my phone and I don’t have a new one yet so I’m not making a lot of plans, you know?”

“Yeah.”

I pretend I have to check something on the computer and I think of the way you e-mailed your friends about me, the way you talked more about the fact that I rescued you than the fact that you’re obsessed with me, so obsessed that you had to pretend you didn’t remember me. You didn’t tell Chana and Lynn about the way you think about me when you mount your green pillow, about how nervous and intimidated you were with me. You were so nervous and distracted by me that you lost your phone, Beck. Remember? Instead, you e-mail your friends about Benji and I have to speak or I’ll blow it.

“So, you never found your phone?”

“No, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think I left it in the subway station.”

“You had it in the cab.”

“Oh right, I did, but I mean who remembers the name of the cab company, right?”

Premiere Taxi of Lower Manhattan.

“Nobody ever remembers the name of the cab company,” I agree.

You ask me for a pen and I give you a pen and you grab one of our bookmarks and flip it over and write down your e-mail address that I already know. “Tell you what,” you say as you scribble. “I’m really busy with school and stuff, but why don’t you e-mail me and we’ll make a plan.”

“I hope you know those bookmarks are for paying customers only.”

You laugh and you are awkward without a phone to dive into and you look around, waiting to be excused. You really do have a daddy complex, Beck.

“Not for nothing, but these books aren’t gonna sell themselves, so why don’t you skedaddle and let me, you know, get back to work.”

You smile, relieved, and you almost curtsy as you back away. “Thanks again.”

“Every time,” I say. And I planned that and you smile, no teeth, and you don’t say good-bye and I don’t say “Have a nice day” because we are beyond pleasantries and you gave me your e-mail address and now I have to choose which draft to send to you. I knew you’d come in and I knew you’d give me your e-mail so last night I wrote different versions of my first e-mail to you. I was up all night writing, Beck. Just like you. I was in my cage, Beck. Just like you.

I put your bookmark with your e-mail in the Italian Dan Brown. It fits perfectly.

8

I hope that most people at this point in time realize that Prince is one of the great poets of our time. I didn’t say songwriter— I said poet. Prince is the closest thing we have to e. e. cummings and people are so stupid because they don’t come in here and buy books of Prince poems.

It’s been seven hours and fifteen days since you took your love away.

That is one of the greatest first lines of a poem in all time for a number of reasons, primarily because of the reversal of hours and days. A nonpoetic person would cite days and hours. A poet is different. A poet transforms the world with

Such small hands.

You haven’t written back to me yet. You have forwarded my e-mail to Chana and Lynn. You have giggled over photo-booth pictures of the three of you—ChanaLynn . . . us!—and exchanged dozens of idiotic e-mails about nothing. You have found the time to read and respond to your classmates’ short stories and beg the bosses at WORD in Brooklyn to let you read but you haven’t written back to the guy who saved your life. You are still in pursuit of Benji and it has not been seven hours and fifteen days but we are getting there, Beck. It’s not funny anymore.

You wrote to ChanaLynn:

How come I have to be a stereotypical chick that meets a nice guy and is like, thanks but no thanks? I don’t read Cosmo or do cleanses or post selfies, which means I don’t fit the profile for lame-girl-who-hates-nice-guys. I mean Benji is married to his business and this guy is the total opposite, works at a business, you know? Also, rooftop at the Wythe on Friday?

Chana wrote back first:

Beck, is this the guy you met at KGB? Wythe maybe.

And this tells me that you meet too many guys. You have this hunger for strangers. That’s why you read Craigslist “Casual Encounters.” No, you don’t have casual encounters (thank Christ), but at the same time you treat life like a giant fucking casual encounter, wasting time with Benji, with random guys from places like KGB.

Lynn wrote back:

They got shrinks on campus that can answer that question, girl.

These girls don’t know about our Italian Dan Brown and the extent of your crush because you don’t tell them and finally in the middle of the night after five hours and eight days you write back to me:

How about happy hour on Thursday?

I wait three hours and one day to write back:

That works. Where?

You didn’t earn my humor this time. You don’t write back right away. Four minutes three hours and two days pass before this bullshit stinks up my inbox: